Zombies swarm London - again

May 10 2007 Mike Davies reviews the latest cinema releases

• 28 WEEKS LATER  * * *
  Cert 18, 99 mins

Five years on from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's overpraised and overheated zombies in London allegorical horror 28 Days Later , here's the suitably grimy post-apocalypse looking sequel.

Boyle and Garland take executive producer credits this time, leaving the work to Rowan (son of Roland) Joffe and co-writer/director Juan Carlos Fresnadill.

Given their respective credits include The Last Resort and Spanish thriller Intacto, these are impressively capable hands. Gone though are the original cast, instead you get Robert Carlyle who, after cravenly abandoning his wife (Catherine McCormack) during an undead attack in the initial outbreak. He fetches up seven months later in London where, the virus having run its course, survivors and returning refugees are being housed in a safe zone around Canary Wharf under the watchful eye of the Americans.

Among the first returnees are Carlyle's two kids (Mackintosh Muggleton, Imogen Poots), understandably upset when dad tells them how, unable to save her, he saw mom die.

So, it's all a bit of a surprise when she turns up in their old gaff, a bit worse for wear but definitely alive. It also transpires that, while a carrier of the Rage virus she's got a natural immunity; which makes her a valuable commodity should there be another outbreak.

You don't need me to tell you that, before long, there's flesh-munching, eye-gouging zombies running all over Docklands, the US Army's deploying a "kill anything that moves and then firebomb the place" solution and that the kids, an Army medic (Rose Byrne) and a sniper with a conscience (Jeremy Renner) are on the run from the living and undead alike.

The screenplay contriving to have him keep popping up at every inconvenient moment, a slavering mad-eyed Carlyle's among the latter, prompting a parent-child confrontation Freudians would have a field day with.

It's not hard to spot the sex=contagion and collapse of civilisation subtexts or read parallels with Iraq into the American response. But really this is mostly just a chase movie across a deserted (and geographically haphazard) London with an excess of gore, some unexpected deaths, a great zombies vs helicopter blades scene and a witty downbeat ending.

There's no real emotional engagement with anyone, but it does the job well enough to keep the Friday night horror brigade happy and give the intellectuals an excuse to join in with the popcorn fights.

• GOODBYE BAFANA * * *
  Cert  12A 117 mins

The year’s 1968, South Africa’s still in the grip of apartheid, black opposition leaders are imprisoned as terrorists and Afrikaans prison guard James Gregory (a perfectly accented Joseph Fiennes) is transferred with wife Gloria (Diane Kruger) and his two kids to work at the infamous Robben Island.

Growing up on a farm where his only friend was a black boy named Bafana means he can speak fluent Xhosa, a gift that immediately finds him employed by the security services to keep an eye on the prison’s most notorious inmate, one Nelson Mandela (Dennis Haysbert).

Although initially a staunch supporter of apartheid policies, a series of incidents, most specifically guilt that information he passed on might have been responsible for Mandela’s son’s fatal car ‘accident’, leads him to check out the ANC’s banned Freedom Charter and question everything he’s been taught to accept.

As time passes, so he begins to forge a tentative friendship with Mandela through their common bond as husbands and fathers, a sympathy that earns him a reputation among the other wardens as a "kaffir lover" and causes the ambitious Gloria to fret about becoming socially ostracised.

Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the structural pattern for the rest of the film as a series of transfers over the ensuing years and the gradual slackening of Mandela’s chains sees Gregory becoming more enlightened, the men’s friendship deepening, and the family being regarded as pariahs by the more entrenched whites.

With Haysbert a reverentially dignified, calmly centred Mandela, the central performances are strong too, Fiennes deftly capturing the internal struggles of Gregory’s social and political awakening with Kruger persuasive as a woman whose political beliefs are more founded on caring for her family than any racial bigotry.

Based on Gregory’s memoirs, despite being yet another account of apartheid told from a white man’s perspective, it’s an involving story. However, while directed in solid workmanlike fashion by Bille August, it’s at times also overly earnest, and, in the early stretches, prone to such clumsy political scene-setting moments as Gloria’s explaining to her young daughter that apartheid is ‘God’s way’.

Although there’s threats made against the family and a last act domestic tragedy that Gregory regards as divine payback for the lives he feels he betrayed, what it lacks is any real dramatic drive or significant interaction between gamekeeper and poacher to deepen the sense of growing friendship.

Content to remain within one tone, it’s a thoughtfully worthy but rather ironically black and white moral fable.

