OPERATION 8 (****)

Dir: Errol Wright, Abi King-Jones.

It's ironic that this documentary was released during the same week all firearms charges against defendants arrested during the notorious Operation 8 were dropped – the raids upon activists throughout New Zealand and particularly on the Tuhoe people in the Urewera ranges.

This is a documentary everyone should see. I can't put it any more simply than that. It is eye-opening and deeply alarming, as reports and eye-witness accounts of the original raids give way to a wider examination of the complicity – wilfully malicious or simply blinkered – of the media, the government and the justice system in what, to put it very kindly, was a spectacularly misjudged action by the police.

Many people, from police chief Howard Broad to Labour deputy leader Annette King to the editor of the Dominion Post, emerge very poorly from this film. The suggestion is that this represented both deep seated racism and an overzealous attempt to stifle any sort of political dissent, fuelled by a paranoia that equates animal rights and peace activists with terrorists. It is a thesis that is hard to dispute on the evidence presented here.

If you thought you lived in something resembling a free and open country, think again. This documentary offers ample evidence that the forces New Zealand has most to fear from are part of the establishment, not those struggling to change it.

So Paul Walker and the babe spring Vin Deisel on his way to prison and they haul off to Rio with The Rock on their trail. In no time at all they're at war with the local drug kingpin, getting the team back together and planning a $100 million heist. It's fast, it's furious, it's Fast & Furious 5 (***). Departing from formula, this sidelines the car racing to be more of a violent Ocean's 11. The thieves are a lacklustre bunch, but Rio looks exotic and Dwayne Johnson's hard-nosed DSS agent brings welcome energy to a film where the spectacularly destructive finale is more important than… well, anything really. The post-credit sequence promises further instalments.

2005's Reeker scored points for verve, but few for originality: isolated young cuties were dispatched by a smelly hooded killer – but in a twist were revealed to be dead all along, killed in an earlier car accident. In No Man's Land: The Rise of Reeker (***) there are clear signs 20 minutes in that this is the same deal, just with different characters. Surely not. Who cares what happens if everyone's dead anyway? What's the point of a twist if you know what it is? Ignoring these questions writer/director Dave Payne makes an entertaining, if pointless, job of things.

Everyone loves a good courtroom thriller, as the popularity of John Grisham thrillers attests. The Trial (**) is likewise based on a best-selling book but, despite the efforts of lead lawyer Matthew Modine, the film never engages. Grief-ridden and suicidal after the death of his family, he is forced by a judge to take 'one last case”. There is little tension, the reveals come too late and the whole thing feels like a bland made-for-television pot-boiler.

Griff The Invisible (***) is the latest of a veritable new movie sub-genre: people pretending to be superheroes. Check Defendor, Super, Kick-Ass, et al. Here the dude who plays Sookie's brother in True Blood is the harmless, but mentally troubled wannabe – donning the colourful garb of the titular masked crime-fighter with predictably mixed results. It's a sweet low-key film, a creditable effort on a smallish budget, enjoyable but forgettable.

In case Cohen fans overlooked it, there is a fantastic documentary revolving around Leonard Cohen's 1972 European tour, Bird On A Wire (****). It's a fascinating glimpse at the singer in his earlier years, mixing insightful interviews with some remarkable stage and backstage footage, particularly from a hair-raising concert in Tel Aviv.