"Actor: Steven Goldstein"

• The Untouchables | DVD | (13/09/2004) from £4.99   |  Saving you £13.00 (260.52%)   |  RRP £17.99

  The DVD extras follow the adage that if one has lemons, make lemonade. This "special" edition has no commentary track, and no new input from stars Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Andy Garcia or writer David Mamet. Yet DVD director Laurent Bouzereau has an ace up his sleeve that makes the four new featurettes (about 50 minutes of content) worth listening to: candid talk. The usual, stiff promotional take is jettisoned as producer Art Linson and director Brian De Palma honestly talk about the film's origins, the tricks of shooting, and the casting of Robert De Niro. These refreshing comments (plus insight from the cinematographer Stephen H. Burum and actor Charles Martin Smith), and better-than-average vintage interviews makes for valuable watching--even if the footage is intercut too often with film clips. To top it all off, there's a new Dolby Digital 5.1 EX soundtrack. --Doug Thomas

• The Untouchables | DVD | (04/06/2001) from £5.25   |  Saving you £10.74 (204.57%)   |  RRP £15.99

  As noted critic Pauline Kael wrote, the 1987 box-office hit The Untouchables is "like an attempt to visualise the public's collective dream of Chicago gangsters". In other words, this lavish reworking of the vintage TV series is a rousing pot-boiler from a bygone era, so beautifully designed and photographed--and so craftily directed by Brian De Palma--that the historical reality of Prohibition-era Chicago could only pale in comparison. From a script by David Mamet, the film pits four underdog heroes (the maverick lawmen known as the Untouchables) against a singular villain in Al Capone, played by Robert De Niro as a dapper Caesar holding court (and a baseball bat) against any and all challengers. Kevin Costner is the naive federal agent Eliot Ness, whose lack of experience is tempered by the streetwise alliance of a seasoned Chicago cop (Sean Connery, in an Oscar-winning performance), a rookie marksman (Andy Garcia) and an accountant (Charles Martin Smith) who holds the key to Capone's potential downfall. The movie approaches greatness on the strength of its set pieces, such as the siege near the Canadian border, the venal ambush at Connery's apartment and the train-station shootout partially modelled after the "Odessa steps" sequences of the Russian classic Battleship Potemkin. It's thrilling stuff, fuelled by Ennio Morricone's dynamic score, but it's also manipulative and obvious. If you're inclined to be critical, the film gives you reason to complain. If you'd rather sit back and enjoy a first-rate production with an all-star cast, The Untouchables may very well strike you as a classic. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

• Fair Game | DVD | (24/01/2000) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £13.99

  She's a lawyer. He's a cop. Some former KGB-types with a wide variety of slippery accents and enough sophisticated technological surveillance gadgets to make one wonder how the Soviet Union could have possibly failed, want her dead. The cop (William Baldwin) is the only man who can save her. It helps that the high-powered attorney is played by Cindy Crawford, who gives new meaning to the phrase "habeas corpus." So the plot doesn't make any sense: first, they try to kill her, no questions asked. Then they capture her and spill their guts about all the details of their nefarious plan. Logic is not what Fair Game is about. It's about explosions, car crashes and more explosions. The only pauses in the action are for showers (one for Baldwin, two for Crawford) and a change of clothing (Crawford slips out of a tight T-shirt into an even tighter tank top). The best feature of the DVD is the addition of a Gallic track. With very little actual sex in the movie, having the main characters conversing in French definitely adds some sauciness to the dialogue scenes. --Richard Natale, Amazon.com

• House Of Games | DVD | (02/02/2004) from £9.43   |  Saving you £3.56 (37.75%)   |  RRP £12.99

  David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut House of Games is mesmerising study of control and seduction between two kinds of detached observers: a gambler who is also a con artist and a psychotherapist who is also an emerging pop-psych guru in the book market. The latter (played by Lindsay Crouse) meets the former (Joe Mantegna) when one of her clients is driven to despair from his debts to the card shark. Mantegna's character agrees to drop the IOUs in exchange for Crouse's attention at the seedy House of Games in Seattle, a mecca for conmen to talk shop and hustle unsuspecting customers. The shrink gets so caught up in the arcane rules and world view of her guide over subsequent days that she observes--with no false rapture--various stings in progress inside and outside the club. Mamet's story finally becomes a fascinating study of two people protecting and extending their respective cosmologies the way rival predators fight for the same piece of turf. The psychological challenge is compelling; so is the stylised dialogue, with its pattern of pauses and hiccups and humming meter. Mostly shooting at night, Mamet also gave Seattle a different look from previous filmmakers, turning its familiar puddles into concentrations of liquid neon and poisonous noir. --Tom Keogh