Cinema is often considered a form of escapism. But proof that films are released into the real world comes with George Amponsah's The Hard Stop, a reflection on the police shooting of Mark Dugan in Tottenham in August 2011 that arrives in theatres at the end of a week that has seen Black Lives Matter protests end in bloodshed in the United States and the Home Secretary who oversaw the rioting that followed what an inquest subsequently declared a lawful killing became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Sadly, this confluence of events is unlikely to secure this thoughtful study of urban black youth a large audience. But this is a film that needs to be watched by those assuming power if the process of healing they claim to champion stands any chance of succeeding.

The documentary opens with a brief summary of how the media reported the different versions of what took place in Tottenham Hale on 4 August 2011 and how riots broke out across the country after the police admitted that they had misled the public into thinking that 29 year-old father of six Mark Duggan had been armed with a handgun when the minicab in which he was travelling was surrounded by Operation Trident vehicles as part of a hard stop exercise. Interspersed with the archive footage are clips of Duggan's childhood friends, Marcus Knox-Hooke and Kurtis Henville, driving round the estate where they were raised and complaining that `the feds' are forever trying to harass and frame black kids.

As they boast that they refuse to be intimidated by anyone in uniform, a caption reveals that five people died during the riots that followed Duggan's shooting and that £200 million of property damage was caused across the UK. Viewing blurry CCTV images, Marcus declares that he has been charged with being one of the instigators of the unrest and the scene shifts to a bail house in Dagenham, where he is awaiting his sentence. He visits his friend's grave on the first anniversary of his the shooting and meets up with Duggan's partner, Semone Wilson, as well as his son Kamani and his mother Pam in order to release black balloons in his memory.

Having viewed a rap video on a laptop, Marcus and Kurtis concur that Duggan was a decent man and a real party animal. Yet, while watching a news report on events on Ferry Lane, they see a policeman in a white vest sneak behind a wall beside the cab and bob down to plant what turned out to be a gun in a sock that didn't bear Duggan's fingerprints. The friends agree that no black man would pull a weapon on a cop, as they know they would be fired upon. They concede that Duggan might have been killed by accident, but they reserve the right to believe that the officer fired because he felt he had the power to do so.

Marcus admits his loss brought him back to Tottenham, as he had moved away two years earlier after converting to Islam. He claims Duggan was interested, but had yet to testify and he takes Kurtis to the local mosque to show him around. On meeting the Imam, Kurtis confesses that his faith in prophets isn't quite matched by his love for his dogs and his fondness for his music and a smoke. When they try to convince him that he will find religion more pleasurable when he surrenders himself to it, Kurtis merely shrugs sceptically.

Life has been tough for Kurtis since he vowed to go straight. He drives along Tottenham High Road and says he has to earn honest money now he had children to think about. As they pass the police station, Amponsah cuts to footage of Marcus on a peaceful protest and then uses white arrows to show him actively participating in the street chaos and even attacking a police car. Marcus regrets that justifiable anger was hijacked by those who simply wanted to loot and destroy and his distaste is reinforced by CCTV images of a motorcyclist being ambushed and a youth having things stolen out of his haversack.

Told to expect an eight-year sentence by his solicitor, Marcus admits to being at the scene, but insists his fury was fuelled by the way in which Duggan's memory was being besmirched by the crooks and opportunists who didn't care about him or the community. Kurtis chips in that nothing would have happened if the feds hadn't killed an unarmed man and lies about it. But a news bulletin avers that Duggan was suspected of being a drug dealer and having links to the Tottenham Mandem (TMD) gang and Marcus takes Amponsah on a tour of the Broadwater Farm estate where they all grew up. They wander the corridors where he learned to ride a BMX bike and visit the underground car park where Mark nearly sent him flying while zooming around in a car.

