Silly me. I go to see a film about a country musician, and am then disappointed when the story is formulaic, built on an overfamiliar melancholy refrain. Never mind that Crazy Heart is beautifully performed by leads Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhall, it doesn’t really step outside of some very narrow confines, and as a result there’s really nothing to report other than if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

Which is a shame. Written and directed by Scott Cooper from a novel by Thomas Cobb, Crazy Heart is a film that stands foursquare in the tradition of the music biopic, even if in this case its subject is fictional. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a grizzled country singer with a drink problem and a troubled past. If it pains me to write those words, it pained me even more to watch the highly expensive resources devoted to this stereotypical story do nothing other than exactly what you’d expect them to.

So, Bad Blake starts off playing at a fleapit venue, and uses his reputation to secure free booze, and sleeps with a woman who associates Bad with her own heyday way back when. Then he does the same again. You could rinse and repeat indefinitely, but of course we’re in need of an Inciting Incident, which comes in the form of a journalist half his age: Ms Gyllenhall. In my eyes, her performance is stronger than that of Jeff’s, which is to say she gleans more interesting results from unpromising source material. She’s a single mum, a bit in awe of Bad’s wayward talent (that he wastes), while she has no pride in her own writing.

Anyway, after he crashes his stock car she comes to visit him in hospital, and…

Hang on, the stock car business didn’t happen. It was one of the scenes I made up to invigorate what was happening on screen: something that could have happened and would have been more adventurous than what does unfold. Did I mention Jeff and Maggie get it together? That she’s won over by his old school charm despite knowing he’s been married four times and has a first name that’s a bit of a signifier? What about her ability to melt his heart so that he’s inspired to write songs for the first time in years? And that it all goes horribly wrong in a bittersweet way, so the two bruised romantics are once again left on their own?

Well, that’s how it all hangs together. There is, naturally, a redemptive element to all this. In my fantasy version, Bridges realises his problems are down to adopting a corrosive masculine archetype, and aided by ecstasy tablets in a San Francisco leather bar, discovers an empowering new identity, and rerecords his greatest hits with a new manlove angle. But no, instead he goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, where I have a horrible idea this project was conceived in the first place.

Listen: there is nothing wrong with Crazy Heart. It’s beautifully acted, and tugs at the heartstrings just so from time to time. But it’s utterly predictable, doing nothing new or interesting with the raw ingredients it’s constructed from. Which may explain why it was so heavily tipped for Oscar glory, but does nothing for me as a viewer or a writer. I’m not looking for novelty at every turn, and the pursuit of it can be tiresome in the extreme — but Crazy Heart is so safe that it misses the chance to do something special, something that might just be beautiful.

A couple of paragraphs back I toyed with the idea of a gay element to the film, and it’s interesting that three of the most remarkable films of recent years — Far From Heaven, Brokeback Mountain and Milk — have effectively been quality mainstream movies with a gay angle. Now, maybe that in turn is old hat — and I look forward to the day when gay relationships are depicted on a regular basis by actors happy to take such roles — but surely there has to be some new angle to a story about a broken down country singer who has problems with drink and women. Please?

You’ve got to admit, Solomon Kane is a pretty fine name for a puritan avenger. Robert E. Howard, his creator, was good at conjuring up two dimensional characters for the pulps with just a few sinewy words, and in Kane he created a subgenre. Grant Morrison tapped into it with Klarion the Witch-Boy, one of his series for the interconnected Seven Soldiers comics extravaganza. And I have memories of Hammer films drinking from the same bloody well. But, as far as I’m aware, Howard got there first.

And now we have Solomon Kane the movie. Which is a good romp, but sadly does all the obvious things with the source material without adding any particular flair. Pity — but if you’re after a bit of b-movie hokum, you’ll find Solomon Kane thoroughly enjoyable.

Problem is, it’s all a bit formulaic. You’ll have seen bits and pieces of this before, and though the execution is credible it’s lacking the sort of pizzazz that took, say, Evil Dead or the Indiana Jones films to the next level of quality and enjoyment. The state of play is established in the pre-title sequence, set in North Africa, in which Kane is revealed to be a badass fighter whose leadership style boils down to killing his own men before the enemy gets the chance. Some supernatural gubbins goes down, and next thing you know our (anti) hero is being holllered at in a death metal voice by one of Satan’s lackeys, promising that Solomon will be relieved of his soul for his temerity. Only, said lackey doesn’t bank on SK leaping out of the window of the tower where all this is going down, and being swept away by a river. Lackey bellows after SK that his soul is still forfeit, etc.

