Cinema review: New releases - The Headless Woman • Solomon Kane • The Last Station
Published: 18 February 2010
by DAN CARRIER
• The Headless Woman • Directed by Lucrecia • Certificate 12a
THE hazards of country road driving is the starting point for this successful Argentine film that considers questions of individual responsibility and how not facing up to doing the right thing is not very good for the soul.
We meet well-heeled dentist Veronica, a lady whose life is due to take a massive swerve for the worst after she heads down a dirt track one night in her car. Veronica’s attention wanders – and wallop, she hits something. She becomes disorientated, distracted – something has happened on that fateful journey, but what?
Was it a dog she hit, or, more chillingly, could it have been a child? When the body of a little boy is found by a canal, she becomes obsessed by the thought she may have killed him. The moral conundrum she now faces gives the film some depth, and cinematically there is a quality about it.
• Solomon Kane • Directed by Michael J • Certificate: 15
Based on the novel by pulp fiction genius Robert E Howard, this entertaining little romp is chock-full of interesting supernatural characters and contains one b-a-a-a-d medieval dude in the title role, played with a great deal of tongue-in-cheekness by James Purefoy.
The action is based on the adventures of Kane, who we learn has struck a deal with the Devil to save his skin after a tomb-raiding gold-snaffling Indiana Jones-style adventure goes awry. He promises never to strike anyone down again if he can go free – but then is confronted by a whole host of nasty fellows whom he can’t help but reek bloody vengeance upon, and is then destined to wander the Earth – or at least the West Country – meting out justice.
• The Last • Directed by Michael • Certificate: 15
The focus of this film is the struggle Russian author Leo Tolstoy had balancing his immense fame, and with it wealth, with his quest to lead a more spiritually fulfilling life, and one where the material wants are seconded to political, moral and artistic fulfilment. The crux of the tale is the clash this creates between his wife who understandably does not want to pull on a hair shirt and his quest to renounce materialism.
With a cast featuring Helen Mirren in her usual wonderful form, Christopher Plummer as an all-too-believable Tolstoy and James McAvoy showing once more what a splendidly watch-able actor he is, The Last Station’s occasionally fidgety bits and domestic tantrum story line that is so intense it ignores the fast-changing world outside the Tolstoy’s way laid out back garden, is easily consumed by the fact it all looks so nice and feels so right.