The Lost City is Channing Tatum’s best performance to date

The Lost City is Channing Tatum’s best performance to date, especially for the scenes where he has to man-up to Brad Pitt.

Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum star in The Lost City

The Lost City (M)
In cinemas
★★★½

Are all films made for the same artistic reason or directed at the same audience? Of course not. So when it comes to deciding between one and five stars I remember that not every movie is, or wants to be, The Godfather.

With that in mind, the action-adventure romantic comedy The Lost City is close to a four-star film. It is lighthearted, over-the-top, well-acted, well-scripted entertainment from first frame until last.

It is Channing Tatum’s best performance to date, especially for the scenes where he has to man-up to Brad Pitt, who has an extended cameo role that is more than worth the price of entry.

Will it win Oscars? No. Will it be copied by other filmmakers? Perhaps, which would add to its cheekiness, as it owes an obvious debt to the 1984 Michael Douglas-Kathleen Turner action-adventure romantic comedy Romancing the Stone and its 1985 sequel The Jewel of the Nile.

The central connection comes via the female lead, a best-selling romance novelist less lucky in love than her characters who suddenly finds herself living one of her rhapsodic, melodramatic novels.

This time it is Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock), who is about to launch her latest historical novel, The Lost City of D. It stars, as the fans demand, her macho hero Dash McMahon.

She is reclusive and lives alone. We learn that her husband, an archaeologist, has been dead for five years. This marital connection is important. Loretta does her research into ancient worlds, even if the end result, to use her word, is “schlock”.

This 112-minute movie is directed by American brothers Adam and Aaron Nee, who have fun riffing on other people’s work. Their previous feature, Band of Robbers (2015), is a crime comedy that puts Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in a modern setting.

The book launch scene sets up the comic possibilities. Loretta is joined on stage by Alan Caprison (Tatum), the model – or, as she puts it, “body wash commercial” – who poses for her covers. As far as the fans are concerned they are in the same room as Dash McMahon. They do not ask if the Lost City was real and might still exist. They scream at the author to “rip off Dash’s shirt”.

Her agent, Jo Randolph (Da’Vine), tells her to “give the people what they want”. However, there is one fan who believes the Lost City is not only real but an untapped treasure trove: billionaire criminal Abigail Fairfax (a brilliant Daniel Radcliffe, who immediately explains the name Abigail). He kidnaps Loretta – “Am I tooken?” she asks in a nod to the Liam Neeson thrillers – puts her on his private jet and heads for what he believes is the Lost City, where he needs her help to find a priceless ornament.

This is where people tracker and all-round action man Jack Trainer (Pitt) comes in. Alan, who more or less thinks he is Dash, hires Jack to find Loretta. “I’ll have her back in 48 hours or your next rescue is free,” Jack promises. The scenes between Tatum and Pitt are a more-please highlight. They show, in a deliberate way, that there’s Pitt and then there’s everyone else. It’s also a pleasure to see him tapping into his comic side, which we will see a lot more of in his next film, David Leitch’s Bullet Train, due in July.

Once Jack is on the job we move into full action-adventure romantic comedy mode: Jack, Dash, Loretta in a purple sequin jumpsuit, a mad billionaire named Abigail in a three-piece white suit, GI Joe mercenaries, a Lost City, snakes, lots of jungle. It’s so much fun and the end credits scene is worth sticking around for.

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All The Old Knives (MA15+)
Amazon Prime
★★★½

The tense, thrilling espionage thriller All the Old Knives opens with a horrific moment that, in the end, is the easiest part to untangle from a thickening web of intrigue.

A Turkish passenger jet, about to take off from Vienna international airport, is taken over by four jihadists. They shoot dead a female flight attendant in the middle of the aisle.

They herd the children into first class to use them as a human shield. They demand the release of jailed Islamic terrorists in Austria and Germany.

The CIA agents at Vienna Station, headed by Vick Wallinger (Laurence Fishburne), move into action. The main field operative, a bit of a CIA wunderkind who started his career in Moscow, is Henry Pelham (Chris Pine). He’s in a passionate relationship with a fellow agent, Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton).

It is December 2012. This heart-racing opening is the backstory. The hostage crisis on the airport tarmac goes as badly as it can go. “We’ve been blaming ourselves ever since,” Pelham admits later on.

Fast forward eight years, and Wallinger and Pelham are in a secluded room, looking through top-secret files and drinking scotch.

Wallinger, still the boss, says CIA headquarters has decided it is “time to close the books on Flight 127 once and for all”. In particular, “we need to find out if we had a mole in our station”.

When Pelham asks what he, the man in the field, needs to do, Wallinger replies, “We can’t afford the embarrassment of a prosecution.” Pelham looks at him and asks, “Are you going to say it?” Wallinger swirls the scotch in his glass and says, “No, Henry, I am not.”

This superb opening sets the scene: Pelham is to reinvestigate the case, find out if a CIA mole was involved and, if so, eliminate the possibility of that person being brought to trial.

Or so we think. As with any good spy thriller, every question answered leads to 10 more being asked. There is deceit and lies. Everyone has more than one face, which is coincidentally funny as the director is Danish filmmaker Janus Metz Pedersen.

This movie is based on the 2009 novel by American writer Olen Steinhauer, who wrote the script. He also created the riveting TV series Berlin Station (2016-19), also about the CIA.

The title comes from the first century Roman fabulist Phaedrus: “All the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours.”

This perfectly fits what unfolds. If someone holds a knife to your throat, there’s a chance you will see them. Knives in the back are a different matter.

The main mole suspects are Harrison, now married, with two young daughters, and living in California, and the then deputy chief at Vienna Station, Bill Compton (Jonathan Pryce).

Pelham tracks down and confronts his former superior and his ex-lover. “That’s ancient history,” Compton says. “It was,” Pelham agrees, “and then it wasn’t.”

The back-and-forth between them, in a London pub, is brilliant, as are the longer scenes between the CIA lovers.

When he looks at her elegant neck, memories return, and perhaps uncomfortable new thoughts arise.

“You are the only girl in this town for me, C,” he says, after the waitress semi-flirts with him. It feels nostalgic and chilling at the same time.

This is a first-rate 101-minute whodunit that is all about the “who?” until we learn the “why?”. The answer to the first question is a shock. The answer to the second comes with a spectacular, harrowing twist that will make you rethink everything you decided beforehand.

Thandiwe Newton and Chris Pine in All the Old Knives, a first-rate whodunit