Charlie Creed-Miles has been a dependable player on screens big and small since his breakthrough in Gary Oldman's Nil By Mouth in 1997. But this is his finest hour. He rips up the screen in Dexter Fletcher's gritty comedy-drama set in the mean streets of south-east London. Tough-but-tender is a difficult routine for any actor, but Creed-Miles carries it off. With maturity and unassuming warmth, he turns himself into the beating heart at the centre of this likable and involving British picture, which incidentally shows that you are not necessarily letting the social-realist side down by having your characters smile and laugh. Former actor Fletcher makes his directing debut, co-writing with novelist Danny King.
Creed-Miles plays "Wild" Bill Hayward, once a violent criminal and cokehead who is now out on licence, with a clueless but reasonably sincere plan to go straight. Once back in the chaotic family nest, he discovers his wife did a runner ages ago, and that his 15-year-old son Dean (Will Poulter) has been bringing up 11-year-old brother Jimmy (Sammy Williams) on his own, under the social-services radar, while seething with anger at his father's desertion. So rather than get in trouble all over again, hapless Bill has to look after his boys and pretend to be a decent bloke and single dad for the authorities' benefit – and discovers it might not be a pretence after all. Yet the sinister bad guys of his old manor are circling: "Wild Bill?" sneers one, "Mild Bill, more like." They find the presence of this former prince of the streets is an intolerable affront to their own teetering self-esteem.
Creed-Miles's face – hangdog, melancholy and somehow invisibly bruised – eloquently tells us about a tough guy who has found that violence has led only to prison and humiliation. And Poulter takes a step up to adult roles as his son, Dean; it's a very good performance. Why can't all British crime dramas be so well written and well acted, and have a splash of comedy as confident as this? Who knows? At any rate, in just under a year's time, Fletcher and Creed-Miles had better make sure their dinner jackets are back from the dry-cleaners.
