The Girl On The Train (15) Odeon, ABC, Cineworld Poole ***

PUBLISHED last year, Zimbabwean-born author Paula Hawkins’ novel The Girl On The Train has become a literary sensation, selling in excess of 11 million copies worldwide.

As with Gone Girl, another taut thriller with a gasp-out-loud narrative twist, Hollywood came a-knocking.

Tate Taylor, director of the Oscar-winning civil rights drama The Help, was duly hired to shunt the book’s setting from London to New York for this glossy film adaptation.

Erin Cressida Wilson’s assured script retains a similar structure to the book, exploring tangled themes of motherhood, revenge and betrayal through the eyes of three women, who are unwittingly trapped in cycles of violence.

Using on-screen title cards to chart the fractured chronology, the film shifts perspectives between these flawed yet resourceful protagonists, while attempting to pull the wool over our eyes.

It’s an entertaining though not exactly pulse-quickening ride.

All aboard...

The Girl On The Train is a smart psychological potboiler anchored by a strong performance from Emily Blunt as a self-destructive woman, who is figuratively going off the rails in her darkest hour.

Unreliable narrators are far more tantalising on the page than the big screen, and there are a couple of pivotal moments in Taylor’s film, which tip the wink too early to characters’ dark ulterior motives and personal ties.

Nevertheless, the picture chugs briskly to a final surprise.

War On Everyone (15) Cineworld Poole ***

LONDON-born filmmaker John Michael McDonagh has nurtured an exceedingly healthy disregard for authority.

In his 2011 directorial debut, The Guard, he went on patrol with a foul-mouthed Garda sergeant played by Brendan Gleeson, whose moral compass didn’t preclude drugs, drink and working girls on duty.

The blackly comic follow-up, Calvary, prayed with a discombobulated parish priest (Gleeson again), who is forced to atone for the monstrous sins of another man of the Catholic Church.

McDonagh’s enviable skill at combining jet-black humour with shocking violence is in evidence in War On Everyone, a crime caper in the company of two New Mexico cops, who gleefully bend the law they have been sworn to protect.

PREVIEW: Supersonic (TBC) Odeon, Cineworld Poole

DIRECTOR Mat Whitecross, who previously made the music-heavy dramas Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Spike Island, turns back the clock to the 1990s to explore the rise of the band Oasis in this affectionate documentary. 

Drawing on a wealth of archive footage and revealing home videos, plus narration from brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, Supersonic charts the siblings’ meteoric rise from the council estates of Manchester to the top of the charts and the UK’s biggest venues.