A Life Less Ordinary tells the story of a hapless young man who is fired from his job. Confronting his boss to ask for reinstatement, he manages to shoot his boss in the leg and accidentally kidnap his daughter. As the plot unfolds, they fall in love but their romance is threatened by two thugs who are hired by the boss to retrieve his daughter and exterminate the young man. The thugs' task is complicated by the fact that they are actually angels whose job it is to bring the young couple together, not separate them. Humour and violence go hand in hand with an acute tenderness for the vulnerability of human relations in a script that has all the originality and imagination that characterizes John Hodge's work on Shallow Grave and Trainspotting.