Anyway, Solomon makes it back to England, where he declares himself a man of peace. And having been expelled by some kindly monks concerned about what diabolical torment they’re due for sheltering the former swordsman, he sets off on foot to find his destiny. Which turns up pronto in the form of Pete Postlethwaite and family, Postlethwaite’s craggy face being ideal for a weatherbeaten pilgrim without recourse to prosthetics.

There are baddies afoot, too, and the family run afoul of them. Refugees from a goth metal promo, the dark warriors are a-collecting slaves, and Postlethwaite’s family will complete the set. Only, they hadn’t banked on Kane being there to protect them — he tries the Mo Mowlam negotiating thing first, but lacking her fright wig has to resort to violence after all of fifty seconds. Which of course condemns him even more surely to lose his soul.

Anyway, you get the gist. Kane sets out to avenge Postlethwaite, who in his dying breath promises that the warrior will be redeemed if he can save his daughter Meredith. And that sets the direction for the rest of the film. All of which is more or less capably executed, but painted sketchily and without some of the connective tissue between scenes that would have made it flow better and engaged the audience more with what’s at stake.

More on the latter point: genre stories often rush the bits where there’s potential for the audience to really get caught up in a character’s plight. Result being, instead of authentic feelings being generated, you get a shorthand version of all that: tropes rather than emotions. See also: James Bond films, where it’s taken as long as the new Casino Royale for the audience to be convinced that Jimmy really does feel something for his lady of the day.

There’s another trap that the film falls into: the belief that the end of the film needs a fight with something that looks like a level boss from a computer game. Really, all this achieves is a lot of expenditure on CGI. See also Hellboy: the clockwork Nazi was infinitely more interesting than the big badass monster. Yawn. And this even after writer-director Michael J. Bassett went to the trouble of establishing a formulaic but workable connection to the evil in the story with Kane’s family: instead of capitalising on that, it devolves into Star Trek: Next Generation style parent/child wibble. Shame.

It’s been an interesting evening. I caught A Single Man with a friend earlier, who told me a tale that continues to make me furious. She’s a playworker, and went with some of her colleagues for an after work drink. As it happens, her line manager is gay, as is another person above her in the hierarchy. A couple of other members of the team, one a volunteer, are not. And the most senior manager present and her girlfriend texted the parents of those junior colleagues to break the news that they’re gay. Because we all know how funny coming out is, and how welcoming families are of news like that.

All of which emphasises why A Single Man is set in 1962, at a time when homosexuality really was the love that daren’t speak its name, and lives could be blighted by the suspicion of it. Colin Firth has never been better than he is here as George Falconer, an English professor at a middling college whose male lover has just died. Only, who can he open up to about his feelings? Does he even have access to them himself, having constructed a life that scrupulously avoids any kind of emotional connection? It’s more than a conundrum, it’s a desperately lonely position he inhabits, one that’s hard for most people — even, I suspect, many modern gay people — to identify with.

We follow George as he goes about his business, an affable if somewhat distant man. He’s polite to his neighbours, flirtatious with the departmental secretaries, tangentially addresses issues around gayness with his students. And he even has a female confidante, and ex lover, in the form of the divine Julianne Moore as fellow English pal Charlie, who delights in her femininity and wonders what would have happened if she and George had been an item long term. Only Charlie doesn’t ‘get’ George any more than anyone else, George included.

The friend I saw the film with said she found the pace of the film slow, but when we discussed it realised that the story is packed with incident. As well as the business already alluded to, George has a close encounter with a Spanish James Dean wannabe, skirts round picking a guy up at a bar, and brings back one of his students home with him. Also, he has a groovy dance with Charlie that serves the same purpose as a sex scene would in most films, showing the two characters becoming closer through physical intimacy. Oh, and he puts a loaded gun in his mouth, and takes quite a while working out how to shoot himself in such a way that he causes minimum bother to his cleaner.

In other words, there’s plenty happening. But part of Tom Ford’s remarkable skill as director in this, his first film, is the way he segues from one scene to another in a very natural way. There’s an ease to it all, and that ease also encompasses the flashbacks and fantasy sequences within the story. Between the confidence of the direction and the strength of the performances, this really is a remarkable film.

