Film reviews round-up: The Age of Shadows, Another Mother's Son, CHiPs

★★★★☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.

★★☆☆☆

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.