This low-key thriller, set in the late 1950s-early 60s judging by the costumes, harks back to the regional British crime flicks of that period, the sort of movies where penny-stakes gangsters and spivs in shiny suits clash over who will control the ration-card black market. Writer-director Michael Wright clearly has a yen for this milieu and takes care to get the argot right in this tale of Arthur Morel (Paul McGann), a reticent funeral director who gets mixed up with local hoodlum Finlay (Roger Barclay) in a northern town. Finlay needs a bit of help burying the excess bodies his shady business generates, or “loose ends” as he describes them.
It’s not immediately clear why Arthur agrees to take on this shady extra business, but perhaps it has something to do with his late brother who had a gambling habit that got him into trouble with Finlay. Or maybe Arthur just fancies some extra cash. It’s hard to tell given how buttoned-down and clenched of jaw McGann’s performance is, playing a man obsessed with keeping the doors between his work life and private life closed and locked, literally as well as figuratively.
