DVD OF THE WEEK

A VERY BRITISH GANGSTER ****
Dir: Donal MacIntyre
Starring: Dominic Noonan

The British have a distinct gangster tradition, a very different one from America's mafia heritage, but while the accents are poles apart there are many similarities – it's all about respect, and the family.
This extraordinary documentary is about Britain's most high profile gangster, Manchester crime lord Dominic Noonan. Donal MacIntyre spent a year following Noonan, his family and his horde of adoring young acolytes, all of them fizzing at the bung to be hard men like their boss. It is scary stuff.
The access that MacIntyre gets is remarkable and you sense that it is only down to Noonan's colossal ego that he happily answers all questions rather than reacting with what one suspects is his more customary manner. There is a brief scene when someone off-camera interrupts one of his self-aggrandising monologues and just for a second the viciousness flashes behind his bald smiling façade and you get to see the real Noonan.
Elsewhere he tells the story of the Dog's Head Tavern, named after the time he cut off the head of a rival's dog and deposited it on a pool table (with the warning that the next time it would be the owner's head) and we see the huge funeral for his brother, a hitman and ganglord. And, throughout, Noonan talks, about everything, from his abused upbringing to his warped philosophy of life. He also, like Marlon Brando's Godfather, is called in to clear up domestic disputes and solve neighbourhood friction.
As much a study of how demoralized societies destroy themselves through a spiral of poverty and violence, this is a unique and honest film, peeling off the layers from desperately pathetic men living violent and deluded lives, a Northern English Soprano family, lords of their own downtrodden manor.

Everyone loves Mamma Mia! The Movie (**). Except – apparently – me. There is, in fact, a simple test as to whether you are going to enjoy this musical, based on the hugely successful stage production, based on a whole bunch of Abba songs. Look at the cover. On it the main cast cavort in frothy mugging revelry. Everyone is perky and unnaturally happy. If that makes you feel good, then you'll love the movie. If such excessive perkiness makes you want to rip out and eat your own eyeballs, then join me in the negative camp. For the record, the story-line follows a staggeringly perky young bride to be who secretly invites three men who might possibly be the long-lost father she never knew to her imminent nuptials (resulting in much French-farce-like running and hiding). It's bright, it's loud, it's sunny, it's full of Abba tunes. You have been warned…

Pierce Brosnan is possibly the least irritating of Mamma Mia's perkfest contenders and he crops up again in Butterfly on a Wheel (**) where he isn't very perky at all. In fact he's on villain duty as an unnamed Irishman who kidnaps the daughter of seemingly happy corporate couple Gerald Butler and Maria Bello. He then forces them to do various things that will wreck the husband's career. And while the film is intermittently tense and the performances good, the last minute revelations as to why he's doing it come a little late to keep proceedings fully involving.

Sukiyaki Western Django (***) is the strangest western you'll see this year (or most other years for that matter). As you'd expect from maverick Japanese director Takashi Miike. It looks like a fake spaghetti western filmed in day-glo colours, with its Japanese cast - and a guesting Quentin Tarantino - doing outrageous American accents (you may well need subtitles to understand them!). There is an intricate, if much told, plot, involving two warring clans on the hunt for lost treasure, a gunman for hire, a love story and more. There is also some entertainingly stylised violence, and the whole concoction is kinda wonderful and certainly different. A taste for the very weird is pretty essential here.