Shane (Michael Legge) is a shy young guy who has a menial civil service job in Limerick, Ireland. Looking to move out of home for the first time, he bumps into Vincent (Allen Leech), a flamboyant gay fashion student who Shane remembers from high school. Though initially sharing little in common, the two are brought together when Shane falls in love with Vincent's best friend Mia (Amy Shields) and also gets caught up in running drugs which brings the household, including anti-drug Vincent, under police supervision.

Though Cowboys & Angels has a heart of gold, it has a brain of tin. It's all very heartfelt and well-intentioned, and the performances are generally strong, but the screenplay is in free fall from the opening scenes, where unbelievable coincidences and pat conveniences allow you to give your eyeballs a thorough rolling. I'm not sure how big Limerick is, but it seems that everyone knows each other and is in the same place at the same time. Shane is bewitched by Mia when he goes to buy some fast food - she's working behind the counter - and she just happens to be bum-chums with Vincent, who is in the real estate agency looking to find a room mate when Shane walks in looking for exactly the same thing.

Things unfold in much the same contrived manner, with characters popping in and out as needed and over-wrought plot twists flying in at light speed. Not even the lead characters are especially well-developed, with Vincent just a clothes-horse prat (where does he get all his money from?) and Shane a doe eyed chain-tower trying to fit in with his party-time generation. The plethora of supporting characters are totally two-dimensional, especially the drug dealers who live in the same building, and an assortment of supporting actors who stand in the background and giggle or ad-lib on command.

I did like the film's progressive approach to sexuality categories, and I was really impressed to see the straight character be the bedevilled Saint Sebastian for a change. On the other hand, this leaves us with a blandly over-confident gay lead who doesn't seem to have any problems beyond working out what accessories to wear for a Saturday night out.

For me, the film was like a compressed entire season of "Queer As Folk"played at fast forward with only the first seven minutes of each episode played one after the other, and out of order. The entire drug subplot should have been deleted during the second drafting of the screenplay (if such an event took place) and if the relationship between the two leads is suppposed to carry the movie, then we need a bit more than one or two conversations between them and a bunch of assumptions and guesses as to who they are and what motivates them. The film just seems to start itself over and over again, exemplified by a third act gender-swap sex scene that involves four characters doing completely unexpected things with each other, but which comes with no warning or resonance, is all over in three minutes, and then not mentioned, explored or approached again.

The plotline reads a little too much like writer-director David Gleeson's imdb biography and I suspect that this beginning film maker may be able to do something worthwhile now that he has got the vague and nostalgic angsty-ennui-of-my-early-twenties filmed memoir out of his system.