"La Haine" (18), Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin UCI Tallaght.

One of the most exciting developments on the international film festival circuit last year was the emergence of several multi talented and award winning filmmakers, all aged 27 and doubling as actors in their own movies. Last January, first prize at the Sundance festival in the US went to Edward Burns as the writer, star and director of The Brothers McMullen, already released here.

At Cannes in May two of the major prizes went to young French directors, each represented by their second feature films. The Prix du Jury went to the gifted actor, writer and director, Xavier Beauvois, for the risk taking and thought provoking N'Oublie Pas Que Tu Vas Mourir (Don't Forget You're Going to Die) which is unlikely to get past the censor here or in Britain because of its sexual candour.

The Cannes award for best director went to another 27 year old Frenchman writer, film editor and director Mathieu Kassovitz, who also plays a supporting role (as a fascist skinhead) in La Haine (Hate). Kassovitz and his cast were cheered wildly by the audience at the movie's Cannes premiere, but there was a markedly different reaction from the security police as Kassovitz and his team emerged from the screening earlier that day at his press conference. Kassovitz had emphasised that his film was firmly anti police and the police in Cannes pointedly turned their backs on him and his team as they made their way down the red carpeted steps of the Festival Palais.

Its scenario triggered by the death of a 17 year old Arab shot in the head during police questioning in Paris in 1993 La Haine went on to become the most controversial and one of the most widely seen movies in France last year, and it became such a burning issue that the prime minister, Alain Juppe, ordered his cabinet to attend a private screening of the film.

This provocative picture, shot in arresting black and white images, follows 24 hours in the lives of three unemployed young men from a run down Paris housing project, when they learn that a friend, a 16 year old second generation Arab boy, has been beaten senseless by the police during interrogation. One of the young men, Vinz (Vincent Cassel) is a hot headed Jewish skinhead another is the streetwise Arab, Said (Said Taghmaoui) and the third, and the most level headed of them, is Hubert (Hubert Kounde), a black bodybuilder and would be boxer.

Kassovitz's episodically structured film follows them through a series of incidents, minor and significant during the course of a day we know is going to be crucial we know this because Vinz has a gun a weapon mislaid by one of the police during the previous night's rioting. In the movie's most unsettling scene, Hubert and Said are subjected to systematic police brutality while a new police recruit looks on in shock. In the movie's most striking sequence. Kassovitz's camera soars in a helicopter shot over the housing estate as a dance mix of La Vie en Rose and an anti cop rap chant soars on the soundtrack.

On screen time checks heighten the escalating tension in the searing, angry and accomplish film which clearly signals a remarkable film making discovery in Mathieu Kassovitz, whose visual style is visceral and restless. In its gritty black and white realism, the movie recalls the early work of Godard and Truffaut however, its contemporary resonances are not the work of Carax, Besson or Beineix, but recent American cinema and specifically, the similarly themed and equally impassioned Boyz `N' the Hood and Do the Right Thing, and most explicitly, Taxi Driver, which is evoked when Vinz performs Travis Bickel's "You talkin' at me?" monologue to a mirror.

One minor drawback is the distracting Americanised subtitling, clearly aimed at the US market and going to such extremes as to change a drug dealer's nickname from Asterix to Snoopy.

Helen Meany adds ...

"The Run of the Country" (15s) Savoy, Virgin, Dublin.

Despite three deaths, sectarian violence and a miscarriage a generous helping of trauma for any sensitive adolescent there's a lassitude about this Peter Yates film which meanders along like the gentle Cavan landscape it so lovingly depicts. We're in Border country during one fateful summer when an 18 year old school leaver, Danny (Malt Keeslar), bereft by the sudden death of his mother, is brought into conflict with his bullying Garda father (Albert Finney). Running away from home, he enjoys the first tastes of freedom with his wild friend Prunty (Anthony Brophy) and of love with a girl from north of the Border, Annagh Lee (Victoria Smurfit).

Part of the problem is Shane Connaughton's embarrassingly self conscious script, which he adapted from his novel of the same title, set in the 1950s. The film is intended to be set in the present day, but close scrutiny of clothes and haircuts was required before ascertaining the period. The bungey jumping scene finally clinched it, without managing to dispel the sense of anachronism that clung, in particular, to the courtship of Danny and Annagh, and her family's determination to pack her off to England to separate the young couple. Had it been left in the 1950s it might have worked better the air of tragic determinism would have had more justification.

We're left with a highly uneven film, which features some good performances Albert Finney, who also played a policeman in Connaughton's The Playboys, manages to bring sympathy and depth to a thoroughly unlikable character, while Anthony Brophy simply shines as Prunty, the boozing, gambling, cock fighting lad with a brilliant lob sided grin and restless energy. But, overloaded with symbolism and marred by a glossy stage Irishness, it is a disappointing effort which compares unfavourably with Cathal Black's Korea, with which it shares many themes.

"The War" (12s), Virgin, Dublin, UCI Coolock, Tallaght, Omniplex, Santry

The deep American wound of the Vietnam War is probed again in Jon Avnet's family drama set in rural Mississipi in 1970, which explores the impact of a war veteran's post traumatic stress on his two children. Kevin Costner is deeply earnest as the father (Stephen) who returns to his family and tries to make a place for himself in their lives, but the focus is on his feisty children Stu (Elijah Wood) and Lidia (Lexi Randall) and their violent disputes with a bullying neighbouring family, the Lipnickis. The treehouse they build becomes a refuge from the financial and emotional instability around them and a fortress to fight for.

While Stephen delivers a series of laboured homilies about the futility of fighting and the power of love, and places an enormous burden on his son Stu by confiding his own sense of failure and self hatred, his wife Lois (Mare Winningham) has a surprisingly secondary role as stoical survivor and loyal spouse which suggests that some of her scenes were cut at the last minute.

But it is the children's performances that carry the film. Refreshingly, they are not patronised by the direction or the script they have great vitality, delivering the rich Southern dialogue with a certain playfulness.

This director, who also made Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe knows the locale there is a palpable sense of place and some memorable set pieces such as the children's swimming race in the water tower, which almost compensate for the tedious worthiness of Costner's character.