As they continue their tour, a newsreader explains that the flats were built in the 1960s as a model replacement for the slum dwellings that had bred poverty and disease. However, Marcus remembers that the walkways were little more than rat runs for muggers and rapists and he feels a reluctant pride in having survived such an uncompromising upbringing. He casually points out the spot where PC Keith Blakelock was hacked to death on 6 October 1985 and Amponsah flashes back to the brutal crime that was prompted by the fatal heart attack that Cynthia Jarrett suffered while the police were searching her flat in a bid to find evidence against her son Floyd, who was later arrested for driving a stolen car that had not been illegally obtained. A caption states that the ensuing riots were a reaction to years of heavy handed policing and an inquiry admonished the Metropolitan force for not suspending the search for Floyd after his mother passed away.

Community activist Stafford Scott shows Marcus a garden of remembrance and vows that Broadwater Farm is not a haven for thugs. He claims that the events of 1985 were an act of self-defence against a hostile invasion and laments that they have since given the police an excuse to inflict misery upon the residents of the estate. In his opinion, nothing has changed between Jarrett and Duggan and Marcus concedes that he had no respect for the feds growing up. He felt he was untouchable and could steal and extort by playing on people's weakness and fear.

Over a video by Smegz, Marcus acknowledges that he was driven by arrogance, while a caption states that Kelvin `Smegz' Easton was Duggan's cousin and was stabbed to death in a nightclub in March 2011. A second note reveals that Duggan was placed under surveillance because it was believed that he had obtained a gun in order to avenge his Smegz's murder. Amponsah shows footage of Duggan at the funeral acting with dignified reverence at the graveside and Marcus insists that he and Smegz were the enforcer types always looking for trouble not Duggan and suggests that the police intelligence was either flawed or fake.

Meanwhile, Kurtis is trying to find work. He takes his CV into shops hoping for a break and has the cheek to ask a Carphone Warehouse clerk why he can no longer exploit the shop's wi-fi to operate his phone. Moreover, he even checks if there are any jobs going before confiding in Amponsah that he was making £500 a day as a dealer and is tempted to go back, as he used to be able to afford all sorts of cool stuff. But he is a father now and doesn't see why he should jeopardise his family's future supplying clients he couldn't stand. As he chatters away while racing cars on the motorway, Kurtis comes across as a loveable rascal. However, he gets a hard time from white girlfriend Eve Hanlan, who has little faith in him landing a job at Tesco, despite getting an interview.

A week before he receives his sentence, Marcus joins Kurtis and Duggan's brother Marlon on a trip to the Farm. They visit Semone and she jokes about the fact that Duggan bought her flowers when he was trying to impress her. She misses him and worries about the effect that his death will have on their kids. Kamani has started listening to his father's music and Marcus is amused by how alike they are. Amponsah amplifies the similarity by showing footage of Duggan dancing in the kitchen at a party and everyone agrees he was a man of fun not fury.

Marcus bumps into his mother, Sheilah Ramdin, and plays with his toddler nephew through the bars of the stairs. She insists that her son was trying to control people during the riots rather than rabble-rouse, but her white partner offers practical advice about wearing flip-flops in the shower to avoid picking up diseases. That night, Marcus drives around the neighbourhood with Kurtis and regrets that he has wasted so much of his life on a cause that didn't deserve his loyalty. He sits more quietly in the backseat, as he is driven to court in September 2012 and a caption informs us that he pleaded guilty to four of the eight charges and was sent down for 32 months.

Kurtis is delighted by the leniency of the tariff, but his view of the law is quickly clouded when he has to go to Harrow police station to collect one of his pets, which has been confiscated under the Dangerous Dogs Act. He loses his temper when the muzzle snaps and the duty officer refuses to allow him to take Princess home. But he is sweetness and light when he returns with another muzzle and wonders why all coppers can't be as helpful. Back home, he shows Amponsah the 18th birthday cards he received in prison and swears he will never return. He jokes about coke smugglers being entrepreneurs rather than crooks and writes to Marcus urging him to keep his chin up. But, even the breezy Kurtis is stung by some of the comments Amponsah finds under online news stories about Duggan and he accuses the person who called his friend gun-running scum of being a bigot.

