The Quiet Assassin

Alex Hardcastle is a musician and, as it turns out, an excellent director as well.

This is an accomplished short with a heavy-weight cast clearly attracted by the opportunity to appear in something so well realised.

Jimmy Law has been waiting. Forty years to be exact. Waiting and marking time - for the bus, for a change in fortune at work, for his life to change for the better.

It does, when he discovers a darkly delicious "gift from God".

Tapping into a part of all of us that has dreamed of causing destruction to those who wrong us, Hardcastle's short has the sort of black humour that lurks in the cellar of your soul.

Simon Greenall (more famous for playing 'geordie' Michael in I'm Alan Patridge) is excellent as Law and Dee puts in a good cameo turn as his chop-busting boss - playing it more straight than he has often failed to do in the past.

The script is great, the production values high and the direction interesting without getting in the way. Hardcastle certainly proves he has another string to his guitar.