Parky at the Pictures (DVD 20/6/2013)

There is no escaping the fact that Hitchcock is a terrible travesty of both the making of the 1960 horror classic Psycho and the near-undoing of a 35-year partnership that started when Reville became the young Hitchcock's boss at the Famous Players-Lasky studio in London in the early 1920s. The biggest miscalculation is the inclusion of imagined encounters between the corpulent director and Ed Gein, the serial killer on whom novelist Robert Bloch based motel-running mommy's boy, Norman Bates. But nothing convinces here, with Hitchcock's relationships with actresses Vera Miles and Janet Leigh being as half-heartedly explored as Reville's dalliance with Whitfield Cook, a dashing author who had helped script Stage Fright (1950) and Strangers on a Train (1951) and who hoped that Alma could convince Hitch into optioning his latest opus, Taxi to Dubrovnik.

Primarily culpable for this botched charade is screenwriter John J. Laughlin, who elected to jettison much of the fascinating behind-the-scenes material in Stephen Rebello's outstanding 1990 book, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, and replace it with some showbiz tittle-tattle that supposedly gives the story a human interest angle. Gwyneth Hughes similarly opted to downplay the mechanics of movie-making in reworking Donald Spoto's Spellbound By Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies for The Girl. But, at least her script sought to show how Hitch's off-set preoccupations impacted upon his work. By contrast, Laughlin and Gervasi afford him a couple of tantrums whilst directing Leigh before consigning him to suffering in sulky silence as he comes to suspect that Reville is having an affair. The result is bad soap opera that fails so resoundingly as screen history and celebrity melodrama that it doesn't even qualify as a guilty pleasure.

The action opens with a scene from the life and crimes of Ed Gein (Michael Wincott). However, as he slaughters a man outside his ramshackle Wisconsin home, the camera slides across to Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) sipping tea and addressing the audience in the manner of one of his television monologues about the problems of finding inspiration and keeping the audience on the edge of its seat. In order to understand how Hitch became obsessed with mass murder, we have to go back to the Chicago premiere of his 1959 Cary Grant romp North By Northwest, when he was nettled by a question from a waiting reporter about doing something different. Further peeved by a newspaper article about upcoming masters of suspense, he vows to make his next feature a radical departure and rejects The Diary of Anne Frank and Casino Royale to adapt Robert Bloch's Gein-based shocker, Psycho.

Having convinced his initially dubious wife-cum-collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) of the plot's potential, Hitchcock orders loyal secretary Peggy Robertson (Toni Collette) to buy every copy of the novel in the United States to limit advanced knowledge of its twist.  Then, when studio chief Barney Balaban (Richard Portnow) proves reluctant to invest Paramount's money in such a distasteful tale, Hitch has agent Lew Wasserman (Michael Stuhlbarg) cut a daring deal that involves the studio distributing the film for a 40% share of the profits, while Hitchcock puts up $800,000 of the budget himself.

As Hitchcock summons the press to announce the subject of his next venture, Alma delights in seeing her husband regaining the creative spark that had dimmed during the production of such box-office misfires as The Wrong Man (1957) and Vertigo (1958). However, she cannot resist the entreaties of Whitfield Cook (Danny Huston), who wines and dines her in a bid to coax her into helping him develop a screen treatment from his latest spy thriller. Thus, she spends her days at Cook's secret beach house while Hitchcock interviews screenwriter Joseph Stefano (Ralph Macchio) and gets better acquainted with his stars, Janet Leigh (Scarlett Johansson), Anthony Perkins (James D'Arcy) and Vera Miles (Jessica Biel), whom he has not forgiven for getting pregnant while he was grooming her to become the next Grace Kelly.

Amidst this frantic activity, however, Hitch finds time to imagine Gein snuggling under the bed covers with the corpse of his dead mother and even has a couch session with Gein as his psychiatrist in order to channel his fury after a meeting with Geoffrey Shurlock (Kurtwood Smith), the head of the Production Code office that has the power to censor scripts and grant the seals of approval that are vital to pictures being screened by the major theatre chains. But, once Hitch has made the cast and crew take an oath of secrecy, shooting progresses well, with the famously flirtatious film-maker for once focussing on the job in hand after both Leigh and Miles make it abundantly clear that they are happily married. This doesn't prevent Hitchcock from spying on Miles in her changing room (in the manner of Norman Bates peeking at the undressing Marion Crane through a hole in his office wall), but he is more put out when he peeps through a window blind and sees Alma chatting with Cook on the Paramount lot when she comes to deliver some script revisions.

