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It's 35 minutes before anyone smiles in Tinge Krishnan’s bruised debut, but when it happens it’s beautiful.

The brilliant Eddie Marsan’s ex-soldier is teaching teenage stray Candese Reid self defence when she starts, irrepressibly, to dance instead. It can’t last.

And just as these characters’ fortunes tip back towards tragedy, so too does this intimate drama ultimately overreach with gangland excesses and a plot involving Romola Garai’s whitecollar wastrel.

But it’s an impressive two-hander about sensitive souls facing stark realities – the lovers who life forces to become fighters.

Matt Glasby is a freelance film and TV journalist. You can find his work on Total Film - in print and online - as well as at publications like the Radio Times, Channel 4, DVD REview, Flicks, GQ, Hotdog, Little White Lies, and SFX, among others. He is also the author of several novels, including The Book of Horror: The Anatomy of Fear in Film and Britpop Cinema: From Trainspotting To This Is England.