As well as directing, Tom Ford co-produced and co-wrote the script with David Scearce, an adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood story. For the most part it’s a very capable script, though there were a few moments when it seemed too on the nose. Those nasal beats are few and far between, and maybe only perceptible to a curmudgeon such as myself.

Kudos too for music which complements the mood of the story to perfection: Abel Korzeniowski provided the bulk of the original score, and there’s skilful use made of period albums for good measure. In all, it’s as truly beautiful film and one that will stay with me for some time. And while it’s probably not fair to think about it in the light of my friend’s crass colleagues and the way they abused their power in a social context, it inevitably makes me wonder just how society has moved on from the era depicted here.

Bloody marvellous. Like scientists haven’t got enough useful things to be doing, they’re now encroaching on the territory occupied by filmmakers. Physics professor Sidney Percowitz of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is behind a plan that is all about allowing Hollywood creators just one departure from scientific thinking. After that, it’s a slippery slope — and there are real world penalties for shoddy thinking in blockbusters, reckons Percowitz:

“I am not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film. You can have things move faster than the speed of light if you want. But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way.”

“If you violate that you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch,” he added.

(quotes from today’s Guardian)

Right, so The Core was a box office failure because of poorly thought out science? And not because it was a shockingly dull concept with poor execution? If anything, it would have been more likely to succeed had the science been worse, and those venturing to the planet’s centre encountered dinosaurs and women in fur bikinis, as is traditional for the genre.

Anyway, let’s give this concept some thinking through. Call it a thought experiment. Superhero films are in a mess, for a start. Superman might be able to fly, but if that’s all he can do he’s not going to be of much use against stray dogs, never mind laser-toting alien warriors. Or maybe superheroes should live with the consequences of their difference: Wolverine can have claws, but they rust, and he’s suffering from metal poisoning, and because he’s got just the one power so much for a healing factor to sort out his resistance as adamantium particles clog his arteries. Hmm, not much fun now is it, bub?

And where do we even begin with The Matrix? There’s the business of suspending pretty much the entire human population in a virtual reality, for one thing. What kind of computing power would be needed to make that happen? More importantly, the story is essentially a Gnostic allegory about how people live in a half-life identified with the trinkets dangled in front of them rather than anything of real consequence. Is Percowitz going to ban films that use science as a metaphor unless the metaphor confirms to scientific facts as known?

Besides, what happens when science changes? Which it does. Right now, there are scientists talking about parallel dimensions and suggesting that the universe is best understood as a hologram of which individual consciousness is but a fractal. Man. So does that make Sliders and Quantum Leap ok, despite being a bit pony?

And what of Dumbo’s ears? Did they really aid his flight? Doubtful, but the pachyderm’s zest for achievement has inspired generations of kids to find the courage to make their dreams come true. Best put a stop to that then, if fundamental physical laws are contravened.

All of which is to say that science and stories utilise different forms of logic. And that Prof Percowitz has precious little idea of what a symbol is unless it’s one used in science papers. * sigh * Is it really necessary to overhaul Terminator films to keep diehard rationalists happy at the expense of an audience captivated by a cautionary tale about what happens when machines take over from man? I think not.

If anything, let’s celebrate the extent to which the creative imagination fuels scientific progress. Real life researchers have been inspired by growing up in front of Star Trek. Einstein’s methodology for coming up with the theory of relativity was pretty whacked out, consisting of Albert imagining what would happen if he himself were to travel at light speed, and formulated in part through thought experiments involving steam trains. There’s an interesting ongoing dialogue between science and the creative arts, but it helps neither camp for one to police the activities of the other.

One of my favourite fictional characters is Ignatius J. Reilly, the pretentious and preening adolescent narrator of John Kennedy Toole’s tragi-comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He’s distinguished by his literary ambitions, and with it a hi-falutin’ vocabulary and lofty self-regard. I bring Ignatius up having seen Youth in Revolt, which treads in its footsteps somewhat, and too has its origins in a novel — one of the same name by C.D. Payne.

The protagonist is Nick Twisp, a teenager similarly affected by notions of being a writer, who has seemingly swallowed a thesaurus, and is burdened by his troublesome virginity. Played to perfection by Michael Cera, who has done the awkward adolescent thing to good effect before in Superbad, and directed by Miguel Agerta, who was responsible for the sublimely uncomfortable Chuck & Buck, it hits the beats you sort of expect an indie comedy to reach for, sometimes with panache.

