WATCHING "Dad Savage" is not a comfortable experience. That's the idea. It's not really the chopping'n'changing, non-linear narrative, although that can be an irritant. It's the very British way of making us come to terms with the reality of violence.

"Dad Savage" is both a bold and unwise effort from first time director Betsan Morris Evans. Bold in its experimention and desire to get away from the film world's romance with guns and violence. Unwise because it tries too much and offers too little.

At first, "Dad Savage" is a kind of rustic Reservoir Dogs set against a backdrop of flat, agricultural expanses and oo-aar accents of a Lincolnshire backwater. However, after some initial gun fondling and testosterone-fuelled gangster talk, things turn nasty in a very life-like way.

Patrick Stewart plays the eponymous Dad Savage, an untypical villain who loves Country and Western, thinks he is a cowboy and keeps a large tulip farm. He also has a thriving criminal life, but what this is exactly is never really made clear.

Trouble starts when the paternalistic Savage enrolls the help of two of his son Sav's old school friends, Vic and Bob (no allusion to the comedy duo is evident). When Vic and Bob discover that Savage has burried loot ("his pension fund") they start getting ideas. You know it will end in disaster. The reason you know, is because you get the disaster early on. In an impressive slo-mo sequence a jeep falls, it seems, out of the sky into a dusty cellar, bodies thrown in all directions.

What's happening? Where are we? You'll have to wait for the film to dish up the story piece by piece. The fact that the narrative refuses to sit still in one time frame can be annoying, but there is some satisfaction in seeing the puzzle take shape.

The small cast all put in committed performances, even if the dialogue sounds overly pat at times (Vic and Bob's talk of escaping to America and fantasising about what they'll do with the money is weak).

Patrick Stewart is faintly ridiculous as the eccentric Dad Savage. "Oim just a simple coun'ry boy," he drawls unconvincingly. It is difficult to forget he is also Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise. He exudes too much intelligence to be burying suitcases of Fifties in the woods.

Helen McCrory's character Chris, a feisty female in an otherwise male world, is the one character who seems capable of redeeming the dead-end conclusion of the film. Unfortunately, script writer Robert King and director Betsan Morris Evans don't do enough to salvage what is a plain, depressing ending.