DVDs of the week

JOURNEY’S END (CERT 12) £19.99

Inexperienced officer Raleigh (Asa Butterfield) successfully petitions a highranking relative to transfer him to the company commanded by old school friend Captain Stanhope (Sam Claflin). Fizzing with youthful optimism and innocence, Raleigh arrives at his new post on March 18 1918, oblivious to the impending German onslaught. He is greeted by Lieutenant Osborne (Paul Bettany), who has served alongside Stanhope for some time and witnessed his superior’s whisky-soaked rages fuelled by fear and self-loathing. Stanhope is indeed a changed man and Raleigh is shocked by the Captain’s fractious exchanges with fellow Second Lieutenants Trotter (Stephen Graham) and Hibbert (Tom Sturridge). When the Colonel (Robert Hardy) discloses the likeliest date for the German attack, March 21, Stanhope readies his company, bolstered by cups of tea brewed by Private Mason (Toby Jones) in the mess. Released to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War, director Saul Dibb’s thoughtful tour of duty with British soldiers on the front line expands RC Sherriff’s moving 1928 stage play without sacrificing too much of the psychological intensity. Butterfield powerfully conveys his character’s naivete, while Claflin’s spiralling paranoia contrasts with the authoritative calm of Bettany’s avuncular old bean, who steadies nerves with a comforting smile. Simon Reade’s lean script trudges along muddy, collapsing trenches and sprints into No Man’s Land, where the loss of young lives is brought home in a barrage of sound and fury.

DEN OF THIEVES (CERT 15) £19.99

Ex-con Ray Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber) and his crew bungle the robbery of an armoured truck outside a petrol station, where two unsuspecting police guards have made a pit-stop. “We’re cop killers now,” laments Merrimen, aiming that jibe at trigger-happy getaway driver Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr), whose nervous actions could have dire consequences for muscle man Levi (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson), surveillance expert Bosco (Evan Jones) and technical wizard Mack (Cooper Andrews). Hard-drinking detective Nick O’Brien (Gerard Butler) is assigned to the case with his posse of police reprobates. They suspect Merrimen’s involvement and begin surveillance, just as their prime suspect secretly unveils plans for the theft of $30 million from the Federal Reserve in downtown Los Angeles. Den of Thieves is an overlong retread of the superior 1995 thriller Heat, set in the bank theft capital of the world: Los Angeles. This bruising battle of criminal enterprise versus rough justice plays out between the permanent glower of Canadian actor Schreiber and the hulking physicality of Paisley-born action man Butler, sadly the latter can’t maintain a firm grasp on his American accent.