Film reviews: Precinct Seven Five, Mistress America, Theeb

Lola Kirke and Greta Gerwig in Mistress America

ALL the latest film reviews from Allan Hunter.

 

PRECINCT SEVEN FIVE (Cert 15; 104mins)
VERDICT: 5/5

It may be a documentary but everyone in Precinct Seven Five feels as if they have walked straight out of a Martin Scorsese film.

Disgraced cop Michael Dowd gives testimony that is as compelling as anything James Ellroy or Elmore Leonard ever wrote.

Thirty years ago Dowd worked in the deadliest precinct in America, a hell on earth area of New York rife with drugs, gangs and violence.

The one thing he couldn’t resist was temptation and in 1993 he appeared before a Crime Commission confessing to years of theft, extortion and crime committed beneath the protective cloak of his police badge.

Now he provides chapter and verse on what happened and the way corruption was rife in a precinct where ordinary cops drove the swankiest cars, owned condos in Myrtle Beach and relied on the fact that nobody dared to question their integrity or blow the whistle on them.

Utterly spellbinding.

MISTRESS AMERICA (Cert 15; 84mins)
VERDICT: 4/5

While We’re Young director Noah Baumbach continues his run of success with Mistress America, a breezily engaging farce told with wit and economy.

The essence of the film is the unlikely friendship between college freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke) and renaissance gal Brooke (Greta Gerwig) who are about to become stepsisters.

The pleasure of this screwball comedy comes from both Tracy and the viewer falling under the spell of the irresistible Brooke and Gerwig’s delightful performance.

THEEB (Cert 15; 100mins)
VERDICT: 4/5

There are echoes of Kipling and classic Westerns in the thrilling, award-winning adventure yarn Theeb.

It is the height of the First World War in the Hejaz Province of the Ottoman Empire.

Bedouin boy Theeb (Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat) and his elder brother Hussein (Hussein Salameh) are largely unaware of the war until British officer Edward (Jack Fox) and his guide arrive at their camp.

Hussein is assigned to accompany Edward and Theeb tags along on an epic journey fraught with danger, death and derring-do.

A captivating story shot on breathtaking locations in southern Jordan that feels like a companion piece to Lawrence Of Arabia.

Recommended.