Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines takes its title from the Iroquois meaning of the New York town of Schenectady and boldly seeks to use the setting to explain the behaviour of its principals. However, the dramatic momentum built up in the first third is halted by a sudden shift of focus, while the introduction of two new characters in the closing segment serves only to put further distance between the audience and the action. Slickly photographed by Sean Bobbitt and played with laudable intensity, this lacks the narrative complexity and emotional potency of Cianfrance's much-admired Blue Valentine (2010).

While riding at a fair in Altamont, motorbike stunt rider Ryan Gosling discovers that he has a one year-old son with brief flame Eva Mendes and quits his job in order to become a good father and lure Mendes away from new beau, Mahershala Ali. However, this entails robbing banks with mechanic buddy Ben Mendelsohn and his growing sense of reckless machismo prompts him to attack Ali with a pipe wrench. When Mendelsohn suggests they take a break from heists, Gosling decides to go it alone and is chased by cop Bradley Cooper and cornered in the house in which he seeks sanctuary after falling off his bike in a desperate chase. Calling Mendes to beg her not to let their son know what a loser he is, Gosling shoots Cooper in the leg, but falls from an upstairs window after being fatally hit.

Distressed at orphaning a boy the same age as his own son (with wife Rose Byrne), Cooper struggles to accept the acclaim of his colleagues for taking down such a notorious criminal. He also discovers that superiors Ray Liotta and Gabe Fazio are corrupt when they offer him a share of the look confiscated from Mendes's home. He discusses the situation with ex-judge father Harris Yulin and the police psychologist before informing chief Robert Clohessy about what is going on. But he refuses to press charges and it is only when Cooper records a fellow officer asking him to steal cocaine from the evidence locker that he is able to quit the force and land a job with district attorney Bruce Greenwood.

Fifteen years later, Cooper is separated from Byrne and running for public office. Son Emory Cohen is something of a problem child, however, and, when he changes schools, he becomes friends with troublemaker Dane DeHaan, who not only gets him busted for drug possession, but who also turns out to be Gosling's son. On discovering the truth, DeHaan picks a fight with Cohen and kidnaps Cooper at gunpoint. Yet, while he intends shooting him in the woods, he is touched by Cooper's tearful apology and the fact that he finds a photo of his younger self in his captive's wallet. He sends the snap to Mendes and, while Cooper celebrates his election with Cohen, DeHaan buys a motorbike and sets off to follow in his father's tyre tracks.

Scripting with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, Cianfrance opens the picture brilliantly by capturing the excitement around the state fair and the surrounding blue-collar milieu. But, while the scene-setting recalls the clipped precision of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), the picture loses much when the charismatic Gosling perishes, as Cooper's conflicted decency is simply nowhere near as compelling. The misadventures of Cohen and DeHaan are even less interesting, with the latter being a ruinous weak link in an otherwise capable cast. Thus, this has moments of pace and poignancy, but they are well spaced between passages of soul-searching that are far too portentous for the sketchy characterisation.  One of the joys of summers past were the bumper holiday editions of one's favourite comics. Characters usually only seen in black, white and red were suddenly presented in full colour, although, as in the hardback annuals at the end of the year, their antics often seemed to be spread a little thin across double-page spreads. This week's DVD column is something of a special issue, as there is plenty to get through. But, while there is plenty to pass a balmy summer evening, genuine quality is at a premium.

A case in point is Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines, which takes its title from the Iroquois meaning of the New York town of Schenectady and boldly seeks to use the setting to explain the behaviour of its principals. However, the dramatic momentum built up in the first third is halted by a sudden shift of focus, while the introduction of two new characters in the closing segment serves only to put further distance between the audience and the action. Slickly photographed by Sean Bobbitt and played with laudable intensity, this lacks the narrative complexity and emotional potency of Cianfrance's much-admired Blue Valentine (2010).

