character the way Martin Scorsese gets inside Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver . . . While the novel turns Joe into a question mark, Mackenzie takes a more palatable, less ambiguous approach to the character. The casting of McGregor also softens Joe. Even tamped down and without his easy smile, the actor conveys so much natural charm he's a sorry excuse for a moral void. These changes compromise the adaptation but generally improve the story since Trocchi's existentialism has neither the heft of Jean-Paul Sartre nor the pulp pleasures of James M. Cain. Mackenzie may have realized the shortcomings in Trocchi's prose or decided he didn't want to condemn his film commercially. Whichever the case, he has greatly tempered the story's brutality the old-fashioned way: He puts an appealing, sympathetic star at the center and surrounds him with beautiful visuals, with a darkly contrasting color palette of bruising black and blue." Carla Meyer of the San Francisco Chronicle thought Tilda Swinton's "rich, compelling performance is reason enough to see this uneven picture, which devolves from a riveting romantic triangle to a morality tale without a moral center . . . McGregor has trouble negotiating the role of a man playing at life. He excels at showing the writer's vanity (in captain's hat and jacket, McGregor looks like a rent boy), but not what makes him tick." Mike Clark of USA Today noted, "This movie is so much the opposite of uplifting that you think Gary Oldman ought to be in it. But it's honestly made, and its second half does linger in the memory." Derek Elley of Variety called the film "strongly cast" and "a resonant, beautifully modulated relationships drama" that "establishes Mackenzie as an accessible stylist within mid-range [contemporary] British cinema. Awards and nominations BAFTA Scotland named it Best Film and honored Ewan McGregor as Best Actor in a Scottish Film, Tilda Swinton as Best Actress in a Scottish Film, and David Mackenzie as Best Director. McGregor, Swinton, Mackenzie, and the film all were nominated for British Independent Film Awards. The Director's Guild of Great Britain nominated Mackenzie for the DGGB Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in British Film. He won the award for Best New British Feature at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the London Film Critics' Circle Award for British Newcomer of the Year. London Film Critic's Circle nominations went to the film for Best Film