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RECORDED DELIVERY

A critical guide to the week's videos

Liese Spencer
Friday 27 June 1997 23:02 BST
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Steal Big, Steal Little (12) Fox Guild, rental, 30 Jun.

Andrew Davis's shambolic, Capra-esque fairytale about good and bad identical twins, Ruben and Robby Martinez. Saintly Ruben wears his hat back to front, despite inheriting a multi-million dollar estate in Santa Barbara. Robby wears a white cowboy hat, smokes a cigar in the Jacuzzi and plots how to wrest the land from his brother and flog it for real estate. Broad character strokes are matched by an even broader political message about giving the land back to the native Latinos (a bunch of barely differentiated native types). Undoubtedly a worthy project for the Cuban Andy Garcia (above), who plays both brothers, but not a great career move. Even if, as he revealed just before the film's cinema release, he was born a Siamese twin.

Virtuosity (15) CIC, retail, on release, pounds 10.99. Like Strange Days, this millennial thriller concerns itself with virtual reality and cyber- violence, wrapping such fashionable concerns around the standard action movie scenario of a maverick cop redeeming himself through a dangerous assignment. Character development takes a back seat to flashy video- game effects, and it doesn't help that lead Denzel Washington and love- interest Kelly Lynch have names that sound like they've been randomly generated by a computer (Parker Barnes and Madison Carter, no less). Still, Denzel's pursuit of an escaped cyber-monster is handled professionally enough, with well- paced chase sequences building towards a suspenseful, if not entirely original, climax.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask (15) Warner Home Video, retail, pounds 12.99, 30 Jun. What is the collective noun for a group of Woody Allen movies? A complex? A schtick? Whatever. In a lame week, Warner has flooded the retail video market with a slew of early works from Sleepers, Interiors and Stardust Memories to this dated but still intermittently amusing sex comedy. Allen stars as his usual nebbish, sexually frustrated neurotic in a series of daft sketches designed to parody a sex manual. The highlight is seeing Allen playing a reluctant sperm in the inspired sci-fi parody What Happens During Ejaculation? Lynn Redgrave, Anthony Quayle and Allen's first wife, Louise Lasser, are among the ensemble players.

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