While riding at a fair in Altamont, motorbike stunt rider Ryan Gosling discovers that he has a one year-old son with brief flame Eva Mendes and quits his job in order to become a good father and lure Mendes away from new beau, Mahershala Ali. However, this entails robbing banks with mechanic buddy Ben Mendelsohn and his growing sense of reckless machismo prompts him to attack Ali with a pipe wrench. When Mendelsohn suggests they take a break from heists, Gosling decides to go it alone and is chased by cop Bradley Cooper and cornered in the house in which he seeks sanctuary after falling off his bike in a desperate chase. Calling Mendes to beg her not to let their son know what a loser he is, Gosling shoots Cooper in the leg, but falls from an upstairs window after being fatally hit.

Distressed at orphaning a boy the same age as his own son (with wife Rose Byrne), Cooper struggles to accept the acclaim of his colleagues for taking down such a notorious criminal. He also discovers that superiors Ray Liotta and Gabe Fazio are corrupt when they offer him a share of the look confiscated from Mendes's home. He discusses the situation with ex-judge father Harris Yulin and the police psychologist before informing chief Robert Clohessy about what is going on. But he refuses to press charges and it is only when Cooper records a fellow officer asking him to steal cocaine from the evidence locker that he is able to quit the force and land a job with district attorney Bruce Greenwood.

Fifteen years later, Cooper is separated from Byrne and running for public office. Son Emory Cohen is something of a problem child, however, and, when he changes schools, he becomes friends with troublemaker Dane DeHaan, who not only gets him busted for drug possession, but who also turns out to be Gosling's son. On discovering the truth, DeHaan picks a fight with Cohen and kidnaps Cooper at gunpoint. Yet, while he intends shooting him in the woods, he is touched by Cooper's tearful apology and the fact that he finds a photo of his younger self in his captive's wallet. He sends the snap to Mendes and, while Cooper celebrates his election with Cohen, DeHaan buys a motorbike and sets off to follow in his father's tyre tracks.

Scripting with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder, Cianfrance opens the picture brilliantly by capturing the excitement around the state fair and the surrounding blue-collar milieu. But, while the scene-setting recalls the clipped precision of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), the picture loses much when the charismatic Gosling perishes, as Cooper's conflicted decency is simply nowhere near as compelling. The misadventures of Cohen and DeHaan are even less interesting, with the latter being a ruinous weak link in an otherwise capable cast. Thus, this has moments of pace and poignancy, but they are well spaced between passages of soul-searching that are far too portentous for the sketchy characterisation. 

Next up are a couple of British thrillers. Eran Creevy seeks to build on the good impression made with Shifty (2008) with Welcome to the Punch, a hard-nosed Canary Wharf variation on the hot metal crime sagas that Michael Mann and John Woo used to set in Los Angeles and Hong Kong respectively. Crispian Sallis's production design and Ed Wild's blue-filtered cinematography could not be improved upon, while a fine ensemble demonstrates that not all BritCrime flicks have to be played out in broad Mockney. But, while there are a handful of thrillingly staged action sequences that owe much to executive producer Ridley Scott and his late brother Tony, Creevy's screenplay is undermined by a gauche political subplot and some slapdash characterisation that ensures this excites but never engrosses.

Dishevelled detective James McAvoy is determined to nab East End gangster Mark Strong. However, following a breakneck car-and-bike pursuit through the City, Strong shoots McAvoy in the knee and makes his escape. Three years later, McAvoy is still physically and psychologically scarred by his failure, in spite of the reassurances of new partner, Andrea Riseborough. However, he gets an unexpected chance to ensnare his nemesis when Strong's son, Elyes Gabel, is wounded in a botched heist and his father leaves his Icelandic hideaway to see him. But, as McAvoy seeks to lay a trap for Strong, they both find themselves in the cross-hairs of scheming police chief David Morrissey and shady Home Secretary Robert Portal.

With too many figures on either side of the law being ciphers, this is hardly the most challenging of thrillers. Indeed, while Creevy stages the `heroic bloodshed' sequences with laudable panache, the lack of nuance proves ruinously enervating and the most effective turns are those by the likes of Peter Mullan and Johnny Harris in villainous support and by Ruth Sheen, as the latter's Calamity Jane-loving mum. Steve Oram and Jason Flemyng are also smuggled in in negligible cameos and it is very much to the cast's credit that the entire picture isn't sabotaged by the woeful dialogue. The plotting is also pretty shoddy, with every twist being signposted before being clunked into place. But, such is Creevy's knowledge of genre cinema and his bravura approach to film-making that he just about gets away with this and it is definitely preferable to Ray Burdis's The Wee Man.