Despite jealously mocking Cook at every opportunity, Hitchcock becomes increasingly fearful that Alma is betraying him after she mistakes him for Cook on the telephone and he takes out his frustration by bellowing at Leigh during the shooting of a driving sequence and furiously forbidding Balaban from seeing any footage until the film is completed. When Alma gets home late, Hitchcock sneaks out of the bedroom to read her treatment and passes snide remarks about her `stillborn' efforts before thrashing the swimming pool with a leaf net and subjecting Leigh to a disconcerting assault with a prop knife in demonstrating to Perkins's stand-in how he wants the stabbing to be done in the notorious `shower scene'.

Unsurprisingly, the conviction that he is being cuckolded and the pressure of operating on a tight budget and schedule take their toll on Hitchcock and he is confined to bed for several days after collapsing. Seizing the opportunity to regain some control over the project, Balaban attempts to impose a studio hack to keep the cameras rolling. However, as Alma strides on to the set to insist that they stick to Hitch's storyboards, he is led by Ed Gein into the bathroom of their luxurious home, where he finds traces of sand on the floor near the shower. He accuses Alma of infidelity when she returns and complains that she should be supporting him st this most difficult time in his career.

But, when she catches Cook with another woman at the beach hideaway and Balaban castigates the rough cut of Psycho, Alma rallies to the cause by helping Hitchcock re-edit the picture and suggesting the addition of a Bernard Herrmann shrieking strong score to make the shower montage that Hitch had concocted with Saul Bass (Wallace Langham) even more visceral and terrifying. Wasserman also does his bit by concocting an ingenious publicity campaign, while Hitch flatters Sherlock into awarding the MPPA seal. Thus, he is able to pace the foyer during the first public screening and conduct with gleeful satisfaction the screams emanating from the auditorium, as he audaciously kills off his star after just 30 minutes. No wonder he beams for the photographers on the pavement outside before confiding to Alma that he had waited three decades to tell her that she is his favourite blonde because he is the Master of Suspense.

This closing line epitomises everything that is wrong with this glib, self-satisfied and wholly  unpersuasive picture. In spite of his documentary background, Sacha Gervasi singularly fails to capture the atmosphere of Hollywood at the end of the Eisenhower era. The depiction of studio life is lazily superficial, while little or no attempt it made to contextualise or assess the boldness of Psycho's content or style. Judy Becker's sets, Julie Weiss's costumes and Jeff Cronenweth's photography are all solid enough, but Danny Elfman's score cannot hold a candle to Herrmann's, while Gervasi struggles to keep pace with Julian Jerrold, let alone Hitchcock.

Saddled with some crass dialogue, the principals do what they can. But significant figures like Leigh, Miles and Cook are sketchily drawn, while potentially compelling characters like Stefano and Perkins are consigned to the margins. Although the Cook-Reville liaison appears rooted in fact, Mirren feels physically and temperamentally wrong for Alma, while Hopkins only occasionally hints at Hitchcock's hopeless romanticism and mischievous crudity, let alone his cinematic genius. Moreover, he seems sceptical of the validity of the Play It Again, Sam-style exchanges with Ed Gein and, as a consequence, they come to seem increasingly ludicrous and fatally undermine the picture's already tenuous pretence at authenticity.

Since completing the thriller What Lies Beneath and the desert island saga Cast Away in 2000, Robert Zemeckis has concentrated on 3-D motion-capture entertainments like The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009). He returns to live action with Flight, which seeks to combine human drama and cinematic spectacle in the story of a hero who is found to have feet of clay. This was a common theme of postwar film noir and the psychological Westerns of the 1950s, but it has rarely been employed in Hollywood since the dark days of the 1970s, when Vietnam and Watergate exposed the fragility of the American male psyche. Yet, while it is intriguing that the anti-hero is making a recessional comeback, it's doubtful that Captain Whip Whitaker will take his place in the pantheon of flawed screen icons, despite him earning Denzel Washington his sixth Oscar nomination.

Rising reluctantly from an all-night sex, drink and drugs session with stewardess Nadine Velazquez, middle-aged air ace Denzel Washington peps himself up with a couple of snorts and boards a short haul flight between Orlando and Atlanta with his customary confidence. New co-pilot Brian Geraghty is surprised to hear him asking chief stewardess Tamara Tunie for a strong black coffee and some painkillers, but is even more aghast when Washington rips the aircraft through severe turbulence to find a pocket of clear sky so that he can hand over the controls and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Prior to dozing off, Washington had laced his orange juice with three miniatures of vodka. But his instincts and reflexes seem unimpaired when he is roused from his slumbers by the panicking Geraghty because the hydraulics have failed and Washington has to fly the plane upside down to arrest its nose dive. Miraculously, he lands in a field having sliced off the steeple of a country church with one of the wings, but he is knocked unconscious on impact and knows nothing of the rescue operation that ensues.

