The Wee Man – review

Ray Burdis co-directed and appeared in the grisly mockney-geezer Britflicks Final Cut (1998) and Love, Honour and Obey (2000), and this clumsy, cliched crime thriller, written and directed by Burdis, has some echoes of those, despite being set in Glasgow. It is worryingly like the many ropey London-estuary gangland movies that are allegedly "true stories" – that is, based on the self-pitying and self-serving books by ex-criminals who explain how their crime career began with standing up to bullies, and how they were never the really bad ones. This has a great cast: Martin Compston plays Paul Ferris, a young Glasgow tough guy who gets involved in the crime empire run by local godfather Arthur Thompson (Patrick Bergin). Denis Lawson gives the film a touch of humanity and class as Ferris's weary dad. But as a whole, it's forgettable.