PATRIOTS DAY (15, 133 mins) Thriller/Action/Romance. Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, Michelle Monaghan, JK Simmons, Alex Wolff, Themo Melikidze, Jimmy O Yang, Vincent Curatola, Michael Beach. Director: Peter Berg.

Released: February 23 (UK & Ireland)

Director Peter Berg and leading man Mark Wahlberg previously collaborated on the testosterone-fuelled action thrillers Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon.

They draw inspiration from another harrowing true story of heroism for this gripping race against time.

Patriots Day introduces a fictional character into the heart of real-life terrorism - the bombing of the 2013 Boston marathon - to pay rousing and sometimes overblown tribute to the men and women who risked their lives in the name of justice.

The script's queasy conflation of fact and artistic licence runs the risk of glamorizing the hunt for the perpetrators.

We become completely immersed in the investigation as it gathers pace, culminating in a shootout on the city streets.

Vehicles explode, hundreds of bullets scythe through the air, transforming a sleepy nook of suburban Massachusetts into a flaming, debris-strewn war zone.

It's certainly a pulse-quickening, edge-of-seat rendering of a senseless act that made headlines around the world.

On the morning of April 15, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex Wolff) and his brother Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze) head into Boston with homemade bombs concealed in rucksacks.

They move into the thick crowds of spectators thronging the marathon course, drop the bags and move to safety before detonating the devices in quick succession near the finish line.

Hundreds of people are injured in the blasts.

"We've got to decide who's running this and we've got to decide quickly," Deval Patrick (Michael Beach), the Governor of Massachusetts, tells Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis (John Goodman) and the assembled responders.

"It's terrorism, we'll take it!" responds FBI Special Agent Richard DesLauriers (Kevin Bacon) as he discovers fragments of a bomb at the scene.

Sergeant Tommy Saunders (Wahlberg) and his wife Carol (Michelle Monaghan), a registered nurse, are on the front line during the subsequent man hunt.

Their resolves are tested along with Boston's mayor Thomas Menino (Vincent Curatola) and other figures in public office including Police Sergeant Jeffrey Pugliese (JK Simmons).

Meanwhile, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan steal a car belonging to student Dun Meng (Jimmy O Yang), which they intend to drive to New York to carry out more atrocities.

Patriots Day seamlessly blends footage shot by witnesses, who were in Boston that day, with grainy reconstructions to document events before the explosions up to the point that one of the suspects is found hiding inside a boat.

Berg's bombastic approach to action sequences sets our pulses racing and he effortlessly holds us in a vice-like grip for more than two hours, even if we know the chain of events from news coverage.

Wahlberg portrays another steadfast all-American hero, who refuses to let anyone harm the city he loves.

The voices of real-life survivors and officers reverberate over the end credits, hammering home the true valour and sacrifice behind the expensive Hollywood pyrotechnics.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 7/10

A CURE FOR WELLNESS (18, 146 mins) Thriller/Fantasy/Horror/Romance. Dane DeHaan, Jason Isaacs, Mia Goth, Celia Imrie, Harry Groener, Ivo Nandi. Director: Gore Verbinski.

Released: February 24 (UK & Ireland)

Gore Verbinski, director of the opening three salvos of the Pirates Of The Caribbean series and Rango, slinks into bonkers territory usually inhabited by Tim Burton and Wes Anderson in this unsettling and achingly stylish psychological thriller.

Set predominately in a spa located in the Swiss Alps, A Cure For Wellness casts an intoxicating spell with its deliberately off-kilter camerawork, hallucinogenic set pieces and discordant orchestral score composer by Benjamin Wallfisch.

It's an impressive amalgamation of colour-bleached production design and slow-burning suspense reminiscent of the high-altitude madness of The Shining.

Alas, a sustained build-up of tension dissipates in a ludicrous final act that repeatedly chooses cheap, salacious shocks over plausibility, leaving a nasty taste in the mouth at the very moment we should be smacking our lips with glee.

An excessive, self-indulgent running time certainly doesn't help the medicine go down and scriptwriter Justin Haythe, who recently worked with Verbinski on the ill-fated remake of The Lone Ranger, repeatedly falls back on horror movie cliches as punchlines to his artfully contrived weirdness.

Ambitious executive Lockhart (Dane DeHaan) gains rapid promotion when a colleague suffers a fatal heart attack.

