In the interests of full disclosure, you should know before we go any further that Brighton is my home town. I live here, work here and I'm very proud of the place.

But I hope that won't affect my ability to take a critically objective view of this film, which is set in the city.

It's a dark and unsettling drama charting the obsessive relationship that develops between disturbed cop Daniel (Moran) and 15-year-old Hayley (Belmont).

Daniel's putting his career on the line on two counts. Not only is Hayley under age, she's also the leader of a vicious girl gang who specialise in mugging tourists on the seafront and the police are on to them. It's a slice of gritty realism which is neither gritty nor realistic.

Director Bob Blagden's hopes that his film will encourage debate about crime, relationships and moral values are scuppered by a terrible script and wooden acting.

Moran just isn't convincing as the tough cop with a secret fetish for women's shoes. Put a beret on his head and you would have Frank Spencer, without the humour, spouting cliched detective dialogue culled from too many hours watching re-runs of Z Cars.

Belmont's portrayal of a teenager in torment - tough on the outside but fragile on the inside - is amateur and irritating. Her attempts at conveying inner turmoil mostly come across as suffering from painful bouts of trapped wind.

The Brighton portrayed here is not a place that I recognise.

It's a colourless, oppressive, provincial wasteland peopled by characters who are either resigned to the rut they're trapped in or struggling in vain to get out.

The story could have been set in any medium-sized town with a seafront.

Nothing about this story rings true. Not Hayley's gang, not Moran's detective and certainly not their tempestuous and ultimately tragic romance.

At the premiere, Moran told me Ashes And Sand is one of six films he has made in the last couple of years that are still waiting for a distributor to release them.

If the other five are like this, he's in for a long wait.