Waking in hospital to be hailed a lifesaver by pilots' union official Bruce Greenwood, Washington learns that Velazquez was one of two crew and four passengers to be killed in the crash. However, as 96 people survived, Washington is feted by the media, just as accident investigators warn him that the loss of life is bound to spark legal proceedings as grieving relatives start seeking compensation and culpable corporations strive to apportion blame.  

While recuperating, Washington receives a visit from supplier John Goodman and he assures him that he is off the booze for good. However, he remains desperate for a cigarette and, while smoking in a stairwell, he encounters Kelly Reilly, an aspiring photographer who has been reduced to working as a masseuse to feed her heroin addiction. Washington is touched by her determination to put her life in order and follows her lead by pouring away all the alcohol he can find on heading for his grandfather's remote property in Georgia to avoid press attention.

However, any good intentions to quit drinking are quickly dashed when Greenwood summons Washington to a meeting with lawyer Don Cheadle and he learns that toxicology reports have confirmed that he was technically unfit to fly and that he stands to go to prison for a long time unless they can quash the evidence as tainted and convince both the airline and the manufacturers of the malfunctioning jetliner that he was in complete control at the time of the crisis. Furious at suddenly becoming the scapegoat and unable to confide in either ex-wife Garcelle Beauvais or teenage son Justin Martin, Washington goes in search of Reilly and they become lovers after he suggests she stays with him on being evicted by her seedy landlord.

Grateful for a second chance, Reilly gets a job and invites Washington to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. But he remains in denial and disappoints Tunie at Velazquez's funeral by asking her to lie on oath about his physical state on the day of the crash. The highly religious Geraghty is more prepared to co-operate after they pray together. But, even though Cheadle succeeds in proving the unreliability of the toxicology report, Washington will still have to justify his actions at a public hearing chaired by formidable inquisitor Melissa Leo.

The discovery of the vodka bottles in a galley bin after it has been confirmed that Washington had suspended all trolley service during the fateful flight places him in fresh jeopardy and he goes on a bender that persuades Reilly to move out. However, when he tries turning to Beauvais for solace, Washington causes such a scene that she calls the cops and he is captured on camera leaving the premises and Greenwood offers him sanctuary and a chance to dry out before the hearing commences.

All seems well, with Washington ensconced in a hotel room and a guard posted at the door to prevent him from slipping out to the bar. However, an unlocked communicating door allows him to access the minibar in a neighbouring room and it takes a pick-me-up from Goodman's bag of chemical tricks to get Washington to the courtroom in a vaguely presentable state. But, when Leo asks if Velazquez consumed the vodka miniatures, Washington finds himself confronted with the choice of taking either responsibility or the easy way out.

Like close friend Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis is essentially a showman. However, Spielberg is much more adept at handling weightier topics and this return to `adult' film-making exposes Zemeckis's limitations. The 20-minute cockpit sequence is magnificently executed, with the white-knuckle ascent through storm clouds being topped by the plunge from 20,000 feet and the last-minute reinversion that ensures a stupendous touchdown. But, while editor Jeremiah O'Driscoll and the SFX unit deserve considerable credit, John Gatins's screenplay thereafter becomes heavily dependent upon the addiction clichés that have fuelled many a teleplay and well-meaning melodrama since Billy Wilder established the rules of the sub-genre in The Lost Weekend (1945).

Ignoring the extent to which his intoxication enabled Washington to land the plane, Gatins revels in his binges and half-hearted attempts at sobriety. He makes Goodman's enabler a semi-comic character and contrives a romance with Reilly that serves solely to emphasise the arrogance and ignorance that sustains Washington's delusion that his lifestyle is nobody's business but his own. But, most dismayingly, Gatins insists that Washington is a sympathetic character throughout his ordeal and that the real villains are airline boos Peter Gerety (who would happily feed Washington to the wolves to protect his business interests), Cheadle's dourly disapproving lawyer and Leo's relentlessly prying investigator. The climactic volte face, therefore, is as bogus as the punishment of decadence in a Cecil B. DeMille epic and the manipulative strains of Alan Silvestri's score only exacerbate the picture's calculated cynicism.

Frequently trapped in Don Burgess's uncompromisingly tight close-ups, Washington delivers a solid display of compromised competence and is ably abetted by an ensemble nobly making the most of some underwritten secondary roles. But any valid points made about addiction, corporate corruption, litigious opportunism and simple human frailty are ruinously diluted by their blatancy and negligibility. Thus, for all its outward appearance of gravitas, this is a self-regarding potboiler that is stuffed with gauche religious symbolism and superficial social significance.