The story’s twist, the aspect which raises it above the level it starts at, is the protagonist’s realisation that he needs to develop a bad boy persona to attract the delectable Sheeni Saunders. She is a bit of a teenage pseud, like Nick himself, and her idea of a suitable suitor is Belmondo, the archetype of French New Wave cool featured in Truffaut’s Breathless. (Belmondo in turn modeled himself on Humphrey Bogart, but being French adds an extra dimension of cool in Sheeni’s eyes.) Anyway, Nick’s back-up personality pops up to give him advice at opportune moments, all the while smoking a cigarette and sporting a moustache.

Seeing this alternate self, named Francois Dillinger, egg Nick Wisp on to acts of daring and trouble making is one of the chief pleasures of this very likeable film. A lot of the glee is down to Cera’s strong performances as Nick and Francois — the two are clearly delineated. Other roles are equally well cast: Nick’s dad is an interestingly cast Steve Buscemi, and Sheeni’s brother and parents are strong too.

So, if we’ve got good actors in a comedy with a novel element, how come I don’t like Youth in Revolt more than I do? I suspect the answers are in the source material — perhaps a firmer hand could have been taken with Gustin Nash’s screenplay. For instance, having shifted location from Berkeley to a backwoods town where his mum’s lowlife lover has access to a mobile home, we then shift again when Sheeni is despatched to a school where it’s all French all the time. That sort of thing works better on paper than on screen: location is part of a film’s lifeblood, and to suddenly shift seems irksome. The director tries to make light of the fact by doing the journey to the school in animated form, and it’s kind of cute, but to me emphasises structural failings.

There’s another issue too. It’s not just Nick Wisp and Sheeni that have an affected manner. Pretty much all the younger characters do, and it’s a routine that wears thin, all of them talking in a stilted fashion and having similar issues. Sure, adolescents have a lot in common — but one of those things is a desire to be perceived as individual, and these kids all come from the same mould. It’s a pretty old mould at that, revolving around dreams of travelling to Europe, arthouse cinema, and cult vinyl — likely the stuff of C.D. Payne’s youth, but not credibly that of teenagers in today’s world, with which they seem to have no reference points. No, I’m not asking for topicality, but some recognition of contemporary youth styles and issues would have been welcome.

Really though, these are small quibbles about a film that is largely very satisfying. I’m not sure that I’ll ever read the book that it’s based on, but if it’s reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces then it’s performed a useful service regardless.

I was in London a while back, and opposite me on the Underground was a poster for Nespresso, a coffee product advertised by George Clooney. A father was using it as a lesson to his children about the evils of advertising, saying that Clooney was pimping caffeine for money, which is a Bad Thing. I restrained myself from talking about how Clooney uses the money from adverts to fund ventures such as Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck, two films of a leftward persuasion that could be viewed as advertising of the decent kind.

Anyway, Clooney’s here again — this time to entertain — with Up In The Air, a superb comedy drama directed by Jason Reitman (known also for Juno), co-scripted by Reitman and Sheldon Turner. George plays a man who spends his life travelling from airport to airport, stopping off to make people redundant at whatever business is going down the tubes in the vicinity. For most people that would seem to be an empty existence, but George’s character loves his anonymous life. Or does, until he meets a woman who seems to share his vacuous value system. Naturally, and gradually, he falls for her.

It’s class from the word go, with people who really have lost their jobs playing people who do likewise, adding it the same kind of authenticity that School of Rock benefits from by having young musicians instead of actors playing the kids. George’s impossible good looks and smooth upbeat manner are an alien contrast to their mere mortal ways.

Not only that, but George really does believe he’s got it made. And he wants you to know it. When he’s not sacking people, he’s got a sideline in motivational speaking, and holds forth on the value of a life with minimal attachments – the only baggage he wants is a stylish rucksack, and even that’s replaceable.

George’s bubble bursts when the company he works for hires a smart young woman who realises that people can be fired online rather than in person. The savings on plane flights would be enormous, and people would get to spend more time at home with their loved ones. Exactly not what George wants: nothing horrifies him more than the idea of commitment.

Travelling with the digital evangelist gradually brings home to George that you can’t live without people, and he invites the vapid woman he copped off with to accompany him to his sister’s wedding. He wants more than that – and discovers that she’s married, with kids, and wants nothing to do with the man she views the same way he perceives his conquests on the road. Ouch.

