Review Category: DVD/Blu Ray

Last Christmas the BBC took a classic novel of the early twentieth century, John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, and produced a dramatisation that was closer to the source material than any of the multiple film versions of the intervening years. This year they’ve undertaken the same with Agatha Christie’s seminal And Then There Were None (the altered title for the racially insensitive original title), in a prestigious three-part adaptation by experienced TV writer Sarah Phelps marking the 125th anniversary of the author’s birth.

For anyone who’s been living under a rock, the legendary story concerns the assembly of ten strangers on a remote island by an absent stranger, ostensibly for a diversity of reasons – but in reality because each of them is hiding a murderous secret which their mysterious host U.N. Owen (a choice of name, which would have felt less obvious in 1939 when the novel was published) will over the course of the story punish them for. Thus it is that the ten strangers are whittled away one by one, in a variety of inventive methods corresponding with the verses of the eponymous poem – and all the while the ten statuettes displayed on the dining table are vanishing as each murder takes place.

Christie famously altered the ending of the book (one of the bleakest conclusions in literary history) for early stage performances, and much of the tension in this adaptation is in anticipating how closely Phelps’ script will follow the novel, rather than previous screen versions, which have tended to stick to the theatrical resolution. But Phelps has also opened the novel out in order to extend it to three hours, using flashbacks to present the crimes of which the ten participants are accused. Occasionally this threatens to pre-empt the deaths just a touch too closely, but there’s enough variation in the conceit not to rob the serial of too much drama. This isn’t, then, quite the faithful adaptation it might claim to be, although most of the changes are sympathetic to the source – with the exception of some choice modern language, mainly coming from the mouth of Toby Stephens’ agitated Doctor Armstrong. Phelps has also used the grammar and geography of the horror film, to help the story along, with the occasional shock tactic employed mostly to great effect. Anyone familiar with previous versions will still enjoy the trajectory of this, its slightly unexpected turns providing plenty to keep the viewer guessing.

The acting is, given the cast that have been assembled, of the first order, but the real standout performance is from Maeve Dermody as Vera Claythorne (cast just two days before the script read-through, and whose native Australian accent is almost entirely invisible), the character through whom we experience most of the story. Not only does she hold her own among the likes of Charles Dance and Sam Neill, but also she manages to elicit our empathy in spite of playing Claythorne, with as much antipathy as the character requires. Her relationship with Aidan Turner’s Philip Lombard becomes a central element around which much of the action unfolds, and the BBC’s courage in not diluting either character or their crime is both successful and noteworthy.

Fans of the softer, ITV Christie adaptations of recent years might find this rather less agreeable viewing than they are accustomed to, but And Then There Were None is a classy, modern production, and one of which the author herself would undoubtedly approve.

Special Features: Making of / photo galleries

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: CRAIG VIVEIROS / SCREENPLAY: SARAH PHELPS / STARRING: CHARLES DANCE, MAEVE DERMODY, AIDAN TURNER, BURN GORMAN, TOBY STEPHENS, MIRANDA RICHARDSON, SAM NEILL, NOAH TAYLOR, ANNA MAXWELL MARTIN, DOUGLAS BOOTH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

We always find it advisable to have a nice piece of gammon to hand when watching a new movie featuring the inestimable talents of Sir Anthony Hopkins because ham of one sort or another is usually on the menu. Solace, a bizarre, low-key but inoffensive little thriller, actually sees him dial at back a bit at times – he even seems to be phoning it in occasionally – as psychic John Clancy drafted in by the cops to help track down a serial killer. But the murderous Charles Ambrose (Colin Farrell) is also psychic and his advanced abilities keep him one step or more ahead of the cops and even the urbane, initially reluctant Clancy.

Originally conceived as a sequel to David Fincher’s 1995 rain-soaked classic Se7en, Solace was ultimately substantially rewritten into a stand-alone project and in doing so it has become another routine serial killer thriller distinguished from any other straight-to-DVD effort mainly by its higher profile cast. Hopkins now seems unable to function unless he’s riffing on his infamous Hannibal Lecter persona. Here, even though he’s ostensibly on the side of the angels, he’s still brooding and menacing, often comically eye-boggling (there’s a hoot of a car chase sequence where he uses his psychic powers like a SatNav) and there’s no escaping the Silence of the Lambs-like vibe between Clancy and FBI good girl Katharine Cowles (Cornish). But there are few decent ideas dotted in amongst the psychic pretensions; the serial killer’s victims are all suffering from potentially-fatal diseases (he argues that he’s effectively a ‘mercy killer’, sparing his victims a lingering, painful death), we’re briefly wrong-footed as the initial suspect turns out not to be our man at all and the ‘we didn’t see that coming’ fate of Clancy’s former cop colleague Joe Merriwether (Morgan) pulls the rug from under us, if only temporarily.

