Here is a vigilante thriller co-directed, written by and starring prolific low-budget Scottish film-maker Nathan Shepka, which has a kind of grim integrity despite the uneven acting and numerous rough edges. Seemingly inspired by the Rotherham grooming gang scandal, but transposing the story to Glasgow, Shepka plays laconic nightclub bouncer Alex, who is asked to do a Jack Carter and rescue a teenage girl from sex-trafficking hell.
Not that this takes place in a world where anyone does anything out of innate goodness. The job, and the accompanying 20 grand, are sent his way by a retired lawyer (ex-Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy) who is trying to cover up the fact that the girl’s mother is a heroin addict sleeping with a major politician. But Alex isn’t fundamentally a wrong’un; he visits his deaf father languishing in a care home, and shows worrying outbreaks of tenderness to sex worker Gemma (Grace Cordell) on her regular visits to his caravan.
Starting with a failed abduction attempt by taxi driver Ghadir (the impressively slippery Kareem Nassif), Shepka paints this grimy underworld with a suffocating density. Alex’s first port of call is prison, to see the politico’s paedophile brother; a comparatively nice guy next to the hardcore flesh-peddlers who use taxi ranks, newsagents and takeaways as a front. But Shepka’s commitment to fully tracking this grubby terrain often gets him bogged down in muddy plotting – as when Patrick Bergin inexplicably shows up to warn Alex he’s in too deep (very considerate of the big kingpin).
The film also displays what you might call the Daily Mail dichotomy: a streak of mawkish sentimentality (Alex and Gemma slow-dancing to his dad’s piano-playing) married to law-and-order bloodlust. Shepka is on thin ice by identifying the gangmasters as south Asian, though he does go a certain distance towards a nuanced portrayal by depicting the contradictions of ringleader Amar’s (Manjot Sumal) family life. And that’s before his hero goes full Charles Bronson on everyone. A bit of a waste, given the socially minded heft elsewhere that keeps this watchable.
• Dead Before They Wake is on digital platforms from 27 January.
