BEST OF THE REST

Geoffrey Macnab takes in a gripping tale of British exploration, an epic Korean thriller, the story of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands and a classic buddy film

The Lost City of Z

★★★★☆ Dir: James Gray, 140 mins, starring: Charlie Hunnam, Sienna Miller, Robert Pattinson

It has been a while since we’ve had a decent film about British explorers in pith helmets roaming through the Amazonian jungles. James Gray’s brilliant new feature The Lost City Of Z (adapted from David Grann’s book) is both a throwback to an era in which rip-roaring yarns about imperial adventurers were commonplace and a story with a strong and disturbing contemporary resonance.

Gorgeously shot by Darius Khondji, it manages the feat of making the English and Irish-set scenes look just as rich and strange as those that unfold far down the Amazon. For all its epic trappings, this turns out to be a very poignant and closely focused character study of a man badly out of step in his own society, on a Quixotic journey to a destination that he knows he will never reach. Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) has many reasons for going on his far-flung expeditions.

They’re a way to redeem the family name, tarnished by the drinking and gambling of his ne’er do well

father. If he is able to map Bolivia accurately, the British Empire stands to benefit. It isn’t just money and reputation that is driving him, though. He is looking for escape.

Hunnam’s performance is intriguing. He’s an upstanding Englishman, selfless and heroic, always trying to keep his emotions under wraps, and yet he has that same zealous, obsessive quality that Klaus Kinski brought to his roles as men on mad quests in Aguirre, Wrath Of God or Fitzcarraldo.

Structurally, The Lost City Of Z is very loose. At times, Gray doesn’t seem to have any clearer idea of his final destination than Fawcett himself. This is the story of three expeditions over a period of 20 years, all of them inconclusive. There’s a brutal First World War interlude too. Every so often, the narrative will lurch forward in time. When the explorers are heading down river, Gray cranks up the tension.

There are chases, scenes set on turbulent rapids, references to cannibalism and footage of the British explorers coming under attack from arrows and spears. The action, though, isn’t really the point. Gray’s main preoccupation is with Fawcett’s existential quest to make sense of his life.

The explorer is both a heroic figure and a forlorn and slightly pathetic one. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for,” a quote from Robert Browning is thrown in which sums up both the explorer’s reckless ambition and his realisation that he’ll never get where he wants to.

The Age Of Shadows

★★★★☆ Dir: Kim Jee-woon, 140 mins, starring: Song Kang-ho, Gong Yoo, Han Ji-min

The Age Of Shadows is a tremendous thriller, combining Hitchcockian elements with action set-pieces and a slippery plot line as full of twists and betrayals as one of John Le Carre's Cold War thrillers. It is set in Korea in the 1920s. The country is under the yoke of the Japanese but there is a ferocious resistance movement.

The pivotal character is a rugged Korean police captain Lee Jung-chool (played by the charismatic Song Kang-ho). He was once close to the resistance leaders but has now thrown his lot in with the Japanese occupiers. At their behest, he is busy hunting down his former comrades. The resistance, though, hopes he can be turned one last time.

Director Kim Jee-woon throws in some breathtaking sequences - and some very brutal ones. There are scenes of resistance agents being tortured in extremely bloody and sadistic fashion by officers they thought were their friends. The relationships between all the main characters are in constant flux. We're never sure who is the betrayed and who is doing the betraying.

The most memorable episode here is the virtuoso sequence in which all the main protagonists are on a long train journey together. The resistance fighters know that one of their colleagues has been double crossing them and, in the course of the journey, they have a way to flush him or her out.

The Age Of Shadows will have a very different resonance for Korean viewers than it does for outsiders not steeped in the history or politics of the era it portrays. Its multiple plot twists and reversals occasionally risk becoming confusing. Nonetheless, this is pulsating storytelling, suspenseful and often very stylish too.