Inspired by the memoirs of Glasgow gangster Paul Ferris, this is a far cry from The Krays, which Burdis produced for director Peter Medak in 1990. Indeed, it's much closer in feel to his own last directorial outing, Love, Honour and Obey (2000). Production designers Belinda Cusmano and Alice Norris and cinematographer Ali Asad do a decent job getting London locations to stand in for 1970s Blackhill. But this is formulaic film-making whose success on the big screen in Scotland will not be replicated on disc further south.

Despite being taught by parents Willie (Denis Lawson) and Jenny (Clare Grogan) to steer clear of Glasgow's dangerous underworld, bullying victim Paul Ferris (played as a kid by Daniel Kerr and thenceforth by Martin Compston) soon falls in with the wrong types and finds himself behind bars after launching a frenzied knife attack on the duo pestering his girlfriend. Returning home, Ferris rises through the ranks of the gang run by Arthur Thompson (Patrick Bergin). However, he falls foul of his son, `Fat Boy' (Stephen McCole), and ends up being a lynchpin in the turf war between the Thompsons and rival crime lord, Tam McGraw (John Hannah).

Glamourising crime right down to depicting a dog being kicked to death, this is a smug assemblage of clichés and caricatures that would be a lot less tolerable were it not for some solid performances. Martin Compston must be tired of being the best thing in mediocre movies, as he holds things together as the thug forever vowing to go straight and make the most of his lawful talents. That said, he is well backed here by the upright Lawson and the foul-mouthed Hannah, although Bergin's accent shifts as often as the alliances that form and shatter with thudding predictability. 

Edinburghian Iain Glen finds himself in Galway in the series of TV-movies adapted from the novels of Ken Bruen. Having cropped up recently in everything from Downton Abbey to Game of Thrones, Glen plays Jack Taylor, a former Garda Síochána officer who becomes a private investigator with a knack for finding evidence in places others would never dream of looking. A trio of cases has been released on disc, with The Guards setting the scene, as Glen is fired for beating seven shades out of a government minister he catches speeding. However, he is soon in demand when Tara Breathnach ventures into his favourite pub and asks him to track down her missing daughter. He is assisted by ex-paratrooper friend Ralph Brown (who has plenty of skeletons in his cupboard) and, when four more girls found in the local river and declared suicides, Glen's traces the victims to a factory run by the sleazy Bill Murphy. But events take a personal turn when Glen is savagely beaten and his bar-tending confidante, Barry Cassin, is killed in a hit-and-run accident.

This decidedly seedy saga is followed by The Pikemen, which sees Glen return to the west coast of Ireland after a year in rehab. Now sober and determined to stay out of trouble, he is coaxed back into action by the mother of an old friend, who has died mysteriously in a fall from some scaffolding. Garda Nora-Jane Noone and priest Paraic Breathnach urge Glen not to get involved. But young Killian Scott is convinced Glen is the best finder in the business and is so determined to become his sidekick that he talks in him into snooping around. He soon regrets his decision when he bumps into Tara Breathnach, who is now involved with a businessman who beats her. However, just as he gets close to solving the mystery, Glen finds himself charged with his old flame's husband and Noone and former chief Frank O'Sullivan find it hard to ignore the evidence. But Scott escapes from custody and uncovers the true intentions of a vigilante group based on the Irish Freedom Fighters.

Concluding the trilogy is The Magdalen Martyrs, which begins with Glen being approached by Darine Ní Dhonnchadha to track down a nun nicknamed Lucifer (Sarah O'Toole), who was known in the 1960s for the cruelty of her punishments at the notorious St Monica's laundry run by the Magdalen Sisters. Ní Dhonnchadha had come across the name in her mother's diary and Glen soon learns that his own mother (Aine Ni Mhuiri) was one of the `fallen girls' the nuns exploited. But Scott hits a dead end when he finds that the church records that might expose Lucifer are missing. Moreover, Glen is told to keep his nose out of other people's business by his old drug-dealing adversary, Liam Carney. But, when two brothers are killed in identical circumstances and Glen stumbles upon the fact they were both Lucifer's nephews, it becomes clear that someone is trying to wreak their revenged by harming those their onetime tormentor most loves.

