Prejudice is the recurring theme in four of this week's films. It would be nice to think they would be widely seen, as they all have something significant to say. But they'll almost inevitably be confined to an appreciative minority already aware of their import. It's a shame that audiences don't take more chances where film is concerned, but, with the Hollywood machine relentlessly promoting partiality, they're hardly encouraged to become more cinematically tolerant.

Showered with awards back home, Days of Glory recalls the treatment meted out to North African soldiers in the French army during the Second World War. Capturing the brutality of combat without resorting to the showy viscerality displayed in Saving Private Ryan, director Rachid Bouchareb also explores the ironies involved in a colonial power mistreating its subject peoples in a crusade against fascist tyranny.

However, by concentrating on personality rather than bellicosity, Bouchareb succeeds only in creating a number of identikit characters - the corporal convinced that collaboration is the only route to equality (Sami Bouajila); the dashing Arab who falls for a French blonde (Roschdy Zem); and the compliant lackey who is politicised by rejection (Jamel Debbouze). Fortunately, the performances are excellent, with Bernard Blancan also impressing as the sergeant whose shame at his Algerian roots causes him reluctantly to acquiesce in the exploitation of his Maghrebian troops. But an air of familiarity pervades proceedings that culminate in a disappointing coda that sentimentalises the shocking authenticity of the final showdown.

f=Zapf Dingbats noThe media's tendency to sensationalise and compartmentalise news stories comes under scrutiny in Beyond Hatred, an admirably restrained documentary, in which a murder victim's family attempts to understand the motives for the crime rather than succumbing to vengeful anger. The tone is set in the opening sequence, as Aurelie Chenu calmly describes, over a static shot of a Rheims park, how she learned that her gay brother, François, had been beaten and left for dead in a pond by a trio of skinheads frustrated at not being able to vent their anger on some Arabs. The equanimity with which she and her parents, Jean-Paul and Marie-Cécile, handle the trial and its aftermath is heroically paradigmatic, and director Olivier Meyrou wisely adopts their dignified approach to put the case into a wider socio-cultural context.

Another kind of hate crime dominates Prick Up Your Ears. Scripted by Alan Bennett from John Lahr's eponymous biography of playwright Joe Orton, this is less an insight into the man and his art than a story inspired by the events that led to his brutal hammer murder by lover Kenneth Halliwell in 1967. Thus, Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina essentially rework The Odd Couple as a gay melodrama, in which the older, stuffier Halliwell comes to regret encouraging the confident, amoral Orton to indulge his sexual and literary proclivities.

Director Stephen Frears ably recreates the dreariness of pre-Beatle Britain and its timid attitude to non-conformity. But while Oldman plays Orton as a cheeky working-class rebel, his theatrical achievements are downplayed to retain focus on how his success affected his increasingly alienated mentor. Consequently, the film loses its much-needed iconoclastic edge.

Northern Irish mother-to-be Mairead McKinley is greeted more with suspicious contempt than outright bigotry in Molly's Way, after she arrives in a rundown Polish mining region hoping to find the father of her child. However, the residents of the brothel where she finds lodging and work as a maid eventually respond to her fortitude, even though the folly of her errand soon becomes apparent, as she vainly scours a countryside scarred by the detritus of a discarded industry.

McKinley effectively combines naiveté and stubbornness as she deals with the icy indifference of her German boss Ute Gerlach. Moreover, Patricia Lewandowska's musty cinematography achieves a tangible sense of place. But debuting director Emily Atef misjudges sequences such as McKinley's wrongful arrest for shoplifting, although she manages to resolve matters with a laudably downbeat optimism that suits the overall mood of making do in a crumbling world.