DVD OF THE WEEK
There aren’t enough Westerns these days, so for those who enjoy their landscapes in widescreen and their shootouts in stetsons, Jon Cassar’s
Forsaken (15)
will taste like fine bourbon. It’s 1872 and American Civil War vet John Henry Clayton (Kiefer Sutherland) returns home to Wyoming claiming his gunslinging days are behind him. I’ll believe it when I see it, says his preacher pa (Kiefer’s real-life daddy, Donald). But John Henry is as good as his word, preferring to tend the land his late mother cherished than go out drinking and scrapping. Even when the local roughnecks, working for land-grabber James McCurdy (Brian Cox), pick fights with him, he turns the other cheek. Yes, I know, you can see where this is headed. But like even the weakest Clint picture, Forsaken is played with such integrity that it never feels as if it’s going through the motions. I could have done without our hero’s transformation into fullon, Dirty Harry-style killing machine. But there’s no denying the emotional kick of watching him finally belt on his holster.
Midnight Special (12A)
looks like a rerun of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters but feels like a retread of Brian De Palma’s The Fury. Its young hero, Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher), knows everything, from what’s on the radio without it being switched on, to the precise location of satellites in the sky. And sometimes his eyes project a spooky blue ray... He and his father (Michael Shannon) and an ex-cop (Joel Edgerton) are on the run from the FBI, the National Security Agency and a cult led by Sam Shepard. Why? Hanged if I know, which means that while there’s no denying the rich splendour of the visuals Jeff Nichols summons to tell his weirdo tale, I wonder whether they make it worth sticking with.