Capsule reviews for Jan. 17

Disturbing the Peace

A recombination of throwback genre elements fails to yield anything fresh or exciting in this morally ambiguous crime thriller about a former Texas Ranger (Guy Pearce) with a chance at redemption for a past tragedy. He’s now a small-town sheriff with a passion for justice but a disdain for firearms. He’s forced to put that aside when a ruthless criminal (Devon Sawa) rolls his biker gang into town with violent intentions and sinister motives. Pearce might save the day, but he can’t rescue the movie, a tedious and predictable series of Wild West-style confrontations that never generates much consistent suspense within its confined setting. (Rated R, 91 minutes).

Feedback

You need to suspend your disbelief to an extreme degree in order to find the morally complex center of this British revenge thriller that generates enough suspense to mask its outrageous contrivances. Jarvis (Eddie Marsan) is a controversial radio talk-show host whose show is targeted by armed intruders at the studio. They’re seeking vengeance for a past indiscretion involving Jarvis and his co-host (Paul Anderson), and leave no means of escape until their demands are met. Marsan’s portrayal and the film’s tense intimacy manage to keep a rather thin idea afloat at feature length, even if it’s ultimately difficult to sympathize with Jarvis or his ideology. (Not rated, 97 minutes).

The Host

In its somewhat admirable quest to try something different, this British thriller winds up more confusing than intriguing. It’s essentially a horror movie disguised as a noir-like mystery about a London banker (Mike Beckingham) who steals money, then runs afoul of some Chinese gangsters, and desperately accepts a deal to transport a briefcase to a femme fatale (Maryan Hassouni) in Amsterdam. When secrets are revealed, everybody’s lives are threatened. The screenplay indulges an abundance of convoluted twists and turns that never pay off in the end. And the actors aren’t magnetic enough to overcome those narrative flaws by providing incentive to care about the wild outcome. (Rated R, 102 minutes).

Intrigo: Death of an Author

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to adapting literary works for the big screen, although this muddled story of emotionally troubled writers might have benefited from a more straightforward translation. As the first of three films from Swedish director Daniel Alfredson (The Girl Who Played With Fire) based on Hakan Nesser’s Intrigo book series, it centers on a novelist (Benno Furmann) relaying his latest murder mystery — about a man who thought he’d killed his wife, only to learn otherwise — to a famous author (Ben Kingsley) for feedback. Despite some clever twists, these intercut stories bog down in dense narration and tangled perspective, diminishing the emotional impact. (Rated R, 106 minutes).

VHYes

Those of a certain age will find this retro comedy hits a certain nostalgic sweet spot, even if its fragmented nature becomes frustrating. Rookie director Jack Henry Robbins — son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon — appropriately shot his ambitious debut entirely on VHS. In 1987, a 12-year-old boy (Mason McNulty) loves the new camcorder he got for Christmas, except that when he accidentally records over his parents’ wedding video, it unleashes a spiral of bizarre clips from the analog era, from infomercials to newscasts to soft-core pornography to cable-access oddities. Robbins finds some quirky laughs, but his more heartfelt intentions are obscured by the haphazard assembly. (Not rated, 72 minutes).