SCISSOR SISTERS (DEADLY CUTS)

Rachel Carey's hairdressing comedy 'Deadly Cuts' nipped in for a short back and sides when it was released in UK cinemas last year.

Pitched somewhere between the humour of early Roddy Doyle and Brendan O'Connor, it didn't last long in English, Scottish and Welsh cinemas.

A simple, foul mouthed, working class Dublin comedy, Carey's film made around £164,000 at the UK box office.

It did well, however,  at the Irish box office - racing to number three in the charts in its opening week, just behind 'No Time To Die' and 'Addams Family 2'.

Carey's film also achieved the best opening in Ireland for a native film by a female director for 20 years.

It was also the biggest opening for a domestically made movie since Lee Cronin's superb 2019 Wicklow horror film 'The Hole in the Ground'.

'Deadly Cuts' has since been acquired for distribution in South Africa, Australia and Spain where it will get a release on St Patrick's Day.

Netflix has lined it up in the US for a St Patrick's Day release.

A New Year's release in the UK and Ireland has given it another lease of Netflix, with the comedy rather predictably racing to the top of the streamer's charts in the latter.

'Deadly Cuts' is set in a hair salon in the tough fictional north Dublin neighbourhood of Piglinstown.

Run by Angeline Ball's Michelle, her staff Ericka Roe's Stacey, Lauren Larkin's Gemma and Shauna Higgins' Chantelle are aiming for national recognition in the prestigious "Ahh Hair" competition.

Michelle, though, has been burnt before by the snobbery of the hairdressing circuit, butting up against Victoria Smurfit's Pippa in her youth and blowing a big chance to impress Louis Lovett's revered celebrity hairstylist, D'Logan Doyle.

While her staff secretly enter the competition and secure a place in the finals, the salon faces other problems.

Ian Lloyd Anderson's local thug Deano bullies the staff and leans on them in an extortion racket. 

Aidan McArdle's slimy politician Darren Flynn also has designs on improbably turning the row of shops where the salon and Lawrence Kinlan's butcher Fat Mick into a hotel.

This persuades Michelle that the only way to stop Flynn from getting his way is to win 'Ahh Hair'.

But this means a showdown on national television with Smurfit's posh southside salon whose staff will resort to any tactics to undermine the Deadly Cuts crew and lord it over them.

It also means winning over D'Logan who has his own theme song and Pauline McLynn's Shelly Sherlock in the Irish hairdressing equivalent of a live version of 'Tbe Great British Bake Off' fused with 'Strictly Ballroom'.

Matters are further complicated when ahead of the competition Deano trashes the salon and coming back for more is fatally stabbed by Michelle's crew.

Forced to incinerate his body, the Deadly Cuts crew also run the risk of the Gardai and his gormless gang eventually wondering where he has disappeared.

Written and directed by Carey, 'Deadly Cuts' has been in gestation since 2016 when she first dreamt up the idea of a comedy about a team of working class vigilante hairdressers in Dublin.

Carey undoubtedly savours the earthy banter of her characters in the salon or the local pub.

However there is little subtlety to her darkly comic script.

Most Dublin Northsiders, with the exception of Deano and Darren Flynn, are salt of the earth working class people.

The Southsiders are mostly stuck up, obnoxious and pretentious.

The "Ahh Hair" competition is camped up to the nines.

And the film immediately reaches for some street cred with the sound of the in your face Belfast rap act Kneecap.

The choice of their Irish language rap 'C.E.A R.T.A.' with its references to the RUC, however, seems a little incongruous blaring over images of North Dublin.

A lot of the jokes in Carey's script either land with a disappointing thud or raise a wistful smile.

But it has to be said the cast throw themselves enthusiastically into their roles.

Ball is a solid lead and having made her name 30 years previously as Imelda Quirke in Alan Parker's movie of Roddy Doyle's 'The Commitments,' she clearly relishes the chance to play a middle aged mentor to a younger cast.

Roe, Larkin and Higgins are engaging as her co-workers.

Anderson is effective too as Deano, bringing a real sense of menace as if he has wandered off a script from the popular RTE crime gang drama 'Love/Hate'.

McArdle is suitably slimy as a greedy local councillor.

Smurfit does a decent job playing a malevolent, stuck up rival to Ball and McLynn has fun as the competition judge.

However it must be said Carey's premise of a hairstyling competition saving the Piglinstown shops is a bit far fetched.

Scenes of local residents packed into the local pub to watch live coverage of the competition Italia 90 style also stretch credulity.

'Deadly Cuts' ultimately is a bit too rough and ready to really work.

A curiously old fashioned underdog tale, it regularly fails to land its comic punches unlike Peter Foott's original movie of 'The Young Offenders' and Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman's supernatural caper 'Extra Ordinary'.

It doesn't feel as well developed as either of those Irish big screen comedies.

As a debut feature, it almost gets by on the surface charm of its cast.

While it's easy to see how Carey's film could be adapted into a TV sitcom like Foott's, as a big screen venture it is not funny enough and ultimately too disposable to be truly memorable.

If Carey is to develop as a comic writer and director on the big or small screen she will need to do more than rely on wordplay based on Dublin slang and stereotypes.

She needs to work with material that has a bit more subtlety and a bit more heft.

('Deadly Cuts' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on October 8, 2021 and was made available for streaming on Netflix in both countries on January 6, 2022)