DVD reviews: Brake | A Royal Affair

By Alistair Harkness
Published on 29/10/2012 00:00

Our film critic reviews the week’s home movie releases

Brake

High Fliers, £15.99

THE confined space thriller is nothing new, but since the breakout critical and commercial success of Buried, it was probably only a matter of time before another budget-conscious film attempted to mimic its ability to create intense scenarios without the attendant expense of shooting too much location work. Brake is that film, and while Buried is its most obvious antecedent, there’s a hint of B-movie screenwriter Larry Cohen’s work about it too, not least his scripts for Cellular and Phone Booth. What matters though is not how derivative it is but whether or not it can translate the claustrophobia of the setting to the screen and in this respect Brake does a decent enough job for its first act as Stephen Dorff’s government agent wakes up in a confined but undefined space with a digital clock ominously counting down. A CB radio with a frantic, disembodied voice on the other end allows the film to slyly fill out a few more details involving a possible terrorist attack, but from the moment we realise where Dorff is, the plot reverses itself into a corner and has to rely on double bluffs and hokey plot twists to see it through. Still, as B-movies go, it has enough to hold the interest.

A Royal Affair

Metrodome, £19.99

Chronicling what is apparently one of the most well-known chapters in Danish royal history, A Royal Affair may end up being broadly similar to any number of period dramas about the British monarchy, but the change of setting, alternative faces and absence (for the most part) of RP accents imbues it with a freshness it might not otherwise have had. Set against the backdrop of revolutionary fervor that was beginning to sweep Europe and the American colonies towards the end of the 18th Century, it revolves around an illicit affair between the British-born Queen Caroline (Alicia Vikander) and Johan Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), a liberal thinker of German descent who uses his position as physician to the mentally unstable King Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) to conspire with the Queen to drag Denmark into the Age of Enlightenment. Power, of course, inevitably corrupts, and Mikkelsen is great at quietly showing how Struensee’s ideals are gradually compromised. Tasteful bodice ripping and political intrigue also keep things rattling along, despite a slightly over-long running time.