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Fresh out of prison after a ten-year stretch, Jimmy Kerrigan (Alex Ferns, better known as ' villain Evil Trevor) is back on the Glaswegian mean streets where he made his rep. He's the local big man and he's still in good shape, but something's different. Has he lost his bottle? Found religion? Or is he just deceiving everyone? Nothing's what it seems, and there's everything at stake in this engrossingly unusual Brit flick.

Taking the 'gangster returning home' theme into unexpected territory, director Norman Stone manages to sidestep the inevitable clich茅s of the genre in favour of something distinctly offbeat. More interested in working out his probation by acting in a local Passion Play with kindly vicar Father Flynn (the ever-excellent Tom Georgeson) than in playing the hard man, Jimmy's on dangerous ground. Particularly since his old mob boss is convinced he's just biding his time until the time is ripe for a takeover.

"VEERS BETWEEN MOODY AND HAPPY-CLAPPY"

There's an alarming rawness at the heart of this tale of redemption. But it's too often stifled by the screenplay's wild changes in tone as it veers between moody Scot-noir and happy-clappy religious parable, leaving the talented Ferns struggling to keep up.

Spiced up with bouts of knuckle splitting, hair trigger violence and a keen eye for inner city deprivation, Man Dancin' suffers from some occasionally heavy-handed work in the symbolism department: the vicar's first name is Gabriel, the play is about the crucifixion, and the finale takes place at the foot of The Angel of the North. Short of making Jimmy into a carpenter, it's difficult to see how this could have been any more transparent.

As Harvey Keitel once said in Scorsese's Mean Streets: "You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets." It's a lesson Man Dancin' should have paid a little more attention to.