Following a delightful scene of Kurtis and Eve watching their two sons opening their Christmas presents, he accepts a tele-sales job in Norwich and has to commute 115 miles at weekends. Eve is resentful that he failed to find something closer to home, as she is having to cope with the boys on her own. But he feels very cut off and recognises the irony of his situation when he visits Marcus in Pentonville.

The Duggan family gathers at the cemetery to mark the second anniversary. One man tells Amponsah that the cops make no secret of their hatred for black men and Duggan's Aunt Carol reveals how Marlon is forever being harassed. They all agree that this will continue until they can find the Blakelock killer and feel it is unfair that successive generations of children have been victimised because of a 30 year-old crime. But the Farm remains an uncompromising place, as Kurtis discovers when he goes to a block party and decides to beat a hasty retreat when the enjoyment is shattered by gunshots and screams.

On 16 September 2013, a 12-week investigation into the Duggan shooting begins. An off-screen newsreader describes how the hard stop tactic of cornering a vehicle was employed because the suspect had a gun in a shoebox. Once again, the police claim to have fired in self-defence, but a witness who had recorded the stand-off on his phone insists that Duggan had made gestures that suggested he was trying to surrender. The hearing also learns that Duggan knew he was being tailed, as he texted a friend to warn him about a pursuing green van, while the gun in the sock is found to be a starting pistol devoid of DNA traces that could link it to Duggan.

Amponsah asks Kurtis what it would take for him to accept the police story and he gets cross because he knows they are covering for each other and would have made more of the gun being on Duggan's person if he had actually been threatening them with a real weapon. He attends a memorial protest in Ferry Lane and listens to Scott and Carol Duggan speaking about getting justice and answers.

A combination of captions and voiceovers reveals that Officer V53 testified on 13 October about why he fired and why he maintains that he saw a gun in Duggan's right hand, even though he has no idea as to why it suddenly disappeared. Kurtis is not impressed by the evidence. But he is having a tough time because Eve has moved out with the kids because she can no longer raise them alone. He wants to keep the job, however, and is pleased to learn that Marcus has passed an exam while inside and is being released on Christmas Eve. Kurtis and Sheilah go to collect Marcus and he asks for a kebab. He sits quietly on the journey home and braves a downpour to rush inside and play with his nephew.

During a probation session in January 2014, Marcus declares that TMD is not a gang in the police definition of the term and swears never to trust the force again unless they admit they made a mistake in killing Duggan. But the verdict delivered on 8 January finds 8-1 in favour of lawful killing, even though the jury concedes that Duggan might have had a phone rather than a weapon in his hand. In news footage, the family is shown shouting down a senior policeman outside the Royal Courts of Justice. Marcus is furious and decries the justice system. But Carol organises a peaceful march from the town hall to the police station to show her dignity and tears. Kurtis gives an interview to the press, in which he bemoans the fact that the finding means that anyone can reach into their pocket and produce any innocent item and be deemed a legitimate target for a police marksman.

Over the next few weeks, Marcus lingers on the periphery of the various meetings and protests, as he is no longer sure who they are supposed to be addressing, as those who returned the inquest verdict are never going to change their minds. Semone gets upset when her daughter mournfully pipes up that she wants to sleep with her daddy in Heaven. Moreover, Kamani has been suspended from school and Marcus explains that he has taken to boasting about his dad and refuses to listen to any advice because he now considers himself to be a rude boy.

Marcus starts mentoring at the Eastside Academy and shows Kamani videos of American kids who have wasted their lives, in the hope he will heed their warnings. Kurtis, meanwhile, has become as a park ranger and is back with Eve and the boys, who are now doing better at school. He isn't wild about having to clean toilets, but he enjoys being outdoors and the fact that he can work at his own pace.

