The Information: New Films
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Director: Che-Kirk Wong
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Christina Applegate
Big title, small film. Che-Kirk Wong's screwball action caper substitutes noise and zip for original ideas and solid plotting. Mark Wahlberg reprises his likeably bemused Boogie Nights performance as the put-upon hitman sandwiched between a brattish girlfriend and the volatile heiress he's kidnapped. The rest of the film unravels in a rash of cartoon violence. West End: Virgin Trocadero, Warner Village West End. And local cinemas
THE DEBT COLLECTOR (18, 110 mins)
Director: Anthony Neilson
Starring: Billy Connolly, Ken Stott
Anthony Neilson's Edinburgh-set revenge tragedy is stagey but sporadically effective, anchored by weighty turns from Billy Connolly as a reformed jailbird and Ken Stott as a driven cop unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie. But there are finally too few twists to The Debt Collector, and Neilson's harried, heated finale undoes a lot of good work. West End: Virgin Trocadero
THE LOST SON (18, 102 mins)
Director: Chris Menges
Starring: Daniel Auteuil, Nastassja Kinski
Daniel Auteuil's Parisian in London is a hard-drinking, heavy-smoking private eye. Employed on a straightforward missing-persons gig, he soon turns up something altogether darker and more uncomfortable. Sadly, Auteuil's English-language debut is a dud. No, The Lost Son doesn't sensationalise its low-life elements. It's too passive for that, too unsure how to defuse such highly charged material. West End: Curzon Soho, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin Haymarket. Local: Richmond Filmhouse
THE MUMMY (12, 115 mins)
Director: Stephen Sommers
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz
Steven Spielberg has a lot to answer for. Ever since he converted a B-movie format into A-movie returns on 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark, the formula has been copied by every studio. The Mummy, then, is this year's Godzilla: a cheesy monster-mash which has Brendan Fraser (square-jawed adventurer) and Rachel Weisz (luscious Egyptologist) uncovering a lost city and battling a bandaged bogeyman. The effects look tinny and tacky, and the whole thing fairly reeks of corporate cynicism. West End: ABC Tottenham Court Road, Clapham Picture House, Empire Leicester Square, Odeon Camden Town, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Marble Arch, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Ritzy Cinema, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road, Virgin Trocadero. And local cinemas
ROGUE TRADER (15, 92 mins)
Director: James Dearden
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Anna Friel
The magic movie mill moulds weaselish Nick Leeson into princely Ewan McGregor, and his half-arsed rise and fall into an assault on the British class system. So barrow-boy Leeson hangs out in the tiger economies of the Far East, hides his losses in a secret account and comes sweatily undone at the seams. Clearly aiming at the mix of high-tension thrills and high-minded moralising patented in Oliver Stone's Wall Street, Rogue Trader unfurls efficiently enough without ever quite amounting to more than the sum of its parts. West End: Barbican Screen, Odeon Kensington, Odeon Swiss Cottage, Odeon West End, Screen on Baker Street, UCI Whiteleys, Virgin Fulham Road. And local cinemas
SIMON BIRCH (PG, 113 mins)
Director: Mark Steven Johnson
Starring: Ian Michael Smith, Oliver Platt
Simon Birch spins its winsome account of a diminutive, bonsai saint (Ian Michael Smith) in small-town New England like some human-interest article from one of the more progressive church newsletters. The plot is "suggested by" John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, but unfortunately comes across as being smugly whimsical. Smith's engaging central turn lends the film's milky centre some much-needed tang. West End: Virgin Haymarket
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