If you’re a Colin Farrell fan you’ll have to wait a good hour before he finally rocks up as the proper serial killer (he only worked on the movie for five days) and he instantly forces the film to raise its game.  His cat-and-mouse psychic sparring with Clancy is tense stuff and the climax, aboard a speeding subway train, is more gripping than anything we’ve seen across the previous eighty minutes or so. There’s no doubt that Solace is wilfully absurd but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad movie. There are one or two questionable narrative curveballs and ‘excuse me, they did what now?’ moments but director Poyart navigates us through the film’s frequent bumps in the road with some stylish set-ups and nifty visuals showing several versions of possible futures on screen at the same time. Not as clever as it thinks it is or it might like to be, Solace certainly isn’t as dumb as some reviews have suggested and we safely predict that you’re not likely to resent the hundred or so minutes you spend in its company.

SOLACE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: AFONSO POYART / SCREENPLAY: PETER MORGAN, SEAN BAILEY / STARRING: ANTHONY HOPKINS, COLIN FARRELL, ABBIE CORNISH, JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN, XANDER BERKELEY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Stick Man is a charming children’s tale from the pen of Gruffalo creator Julia Donaldson. Despite the spin that Stick Man is part of the world of the Gruffalo, the character really isn’t anything to do with those books. It’s much simpler than that; this is the simple story about a man who happens to be a stick. This animated adaptation of the best-selling book attempts to capture the simplicity and joy of the book and almost succeeds.

This is a beautifully animated kids tale about a sentient stick that gets torn away from its stick family due to bad luck. Stick Man’s life is a disaster, because he’s a stick that keeps getting played with.  Each encounter has a repetitive and memorable little ditty that accompanies it, of course.

The whole thing is brought to life mostly due to the vocal talents of Martin Freeman as the Stick, Jennifer Saunders as The Narrator and Hugh Bonneville as Santa. They bring warmth to this wintery, Christmassy tale, which is welcome and required for it to work.

The DVD extras are rather lovely. We get the expected ‘Making of’ style documentary that talks about the entire process of making the whole thing. From the author’s original idea, to the way the animators changed the story to make it suitably dramatic for the small screen, we get a rough and ready idea of how the process works. It’s also a pleasure to be introduced to actors. We also get a brief recording of story time at children’s literature festival; it’s hard to see how this really connects with The Stickman, as it’s a different children’s story, but it’s pleasing none the less.

Overall, Stick Man is a DVD that you can safely put on the TV and keep the small people in your life blessedly quiet for just under half an hour. For adults, it’s visual equivalent of a warm mug of cocoa. Charming British animation at its best.

Special Features: Making Of, Storytime Recording

STICK MAN / CERT: U / DIRECTORS: JEROEN JASPAERT, DANIEL SNADDON / SCREENPLAY: JEROEN JASPAERT, MAX LANG / STARRING: MARTIN FREEMAN, JENNIFER SAUNDERS, RUSSELL TOYEY, HUGH BONNEVILLE, SALLY HAWKINS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Not, in the end, the massive return to form we might have hoped for from M. Night Shyamalan but last autumn’s The Visit certainly helped cleanse movie-going palettes left rancid in the wake of the once-hot director’s recent stinkers such as The Happening, The Last Airbender and even the slightly less offensive SF romp After Earth. The Visit doesn’t exactly fire on all cylinders but it does suggest that Shyamalan has at least some creative fuel left in his tank…

The Visit – financed by Shyamalan himself to the tune of just $5 million – dials it right back, abandoning big star names and huge concepts, and just goes about the business of delivering an intriguing, efficient and often wry little horror movie. Rebecca (DeJogne) and Tyler (Oxenbould) are packed off to spend a week with grandparents they’ve never seen as their mother Paula (Hahn) goes off on a cruise with her new beau. Fortunately – for this is a ‘found footage’ style movie – the kids decide to make a film about their experiences and record everything on video. But all is not as it seems in their grandfolks’ snowy country idyll. The old couple are agreeable enough but there are a couple of odd house rules; the kids are forbidden to enter the basement due to toxic mould and they’re strongly advised not to leave their bedroom after 9.30pm. Not unnaturally they venture out of their room in the night and find grandma projectile vomiting and scratching at the walls with her nails. Rebecca and Tyler begin to suspect that all isn’t well with their grandparents…if they are indeed their grandparents at all.

