theOneliner.com: Handling the Truth

Hello again people! Let's take a look at the delights awaiting us in the multiplexes this week.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Pride and Glory, a cop corruption drama from the pen of the superlative Narc's Joe Carnahan that also has Ed Norton, Colin Farrell and Jon Voight in front of the camera would pretty much automatically be great. You'd be wrong, as this glacially placed, plodding, suspense free drama trundles on through a mire of tedious, often extraneous plot elements that more often than not relies on convenient happenstance to move forward. Boring. Avoid.

Warlords, a tale of three blood brothers and leaders of armies in a brutal Chinese civil war, represents the grim flip side of all the brightly coloured wushu stuff that's been floating around of late. Location aside, the 'war is hell' motif is nothing new, but with most of the story revolving around the increasingly strained relationship between Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro's generals there's at least something novel here, that being a film that relies as much on Jet Li's acting ability as his beating people up skills. It more or less pays off, although arguably it's too grim for its own good. More of an interesting curiosity than a must see film, nevertheless there's not a great deal wrong with it.

Olly Stone points his camera at yet another world leader's story in W, although this time round we have to wonder rather what the point of it was. Essentially a potted recap of George Dubyaa Bush's life so far, this could perhaps do with spending more time on what drives him to do the things he does rather than retell us what he's done so far, as that tale is rather familiar. He's not exactly kept a low profile, y'know? There's some good impersonations going on here, but on balance this is too long, too dull and too pointless to be worth your interest.

Not the best of weeks, I suppose. We'll be back soon.