DVD: The Bank Job

Hurrah, for the first time this year we get a British movie that just reeks of class. It’s not just that it has a wickedly good cast, or uses London to its best advantage as a location, more than anything else this film works because of a top-notch script from none other than the legendary Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

Based (very loosely) on a bank heist that really did happen back in 1971, this is the story of a bunch of likely lads who saw a window of opportunity, took it and then lived to reap the whirlwind. When saucy pictures of a certain Royal end up in a safety deposit box in the vault of Lloyd’s Bank in Baker Street, England’s secret services are very keen to get them back. But how can they do that without acknowledging they exist in the first place? Simple – through a bit of coersion, get a group of petty criminals to pull off the bank job of the decade and ‘steal’ them.

The bait is model Martine (Saffron Burrows), who is told she’ll be let off a drugs charge if she can persuade her old school chum Terry (Jason Statham) and his band of bodgers to do the job. They agree and think they are free and clear when they pull the robbery off without a glitch. But unbeknownst to them, there is more than one batch of dodgy pictures in that vault and there are some very dangerous people out there who want their property back, including King of Smut Lew Vogel (Ian Suchet). So, they may have made off with lots of cash and jewellery, but if they’re not careful the whole team will never live long enough to spend it.

The dialogue in this film is so spot-on it drives the whole momentum of the movie effortlessly forward. Director, Roger Donaldson, expertly choreographs his large ensemble cast (including Stephen Campbell Moore, Keeley Hawes, Peter Bowles and Colin Salmon) and keeps them all real and believable, even though some pop in and out of the action frequently. There’s a great sense of 70s London and some nice pops at the English establishment and overall this is an action thriller with heart and intelligence. Dee Pilgrim

Buy yourself a copy here.

CINEMA: Hancock

In recent years the superhero has undergone getting something of a makeover. These days he’s more likely to be a troubled character with a past that has scarred his thinking and his ability to connect with mere mortals than an upright, squeaky clean chap.

Hancock (Will Smith) is different again for he’s a superhero with an attitude problem brought on by what he perceives as mankind’s lack of appreciation for his daring deeds. You’re more likely to see Hancock blind drunk and unwashed than all done up in his superhero suit, slick and sober. But salvation lies in the hands of a PR guru, Ray (Jason Bateman) saved by Hancock from certain death. Ray’s a decent guy and decides to pay Hancock back by giving him a highly visual makeover, sending him to prison for his misdeeds in the belief that while he’s behind bars crime rates will rocket and soon the public will be begging for Hancock to come back and get the bad guys. However, Ray’s wife Mary (Charlize Theron) doesn’t seem all that keen on Hancock returning because she’s got a secret she doesn’t want anyone – most of all Ray – ever to find out.

This is the superhero genre played as comedy and director Peter Berg goes for the broadest laughs rather than for finesse or subtlety. Most of the time he manages to pull it off, especially when a boozed up Hancock is trying to nab the bad guys and drunkenly destroying half the city in the process. Brit actor Eddie Marsan turns up as the con who is out to get Hancock and gives a great performance, but Theron is underused and her ‘secret’ is pretty much broadcast from the first scene in which she meets Hancock, while Smith basically just reprises his Bad Boys persona – but in a beanie hat.     

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Female Agents

It’s about time the female agents who helped the Allies win the war were acknowledged, and this fascinating film acts as a very fitting tribute to them. It does take some time for the backstory to be put into place, but once all the exposition is over the film fair rattles along with scares, thrills, spills and real suspense.

French resistance fighter Louise (Sophie Marceau) has fled to London to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and her very first mission seems straightforward enough; she must return to France disguised as a nurse and retrieve a fallen British agent who is in the hands of the Germans. She is joined by four other female agents but almost from the onset their rescue plan goes awry and so begins a desperate flight through the countryside to get to Nazi Colonel Heindrich (Mortiz Bleibtreu) before he can pass on the information he has gleaned from his captive.

Marceau is amazing as Louise, by turns fragile and vulnerable then hard as steel. But her four companions (Marie Gillain, Deborah Francois, Maya Sansa and Julie Depardieu) are equally as good, each displaying a hidden strength or skill.

The wartime feel of the film is well realised, but it is not the planes, cars or clothes that steal the show here, but the performances of a really rather formidable group of women who put the successful conclusion of their mission before their own safety or well-being.      Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Prince Caspian

In which the stars from the first Narnia movie reprise their roles and are joined by a new hero, Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes).