Shyamalan appears to be on surer ground here than he has been of late. The story clips along at a decent pace, the mystery of the bizarre behaviour of the two grandparents is suitably compelling (and, for once, satisfactorily explained) and there are a few disquieting moments where we’re not quite sure what to expect next or where the story might take us. The film’s underlying themes of parental responsibility and abandonment are treated intelligently and with unexpected subtlety and if the denouement and resolution are a little bit sickly then maybe we can make allowances this time, if only because we really want Shyamalan to turn things around in a career which appeared hopelessly dumper-bound.

But it’s not all sweetness and light and cheerfully-goosebump shivers. The cast are all pretty good – especially Dunagan and McRobbie as the creepy grandparents – but there’s really no excuse for Oxenbould’s Tyler, a smart-arse kid whose tendency to break into excruciating raps will have you rooting for the oldies and begging them to shove him into the nearest oven as soon as possible and turn it on to Gas Mark Ten. The Visit really offers up nothing new but it’s well handled by Shyamalan and, having turned a healthy profit (nearly $100 million at the worldwide Box Office) it might at least have gone some way to restoring the director’s confidence and reminding him what audiences loved about his movie-making in the first place.

Special features: Making of, deleted scenes, alternate ending, photos

THE VISIT / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN / SCREENPLAY: M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN / STARRING: OLIVIA DEJONGE, ED OXENBOULD, DEANNA DUNAGAN, PETER MCROBBIE, KATHRYN HAHN / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

The Swedish team of detectives is reunited to use their specialist skills to crack more crimes. The A-unit, is now headed by Kerstin Holm (Arvidsson), a tough but fair, single mother who has a predilection for falling in love with her fellow detectives.

The other members of the team, include Gunnar Nyberg (Magnus Samuelson), he’s a big tough guy, who enjoys beer and singing in the church choir. Arto Söderstedt (Niklas Åkerfelt) comes from a legal background and uses his cool intellect to analyse criminal activity. In contrast, Jorge Chavez (Alexander Sulzberger) is an ambitious and restless IT expert, whose best friend is Paul Hjelm (Shanti Roney), the Head of Internal Affairs. Paul’s life is difficult because not only does he have to investigate any wrong doings by his fellow police officers, he has to keep secret his growing relationship with Kerstin. Sara Svenhagen (Vera Vitali) is an expert on paedophilia and trafficking, and is married to Jorge. Finally, there is the young and inexperienced Ida Jankowicz (Natalie Minnevik), a new member of the team who is a linguistics expert.

The dynamics of these different characters and how they react and investigate crimes involving murder, abduction, human and drug trafficking, assassinations that often have international connections, is explored over these ten, two-part episodes of Season Two. 

Like the first series, the stories are based on the Intercrime novels written by Jan Arnald using the pen name Arne Dahl. This time the team, two years after the events of the first series, is re-formed to deal with the murder of Polish health workers in Sweden. It seems they were forced to kill patients by the Polish mafia and they escaped them and the Polish health authorities by fleeing to Sweden, unfortunately they are now being assassinated one by one. Given the political implications and the need to deal with an international situation resurrecting the A-unit was the obvious answer.

Each episode centres on a major crime interlaced with the complex lives of the officers and one or more secondary criminal cases. It is fast-paced and entertaining, but is a little more like The A-Team that they jokingly compare themselves to than the more serious-minded Nordic thrillers. Instead of being dark, broody and depressing, it is comparable to such British crime procedurals as Silent Witness or New Tricks. So it might not be challenging or ground-breaking, but it is still an above average series that has a good blend of characters and intriguing murder mysteries.