A dedicated drinker whose problems stem from a loveless childhood that saw his mother's strict Catholicism drive his father away, Jack Taylor is not an easy character to like. But Glen (despite some eccentric shifts in accent) laces his gnarled maverick with dashes of wit, tenacity, decency and loyalty that keep Scott and Noone in his corner and viewers rooting for him to crack the case. Steadily directed by Stuart Orme, this collection makes for intriguing, if occasionally inconsistent viewing. The supporting performances are usually solid and cinematographer John Conroy makes fine use of both the spectacular scenery (with Germany often standing in for Ireland) and the seedier side of Galway City. But the voiceovers fail to turn this gritty material into classic noir, while the pacing of the latter pair feels sluggish, as though the storyline was being teased out.

The squalid atmosphere carries over to Lately, Florida in Lee Daniels's The Paperboy, an adaptation of a Pete Dexter novel that tweaks the text to give the action a denser post-Civil Rights subtext, but which spends so much time dwelling on its perceived social taboos that it loses sight of the storyline. Following on from the much-derided Shadowboxer (2005) and the wildly over-praised Precious (2009), this again suggests that Daniels is a film-maker who is capable of moments of brilliance, but lacks the focus and consistency to produce fully rounded movies.

In the summer of 1969, bayou lowlife John Cusack finds himself on Death Row for the murder of a racist sheriff. Having corresponded with the accused before becoming his fiancée, Nicole Kidman is convinced of his innocence and convinces Miami Times reporter Matthew McConaughey that he could earn himself a Pulitzer Prize if he succeeds in proving a miscarriage of justice. Returning to his hometown with some trepidation, as father Scott Glenn edits the local free-sheet that younger brother Zac Efron (a champion swimmer who has been chucked out of college) helps distribute, McConaughey arrives with black British assistant David Oyelowo in tow and he soon crosses swords with Efron when it becomes obvious that they are both interested in the wildly flirtatious Kidman.

Narrated some time in the future through a hangover by Glenn's maid, Macy Gray, this is a mess of epic proportions. Contrivances pile ever higher on top of each other and there is a certain ghoulish fascination in watching them teeter and eventually crash. Dressed in hilariously kitschy costumes designed by Caroline Eselin-Schaefer, Kidman just about emerges with her reputation, if not her dignity, intact. It takes a certain kind of courage to play a character who can bring Cusack to orgasm by auto-erotic suggestion on first meeting, assuage the pain after he is stung by a jellyfish by urinating on Efron and display parts of the anatomy most A-list Oscar winners would never dream of revealing. But everyone else has to be listed as a casualty of a quite dreadful film that has been directed with a disregard for diegetic logic and coherent style that is quite staggering.

Things just about hang together as McConaughey investigates the killing, with a trip into an alligator-infested swamp to meet with Cusack's uncle, Ned Bellamy, being a splendidly gothic highlight. But, once it becomes known that McConaughey is gay and Efron has a hard time dealing with the revelation, the plot begins veering off into increasingly risible melodrama. The siblings are briefly reunited at a wedding and it transpires that not only has Cusack been freed, but that he has also lured Kidman to his isolated home. Still bewitched by the older woman, Efron convinces McConaughey to rescue her. But they arrive too late to save her from a grisly end and Efron is powerless to prevent Cusack from killing his brother before he leaves the godforsaken backwater with two corpses in his car.

Cinematographer Roberto Schaefer and production designer Daniel T. Dorrance do what they can to provide a suffocating setting, while the mix of Mario Grigorov's score and the selection of period soul hits reinforce the 60s feel. But Daniels and Dexter have produced a script that is murkier than the swamp waters and its insights into racial and sexual prejudice, journalistic ethics and social injustice are pathetically trite and easily lost amidst the lurid goings on. Some critics have claimed this as glorious trash and denigrated those who despise it for lacking a sense of humour or a connection with ordinary people. But this is utter drivel and badly made drivel at that.