This year Robert De Niro will be 60 years old, and still industriously making movies in the long sunset of his post-greatness, either as a reasonable comic turn (Meet the Parents, Analyze This and Analyze That) or a tough guy on either side of the law. But lately, it's when he's playing the grizzled, worldly cop that he really causes hearts to sink. Who could forget, or rather remember, pictures like Showtime and 15 Minutes with De Niro as the careworn officer, phoning in precisely the same yawn-inducing performance? This film looked very much like being more of the same: but it's actually not bad at all.

Detective Vincent La Marca's entire career is a propitiatory gesture for the sins of his father - executed for a fatally bungled kidnap attempt - and now he's forced to investigate a murder for which the prime suspect is his estranged junkie son. Ironic agony is piled upon ironic agony with the remorselessness of Greek tragedy, with mucho parent-child abandonment issues. Yet Ken Hixon's screenplay is tight and well plotted and Michael Caton-Jones directs with confidence; he delivers an engaging and entertaining piece of mainstream entertainment and gets strong, persuasive performances from De Niro, Frances McDormand as his girlfriend and James Franco (Harry Osborn from Spider-Man) as Joey, Vincent's son.

When the reticent cop finally opens up to his appalled girlfriend about all the secrets of his past and present, there was derisive laughter at the screening I attended, but the grotesque, humbling absurdity is certainly intentional. Caton-Jones's run-down Long Beach locations nicely combine melancholy and menace. As for De Niro, well - with a director confident enough not to be overawed, who knows what might still be possible?