Lantana

By EWAN McDONALD

(Herald rating: * * * * * )

Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia) is a middle-aged Sydney cop who is cheating on his wife with Jane (Rachael Blake), a separated housewife he met at dance class. Leon's wife, Sonja (Kerry Armstrong), worried about their marriage, is seeing a psychiatrist, Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey).

Valerie is married to John Knox (Geoffrey Rush). Their daughter was murdered a few years ago and Valerie wrote a book about the experience while John hid inside his grey suit. One of her patients, Patrick (Peter Phelps), is a gay man who wants to talk about his married lover; Valerie suspects the lover is her husband.

Jane lives next to the only happily married couple in the movie, Nik and Paula D'Amato (Vince Colosimo and Daniela Farinacci). Even their happiness is threatened when, almost impossibly late in the film, the main incident takes place. Valerie goes missing, feared murdered, and Leon and his female partner are assigned to investigate the case.

But this is not a murder mystery. Tense and taut, with characters that it is difficult if not impossible to like, it's like Robert Altman's Short Cuts or Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, a story of the lives of a group of everyday people, apparent strang-ers joined by unsuspected connections and secrets.

LaPaglia, who seems so much the American tough-guy actor but was born in Adelaide (he returned home to make this, The Bank and Looking For Alibrandi) transplants his LA image into the Sydney cop, a middle-aged man in meltdown. Rush portrays a man who betrays nothing until there is nothing to hide; Hershey and the two women in the cop's life feel their lives, their minds, disintegrate. A masterpiece.

¥ DVD features: movie (121 mins); audio commentary; trailer; behind-the-scenes footage; deleted scenes.


Angel Eyes HHH

Rental video, DVD: Today

Oh goodie, a Jennifer Lopez movie for those who sat through the Mariah Carey and can't wait for the Britney Spears to arrive at the store. Except that - surprise - Lopez can act and - more surprisingly - this movie gives her the material to do it.

She plays Sharon, a tough cop but a good cop, scarred since she called the police to stop her father beating up her mother. Her father disowned her, her brother is still mad about it. Mom defends him.

Sharon is growing into a wary, cat-and-mouse relationship with Catch (Jim Caviezel), a man from the shadows who walks the streets in a long overcoat.

This is a cop movie, there is action, and it'll probably be filed on the ÒThrillerÓ shelves. But it is more of a psycho thriller, a story like Lantana of damaged lives.

¥ DVD features: movie (104 mins); commentary with director.

Don't Say A Word HHH

Rental video, DVD: Today

24 on speed - the guy has only eight hours to find the kidnappers and save his daughter.

When his cute little girl is kidnapped, Dr Nathan Conrad (Michael Douglas), a New York psychiatrist, learns that the ransom is a secret six-digit number. Unfortunately the code is trapped inside the uncommunicative mind of one of his patients. The doctor must retrieve the number from a catatonic teenager, Elizabeth (Brittany Murphy), before stumps on Thanksgiving Day, or the kid gets it from her kidnapper (rent-a-baddie Sean Bean).

Because this is a Michael Douglas movie, you'll know that the mild-mannered guy in the suit is gonna wig out and there'll be some serious basic instinct and a fair degree of fatal attraction as the shrink works over the patient, his wife struggles to defend herself, his daughter tries to outsmart the kidnappers, a detective stumbles over the crime during another investigation, and the movie ends in a cemetery.

Of course there are holes in the plot, lots of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, but it's a Saturday night's worth of tension.

Rental video, DVD: Today

* DVD features: movie (113 mins); commentary with director; screen-specific commentary with cast; deleted scenes; making-of feature; set tour feature; film scoring feature; screening room dailies; Murphy screen test; storyboard-to-screen comparisons; cast and crew bios; producing workshop; behind-the-scenes shots trailers.