ARNE DAHL: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: VARIOUS / STARRING: MALIN ARVIDSSON, MAGNUS SAMUELSSON, NIKLAS ÅKERFELT, ALEXANDER SALZBERGER, SHANTI RONEY, VERA VITALI, NATALIE MINNEVIK / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

Cannon Films weren’t the first company to turn the legendary ninja warrior into a fully-fledged action hero but the trio of movies Cannon produced during the 1980s gave the mysterious masked assassin a lease of cinematic life no-one could have suspected.

Although they are billed as a trilogy, the three films in this set bear no relation to each other except for the continuing presence of martial artist Shô Kosugi, who made his screen debut in the first story (as the villain) but was quickly promoted to hero in the second and third entries.

Enter the Ninja, directed by Cannon’s own Menahem Golan himself, is a fast moving tale about a soldier-of-fortune called Cole (Nero) who enrages Kosugi’s character Hasegawa by being the first Westerner to achieve ninjahood (or something like that.) When Cole uses his freshly-minted martial arts skills to help an old army buddy and his wife (George) who are being intimidated by crime boss Charles Venarius (Christopher George – no relation), Venarius recruits Hasegawa to even up the score. After all, a ninja can only be killed by another ninja… apparently.

Revenge of the Ninja follows Cho Osaki (Shô Kosugi again) who, after most of his family are nastily murdered by rogue ninja (or ninjae? What’s the plural for ninja?), turns the other cheek and opens an art gallery, where he intends to show off his precious collection of Japanese dolls. When he discovers that some of the dolls are packed with heroin, his mother is murdered and his son is kidnapped, Cho decides it’s time to drop the mild-mannered doll-collecting routine and karate mayhem swiftly resumes. Martial arts weapons-fetishists should keep the Kleenex close to hand.

Ninja III: The Domination is by far the weirdest of the three films, but easily the most ridiculously entertaining. After assassinating a man and woman on a golf course for no reason we ever discover, a villainous ninja assassin is gunned down by a cavalcade of police, although not before single-handedly downing a police helicopter and leaving an impressive body count in his wake. Near death, he staggers into the path of beautiful telephone lineswoman Chris (Lucinda Dickey, Breakin’) who, when she’s not climbing telephone poles, is a part-time aerobics instructor and video games enthusiast (because those two interests fit so well together). Chris rushes to help the bad ninja and he, ungratefully, possesses her before he dies. But the good news is that she does inherit his very nice-looking ninja sword in the process.

All seems to be going well until the video game machine in Chris’s apartment goes wild and a possessed Chris leaps into full-blown ninja-terminator mode, mercilessly hacking and bow-and-arrowing her way through the various cops who shot holes through the villain. After a backstreet exorcism goes wrong, it becomes clear that the only person who can destroy the ninja possessing Chris is, you guessed it, another ninja. Enter Shô Kosugi, sporting a rather fetching eye patch – a keepsake from the last time he duked it out with the undead villain – and the roundhouse kicks and throwing stars fly.

The Blu-rays look and sound terrific and although the extras are fairly minimal the set does include a booklet containing a fascinating behind-the-scenes essay and some rare photographs. Eureka, best known for distributing more – let’s say – ‘legitimate’ cinema classics like Metropolis, Nosferatu and Shoah have given these films the kind of attention they probably don’t really deserve but it’s great to see them looking this good. Skip the dojo tonight and watch these instead. You won’t be disappointed.

THE NINJA TRILOGY / DIRECTORS: MANAHEM GOLAN, SAM FIRSTENBERG / SCREENPLAY: DICK DESMOND, JAMES R. SILKE / STARRING: FRANCO NERO, SHÔ KOSUGI, SUSAN GEORGE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

  

Anthony Woodley’s second full feature (after 2012’s Outpost 11) is an odd affair, on the one hand servicing a decent raft of admittedly (and on this basis undeservedly) second string acting talent with some fine ideas, but on the other never quite getting to grips with its conceits enough to fully satisfy. It’s cleanly and concisely shot without any affectation or unnecessary flamboyance (bar the occasionally ropey CGI effect), but unfortunately, it’s fairly thinly characterised (in terms of both the people and the plot) and ultimately a little insubstantial.

The central concept is rather smart; as Woodley explains in the extras, rather than producing a film set on an aeroplane in which the predicament creates the need to land it, here instead the passengers and crew are determined to stay airborne, the threat being on the ground. That threat is an unstoppable, fatal global pandemic; we’re firmly in post-apocalyptic territory here. Ten survivors have taken off heading for Greenland, said to be a safe haven and possibly the home of a cure. However, they’ve taken the infection too and as we join them, tensions are fraying as the infected are being segregated and the pilot is looking to land and refuel the plane.

