DVD REVIEWS NOT YOUR TYPICAL ALIEN ADVENTURE.

Byline: Rob Lowman Entertainment Editor

In ``Dirty Pretty Things'' director Stephen Frears has fashioned a terse, tense drama that illuminates the plight of illegal immigrants in London. The script was written by Steven Knight, who created the original British version of ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.'' For Senay (Audrey Tautou), a Turkish emigre, and Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian refugee, it's more like Who Wants to Survive, with dignity and body parts intact.

As is the case with many illegals - including those in this country - people take advantage of them because they work cheap. People also use them in other ways - including sexually - because illegals have few rights and are afraid of deportation. ``Dirty Pretty Things,'' while dealing with those issues, takes on added thriller elements as it looks into the illegal organ donor trade: Give up a body part such as a kidney for the right papers that keep you legally in the country. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. It's been in the news in Europe as well as Africa, and there are rumors it happens in America.

To his credit, Frears (``The Grifters,'' ``High Fidelity,'' ``Dangerous Liaisons'') never gets sentimental about his subjects, looking at things with a cool eye, helped by the striking noirish images from famed cinematographer Chris Menges. In the end, it's the humanity of his subjects that comes to light.

``Dirty Pretty Things'' (Miramax; $29.99) includes commentary by Frears and a behind-the-scenes special.

Faker heights

`Shattered Glass'' tells the true story of Stephen Glass, a young writer and editor at The New Republic who in 1998 was found to have made up whole or parts of more than two dozen articles published in that prestigious magazine. Interestingly, the DVD release of this film comes on the heels of the revelation that another high-profile journalist fabricated stories (Jack Kelley in USA Today), and while Jayson Blair, the reporter who invented or plagiarized parts of at least three dozen articles in The New York Times, is hawking his book.

Written and directed by Billy Ray, ``Shattered Glass'' is an unsettling tale for those of us who are journalists, but Ray fashions an interesting, straightforward narrative that reflects on the business climate in America, where getting ahead by any means is paramount and ethics are slippery. That Glass (played by Hayden Christensen) could continually fool so many people may not be that surprising. He was - as portrayed in the film - charming and his stories were entertaining, so he didn't receive as much scrutiny as he should have.

But things are not necessarily different elsewhere. It was reported that during a Wall Street fact-finding trip to Enron during that company's heyday, the firm had workers from one floor in the corporate building go to a previously unoccupied floor, where computers and phones were set up, though not operational. There, the workers were told to pretend to be busy for the visitors. Strangely, no one brought this up until the company began to collapse. As with Glass, there were sneaking suspicions, but it took far too long for the truth to come out.

``Shattered Glass'' (Lions Gate; $26.99) includes commentary by Ray and former New Republic editor Chuck Lane and a ``60 Minutes'' interview with the real Stephen Glass.

Measures of a man

Last year's film version of ``The Singing Detective'' with Robert Downey Jr. ultimately pales in relationship to the 1986 miniseries by Dennis Potter that starred Michael Gambon.

Interestingly, Potter wrote this latest adaptation of ``The Singing Detective'' before he died in 1994, moving the action for the mystery story from 1940s England to the 1950s in Los Angeles. Directed by Keith Gordon, the newer version does offer the pleasure of Downey, who shows once again that he's a superb actor as he plays Dan Dark, a pulp novelist suffering from a terrible skin condition.

Lesion-covered and in pain, he is a prisoner in his own body, hospitalized and unable to do anything but verbally strike out at the medical staff or retreat into the noirish, often incomprehensible world in his head. There he plays the tough-guy hero of his own novels, which are laced with figures from his own life, who also appear as memories. His wife (Robin Wright Penn) becomes a seductress, his mother (Carla Gugino) a wanton women, and a nurse (Katie Holmes) a teen fantasy.

And within these fantasies are songs - 1950 tunes, from ``Let's Go to the Hop'' to ``How Much Is that Doggy in the Window'' that are lip-synched by the cast. They are from the era when Dark was a boy and when he sets his detective stories.

Helping Dark to find some understanding is a psychiatrist played by Mel Gibson, who you'd have trouble recognizing with thin blond combed- over hair, thick eyeglasses and a stoop. When it is suggested to Dark that he try to write something other than detective novels, he replies: ``All solutions and no clues, cause that's what the dumbheads want. ... I want it the other way around - all clues and no solutions, cause that's the way things are.''

This ``Singing Detective,'' unlike the miniseries, is oddly like the former: a bit too prettily tied up because of how it's been pared down. But there are enough intriguing moments - and Downey - to get you through it.

``The Singing Detective'' (Paramount; $29.99) includes commentary by Gordon.

Committed actors

Robert Downey Jr. plays a rather odd therapist in ``Gothika,'' a creepy chiller starring Halle Berry as Miranda Grey, a psychiatrist at a Connecticut institution for the criminally insane.

One of Miranda's patients is Chloe (Penelope Cruz), a distraught young woman who is being sexually assaulted by the devil while in her locked cell. Miranda believes she is delusional. But this being one of those movies, she soon finds herself an inmate after the murder of her husband, and now she is the one insisting that she's not deluded but possessed.

Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, ``Gothika,'' with its rain, dark lighting and eerie music, is in a perpetual state of foreboding. When the payoffs come, they will seem like variations on dozens of other films. But Kassovitz keeps it moving despite its lack of logic and originality, and Berry makes a determined heroine while Downey once again proves his immeasurable skills as an actor.

``Gothika'' (Warner; $27.95) includes commentary by Kassovitz and director of photography Matthew Libatique, plus a Limp Bizkit music video.

Rock star power

The turn-off-your-brain formulaic action picture of the week is ``The Rundown'' with the Rock (aka Dwayne Douglas Johnson), who plays Beck, a man of muscle (what else?) sent to South America to retrieve the son of his underworld employer.

Of course, Beck isn't all bad; he wants to quit the strong-arm lifestyle and open a restaurant. In the Brazilian jungle, he tracks down his boss' son Travis (Seann William Scott), who has been looking for a valuable ancient gold relic, and finds himself caught in a struggle between Hatcher (Christopher Walken), the American who runs an open-pit gold mine and keeps the natives under his thumb, and the local rebel group. Toss in (surprise!) a beautiful, secretive woman (Rosario Dawson).

Early on, now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a cameo, leaving a disco as the Rock enters. As they pass, Schwarzenegger offers the advice of ``have fun.'' ``The Rundown'' offers a bit of that, if you're into action and in an undemanding mood.

``The Rundown'' (Universal; $26.98) includes deleted scenes and featurettes on stunts and fight scenes, visual effects and the jungle location.

A classic take-off

In the oldie-but-goodie category, there is director Ken Annakin's comic ``Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,'' which is based on the famous London-to-Paris air race of 1910.

The 1965 film boasts the same combination of spectacle and madcap humor as other fun films of the era like ``The Great Race'' and ``It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.'' It also boasts Terry-Thomas, who is terrific as the less-than-honorable Sir Percy Ware-Armitage, as well as a number of funnymen - Robert Morely, Red Skelton and Benny Hill - who fit around the more serious types, like Sarah Miles, Stuart Whitman and James Fox. Along the way, Annakin manages to keep all the pieces of this juggling act in the air.

``Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines'' (Fox; $14.98) includes commentary by Annakin.

Rob Lowman, [phone]

robert.lowman(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1) AUDREY TAUTOU in ``Dirty Pretty Things''

(2) HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN in ``Shattered Glass''

(3) THE ROCK in ``The Rundow''