Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 11/10/2012)

In remaking Pusher, the first part of Dane Nicolas Winding Refn's trilogy about a dealer facing the harsh realities of his trade, Spaniard Luis Prieto falls into all the old traps in striving to make decadence seem cool. We have the booming beats, the crowded dance floors, the montages of revellers tossing back shots before surrendering themselves to the rhythm and then sidling off into a quiet corner to purchase the cheeky bindle of cocaine that will make the evening go with a bang following a quick trip to the toilets. It's all so sordid, so depressing and so predictable. But what's a director to do? Art is, after all, an imitation of life and this, sadly, is a lifestyle to which many aspire and the media does all it can (in the grand DeMillean manner) to demonise it while making it look as glamorous and enticing as possible.

The scene may have shifted from Copenhagen to London and Kim Bodnia and Mads Mikkelsen may have been replaced by Richard Coyle and Bronson Webb, but little else has been changed in translation. Coyle and Webb still cruise the niteries and strip clubs of the capital flogging their wares to party animals with more money than sense, like Paul Kaye, who is buying in bulk at the start of the week to ensure his Saturday birthday bash is a success. However, while Coyle plays hard ball over a £300 short fall in the transaction, he is ready to move into the big league and has arranged for courier Daisy Lewis to smuggle a large consignment from Amsterdam.

In order to fund the shipment, Coyle borrows £45,000 from Zlatko Buric (who seems to be playing Turkish here as opposed to the Croat he essayed in the 1996 original), who runs a ruthless operation from an office behind a bridal gown shop. Coyle is already in debt to this effusive charmer and knows he cannot afford any slip ups. Which makes it all the more puzzling that he should agree to score a key of coke for Neil Maskell, who approaches Webb in a club with a story that he knows Coyle from their prison days and needs to do a deal in a hurry.

Naturally, the handover goes badly with the cops ambushing Maskell's car and chasing Coyle into the lake at a local park, where he disposes of the evidence with the grim realisation that he has just landed himself in a deep hole. Having refused to buckle under interrogation by Badria Timimi and Richard Shanks, Coyle seeks out Webb and beats him to within an inch of his life as he ogles the afternoon shift at the nearby pole-dancing establishment.  He also pays a call on Buric and explains his predicament in the hope of leniency. Instead, he is given a ridiculously tight deadline to pay what he owes, plus interest, or face the knee-capping consequences.

Initially, Coyle seems reasonably relaxed about the situation. He has the Dutch blow to sell and always has the secret stash he keeps in a lock-up behind the market. But, with Lewis refusing to return his calls, he becomes increasingly tense and even dancer girlfriend Agyness Deyn struggles to distract him. He threatens middle-aged junkie Bill Thomas at his pet shop, demands the incapacitated Webb forks out what he owes and even tries to con mother Joanna Hole into lending him some cash. However, when Lewis finally surfaces and admits she was duped into bringing back a bag of dextrose, Coyle realises he is in serious trouble and things start rapidly to spiral out of control after Buric's enforcer Mem Ferda terrorises Thomas into committing suicide and Coyle buys a pair of handguns from wideboy Adam Foster to rob Kaye's safe and his party guests.

All looks bleak when Ferda hauls Coyle into Buric's office and he has his nipples singed with live wires for failing to honour his debt. However, he manages to grab a gun as he is about to have a finger removed with a pair of bolt cutters and seeks sanctuary in Deyn's apartment. Recovering some of his poise, he suggests they beat a hasty retreat to Spain. But fate has one last surprise for him, as he dashes round the city trying to sell the last of his merchandise.

Those familiar with Refn's reputation-making thriller will know exactly how things pan out and many will leave the cinema with a certain trepidation that Bronson Webb might be entrusted with the sequels that did so much to help Mads Mikkelsen make his name. The fact that Refn is credited as an executive producer confirms that this remake has his blessing. But he must also be aware that this is a pale imitation of his cult hit and that no amount of flashy cinematography and pumping electronica can disguise the fact.

In fairness to Richard Coyle, he delivers a decent performance as the façade of cocky control becomes as badly dented as the paintwork of the car that is vandalised by kids at the start of his nightmare week. But no other character is so well defined, despite Buric revelling in reprising the role of the avuncular thug and Deyn having the odd soulful moment as the dancer-cum-escort who injects heroin between her toes in times of stress. Similarly, while Matthew Read sensibly sticks closely to the screenplay that Refn wrote with Jens Dahl, he offers few fresh insights into the pusher's state of mind as his plight worsens.

