Videos: Andy Garcia is the new Al Pacino; even Hackman and Dunaway fail to lift a John Grisham adaptation; Julia Roberts in daft romp

The Chamber, Cert. 15, Cic Video, 108 mins (available for rental 20 Feb)

Faye Dunaway and Gene Hackman may well own a hat trick of Oscars between them, but this lame adaptation of John Grisham's best-selling novel only goes to show that three gongs don't make a right. With just 28 days to go before execution, young legal eagle Adam Hall (Chris O'Donnell) takes on the death penalty clemency case of his grandfather, Sam Cayhall (Gene Hackman), convicted 20 years earlier for the murder of the children of a Jewish civil rights lawyer.

But the old Klansman could (and should) go to hell for all the mitigating circumstances we're asked to take into account. The iniquitous Mississippi State Penitentiary death-row portrayed in the original novel has been upgraded to what looks like a well-guarded motel. What's more, the corrupt state politicians - for whom, crucially, Sam may have acted as a willing stooge - are strangely ignored. What little pleasure there is to be had, is derived from watching a glitzy cast attempt to kickstart the film's awful script into life. Hackman snarls and drawls well below par; Dunaway, as Adam's boozy aunt, hams it up like a pensioned-off Blanche DuBois; and O'Donnell earnestly runs errands between the two.

2/5

Conspiracy Theory, Cert. 15, Warner Home Video, 130 mins (available for rental 20 Feb)

Quite how Nigel Hawthorne pipped Mel Gibson to the lead role of 'The Madness of King George' remains a mystery. The wild-eyed Aussie has managed to work just about every other 'crazed maverick' angle in his career and perhaps we may yet see Mel in 'Mad Monarch 2: This Time It's Constitutional'. Until then the incessant Gibson patter, the jumpy grin and the split personality are all present and correct in Richard Donner's appealingly daft romp through X-Files territory.

When obsessive conspiracy theorist and cab driver, Jerry Fletcher (Gibson), is kidnapped by government scientist Dr Jonas (Patrick Stewart), the eccentric Fletcher and his reluctant Justice Department confidant, Alice Sutton (Julia Roberts), are drawn into a web of cover-ups and covert agencies. Thankfully, Donner finds the story as ludicrous as the viewer and tears through its illogicalities with a suitably light touch. The cast respond likewise: Gibson parodies himself throughout, Patrick Stewart has a hoot camping it up as the evil scientist and though her tongue couldn't find a cheek with a map, Roberts - as she demonstrated in Woody Allen's 'Everyone Says I Love You' - is always a watchable foil.

3/5

Night Falls on Manhattan, Cert. 15, First Independent, 109 mins (available for rental 16 Feb)

It ought to have been grist to director Sidney Lumet's moral mill. Andy Garcia - as a good man struggling to stay good, a natural successor to the vintage Pacino of Lumet's 'Dog Day Afternoon' and 'Serpico' - excels as Sean Casey. The ex-cop turned lawyer rises to District Attorney on the back of a high-profile prosecution secured, unbeknownst to him, with tainted evidence. You can even forgive Lumet his attempt to pass off Pacino as the son of hard-bitten Irish-American detective Ian Holm. The British actor bristles with fierce loyalty to the members of New York's Finest whom Garcia has to investigate, while Richard Dreyfus makes an all-too- brief appearance as a disillusioned Sixties radical-turned-lawyer.

A first-rate cast and a great director on home turf - so why do we feel as if this tale of compromised morality is slipping us a gold-leafed envelope with a 50p coin inside? Self-indulgence, mainly. Lumet takes far too long to establish the convincingly murky environment of municipal corruption before Sean Casey's hubris is exposed. Eventually, Casey realises he's going in over his head, but it's an age before the quagmire begins to suck him down. A case of artist neglecting the painting to fuss over the frame.

3/5