For some reason it seems that our brightest TV comedy talents are incapable of transferring that talent to big screen. Take Rik Mayall - sublime in everything from The Young Ones to Jackanory, totally crap in Drop Dead Fred. And this Peckinpah-title aping yawn drives another nail into his cinematic coffin, while also managing to make the normally wonderful Jane Horrocks look bad as well.
Horrocks is Mavis Davis, once a nobody, now a rock star called Maria Dorland. Rik is Marty Starr, her once cool, now snivelling manager. They share a past but keep it secret. But now Marty is in deep hock to someone who might just be a mobster (the inevitably mob-like figure of Danny Aiello) and the quickest way for Marty to settle the debt is to off his hottest property - Maria - then pocket the royalties such a tragic "accident" will bring.
The credits claim this is "based on an original idea" by Joanne Reay, but there's very little originality on display here, with the hackneyed plot merely window-dressed with some rock and roll trappings. Mayall struggles as best he can given the weakness of the material, while Horrocks - clearly miscast - opts for overdrive, delivering a performance that is simply unpleasant to watch. As for poor Aiello, who wanders in and out of the picture looking genuinely confused, you just want to buy him a ticket back to Brooklyn and put him out of all our miseries.