Well judged in every respect, this is a film I’ll be picking up on DVD and sure to learn more from with every viewing. At one level it’s a thoroughly modern comedy attuned to today’s economy and technology. But it’s also timeless, in the tradition of classics like the Howard Hawks gem His Girl Friday. Put Clooney back in time and he’d stand in for Cary Grant’s role just fine, and vice versa.

Every now and then a film appears which catches the zeitgeist in a way that couldn’t be planned. It’s arguable that Clooney has already been in one such film with Michael Clayton, an exploration of corporate wrongdoing that at heart is about one man learning to do the right thing. And at its core, that’s what Up In The Air is too, regardless of its comedy aspect. The Full Monty is another example, focused on life for those made redundant, but like Up In The Air treating the subject with a light touch – a reminder that comedy is serious business.

Creating a film franchise is an interesting business. Writing about the Spider-Man films recently made me think more about the ways that sequels function almost as a genre spawned by the original movie, calling back to it so that people who enjoyed the first can get more of the same kind of fun from the second and subsequent parts in a series.

Take James Bond for instance: where would Jim be without a villain with a foreign name and a distinctive physiological quirk such as weeping blood or a tertiary nipple? In Indiana Jones films viewers would be disappointed if the whip didn’t turn up somewhere along the line. Nightmare on Elm Street sequels had better involve a sinister janitor upsetting the lives of a bunch of hormone-fuelled teens. And so on.

Which brings us to Transporter 2. As is often the case, it begins with a sequence which establishes some of the ground rules for how the Transporter world works. Some lowlifes try to take Jason Statham’s car — a lovingly filmed Audi — only to discover that the driver is a badass with considerable fighting prowess. Next we come to the twist element, by which we distinguish one chapter of a franchise from another — Jurassic Park 2’s new angle was that some of the dinosaurs are smart. In this context, it comes when Statham’s driving job turns out to be to transport a cute kid home from school. Another aspect is a French presence in the story: the first film was set in France, this one is in Miami and Statham pays host to a French friend.

The main business on Statham’s agenda is a constant: creative demonstrations of martial arts based violence giving the driver a chance to improvise ways of sorting his opponents out. And there’s no shortage of those. Statham inventively despatches bad guys armed with firemans’ axes by taking them down with first a scaffolding pole and then a firehose, using it to tangle and trap henchmen and then filling it full of water so that they fly off in all directions. Oh, and he shows off his superlative driving skills by driving over a narrow alley so that the car’s wheels touch buildings either side of the gap.

Basically, Statham is Batman without the cape and code against killing. He’s a smart thinker, a supercapable fighter, and above all else you know he’ll commit to his mission — in this case fulfilling his promise to the young boy that he’ll look after him. Of that there is no question. You know the bad guys will be thwarted — it’s just a matter of how inventively and when. And thankfully the film delivers, with an expertly constructed and executed story that sees Statham take on the baddies while being under suspicion by the cops, seeing off the goons before tracking down the guy in charge of the operation.

As written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and directed by Louis Leterrier it’s a fast, taut, and often funny film that packs the action of a full length feature into its first hour before a skilful segue into a final act — the young boy was targeted because he’s the son of a man who will speak at a conference packed with people from around the world working against the drug trade. The bad guys pump the kid full of a custom virus that he gives to everyone he comes in contact with, and they in turn to people around them…an opportunity to get the dad to off the cream of the international drug policing community.

Gadzooks, the consequences of such a fiendish plot would be catastrophic! Statham’s got to act, and the bad guy personalises things by pumping his own body full of the only stock of antidote. Cue ridiculous fight scene in a jet plummeting from the sky, and other high octane nonsense that gave me a grin pretty much the duration of the film. A lot of people are dismissive of action thrillers like this, dismissing them as braindead — but watch Transporter 2 and you’ll realise just how much intelligence goes into crafting entertainment that slips down so easily.

In the year I was born, 1965, a film was released that painted a grim picture of life after a nuclear confrontation. Called The War Game, it probably still gets wheeled out to shock people to this day. Later, a tv film called Threads presented a harrowing vision of Sheffield after the bomb the year I went there as a student. But in truth, I’m fairly typical of my generation in being more taken with the post-apocalypse future as presented in the Mad Max trilogy, and the journey that Judge Dredd took through the Cursed Earth in the pages of 2000AD.