Writer-director So Yong Kim has already demonstrated an understanding of the juvenile mindset in her first two features, In Between Days (2006) and Treeless Mountain (2008). In For Ellen, however, she sets herself the additional challenge of exploring the thought processes of a struggling rock singer, whose arrested development means that he is no more emotionally mature than the six year-old daughter with whom he is desperate to make a connection before a divorce settlement separates them forever. Drawing on her own experiences and shooting in a snow-covered upstate New York to reinforce the contrasting bleakness of the father's situation and his daughter's innocence, Kim tells her tale with affecting simplicity. However, by withholding crucial backstory and concentrating on the perspective of an anti-hero whose principal personality trait is opacity, Kim risks keeping viewers at such a distance that they can only regard the characters rather than engage with them.

Having spun off an icy road while driving directly from a distant gig, grungy musician Paul Dano arrives late for a meeting with estranged wife Margarita Levieva. She refuses to speak to him directly and lawyer Julian Gamble tries to bully Dano into signing papers that will give him a share of their joint assets, but deny him access to daughter Shaylena Mandigo  Bemused that his own attorney, Jon Heder, had not made these terms clear, Dano requests more time to read the documents and tries unsuccessfully to appeal to Levieva, who has clearly had enough of his self-preoccupation and unkept promises.

Checking into a motel, Dano has an angry phone call with a bandmate over the quality of the songs for a new album and heads for a local bar to drown his sorrows after he appears to have been fired as lead singer. He flirts with Dakota Johnson over the pool table and wakes the worse for wear next morning. Fuzzily trying to channel his feelings into a song, Dano realises that time is running out to reach an agreement with Levieva and leaves her several messages in the hope that he can use his charm to coax her into moderate her demands. However, she refuses to budge and, when she threatens to take him to court unless he signs, Dano reaches such a low ebb that he accepts a dinner invitation from Heder and his mother, Mara Pelifian.

After the awkward meal, Dano takes Heder to a nearby bar. Aware that his straight-laced lawyer is out of his depth, he gets hammered and plays wild air guitar to Whitesnake's `Still of the Night' on the jukebox. When Heder follows him outside and cadges a cigarette to hold rather than smoke, Dano loses patience and, having sent his clueless companion home, proceeds to throw up violently in the toilets. Back in his room, he leaves Levieva a message reminding her that he persuaded her not to have an abortion and threatens to use the paperwork she filled out unless she proves more accommodating.

Next morning, Dano is awoken by a call from Mandigo suggesting that they spend some time together. Dazed, but delighted, Dano goes to collect her and is instructed by Hamilton that they only have two hours and that no mention is to be made of his client or her motives during that period. Dano agrees and escorts the taciturn six year-old to his car. He gives her the doll he bought from the local toy store after peeping through the window at her as she ate with Levieva and her new beau. However, she already has that model and Mandigo takes an eternity to scour the shelves before finally choosing a replacement. She also turns her nose up at the ice-cream he buys her in the mall café, although she smiles when he says his favourite subjects at school were lunch and recess. Finding it difficult to hold a basic conversation, let alone get to know her, Dano tries to explain that he had set his heart on becoming a rock star and had to take his shot, even though this meant neglecting her. But, while Mandigo says she understands, she doesn't seem all that concerned to have drifted apart from her father and admits that she likes the man her mom intends to marry

Wanting to make their time together memorable, Dano suggests they go tenpin bowling and they have enough fun to go to a snowbound playground and play on the swings. But the time elapses far too quickly and Dano is crushed as he watches Mandigo disappear through the front door. Consequently, he sneaks back to the house and knocks on her bedroom window, as she practices Beethoven's `Für Elise' on her electronic keyboard. He tries again to hold a meaningful conversation, but seems to realise that not only is he not cut out to be a parent, but that he can make no tangible difference to her life. Smiling sadly, he slips out of the window and drops into Heder's office to sign the papers.

On returning to the motel, he is surprised to find girlfriend Jena Malone waiting for him. He is torn between irritation that she has ignored his request not to follow him and relief at not having to be alone for the night. She is proud of him for showing some maturity and doing the right thing and lures him to bed. But, when he wakes early next morning and goes outside to smoke, Dano impulsively hitches a lift with a timber truck and runs away from both the reality that he has lost everything he has ever achieved and the awful prospect of having to start again as a failure.

