Anthony Neilson has only ever directed a single feature film, so it is nice that he wrote and directed a particularly good one. The Scottish playwright is a leading figure in the United Kingdom’s “in yer face” theatre movement, which saw a new generation of writers present a string of plays during the 1990s that were deliberately transgressive, controversial, and violent. Neilson stood alongside the likes of Sarah Kane, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, and others in presenting deeply confronting and effective theatre.

Neilson’s film The Debt Collector follows a reformed violent criminal named Nicky Dryden (Billy Connolly). In the 1970s he would enforce Edinburgh’s gangland debts, not by assaulting the debtor but by assaulting, disfiguring, and even murdering their loved ones, friends, and family. 20 years later Dryden is a reformed ex-convict. He has married a journalist named Val (Francesca Annis), and forged a highly lucrative career as a sculptor. None of this sits well with the obsessional police detective Gary Keltie (Ken Stott), who does not believe in Dryden’s transformation, or that someone so innately cruel deserves any kind of redemption.

The Debt Collector is a relentlessly bleak, deeply unhappy thriller. One can sympathise with Dryden, a reformed man who simply wishes to live his life in peace. One can also see things from Keltie’s point of view: the damage that Dryden inflicted on the community still hurts it. His victims are still permanently scarred or grieving their spouses and children.

The film embraces a career-best performance by Connolly, who has always presented himself as a talented actor. Here he is stripped of the opportunity to rely on his comedy skills, and instead appears to dig deep into his working class Glasgow background. He is an immediately effective ‘hard man’, with a worrisome potential for violence. He achieves a hugely impressive creative feat here, balancing elements of horror and humanity and creating a brilliantly realised protagonist. When, deep into the film’s narrative, Dryden looms over a bloody and battered man and cries ‘look at what you made me do’, the horror, tragedy, and sympathy come in equal measure.

To my mind Ken Stott stands as one of Scotland’s most underrated actors. While never wanting for work, he has sustained a career in British film and television without ever making the break into mainstream American cinema like he deserves. In many ways he is tasked with a more difficult character. Kelty thinks of himself as a good man, however his obsessions and rapidly decaying morality turn him into an absolute monster. If he does not garner the sympathy that Connolly’s character does, it is because the script does not allow him to. Dryden’s worst horrors are expressed as back story; Kelty’s come as a result of his obsessive crusade.

The leads are ably supported by a top-notch cast. Francesca Annis delivers superb work with a wonderfully nuanced character, one that ably tackles the question of how somebody could love someone with such an abhorrent past. Iain Robertson is deeply unsettling as “Flipper”, an aspiring gangland thug who has idolised Dryden’s criminal past and tries to ingratiate himself into Dryden’s post-criminal life. Scottish local legend Annette Crosbie, probably best known for her long-running role in BBC comedy One Foot in the Grave, is palpably tragic as Kelty’s elderly mother.

The film is exceptionally well shot, particularly given that – despite a striking Edinburgh setting – funding requirements saw most of the film shot in Glasgow. Adrian Johnston’s musical score is a bit overwhelming, but honestly big scores were a hallmark of 1990s cinema. A quieter film may have been more effective, but in Neilson’s hands it is already effective enough.

This is a tragedy in a classical sense. The outcome is clear from the film’s first scene. Opportunities abound for Dryden and Kelty to end their tit-for-tat feud. That neither takes that opportunity is down to unchangeable faults in their character. The Debt Collector, a title that applies to both its lead characters, is a deeply miserable and hugely effective downward ride. That it is not better known or available today is its own kind of tragedy.

There are many good films released around the world every year. Masterpiece celebrates the best of the very best: genuinely superb works of cinema that come with FictionMachine‘s very highest recommendation. If we had our own Criterion Collection, these are the films we would want it to include.