Dead Long Enough doesn't do it all by numbers and it looks very pleasant with its Irish and Welsh settings, and an attractive cast who bring warmth to a rather slight story.
It's about two brothers with distinctly different personalities, an old flame who's had a child by one or the other of them, and some guns buried on a beach.
Douglas Henshall is very good, Michael Sheen and Jason Hughes do an entertaining double act and everyone else manages to survive some potentially twee light comedy.
It's not satirical, it's not particularly exciting, and it has about as much cinematic ambition as an episode of Only Fools and Horses – but it tells its story competently, it's well performed and the low budget production makes the best of the scenery.
There are a number of elements that smack of not-having-thought-it-through. Some of the dialogue is surreal – I have no idea what the Welsh secretary was talking about for instance (you'll know it when you see it) and Joe Pasquale is out of place, yet oddly endearing as a gay soldier on border patrol
Also, there are some very strange chapter titles that don't add much to anything
and the climactic chase is a bit naff.
But it doesn't fail because it doesn't hang itself on over-ambition. It could be a whole lot worse.
