Bob’s Pat Garret and Billy The Kid is not so glib a reference here. Like Dylan’s soundtrack, The Proposition on its own is an elegiac skeletal beautiful thing that leaves the dread violence to the screen. The sound is a bleached bone dry blues that takes Nick Cave back further than even the primal yelp of The First Born is Dead, and allows Warren Ellis to play anything but second fiddle. Brilliant.

Mark Luffman is from Readings Malvern