We’ve gotthe movieslike Jagger...
Face it: Homeland isn’t what it was. So if you’re finding your weekly fix of black ops no longer does the business, come with me to Paree, to meet The Bureau (15) HHHHH. Also there to meet them – or meet them again – is Malotru (Mathieu Kassovitz). Just back from a six-year stint in Syria, he’s finding it difficult to adjust to his old life. Oh, sure, he loves his wife and daughter. But he can’t forget Nadia (Zineb Triki), the married woman he fell for while working undercover in Damascus.
So when she turns up in Paris, desperate to see him, he breaks protocol and re-establishes contact.
The classic conflict of love and duty, then, and the good news is that The Bureau treats the theme with a probing subtlety that lifts it well above the mainstream.
Artfully shot and edited, the series – now in its second season on Amazon Prime and set for a third – has all the complexity and bite of a great claret.
Let’s hope that it learns from Homeland, and doesn’t press on with his mission beyond the call of duty…
Talking of duty, here comes Sully (12A) HHHHH – Clint Eastwood’s latest. This one tells the true story of the plane that was hit by a bird strike and crash-landed in the Hudson River in the depths of January 2009.
As most of us recall, in a remarkable feat of aviation on the part of captain Chesley ‘Sulley’ Sullenberger, there were neither casualties nor injuries. However, as Sully portrays, in some respects the pilot’s knuckle-whitening ride was only the start of his ordeal. We see pesky bureaucrats insist on treating Dirty Harry, er, sorry, Sully (Tom Hanks), as if he’d imperilled his passengers.
A courtroom drama, in other words, though don’t go worrying that the movie is too static to get airborne. Eastwood ups the tension by cutting back and forth from the interrogation scenes to the cockpit of the plane, where we see Sully’s reactions as he realises how limited his options are. Hanks is on top form here, never once stiffening his upper lip, much less encouraging us to reach for the hankies – as he might have done under a less muscular director. In a week full of treats, just room to mention a golden oldie: Nicolas Roeg’s psychedelic masterclass Performance (18) HHHHH finally makes it to Blu-ray. Villain James Fox holes up with rocker Mick Jagger. Cue a comic culture clash not even Harold Pinter would have dared imagine. Unmissable.