Neds

Directed by Peter Mullan. Starring Conor McCarron, Gregg Forrest, Joe Szula, Mahari Anderson, Gary Miligan, John Joe Hay, Peter Mullan 18 cert, lim release, 122 min

IT'S TAKEN Peter Mullan nearly a decade to follow-up his searing The Magdalene Sisters, but the wait has probably been worthwhile. Probably.

Nedsis such a wilfully discombobulating film that it defies any attempts at instant evaluation. At times it plays like a warm exercise in nostalgia. Elsewhere, it has the quality of a 1950s teen exploitation flick. Its final moments drift into Caledonian surrealism. What's clear is that Mullan is not someone to take the easy option.

The beginning plays very much like Shane Meadows's This Is England. It is the early 1970s. Young John McGill (Gregg Forrest and, later, Conor McCarron), a clever, diligent child from a rough part of Glasgow, is about to start at secondary school.

Before he cracks open a book, John encounters several disturbing traumas. A rough kid, self-proclaimed master of the school, threatens to beat him into a pulp. As a result of clerical carelessness, he is put into the second stream, where he encounters a teacher with little interest in nurturing his potential.

Nonetheless, John knuckles down and eventually gets bumped up to the top flight. Then everything falls apart. He is drawn into a gang and, initially wary, happily embraces the culture of recreational violence. Work suffers. Home life becomes unmanageable.

Pondering such a scenario, you probably imagine the mayhem taking place to the strains of T Rex. You'd be right. Like This Is England, Neds is happy to immerse itself in the pop culture of the era. And, like the Meadows picture, it initially appears to invite empathy with the central character.

As events progress, however, Mullan’s Brechtian roots show through and, encouraged by McCarron’s impressively deadened performance, we become increasingly alienated from the borderline-psychotic protagonist. Maybe he’s not such a good boy after all. Maybe there was always a budding lunatic lurking beneath the studious façade.

The result is a film – burdened with, perhaps, one too many endings – that constantly whips the carpet from beneath you. Social realism has never seemed so unreal or so anti-social. Don’t miss.