TEXAS KILLING FIELDS

Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain. Dir: Ami Canaan Mann

Daughter of Michael Mann – who serves as producer here – Ami Canaan Mann has worked mainly as a television and film writer. Her one previous film as director (2001's Morning) won awards, but was largely unnoticed. Here she moves into the area often associated with her father's best work, police investigation, more specifically, the investigation of disappearances and murders of young women in the desolate industrial surrounds of Texas City.

Worthington (considerably more impressive than in Avatar or Clash of the Titans), Morgan and Chastain make for grittily expressive cops. The former was once married to the latter and Morgan is the relatively new arrival from New York, naive about the risks as all three are inexorably drawn towards the dangers of the titular bayou, a place of almost mythical evil from where you might never return.

The film is strong on its atmosphere of decay and fetid heat. It is beautifully shot and in some places strongly reminiscent of her father's work. The mystery never rises to the level of a true whodunit but the mood and the landscape are brilliantly evoked and mark the emergence of a talent that will be worth watching. Good stuff.

Mel Gibson isn't exactly flavour of the month, which might explain why The Beaver took so long to be released. If I remember rightly, the film was the lifeline thrown by friend (and director and co-star) Jodie Foster after the drunken anti-Semitic rant scandal, subsequently held up further by the girlfriend-abusing phone call scandal. It's a blackly comic family drama with Mel as a clinically depressed husband who finds new life (and fame) through wearing the eponymous hand-puppet (which sounds, bizarrely, like Ray Winstone). It's a brave unsettling, unpredictable film and Gibson – whatever one thinks of his off-screen performances – is superb.

Johnny English was always a Bondian figure so it seems fitting that now that Bond is leaner meaner and grittier that Johnny English should follow suit. Thus Johnny English Reborn plays it a bit straighter and is very much a spy satire – and a pretty good one – though genre subtleties and the newly-adult approach between gags may escape younger viewers. Rowan Atkinson again proves what a superb comedian he is and his appeal could allow this to straddle the kidult divide. It's silly, lower budget than the first, and scores for general charm and amiability, rather like the initial film.

Tony Kebbell returns from Afghanistan to the mean streets of London in The Veteran only to find his council estate ruled by armed drug-running gangs. Declining to join them he instead gets drawn into a shady world of anti-terrorist intelligence, the inestimable Brian Cox showing up as a sinister guy from the Home Office. Danger, complications and political intrigue quickly multiply. This is good stuff, an authentic gritty thriller, very well made with a complex central turn from Kebell and a tough uncompromising feel.

I fell in love with Vera Farmiga's bottom in In The Air and though it is sadly underdisplayed here she is far and away the best thing about Henry's Crime. Seemingly a strange choice for Keanu Reeves, this has his ex-con – blank and directionless (and innocent) – deciding to commit the robbery for which he was wrongly committed. This involves an amateur theatre production in which Farmiga stars. James Caan's tough crim enlivens things a little bit but the plot is insufficiently complex and Reeves sinks the film by being so blank as to suggest somnambulance. Go on Keanu – use your acting!