A Touch Of Sin (15)
A Touch Of Sin (15)
Dir: Zhang-Ke Jia
With: Vivien Li, Wu Jiang
Runtime: 130 minutes
LIFE in modern China as the Party would not portray it is set out in Zhang-Ke Jia's ultra-violent but riveting drama.
Split into four stories, A Touch Of Sin shows China as a Wild West of the East, with corruption, lawlessness and men with guns aplenty. As with many an episodic piece, some parts are stronger than others, with the first, starring Wu Jiang as a loner standing up to big money, the best of the bunch. Jia won the Best Screenplay award at last year's Cannes for his efforts.
Glasgow Film Theatre, May 16-22; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, until May 18.
Omar (15)
Dir: Hany Abu-Assad
With: Adam Bakri, Essam Abu Aabed
Runtime: 98 minutes
HANY Abu-Assad's thriller had the misfortune to be up against Paolo Sorrentino's majestic The Great Beauty for last year's Best Foreign Film Oscar.
Otherwise, it would have been a serious contender. Adam Bakri turns in a star-making performance as the titular Omar, a young Palestinian who finds himself torn between the demands of community, love, and self-preservation.
Action-packed, gripping and endlessly surprising.
Filmhouse, Edinburgh, May 16; Glasgow Film Theatre, May 18
The Two Faces Of January (12A)
Dir: Hossein Amini
With: Oscar Isaac, Kirsten Dunst
Runtime: 96 minutes
ADAPTED from the novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hossein Amini's drama is a slickly done period thriller for anyone who mourns that they don't make 'em like they used to.
Oscar Isaac is Rydal, a young American working in 1960s Greece who is charmed and intrigued by Mr and Mrs MacFarland, played by Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst. Jealous of him, enamoured of her, Rydal soon finds the respectable tourists are not what they seem.
Amini keeps the pace slow but simmering, allowing each character space to flourish.
Between them, Isaac, Mortensen and Dunst do the business of delivering a noirish treat.
Glasgow Film Theatre,
May 16-29; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, May 16-22
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