Most frustratingly, however, Luis Prieto fails to bring an outsider's eye to London and while production designer Sarah Webster's array of trendy clubs, seedy Turkish baths, poky offices, bland apartments and abandoned warehouses are all apt, they could be anywhere and this lack of distinctive character seeps into Simon Dennis's photography, Kim Gaster's editing and the incessant retro score by Orbital. Essentially, Prieto has smoothed off the rough edges that made Refn's debut feature so daring and dangerous and has coated the remaining core with the gloss he has since brought to pictures like Drive (2011). Thus, while this is slick and efficient, it never pulsates with the intensity and suspense we already know the story possesses.

A century ago, life for Britain's young men and women was very different, as director Pat O'Connor and screenwriter Simon Reade strive to demonstrate in their careful, but lacklustre adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's bestselling children's fiction, Private Peaceful. Covering several of the themes tackled by Steven Spielberg in his bigger budget take on the same author's War Horse, this is supposed to be a family film. But one suspects it will only reach its intended audience on the small screen, as it's hard to see this earnest study of rural poverty in the 1910s and the living hell of the Western Front being much of a half-term treat for even the most intellectually curious kids.

The action opens in an army jail somewhere in France in 1916, as Tommo Peaceful (George MacKay) thinks back on the events that led to his court-martial. Eight years earlier, he had been living happily in a tied cottage in the Devon countryside with his parents Joe (Kyle Summercorn) and Hazel (Maxine Peake) and his older brothers Jimmy (Frasier Huckle) and Charlie (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin). Joe was a forester on the estate of The Colonel (Richard Griffiths) and his wife (Anna Carteret), whose constant state of ill-health encouraged postmistress Grandma Wolf (Frances de la Tour) to entertain hopes of one day becoming the lady of the manor.

However, everything changes when Joe is crushed by a falling tree while trying to save Tommo and Hazel is forced to accept the post of personal maid at the big house so that the family can keep their home. Soon afterwards, Charlie and Tommo decide to quit school and work for the Colonel to make ends meet, while Grandma Wolf keeps an eye on the slow-witted Jimmy (Stephen Kennedy). But a welcome distraction from the daily grind comes in the form of Molly (Izzy Meikle-Small), the daughter of new gamekeeper Mr Monks (Michael Gould), who sneaks off to see the siblings and swim in the nearby river in spite of her father's dire threats.

Increasingly arrogant after inheriting his wife's fortune, the Colonel fires the Peaceful boys after they have the temerity to save a condemned hunting hound and they are grateful to be hired by Farmer Cox (Keith Bartlett), who treats them fairly while working them hard. However, while the now-teenage Tommo (George MacKay) nurses a secret crush on Molly (Alexandra Roach), Charlie (Jack O'Connell) acts upon his lust for her and she falls pregnant.  Distraught at the dual betrayal, Tommo attends their wedding with little enthusiasm and, when war breaks out, he lies about his age to a recruiting sergeant (Anthony Flanagan) and finds himself in the trenches under the baleful eye of Sergeant Hanley (John Lynch).

Unwilling to stay at home and play dutiful husband while his pals are having an adventure overseas, Charlie also joins up. But he is less willing to tolerate Hanley's bullying and leads his mates to the nearby village for a night's carousing that sees Tommo fall for the innkeeper's daughter, Anne (Eline Powell). He is left to his own devices, however, when Charlie is wounded and sent back to Blighty. Thus, when Anna is killed by some stray shrapnel, Tommo is close to despair and is hugely relieved when Charlie ignores Molly's pleas and returns to duty in time to protect him in a foxhole after he is shell-shocked during an advance across No Man's Land.

This decision to place family above a battlefield order gives Hanley the opportunity he has been waiting for and both privates are charged with insubordination and cowardice in the face of the enemy. Appeals for clemency are made to General Douglas Haig (David Yelland) at headquarters safely distant from the enemy. But one Peaceful had to be made to pay the ultimate price and the story ends with Tommo arriving home to make good on his promise to look after Molly and his toddler nephew.

Played with admirable sincerity by a notable ensemble, this is well-meaning effort to teach younger viewers about the social conditions that existed on the eve of the Great War and the toll that the conflict took on an already put-upon populace. Ably abetted by production designer Adrian Smith and cinematographer Jerzy Zielinski, O'Connor invokes a Hardyesque idyll in the initial sequences before slowly starting to expose the consequences of class division and the first rumblings of proletarian protest. However, Simon Reade's politicised sloganising sounds decidedly clumsy and, with Rachel Portman's insistent score constantly manipulating audience emotions, the overall tone lurches disconcertingly between Ripping Yarns, The Monocled Mutineer, Downton Abbey and the latter incarnation of Upstairs Downstairs.

