THE VAN

Not since Kieslowski's “Trois Couleurs” has a trilogy been so anticipated as screenwriter Roddy Doyle's adaptations of his 'Barrytown' novels about characters in a working-class north Dublin neighborhood. Alan Parker released Doyle's “The Commitments” in 1991, Stephen Frears picked up the thread with “The Snapper” in 1993, and now concludes the saga with THE VAN, a flavorful study in friendship under fire – cooking fire – and the calamity of success. In the late 1980s Barrytown a bakery worker named Bimbo (don't call him babe!) is laid off. Determined to do better than all his unemployed mates down at the pub, Bimbo goes into the mobile fast-food business with his closest and equally jobless pal Larry. The partners spend their dole money on a ramshackle van, and Bimbo's Burgers is born. Thanks in part to Ireland being in the World Cup Soccer finals, “Bimbo's burgers does brisk business. But the unfamiliar climate turns up the flame on Bimbo and Larry's relationship. Can the onetime buddies take the heat? Or will someone have to exit the kitchen, preferably at 40 kilometers per hour?- Charles Cassady