Adrienne Connors
House of Sand and Fog
Buena Vista, 15, 121 mins; £15.99 (DVD), rental
If you’re drowning, what do you cling on to? Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is a recovering alcoholic, deserted by her husband, whose house has been repossessed. Behrani (Ben Kingsley) is an immigrant Iranian, a former colonel in the shah’s regime, who buys the house at auction. For both, the house is a raft: for Behrani, it is what will convey him to American respectability; for Kathy, losing it symbolises her entrée to the underclass. The clash between them is inevitable, desperate and bloody. This is a small-scale, sophisticated tragedy, made extraordinary by the performances of Kingsley, Connelly and, especially, the wonderful Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, playing Behrani’s wife. The film is well paced, though its portentous score is a bit too overwrought. Decent extras include behind-the-scenes chats and a commentary from the first-time director Vadim Perelman, the writer of the original novel, Andre Dubus III, and Kingsley. Three stars
Patricia Nicol
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Battle Royale II — Requiem
Tartan Asia Extreme, 18, 132 mins; £19.99 (DVD), £15.99 (VHS)
Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000) was a sharp blow below the belt, a ghoulish, gory parable about wayward school pupils who are inducted into a “war game” by militaristic “teachers”, then dumped on an island to exterminate each other — Lord of the Flies by way of Saving Private Ryan, shot by a master of extreme cinema. Three years on, and a survivor, Shuya, has declared war on all adults, destroying several tall buildings and then fleeing with his “terrorist” army. Don’t-wannabe assassins from a school for misfits are sent to take him out. Will the ragtag “army”, faced with death by exploding collar if they don’t comply, make the grade? Forgive the quote marks: it’s that kind of film. Fukasaku, who died during shooting (the film was completed by his son, Kenta) is in elegiac but angry mood here at the world’s bellicosity, and is challenging the terms it uses to justify violence. But the lean, mean machine of the original has become more Heath Robinsonesque, lurching between the portentous and the preposterous. The mayhem is still marvellously mad, but it regularly shuts down for the characters to trade philosophical soundbites. The scanty “extras” amount to a few pages of solemn text about the filmmakers, plus a trailer. Two stars
Helen Hawkins