Plenty of movies have shown soldiers enjoying a brief period of freedom before shipping out to an uncertain fate, and writer-?director Matthew Newton knows it.

That’s why he has the characters in Three Blind Mice reference the Gene Kelly-?Frank Sinatra chestnut On The Town in the first 10 minutes. After that, he’s free to blaze his own trail.

Three Blind Mice follows three Royal Navy sailors – upright Dean (Toby Schmitz), haunted Sam (Ewen Leslie) and fast-?talking Harry (Newton) – over one long night in Sydney, Australia, just hours before they’re scheduled to ship out for a tour in the Gulf. They’re archetypes, but only for a little while. Newton burrows into their psyches to find real concerns and believable conflicts that emerge organically as the story develops.

All three leads give strong performances, but Gracie Otto deserves a special citation; not only does she play a bright-?eyed restaurant server who offers Sam some flirty comfort, but she’s also the picture’s editor. And a damn good one.