Sean Penn wrote and directed The Crossing Guard, a character-driven drama about a divorced couple (Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston) whose relationship never recovered following the death of their daughter at the hands of a drunk driver (David Morse). When the latter's character, a deeply regretful and changed man, gets out of jail, Nicholson, as the vengeful dad, decides to go after him. As a director, Penn is not so good with fluid storytelling and camera clichés, but he is amazing as an actor's director. The onscreen re-teaming of former real-life lovers Nicholson and Huston is more than just a voyeuristic exercise: Penn ingeniously uses the duo's palpable friction to bring a horrifying reality to the pain of a dead relationship. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Timothy Dalton's second and last James Bond assignment in Licence to Kill is darker and harder-edged than anything from the Roger Moore years, dropping the sometimes excruciating in-jokes that had begun to dominate the series in favour of gritty, semi-realistic action. When CIA colleague and close friend Felix Leiter (David Hedison) gets married immediately after arresting villainous drug baron Franz Sanchez (with a little help from Bond), the crime lord's retribution is swift and terrible. Bond goes on a personal vendetta against Sanchez after his licence to kill is revoked. There are plenty of spectacular stunt scenes, of course, but the meaty story of revenge is this film's distinguishing feature. Dalton's portrayal of the iconic hero as tough but flawed was a brave decision that the producers subsequently retreated from after Licence to Kill's relatively poor box-office showing. On the DVD: Timothy Dalton's insistence that Bond was a man not a superhero, and "a tarnished man" at that encouraged the producers to redefine Bond with a tougher edge more in keeping with Fleming's original conception of the character. Licence to Kill is Bond's darkest assignment. The production team experienced their usual difficulties in bringing it to the screen, the "making-of" documentary reveals, including a haunted road in Mexico and a mysterious flaming hand that appeared out of the fire during the climactic tanker explosion. There are two commentaries here, both montage selections of interviews from cast and crew. The first features director John Glen and many of the actors; the second has producer Michael G Wilson and the production team. [+]

John Woo's forays into Hollywood cinema have revealed just how childish a lot of his material can feel when it is delivered without the clouding medium of subtitles. In his earlier Hong Kong movies it is possible to allow that the melodramatic, risible and at times confusing dialogue-a disgruntled gangster exclaims "Nobody dares not give me face!" and after being shot about 43 times two of the heroes concede "Yes. We're not right"-is at least in part due to clumsy translation. However, when added to a complex plot of twin brothers, undercover cops and honourable gangsters in A Better Tomorrow II, it can often be quite difficult to keep track of what is going on, especially if you haven't seen the original. Restaurant owner Ken (Chow Yun Fat), "secret" twin brother of the dead main character of the first movie, leaves New York and returns to Hong Kong after an old friend's daughter is murdered. There he re-assembles the group of four heroes from the original movie to exact revenge and bring down a counterfeiting ring. The film loosely addresses Woo's pet themes of loyalty, betrayal and honour but, as always, any exposition is merely the excuse for a series of violent and over-the-top shoot-outs. Here the action is a long time coming, but delivers much as you would expect-violent, explosive and with a nice line in tongue-in-cheek humour. Yun Fat is cool as ever, with shades and a toothpick, gliding through scores of faceless, blood-splattered henchmen with a gun in each hand. In fact, the final bloodbath is so frenetic that it seems to lack the deliberate and graceful choreography of other Woo classics, such as Hard Boiled and The Killer, but A Better Tomorrow II is typical enough of his work to easily satisfy all but the most unforgiving action fans. [+]

