"Actor: Michel Muller"

• Wasabi | DVD | (18/08/2003) from £9.99   |  Saving you £10.00 (100.10%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This high-energy Dirty Harry in Japan stars Jean Reno (The Professional) as a maverick Paris cop with sledgehammer fists and a short temper. Promoted to sudden fatherhood when he "inherits" a spunky Japanese daughter (Ryoko Hirosue) he never knew, he becomes her droopy guardian angel, protecting her from an army of yakuza gangsters. Written and produced by Luc Besson, the former fashionista director of Euro-sleek shoot-'em-ups, this colorful B-movie blast is as gritty as an oil slick on a water slide but packed with explosive action. Director Gerard Krawczyk punctuates his gunfights with the Hong Kong school of recoil (bullets blast victims across the screen) and an undercurrent of humor. As long as you don't lean too hard on such niggling details as logic, legality, and the laws of physics, this silly, splashy, family bonding bulletfest is a spirited good time.

• Deep In The Woods | DVD | (26/08/2002) from £4.98   |  Saving you £15.01 (301.41%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Deep in the Woods is an average horror film, unusual only because it was made in France. A troupe of young actors who specialise in school performances are hired by sinister aristocrat Francois Berleand to perform their "Little Red Riding Hood" act at his remote mansion as a birthday treat for his strangely silent grandson. As is often the case, the film works better in the early stages as it piles on the omens and disturbing touches, with unsettling byplay between host and guests, than it does in the extended finale, which features the familiar demises of most of the cast as someone dressed in the Big Bad Wolf costume stalks with a spear-gun and unorthodox use is made of a handy nail gun. The young, attractive victims bicker and get naked just like in a rubbish American movie and leading lady/likely survivor Clotilde Courau (best known as the young Anne Parillaud in Map of the Human Heart) is wasted in a nothing role, but mad people Berleand and Lavant provide some entertainment value.--Kim Newman