Also keen to make a difference, Marcus meets with Mick Lees, an ex-copper who runs a youth initiative with the Metropolitan Police. He clearly feels uncomfortable and has to conquer his demons in order to shakes hands. But he realises that Lees talks sense and can help him devise a programme for keeping black lads out of trouble. Suitably impressed by his courage, Amponsah cites Leo Tolstoy: `Everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change themselves.'

As the documentary ends, Marcus and Kurtis walks the streets at night and turn with a haunted look when they hear a siren nearby. A closing caption reveals that there have been over 1500 death in police custody since 1990, yet there hasn't been a single conviction for unlawful killing. It's a sobering statistic and one that shames the parties that have held power during that time. Amponsah

knows there are no easy solutions and leaves his audience with the grim realisation that things may well get a lot worse before they start to improve, as the chasm defies any well-intentioned efforts at bridge building.

Opening with a Martin Luther King quotation about rioting being the language of the unheard, Amponsah can be forgiven for allowing his sympathies to show at various points during a potent, but never polemical study that was filmed over 28 months. Given the Hillsborough mindset exhibited by the Metropolitan Police in relation to the Duggan case, it's perhaps wise that its participation was not sought. But, even though he sets great store by the honesty of Marcus and Kurtis, Amponsah avoids propagandising in presenting some of the worst excesses of the aftermath alongside a challenge to the stereotypical depiction of urban black males in the media. Consequently, his humanist snapshot of a demonised community skirts accusations of institutionalised racism to focus on the efforts of ordinary people to make a life in often intolerable circumstances. He might have cast the net wider and spoken to some older black males and several more women (of all ages). But this plea for understanding and acceptance deserves to be widely seen.

Changing tack completely, Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen re-imagines HG Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau as a knockabout farce in Men and Chicken, which pushes the boundaries of grotesque horror in the same manner as The Green Butchers (2003) and Adam's Apples (2005), which respectively pondered the subjects of cannibalism and neo-Nazism. Since winning the Academy Award for Best Short with Election Night (1998), Jensen has written several realist dramas for Susanne Bier, including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004) and In a Better World (2011), which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. But this dystopic romp goes so far out on a limb that it is likely to find a devoted cult following rather than mainstream acceptance.

Despite having a harelip, Elias (Mads Mikkelsen) fancies himself as a ladies man. He endures an appalling dinner in the hope that his wheelchair-bound psychiatrist date will give him free therapy, but has to placate his overactive libido in the privacy of his own home. Meanwhile, his estranged philosophy professor brother Gabriel (David Dencik) - who also has a cleft palate - is visiting their dying father in hospital. When the old man passes, Gabriel summons Elias to watch a videotape that reveals they were adopted and that their real father is Evelio Thanatos, a 99 year-old geneticist who lives on the remote island of Ork.

Gabriel is eager to meet his biological father and hopes to find out what happened to his mother. But he is only half pleased when Elias insists on accompanying him, as not only is he a loose cannon slave to his urges, but he can also turn a discussion of the relative merits of Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein into a full-scale feud. On the ferry, Elias flirts with Inger (Birthe Neumann), but she is sufficiently intrigued by the newcomers to introduce them to her brother, Flemming (Ole Thestrup), who is the local mayor and is obsessed with keeping the population above 40 so that the island can qualify for important government grants. He introduces Elias and Gabriel to his cake-baking daughter, Ellen (Bodil Jørgensen), who is desperately unhappy and tries to seduce Elias when she gets him alone in the kitchen.

Flemming and Inger inform Gabriel that Evelio lives in a dilapidated sanatorium on the other side of the island. So, he rescues Elias and they set out to introduce themselves. They are greeted, however, with violence and a volley of abuse by Franz (Søren Malling), Josef (Nicolas) and Gregor (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who don't get many visitors and are convinced that the strangers spell trouble. Elias notices that the siblings also have cleft lips and tries to convince them that they are family and mean them no home.