The depiction of the villains is particularly awkward, with both Richard Griffiths and John Lynch seeming to have been encouraged to exaggerate caricatured mannerisms, while Frances de la Tour's gold-digger resembles a minor character from a forgotten Dickens novel. By contrast, the principal juveniles frequently feel distractingly anachronistic, with O'Connell's laddish belligerence sitting uncomfortably alongside Roach's simpering flirt and MacKay's sulky self-pity. Thus, impeccable though the intentions might be, this potentially harrowing saga is consistently undermined by mawkish melodramatics.

Finally, this week, come two documentaries that respectively profile a genius whose modesty is refreshing and touching in an age of celebrity braggadocio and a nobody with delusions of grandeur. Both BB King and Craig Castaldo allow the film-maker unique access to their daily routines and each man is lauded to the skies by those familiar with his work. But, whereas Jon Brewer's B.B. King: The Life of Riley meticulously chronicles how a boy from the Mississippi Delta pulled himself up by his bootstraps to play his part in changing American attitudes to race and music, Mary Kerr's Radioman confusedly shows how a onetime homeless alcoholic reinvented himself as a friend to the stars whose ability to inveigle himself on to just about every film set in New York has resulted in around 100 cameo appearances and the inflation of an ego that is as precariously balanced as the blagged mementoes that are strewn around his unkempt Brooklyn apartment.

Riley B. King was born in the Mississippi hamlet of Itta Bena on 16 September 1925. His father Albert can be heard on the soundtrack recalling what a hardscrabble existence they endured in a cotton plantation shack that leaked whenever it rained. But, as relatives Lessie and John Fair, Clemmie Truevellian and Delcia Davis recall, this was the least of the boy's problems, as his mother Nora died of diabetes when he was young and he had to start work at the age of seven to help out grandmother Elnora, who raised him until he was 14 in the town of Kilmichael. King reckons he had walked around the world by the time he was 18, but it wasn't all back-breaking toil, as he could listen to the phonograph at his Great Aunt Jemima's place (providing he could stand her snuff-flavoured kisses) and he enjoyed lessons at Elkhorn School with teacher Luther Henson, who taught him to look after his body and make the most of his talent.

Daughter Sarah Betty Lou Henson and classmates Carver Randle and Annie Clay look back on this period with great affection and King himself remembers singing with the choir at the Elkhorn Baptist church and hearing the devil's blues being sung by the labourers in the fields. But it was Pastor Archie Fair who gave him his first taste of the electric guitar music that would sustain him after he was forced to live with Albert and his new family in Lexington. Suddenly aware of the prejudice perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan after witnessing some lynch mob justice, King also lived in fear of his father, who never once expressed any love for the son he occasionally called Jack in clumsy bids to be kind. Thus, in 1941, he cycled 50 miles back to Kilmichael and was taken in by farmer Flake Cartledge, who bought him his first guitar.

King was soon singing with the Famous St John's Quartet and learning how to drive a tractor for farmer Johnson Barrett. At the age of 21, he also married Martha Denton, with whom he would spend Saturday nights busking on the streets to make the coppers that would allow them entrance to the downtown juke joints where he heard the music he was now certain he wanted to play. One day, after crashing his tractor, he hitched to Memphis, Tennessee and hooked up with his cousin Bukka White (himself a virtuoso steel guitar player), who introduced him to the musicians on the legendary Beale Street and to WDIA radio personality Rufus Thomas, who let King enter his weekly talent contest so he could win the prizes that kept him alive.

Having popped home to work off the damage he caused to the tractor, King returned to Memphis and spent five years as a DJ on WDIA, the first all-black station in the mid-South, for which he also wrote jingles for products like Pep-ti-Kon tonic. He also made himself known to blues giant Sonny Boy Williamson and earned extra pocket money substituting at gigs he didn't fancy playing. Indeed, he made such an impact on the local scene that he became known as `Blues Boy' and this was soon shortened to plain `B.B.'

