ALAN Clarke had a knack for bringing out the best - or should that be the worst - in his actors. Following Roth's electrifying role as neo-nazi skinhead in Made In Britain and Ray Winstone toughing it in borstal drama Scum, up steps a young Gary Oldman in emaculate form as a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like Bexy, a silver-tongued estate agent who, when he finishes his week's work, likes nothing better than getting together with his friends and giving someone a good kicking.

Product of the Eighties or not, Bexy is no ordinary scum bag: he's witty, charming (albeit in a viscerous, wide-boy way), and even sympathetic. He has a wife and kid who he lavishes with affection. Like his fellow soccer casuals he has all the outward trappings of success and respectability - designer clothes, good job and flash car.

So what's he doing smashing heads in? He argues, to his wife, that he can't help it, he needs the buzz. "Then get a hive" she snaps back angrily in a script that is full of acerbic, darkly comic exchanges. But the "top boy" from the Inter City crew, is intent on uniting all the rival gangs in the area into one "firm", for the forthcoming European Cup. Everything else takes a back seat.

Few film-makers these days want to tell it like it is. Standard schlock has good triumphing over bad, happy endings and escapism. Clarke was not like that. The verite style camerawork of his made-for-tv features allowed him to experiment and bend the rules of film-making. His style is marked by its use of handhelds, close-ups, and minimal studio lighting, which helps create raw and effective visuals. Bar the braying football terrace refrains, you don't even get a soundtrack, which is refreshing too.

In Clarke's slices of life, characterisation matters. Oldman's Bexy is revealed to be a complex, ballsy character who is driven by peer pressure, his own violent impulses and macho pride, into behaving like the worst kind of thug. The film doesn't question and it doesn't preach, it just shows.