FILM REVIEWS

On general release

Damon Smith **

With life expectancy increasing steadily, our ageing population makes ever greater demands on the state for medical care.

Based on the novel by Eric Garcia, Repo Men is a futuristic thriller which takes that demand for longer, fuller lives to its chilling conclusion.

Men, women and children pay to stay alive, and when their credit runs out, the conglomerates which produce artificial organs take back their miracle goods and give them instead to customers with a healthier bank balance. It's a case of survival of the richest.

Patients take out high-interest loans to cover the cost, but if they fall behind three months with repayments, repossession men such as Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker) arrive unannounced to knock the donor unconscious with a stun gun – and then retrieve the valuable organ.

Repo Men delights in scenes of gore as Remy and Jake scythe open debtors and rip various organs from their lifeless bodies.

Law convinces as a heartless servant of corporate fat cats but there's scant emotion in his bloody performance.

Oscar-winner Whitaker perspires furiously as he

tries to work out why he signed up to such substandard genre fare.

Action scenes are heavy on slow motion to capture arcing arterial spray as

Remy employs a hammer, hacksaw and knife in

his work.

Cemetery Junction (15)

On general release

Damon Smith **

With the award-winning television series, The Office and Extras, the creative partnership of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant sharpened the cutting edge of British comedy.

The friends have resisted pleas to transplant their talents to the big screen, but finally relented with this disappointingly cosy portrait of 1970s small-town angst.

Set to a soundtrack of T-Rex, Led Zeppelin, Mott The Hoople and The Osmonds, this predictable rites-of -passage yarn affectionately recreates the fashions of a bygone era as it jives lazily through a linear narrative of selfishness and redemption.

A more accomplished director might have pruned some of Gervais and Merchant's plodding script and injected pace.

Best friends Freddie (Christian Cooke), Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan) have very different outlooks on life.

While Bruce enjoys being cock of his small-town walk, and lovable loser Snork is happy to trail in his wake, Freddie dreams of something bigger and better and applies for a job as a salesman with Vigilant Life Assurance.

The firm is owned by Mr Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes), the father of old school sweetheart, Julie (Felicity Jones), who is now dating the company's top salesman, Mike Ramsay (Matthew Goode).

As Freddie's ambitions broaden, the three young men are forced to re-examine their friendship and contemplate whether their paths must diverge.

Cemetery Junction isn't as funereal as the title would suggest, but the plot ambles and Gervais and Merchant cannot resist neatly tying up every loose end in a manner which strains credibility.

Fiennes's centrepiece retirement party speech could have been written for David Brent in The Office, and like everything else in the film, goes on too long.

The Ghost (15)

On general release

Damon Smith ***

For a film about the re-writing of a political memoir, it's deliciously ironic that

the screenplay for Roman Polanski's thriller should be one of its weaknesses.

Characters are not fully formed in a script co-written by Polanski and Robert Harris, adapting his novel of the same name.

Indeed, they are ciphers in a clunky and contrived plot that builds to a big reveal.

Not that The Ghost doesn't have its fair share of unintentional laughs: Ewan McGregor's accent could be an affectionate tribute to Dick Van Dyke, and the trail of clues left for his character to unravel the deadly conspiracy is unmistakable.

Polanski polishes the lacklustre material and creates the illusion of suspense where our steady pulse tells us there is none.

Former British Prime Minister, Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), takes up residence in a remote beach house on the American coast, far from the lenses of the media.

The statesman intends to write his memoirs but when his current ghost writer dies in suspicious circumstances, Lang hires another nameless Ghost (McGregor) to restructure his prose.

The politician's loyal and sexy assistant, Amelia (Kim Cattrall), and his savvy wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), keep an eye on the Ghost and distract him from the arduous task at hand.

When Lang is accused of sanctioning torture, the Ghost witnesses a media storm. At the same time he attempts to solve the mystery of his predecessor's demise.

The Ghost is a routine thriller elevated by Polanski's direction and an A-list cast, who are never stretched.

Brosnan channels the spirit of Tony Blair while McGregor flashes his posterior during an emotionally-cold bedroom scene. Tom Wilkinson chews scenery late in the film in a Machiavellian supporting role.