The Pevensie brothers and sisters have only been back in England for a year since their last adventures in Narnia when a distress call reaches them urging them to return to the magic kingdom. On arrival, they discover a thousand years have passed and the land is now ruled by an evil tyrant. However his nephew, Prince Caspian, vows to form an army with the centaurs, griffins and woodland animals who have retreated deep into the forest and defeat him, and Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell), Edmund (Skander Keynes) and Lucy (Georgie Henley) decide to help him.

The film looks even more glorious than its predecessor thanks to some fantastic location work in New Zealand, and there is definitely a darker and more violent edge this time round. There’s also a marked improvement in the CGI rendition of the animals (especially Aslan). However, the story is quite confusing and extremely gung ho, and shows just how dated the original book has become.

Nonetheless, until the next instalment of Harry Potter arrives this has more than enough myth, mystery and magic to keep sword and sorcery fans entertained.      Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Wanted

Comic book adaptation Wanted is the US debut of Russian fantasy action maestro Timur Bekmambetov, of Night Watch and Day Watch fame, Jim Machin gives his verdict.

Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) is an anonymous office schlub – bullied at work, cuckolded by his girlfriend and remarkable only for the incapacitating panic attacks he regularly suffers. This mild mannered accountant’s life of quiet desperation and self-loathing is shattered when he is caught in the crossfire of an apparent attempt on his life in his local grocery store. He is abducted by a mysterious gun-wielding stranger (Angelina Jolie), and introduced to the suave Sloan (Morgan Freeman), who tells him that he’s actually the progeny of a recently killed member of an elite group of assassins (The Fraternity) who have – through judicious executions of the bad and dangerous – been the safeguards of civilisation against the forces of chaos for the last thousand years or so. He also discovers that a rogue member of the group murdered the father he never knew, and that he’s the only one with the potential to avenge his death.

Quickly deciding that hanging around with Jolie and throwing his lot in with this gun and knife slinging  crowd is a better bet than sticking to his day job as a brow-beaten no-mark, he’s soon learning to use his latent powers (something to do with controlling adrenaline production… don’t ask), and becoming less self-conscious about taking his shirt off. In no time at all, he’s on the trail of his father’s killer  -a trail easy enough to pick up as his father’s killer is regularly taking pot shots at him – and whizzing off to Europe to hunt him down like the dog he is.

Wanted has several things going for it – a strong cast, high productions values, an occasionally witty script and a distinctly old world sense of the grotesque. Jimmy McAvoy acquits himself very well and puts the work in to convince as an action hero. Jolie and Freeman, on the other hand, phone in performances that never deviate from their standard shtick, Jolie clinging desperately to a single expression – self-satisfied smirk. The plot is so much risible nonsense, but that’s really besides the point when the meat and drink of the film is the action – gun-play, twitch-edits, car chases, slow motion bullet time, more gun-play, Peckinpah-esque sprays of blood and more fancy camera/CGI interplay. For the opening half an hour or so, all this is fairly engaging, as is McAvoy’s character, who has far more to do and elicits more sympathy in his initial incarnation as a white collar loser than he does as a muscle-bound uber assassin. The initial promise soon turns to disappointment as the story becomes more generic with every twist and turn. It’s actually difficult to imagine a film more straightjacketed by Hollywood screenwriting formula.

Wanted is not for the faint hearted, and takes almost sadistic glee in Gibson’s brutal induction into the Fraternity, which seems to involve getting endlessly beaten up until one reaches an appropriate level of existential angst to qualify as a member. Although cartoonish, the violence is relentless and culminates in a John Woo style bullet ballet with an absurdly high body count. By the end of the film, the early promise seems a distant memory and the viewer has been well and truly bludgeoned into indifference by its interminable and mindless Sturm und Drang.

CINEMA: The Ruins

.

One of the first rules of horror is you have to make your story scary or blackly funny otherwise it is not going to have the desired effect on the audience. Unfortunately, The Ruins is neither of these things, in fact, it is a bit of a non-event.

.

While on vacation in Cancun, a group of twentysomething friends decide to take a trip away from the beach to visit an archaeological site. However, when they get there they find a lot more than an ancient Mayan monument, and are soon battling a non-human enemy that threatens to eat them all alive. It helps that one, Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) is a medical student, but even he can’t save Mathias (Joe Anderson) when he falls and breaks his leg.

.

.