Woodley and his co-writers have commendably resisted sensationalism – but for one rather graphic early scene – avoiding as many of the clichés of the genre as possible and refusing to write over-familiar characters. The terse, sporadically intermittent dialogue is relatively realistic (there’s no breaking into conversations about Material Girl during moments of tension), and the handful of people who’ve made it to the start of the film generally conduct themselves in the manner we might actually rather than the way we’d hope. There’s little conventional heroism and few of the actions feel unnecessarily contrived.

Conversely, with the exception of Eric Mason (Joe Dixon) and his determination that they shouldn’t take any potential contagion into an uninfected zone, there’s little to really latch onto. The acting is entirely convincing and the motivations mostly plausible, but the understated feel throughout serves only to distance the viewer from the story, and the inevitable second half barely delivers on a threat that almost entirely fails to materialise. The resolution itself is perfectly satisfactory and consistent with the rest of the film, but much of it – like the reason given for the contagion’s rise in the first place – is interesting but ill thought through. It’s entirely likely that although enjoyable, The Carrier will have been forgotten by most viewers almost as soon as it’s finished. Woodley, however, given a decent budget and a co-writer with a more empathetic feel for an audience, shows enough potential to advance far beyond the limitations of this.

Extras: VFX Featurette, Making Of Feature, Deleted Scenes, Trailer

THE CARRIER / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: ANTHONY WOODLEY / SCREENPLAY: ANTHONY WOODLEY, LUKE HEALY, HELEN KINGSTON, STEFAN MITCHELL / STARRING: JACK GORDON, EDMUND KINGSLEY, ZORA BISHOP, JOE DIXON / RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 25TH

 

With a name like Shelter, you’d be forgiven for expecting a discourse on the problems with the American welfare system. But rather than a film about homelessness, Paul Bettany’s directorial début instead uses the theme simply as a backdrop for a story about two homeless people, who in spite of varying ways in which they are deliberately set up as polarised from one another, over the course of it discover they have much more in common than either of them might have supposed.

Tahir (Mackie) is a quietly sober Nigerian refugee whose paperwork has elapsed, and who finds himself now a low-priority illegal on the streets of the Big Apple. Into his orbit arrives Hannah (Connelly), damaged goods of the heroin-addicted variety. She’s a devout atheist, whereas he’s unswerving in his religious beliefs, and some of the early part of the film is given over to creditably even-handed conversations about their differences in philosophy – which might feel like a clumsy authorial conceit if it weren’t for the subtle humour with which they are delivered. In fact, there’s a sporadically surfacing effervescence throughout the early film, offsetting its darker second half, making the experience a substantially less intense one than anticipated; a long detour where the nascent ‘couple’ discovers a large unlocked apartment belonging to an affluent family who fortunately have gone away for the summer, makes Hannah’s cold turkey a lot less painful than it might otherwise have been. Unfortunately, this unwillingness to welter in the reality of homelessness renders Shelter more of an admittedly grim fairy tale than a true depiction of lives on the streets, and as it gradually adjusts towards melodrama, its nature as a work of fiction rather than a genuine attempt to capture something of the reality of the destitute is revealed.

Anyone acquainted with Requiem for a Dream will know just how capable Connelly is with this kind of material, and presumably, Bettany wrote this role specifically with his wife in mind. She’s utterly convincing – frighteningly so when you see her skinny, wiry frame later in the film – giving a performance that’s much more subtle and complete than many others would, even down to an almost imperceptible addicts’ twitch which isn’t allowed to dominate the character. But the understated Mackie is the real centre around which Shelter revolves, and he’s a calm, stoic, and charismatic presence. There are some intelligent authorial touches, like the use of water to symbolise important moments in the story, and the handheld photography captures New York beautifully. But you can’t help feeling that Shelter is a little too contrived to convince of its authenticity, and a little too obvious as awards bait to generate a genuinely emotional response.