Another Mother’s Son

★ ★☆☆☆ Dir: Christopher Menaul, 98 mins, starring: Jenny Seagrove, John Hannah, Julian Kostov, Ronan Keating

Another Mother's Son casts light on an episode which filmmakers have largely ignored in the past, namely the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. It tells the true story of a Jersey woman, Louisa Gould (Jenny Seagrove) who hid an escaped Russian prisoner in her home.

This is a very woolly drama. With its imagery of characters in tweed caps and aprons riding rusty old bikes, the film has the look of an old Hovis ad. The screenplay by Jenny Lecoat (the great niece of the main character) emphasises the sense of community on the island. Louisa runs the grocery shop, where the locals meet for a gossip. She is very close to her brother Harold (pop star Ronan Keating), sister Ivy (Amanda Abbington) and brother in law Arthur (John Hannah) who is assistant postmaster.

The nostalgic elements and folksy humour sit a little incongruously alongside shots of Nazis whipping their Russian prisoners or even pummelling them to death. There's a hint of 'Allo 'Allo, too, about the scenes in which the islanders outwit the German officers, for instance when Ronan Keating sings in Russian.

Keating acquits himself pretty well as Harold, genial and selfless in the early scenes and then deeply traumatised later on. Seagrove gives a spirited performance as the redoubtable and outspoken Louisa (who slightly bizarrely has the hint of a cockney accent). Her own son has recently been killed and she sees the Russian, Feodor (Julian Kostov), as a surrogate.

As first encountered, he's bedraggled, filthy, and emaciated but once he has been cleaned up and has had his hair cut, he is revealed as a handsome and sensitive young man. She rechristens him “Bill” and he proves his decency by fixing a leaking tap and drawing pictures of her.

In its own soap opera-like fashion, the film is involving enough. The characters, whether local girls have flings with German soldiers or busybody ladies who may be trying to rat on Louisa to the Nazis, are vividly drawn. Nicholas Farrell registers strongly enough as the cowardly postmaster, only very reluctantly doing the right thing, while Susan Hampshire and Peter Wight have some nice moments as selfless old-timers.

This, though, feels more like a TV movie than anything cinematic. Its generally cheery tone is belied by its very brutal ending in which the doughty Channel Islanders are suddenly forced to confront the reality of the Holocaust.

CHiPs ★★☆☆☆ Dax Shepard, 101 mins, starring: Dax Shepard, Michael Peña, Vincent D’Onofrio, Kristen Bell

Buddy movies don't come any more moronic than Dax Shepard's CHiPs (based on the cop series of the 70s). This is very low-grade comedy, smutty, witless and prurient – but at least its two stars, Shepard and Michael Peña, seem to be enjoying themselves.

Shepard plays a has-been Evel Knievel-like motorbike ace whose marriage is breaking up even faster than his battered, rain-averse, titanium filled body. Peña is an undercover agent. They become partners as motorcycle cops in the California Highway Patrol. Shepard is the oldest and most incompetent rookie on the force. Peña's character is working under an assumed name, trying to root out corruption in the force. The cops themselves seem to be behind a series of armed robberies of security vans.

Most of the jokes here revolve around sexting, voyeurism (Peña has a fetish for women in hot pants), and the attrition between the two middle-aged leads, who don't take long to start their bromance anyway. Every so often, a high-speed motorbike chase across the LA freeways (and sometimes ignoring them altogether) is thrown in for good measure. CHiPs plays like an American version of Cannon & Ball or of

some other goofy 70s sitcom. Vincent D'Onofrio plays the “heavy,” the rogue cop Ray Kurtz, scowling away as Peña and Shepard behave ever more inanely.

Given that this is a comedy, the storytelling becomes strangely gruesome at times. There is decapitation, characters plunge to their death from helicopters and, most horrific of all, in one grim scene, Peña lands up face first in Shepard’s pubic nether regions. If you enjoy juvenile, sub-Viz humour, you may find a few scenes worthy of a good snigger but overall this is pretty lamentable fare.