REIEWED - THE HALO EFFECT: Irish writer-director Lance Daly follows his enterprising, no-budget début feature, Last Days in Dublin, with The Halo Effect, which is set over dark nights in Dublin, down the mean streets off the city centre, writes Michael Dwyer.

On one of them is the rundown chipper run by the inaptly named Fatso (Stephen Rea), a decent, hard-working man struggling to stay in business, and, less successfully, to keep his gambling addiction under control.

Playing Good Samaritan to an assortment of disparate, mostly desperate deadbeats, Fatso, it seems, can save everyone but himself. As his debts spiral out of control, he is forced to risk everything in a desperate bid to survive.

Making impressively resourceful use of a small budget, Daly and his team have produced a dark and droll serious comedy that is nimbly paced and punctuated with sharp, punchy Dublin humour. Working with lighting cameraman Ivan McCullough, he distinctively captures the nocturnal atmosphere of the city in all its edginess and unpredictability, and Daly proves just as adept at juggling all the various characters populating this scenario.

Playing Fatso with the perfect combination of resignation and hang-dog despair, Rea heads a lively Irish cast in which such promising young talent as Kerry Condon, Grattan Smith, Simon Delaney, Fiona O'Shaugnessy and a scene-stealing Laurence Kinlan comfortably hold their own in the company of such established players as John Kavanagh, Mick Lally, Gerard McSorley and Brendan Cauldwell, each of whom attacks his role with relish.