In the GCSE perennial, John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, the two lonely itinerant farm hands, George and Lemmie, are always discussing their plan to save up to buy a farm. You know it will never happen as their dream is the universal dream of the dispossessed, just as food is the dream of the starving.  The same is true in British scriptwriter Chris Green’s (Desperate Measures) loose adaptation.

Green has set the story in modern day Nottingham, UK, transforming Steinbeck’s George into Danny (Stephen Graham), a diminutive, petty criminal with substance abuse issues. He is indebted to Joseph (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), a gentle giant with the mental age of a child, for saving his life in prison.  While Steinbeck’s protagonists were good men in a bad world, Danny is not beyond using Joseph’s superhuman strength to get himself out of trouble and feed his cocaine addiction. 

Their relationship is even more mutually dependent that in Steinbeck’s novella as Danny is presented as a physically and morally challenged loser, albeit one with a redemptive conscience and heart.   When Danny’s debts to mafia boss Curtis (David O’Hara), mount, his only way out is to force Joseph into a brutal underground fighting ring. 

Where romance is absent in Steinbeck’s ranch, the filmmakers supply both men with a love interest to build up what is otherwise a threadbare plot.  Maxine Peake plays Isabel, a woman also with learning difficulties, who falls in love in Joseph after he saves her life, too. Touchingly, if rather implausibly, her middle-class, saintly parents encourage the union, fearing their daughter will be left alone in the world when they die.  

Meanwhile, a prostitute named Lisa (Emma Stansfield), who is into the local gallery scene, and whose swanky flat is decorated with her own art, gives up everything for the alcoholic and impecunious Danny.  While Peake and, in particular, Stansfield, turn in impressive performances, and the Isabel/Joseph scenes are moving, the film’s love relationships stretch our credibility.

Best Laid Plans is the feature debut of Emmy-award-winning television Director (The Street, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (2008)) David Blair, and not a bad one.  While Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje is brilliantly convincing as the innocent, loyal fall guy, Graham struggles with his role, producing one of the worst drunk scenes in recent memory. In an attempt to prevent the film from being too predictable, Green and Blair play a little trick on the audience at the end, but you do have to wonder why Lisa didn’t insist on a trip to the A & E.