George Melly's famous description of Get Carter as 'like drinking a bottle of gin for breakfast' came back to me as I watched an early morning screening of London to Brighton, an iron-hard film of almost unbearable intensity from Paul Andrew Williams. It follows a prostitute (a terrific debut from Lorraine Stanley) escaping a grisly situation accompanied by a 12-year-old girl she'd recently recruited to please her pimp.

This is straight from the 'shut up and fuck off' school of British film-making but it has some excellently tense scenes, a polished script and thrilling, purposeful sense of direction - think Cassavetes's Gloria with nonces, shooters and cups of tea. I just wonder what Sean Connery, who sneaked into the back row of the screening, made of it all.

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