Hot on the trail

This week's DVD releases are dominated by The Proposition, John Hillcoat's masterful Australian western that was penned by dour musician Nick Cave. Other releases include a collection of Errol Morris's best work and the off-beat offering of Romance &£038; Cigarettes from John Turturro

The Proposition
Tartan Video, 18, £19.99
*****

The collaboration between director John Hillcoat and musician-turned-screenwriter Nick Cave produced The Proposition, a darkly lyrical Aussie Western that lingers in the mind like a bloodstain on parched ground. In a raw, 19th-century outback town, police chief Stanley (Ray Winstone) sets a thief to catch a thief. After the massacre of a farming family, he rounds up two members of the Burns gang, believed responsible, and gives Charlie (Guy Pearce) a choice: track down his fugitive older brother Arthur (Danny Huston, amazing) or see his fragile younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson) die. So Charlie sets out after his poetic psychopath sibling. Cave's screenplay doesn't focus on Charlie's dilemma: this is a quest but one that broadens out to incorporate both the politics of the panting, brutal town and the abiding love between Stanley and his wife (Emily Watson), which contributes an unlikely tenderness to this powerful story.

Extras: A whole disc-full, including lengthy making-of doc, interviews with Huston and Pearce and director commentary.

The Errol Morris Collection
Optimum Releasing, 15, £34.99
****

Amazingly, The Errol Morris Collection appears to be Morris's first DVD outing in this country, with the exception of the recent The Fog Of War. Even his best-known doc, The Thin Blue Line, a funny yet frightening delve into the horrors of the US justice system that was credited with overturning its subject's murder conviction, hasn't been released before. Here, it's accompanied by the two films that preceded it. Morris's 1980 debut, Gates Of Heaven, tracks two pet cemetery founders; the following year's Vernon, Florida depicts that town's eccentric citizens. But neither of these descriptions even begins to cover the truths - about people, places and commercial and social realities - that Morris's skilful technique uncovers. He is a master - although sadly not, it appears, one keen to supplement his work with extra material.

Extras: None.

Romance &£038; Cigarettes
Warner Home Video, 15, £16.99
***

With producing encouragement from the Coen brothers, for whom he is a regular cast member, John Turturro directed Romance &£038; Cigarettes, a wacky, somewhat hit-and-miss musical satire of the whole guys 'n' dolls genre. Nick Murder (James Gandolfini) has stubble, a dodgy surname and a profound nicotine addiction, but all this pales into insignificance beside his real problem: Tula (Kate Winslet), a pneumatic pseudo-Carmen who is blithely and inadvertently ruining Nick's marriage to Kitty (Susan Sarandon). Is it love? Is it lust? And how is Nick going to survive it, or his irate spouse's intended vengeance? The songs vary from Dusty Springfield to Bruce Springsteen and the plot varies from unlikely to ridiculous but there are lovely moments, accentuated by a great supporting cast that includes Steve Buscemi, Eddie Izzard and Mary-Louise Parker. Yet Turturro lacks the directorial flamboyance to pull off the combination of a tawdry tale of New York working-class marital misery with wild sing-song.

Extras: None.

The Elephant Boy
Network, PG, £9.9
***

Sabu was a 12-year-old stable boy to a maharaja when celebrated Nanook Of The North director Robert Flaherty - in India in 1937 to film his only complete work of fiction - discovered him and cast him as The Elephant Boy in this sweet fantasy based on a Kipling story. Toomai (Sabu) loses his father to a tiger but longs nonetheless to be a proper hunter. He saves a rampaging elephant, finds the secret place where the herd dances and becomes a true hunter - most of which is just a flimsy excuse for a lot of fabulous elephant footage, shot by the greatest documentary maker of the era.

Extras: None.