I’ve experienced my fair share of grim future scenarios in which rugged loners battle mutants and savage tribes coutoured by whoever styled Village People, and more or less enjoyed a range of films in that milieu from well known ones like Planet of the Apes to obscurities such as Salute of the Jugger. And then Cormac McCarthy comes along, and takes all the fun out of Earth’s death knell with a book called The Road.

Not that I’ve read the book yet, you understand. But I have just seen the film it inspired, and I think it’s fair to say my desire to see Tina Turner commanding legions of men with spiked leather body armour has dissipated. Writer Joe Penhall and director John Hillcoat present a scenario that comes across with frightening credibility, as a father and son travel across an America with sulphurous skies, derelict cities and burning forests, hoping that in reaching the coast they’ll find something like salvation.

The son’s repeated refrain is ‘Are we still the good guys?’, and it’s ever tougher to answer that question with the positivity the father would wish for as they encounter other people on their travels. Food is scarce, and the easiest source of protein walks on two legs. Cannibalism is the line that sets father and son apart from many of those they encounter, and it leads to some grim scenarios. Sometimes they’re potential victims, but there’s also an occasion when they come across a cellar that’s been converted into a larder and leave the human livestock to their fates while fleeing themselves. In the circumstances there’s little else they could do, and the story is about exactly such circumstances.

In stripping away the fantastic elements that most post-apocalypse films relish, what’s left is a truly epic story of survival. The father starts the film with a pistol holding two bullets, one for each of them in case they run afoul of cannibals. More than that, he even shows his son what angle to hold the gun in his mouth to ensure he’s killed clean and quick. It’s that starkness which gives The Road its power, and other choices are similarly loaded. Is it wise or stupid to share food with a stranger when you’ve only got what you can carry in a cart? Breaking bread together is the basis of civilisation, and in its absence what’s left?

There are no answers presented, just a clear depiction of the realities of life minus the social cushioning we’re used to. No wonder that the father is troubled by dreams of the past with his wife, and is so affected when he comes across a piano. There might be no place for music in the world of the story, but the soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis forms an important part of the texture of the film, providing subtle colour that’s variously ominous, bleak, and nostalgic.

Beautifully filmed, and with note-perfect performances from Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as the father and son, The Road is as powerful and unpreachy a message about the future of the world as you’re likely to come across. This is cinema of rare quality, perhaps even importance, though I’m aware as I say so that one day it’ll become just another DVD found in a landfill site a century from now. Let’s hope Tina Turner’s not the queen of that or any other wasteland by the time that future comes about.

As you may have gathered from previous pieces, Sexy Beast is one of my very favourite films. And now here’s 44 Inch Chest, with a lot of the same names involved. Ray Winstone once again provides a sterling performance as the lead, and the script is by Louis Mellis and David Scinto. Pretty much everything you’d hope for if you’re hoping lightning to strike twice, ignoring the fact that it rarely does, though director Malcolm Venville has a fair go at attracting it.

Winstone stars as Colin Diamond, a man whose life has fallen apart since his wife left him. See, she was seeing this other bloke. Sorry, a guy and not a bloke. Distinctions like these are central to a script that is as much an examination of masculinity as it is a story. In fact, you could say — but only a ponce would say it to Colin Diamond’s grizzled and grizzling face — that some fucker’s made off with the story and left the audience with just a situation. What sort of bastard would do a thing like that?

Fortunately, the situation that’s left is an interesting one. Colin’s got his mates together and they’ve gone and kidnapped the wanker what went and shagged Mrs Diamond (Joanne Whalley). Now, the French waiter is in this wardrobe, all locked up like, waiting for Colin to give the nod so’s the boys can get stuck into the creep. Froggie went a wooing, and he’s going to pay for it — with his life.

It all holds together well for the first hour, maybe more. With talent like Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson and Stephen Dillane involved, and an absorbing, obscene and often hilarious script, it’s a fine ride the film takes you on. But then the brakes come on when Joanne Whalley turns up, and the film doesn’t recover.

