A tense tale of menace, murder and redemption, The Deep End is a film that sets itself high and stylish standards but ultimately fails to meet them all. Set in a sleepy American lakeside town, it traces the sudden and rapid disintegration of the life of Margaret Hall, a devoted mother who discovers her son is having an affair with a seedy older man Darby Reese (played by the suitably sleazy Josh Lucas). Matters take a turn for the worse when, after Reese's death, she finds herself the victim of a blackmail plot. With her husband away at sea, it falls to her alone to keep the family safe from harm. Salvation comes in the unlikely form of Alex (ER regular Goran Visnjic), her blackmailer, who develops a close and unexpected bond with his intended victim. Tilda Swinton dominates proceedings as the increasingly desperate Margaret, although her relationship with Visnijc stretches the boundaries of credibility just a little too far. The direction is self-consciously showy, jumping at every opportunity for a clever shot. Although it isn't half the film that it thinks it is, The Deep End is still capable of holding the viewer's interest for its modest duration. On the DVD: The Deep End disc, in an annoying throwback to the days of video, opens straight into a series of trailers for forthcoming attractions. Once the menu itself appears there is a distinct lack of inventiveness and thought. [+]

After scoring a hit with the Eddie Murphy-Nick Nolte cop thriller 48 Hours, director Walter Hill returned to the buddy formula with this half-ridiculous, half-invigorating action flick about humourless Russian cop Ivan Danko (Arnold Schwarzenegger). He follows a drug dealer from Moscow to Chicago, where he's matched up with city cop Art Ridzik (James Belushi), whose work ethic is considerably more relaxed. Most of the humour revolves around Danko's grumpy reaction to good ol' American capitalism, while Ridzik urges him to chill out. Red Heat is not bad as action comedies go, but only if you get into the absurd spirit of this predictable fare, in which the unlikely buddies get to wisecrack and act casually while mayhem erupts everywhere they go. Incidentally, Red Heat was the first American film allowed to shoot in Moscow's Red Square. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.

The Jackal is filmmaking by numbers: take two huge stars, Richard Gere and Bruce Willis, and pit them opposite each other in a plot that's already been audience tested. That director Michael Caton Jones' film is based not on Frederick Forsyth's novel but on the script for the 1973 original starring James Fox is the first clue that something here is amiss. Fred Zinneman's The Day of the Jackal was a genuinely taut and claustrophobic thriller; the remake is like a Rocky & Bullwinkle take on international terrorism disguised as an action movie. Dashing IRA terrorist, Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere), is sprung from jail to help the FBI Deputy Director Carton Preston (Sidney Poitier) track down The Jackal, an amoral international terrorist who is a master of disguise. The FBI believes he is about to assassinate a US political bigwig and is engaged in a race against time to discover exactly who the target is and where they will be felled. Throughout the film Gere sports an Irish accent as ill-fitting and phoney as the bushy lip-wig that Willis adopts at one point as a disguise. The usually warm-hearted Willis plays the steel-jawed terrorist with a cool reserve, but he doesn't have much character development to work with (apart from a misguided attempt to introduce a gay subtext). At over two hours of running time with plenty of exposition and precious few action sequences, this film is a test of will for the audience as well as the protagonists. On the DVD: The DVD includes a lengthy "making of" featurette, several deleted scenes and an alternate ending with some small dialogue changes. There is also an exceedingly dry director's commentary by Michael Caton Jones which muses on such mind-numbingly dull details as the colour of the subway platform in the film's climactic sequence. [+]

Edward Woodward stars as Britain's favourite Cold War Spy! Callan, one of the most successful series in British television history, stars Edward Woodward (Breaker Morant) as David Callan, a relentless but somewhat reluctant secret agent provocateur. Re-enter the dark and sinister domain of Cold War espionage with the Entire Series Three of Callan, presented here on DVD complete and uncut, and in its original production order - all 9 hour-long episodes! Episode Listing: Where Else Could I Go? Summoned to Appear The Same Trick Twice A Village Called G' Suddenly - at Home Act of Kindness God Help Your Friends Breakout Amos Green Must Live Actors: Edward Woodward, Russell Hunter, Lisa Langdon, Patrick Mower Year of Production: 1970 TV Standard: PAL Format: 3 DVD Region: Zone 4 Running time: 462 mins Genre: TV Aspect Ratio: 1. 33:1 Audio: Dolby Digital 1. 0 Mono Languages: English (Dolby Digital 1. 0 Mono).

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers is about a half-human, half-cat race of shape shifters called, for no apparent reason, sleepwalkers. Hunky Charles Brady (Brian Krause) and his incestuous mother (Alice Krige) are sleepwalkers, and they've come to the small town of Travis, Indiana, where they've somehow acquired a nice house and false identities. They need virgin souls to survive and have fixated on local beauty Tanya (Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks). That's about it for the story-from then on it's a series of chase scenes full of badly done gore. King must have been sleepwalking himself when he wrote this screenplay: the dialogue is terrible, the characters are cardboard, and the plotting is clumsy. Combine that with mediocre acting, thoughtless direction, slapdash editing, and cheesy special effects, and you have Sleepwalkers. Amick comes off reasonably well and there are cameos by King, Clive Barker, and horror directors John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), Joe Dante (Gremlins), and Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But really, if you're interested in were-cats, see the original Cat People, starring Simone Simon; it's both sexier and scarier. -Bret Fetzer, Amazon. com.