Monday new releases: 5 August 2024

Trap and The Edge of the Blade are in cinemas, Cirque du Soleil: Without a Net and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare are both on Prime Video

M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap is a film about a man whose obsessions prevent him from being fully present for his children. To that end, Shyamalan casting his own musician and songwriter daughter Saleka as the pop star at the centre of his arena concert-set thriller isn’t nepotism or favouritism – at least not just nepotism. It’s kind of what the film is about.

Josh Hartnett plays a Philadelphia firefighter taking his 12-year-old daughter (perfect Ariel Donoghue) to a Lady Raven concert as a reward for her high marks at school. He’s distracted by what seems to be an unusual amount of police and security. Middle-aged white men like him are being pulled out of the crowd by cops.

It turns out that he actually is the one they are after and has to find a way out of the venue – with his unsuspecting daughter – before the net closes in.

The concert isn’t just a trap set for Hartnett’s character, the appearance of Shyamalan himself in a cameo as one of Lady Raven’s concert team confirms that it’s also a parent trap. And if that wasn’t clear enough for you, Shyamalan casting The Parent Trap’s Hayley Mills as the FBI profiler leading the hunt confirms it.

The contrivances here – and there are many – are part of the pleasure of a film that also showcases Hartnett in a way we have never seen before. If this was a more serious picture, we’d be talking about an awards conversation.

He’s mercurial, moving from hyper-focus on his immediate predicament to doting dad, showing the struggle he has to keep his two worlds both apart and together.

There’s one (or two) too many twists because he simply can’t help himself but I do always leave a Shyamalan film feeling extra-attentive to my surroundings, as if everything is a potential clue.

Sword fights have been a staple of cinema since the beginning. There’s something about the way the blades catch the light and glint as they swish and crash together that’s really cinematic.

With The Edge of the Blade (known in France as Une affaire d’honneur), Vincent Perez – with the collaboration of ace stunt and fight co-ordinator Michel Carliez – has taken this knowledge and built a rewarding drama around some exciting and well-constructed set-pieces.

Paris, 1887. Duels to settle disputes and slights remain all the rage, even though they are illegal. Traumatised veterans of the Franco-Prussian War use them to seek the adrenaline rush they have been missing.