With his lank hair, black nail varnish and air of spaced detachment, Paul Dano cuts a rather shambolic figure. He has clearly been a terrible husband and father and has driven his bandmates to distraction with his sense of self-importance and evident unreliability. Yet such is the vulnerability that Dano conveys that it is difficult not to sympathise with him, as he realises the enormity of the mistakes he has made and the anguish that they will cause for the rest of his days. His greatest disappointment, however, is the discovery that he can do nothing to improve his daughter's life and that she would be much better off without him. This feels even more painful after their brief liaison suggests that things might have been different if he had made a commitment earlier. But he is aware that he has no one to blame but himself and his climactic decision to disappear could be interpreted as magnanimous rather than cowardly, as he seems to waive his share of the house sale and spare Malone the pain of being let down by him somewhere along the line.

Yet, while Dano impresses and strikes up a touching rapport with Mandigo, Kim surrounds him with sketchily drawn supporting characters who add little or nothing to the story. Both Leveiva and Malone are mere ciphers, while Heder's momma's boy provides a little comic relief, while also suggesting that decent folks can be every bit as ineffectual as mavericks. Kim and cinematographer Reed Morano make solid use of the frosty landscape and the unprepossessing interiors. But Kim and husband Bradley Rust Gray impose a mannered languour with their editorial choices that is compounded by the decision to mix scripted and improvised dialogue. Thus, while this has its amusing and poignant moments, it always feels more like a vignettish character study than a fully realised narrative.

Made back in 2010, but only now arriving on disc in this country, Matthew Porterfield's Putty Hill is a film that's easier to admire than like. Broodingly shot in a pseudo-documentary manner by Jeremy Saulnier, the non-action chronicles the response of family and friends to the death of a twentysomething Baltimore addict, who nobody really knew at all. Interspersed with interviews that reveal more about the speaker than the deceased, this is a rigorously indie enterprise, with the non-professional cast seemingly improvising though long takes that reinforce the impact of the dead kid's overdose and the emptiness of a life built around skateboard parks, paintballing, swimming and copious amounts of drugs.

Refusing to judge or patronise his characters, Porterfield takes their every utterance seriously, no matter how inconsequential it might be. Indeed, he regards their inarticulacy as a socially unifying trait and it's only during the karaoke session after the burial that the mourners succeed in tapping into their suppressed emotions with renditions of such maudlin ballads as `I Will Always Love You'. Even the lamented's sister, Sky Ferreira, struggles to find anything positive to say about him. But, at least she made the effort to travel home for the ceremony, unlike her grandmother, who prefers to remain in her sheltered accommodation and remember things as they were.

Complete with scenes of a tattoo artist newly released from prison calmly discussing the revenge killing of the man who raped his wife and a car-load of slackers making a pilgrimage to the shabby squat where their buddy died alone, this is a difficult watch that makes no dramatic or stylistic compromises. There are moments of genuine poignancy and Porterfield's sense of people and place is exceptional. But he doesn't always succeed in making the viewer care about characters whose willingness to drift and wallow prevents much insight into their mindset, social situation and hopes for the future.

The plot is somewhat more convoluted in Philipp Stölzl's The Expatriate, which marks something of a departure from the fact-based mountaineering adventure North Face (2008) and the fanciful romantic biopic Goethe! (2010). But, while it is equally prone to cross-cutting to touristy vistas and is every bit as reliant on a specious macguffin, this intricate thriller (which is also known as Erased) is much more dextrously assembled and played with considerably more conviction.

American Aaron Eckhart works for a security company run by Neil Napier in the Belgian city of Antwerp. He and assistant Debbie Wong have been commissioned to find flaws in various top-range devices and Napier seems delighted with their progress. Bidding his usual cheery farewell to porter Nick Alachiotis, Eckhart goes to prize day at teenage daughter Liana Liberato's school. However, he arrives late and lets it be known that he disapproves of her friendship with Arab youth, Yassine Fadel. She sulks and wishes he had left her with the grandfather who had been looking after her since her mother died, but Eckhart assures her that everything will be fine once they get to know each other again.

Next morning, however, as Eckhart pops into the office while driving Liberato to school, he discovers that the premises have been completely emptied and that all traces of the company have been wiped from the computer and telephone systems. Moreover, as he tries to find out what is going on, ex-colleague Alexander Fehling bundles him into a car at gunpoint and orders him to drive. Escaping after slamming on the brakes and snapping his abductor's neck in the subsequent fight, Eckhart purloins some money and a railway station locker key and heads to Brussels with his bemused daughter in tow.

No one at the head office of the multinational Eckhart thought he had been working for has heard of Napier or his organisation. But they still want him out of the way and the station is crawling with cops when they arrive back in Antwerp. However, Eckhart manages to retrieve a dossier from the locker and this leads him to the city morgue, where Wong and other erstwhile workmates have been stored following a spate of accidental deaths. As they leave, Eckhart and Liberato are pursued by a gun-toting Alachiotis and Liberato is wounded in the arm. However, she persuades Fadel and his people trafficking brother Fabrice Boutique to find them somewhere to lay low until Eckhart can figure out what is going on.

