DON CHEADLE is becoming a very comfortable presence in the movies. You could saddle him with anything and he would give you that soft, melancholy smile of his and bear it. Here he gets lumped with Adam Sandler doing his best Dustin Hoffman impression (Raymond Babbitt and Ratzo Rizzo rolled into one annoying screech). Yet Cheadle carries the film . . . a gentle drama about male companionship in New York almost upended by its post-9/11 maudlin shoe-gazing.

Cheadle plays timorous dentist Alan Johnson and under-thethumb husband of Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith). Couped up too long in their plush apartment, he gets very excited when he bumps into old college pal Charlie Fineman (Adam Sandler). But Fineman has turned into a gibbering oddball who lives alone in an apartment playing computer games. He used to be a dentist; now he's unemployed, he looks like Bob Dylan circa 1984 and wraps himself in a comforting soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen and The Who (hence the title). We learn he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after watching on TV the plane his wife and children were on crash into the twin towers.

But played by Sandler, the symptoms look more like autism and obsessive compulsive disorder. Alan spends the film trying to get him to express his feelings, as if the one thing the world needs right now is another New Yorker banging on about that day six years ago. Liv Tyler also stars as a demure psychologist.

Alpha Dogs (Nick Cassavetes): Emile Hirsch, Justin Timberlake, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone, Fernando Vargas Running time: 117 minutes.. .

NICK CASSAVETES, son of actor/director John, tackles teen life on the edge in this baggy story based on true events in Californian in 1999 . . . a case involving a petty gangster called Jesse James Hollywood. At 21, he became one of the youngest people ever on the FBI's most wanted list for murder. Alpha Dogs recreates the killing of a 15year-old teenager (Anton Yelchin) who is abducted by wannabe gangster Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) because of a paltry drug debt owed by an older brother (played by an enjoyably psychopathic Ben Foster). But the kid takes Stockholm Syndrome to a new level . . . he enjoys the partying, drug taking, drinking and ultimately the losing of his virginity so much, he doesn't want to leave, even when he is given the chance. Bruce Willis and Sharon Stone play supporting roles, while Justin Timberlake is charismatic as a goon who gets in over his head. Cassavetes turns the story into a Larry Clarke-style parable about bad parenting, but the film treads a fine line between its castigation of decadence and the camera's enjoyment of it.

The Reaping (Stephen Hopkins): Hilary Swank, David Morrissey Stephen Rea, Idris Elba, AnnaSophia Robb Running time: 96 minutes .

HILARY SWANK undoes whatever credibility she had left as a two-time Oscar winner with this godawful tale of Biblical scaremongering. You would be forgiven for confusing its evil smell with that of methane.

Swank plays an athiest miraclebuster investigating a town in the deep south which has been visited by a series of Old Testament plagues.

It turns out she used to be a missionary whose husband and daughter were murdered . . . and the film goes to great lengths to convince her that God really does exist. A river turns to blood, the town is swarmed with locusts, rats, lice, flying toads, but the effect is as chilling as a melted Fat Frog. It's full of jolts to keep the sagging viewer plugged in.

The mishmash of Carrie, and every devil movie ever made including Rosemary's Baby, only works to embarrass. Stephen Rea is a priest who warns her of the oncoming apocalypse.

Speed-Dating (Tony Herbert): Hugh O'Conor, Emma Choy, Don Wycherley, Dawn Bradfield, Charlotte Bradley Running time: 85 minutes .

THIS homegrown turkey comes with a thick slice of ham, courtesy of many fine Irish actors who really should know better. It is so over-acted in places you wonder if it's pantomime. But Oh No It Isn't. It stars Hugh O'Conor as James Van Der Bexton, a billionaire's son and compulsive speed dater who can't get a girlfriend because a broken heart has turned him into an insincere liar.

He begins stalking a mysterious woman he spies in a bar. Turns out she's an international drugs smuggler; but he bangs his head and loses his memory. He wakes up in hospital under the sweet gaze of nurse Susan (Emma Choy) and a pair of suspicious detectives (Don Wycherley and Luke Griffin). Soon enough he rediscovers his true self. The script is muddle-headed and witless, a blend of comedy caper and crime that is neither funny nor dangerous and less entertaining than banging your own head and forgetting you ever saw it.

Pathfinder: legend of the Ghost Warrior (Marcus Nispel) Karl Urban, Moon Bloodgood, Russell Means, Clancy Brown, Gunnar Jay Tavare.Running time: 99 minutes..

THE Vikings are coming, and they haven't got a script! Hide!

This virtually dialogue-free, violent action adventure set in the middle ages seems to have gone from five-second pitch to production without anybody putting even a word on paper first. It tells the story of a Viking boy shipwrecked on north American shores and reared by Wampanoag Tribe. When the Vikings return 15 years later for a bit of pillage and plunder (now we know what hairy heavy metallers Lordi did after they won the Eurovision) the nowgrown up Ghost (a saturnine Karl Urban) is determined to save his adopted tribe. It's directed with nothing but gruesome, unrelenting force by Marcus Nispel, who previously remade the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.