Protein (18)
Directed by Tony Burke
★★★★

THIS macabre and murky slasher-fest has the same plot as the recent film The Return: a traumatised veteran brings the war back home when he defends a woman’s virtue and unleashes a bloodbath. It makes the same worthy points: the experience of war degrades man into serial killer; a corrupt society is only waiting for a spark to burn itself down; and where men are either infantile or killers, only the women feel a hopeless empathy.

Ithaca, in this case, is a depressed Welsh former mining town where men go to gyms to build muscle and snort cocaine, and women clean the toilets. The violence, when it comes, is stomach churningly graphic as hammers, saws, freezers, nail-guns and petrol all meet flesh in a DIY frenzy of gore and cannibalism. There is no concession to taste, or the watershed, or middle-class sensibility.

This universal story of a savage homecoming is peered into by two detectives who stand no chance of solving it, but add deep and surprisingly ambiguous characters to the horror.

Irvine Welsh puts this kind of gratuitous violence and working class environment at the service of an informed anti-capitalist narrative, but here there is no guiding light beyond brutal, if well-observed caricature. The common trait shared by characters and script is a bleak cynicism, as though that were the only way to cope in a world you cannot hope to change.

Given the amount of war in our world this is for sure compelling, mostly well-acted, and worth watching once, if never again. But Edward Bond would approve.
 

AR
In selected cinemas June 13; on digital platforms July 14

 

Tornado (15)
Directed by John Maclean
★★★

SET in 1790s Britain, in a stark and bleak terrain populated by French, African, Scottish and Japanese, this surreal Western-style drama may prove an acquired taste. 

Shot in Scotland and unfolding over the course of a day, it follows a 16-year-old girl called Tornado (Koki), whose father is a samurai and a Japanese puppeteer, who is pursued by a criminal gang led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his ambitious son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). 

Model/songwriter turned actor Koki gives a mesmerising performance as the sullen and monosyllabic Tornado; Takehiro Hira brings quiet gravitas as her father and Lowden (Slow Horses) is deliciously menacing. 

A bizarre mix of genres, it may not be to everyone’s liking, but I found it fascinating and hypnotic. Frankly, it got under my skin. 
 

MD
In cinemas June 13 
 

How To Train Your Dragon (PG) 
Directed by Dean DeBlois
★★★

HOT on the heels of Lilo & Stitch comes another live action version of a well-loved animated feature from the man who created the film franchise. 

Written, produced and directed by Dean DeBlois and inspired by Cressida Cowell’s book series, this is a virtual carbon copy of the original 2010 film, which remains as charming and heartfelt as ever, begging the question why bother remaking it? 

It does capture the original’s spirit and brings the Isle of Berk and its dragon-hunting inhabitants to colourful life with its arresting visuals and stunning landscapes. 

Gerard Butler is on verbose fighting form as he returns as Stoick the Viking leader, and an engaging Mason Thames (The Black Phone) plays his son Hiccup who has to rethink his long held views on dragons when he befriends Toothless, a feared Night Fury.

Although it might just seem to be another pointless cash grab, it is surprisingly entertaining.    
MD
In cinemas now

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (15)
Directed by Laura Piani
★

La pauvre Jane Austen! Dragged into the plot to cash in on the 250th anniversary of her birth. The film, confusingly, is billed as a romantic comedy, and no doubt tapping into the legacy of the many film and TV versions of Austen’s novels helped win financial backers. Here, too, we get a dose of dressing up and a ball scene in a country mansion.

Agathe (Camille Rutherford) works in a small Parisian bookshop called Shakespeare and Company, and lives with her sister. She is very close to her co-worker Felix (Pablo Pauly) but falls for Jane Austen descendant Oliver (Charlie Anson).

Agathe is inspired to write a romance novel in English, after seeing a man’s face at the bottom of her sake cup in a Chinese restaurant. Felix secretly sends it to the Jane Austen Residency, a two-week writing retreat in England.

Oliver picks Agathe up at the terminal. Although she finds him arrogant and haughty to begin with, they eventually click. Back in France, and feeling inspired, she finishes her novel and finds a publisher.

The plot would hardly make it into a Mills and Boon novel, never mind a film: the dialogue is banal and the narrative pedestrian, full of pretensions. Filmically it also has little to offer. Jules et Jim or Chocolat ce n’est pas!
 

JG
In cinemas June 13