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Sometimes the broken pieces of two people can fit together in a way that helps both of them heal the part that is broken.

"Tyrannosaur," a low-budget British movie written and directed by Paddy Considine (actor, "The Bourne Ultimatum"), feels like it's going to be about bottled rage, personified in an old duffer named Joseph (Peter Mullan, "Trainspotting," "Red Riding").

He lives in a public housing project. He tangles with the neighbor over his noisy pit bull. He drinks too much, and too often. He gets into fights with just about anybody: rowdy kids at a pool hall, the clerk at the post office.

He's like a volcano that erupts regularly, spewing profanity and violence instead of hot lava. Sometimes the violence comes back at him, too.

One day he ducks into a Christian thrift shop to hide from some people he's abused. Hannah (Olivia Colman), the woman who runs the place, takes pity on him and offers him tea. She prays for him — earnestly, out loud.

He rewards her with a nasty tirade about her faith that reduces her to tears. Then he flees.

That's when "Tyrannosaur" begins to be about something more than Joseph's temper. Considine is interested in our preconceived notions: how we quickly size people up and pigeonhole what they're about.

But Hannah and Joseph both turn out to surprise us, and each other, as we learn little bits about their lives and their pasts.

Hannah is trapped in an abusive relationship. Her husband, James (Eddie Marsan, "Sherlock Holmes," "Red Riding"), is a control freak whose insane jealousy drives him to shocking acts of wife-beating — and worse.

Hannah is an earthquake waiting to happen. The fissures are just beneath the surface.

"Tyrannosaur" isn't pretty, and it isn't easy to watch. But Considine, who based this movie on an earlier short film that also starred Mullan and Colman, finds a way to make you feel empathy for characters who do awful things to each other.

In small ways, he fleshes out the humanity of these characters. That keeps them from being the expected deep shades of black and white. Instead, they are shades of gray that shift darker and lighter with each added scene.

All three of the main actors give stellar performances, so painfully raw and real you almost want to turn your eyes away.

The movie becomes a well-constructed combination of a character study, an unconventional romance and a morality play.

There are difficulties here. One is Mullan's thick accent (Is it Scottish? Irish? Or just Leeds? Not sure) and rapid speech, which render entire sections of dialogue impossible to understand. The movie's in English, but I wished for subtitles early on.

The other hard part is you have to have the stomach to witness the extreme cruelty these characters are capable of. It's disturbing. Dog lovers, be forewarned. Though the images are not directly splashed before your eyes, this movie isn't kind to canines.

But prepare to be surprised. This small, rather mean movie makes you feel a whole lot for characters you were prepared to pigeonhole or write off. "Tyrannosaur" has teeth, but it also has hope.

Contact the writer:

402-444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com