Given the sheer quality and phenomenal (if belated) reception of his feature debut (the scarifying Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) it was inevitable that John McNaughton would be courted by the big boys. And they don't come any bigger than Martin Scorsese, producing here (alongside his wife) for the first time since Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990), and bringing with him scripter Richard Price, composer Elmer Bernstein, and Robert De Niro.

De Niro is Wayne 'Mad Dog' Dobie, an ironically tagged Chicago forensics detective who one night, after never having pulled his gun in 15 years, saves the life of connected loan shark Frank Milo (Bill Murray) in a store stick-up. Milo cements the uneasy on-off friendship between the odd couple by sending over bar girl Glory (Uma Thurman) for a week as the 'gift that keeps on giving.' With the inevitability of a movie script, the relationship between Glory and Mad Dog develops beyond reason and conflict is never less than seven days away.

That there is much to admire in McNaughton's film and particularly Price's script is very much at odds with the quality of the final product. Certainly De Niro is better here than he has been since Scorsese's own staggering Goodfellas, and if it is still far from his best work, at least he finally seems to be trying again and we do get glimpses of the talent that made him the screen actor of his generation. And Murray, playing defiantly against type, for the most part succeeds in encompassing the contradictions of Milo's generosity and manipulative cruelty. Thurman on the other hand masters what little she's given well enough, but is always left on the back burner, relegated in the machinations of plot to mere catalyst, and leaves a subsequent hole in the heart of the picture; there is precious little hint as to why Mad Dog is so suddenly passionate after his years of submission.

This is a flaw in the script that is not repeated elsewhere, particularly in the first half – there's the potent, well-realised slaying that kickstarts proceedings, and the film has the nicely delineated characterisation that Price demonstrated well in Sea of Love and especially his recent, extraordinary novel, Clockers, from Milo's leviathan goon Harold (Mike Starr, excellent), to Wayne's frighteningly macho partner Mike (David Caruso), who never uses intelligence when a fist will suffice. Best of all, these sections are suffused with a knife-edge sense of comedy, evoking nervous laughter from an audience unsure of how to react, especially to habitual funnyman Murray, who is particularly good when Milo indulges his stand-up ambitions with an act so creasingly unfunny as to recall De Niro himself in Scorsese's eighties masterpiece, The King of Comedy.

Ultimately though, Mad Dog And Glory is less than the sum of its (very good) parts. The ending, where cop and gangster slug it out in an overt display of macho bullshit, is clearly there for the money men reportedly unhappy with McNaughton's first, less commercial cut, and one clearly not shot by original cinematographer Robby Muller (Wim Wenders' cameraman of choice). It's crass, artless and deeply unsatisfying in a movie that has so much else to recommend it. 

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