DVD reviews: Rango | Resurrected

Our film critic takes a look at two of this week's new releases...

Rango

Paramount, 19.99

HERE'S a surprise: a genuinely strange, interesting and entertaining slice of CG animation that for once is not content simply to crib everything from Pixar (probably a good idea, after Cars 2), or throw in tired pop culture gags. Instead Rango, the first animated film from Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinksi, takes actual narrative risks, features weird and wonderfully strange reference points – hats off for the genius Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas gag – and boasts a vocal performance from Johnny Depp that's better than anything he's done for years. He plays Rango, a pet chameleon wrestling with existential angst who suddenly finds himself thrust into a leading role in his own story after a car accident leaves him stranded in the desert. Rolling up in a surreal frontier town called Dirt populated by bizarre desert creatures, things start going a little gonzo when he assumes the role of sheriff after his penchant for acting – and a little bit of luck – convinces the townsfolk he's just the kind of bad-ass gunslinger they need in order to return aqua to their parched lands. It's batty, brilliant stuff and features a marvellously unhinged cameo from Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name.

Resurrected

Second Sight, 15.99

THOUGH people first started taking note of Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass in the late 1990s after a series of TV movies culminated in his breakthrough film, Bloody Sunday, he made his debut more than a decade earlier with Falklands drama Resurrected. Released on DVD for the first time, that film also marked the debut of David Thewlis, not to mention everyone's favourite Newsnight attack dog, Steve Coogan. The latter has little more than a walk-on part, but Thewlis demonstrates his early promise in the lead role of Kevin, a British squaddie feared dead by his family after he disappears during a particularly brutal battle. Stumbling out of the mist six weeks later, he's given a hero's welcome in his home town, but it's not long before accusations of desertion take hold in the press and within his unit. Though Greengrass's hyper-kinetic style is not much in evidence here, his controlled, politicised anger is, especially in the way the film handles the issue of post-traumatic stress, which for the time (it was made in 1989) was way ahead of the curve.

• To order these DVDs, call The Scotsman on 01634 832789.