In 1949, King cut his first single, `Miss Martha King', for Bullet Records. However, it wasn't a huge success and Joe Bihari persuaded him to record for RPM at the famous Sun Studios, although his first hit, `3 O'Clock Blues' was actually taped at the black YMCA with blankets being fixed too the walls to muffle the echo. Robert Lockwood, Jr. and Robert Henry also began finding King spots with local outfits like the Bill Harvey Band, where he learned the discipline of being a combo player rather than just a frontman and instrumentalist. Moreover, it was around this period that he christened his guitar `Lucille' after he rescued it from a fire in a club that had been caused by two men fighting over a woman of the same name.

Life on the so-called Chittlin' Circuit (which segregation demanded was restricted to black audiences) cost King his first marriage. But, by 1955, he had his own band and tour bus, which he always kept stocked with provisions in case they didn't have time to eat after a gig or were chased out of town by white thugs. Often forced to sleep in flop houses or with friends, the band often found themselves in cheap motels like the Gaston in Birmingham, Alabama, where B.B. found himself in the adjoining room when a bomb attempt was made on the life of Martin Luther King.

Despite new manager Sid Seidenberg taking some of the strain, the demands of the road meant his marriage to 18 year-old Sue Carol Hall lasted just two years. But, as Dr John points out, King knew that there was no point recording great music unless it sold and, even after he signed to the ABC Paramount label in 1962, he maintained a punishing schedule as he sought to refine the influences of Elmo James, Django Reinhardt, Blind Lemon Pie, Robert Johnson and T-Bone Walker into the distinctive style that Carlos Santana calls `the sound of collective consciousness'. However, landmark albums like Live at the Regal (1964) were reinforcing King's status with the British musicians who were about to conquer the States and teach white American audiences about black blues for just about the first time.

John Mayall, Eric Clapton, John Lennon (in voiceover), Ringo Starr, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman and Keith Richards all cite the three kings (B.B., Albert and Freddie) as major influences on their musical development. But, while The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were spreading the blues gospel, King still found it so surprising when white kids like Johnny Winter and Mike Bloomfield showed up at his gigs that he suspected they were cops or IRS agents. But he found the enthusiasm, knowledge and acclaim of white audiences deeply moving and delighted in playing venues that had previously been off limits to African-American artists.

He also revelled in his reputation as a womaniser (and is seen hear joking about it with Solomon Burke). But, as Ringo recalls, it was his musicianship that set most pulses racing, with tracks like `The Thrill Is Gone' revolutionising the blues because producer Bill Szymczyk (who produced the exceptional albums Live & Well and Completely Well, both 1969) insisted on adding some strings. Wyman, Taylor and Richards remember him touring with the Stones in 1969 and being blown away by the subtle shifts in his stage dynamic and his ability to create a vibrato that no one else can emulate. Indeed, later in the piece, numerous talking heads including Bruce Willis agree with Clapton that they could recognised a B.B. King track after just one note because his style is so distinctive.

By the 1970s, rock stars like Leon Russell and Joe Walsh were thrilled to guest on albums like Indianola Mississippi Seeds (1970), while Ringo is still excited at being told his drumming had the precision of a clock while working on B.B. King in London (1971). But he kept striking out in new directions, with Stewart Levine further refining his studio style on Midnight Believer (1978) and Take It Home (1979). However, his biggest hit came in conjunction with U2 on `When Love Comes to Town' in 1988 and footage from the Rattle and Hum documentary is culled to show him rehearsing with the band on stage and informing Bono that he doesn't do chords.

Into the new millennium, King joined Eric Clapton on Riding With the King and he returned from a farewell tour in 2006 to steal the show at Glastonbury in 2011. He presented a guitar to Pope John Paul II and jammed at the White House with Mick Jagger and Barack Obama. Yet, as Joe Walsh suggests that he has redefined age where popular music is concerned, King laments that he has never quite managed to reproduce the sounds he hears in his head when he sets out to play.

Compiled over two years and distilled from over 250 hours of footage, this is the seminal screen portrait of the `King of the Blues', who has packed some 15,000 gigs and 70 albums (selling of over 40 million worldwide) into a career that has spanned seven decades. Making astute use of archive material to illustrate King's youth, Jon Brewer expertly captures the harsh social, economic and cultural conditions that King and his contemporaries had to overcome to get their music heard and it feels like arriving in the Promised Land when the film is finally taken over by clips of concerts and TV interviews. The high regard in which King is held by the 60s brigade is charming to behold and the sincerity of their praise is beyond question. Indeed, the majority of the participants seem grateful for the opportunity to extend their thanks rather than blow smoke in turning the anecdotal spotlight upon themselves. As a result, this is as engaging as it is informative and it undoubtedly ranks among the best musidocs of the year.

