Director Antonia Bird has triumphed where so many have failed since "The Long Good Friday", with a British crime thriller that actually works. Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty) is Ray, a politically correct armed robber who's gathered together a bunch of his fellow East End "faces" to pull off an ambitious raid on a London warehouse. Amongst his partners-in-crime are the old-fashioned gangster (Winstone), the alarming but amusing psycho (Davis) and the cocky young apprentice (Albarn find out more...

Eight months after a disastrous job in Kiev left him physically and mentally scarred, ex-soldier turned contract killer, Jay, is pressured by his partner, Gal, into taking a new assignment. As they descend into the dark and disturbing world of the contract, Jay begins to unravel once again, his fear and paranoia sending him deep into the heart of darkness. An find out more...

A crackingly realised biog of a man who relentlessly dodged death with a cocky ambivalence that frankly defies credulity. 'Mesrine' is stylishly shot, smoothly directed and perfectly, charmingly, sociopathically performed by Cassell. A tight, pacey thriller considerably enhanced by the fact that it's based in, well…fact. This first film takes us from his brutal initiation as a soldier during the horrors of Algeria's fight for liberation to the end of the 1960s via France and French Canada. find out more...

The last few years of Mesrine's life sees him starting to enjoy the fruits of his thievery but this is now a man tortured by his infamy; increasingly, egotistically consumed by his own invincibility. Mesrine part 2 is an odd film in the sense that it feels like half an hour of story dragged out to a feature length running time; Cassel still makes a crackingly charming psychopath mind find out more...

A superb modern thriller in the ultra-hardboiled Jim Thompson mould, in which a trio of criminals, wanted for a brutally murderous drugs heist, converge on a small, quiet Arkansas township where the local cop, treated with contempt by the LA officers in charge of the case, looks forward to a High Noon-style showdown. The asides on racial and sexual inequality are made subtly and succinctly; the performances and pacing are nigh perfect; the violence is explicit, disturbing but never gratuitous; a find out more...

As he plans his next job a long-time thief tries to balance his feelings for a middle-class woman, who is connected to one of his earlier heists, against the perils he faces as the FBI look to bring him and his crew down. Ben Affleck’s second feature (his first being ‘Gone Baby Gone’) is a blue-collar crime caper drama with a soupcon of romance and its conscientious use of location, the Charlestown district of Boston, lifts it above your standard genre flick. At times the acting feels a little s find out more...

"Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance. I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the find out more...