NEVER one to duck the slings and arrows, Nick Love has placed himself firmly in the line of fire with his latest movie.

Outlaw (cert 18), which opens on March 9, stars Sean Bean as a soldier returning from active service who finds England has gone to the dogs. Disaffected, disillusioned and disenfranchised, he is drawn to four like-minded souls (including Bob Hoskins and Love regular Danny Dyer) who band together as a modern-day outlaw posse hell-bent on meting out justice, street style.

But, as is the modern way, it's not long before they are re-cast as media icons and their celebrity swiftly outstrips their success. It can only end one way.

"This film is deliberately violent - ultra-violent - it's extreme, it's dark, it's murky and, above all, it's angry," offers 37-year-old Bournemouth Film School graduate Nick.

"I'm angry that the country's being run by Blair who's a better businessman doing his little deals than he is a politician. We're invading people's countries and spending trillions on killing one man - Saddam Hussein - when people at home are downtrodden, neglected and ignored, left to rot on some horrible estate where they're too scared to leave their homes. Too right I'm angry."

With echoes of films such as Taxi Driver, Falling Down, Death Wish and even Natural Born Killers, reactions to the film have been mixed. The liberal press has largely condemned Outlaw for glorifying vigilantism and revelling in the violence Love says he is sick of, but papers including the Daily Telegraph, The Sun and the Daily Mail have invited Nick to write articles about the issues raised by the film.

"It'll be interesting to see what those papers make of the film when they review it. On the one hand their newsdesks recognise the value of the story - and probably agree with the greater part of it - but on the other they can't be seen to be condoning taking the law into your own hands.

"But I don't really care. I'd rather have a one-star rating than a three-star rating because at least I've provoked a reaction in them - even if they hate it."

There's no denying the Nick Love audience is growing. He's still happy to wear the King of the Chavs crown earned after the success of earlier films, The Football Factory and The Business. He's equally happy to stand as a spokesman for his generation.

"Look, people disparage Chavs, but they will be seen as an important movement. Working class male youth has always been drawn to packs. When I was a kid there was punk; then when I was a football casual we were hated as well for being scum; it was the same with rave and the acid house thing.

"And, yes, I do want my work to be well known and if that means I'm seen to be speaking for my generation then so be it. I'm happy to wear that responsibility because who else is standing up and saying enough's enough? A million people marched against the war in Iraq and Blair just went right ahead and did what he wanted.

"What's going on is wrong. When Blair got in, like many others, I was full of optimism that someone young and dynamic had replaced those grey-haired old Tories, but I actually think we've regressed now."

The story that kick started Nick's ire concerned a public schoolboy victim of an unprovoked attack by a gang of youths who were released while their victim was still having reconstructive facial surgery.

"How can we have faith in a judiciary that allows that to happen? This isn't quasi-facism, this is fundamentally wrong. The film reflects that state of affairs."

Because he delivers successful films on relatively small budgets, Nick Love knows he can more or less make the films he wants to. His first film, Goodbye Charlie Bright, was a modest coming of age tale set on a south London estate like the one Nick grew up on. But it was the double whammy of The Football Factory (about football hooligans) and The Business (ex-pat London criminals on Spain's Costa Del Crime in the 1980s) that really put him on the map, cultivating a solid, if predominately laddish, following.

"I'm not going to apologise for that. I'm proud of the work I've done and I'm speaking to a sizeable demographic now, that's why I ring the bells with the 18- to 35-year-olds.

"Someone said to me recently - and I took it as a compliment - that my films are clearly working class because of the subject matter and the characters, yet they have the whiff of the middle class about them because they are intelligent and emotional."

Nick's parents were middle class but when they split up he went to live with his mum on a south London council estate.

"I wanted to be bad and I always felt I had more to prove than my working class mates. When you're middle class you either want to go up or down, you're never happy how you are. I spent too much time in the 80s doing drugs - I had a playabout with heroin - but it was all about finding who I was. I drifted into football violence with Millwall, but while my mates would be up for anything I was always cantering along just behind them thinking: Do I really want to be in this?' "I was slipping badly but I always had my mum telling me to get off my arse, use my brain and make something of myself, whereas I know lads who have never left that estate whose parents told them they were rubbish and no use. I've embraced my middle class roots now, it makes me who I am.

"It makes me laugh a bit because it's only a film, but, yes, to that extent, Outlaw is just as much about me exorcising my demons as any of the other films. Put it this way, I'm going to get a load of flak for it, but if I hadn't made Outlaw now I would have always regretted it."