He is summoned to the boardroom on the 70th floor where senior staff reveal CEO Roland Pembroke (Harry Groener) has disappeared to an Alpine spa at a crucial juncture in a business deal.

"Who the hell takes waters in the 21st century anyway?" growls one disgruntled board member.

They need Lockhart to bring Pembroke back to New York to sign off a hugely profitable merger.

As instructed, Lockhart travels by train to Switzerland and heads into the mountains by car.

"There's always been bad blood between the villagers and the people on the hill," ominously remarks a taxi driver (Ivo Nandi) as Lockhart sweeps into the driveway of a picture postcard facility masterminded by director Dr Volmer (Jason Isaacs).

Before Lockhart can return to company HQ, the high-flyer is involved in an accident and suffers a broken leg.

He agrees to recuperate at the spa and sample the "uniquely rejuvenating properties" of the aquifer in the catacombs.

Mingling with other clientele, including history buff Victoria Watkins (Celia Imrie), Lockhart learns about the facility's macabre past and he is inextricably drawn to a quixotic girl (Mia Goth).

A Cure For Wellness is a fantastical yarn that promises far more than it delivers.

DeHaan, Isaacs and Goth deliver ambiguous performances to stoke the air of mystery that surrounds the spa and its residents.

They are ultimately undone by the stomach-churning method in the film's madness and bold narrative strokes that wouldn't seem out of place in the Gothic grandeur of the Hammer Horror output of the 1960s.

The film's ambition and scope are admirable, but no picture, especially one this sprawling, can flourish principally on the heady fumes of directorial brio.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 5/10

WITHIN (15, 88 mins) Thriller/Horror/Romance. Michael Vartan, Nadine Velazquez, Erin Moriarty, Ronnie Gene Blevins, JoBeth Williams, Blake Jenner. Director: Phil Claydon.

Released: February 24 (UK & Ireland)

Directed with a heavy hand by Phil Claydon, Within is a hoary haunted house thriller that lacks scares, suspense or ingenuity.

Screenwriter Gary Dauberman telegraphs his intentions so far in advance that when the terrified home owners finally piece together the glaringly obvious clues, we greet their moment of wide-eyed realisation with snorts of derision.

Indeed, there are more unintentional giggles than spine-chilling jolts, like when a bespectacled tyke casually blurts out to the film's teenage heroine, "You know how every neighbourhood has that one creepy house? Well, you're living in it!"

The protagonists at the centre of this suburban nightmare behave recklessly and repeatedly put themselves in harm's way so it's impossible to muster compassion or concern for them when the blood-letting begins in earnest.

Production values look cheap and during 88 plodding minutes, director Claydon choreographs a solitary memorable sequence: a lingering shot of the teenage daughter's face, caught in the reflection of a glass-fronted kitchen unit, as something unspeakable emerges from the darkness behind her.

John Alexander (Michael Vartan) and his wife Melanie (Nadine Velazquez) move into a new home with their truculent daughter, Hannah (Erin Moriarty), who is less than thrilled about relocating during her senior year, far from her boyfriend Tommy (Blake Jenner).

"It feels like I've gone from house arrest to solitary confinement," sulks the teenager, who is grounded for two months as punishment for throwing a drunken party while her parents were out.

Her only allies in unfamiliar surroundings are the family cat and a kindly neighbour called Mrs Fletcher (JoBeth Williams).

John foolishly asks creepy locksmith, Ray Walsh (Ronnie Gene Blevins), to secure the new property.

"Tell Mr Alex not to worry about any payment just yet," Ray tells Melanie and Hannah with a lascivious grin. "You can owe me!"

Soon after, Hannah senses that someone has been in her bedroom and moved her possessions including a talking stuffed bear.

More strange occurrences - a dresser moving in the dead of night, photographs falling off the wall, peculiar rasping noises in the air vents - stoke Hannah's creeping dread and she revolves to discover the shocking secret of her apparently haunted home.

A box of news clippings, conveniently located in the garage, tips the wink to the tragic history of the previous owners.

Within unfolds predictably, without a smouldering ember of dramatic tension.

Moriarty struggles in vain to conjure sympathy for her misbehaving minx, who smuggles her boyfriend into her room and drinks alcohol underage, yet expects to be believed when she spouts outlandish tales about mysterious intruders in her bedroom.

Vartan and Velazquez are instantly forgettable while Blevins compensates by overacting wildly as the pantomime villain to keep us from succumbing to yawns of boredom.

He fails.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 4/10