Reviews: DVD

Days of Glory

Directed by Rachid Bouchareb, starring Jamel Debbouze

This World War II feature unearths a forgotten saga about North African soldiers who fought for France, and played a crucial role in restoring French government pension for these unknown heroes.

Other than that, it is a run-of-the-mill war story with a heavy dose of political correctness, which insures it get tons of media applause as well as an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film.

The story is competently made, but shows more traces of imitating Saving Private Ryan than signs of genius. The soldiers' decision to join the French army is hardly convincing from an individual point of view, but gives enough foil for depicting racial discrimination.

A politically correct movie is very much like a propaganda film. It reduces human complexity to a set of codes and ethics that make the powers-that-be comfortable. By reducing these soldiers to stock characters, the movie could never be engaging.

Raymond Zhou

Notes on a Scandal

Directed by Richard Eyre, starring Judi Dench, Cate Blanchette

This British art film features two fearless performances as school teachers in a battle of wits.

Cate Blanchette plays a married woman who is sexually involved with a 15-year-old boy, and Dench, as her mentor, uses that information to keep her as a kind of psychological hostage. The way these two women interact gives insight to the inner worlds of human psyche loneliness, obsession, interdependence and the eternal pining for youth.

The structure of the story is filled with points and counterpoints, with most of the characters seeking to hold on or recover lost youth through relationships with someone much younger. Clich as it is, the movie makes it not only convincing, but psychologically revealing. Each character is at once a culprit and a victim.

Except the acting, the directing and everything else is nothing to write home about. RZ

The Towering Inferno

Directed by John Guillermin and Irwin Allen, starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen

It's a stellar cast - Newman, McQueen, Dunaway, Holden, Astaire. And it's easy money for these A-listers, starring in an overblown blockbuster that requires them only to scream. But hey, this is a disaster movie after all, not a rich documentation of doomed souls and it's the flaming building itself that plays the biggest role.

The Towering Inferno is not rocket science, doesn't pretend to be rocket science and the title tells us everything we need to know about the plot: there's a big building on fire and a lot of people are trapped inside it. Sure, the dialogue is stomach churning at times (particularly in the moments when the various couple are canoodling) but this b-grade epic does have its charms.

Several story threads are competently interwoven and it's impressive that all of the myriad characters are somehow included into the action.

OK, they are, admittedly, one-dimensional cardboard characters but that's also part of the movie's appeal. The rescue sequences vary from the innovative to the outrageously far-fetched but unless you are expecting a serious portrayal of people preparing to meet their maker, you should find something here to tickle your fancy.

Ben Davey

(China Daily 04/12/2007 page20)