Do you want to see a really exciting thriller?

Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs

OMAR (Soda). Life in the West Bank is not easy, especially with a high wall to scale. A young Palestine freedom fighter is arrested and tortured by the Israelis. Will he confess? Collaborate? Denounce the brother of the girl he wants to marry? This political thriller, a story of love and betrayal, directed by Hany Abu-Assad, is one of the best foreign films I have seen this year. The chase sequences, down alleys, over walls and roofs, are not only genuinely exciting but feel totally authentic. Adam Bakri in the leading role shows he has the potential to become a big star.

JOE (Curzon). David Gordon Green directs Nicholas Cage in his best role for a long time. He plays an essentially kind and decent ex-convict, who is liable, under pressure, to show a complete lack of restraint. It gets him into trouble with the police and the local baddies. He befriends a hard-working 15-year-old lad (Ty Sheridan), the son of an alcoholic, abusive scumbag, played most convincingly by a non-professional actor, Gary Poulter, who died of alcoholism shortly after the film had finished.

THE LAST METRO (Artificial Eye), released in 1980, is one of Francois Truffaut’s most popular films. It is an original backstage story in that it takes place in Occupied Paris during World War 2. The artistic director, a Jew, is hiding in the cellar. Beautiful Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu are two actors acting in his play. They fall in love.  Jean-Louis Richard is well cast as an obnoxious critic, based on a real theatre critic and Nazi sympathiser, who used his column to express anti-Semitic sentiments and hound Jews out of the theatrical profession.

THE TALE OF TWO THIEVES – THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Signature). £2.6 million was stolen in 1963. The story has often been told. There was a quasi-documentary less than a year ago.  The only new thing is that a member of the gang, Gordon Goody, now 84, reveals who the mystical Ulsterman, the mole in the post office, was. There is far too much irrelevant footage and it is a big mistake to get an actor to play the young Goody and have him speak most unconvincingly directly to the camera.

THE YOUNG AND PRODIGIOUS T S SPIVET (Entertainment One). A 10-year-old genius, brought up on a ranch in Montana, travels all alone across country to Washington DC to pick up an award for his invention of a perpetual motion machine. The Institute does not know he is ten until he arrives. You will have to put up with lots of schmaltz.  Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film really needs to be seen in 3D. Kyle Cartlett looks like a bright lad. Judy Davis gives a cartoon performance as his manic exploiter.

THE CHALK GARDEN (Odeon).  On the West End stage in 1956 Edith Evans had top billing. In the 1964 film her role of Grande dame was so diminished that her billing was below the tile. Enid Bagnold’s play was rewritten and turned into a vehicle for the then teenage Hayley Mills. Her dad, John Mills, played the butler, a totally changed character. The wit and literacy of the original play were discarded and all that was left was cheap melodrama. Deborah Kerr played the governess with a dark secret, a role created by Peggy Ashcroft.

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