Released in 2003 and produced for a budget of something like £400,000, 16 Years of Alcohol is the directorial feature film début of ex-Skids frontman, ex-male model and ex-TV presenter Richard Jobson. I've seen this film twice in as many years now and I'll have a stab at reviewing it ...

Jobson has adapted the film from his own semi-autobiographical book of the same name. I cannot pass comment on the book as I have never read it, nor have I seen it for sale anywhere, but it was described as a "prose poem" on the BBC website. This description comes as no surprise to me as I do get the impression that Jobson may have a tendency towards the ostentatiously artistic. Nonetheless, despite having some notable flaws, 16 years of Alcohol is still rather a good film.

Opening with Frankie Mac (Kevin McKidd) receiving what is known in Scotland as a "real doin'" by three other men in a deserted Edinburgh close we are then shown the events leading up to this incident in intercut flashbacks. It is not clear to the viewer whether Frankie dies as a result of this violent and bloody beating and you are left to wonder if the film might not be a dream sequence review of his life seen through the eyes of a dying man.

With a title like 16 Years of Alcohol you would be forgiven for expecting this to be a film about alcoholism. This is true only in passing and the film is more concerned with despair and a paucity of hope which, fuelled by alcohol, results in self-expression and temporary liberation through violence. The seeds of Frankie's hopelessness are made clear in the sections of the film dedicated to his experiences as a young boy in awe of his charismatic father and the chivalry and love his father shows for Frankie's mother. After witnessing a sexual indiscretion between his father and another woman Frankie begins to see through to the grim reality of their lives. His father is an alcoholic and a womaniser and there is a simmering resentment between his parents. In a particularly memorable and heavily stylised scene the 10 year old Frankie sits between his cobweb-strewn parents who sit in their armchairs facing each other with hostile unblinking glares while each gripping a glass of spirits. With a nod to the way the human mind distorts, idealises or amplifies memories through time, the scenes focused on Frankie's early life seem particularly impressionistic.

The section exploring Frankie's life as the leader of a teenage skinhead gang is filmed as an obvious homage to Kubrick's 1971 A Clockwork Orange. Stuart Sinclair Blyth gives a solid performance as Miller, one of the more psychopathic members of the gang. Frankie sees hope of an escape from his tortured life in the shape of art student Helen (Laura Fraser) but their relationship is doomed to failure and Frankie descends into alcoholic oblivion after she leaves him. [McKidd and Fraser also appeared in Gillies MacKinnon's 1996 Small Faces from which Jobson seems to have drawn influence while shooting this film.]

Years later we see Frankie at an AA meeting where he confides to the circle "my name is Frankie and I am a violent man". A second relationship with aspiring actress and fellow AA member Mary (a well cast Susan Lynch) seems to offer Frankie a second chance but, in a clumsy and unconvincing sequence, Frankie mistakenly thinks she has been unfaithful to him in what amounts to an echo of his own father's indiscretions round the back of a pub.

The narration by McKidd throughout the film does on occasion veer quite close to being pretentious nonsense but that aside the actor puts in a good shift and delivers a powerful and memorable performance. As good a performance as I've seen from McKidd.

Whereas some directors would have chosen to make a film with this subject matter in the "kitchen sink" tradition of social realism I think many people will have seen a film just like that before. Jobson and his cinematographer John Rhodes employ striking visual flourishes throughout this film, including still photography, unusual framing and hyper-real colour saturation, which, along with some excellent performances, elevate a fairly standard plot to something much more worthwhile. Viewers of a certain age will also be given a nostalgic aural treat with a soundtrack featuring Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, The Skids (obviously) and Roxy Music.

The title credits dedicate the film to Jobson's late elder brother Francis and subsequent interviews have made it clear that the Frankie in the film is an amalgam of the two brothers. Richard was a teenage gang member in Dunfermline's Abbeyview estate seeking acceptance as part of a larger group. The "AV Toi" gang had tailored clothes and a passion for football-related and drink-fuelled violence. His older brother Francis was also a skinhead but his intellectualism and more solitary nature drove him away from that life and he became a Hare Krishna devotee.

In short then, a visual and aural treat, a tad on the artsy-fartsy side with the narration but generally good acting across the board. You could do a lot worse than give it a go.