For the record, the others in this chorus of approval are Allan Hammons (from the B.B. King Museum), Reverend David Matthews, Bobby Bland, Cadillac John Nolden, Walter Trout, Wayne and Jo Cartledge, biographer Charles Sawyer, Charles Evers (brother of Civil Rights martyr Medgar Evers), Ford Nelson, Buddy Guy, Calvin Owens, Cato Walker III, Polly Walker, Ernest Withers, Aaron Neville, Derek Trucks, Billy Boy Arnold, George Benson, Ronnie Wood, Mick Hucknall, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Doyle Bramhall II, Joe Bonamassa, Paul Rodgers, Susan Tedeschi, Tina France, LaVerne Toney, Bonnie Raitt, Bernard Purdie, James Toney and Slash.

By contrast, Radioman is one of the most frustrating actualities of 2012. Director Mary Kerr is to be congratulated for unearthing such a unique individual as the eponymous ligger and it is fascinating to watch the confidence he exudes while interacting with some of the biggest stars in contemporary cinema. But Kerr is too often content merely to observe and, consequently, she fails to ask the idols why they are so relaxed around such a determinedly eccentric character and to press Radioman about his reasons for pursuing such an idiosyncratic lifestyle and why he considers himself to be so gifted while his fellow extras are worthy only of his contempt.

First seen cycling up to the set of Brett Ratner's crime caper Tower Heist, Radioman quickly announces himself as an extrovert with a pronounced sense of self-entitlement. He is peevish when denied access to locations, but parades goodies taken from the snack wagon as though he is a loveable rogue who has wandered in from the confines of The Fisher King. Ironically, Robin Williams is among the many actors to proclaim their affection for this scruffy, grey-bearded chancer with a mini-boombox hanging around his neck and Kerr follows his testimony with equally effusive (if sometimes cursory) soundbites from George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Josh Brolin, Sting and Trudi Styler, Shia LaBeouf, Steven Soderbergh, Meryl Streep and Joel Schumacher, who gushes that Radioman deserves to stand alongside the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building as symbols of the Big Apple.

Dressed in old clothes and often looking dishevelled, he is affronted when people offer him charity while he is sitting outside a TV studio or a premiere venue and yet he thinks nothing of stuffing his pockets with food and freebies whenever the opportunity presents itself. Kerr asks Radio (whose real name could be either Craig Castaldo or Craig Schwartz) if he is playing a character or being himself and he dodges the question by insisting he is himself and that no one else could play him. Such a response is typical of this undeniably intelligent man's resistance to conformity and his insistence on doing things on his own terms. But no matter how genial he may be in the flesh, the camera emphasises his more abrasive and resistible characteristics and a little Radioman soon seems to go a long way.

Given the image of film folk as self-serving egotists who hide behind their PRs and bodyguards, it's surprising to see how many are so willing to stop and shoot the breeze. The likes of Clooney, Williams, Johnny Depp and Paul Giamatti seem to admire Radio's blend of chutzpah and banality, as though contact with such an obviously ordinary bloke keeps their own feet a little closer to the ground. They also appear to get a kick out of him landing background roles in such pictures as Snake Eyes, Godzilla (both 1998), Miss Congeniality (2000), Two Weeks Notice, Enchanted, Jersey Girl (all 2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), with Williams even joking that he has a more impressive resumé than his own.

But there is an alarming lack of self-awareness when Radioman proclaims that it's no accident that the overwhelming majority of the films in which he appears (often as a speck in the blurry distance) go on to make pots of money. Similarly, his conceitedness in explaining that he is a natural who instinctively understands direction cannot simply be dismissed as harmless prattle. It would be fine to confide that he relishes the sense of fulfilment he derives from cycling through the park for a scene in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. But to claim that he is an improvisatory character actor while dismissing as talentless schmucks those cheering in a crowd outside the United Nations for The Dictator is both delusional and disturbing.

The reasons for these traits clearly lie in the fact that Radio spent much of the money he didn't have the happiest of childhoods and felt such an outsider while working for the New York Post Office that he became an alcoholic and used to sleep beneath Pennsylvania Station during a prolonged period of homelessness. He now lives in his mother's old apartment, which he has crammed with memorabilia he cannot bear to throw away because it represents the success story he has become since conquering his demons after blundering on to the set of Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) and offering Bruce Willis a beer because he thought he was a fellow hobo.

