If part of the reason action movies resonate so broadly is because most of us are simply never going to have a chance to go Action Jackson, let alone drive a truck off a freeway ramp or swing by rope from a helicopter and kick open a skyscraper’s window, then prison dramas also provide vicarious entertainment at a comfortable remove. After all, we can enjoy all the cursing, fighting and vengeful plotting without fear of sacrificing our own behymens.

Case in point: the starkly titled R, a Danish prison flick that strongly recalls HBO’s The Wire and the recent, award-winning French import Un Prophete. The fiction film debut documentary of directors Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer, and the winner of the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the prestigious Gothenburg International Film Festival, the gritty and well acted R is strongly sketched enough to leave a mark with predisposed audiences, no matter its subtitles.

The story here is quite familiar and charts a rather expected path, more or less, whether one has seen a small handful of prison films or upwards of five dozen. Still, the precision and care with which it is rendered mark it more than some time-whiling throwaway. The ethnic and religious divisions, also on display in Un Prophete, are solidly elucidated without ever becoming overbearing or pretentious, and there are nice, relaxed parallels drawn between Rune (Pilou Asbaek, above) and fellow prisoner Rashid (Dulfi al-Jaburi), a Muslim, by way of the respective family members who come to visit them. They are doppelgangers, in a strange way, and the slow dawning of this point gives the movie a nice and somewhat unexpected depth. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Olive Films, unrated, 96 minutes)

The word “Riverdance” isn’t really used, but that’s what the documentary Jig puts under the microscope — the story of the 40th Irish Dancing World Championships, and specifically the leg-splaying competitions between certain youth subsets. To that end, there’s some absolutely fantastic talent on display in this ambling but only passably inquisitive nonfiction film, meaning that those inclined to like this sort of thing (those who might have a TiVo season pass for TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, say) will find in this plenty to like. General audiences, however, may feel a bit danced out.

Unfolding in the final months leading up to the aforementioned March, 2010, competition in Glasgow, Jig charts a number of highly skilled young folk dancers — precious few of whom have any connection to the rapid step-dancing genre’s link to Irish culture — and loosely pairs off some of them who will eventually be competing against one another. The film is comparable to but not quite as engaging as the recent documentary Make Believe: The Battle To Become the World’s Best Teen Magician. The subjects in Jig all put in an equal amount of hard work and dedication, but the latter movie has significantly better guides, if you will, and a sharper focus. It succeeds in eliciting information and perspectives from its young would-be magicians, whereas most of Jig director Sue Bourne’s interview chats, while perfectly amiable, are less revelatory. They do less to connect the kids’ passion for dance to the different ways it makes them feel, and how they see it eventually integrated into their adult lives.

Watching excellence in almost any field, and the pursuit of the same, can be a fortifying and rewarding experience. And it’s certainly interesting to see the wide variety of personalities (a group of Russians, an adopted Sri Lankan teen living in Holland) drawn to this extremely difficult and competitive discipline. But Jig doesn’t spend a whole lot of time elucidating the actual steps of Irish dance (perhaps by design, as one judge later says it’s a highly subjective art form), and the movie unfurls as a haze of practice and performance footage — again, frequently impressive — with neither much contextual mooring nor ambition in staging. It’s just kids dancing, and competing. Some eventually win, and some will lose — as often happens in life. For the full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Screen Media, PG, 93 minutes)