GOOD - compelling study of moral corruption

Cinema sells stories of monsters and angels - Hitler and Schindler. Rarely do we find a movie that shows us the unpalatable truth: most people are, when nudged by a little flattery, likely to take the easy path of self-interest. We are callow creatures, but as Ripley put it, "Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense, doesn't it, in your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person."

GOOD is a facile title for a movie that deals with precisely this complicated, unpalatable truth, in the most savage of circumstance, Germany in the 1930s. Handsomely shot and beautifully acted, the movie deftly shows us the moral deterioration of a well-meaning but ultimately easily corruptible academic, played by Viggo Mortensen. As the movie opens, he's an uncomplaining, but frustrated middle-aged man, struggling to please a depressed wife, care for a chronically ill mother and manage his children. His personal struggle is reflected in a novel he writes about euthanasia for the chronically ill.

Years later, and this good man is seduced, first by an adoring young student (Jodie Whitaker) and second, by a clever Nazi official who, with a few charming words and reassurances, persuades the academic to write a paper advocating euthanasia of mentally and physically handicapped. After all, isn't it better to be inside, influencing policy, rather than carping on the sidelines? Mark Strong, in a cameo role, is petrifyingly efficient as the recruiting officer. Even more interesting is the character played by Steven Mackintosh - a brutal SS thug who will organise "spontaneous" anti-Semitic riots with a boyish charm and vulnerability that challenges us to with-hold our sympathy.

What makes this film compelling is that it treads the fine line between empathy and sympathy. I don't sympathise with the "good Nazis" but I do empathise. It's all too plausible to see "good men do nothing", or rather think that they are doing nothing when really they are actively enabling a regime they know to be evil. The only truly sympathetic character is that of the Jewish psychologist, played by Jason Isaacs. It's a brilliant performance in a memorable role.

GOOD played Toronto 2008 and opened in Hungary, the US and Brazil in 2008. It is currently on release in the UK and in Australia. It opens in Spain on May 22nd; in New Zealand on June 4th and in Argentina on October 1st.

Guy Ritchie retrospective - LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS

Do you remember when Britannia was cool? Do you remember when we were Common People? Do you remember when Jason Statham was just some skinny bald git? Do you remember when Guy Ritchie was the saviour of British cinema? Before the marriage to the cinematic kryptonite that is Madonna - before the kabbalistic drivel of REVOLVER - before the straight-to-video disaster of SWEPT AWAY....

LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS remains the best of Guy Ritchie's movies - full of energy, cartoonish-fun, a genuinely new visual style, and a script so tight and complex you could put a cherry on top and call it a weasel. It was a shock to the system when it first came out. It celebrated all that was great about the old Ealing comedies and caper films, but amped it up for the video-gaming age with sharp editing, pop-culture references and a Tarantino-like fondess for the absurdity of violence.

The plot is too byzantine to discuss in any detail. Suffice it to that, as with all Ritchie films, it takes a slice of London life in all its grimy glory but puts it through the filter of a cartoon-sensibility. So we have posh kids producing drugs; working class kids losing heavy money gambling; heists and counter-heists; cockney gangsters and immigrant scams. The whole things ties together with a neatness that is awe-inspiring. Instead of dumbing everything down to a sort of universally understandable but banal language and set of character types, Ritchie glories in the quirkiness of Londoners. He goes out of his way to create outlandish characters and loves their particular idioms and squalid hang-outs. He doesn't want Hollywood-handsome. He wants "Barry the Baptist" and "Nick the Greek".

Ten years later you can still stick this on the old DVD player and have a laugh and that's more than you can say about most movies. Critics and audiences weren't wrong to get excited about what this mockney was going to do next. LOCK STOCK didn't just have promise, it delivered.

LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS hit the screens in 1998 and is available on DVD.

THE ESCAPIST - Best of British

THE ESCAPIST is an intelligent, imaginative take on the prison-break movie as exemplified by THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Indeed, this low budget British flick heavily references the cult classic, contrasting the savagery of prison life - drugs, rape, brutal violence - with religious imagery and martyrdom. The style, however, couldn't be more different. The sun-lit American prison is replaced with grungy British misery. And the straightforward linear style is replaced by a narrative that starts both at the beginning of the plot and at the beginning of the escape itself. We learn about the motivations of each participant as we watch their escape unfold. I found the method absolutely compelling and neat because it didn't diminish the suspense. The key question of whether or not the men would pull off their escape was still there till the end. But we also get a wonderful plot twist that asks more interesting and meaningful questions.

What else is there to love about this film? For a start, the performances are great. Brian Cox leadsfrom the front, but is upstaged by a quite sinister, physical performance from Steven Mackintosh as a rapist, junkie. The only false note was Damian Lewis trying to look hard with a half-baked working class accent. Still, not even that was enough to keep this film off my Best of 2008 list. Kudos to debutant feature writer-director Rupert Wyat.

THE ESCAPIST played Sundance and Dublin 2008 and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands in February 2009.