Really good Australian films are as rare and as welcome as rain in the outback, and Mullet is a real beaut. The mullet of the title doesn't refer to the haircut - though there are plenty of those in the New South Wales fishing town of Coollawarra - but to the fish. It's also the nickname of a returning football hero whom everyone would have preferred to stay away.

Like the fish, he's a no-good larrikin, and he's played by Ben Mendelsohn with a gormless charm that reminds you of Michael Hutchence. But Mullet's hooligan days are drawing to a close, and in his mother's words of welcome, he's beginning to look like "a rat staring through a straw broom".

While Mullet has been up to no good in Sydney, his brother, the dependable cop, has married his girl, Tully. As his dad, "Coach" Col Maloney, explains when he asks why he wasn't invited to the wedding: "Everyone wanted you there, just not the shit that goes with having you."

David Caesar's beguiling, beautifully paced film wears its subtlety lightly. Honest, funny and oddly romantic, it never sounds a note of condescension. As they say in Coollawarra, Mullet is a diamond in a dung heap.

• At the UGC today at 6pm. Box office: 0131-623 8030.