Eventually, Franz (who has a penchant for beating people with stuffed animals) relents and Gabriel and Elias venture inside the crumbling edifice that is overrun with bizarre barnyard animals. They share a meal and are bemused when Franz, Josef and Gregor argue over some decorative animal plates. Gabriel is also nonplussed when the brothers gather for a bedtime story. Yet Elias finds the whole rigmarole as appealing as the ritualistic cheese eating and the highly competitive games of badminton that take place on an indoor court and he urges Gabriel to enjoy himself instead of fretting that he is not allowed to visit Evelio on the top floor of the clinic.

Determined to find out what is going on, Gabriel tries to sneak upstairs during the night, only for Franz to catch him and march him back to his room. When the siblings invite Elias to go looking for girls, Gabriel resumes his snooping and discovers that Evelio has been dead for quite some time. He confronts Franz and pleads to be allowed in the basement laboratory to see what their father had been working on. But, even though he intrigues Josef by insisting that the bedtime story should come out of the Bible, he is kept under close watch.

Pining for a missing stork, Gregor is more sympathetic, however, and helps Gabriel gain access in return for a promise to meet a nice girl. He is disturbed by the gross specimens in jars lining the shelves and pores through notes in order to learn that Evelio had been experimenting with his own stem cells and animal semen in a bid to impregnate willing women with hybrid offspring. As he reads, he discovers that he is part owl, while Elias has bull DNA and Franz, Josef and Gregor were respectively bred from a chicken, a mouse and a dog. He also gleans that they are all sterile and that he and Gabriel were regarded as such failures that Evelio put them up for adoption.

Franz is angry with Gregor for allowing Gabriel into the lab and he puts Elias in a large cage at the front of the sanatorium. But, while Gabriel initially considers fleeing from the horrors he has uncovered. He decides to stay and the closing shot presents a soft-focus snapshot of the extended family that implies that Gabriel has been dabbling in the dark arts himself.

Directing his first feature in a decade, Jensen has concocted a grim fable that would not have been out of places in Matteo Garrone's Tale of Tales. Blending the look and feel of Universal and Hammer horror with the kind of socko slapstick usually associated with The Three Stooges, he employs the unsavoury mix of bestiality, brutality and brotherhood to celebrate the sanctity of life in all its forms and there is genuine poignancy in a humanist message that is all the more effective for coming from so far out of left field.

Much depends on the commitment of the leads, who rise to the challenge of being indestructible props and strangely sentient beings with considerable physical energy and intellectual refinement. Sporting a large moustache and forever slipping away to answer the call of lust, Mikkelsen proves what a versatile and unaffected actor he is. Swede David Dencik also impresses as the nerdier sibling seeking answers to questions that have long troubled him. But, while Søren Malling, Nicolas Bro and Nikolaj Lie Kaas throw themselves into their roles, their characters are less well defined. Moreover, the action loses momentum as the focus falls on Dencik's obsession with the locked room.

Once open, this doesn't disappoint, however, as every aspect of Mia Stensgaard's production design is wondrously atmospheric, with the Havershamesque clinic being particularly arresting, thanks to its echoing hallways, cluttered courtyards and sinister hideaways. Cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov bathes the interiors in a muddy light that ends up feeling deceptively cosy, despite the ethereal eerieness of Frans Bak and Jeppe Kaas's zither score. But such ambiguity is par for the course in an absurdist shocker that is much more about acceptance than accusation and about making the most of the worst hand that fate can deal.

There's an autobiographical element to Catherine Corsini's Summertime, which has been produced by her life partner, Elisabeth Perez. Set in 1971 and exploring the chasm between rural and urban attitudes and the essential conservatism of Pompidou's Paris, this will remind some of Corsini's 2001 drama, Replay, in which Emmanuelle Béart and Pascale Bussières struggled to come to terms with their conflicted emotions. Moreover, it's tempting to compare this tearjerker with the other two pictures in which Belgian actress Cécile De France has played lesbian characters, Cédric Klapisch's romcom, Pot Luck (2002), and Alexandre Aja's body horror, High Tension (2003). However, this has its own distinctive personality, even though Corsini and co-scenarist Laurette Polmanss don't quite pull the two halves of the story together.

