REVIEWED - THE MAGICIAN: IF YOU were searching for reasons to dislike this spirited Australian mock-documentary, you might point out that it comes across like an amalgam of Man Bites Dog and Chopper fleshed out with rambling duologues modelled on those in Pulp Fiction.

Well, sure. But Scott Ryan, actor, director, writer, producer, has created such an intriguingly ghastly protagonist and has managed to inject so much grisly humour into his criminal adventures that the film rapidly casts off the burden of its influences. It's a small movie, but it comfortably achieves all its humble ambitions.

Ryan stars as Ray Shoesmith, a bluff Melbourne hitman who, for reasons that are not explained until the final reel, takes the unusual decision of allowing a student to follow him round with a camera. Unlike most documentary pastiches, such as this week's Confetti, The Magician allows the film-maker to become part of the action. Indeed, the evolving relationship between villain and director almost imposes a shape on the otherwise agreeably disordered enterprise.

Though we do see some brutal killings, the picture is, for the most part, taken up with increasingly absurd conversations between Ray, his naive cinematic amanuensis and various unfortunate victims. A key scene finds documentarist and hoodlum arguing over whether Clint Eastwood appears in The Dirty Dozen. Eventually, calmly pragmatic rather than angry, Ray stops the car to consult the trussed-up unfortunate in the boot on this point of cinematic trivia.

That anecdote should get across the absurd comic tone that characterises The Magician. But Ryan, a spaghetti-thin coil of contained energy, manages to make something more of Ray than a broad caricature. Offering tiny gestures of kindness toward his targets before blowing their brains out, he emerges as somebody who has purposefully chosen to ignore his moral compass within.

It would be overstating it to call Ray a complex, fleshed-out personality, but Ryan appears to have thought long and hard about what made the droll hoodlum what he is. I fully expect both Ray and Ryan to become idols of the lad-mag crowd. Don't let that put you off.