First things first, if you read this review you will find out how this film ends, not that its ending should really come as a surprise to you; as the counsellor in South Park says, 'Drugs are bad, m'kay'.

Adam and Paul are two junkies, or addicts – depending on how you feel about such things. They wake up on a desolate landscape, not sure where they are, but fully agreed on how they feel: strung out. Motivation, introduced neatly in the first few minutes, sees the boys off on a surreal and sometimes blackly humourous odyssey to get some smack, or heroin – depending on how you feel about such things. Along the way they encounter friends, enemies and people who neither care for them nor hate them. We meet their ex-girlfriend, who we learn has managed to get off junk, and we discover through a meeting with old acquaintances that it is another friend's 'month's mind' that very day; something they are unaware of, nor really care about. As each new scene comes and goes, we learn something new about our 'intrepid heroes'... only we don't really. We try to piece together the surface information provided, but we never get a true sense of who they are, or should I say who they were. The more we try to connect with them the more impossible the task seems, for they are lost mind and body to their addiction. The only thing keeping them going is their craving, the only thing they think about is their craving.

Several encounters of increasingly black proportions later, and the lads eventually get what they had hoped for: A miracle of coincidence that would seem totally out of place in any other film provides them with what might be a small fortune of smack in junkie terms. The day ends, and the following morning finds the two back in their desolate landscape, ready to start another day. But now only one of them is left alive.

It's been over a month since this film was released, and I've heard discussions and debates regarding its realism or lack of it. I even had a heated debate with a counsellor on whether the film was making addicts/junkies out to be stupid. Technically one might argue that it's not too bright to take a drug that has been the proven downfall of so many, but that's a debate for another day. Although its 'mocking' black humour, happily showing each piece of misery and pratfall in its their glory, has caused upset to some, the film is very much on the side of its protagonists.

Served by a wonderful script from Mark O'Halloran, director Abrahamson has managed to delve into an arena barbed with 'social issue' and managed to wrest from it a very universal and human story that causes anyone with a heart to think. Comparisons have been made to Beckett and Laurel & Hardy, and there is certainly some truth to this. However, the film's humour serves most of all as an effective way to make the world of Adam and Paul more palatable, so audiences might stick around to learn some terrible things. After all, as another famous Irishman – G.B. Shaw – said: 'If you are going to tell people the truth you'd better make them laugh.'

Rated 15PG (see IFCO website for details)
Adam & Paul was released on 27th August 2004.
Adam & Paul – Official website