Twenty-three year-old Izïa Higelin lives on a farm in the southern Limousin region with her parents, Jean-Henri Compère and Noémie Lvovsky. They know their daughter sneaks out at night for secret assignations, but presume they are with Kévin Azaïs, who has doted on Higelin since they were kids. But she is actually meeting up with girlfriend Loulou Hanssen and she is so devastated when she announces that she is getting married that Higelin makes the spur of the moment decision to move to Paris and broaden her horizons.

Not long after arriving in the capital, however, Higelin becomes besotted with Spanish teacher Cécile De France, who is 10 years her senior and is also a key member of a feminist action group campaigning for equal pay, access to contraception and the legalisation of abortion. They go on protests and print pamphlets and fliers and Higelin is impressed by the vivacity and togetherness of the sisterhood. But she is also motivated by her crush on De France and feels slighted when she discovers she lives with writer Benjamin Bellecour.

De France is very much an emancipated woman, she is sexually naive and is swept off her feet when Higelin makes an unexpected move. The pair are soon inseparable, although De France can't quite get round to breaking the news to Bellecour. Despite his liberal leanings, he takes his cuckolding badly and De France spends more nights at Higelin's cramped bedsit. They grow closer after helping Laetitia Dosch rescue cousin Frank Bruneau from the country clinic where he is being given electro-shock treatment to cure him of his homosexuality. But their romance seems doomed when Compère has a paralysing stroke and Higelin returns home to help Lvovsky run the farm.

When Lvovsky goes to stay near the hospital, Higelin invites De France to the farm. She coaxes her into mucking in with the chores, but they also lounge naked in the fields and De France realises that she has to break up with her boyfriend in order to commit to her lover. However, Azaïs sees them kissing and feels cheated when Higelin asks him to help with Compère when he comes home. De France is also distraught when Higelin informs her that she cannot abandon Lvovsky, as the farm means everything to the family and she would hate to see it swallowed up by one of their avaricious neighbours. But she struggles to re-acclimatise to city living and breaks up with Bellecour in order to make a fresh start.

As they drive back from the station, Higelin reminds De France that they will have to be discreet, as rural folk are both conservative and judgemental. She also regrets that they will have to sleep in separate rooms because Lvovsky would never understand their relationship. But, while Lvovsky is cautiously welcoming to her daughter's guest, she begins to warm to De France when she rolls up her sleeves and does her bit. She teases Higelin by telling Lvovsky that they met at a pottery class and they soon start sneaking along the landing in the dead of night for stolen moments of passion. Eventually, Lvovsky dances to De France's portable record player and Higelin is amused to see her mother and girlfriend getting on so well.

However, Lvovsky has high hopes that Higelin will marry Azaïs and stay on the farm. Thus, she is taken aback when she sees Higelin kiss De France's palm after she pops the blisters she developed hauling hay bales. She says nothing to Compère, as she washes him on a chair. But De France does speak to him when they are alone and confides that she is in love.

As the summer draws to a close, the farmers hold a bonfire party and De France looks on with pride as Higelin jumps over the fire like her male counterparts. However, Azaïs takes her to one side and cautions her against ruining Higelin's life by coming between her and the people who love her most. Lvovsky also chats to De France about her hopes for Higelin and Azaïs and she suddenly feels a long way from home, De France broaches the subject of spending some time in Paris, but Higelin says she can't just up sticks and they have a blazing row (which Lvovsky overhears) about putting the farm before love.

