(90 mins, 15)
Directed by Niall Heery; starring Iain Glen, Steven Mackintosh, Laurence Kinlan, Tom Jordan Murphy

In Small Engine Repair, his modest, highly promising feature debut as writer-director, Niall Heery brings a fresh eye to bear on traditional Irish themes: small-town despair; living through pipe dreams; the need of the young to flee the nest for more promising places. The people involved are hooked on small-town Americana and it might well have been called The Playboys of the Country-and-Western World. An opening shot of an enormous Caterpillar contraption methodically tearing down trees, stripping them, cutting them up and piling them on a lorry, establishes a rural world where mechanisation is creating unemployment. The central characters are heavy-drinking chums in their forties who support each other in hard times. Doug (Iain Glen) is an odd-job man, Bill (Steven Mackintosh) owns a mechanical repair shop. Doug wants to be a country singer, performing wry songs about his own troubles and disappointments, but lacks the confidence to appear in public. Bill's business barely covers his outgoings and his son is determined to move to more promising pastures. Meanwhile a local bully is out of jail and looking for the man who turned him in for a hit-and-run offence.

The film takes place in a mountain area that looks much like the Appalachians, and the movie could be transposed to the States without anyone having to change anything but their accents. But the Irish setting gives it a particular edge. Theres something peculiarly poignant about these people living at one remove from life and not getting their share of Ireland's tiger economy. This is a confident, perceptive movie, both funny and sad, and the performances are first-rate.