He confesses to Liberato that he used to be a CIA assassin and she curses him for landing her in such a mess. But, while going through the documents in Fehling's file, Eckhart realises that Napier has been working with his old CIA handler, Olga Kurylenko, and deduces that she is on the payroll of billionaire industrialist Garrick Hagon, whose company has been profiting from conflicts sparked around the world by illegal arms deals. Moreover, he learns that Kurylenko has just flown in from Langley to liaise with Hagon's scheming factotum, David Bark-Jones, who is quite prepared to let kidnapper Eric Godon harm Liberato in order to force Eckhart into handing over the incriminating evidence. However, he has a trick up his sleeve to ensure the trade-off goes with a bang.

As is often the case in thrillers of this sort, so much space is devoted to exposition and chase sequences that there is insufficient time to develop character. But screenwriter Arash Amel gives Aaron Eckhart and Liana Liberato plenty to work with as the father with a shady past and the rancorous daughter just beginning to realise what kind of man her mother married. The villains are less well rounded, however, with Kurylenko struggling with the particularly thankless role of the traitor realising she is out of her depth. Moreover, the scenario itself will seem familiar to those au fait with the Liam Neeson vehicles Taken (2008) and Unknown (2011). But Stölzl keeps things moving and, while this may seem a touch conventional after the Bourne movies, it remains eminently watchable, thanks largely to Eckhart and Liberato bickering and bonding their way through a conspiracy that touches on a multitude of hot button issues without exploring a single one in any meaningful detail.

Echoes of Eric Red's Cohen and Tate (1988) and Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1998) reverberate around Craig Viveiros's The Liability, a darkly comic rite of criminal passage that injects plenty of energy, but little novelty into a well-worn scenario. Yet, while a willing cast works hard to exploit the character quirks in John Wrathall's witty, but patchy screenplay, Viveiros struggles to sustain a sense of farcical suspense and rather wastes the North East's splendidly contrasting industrial, rural and coastal landscapes. Consequently, while this proves a fun watch, it too often strains credibility and draws attention to its own shortcomiings.

Nineteen year-old Jack O'Connell deeply resents the fact that mother Kierston Wareing has taken up with the prim, but seethingly vicious Peter Mullan. Thus, he delights in pranging his expensive car while speeding around the country roads near the expensive house where he has been made to feel decidedly unwelcome. With Wareing being too much of a shrinking violet to protect him, O'Connell is frog-marched into Mullan's office, where he is given a lecture on making something of his life over a game of darts. However, when Mullan leaves to take a phone call, O'Connell takes a peek at his laptop and finds some incriminating images that suggest Mullan is into underage sex, snuff movies or both.

Thinking he has managed to get away with his snooping, O'Connell accepts a chauffeuring job as the first step towards paying off the damage to Mullan's motor. Rising before dawn the next day, he meets up with kitchen fitter Tim Roth at a petrol station, where he seems oblivious to the blanket media coverage of the so-called `Handyman' killings. Blessed with more attitude than sense, O'Connell soon incurs Roth's displeasure by chattering aimlessly while he is trying to concentrate on some paperwork and by listening to music on his phone to drown out the Cuban rhythms that Roth is playing on the hot-wired car's stereo.

Disobeying Roth's order to toss the traceable mobile out of the window, O'Connell drives into Northumberland and Roth reveals over lunch looking out to sea that he is a hitman on his last job before attending his daughter's wedding and retiring. But O'Connell couldn't care less about his plans, as he has spotted the opportunity to have an adventure and is delighted when Roth allows him to act as lookout as he creeps up to a caravan parked deep in some nearby woods. However, as Roth tries to lure Latvian Tomi May out of hiding, the accident-prone O'Connell fails to spot a sniper lurking behind him and the hapless May is swiftly dispatched.

Unconcerned by this turn of events, Roth dons a protective suit to avoid leaving any DNA evidence and, tying May's naked corpse to a tree, prepares to cut off his hands as proof of the slaying. O'Connell begs for a chance to wield the hatchet. But his sudden squeamishness causes a delay that allows the pair to be spotted by backpacker Talulah Riley. For some unknown reason, Roth decides to let O'Connell shoot her and his hesitation not only allows Riley to escape, but also to snatch May's hands and speed off in the stolen car as Roth shatters the rear windscreen with a despairing shot.