While walking in a leafy glade, Higelin is spotted kissing De France by a gossipy neighbour. When she attends the unveiling of the new combine harvester, Higelin sees the man and becomes so convinced that he is going to tell the others that she is a lesbian that she panics and begs Azaïs to kiss her. He refuses to be her alibi and storms off, humiliating her in front of the men she has been trying so hard to impress. Feeling blue, she crawls into bed with De France, who assures her that everything will work out for the best.

They oversleep the following morning, however, and Lvovsky finds them naked in bed together. Higelin dresses hurriedly and goes to work, but Lvovsky tells De France to pack her bags and leave on the first train, as she won't have a jezebel under her roof. De France rushes out to find Higelin ploughing on the tractor and urges her to come to Paris with her and leave the blinkered yokels behind. But, while she packs and travels to the first station, Higelin has a change of heart as they wait for their connection and she remains on the platform, as De France climbs aboard. Returning home, Higelin pulls up a chair and Lvovsky gives her a coffee and an understanding smile.

Five years later, De France is working at an abortion clinic. She advises a client to use contraception and explains that she doesn't have to because she lives with a woman. A letter arrives unexpectedly from Higelin. She reveals that she has left home and now has a small farm of her own further south. She wishes she could turn back time and arrange a happier ending. But she can only move forward, while never forgetting.

While never as graphic as Abdellatif Kechiche's controversial Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), this is an unapologetic celebration of Sapphic passion that is played with spirit and tact by De France and Higelin, a singer who earned César nominations for her first two features, Patrick Mille's Bad Girl (2012) and Olivier Nackache and Eric Toledano's Samba (2014). In conjunction with production designer Anna Falguères and cinematographer Jeanne Lapoirie. Corsini ably captures the look and feel of the early 1970s. But, while she doesn't overdo the period trappings or the town-and-country contrasts, she isn't always able to prevent some of the more bucolic farming sequences from feeling a little twee.

However, Corsini and co-writer Laurette Polmanss ably convey the mood of the French feminist movement in the early 1970s and the extent to which lesbianism was still something of a taboo within the sisterhood. The scenes in which De France pinches the bottom of a chauvinist who has been plaguing her is more convincing than the protest at a pro-life lecture. But what is most fascinating is the utter disconnect between the capital and the provinces, where the pace and style of life seem not to have changed in decades.

Finally, this week, comes Precious Cargo, a thick-ear actioner that marks the directorial debut of Max Adams and ranks among the worst films that Bruce Willis has ever made. Despite receiving second billing, Willis takes little more than a glorified supporting role in a picture that expands upon a short of the same name that Adams made in 2008, with Travis Herndon as the bad guy. Subsequently, Adams has scripted Scott Mann's Heist and Steven C. Miller's Extraction (2015), which respectively featured Robert De Niro and Bruce Willis. But the decision to team with Paul V. Seetachitt on the screenplay for his first venture behind the camera seems to have backfired, as not only is the plotting sloppy, but also the dialogue is often excruciating.

Somewhere in Mississippi, Mark-Paul Gosselaar is hitting golf balls into the sea while waiting to conclude a weapons deal. The contact proves unwilling to stump up the agreed sum. But Gosselaar has planted sidekick John Brotherton in the gang and has sniper Jenna B. Kelly standing by in case of such an eventuality. However, old flame Claire Forlani fails to plan ahead and has to beat a hasty retreat when psychotic thug Bruce Willis discovers that she is in the process of hijacking a bank raid he had been preparing for months and calls the cops.

Having bumped off the villains and kept the guns and the cash, Gosselaar borrows Kelly's dog, Grace, so he can impress new vet girlfriend, Lydia Hull, on their next date. She insists he cooks and they are busy canoodling in the bedroom when Forlani bursts in and asks Gosselaar for a favour for old-time's sake. Realising she has been followed by Willis's oppo, Daniel Bernhardt, Gosselaar tools up and bundles Hull, Forlani and Grace into a waiting speedboat. However, Bernhardt and his goons find another boat and a pair of jet skis and a prolonged chase ensues, in which Gooselaar and Forlani exchange witty banter and everyone demonstrates what appallingly bad shots they are.