• MY BEST FRIEND * * *
  Cert 12A 94 mins, subtitled

Not a million miles removed from Francis Veber's witty 1999 comedy Le Diner Du Con (man enlists unwitting dupe in a bet only to discover they have a lot in common), French writer-director Patrice Leconte's latest is a light farcical crowd-pleaser with a poignant edge.

Delivering one of his more relaxed performances, Daniel Auteuil is divorced self-absorbed antiques dealer Francois, emotionally estranged from his teenage daughter (Julie Durand) and prone to treating his devoted girlfriend like a business accessory.

He's the sort of guy who would – and does – attend a client's funeral simply to smooth-talk the widow into closing up an unfinished deal.

He is, however, content in thinking himself well-liked. Until, over dinner that evening, a group of acquaintances admit none of them would consider him a friend.

After some polite character assassination, they even suggest he doesn't have any friends at all. Nonsense, he insists, but is hard pressed to name one. So, a bet is struck. He has ten days to produce a best friend or forfeit the antique Greek vase he just bought for a fortune the company can ill-afford to his business partner Catherine (Julie Gayet).

Unfortunately, as Francois runs through his address book and looks up associates and former schoolmates, it turns out that not only does he indeed not have any friends, but some people actively dislike him.

Which is when an idea hits him. He's being driven around by Bruno (Dany Boon), a trivia-obsessed TV quiz-show fanatic cabbie who seems to have no problem having perfect strangers warm to him. Even Francois' daughter is perfectly affable in his company. Perhaps Bruno could teach him the tricks of being sociable? Or, even better, since Bruno (who turns out to be something of a loner himself) clearly appreciates his company, if Francois hangs out with him and even gets him on to TV, maybe he can pass him off as his best pal and win the bet.

Of course, he has to somehow prove to the others that Bruno really is his best friend and would do anything for him.

It's predictable stuff, of course, with Francois messing things up bigtime, realising he's been an idiot and learning the true value of friendship as he tries to rectify matters, but it's also engagingly amusing, nicely acted and, in places, disarmingly touching.

Given that it climaxes with a French version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, it was probably written just to hang its sentimental corny the Phone A Friend punch-line on, but it's no less enjoyable fun for that.

• BLUE BLOOD * * *
  Cert 15 91 mins

Quite why this documentary is getting a mainstream cinema release is hard to fathom. Not that it's not good, but it would surely fare much better and find a bigger, more appreciative audience on the art house circuit or Channel 4

A first feature by upcoming documentary film-maker Stevan Riley and the first release for newly formed Warner Music Entertainment, it follows a bunch of aspiring boxers as they prepare for a big match.

Not just any match, and not just any boxers, though. These lads are all students at Oxford University and the fight in question is the traditional annual Varsity match against rivals Cambridge.

It's a great honour to be chosen for the team, earning those that take part a prestigious "blue". However, getting there isn't easy, especially for those who little or no boxing experience. Something Oxford's long-serving coach, Des, an ex-boxer from a family of pugilists, has to instil in a few short weeks, whittling down an initial 40 to a final nine, if there's to be any hope of ending the university's losing streak.

The contenders are a mixed bunch, and Riley has elected to follow five of them through their training and try out bouts, before spending the last reel on the Varsity match itself.

Chris Kavanagh is an enthusiastic but totally non-athletic philosophy major who reckons boxing looked fun on TV and, as witness his stints with the debating society, likes a good confrontation.

Charlie Ogilvie is the privileged background pin-up, a fine art student who's big with the girls and, on the face of it, the least likely to make the final selection.

By contrast, biochemist Fred Brown's from a more working class background, raised by a single mom and fuelled with rage at the father who abandoned them. He's the most natural boxer in the group, but his academic abilities are being pushed to the limit.

Then there's third year mathematics major James Boyle aka Boiler. His ambition was to get a Rugby blue, but he never made the team. Boxing is his last chance.

Finally, and by far the most aggressively ambitious, is Justin Bronder, a gung ho, devoutly Christian, overachieving American Air Force graduate at Oxford to do a PhD in astrophysics. His motto is "live big".

All have different motivations for wanting to box and to make the team, all – to one degree or another – have something to prove to themselves and others. How they approach this, how they deal with pushing themselves, cope with pressure and handle failure makes for absorbing character studies regardless of your opinions on boxing. Indeed, in many ways boxing is simply a metaphor. Albeit one which, when the final few come face to fist with Cambridge, can still put you on the canvas.

Given a soundtrack that includes music by Dylan, the Stones, Beastie Boys, Moby and Metallica, Riley has either very good contacts or he's done a remarkable job of filming on whatever pence was left over to produce an engaging and unexpectedly inspiring piece of work that comes with a lovely wry twist over the final round-up credits.