DVD

Though it never quite decides whether it’s a comedy or a drama or a comedy-drama,

Blindspotting (15A) ★★★★ has a lot going for it. Carlos López Estrada’s movie has a bouncy energy and pulsing rhythm that keep you watching, even as it descends into expressionist nightmare. We’re in Oakland near San Francisco – an area that’s gentrifying so fast that the locals wear T-shirts saying ‘Save your neighbourhood. Kill a hipster’.

The Oaklanders we get to know are Collin (rapper Daveed Diggs), a removal man on his last three days of probation, and his friend and colleague Miles (Rafael Casal, above with Ziggy Baitinger andJasmine Cephas Jones), a gold-toothed Eminem lookalike who has got himself a gun. For the first hour, as we wait for Collin to ditch Miles (the reason he ended up inside), Blindspotting has a lovely, loose, near cinema verité feel. But as the plot tightens, it constricts Diggs and Casal’s performances. Our street poets degenerate into attitudestrikers. Which is in keeping with the movie as a whole. For all its expressionistic visuals and jittery editing, it’s as reassuringly well structured as a J B Priestley play.

‘He’s not a double agent. He’s a triple agent.’ Mile 22 (16)

★★★ is full of sub-le Carré lines like that. It’s also full of good Bourne-style car chases and Bruce-Lee-on-steroids-style kung fu fights (very nasty).

Directed by Peter Berg, the movie is as predictable as a wash cycle. But Mark Wahlberg is on reliably macho form and, as the spymaster, John Malkovich has lots of foul-mouthed fun.