Roxanne, with Steve Martin, is a modern-day Cyrano de Bergerac

Roxanne, the 1987 film starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, revisits an endearing 17th-century figure.

Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah in scene from film Roxanne.

The second film to win the Sydney Film Prize, bestowed by a jury selected by that metropolis’s venerable film festival, was director Nicholas Winding Refn’s explosive 2009 true-crime drama Bronson (Sunday, 7.55pm, World Movies).

The then unknown Tom Hardy is malevolently magnetic as a British prisoner whose violent tirades kept him in solitary confinement for the better part of three decades. Thankfully, the film spends less time in the cell with him and more in his fevered dreams of bizarre stardom. Winding Refn went on direct the critical darling Drive, while Hardy inherited the Mad Max mantle and will essay a pair of notoriously ruthless gangsters, the Krays, in the upcoming Legend.

In Hollywood’s heyday, the Warner Bros studios developed a reputation for gritty, socially aware dramas that lived at the far end of the spectrum from typical glossy entertainment. That reputation was built in part on the success of director Mervyn LeRoy’s 1932 cautionary tale I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Friday, 5pm, TCM). It is based on a true story and stars Oscar-nominated Paul Muni as the unjustly incarcerated World War I veteran whose escape from the titular hellhole forces him into a life of duplicitousness and apprehension. The film was a popular as well as social success, spurring reform in the way such primitive penal institutions were administered.

For those who think “they don’t make ‘em like that any more”, while remembering quiet, intense and cryptic dramatic thrillers circa the 1970s, there’s a tonic in the form of actor Sean Penn’s third directorial effort, the mysterious and involving 2001 thriller The Pledge (Saturday, 8.30pm, Thriller Movies). The film is based on Swiss author Friedrich Durrenmatt’s 1958 novel and critique of the genre, The Pledge: Requiem for the Detective Novel. Jack Nicholson, in Chinatown-ish befuddled mode, plays a newly retired police detective whose investigation into the murder of a child proves provocative and, giving away nothing in terms of plot or intention, fruitless. The sublime supporting cast includes Penn’s ex and House of Cards co-star Robin Wright (Penn).

Among the best films on the resumes of actor-comedian Steve Martin or versatile, Melbourne-born director Fred Schepisi is their delightful 1987 romantic comedy collaboration Roxanne (Thursday, 12.50pm, Comedy Movies). Penned by the star himself, the story features him as a small-town American fire chief with a prominent proboscis who eventually wins the heart of the title newcomer (Daryl Hannah). If this sounds suspiciously like a reboot of the 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac, well, it is, down to an achingly funny modernisation of the so-called “20-Nose Insult”, delivered here by Martin to a critical aggressor in a packed pub.

Roxanne (PG) 4 stars

Thursday, 12.50pm, Comedy Movies (407)

The Pledge (MA15+) 4 stars

Saturday, 8.30pm, Thriller Movies (409)

I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (PG) 3.5 stars

Friday, 5pm, TCM (428)