Unsurprisingly, Hull is perturbed that Gooselaar has been lying to her, but she reluctantly accepts his advice to lay low in a hotel for a couple of days. Forlani, however, just wants to talk turkey and explains that she has to find a sum equivalent to the one lost in the bungled bank raid or Willis will kill her. In order to prove how readily he would carry out such a threat, Adams cuts to Willis punishing loose-lipped henchman David Gordon for discussing future operations with Forlani by driving a knife into his hand and promising to kill him slowly.

Consequently, Gooselaar agrees to help Forlani steal $30 million in gems from an armoured car. He ignores Kelly's advice not to trust Forlani, but takes her along to meet getaway driver Nicholas M. Loeb, who is dead drunk in a beach-side bar. They also hook up with Brotherton and his feisty wife, Ashley Kirk, who is tired of him jeopardising their bar business by jumping whenever Gooselaar whistles.

The ambush is planned out in a series of meetings, during which Forlani reminds Gooselaar about their plans to make enough money to open a business in the Caribbean. However, Gooselaar insists he is happy with Hull and wants nothing more to do with Forlani and her reckless schemes. That said, he gets a kick out of danger and rides along with Loeb in the tow truck they will use to snatch the security van. He exchanges fire with Bernhardt and his minions, but Kelly has the waterfront covered and removes any inconvenient opposition to allow Loeb to speed to their rendezvous.

Unfortunately, Willis shows up just as the gang unpack the gems and Kelly is hit in the crossfire. Gooselaar takes her to Hull's surgery and she tells him she never wants to see him again after she dresses the wound. But he doesn't have long to pine for her, as Forlani announces that the real reason for the armoured car robbery was a gadget containing the code to a CIA safe containing $500 million in red diamonds. Unable to resist such a huge sum and excited by the challenge of getting to the safe aboard a plane during a refuelling stop, Gooselaar reassembles his crew and they bide their time.

Naturally, Willis learns about the mission and warns Forlani that she will never outsmart him. Thus, as Gooselaar slips into the hold at the airbase to locate the safe, he is joined by Bernhardt, who forces him off the plane before taking off. What he doesn't know, however, is that Gooselaar has placed Semtex around the safe so that it blows a hole in the floor of the plane and drops the safe in a lake right next to where Brotherton is waiting in deep-sea diving gear. Typically, Willis has one last stab at seizing the day (and Forlani). But Gooselaar brings in Christopher Rob Bowen to complete his team of mavericks and, after Willis takes a fatal tumble, he feels suitably smug to borrow Humphrey Bogart's `beautiful friendship' crack to Claude Rains from the end of Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942).

Yet, the longer this barrage of slick, but predictable set-pieces rumbles on, the less most viewers will care about what happens to the goodies or the baddies. Claire Forlani does her best as the femme fatale with the bewitching eyes, while Jenna B. Kelly makes a formidably sardonic (if scantily clad) sharpshooter. But Mark-Paul Gosselaar lacks presence as the resourceful hero, while Bruce Willis seethes with an indifference that intensifies with each banal line he is forced to utter. Clearly, he enjoys making action movies. But he is a decent actor and, now he is in his sixties, he should be surprising people with his eclectic choice of character parts rather than sleepwalking through mediocre Tarantino imitations like this.

Max Adams is evidently a student of the genre and he packs his debut with breakneck chases, shootouts, double-crosses and wisecracks. But too many of the pieces slot into place with a resounding clang, while the majority of the supporting characters are interchangeable ciphers. The exception is Daniel Bernhardt, as Willis's snarlingly suave factotum. But the scene in which he threatens violence to moll Sammi Barber and her coterie of bikini-clad sunbathers lounging by the pool is loathesomely misogynist and should have been junked along with the blooper reel (which noticeably doesn't contain any Willis gaffs) that accompanies the closing crawl.