Awesome film.

I've just finished watching this film, and the making of documentary on the dvd. It's amazing. There are so many themes and ideas that this film deals with... Frank's inability to communicate, and his inability to be close to anyone (he doesn't even have full intercourse with Vic; he can't let his mother embrace him and so on); the change that he goes through from the start to the end - the turning point of which is the attack on Tonny; the changing relationship between Frank & Radovan, and then Frank & Milo; the issues of trust and the constant disappointment that Vic goes through with Frank; the way that Frank uses everyone that he comes across, only to end up making one wrong choice too many at the end... the list goes on.

There are a lot of references (possibly intentional, possibly unintentional) to other character based films such as American Gigolo, and The Long Good Friday (as someone else has posted up)....

It's a food for thought film, certainly. One of the best films I've seen for months. I was genuinely scared watching it, as I had no idea what was going to happen next. The sad thing is, in my line of work (youth worker) I come across a lot of youngsters who are part of the drug 'game', and from what I get told, some parts of this are scarily accurate. It's much more of an anti-drug film than it may appear.

One more thing - isn't the scene at the end (apart from being reminiscent of The Long Good Friday) Frank's imaginings of what is going to happen, or what's likely to happen, rather than a literal cross-cutting of events? The whole film follows Frank and shows everything from his point of view, and to change the narrative at the end seems a little 'easy'... but then I suppose it could be argued that Frank's position in the grand scheme of things has changed as well, and it's not just about him anymore.

"Now he's gawn and twisted them bars as if they was cheese!!"