You can even forgive Lumet his attempt to pass off Pacino as

You can even forgive Lumet his attempt to pass off Pacino as the son of hard-bitten Irish-American detective Ian Holm. The British actor bristles with fierce loyalty to the members of New York’s Finest whom Garcia has to investigate, while Richard Dreyfus makes an all-too- brief appearance as a disillusioned Sixties radical-turned-lawyer.A first-rate cast and a great director on home turf – so why do we feel as if this tale of compromised morality is slipping us a gold-leafed envelope with a 50p coin inside? Self-indulgence, mainly. Lumet takes far too long to establish the convincingly murky environment of municipal corruption before Sean Casey’s hubris is exposed. Eventually, Casey realises he’s going in over his head, but it’s an age before the quagmire begins to suck him down. Andy Garcia – as a good man struggling to stay good, a natural successor to the vintage Pacino of Lumet’s ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and ‘Serpico’ – excels as Sean Casey. The ex-cop turned lawyer rises to District Attorney on the back of a high-profile prosecution secured, unbeknownst to him, with tainted evidence.

15, First Independent, 109 mins (available for rental 16 Feb)It ought to have been grist to director Sidney Lumet’s moral mill. Thankfully, Donner finds the story as ludicrous as the viewer and tears through its illogicalities with a suitably light touch. The cast respond likewise: Gibson parodies himself throughout, Patrick Stewart has a hoot camping it up as the evil scientist and though her tongue couldn’t find a cheek with a map, Roberts – as she demonstrated in Woody Allen’s ‘Everyone Says I Love You’ – is always a watchable foil.3/5Night Falls on Manhattan, Cert. The wild-eyed Aussie has managed to work just about every other ‘crazed maverick’ angle in his career and perhaps we may yet see Mel in ‘Mad Monarch 2: This Time It’s Constitutional’.

Until then the incessant Gibson patter, the jumpy grin and the split personality are all present and correct in Richard Donner’s appealingly daft romp through X-Files territory.When obsessive conspiracy theorist and cab driver, Jerry Fletcher (Gibson), is kidnapped by government scientist Dr Jonas (Patrick Stewart), the eccentric Fletcher and his reluctant Justice Department confidant, Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts), are drawn into a web of cover-ups and covert agencies. Hackman snarls and drawls well below par; Dunaway, as Adam’s boozy aunt, hams it up like a pensioned-off Blanche DuBois; and O’Donnell earnestly runs errands between the two.2/5Conspiracy Theory, Cert. 15, Warner Home Video, 130 mins (available for rental 20 Feb)Quite how Nigel Hawthorne pipped Mel Gibson to the lead role of ‘The Madness of King George’ remains a mystery. The iniquitous Mississippi State Penitentiary death-row portrayed in the original novel has been upgraded to what looks like a well-guarded motel.

What’s more, the corrupt state politicians – for whom, crucially, Sam may have acted as a willing stooge – are strangely ignored. What little pleasure there is to be had, is derived from watching a glitzy cast attempt to kickstart the film’s awful script into life. The 18th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards did honour Stern in their nominations, however – he’s up for Worst New Star.Mike Higgins. The Chamber, Cert.

15, Cic Video, 108 mins (available for rental 20 Feb)

Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman may well own a hat trick of Oscars between them, but this lame adaptation of John Grisham’s best-selling novel only goes to show that three gongs don’t make a right. With Chasing Amy rounding off his New Jersey trilogy on a high note, Kevin Smith is casting for his next film, DOGMA.The US indie director will have to do without his first choice God, however, as Emma Thompson is having a baby. The theological comedy’s biblical revisionism doesn’t stop with a female Creator. Plenty of people claim – as DOGMA will – that Jesus was black, but it’s a fair bet you didn’t know that the Son of God had a difficult adolescence, and brothers and sisters.STERN ADMONITION: As usual, the announcement this week of 1998’s Oscar nominations brought howls of dismay and squeals of delight in equal measure.For one disgruntled fan however, the omission of his hero from the Academy’s roll call was too much to bear. With just 28 days to go before execution, young legal eagle Adam Hall (Chris O’Donnell) takes on the death penalty clemency case of his grandfather, Sam Cayhall (Gene Hackman), convicted 20 years earlier for the murder of the children of a Jewish civil rights lawyer.
But the old Klansman could (and should) go to hell for all the mitigating circumstances we’re asked to take into account. “I think it’s a travesty, and it is anti-Semitic that Stern is not nominated,” Rose added later “They escorted me out before the Best Picture was announced Did Howard make it for Best Picture?”Not quite. “What about Howard Stern?” cried Larry Rose, reacting badly to the news that the New York shock-jock had failed to make the Best Actor short list for his tour-de-force self-portrayal in Private Parts.Rose went on to interrupt the Best Actress announcements with loud protests, before he was kicked out of the Academy’s Beverly Hills HQ.