By Dennis Harvey

THE CINEMATIC WESTERN succeeded for so long because its white hat-black hat conventions were such a comforting contrast to reality, where moral superiority is much less certain. Naturally the genre took some near-fatal beatings in the 1960s, when all things Americana began to look more doubtful, even morally dubious. Westerns became cynical (especially the European "spaghetti" brand) and ambivalent, questioning society's means and purpose in taming the outlaw – let alone indigenous – factor.

The genre gradually faded toward the status of an occasional, seldom-popular novelty. Viewers now schooled to interpret their own oft-faulty family psychology as historical truth could no longer accept the mythos of a West being "won." Rather, it was lost, like political innocence. Yet the id still insists on white hat-black hat subjectivity: deep down, each of us still believes we are the good guy.

Shane Meadows's Once upon a Time in the Midlands riffs on precisely that disconnect. There's nothing western going on here beyond the title's crafty Sergio Leone reference, the credit sequence's cracked-leather stylization, and a score by John Lunn that winks at Ennio Morricone. Those superficial-glaze elements are a parodic contrast to the gleefully messy content. Midlands is a seriocomedy in which the lone gunman who pointedly drifts into town – upsetting all norms therein – is neither avenging angel nor demonic destroyer. Rather, he's a yobbo who made a mess of things some years before and now presumes to fit into a messy yet functional network of extended family whom his prior idiocies helped create.

Midlands is like one of the pre-Naked Mike Leigh comedies on working-class English life. Only it actually likes its characters and respects the tangled connections between them. (Until Naked, Leigh struck me as being mostly interested in ridiculing the underclass he claimed to represent.) Nottingham Michelin outlet proprietor Dek (Rhys Ifans) has committed himself to the live-in love of baby-voiced, pretty yet squash-featured Shirley (Shirley Henderson); the deal includes Marlene (Finn Atkins), her daughter by a prior suitor.

Shirley brings with her an incredibly cluttered family that extends in every possible direction – and they all live on the block. Often as not they've drifted en masse to chez Dek, by far the nicest digs of the lot. He foots the bills, gets trod underfoot half the time, and whines about how everyone ignores his persnickety rules. Still, you can sense Dek feels lucky – being accepted into this brassy, presumptuous clan is probably the greatest (if not sole) social triumph of his life so far. Because Dek is pretty much a near-perfect prat. All six feet two inches of him shrinks into sulkdom at the least slight; his stabs at bravado invite unkind laughter, which mercifully his coworkers and quasi-in-laws are mostly nice enough to swallow. He skates wobbly legged on an ever warming lake of insecurity, quite aware that Shirl could've chosen any more exciting (if less spinelessly adaptable) man.

Which in fact she did, once. And it happens that Jimmy (Robert Carlyle) is nodding off in front of his Glasgow telly when familiar voices rouse him from stupor – it's his elder sis, bullish Carol (the terrific Kathy Burke), grousing about the shiftlessness of semi-separated husband and "Midlands Cowboy" C&W troubadour Charlie (Ricky Tomlinson) on a national trash-talk show hosted by Britain's Ricki Lake, Vanessa Feltz. The program then brings on some of Carol's equally colorful intimates – including best friend Shirley, who does not expect Dek to join her on-screen. There, in front of a national audience, he babbles a marriage proposal. And gets gently turned down.

Witnessing this broadcast tragifarce is enough to get Jimmy's ass on the move – clearly, his erstwhile partner in the pits of passion must love him still. Even if he did abandon her and offspring Marlene years ago, hasn't been heard from in eons, and remains a hapless minor-felon fuckup. Fleeing glorious Glasgow with the unexpectedly large take from a recent heist, Jimmy arrives unannounced and variably welcomed in his hometown, determined to reclaim the family life he'd tossed.

Instantly, the chaos balanced between three Nottingham households is upset. Shirley remembers the hitherto-forgotten full force of sexy bad-ex-boyfriend magnetism; Dek blows his upper hand in Cowardly Lion fashion. Worse still, Jimmy's criminal associates pursue him, wreaking strong-arm havoc on an already delicate situation.

Once upon a Time in the Midlands is the third feature from Meadows and his cowriter Paul Fraser, following two good if uneven movies (TwentyFourSeven and A Room for Romeo Brass). Its comedy is tart, its sentiment earned in ways U.S. big-screen stabs at domestic seriocomedy seldom achieve – no doubt in part because here they're usually set amid idealized wealthy-WASP environs, obviating much real "reality." This movie does try a little hard at times, pushing situations toward payoff too aggressively. (When Jimmy and Shirley finally get a moment alone together, you know they'll be "accidentally" spied by the worst possible witnesses in the worst possible way within 10 seconds.) I could've done without two notable intrusions by ever-so-sensitive singer-songwriters Norah Jones and Sarah McLachlan – the latter's glycerin puling "Believe me, we are still innocent" at a key point toward the end is almost as heinous a soundtrack decision as that Aimee Mann mime-along tune was in Magnolia. But this story about ordinary adults who've made life very complicated for themselves, and their levelheaded children who mercifully haven't yet, has the good grace to know real-life domestic issues are never so pretentious. Only artists make them so.