Robert Carlyle once again teams with director Antonia Bird (Ravenous, Priest) for Face, a crime drama about a socialist turned armed robber (Carlyle) who takes part in a big heist that doesn't go as expected. The heist itself is a semi-success, but pretty soon bodies start piling up and money goes missing as Carlyle learns that there really is very little honor among thieves. Made in 1997, before Carlyle and Bird paired for last year's disastrous Ravenous, Face is an ambitious if unsuccessful attempt to inject working-class realism and social commentary into a stylish crime thriller. Bird and screenwriter Ronan Bennett take great pains to de-glamorize the life and crimes of its core group of felons—it presents their existences as little more than an extension of working-class drudgery—but the conventions of the genre and the film's pulsating techno score work against their efforts. Similarly, much is made of the idealistic past Carlyle shared with implausibly perfect activist Lena Headey, but their relationship is woefully underdeveloped, while the film's political content comes off as mere window dressing. The supporting cast is fine, Carlyle is characteristically excellent, and Bird keeps things relatively engaging, but in her attempt to make a crime thriller with both style and substance, Bird comes up short on both counts.