SHELTER / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: PAUL BETTANY / STARRING: JENNIFER CONNELLY, ANTHONY MACKIE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

 

We’d have to do a quick scan of our archive but it seems likely that The Weather Station, filmed in 2010 and finally slipping out onto DVD in the UK, is the first Russian thriller directed by an Irishman we’ve ever reviewed here at Starburst Magazine. It’s entirely possible that The Weather Station is surfacing now because director Johnny O’Reilly’s acclaimed Moscow Never Sleeps, which was doing the rounds of the festivals towards the end of last year, shares The Weather Station’s quirky and distinctive multi-narrative conceit. The Weather Station plays with narrative, telling the story of a remote snowbound weather station and the mundane life of its somewhat surly meteorologists (and a shy young boy who works as their cook) concurrently with the story of a police inspector and his fresh-faced colleague who arrive, two days later, to investigate the disappearance of the station’s three uneasy co-workers. 

The Weather Station, with its flashback/present-day story structure, is a bit of an oddity but what at first presents as a slightly annoying and pretentious contrivance quickly gives the story its thrust. As we see the two detectives prowl around the abandoned station pondering murder or other nefarious activity (one of the station’s crew is an abominable snowmen aficionado and at first it looks as if we’re being steered down one particular alley when in reality we’re absolutely not) we become anxious to slip back to a couple of days earlier. Here the station’s edgy equilibrium is upset by the arrival of dodgy banker Vadim (Sergey Yushkevich) and his flirty girlfriend Irina (Marina Aleksandrova), ostensibly planning to revisit a local beauty spot from their courting days. The couple stay the night at the weather station – and then the murders/disappearances begin…

What unfolds is a story told from two different perspectives, stories that slowly converge as the two narratives move closer and closer together in time. We’re never sure quite whom we can trust and who is on whose side as the killings and the double-crossings start – and beneath it all lies a tale of childhood trauma and an unsolved murder whose resolution is closer than anyone expects. The Weather Station is a stark, cold movie – helped, obviously, by its isolated, sub-zero setting – but its dramatis personae are also distant, difficult, troubled souls and if we warm to anyone in the cast its the apparently-naive cook/houseboy Ramesh (Logachev) who is, it transpires, a lot wilier than we’re first led to believe – and with good reason.

Crisp, icy and complex The Weather Station makes superb use of its unearthly locations and delivers strong performances from a cast, not unnaturally, that we’re entirely unfamiliar with which only adds to its haunting, dramatic appeal. 

THE WEATHER STATION / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: JOHNNY O’REILLY / SCREENPLAY: ALEKSEI KOLMOGOROV, JOHNNY O’REILLY / STARRING: PYOTR LOGACHEV, VLADIMIR GUSEV, SERGEY GARMASH / RELEASE DATE: 18TH JANUARY

 

As Quentin Tarantino’s newest film The Hateful Eight hits cinemas, it is timely that another Western set on the snowbound plains is granted a re-release. As part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series comes Day of the Outlaw, a bleak, slow-burning drama that challenges the audience with the starkness of its tone and imagery.

Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) is a rough and tough cowboy with a strong objection to farmers fencing off their land and effectively restricting the roaming cattle-hand. Riding into a small homestead to confront one such farmer, he encounters the man’s wife Helen Crane (Tina Louise) with whom he has a complicated history. Their melodrama is put on hold with the arrival of a band of unpleasant outlaws barely held in check by their wounded leader Captain Bruhn (Burt Ives).

What initially meanders slower than a weary-legged horse becomes an interesting and complex drama as prior allegiances are tested and new loyalties are forged and broken. Sides are chosen with the hope of maximising survival, and the central Starrett develops from being the initial antagonist to perhaps the only hope of salvation the homesteaders have.

The performances are what you would expect from a film of this period and are good throughout, but it is the direction that really impresses. Andre De Toth draws you into the action through subtle, almost casual use of angles, lingering shots that add to the awkwardness and discomfort felt by many of the characters and in many of their exchanges. Rarely is a film so wonderfully bleak and intentionally lifeless as Day of the Outlaw and it is significant that De Toth receives a dedication on both Reservoir Dogs and Django Unchained.

Even if you’re a fan of the Western, Day of the Outlaw may have slipped by but it is a film worth seeking out. Brooding, malevolent and stunningly beautiful, it is a perfect example how to create style and substance from the simplest of sources.

DAY OF THE OUTLAW / CERT: PG / DIRECTOR: ANDRE DE TOTH / SCREENPLAY: PHILIP YORDAN / STARRING: ROBERT RYAN, BURT IVES, TINA LOUISE, ALAN MARSHAL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW