London to Brighton

5 / 5 stars
Edinburgh film festival

The Edinburgh film festival has a reputation for unveiling the best young British talent - and they've done it again. On a shoestring budget, twentysomething writer-director Paul Andrew Williams has made a cracking debut feature that is the talk of the festival, and rightly so. It's a cold-sweat gangland thriller with a twist of social-realist compassion: Get Carter meets Cathy Come Home.

We are plunged directly into what looks like a frightening situation. A prostitute called Kelly (Lorraine Stanley) with ripped clothes and an inflamed black eye bustles a 12-year-old girl into a public lavatory somewhere in south London. They are afraid of someone, and decide to escape on the last train to Brighton. It's a man called Derek who has it in for them - and some nasty characters have it in for Derek. But why? What has happened? Williams unfolds his story in a cleverly positioned series of flashbacks. The tension is doubled as you wait to discover what Kelly and the girl have done, and what is going to be done to them.

This isn't just another piece of mockney lock-stock nonsense: it's made with terrific fluency and originality, and the performances are outstanding. Johnny Harris is convincing as Derek, the slimeball pimp and coward brandishing a shotgun. Stanley is excellent, as is Georgia Groome as 12-year-old Joanne.

Williams rounds off the movie by disclosing a horrible truth that all too plausibly explains the sordid fear, violence and disgust. It's audacious, exciting film-making, with nightmarish scenes I couldn't get out of my head. A dazzling debut.

· At the Cameo on Saturday 26 August at 2pm. Box office: 0131-623 8030.