DVD OF THE WEEK

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES *****
Dir: Juan Jose Campanella. Starring: Ricardo Darin, Soledad Villamil, Pablo Rago

There was general surprise when The Secret in Their Eyes won last year's Best Foreign Film Oscar, beating out two highly-regarded European films, The White Ribbon and A Prophet. But one viewing is enough to realise that the Academy knew what they were doing.
Once again it is the sort of film that has you wondering why Hollywood can only so rarely produce work like this, a mature thriller that is smart and complex, tied to an achingly beautiful but never sentimentalised love story with deeply threatening undercurrents of the repressive dictatorial Argentina in the ‘80s.
The story revolves around a retired prosecutor (Darin) who starts writing a book about an old case that has always haunted him, a brutal unresolved rape and murder. To help, he reconnects with his old boss, the beautiful Soledad Villamil, whom he was secretly in love with all those years ago. The original investigation is revealed in flashback, its many twists and turns shedding light on their rekindled relationship.
What is so exceptional about this film is the absolute control and taste in the storytelling, the sort of sure touch you find in outings such as Ang Lee's Lust Caution. It is so refreshing to watch such an unashamedly 'grown-up” piece of cinema. But that doesn't mean it's dull or 'challenging”. The central set-piece at a soccer game features an absolutely thrilling 5 minute swooping camera shot, starting high from a helicopter, going into the crowd, racing through the stadium tunnels and ending up on the pitch itself mid-game.
The rise of Latin American cinema continues unabated. Unreservedly recommended
(obviously).

Steve Carell (The Office) and Tina Fey (30 Rock) are well-matched as husband and wife. Date Night (**) follows the old storyline of a stale marriage reinvigorated by an adventure brought on by mistaken identity, as a dinner out devolves into a tangle of corrupt cops, mobsters and chases. Unfortunately, the chance for edgy questioning of the couple's comfortable lifestyle is squandered in favour of shouty relationship-building. There are occasional bright spots – mainly in the first twenty minutes – but despite cameos from the likes of Mark Wahlberg (excellent), James Franco, Mark Ruffalo and Ray Liotta (all wasted) this is lazy with its laughs, relying almost completely on the two leads' considerable charm.

Following the unpleasant vigilante thriller Taken, director Pierre Morel once again sets an American loose in Paris with a raft of automatic weaponry in From Paris with Love (****). But this time there is no hypocritical morality to leave a bad taste, just John Travolta in gleefully over-the-top form as he mows through seemingly endless armies of Chinese and Pakistani bad guys. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a little wooden in support but neither that nor the convoluted plot really matter much when a bald bearded wisecracking Travolta is firing machine guns with both hands and blowing up everything in sight.

Post-apocalyptic futures seem all the rage as – following The Road – we find Denzel Washington tracking through a similarly barren wasteland in The Book of Eli (***). Well it's not quite as bleak. Denzel is a man on a mission and a veritable killing machine if crossed, and he runs into the entertaining likes of Tom Waits in a biker-fuelled frontier settlement controlled by reliably evil Gary Oldman. The central plot device is, however, just plain silly, and for many the creeping religious element may ultimately detract from – rather than deepen – what is basically a pretty decent action flick from the Hughes brothers.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (***) is actually the fourth in the series, which saw the two original leads departing after the first film. The third one even starred Burt Reynolds, showing a franchise in deep doo-doo. But someone must have been a fan because Regeneration is surprisingly competent, very much re-establishing the original's tone and digging up Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Ludgren for fun cameos. It's not about to set the world on fire but may easily end up as one of those cult guilty pleasures.