With Last Orders, Australian-born writer-director Fred Schepisi has done a fine job of bringing Graham Swift's Booker Prize-winning novel to the screen. Schepisi simplifies the book's complex structure a little (we get flashbacks within flashbacks, often switching time and place mid-way through a line of dialogue), but it's all handled so lucidly and sensitively that we're never left in any doubt as to when and where we are.

The setting is Peckham, South London. Jack, a butcher, has recently died of cancer, leaving instructions that his ashes should be scattered off Margate Pier. Three of his oldest friends and drinking companions, Ray, Lenny and Vic, plus Jack's son Vince, meet at their local pub to carry out his wishes. Jack's widow, Amy, doesn't join them; she has an errand of her own to attend to. During the day's drive to the sea, memories and associations crowd in on each of them, reflections on love and fate and death in richly layered profusion.

Schepisi has assembled a cast of British cinema's most seasoned professionals: Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Helen Mirren and Ray Winstone. The location settings--South London and Kent--exude authenticity, with Brian Tufano's widescreen photography adding dignity. For Schepisi this is a personal project, and he's clearly in love with his material. Just occasionally the film skirts sentimentality, but it's pulled back from the edge by its humour, honesty and commitment to wry, downbeat realism.

On the DVD Last Orders arrives on DVD in a clean anamorphic 16:9 transfer with Dolby 5.1 sound. There's a good range of extras: interviews and filmographies for all six principals plus the director; a "making of" featurette (everyone genuinely seems to be having a great time); written production notes; and not just the theatrical trailer, but a "trailer evolution video" showing alternative versions, plus ditto for the film's publicity poster. --Philip Kemp