ONE FOR THE ROAD: Sometimes, to paraphrase Tammy Wynette, it's hard to be a man. One for the Road, Nottingham writer-director Chris Cooke's first feature film, brings together a group of weak, irresponsible men for a darkly serious comedy permeated with the nasty streak that ran through Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men and laced with the edgy, deadpan humour of the TV series The Office.

The principal characters meet on a rehabilitation course for convicted drink drivers. Jimmy (Greg Chisholm), the youngest of them, is naïve and desperately wants to sell his late father's disused warehouse and move to Thailand. Mark (Mark Devenport) is a taxi driver who has lost his licence and now travels around in his cab, as the passenger of his disgruntled business partner. Paul (Rupert Procter) boasts that he was named salesman of the year three times in the 1990s. He bizarrely equates his job with the code of the samurai, but in the tradition of all his dramatic antecedents since Willy Loman, he is washed up and his world is falling apart.

The fourth, most self-assured member is Richard (Hywel Bennett, in a welcome return to the big screen), a retired millionaire property developer who is seeking out a new, younger wife to amuse him.

The fecklessness of these men is sharply illustrated when they take their lunch break on the first day of the rehabilitation course - and head straight for the pub, swilling back pints of lager.

In its early stages, One For the Road seems as wilfully meandering and aimless as its protagonists, and just as full of small talk, and it takes the calculated risk of alienating its audience. But Cooke cleverly lobs one off-the-wall curveball after another, unexpectedly drawing humour from the sheer desperation and deep insecurities of these men.

Paul is by some way the most pathetic of them, but he gets no sympathy from Cooke, who makes him the butt of the movie's cruellest humour. In the funniest - and most embarrassing - scene, Paul ineptly attempts a reconciliation with his estranged wife, only to find her having dinner with another woman and to be sent out of his house into the tent where she has exiled him.

Rambling as its structure feels, Cooke's film consistently delivers surprises as it reflects on the downward spiral of the dreamers at its centre and on their inability to do anything that might trigger trust and self-belief in them.

The performances are strongly naturalistic, and Procter is outstanding as the hopelessly self-deluded Paul.

- Michael Dwyer