By Adam Rosser

In many senses Sweet Sixteen is a fine example of a type of film British audiences have lived with since the late 1960s.

Set in a depressed and, by extension, depressing town on the banks of the Clyde, the film focuses on the struggles of a young group to escape the emptiness and violence of marginalised lives in council flats.

The central character, Liam, is a young man on the verge of a serious criminal career.

With his lifelong friend and criminal companion Pinball (William Ruane), Liam hatches a scheme to escape his origins and provide a better home for his imprisoned mother.

Liam's sister avoids the easy route of crime

Liam sees his salvation in drug dealing and the quick route up offered by crime.

In contrast, his sister has opted for night classes, the promise of work and domestic solidity as a slow but steady way out for herself and her child.

Predictably, the last word in the film, as Liam's schemes collapse about him, is hers.

The central performances of unknowns Martin Compston (Liam), Annmaurie Fulton (Chantelle, Liam's sister) and Michelle Coulter (Jean, Liam's mother) are the driving force and saving grace of the film.

Ken Loach has solicited outstanding performances from his entire cast and from these three in particular.

Sweet Sixteen is, however, an unremarkable film dealing with a topic overly familiar to many viewers.

Does socialist cinema need a new direction?

Liam exists in a climate of lawlessness and violence and so, against his better nature, he succumbs.

His mother is trapped in a spiral of dependency which she will not escape from. Only education and work offers a real way out.

Ken Loach and others have shown these scenes and these types to us repeatedly over the years.

The film deploys a handful of well worn narrative conceits and constructions, but the arc of the story is painfully clear from the outset and has more than a whiff of Calvinist pre-determinism about it.

What is missing from the film is any sense of anger. The characters may struggle but like flies in a web, that they are doomed. This is the lot of the socially disadvantaged, the film says to us.

Socialist cinema has laudable aims but unless the filmmakers embrace a new idiom they will become trapped in a cinematic cul-de-sac, as audiences tire of hearing the same arguments, couched in the same terms, time after time.

Sweet Sixteen has a limited release from Friday.