FILM: RE VIEWS CONTRABAND
REFORMED SMUGGLER MARK WAHLBERG IS FORCED TO UNDERTAKE ONE LAST ASSIGNMENT...
This Month’s DVDs...
CONTAGION
Director Steven Soderbergh ensured star billing for Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, among others for this big-budget exploration of what happens when a killer flu pandemic sweeps the globe. The docu-drama-style film remains an enjoyable, morbidly engaging piece of work – even if it will prompt you to reach for your gloves before you next board a bus. Out: 5 March
WEEKEND CONTRABAND
A hit in Iceland but comparatively overlooked by foreign audiences was the 2008 thriller Reykjavik-Rotterdam. Now, with the backing of Hollywood money, that film’s producer, Baltasar Kormákur (responsible for directing Iceland’s biggest films of recent years – Jar City and 101 Ryekjavik), has directed a US-remake. Unlike David Fincher’s stylish take on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Contraband benefits from its source material being relatively unknown, ensuring most audiences will come to it afresh. It stars Mark Wahlberg as Chris Farraday, a reformed smuggler in New Orleans, who has turned his back on his past and is building a legitimate business installing security systems. When his teenage brother-in-law gets into trouble with local mobsters for throwing away a precious cargo of drugs to avoid his own arrest – said mobsters come looking for payment of their lost profits and Farraday finds himself embarking on one last smuggling assignment to help his brother-in-law. Despite misgivings from his wife (Kate Beckinsale), he assembles a team of former cohorts and sets off to Panama posing as cargo crew, intent on bringing counterfeit dollars back to the US. Though Contraband is stuffed with two-dimensional bad guys, Kormákur manages to maintain the pace, efficiently racking up the tension when Walhberg and his team (including Lukas Haas – former child star of Witness) arrive in Panama and their plans go dangerously awry. Muscular support comes from Giovanni Ribsi and Ben Foster as weasly, tattooed scumsters. Predictable? Yes, but there’s just enough bravado and suspense to ensure Contraband succeeds as a big screen guilty pleasure. DH Out: 16 March
SAFE HOUSE
Ryan Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a lowly CIA operative who looks after a safe house – where terror suspects are detained or witnesses protected – in Cape Town, South Africa. Matt’s life is usually quiet but it perks up considerably when a wanted, former CIA agent, Tobin Frost (Denzel Washington), arrives. He’s barely been there five minutes when a gang of heavily-armed thugs storm the place. Matt makes the snap decision to go on the run with his prisoner – fleeing the bad guys, attempting to keep a hostile Frost under lock and key, and receiving confusing messages from his superiors as to what he should do. Thereon, this fast-paced thriller is one long chase movie, replete with squealing wheels, barking bullets, blood-spilling and face-punching aplenty. The filmmakers make full use of the beautiful South African backdrop, but with a formulaic plot, Safe House is the type of movie that you’ll probably forget as soon as you leave the cinema. DH Out: Now
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Director Andrew Haigh’s award- winning Weekend was acclaimed by many as 2011’s finest gay movie – although to pigeonhole it probably does it a disservice. Tom Cullen and Chris New play Russell and Glen, who meet in a club (as one does) and spend most of the ensuing weekend together. Russell has hang-ups while Glen is about to relocate to the US for a college course. Not the best weekend for either to fall in love… Out: 19 March
THE EROTIC FILMS OF PETER DE ROME
Dubbed ‘the grandfather of gay porn’ British-born Peter de Rome shot erotic films for his own amusement in the late 60s and early 70s – often just picking up men on the street in his adopted New York home and taking them back to his apartment. For the first time, the BFI have collected a selection of his shorts, together with fascinating documentary looking back on his life. Out: 26 March
THE AWAKENING
If you’re a fan of ghost stories, you’ll find plenty to enjoy in Brit-flick The Awakening. Set in 1921, Rebecca Hall plays hoax-buster Florence Cathcart, who travels to a remote boarding school to investigate ghostly sightings. Predictably, Florence’s logical explanations begin to unravel. There’s little originality here, but enough creepy moments to ensure you’ll stick with it to the end. Out: 26 March
REVIEWS: DAVID HUDSON
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