After he was discovered drunk on the sets of Backdraft and The Fisher King (both 1991), Radio was arrested and taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was restrained and fed Thorazine until he proved he wasn't insane and he has been dry ever since. Given this monumental struggle, videographer Larry Holzer, crew member Vince Burns and drivers Herb Lieberz and Jeff Kaplan have every right to unite in declaring him a fine fellow and Clooney and Williams are fully entitled to smile on recalling the appalling Irish accent Radio used to employ to make himself seem more endearingly rascally when he first began to gab his way past the bouncers and into the magical land where movies are made.

But Kerr tellingly follows this heart-rending account by showing Radioman ranting at his rivals filming The Dictator and it's ironic that he encounters Extras creator Ricky Gervais (who, like James Gandolfini, seems less enchanted than most) shortly after he declares that he has earned the right to have a few more lines like the ones he delivered in Little Nicky (2000), Keeping the Faith (2001) and Mr Deeds (2002). And this fixation with his own achievements resurfaces when Matt Damon chats about his contribution to the Bourne movies, only for Radio to say he prefers working with a genuine superstar like Leonardo DiCaprio on The Departed (2005) and Shutter Island (2010), which were made by his favourite director, Martin Scorsese, who persuaded him to shave off his beard for his blink-and-miss-him moment in the latter.

Robin Williams finds it amusing that Radio calls Scorsese `Marty' when he would struggle to get a meeting with him and Tilda Swinton thinks it's adorable that he has such a grasp on the communality of film-making. But he is less than respectful of Sandra Bullock's personal space when pressing up against her in a fan scrum and his disdainful dismissal of Robert Pattinson's talent before they share a cell scene in Remember Me goes way beyond the odds shouting of an impish goofball. Thus, it's hard to find anything quaint about his excitement at being given a tiny trailer cubicle in which to wait until his scene is ready to shoot and few will feel much sympathy with him (after he makes a point of loitering outside Pattinson's trailer to bid an ostentatious farewell) when his hammed-up in-joke line (in which he yells through the bars that he should be treated better because he is buddies with De Niro and Scorsese) fails to make the final cut.

This growing weariness with Radioman's antics continues as he gets himself measured up for a tuxedo so he can attend the Academy Awards. He avers that his presence in Los Angeles will brighten up the day for his many movie friends and prove to them that he is not an opportunist or just another fan by showing them how much he cares. The feeling is scarcely reciprocated, however, after he checks into the Vagabond Inn, hires a bicycle and heads into Tinseltown. Frozen out of the Independent Spirit Awards (where Richard Jenkins manages as half-hearted greeting), he is roundly ignored by Ron Howard, Matthew Broderick, Penelope Cruz and Ben Stiller as they leave the CAA party and he is reduced to shouting that they need to remember who they are before skulking home to the goodies he had bought earlier at a 99c store.

On Oscar day itself, Radio scrubs up nicely and looks very dapper in his DJ. But he has no cachet in LA and he is once again reduced to bellowing from the bleachers at distant celebs and fast-disappearing cars and he is forced to return to his room to watch the ceremony on television. A cheap gag at host Hugh Jackman's expense sets the tone for the charade that ensues, as he plays the luvvie in blowing kisses to a victorious Kate Winslet and screams abuse at Sean Penn for pipping his choice Mickey Rourke to Best Actor.

Next day, he appears no more amiable as he sneers at the paparazzi, whom he deems leeches along with the memorabilia collectors and autograph hunters. Naturally, he excludes himself from this gaggle of exploiters and hangers-on, as he has a proper relationship with the stars having worked with them. And to prove his point, he plays a conversation he had off camera earlier in the morning with Cher and, for the first time in the entire picture, a hint of a self-deprecating smile appears in the corner of his mouth and one is left wondering whether he is simply after all playing a game with which Helen Mirren, Whoopi Goldberg, Eva Mendes, Alfred Molina, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law (on the set of Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) are happy to go along - as when asked if he has any advice for the audience, he urges them to follow their dream as anything is possible.

Closing with Tina Fey linking into five of Radioman's speaking cameos from 30 Rock, this is a film that leaves so many questions unanswered that it is puzzling why Kerr kept her edit down to just over an hour when she could surely have utilised the extra 20-odd minutes to get to the bottom of this freewheeling (and often freeloading) enigma. Is he merely a lucky mascot for New York productions or does he really have a common touch that jolts millionaires into remembering the streets from whence they came? Could he handle more than the odd line and what do his fellow extras think of him? We shall probably never know and it almost certainly doesn't matter. But to have had such access to such a singular personality and have put up such a feeble fight in trying to get past his carefully mounted defences seems such a waste.