Trespass Against Us

Cert: 15A; Now showing English director Adam Smith has looked to these shores for a cast worthy of playing a clan of law-breakers terrorising the Cotswolds and each other. Even after Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson had been secured, Killian Scott and Barry Keoghan, two of our better upand-comers, were brought on board to lend some feral energy.

Via a script by Alastair Siddons based on a real-life itinerant family that rampaged through Gloucestershire some years back, Smith portrays a rift within the caravan-dwelling Cutler family. Led by slippery patriarch Colby (Gleeson), they lie at the edge of society. Well, all except son-and-heir Chad (Fassbender), who along with wife Kelly (a fantastic Lyndsey Marshal) has aspirations of a better life for his kids. Colby won’t tolerate dissent and could be as much of a threat to Chad as PC Lovage (the routinely excellent Rory Kinnear).

Implausible as the idea of Fassbender being Gleeson’s son is, the pair spark well off one another. The latter is filled with dogma and treachery as he slumps on a tatty chair in his little kingdom of filth. The former wrestles visibly with the social conflict within him. He is a prince of thieves but wants to step closer into a world that despises him for preying upon it.

Smith’s feature debut has a rawness that is fitting, even if the finale seems to run out of road. Fassbender and Gleeson gnash through the mangled “Cheltenham backstreet” accent with vim and eat up one or two jaw-clenching scenes.