You may not know the names Louis Mellis and David Scinto, but you might well know the 2000 gangster comedy Sexy Beast which they wrote. It turns out the twosome haven’t done much in the last decade, but they have finally gotten round to writing another gritty gangster flick, in 44 Inch Chest, an odd, darkly, sickly comic film that doesn’t hit all the sweet spots, but covers its weaker bases with telling performances.

When we first meet Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone), he’s lying on the floor sobbing, strewn amidst a mess of alcohol bottles and broken glass, while Harry Nillson’s seminal break-up track “Without You” blares over his hi-fi system. Colin is a gangster, but that doesn’t make him a disloyal husband despite the stereotype, and so he’s distraught when his wife, Liz (Joanne Whalley), tells him that she’s fallen in love with someone else and is leaving. Colin calls up his mates for help - Archie (Tom Wilkinson), the pragmatist, Mal (Stephen Dillane), the blunt smooth-talker, Meredith (Ian McShane), the gay philosopher, and Peanut (John Hurt), the cantankerous homophobe – who kidnap Liz’s lover (Melvil Poupaud) and deliver him to Colin, enticing him to kill him as an act of revenge. However, Colin is too much of a state to go through with it initially, and as each of his cohorts chimes in with their views on the situation, he has to decide what to do – kill the adulterer, maybe just maim him a bit, or let him go.

Much is made not of gangster convention throughout 44 Inch Chest, but more of Colin’s cuckolding as a reflection of his bruised masculine ego, for while the film forays briefly into pop psychology, detailing a dream of Colin’s where he was attacked by a toothed vagina, it is a sentiment largely on the level and unpretentious, following along the same simple-mindedness as our crew of gangsters. It is in many ways a postmodern gangster film, depicting its hulking protagonist as an inept and weak thug, while his far more bullish friends egg him on, and Winstone, in playing off of the “tough man” image he has styled for himself, is perfectly cast. Furthermore, the expectations of the gangster genre – that there should be plenty of philandering and violence – are undone, for the considerable majority of the film takes place in one room, unfolding like a play. As a minimalist character piece, in which one man’s masculinity is cross-examined by his friends, it is often fairly engaging.

There are no bones about the fact that this is not your grandmother’s daytime soap opera; it is an incredibly profane film, with liberal use of the C-word, and its fuck-per-minute count may well rival Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth (in which Winstone also starred). This does prove problematic at times, though, because often it’s gratuitous for the sake of gratuity, without being funny or clever. Although it manages a few cutting, Mamet-esque lines, and the tone is certainly impressionistic for the most part (for you needn’t spend a weekend in London to know that these are authentic characters), Glengarry Glen Ross this is not.

Still, that’s not to say the thesps don’t make an impact, because Winstone in particular totally nails his role, especially as he muses on his lost love to her new lover, referring to her as his “Queen Bee”, and in turn referring to himself as a monogamous swan. For a man best known as the supporting grunt in films like The Departed, he displays a rarely-demonstrated depth, seething with anger and pain, while spinning an upside-down riff on the type of character that made him famous in the first place.

These moments don’t dominate the film, though, and despite scarcely running to the 90 minute mark, there is a fair amount of padding here; two of Meredith’s stories – of how he won £40,000 at a casino, and of him buying a pair of £450 shoes – seem utterly without base, and there’s an extensive surreal fantasy section in the film’s third reel that’s difficult to make head or tail of.

The film ends predictably, but it also manages to defy genre expectations in a satisfying way. The performances elevate the hit-and-miss script that takes a few chances and pays off with its single-room format. It won’t win those involved any new fans, but it is a diverting slice of gangster drama despite its many flaws.