Perrier’s Bounty is a gangster movie with a brain, a comic caper with serious undertones and a portentous voiceover hinting at existential themes. It also has some very grisly moments interspersed with much eloquence. After Brendan Gleeson’s sadistic gangster kingpin Darren Perrier inflicts yet more torture on a poor subject who then manages to momentarily escape, his reaction is to exclaim, “The insouciance of the fuck!”

Perrier names his bounty after the accidental slaying of one-half of a pair of homosexual debt collectors by a heartbroken and suicidal English woman played by Jodie Whittaker. She lives in Dublin in the flat underneath the streetwise but skint Michael McCrea (Cillian Murphy), who the debt collectors were after.

As if Michael’s day couldn’t get any worse, his estranged father Jim shows up, claiming that the devil has told him that he will die if he falls asleep. Jim Broadbent puts in a brilliant turn as Jim, forcing himself to stay awake by eating the entire contents of coffee jars, and still being practical enough to get Michael out of some tight spots.

Michael and Jim take Brenda under their wing as the entire Dublin underworld come together to look for them and claim Perrier’s bounty.

Although the movie sometimes lurches wildly between seriousness and triviality, it stays just the right side of bathos, and is a thrilling ride through the Dublin underworld.

Look out especially for a fine supporting role from Natalie Britton, an up-and-coming Dublin-born actress destined for great things, who plays the new lover of Brenda’s former boyfriend.

Perrier’s Bounty is currently showing at the Showcase cinema, St Philip’s Causeway. More details here.