The Parole Officer

All three come out to play in The Parole Officer, his first stab at playing the lead in a full-length feature, for which he also has co-written the script with fellow Mancunian Henry Normal.

Traditionally, this journey to the big screen is fraught with danger, for many a TV-raised comic has wilted under the burden of expectation and Coogan, second only to Chris Morris in the British hit list of dangerous satirists, has more than most to lose.

However, he has always had a surfeit of confidence to go with buckets of presence, and so the leap into the unknown does not trouble him.

Rather than a ground-breaking radical satire, Coogan has settled for a softer option, an old-fashioned cops-and-robbers farce with American dumb-movie accessories. Present, correct and re-arranged are the staple ingredients of so many British comedies: a robbery; a love story; a hapless gang; a nerd know-all; bent coppers; bicycles; a Jenny Agutter cameo; a repetitious vomit gag (the UK version of a sick joke); discomfort in the face of (pole-dancing) naked women and manly statues; and a grim northern setting, in this case Coogan's grey home territory of Manchester.

Coogan is Simon Garden, the inept parole officer of the title, who loses his job and finds an enemy when he unwittingly witnesses a cocaine-dealing police inspector (Stephen Dillane) terminating an accountant (another favourite British target) in a gangland contretemps.

In the frame for murder, simple Simon must break into a bank vault to find the incriminating evidence, a surveillance video tape. To assist him, he calls upon a crack team...well, a bunch of his probation clients, hardman Steven Waddington, computer hacker Ben Miller and mechanics man Om Puri. Lena Headey is around too, as sexy cop love interest, and Omar Sharif takes a break from the bridge table to lend old-school elegance to the finale.

Garden is another of life's humourless irritants, a Coogan speciality, but whereas Alan Partridge is supercilious, Simon is a wet weasel and it takes longer to warm to the stupid humour. However, John Duigan directs with rising energy after a slow start, and the imbecile, contrived early gags (especially the rollercoaster vomit scene) make way for character-led screwball comedy in the Ealing tradition, as the gang members bicker and bond. Even the Reservoir Dogs spoof has its day.

Surprisingly for Coogan, The Parole Officer ends up upbeat, the trademark Coogan malice nowhere to be seen but the deadpan delivery still his ace card. Even more surprisingly for a modern British caper, The Parole Officer is not a crime against comedy.

The Parole Officer

(12, 94 minutes)