Stealing a camper van from hippie couple Jack McBride and Jenny Pike, Roth keeps his cool when O'Connell confesses that his phone is in the side pocket of the driver's door and calls Riley to arrange a rendezvous at a diner off the main road. Having recognised her Latvian accent, Roth is curious about her connection to May. However, O'Connell simply fancies her and is distracted when Roth robs the diner till to raise the ransom for May's hands and only just remembers to block in her car when she attempts a hurried getaway. Forcing some passing customers to make the exchange, Roth calls Mullan to report that his mission has been accomplished. But he is given fresh instructions and tells O'Connell to drive to a vast floodlit chemical plant where they can bury the hands and steal a new vehicle.

However, in spite of himself, Roth has become fond of the needy teen and can't quite bring himself to finish him off. This wavering allows Riley to knock over Roth on the road and load O'Connell's unconscious body into the boot of her car. She chains him to the walkway of an isolated power plant and explains that she has been searching for the men who trafficked and abused her sister. But, just as O'Connell lets slip his name, Roth tracks them down and is wounded after a tussle for his gun and O'Connell feels sufficiently guilty to drive him to the church where his daughter's wedding is to take place and leave him smoking a roll-up on a bench in the graveyard. However, while he torches the van and disposes of the hands in the river, O'Connell defies Roth's order to get rid of the gun and heads home for a showdown with the detested Mullan.

Despite a neat reference to Stephen Frears's The Hit (1984), in which Roth had played an apprentice assassin, the principal influence on this freewheeling, bantering road movie is the early work of Quentin Tarantino and the plethora of macho copycat romps it engendered. Apart from a bizarre sequence in which the fading Roth hallucinates that there are Cuban revolutionaries in the back of the van, Viveiros directs with efficiency rather than inspiration and singularly fails to impart any personality on the highly generic and occasionally derivative material.

Nevertheless, Wrathall slips in some thoughtful asides on parenting and role models, but the convolutedly twisting storyline leaves too little room for much depth or character development. Roth and O'Connell make the most of their badinage and Mullan kicks up a storm as the psychotic pervert with a taste for the good life. But neither Wareing (much of whose performance apparently ended on the cutting-room floor) nor Riley are given much to do, although the latter's deadpan femme fatality clearly entices O'Connell and the picture ends with him debating whether to drive off into the sunset with her or stay with his mum.

Despite basing the screenplay on his own experiences, actor Jonnie Hurn seems no more sapient when it comes to showing how a stressed city suit reaches his own rejuvenating realisation in Paul Hills's Do Elephants Pray? Starting out as an office satire before veering off into a mix of screwball romance and mystical parable, this represents a laudable attempt to do something different and Hurn and Hills definitely depart from the increasingly calcified conventions of British cinema. But, even though this is Hills's fourth feature, the very fact that it took five years to produce and release suggests that it is more a labour of love than a work of genuine inspiration.

A slave to cigarettes, alcohol and quality coffee, thirtysomething Jonnie Hurn is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the advertising agency for which he has mortgaged his home and moved into a poky flat on a rundown London estate. Not even his encounters with the obviously enamoured Rosie Fellner at his weekly tai-chi classes can raise his spirits. Business partner Grace Vallorani tries to persuade him to concentrate on promoting a cranberry alcopop being launched by client Abi Titmuss. But Hurn's indifference only seems to spur ambitious underling Marc Warren and his doltish sidekick John Last into pushing their insubordinate luck further with each passing day.

It's then that Hurn makes the chance acquaintance of French free spirit Julie Dray and discusses his problems with her while spinning gently on the merry-go-round in the nearby park playground. Feeling sufficiently boosted to spit in Warren's coffee the following morning, Hurn finds himself even more distracted from the cranberry campaign and eagerly accepts Dray's suggestion that they should pack some camping equipment and venture into the woods to get away from the rat race and reconnect with Nature.

Surprised to find himself in Brittany, Hurn not only allows Dray to lead him into woods that have been fenced off by the military, but also makes little protest when she tosses his phone into a cornfield and informs him that she is taking him the Lake of No Return. Back in Blighty, however, Vallorani is so disconcerted by Warren's increasing boorishness, as he plays bar football during brainstorming sessions with Last, that she drives round to Hurn's tenement and is spooked back to her vehicle by the malingering menace of ageing hoody Dougal Porteous.

As dusk descends across the Channel, Dray suggests pitching the tent and the pair are soon engaged in vigorous love-making. But there is no sign of Dray when Hurn wakes next morning and he is given a friendly warning to move on by patrolling soldier Jean-Baptiste Puech. Just as Hurn is about to lose patience, however, Dray reappears and leads him to the idyllic lake for a spot of skinny-dipping. She also feeds him some magic mushrooms and promises that he will find enlightenment. But, following a nightmarish vision that involves him running naked through the undergrowth and Warren pulling gurning faces in distorted close-up, Hurn is pushed back into the lake by Dray and all seems lost as Vallorani invites Warren to make his pitch to the expectant Titmuss.

