"I'm on kamikaze commission," rants Satanic salesman Tommy Rag (Timothy Spall), as he speeds through the city like one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, violently foisting vacuum cleaners on the vacuous and vain, the degraded and destitute. Indeed he is. From beginning to end, Rag, whose only excuse for unwavering evilness is that his father beat up his mother, is on a mission to self-destruct.

The death of a salesman (what would Arthur Miller think?) looms large though not, of course, as large as the character of Rag himself. Writer Jim Cartwright has given us an archetype - symbolic, ruthless, arrogant, Faustian - similar to the nightclub promoter played by Michael Caine in Little Voice. Likewise, Pete (Michael Begley), a would-be DJ, who is led by Rag through the seven circles of sell hell, has something of the innocence, introversion and immersion in a dreamworld as Jane Horrocks in Little Voice.

Cartwright deals not in gritty realism, but super-realism. He spins kitchen sink fairytales, peopled by dreamers and schemers. We are taken to a place where underdog becomes top dog and when the worm turns he/she never looks back. But like all fairytales, the story has a number of levels. Rag is symbolic of the old ways. Cyberselling in the almost computer generated shape of Uki (Caroline Ashley), the oriental web developer, is the cool, clear, level-headed future of Rag's profession, a future in which he has no part.

While Rag tries to make a disciple of Pete, the apprentice salesman unwittingly brings about his teacher's downfall by giving a naïve customer her money back and it is Rag himself who chooses to pick up a hitcher who helps bring Pete back on to the true path. This turns out to be a Lord of the Dance, DJ De Kid, (sounds suspiciously like Dickhead, played by James Cartwright) whose dream is to set up a club called The Ark.

Just as the early Christians drew fish in the sand as a secret greeting, Pete and DJ De Kid recognise each other as kindred spirits in the phrase used to describe techno style dancing of the early 90s, "big fish, little fish, cardboard box." God, as Faithless sing, is a DJ and, if we are to take the film literally, dance music is our salvation.

For anyone who felt Danny Boyle had sold out with The Beach, here is a film which sees him back on form. Cartwright's bizarre characters are a perfect complement to Boyle's staccato pace and strange, intimate camera angles and effects. Blackpool beach replaces the Thai paradise and Spall, the real star of the film, is easily more memorable than Leonardo di Caprio.