Fights, frights and Mexican drug wars -the week’s best DVDs

Warrior (Lionsgate) stars Tom Hardy (Bronson, The Dark Knight Rises) as Tommy Riordan, a tormented ex-marine -haunted by a mysterious incident in his past -who enlists his estranged alcoholic father Paddy (Nick Nolte, 48 Hours) to train him to enter ‘SPARTA’, an unprecedented ‘winner takes all’ Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) tournament in Atlantic City.

Elsewhere, Tommy’s long-lost brother Brendan (Joel Edgerton, Animal Kingdom),i s struggling to make ends meet, and looks set to default on his mortgage payments unless he can raise enough cash to keep the bank off his back. With his salary as a teacher proving insufficient, ex-fighter Brendan plots a course through the city’s lucrative bareknuckle fight scene. Inevitably, the two men -who haven’t laid eyes on one another since their teenage years -find their very different motivations propelling them towards a head-on collision at SPARTA, where they will be forced to confront the issues that drove a wedge between them in the first place.

While no one is likely to accuse Warrior of rewriting the fight-movie rule-book, director Gavin O’Connor has delivered a powerful, evocative drama that drags the genre into the modern-era. Despite the ever-increasing popularity of the multi-million dollar UFC franchise, Mixed Martial Arts movies have struggled to gain a foothold in Hollywood to date, veering between scrappy, low-budget vehicles for ex-UFC stars and -at the other end of the scale -David Mamet’s obtuse anti-thriller Redbelt. Suffice to say, Warrior comprehensively out-muscles the competition, and feels more akin to a modern spin on the Rocky saga -with an added dose of family tension that makes the hot-headed family dynamic in David O Russell’s The Fighter seem positively cordial. A bone-shattering, brutally efficient fight movie master-class.

Loosely based on a real-life incident, in which Laura Zuniga, 2008’s Miss Sinaloa, was arrested alongside a number of suspected gang members in a truck filled with weapons outside Guadalajara, Mexico, Miss Bala (Metrodome) is a gritty Mexican drama that tells the story of Laura (Stephanie Sigman), a young woman whose dreams of becoming a beauty queen see her plunged headfirst into a bloody Mexican drug war. Caught up in a police raid at a sleazy disco, Laura is whisked away by a posse of corrupt cops, and forced to do their bidding. With no one to turn to, Laura ricochets between disturbing set-pieces, getting deeper and deeper all the time.

Written and directed by Gerardo Naranjo, who previously earned plaudits for his debut movie Voy A Explodar (I’m Gonna Explode), the film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, although it did not make the final shortlist. While the concept of movie about a catwalk queen who becomes immersed in a bullet-strewn turf war sounds exploitative, to Naranjo’s credit Miss Bala is a thoughtful, engrossing piece of work that reaffirms the Mexican director’s credentials, and steers clear of the cartoonish approach favoured by reigning ‘Mexploitation’ king Robert Rodriguez. Grim, but gripping.

Co-written by Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (StudioCanal) is a remake of the cult 1973 made-for-television horror film of the same name. Directed by comic book artist Troy Nixey, who impressed del Toro with his 2007 short-film Latchkey’s Lament, the movie follows young Sally Hurst (Bailee Madison, Brothers) who arrives in Rhode Island to stay with her estranged father Alex (Guy Pearce, Memento) and his new girlfriend Kim (Katie Holmes, Dawson’s Creek) at the sinister Victorian mansion that they are in the process of restoring. Unable to adjust to her new surroundings, Sally finds comfort in her solitary explorations of the spooky property, and discovers a hidden basement, undisturbed since the mysterious century-old disappearance of the mansion’s builder, famed illustrator Emerson Blackwood

After a teeth-shatteringly nasty opening scene, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark quickly slips into an unambitious mainstream-horror rut, providing a few frights, but very little in the way of genuine surprises. Forget the behind-the-scenes involvement of Guillermo del Toro, for large spells Nixey’s movie is hokier than a bad Stephen King adaptation. Young Bailee Madison delivers a sterling performance as the precocious, heavily medicated Sally, but the usually-reliable Guy Pearce is saddled with a thankless one-note role as her distracted father, and TV mainstay Alan Dale (Lost, 24) is sidelined in a peripheral supporting role. Don’t be distracted by del Toro’s headline presence -Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is nothing more than a lukewarm, lowest-common-denominator re-tread of Pan’s Labyrinth.

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Tom Leins

• Tom Leins spent two years working as a film critic for national movie magazine DVD Monthly. Since the magazine closed down in 2009 he has contributed to a variety of websites, not least Devon & Cornwall Film, which showcases 'Sex, Leins & Videotape', his entertaining DVD round-up. Tom's short fiction has been widely published online, and he is currently working on his first novel. To find out more visit: Things To Do In Devon When You're Dead. http://www.thingstodoindevonwhenyouredead.wordpress.com/

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