Evidently shot on a shoestring that condensed the schedule, this is a well-intentioned, but muddled rite of passage that seems to suggest that the main benefit of attaining a Brocéliandian variation on nirvana is being able to coin a catchy slogan for a kitschy drink. Led as much by his libido as a desire to heal his soul, Hurn makes for a resistible truth-seeker, while Dray draws him deeper into the Arthurian forest with a mix of erotic teasing and cod philosophising that seems equally specious. However, even when they are bantering banally or cavorting in various stages of undress, they are infinitely preferable to Warren and Last, whose mugging laddishness proves an unwelcome distraction that serves only to mitigate Hurn's shortcomings. Thus, in spite of some pleasant sylvan imagery and the undoubted commitment of the cast and crew, this is more an oddity than an odyssey and it's hard to see many being amused or moved by it.

A couple of weeks ago, we reviewed Tony Britten's well-meaning, but flawed centenary tribute, Benjamin Britten - Peace and Conflict. Now his fictional offering, In Love With Alma Cogan, comes to disc with its emphasis also being firmly on a Norfolk location, while John Hurt once again does his bit to help out a pal. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable, if slightly contrived late-life romance that captures the atmosphere of its Cromer locations and reflects thoughtfully on the low priority placed upon the arts (especially those aimed at senior citizens) in a time of recession.

Roger Lloyd-Pack has been running the theatre at the end of the pier in Cromer for decades. During the summer, he manages to keep the till ringing by putting on shows that pander to the tourists. But, out of season, it proves more of a struggle finding something that appeals to the locals and doesn't stretch his meagre budget. Regulars like Keith Barron and Ann Firbank appreciate Lloyd-Pack's efforts to do something different with Rodgers and Hammerstein evenings and Abba tribute acts. But, while master of ceremonies John Hurt and long-suffering assistant Niamh Cusack remain loyal, local politician Gwyneth Strong is faced with making economies after grants from Westminster are slashed and she appoints Christian Brassington to consider alternative strategies for the theatre.

Forever tapping on his laptop, Brassington quickly alienates the tetchy Lloyd-Pack, who deeply resents him bringing in London impresario Neil McCaul, with whom he has had shady dealings in the past. McCaul is all for commercialising the programme and Brassington readily concurs. However, Strong appreciates the effort that Lloyd-Pack has put into keeping the town entertained and gives him time to come up with some solutions of his own. Cusack finds McCaul just as resistible, but wonders whether the time has come to cut her losses. She has long harboured ambitions to become a singer and is considering leaving Norfolk, especially as Lloyd-Pack seems oblivious to the fact that she has long been in love with him.

For his part, Lloyd-Pack has never forgotten the night 48 years earlier when his younger self (Daniel Bardwell) met singer Alma Cogan (Catrine Kirkman), who was at the height of her fame as `the girl with the giggle in her voice', thanks to songs like `Bell Bottom Blues', `Why Do Fools Fall in Love', `Sugartime' and `The Story of My Life'. They had enjoyed a few hours together after her show and he had been devastated when she slipped out of favour in the early 1960s and succumbed to cancer in 1966. However, he is not alone in having fond memories of Alma and, when he discovers that local girl Catrine Kirkman can do a mean impersonation, he realises that he might just have found the attraction to keep his beloved theatre in independent hands.

Superbly photographed by Ole Bratt Birkeland to convey the chilly bleakness of the North Sea coast in winter, this belongs firmly in the tradition of `seaside in decline' movies that also encompasses Jeremy Summers's Tony Hancock vehicle, The Punch and Judy Man (1963), and David Leland's Wish You Were Here (1987), which, of course, starred Lloyd-Pack's daughter, Emily Lloyd. The story is rather slight and Britten awkwardly attempts to bolster it with a subplot about the Cromer lifeboat and former volunteer Lloyd-Pack's heroics during an offshore emergency. Even the romance between Lloyd-Pack and Cusack splutters rather than sparks, unlike Strong's love life, which is filled with kinky encounters with her latest toyboy.

But the insights into running a cash-strapped provincial theatre are fascinating, as is the discussion of the extent to which public entertainment has been hijacked by promoters obsessed with youth. British cinema is less craven than most to the juvenile demographic, but films aimed specifically at ageing audiences are few are far between. Thus, while this may not be on a par with stellar offerings like John Madden's The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) or Dustin Hoffman's Quartet, it is less calculating than John Crowley's Is Anybody There? (2008) and much less schmaltzy than Paul Andrew Williams's Song for Marion.