Possibly this is down to the different geezers all being different types of bloke, where Joanne is emblematic of all women. Which is hard for any bird to pull off, if you ask me. The lads themselves…you’ve got Ray as a married man who doesn’t know what to do without his wife, and uses the vocabulary of pop psychology at times even when he’s smacking her round the house. Then there’s a guy approaching middle age who’s still living with his mum. A ladies’ man who knows the patter and how to light a girl’s cigarette. A vile Old Testament misogynist. And an actual la-di-da homosexual.

The interaction between the men is deftly written and performed, and tragically reminiscent of many all male conversations I’ve been in. So why do the wheels fall off when Liz Diamond comes onto the scene? It’s like the writers didn’t know where to go next, beyond some implication that women can play men and win. Which is fair enough as far as it goes, but doesn’t convince in a scenario when Ray and the lads were initially planning to skin both Frenchie and Liz alive.

Credibility goes out the window then, and instead we get a bunch of dream sequences. They’re fun, but also very self indulgent. I was reminded of the fantasy pieces embellishing Led Zeppelin’s live concert movie The Song Remains The Same to no good effect — another fine example of alpha males strutting around with more resources than sense at their disposal.

Still, the things that are good about 44 Inch Chest are very good indeed. The first hour is a wonderfully written, darkly perceptive exploration of what men are, or can be, like. It’s just a pity that there’s not more story to make it go further. Sexy Beast was all about the subtext, but here everything is on the surface, like a bulldog tattoo you wake up with after an ill-advised night out, that you never go back to get coloured in.

I went to see Daybreakers expecting some undemanding fun on a wet afternoon. The trailers promised Matrix style vampire antics, set in a future where bloodsuckers form the majority of the population. Perfect Friday fodder in other words, without the need to engage my brain: eyecandy would suit me just fine.

The first sign that the film was something other than — more than — what I’d anticipated was a beautifully executed worldbuilding scene, maybe fifteen minutes long, without dialogue. Oh, sure, there was some information presented in text form, but for the most part the nature of this vampiric future was conveyed using images alone. And what images: there was demonstrable imagination at work here, and a lot of interesting ideas extrapolating what a world dominated by vampires would be like. This is just the sort of thing that gets up the noses of people who don’t like genre stories, but as far as I’m concerned it’s a better use of the mind to devise a convincing parallel world than it is to depict a crumbling marriage in this one.

Anyway, the vampires depend on milking the last remaining humans of their blood, keeping their livestock in drugged stupor. But stocks are running low — within a month, there will be none left. And that means trouble. Without blood, vampires degenerate from debonair playboys and WAGs and become monstrous creatures resembling the bats they’re connected with. Trouble coming every day, as Frank Zappa put it: so what’s a poor vampire to do?

Yes, that did read ‘poor vampire’: the protagonist of the story — Edward Dalton, played by Ethan Hawke — is a vampire sympathetic to humans. Showing charity to some mortals on the run, he’s asked by them to contribute to their own plans for some kind of vampire/human rapprochement. What Edward comes across is bigger than that. Much bigger. Inspired by a former vampire who’s regained his humanity, Edward manages to recreate the conditions for the transformation to happen to order.

Only, that knowledge is a threat to the status quo. Edward’s employers are doing very well with things the way they are now. They want a synthetic blood product, which they can continue to sell, while reserving human blood for connoisseurs with cash.

All of this is realised with flair by the Speirig brothers, who jointly scripted and directed this pacy, well-constructed yarn. It’s refreshing to come across a non-sexy vampire tale: the abiding metaphor here is more a political one, with blood standing in for oil and lack of it leading to social chaos. There’s effective emotional content too: Edward’s relationship with his soldier brother cuts across the fault lines in the story. And there’s strong stuff going on between the boss of the corporation Edward works for and his mortal daughter, which is expertly and credibly used to trigger the turning point that results in the story’s denouement.

I won’t spoil the nature of that resolution, save to say it’s very well thought out. It has its roots in science of a sort, which the film has a dubious relationship with. There’s a scientific frame around vampirism that accounts for much vampiric behaviour, but at the same time vampires are still invisible in mirrors, which stretches credibility a little too far for me. That’s a minor point however: the story logic in general is unusually respectful of the audience’s intelligence. Perhaps too much so: I heard people puzzling how the end worked to each other as they left the cinema.

Daybreakers is an unusually good vampire film. In its own way it’s just as strong as last year’s superlative Let The One Right In, which is the weird Scandinavian indie single to the Muse-like stadium rock of the Speirigs’ offering. Well worth a viewing — and remember to take your brain with you.