Things go downhill from here as horror cliché after horror cliché is rolled out in a painted by numbers “young people on holiday in paradise in peril” scenario. One of the major problems with the movie is the main protagonists are so stupid you soon lose patience with them, another is because of the structure of the film you kind of know the ending before you get there. Even the main heroine, Amy (Jena Malone) spends much of her time standing around screaming, which is about as interesting as the film’s premise.      

Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: Teeth

.

If you only get to see one teen mock-horror movie this year, then go see Teeth because it is one of the darkest, funniest, blackest slices of mordant entertainment around.

.

Our troubled heroine is Dawn (Jess Weixler) who has devoted herself to the cause of chastity before marriage, and spends her free time giving abstinence speeches to high school students, much to the disgust of her promiscuous, drop-out half brother Brad (John Hensley). But after a date goes disastrously wrong, Dawn discovers she is really not like other women, and has an added sexual tool she can use to violent effect. A trip to the gynaecologist confirms her worst fears and proves to be a great laugh out loud sequence as Dawn becomes the worm that turns.

.

.

This is subversive and wonderfully malevolent stuff, a bit sick and gross-out, but all the better for it. Jess Weixler pulls off the near impossible by making the priggish, holier-than-thou Dawn a character you can actually relate to and one you’ll really like when she discovers her secret weapon. A word of warning to males though, during the screening I attended grown men were audibly groaning during some scenes of this film.     Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Escapist

.

With a cast to die for and a very clever script, The Escapist weaves a tale that is absolutely unbelievable, but like the best theatrical shows, becomes compulsive viewing.

.

Set in a highly-stylised prison we follow the fortunes of lifer Frank Perry (Brian Cox) as he quietly goes about his business not getting involved in the violence and gang politics about him. But all that changes when he discovers his beloved daughter is critically ill and he vows to escape in order to see her one last time. Helping him are his prison friends Lenny (Joseph Fiennes), Brodie (Liam Cunningham) and Viv (Seu Jorge), but things become complicated when Frank gets a new cell-mate, the young and clueless James (Dominic Cooper) who attracts the attentions of sadistic Tony (Steven Macintosh), whose big bruv just happens to be the prison kingpin Rizza (Damian Lewis).

.

.

The plans and execution of the escape are complicated but also ingenious and the cut up nature of the narrative means you need to give the film your full attention to keep up. However, because every one of these characters is so believable and so well acted, the movie more than holds your interest. It’s incredibly atmospheric, with the threat of violence palpable in every scene and you’ll find yourself rooting for Frank and his motley crew, willing them to make it to the outside.      Dee Pilgrim

CINEMA: The Edge of Love

.

You’d think there would be a poetic slant to this tale of the bond between the two great loves of Dylan Thomas’ life, but this is more purple prose than anything else.

.

Set in a highly-stylised, sepia-tinted Second World War where everyone smokes furiously and speaks in the kind of sentences only ever found in books, we meet the destitute Thomas (Matthew Rhys) as he rekindles his childhood friendship with Vera (Keira Knightley). Both are living in London and missing their Welsh homeland, which only serves to intensify their relationship – until Vera learns Thomas already has a wife, the feisty Caitlin (Sienna Miller). But Vera has also acquired an admirer, the dashing Captain William Killick (Cillian Murphy) and soon jealousies, mistrust and Thomas’ talent for causing mischief threaten to tear the two couples apart.

.

.

Although it is admirable that the film concentrates on the growing friendship between Vera and Caitlin, the problem is, they are the least interesting characters being portrayed; the drunken, childish, spoiled Thomas (who basically needs a good slapping – and gets one), and the war-damaged, decent Killick are far more intriguing.

.

The film certainly looks handsome and the section where the two couples become neighbours in Wales has a great sense of place about it, but ultimately you never feel enough for anyone except Killick, and Cillian Murphy does not get enough screen-time in order to fully bring this quiet and complicated man to life.      Dee Pilgrim

COMPETITION: In The Name Of The King

In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale is a $60 million budget fantasy action adventure, boasting an all-star cast including Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds and it is directed by the infamous Uwe Boll.

An epic fantasy adventure based on Microsoft’s popular Dungeon Siege game series. In The Name of the King is a tale of knights and kings, great courage and noble causes, magic and adventure, and we have two copies to give away on DVD.

.

To enter, just answer this question:

Jason Statham starred alongside Jet Li in which film?

Send your answers to competitions@the-void.co.uk by July 17.

.

In The Name of the King is released on June 23.