One would think that at the ripe old age of 72 director Mike Hodges would depart from his preoccupation with the British underworld—maybe create an uplifting, cheery film to leave his lifetime achievement award audience smiling.

Not this time. Riding the familiar wave of his acclaimed 1972 "Get Carter" that embroiled Michael Caine in a vengeful spree with London lords, "I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead" also involves violent deaths and evening the score. Handsome Davey Graham is a penny-ante drug dealer, using his connections to infiltrate the realm of the beautiful people, supplying them with their narcotic of choice. A favorite with women, he is never without a party or a gorgeous babe. When he is raped by the twisted Malcolm Mc Dowell ¾ still looking creepy thirty years after "A Clockwork Orange" ¾ Davey sinks into despair and commits suicide with a razor in his bathtub.

Enter tough, quiet older brother Will (Owen). In unexplained seclusion for the last three years, Will only hints at the why and where of his disappearance ("I’m grieving for a whole life wasted."), though a few clues reveal that he had been a top honcho in the city’s crime world. Coming home to investigate his brother’s unreturned phone calls Will appears unkempt from living in his van. Even so, local bigwig thugs are nervous about his resurfacing ("Never underestimate Will Graham."). A pathologist’s second opinion and a few phone calls —an incredibly easy fix by cinema standards—give Will the answers about Davey’s death. With little explanation and even less fanfare (unless you count his shower and shave), Will dusts off his revolver and metes his revenge on the nonplussed McDowell.

Clive Owen, a Hodge favorite since he cast him in the equally dark "Croupier," embodies the brooding force of Will Graham with an assurance that almost made me forget this film’s flimsy plot. With barely a hundred words to say, Owen uses his deep-set eyes to express his bone-tired sadness. Clearly the characters and the setting take the forefront in this moody film. Wet, littered streets, cramped apartments and gloomy corners give London a non-tourist, battered look that is perfectly accompanied by the film’s dissonant, jazzy musical score. Images of bloody water filling a bathtub, a chauffeur’s eyes in a rear-view mirror, a field of wind blown dune grass ¾ all contribute to the dark unsavory tone of this visually arresting film.

Sucked in by these atmospheric devices, it is easy to forgive the filmmaker’s waste of Charlotte Rampling’s talent. Her part is undeveloped and underwritten, with a mere hint of her relationship to Will. Her presence seems required only for the film’s underplayed twist ending. The upside and a casting rarity: Rampling is a full twenty years older than Owen. Ah, justice, at last.