As presenter of BBC2's excellent Moviedrome Alex Cox has found the kind of fame that has thus far eluded his films, even going so far as to introduce his own ambitious and unjustly lambasted attack on US foreign policy in Nicaragua, Walker. Scouting the locations for that film first brought him and producer Lorenzo O'Brien into contact with the real policeman upon whose reminiscences the latter's script for this picture is based.

For Mexico, Highway Patrolman is a rich production, as evidenced by their biggest star Roberto Sosa leading the cast as Pedro, the principled young rookie dispatched to police the desert his friend Anibal (Bruno Birchir) calls Hell. In the face of everyday corruption Pedro quickly learns the delicate balance between idealism, compromise and the ubiquitous mordida -- the bribe -- in a system where you stop vehicles first, then decide on their crime.

In outline, El Patrullero may not sound so different from Cox's previous work, but the film -- modest by many low budget standards -- is a calculated risk. It's shot entirely in subtitled Spanish and eschews most of the stylistic excesses Cox has previously exploited, opting instead for more long, hand-held takes than audiences brought up on US blockbuster-editing will appreciate. (Pedro's desperate race to Anibal's gun battle with smugglers is particularly good). Grittily photographed by Miguel Garzon, this is less romanticised, more alien than most gringo pictures south of the border. There is, for example, something essentially unreal about a scene like Pedro's shooting a rabid dog for an audience of appreciative villagers that is to hard to fake.

Heat-hazed desert highways have not looked so seductive since James William Guerico's wonderful one-off directorial shot Electra Glide In Blue, itself a good comparison: like Robert Burke, the picturesquely scarred Sosa is a policeman trying to do right in the face of circumstance, one looking to humanity over authoritarianism. His shot at redemption comes as a young prostitute and in revenging Anibal. Here as there, the clichéd big action set-piece fails to materialise, much to the film's credit.

Highway Patrolman was made, bizarrely, with Japanese money, his backers having seen samurai overtones, and only arrives here (it was made in 1991) on the back of vigorous reactions in the States. The same money-men are currently backing Cox to expand his hour-long BBC magic realist noir Death and The Compass to feature length.

This may be less ambitious than many of Cox's other films, certainly less idiosyncratic than Repo Man, but also more organic, more humane, decidedly more satisfying. Back in cinemas again, here's hoping that one the country's most startling talents will decide to stay this time.