A big-budget summer epic with money to burn and a scale worthy of its golden Hollywood predecessors, Ridley Scott's Gladiator is a rousing, grisly, action-packed epic that takes movie-making back to the Roman Empire via computer-generated visual effects. While not as fluid as the computer work done for, say, Titanic, it's an impressive achievement that will leave you marvelling at the glory that was Rome, when you're not marvelling at the glory that is Russell Crowe. Starring as the heroic general Maximus, Crowe firmly cements his star status both in terms of screen presence and acting chops, carrying the film on his decidedly non-computer-generated shoulders as he goes from brave general to wounded fugitive to stoic slave to gladiator hero. Gladiator's plot is a whirlwind of faux-Shakespearean machinations of death, betrayal, power plays, and secret identities (with lots of faux-Shakespearean dialogue ladled on to keep the proceedings appropriately "classical"), but it's all briskly shot, edited, and paced with a contemporary sensibility. Even the action scenes, somewhat muted but graphic in terms of implied violence and liberal bloodletting, are shot with a veracity that brings to mind-believe it or not-Saving Private Ryan. As Crowe's nemesis, the evil emperor Commodus, Joaquin Phoenix chews scenery with authority, whether he's damning Maximus's popularity with the Roman mobs or lusting after his sister Lucilla (beautiful but distant Connie Nielsen); Oliver Reed, in his last role, hits the perfect notes of camp and gravitas as the slave owner who rescues Maximus from death and turns him into a Colosseum star. Director Scott's visual flair is abundantly in evidence, with breathtaking shots and beautiful (albeit digital) landscapes, but it's Crowe's star power that will keep you in thrall-he's a true gladiator, worthy of his legendary status. Hail the conquering hero! -Mark Englehart, Amazon. com.

Here is just one of the many mishaps chronicled in Tora! Tora! Tora!: "Sir, there's a large formation of planes coming in from the north, 140 miles, 3 degrees east. " "Yeah? Don't worry about it. " The epic film shows the bombing of Pearl Harbour from both sides in the historic first American-Japanese coproduction: American director Richard Fleischer oversaw the complicated production (the Japanese sequences were directed by Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, after Akira Kurosawa withdrew from the film), wrestling a sprawling story with dozens of characters into a manageable, fairly easy-to-follow film. The first half maps out the collapse of diplomacy between the nations and the military blunders that left naval and air forces sitting ducks for the impending attack, while the second half is an amazing re-creation of the devastating battle. While Tora! Tora! Tora! lacks the strong central characters that anchor the best war films, the real star of the film is the climactic 30-minute battle, a massive feat of cinematic engineering that expertly conveys the surprise, the chaos and the immense destruction of the only attack by a foreign power on American soil since the Revolutionary war. The special effects won a well-deserved Oscar, but the film was shut out of every other category by, ironically, the other epic war picture of the year, Patton. -Sean Axmaker, Amazon. com.

Billy the Kid is re-imagined by director Sam Peckinpah in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as a kind of Old West rock star, a young man who wants to do his own thing but constantly runs up against the objections of the establishment-in this case, the cattle barons who run this part of the country. Peckinpah indulged in some quirky casting, including Bob Dylan as an outlaw named Alias and most of Kristofferson's band as Billy's gang. He also draws exceptional performances out of a cast of old veterans, including James Coburn as the reluctant Pat Garrett, R G Armstrong, Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens, who has a terrific death scene to Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door. " Look for this longer version; the shorter version is the one that MGM recut against Peckinpah's wishes, removing all the character development and Peckinpah's elegiac sense of the Old West in favour of action and violence. -Marshall Fine.

The story of Fortress takes place in drastically overpopulated America of the year 2017, where each woman is allowed only one pregnancy. John Brennick (Christopher Lambert) and his wife Karen (Loryn Locklin) flee to Mexico when she becomes pregnant after the death of their first child. They are captured by border police and sent to the Fortress, a subterranean high-security prison owned by the Men-Tel corporation and operated by "Zed-10", an omnipotent computer system, and a sadistic, genetically "enhanced" warden (Kurtwood Smith) who has nefarious plans involving Brennick's wife and unborn child. Along with his cellmates (including Jeffrey Combs, a favourite of director Stuart Gordon), Brennick plots a breakout and Fortress shifts into auto-pilot action mode. After making his reputation with such audacious horror films as From Beyond and Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon graduated to a bigger budget with Fortress but his penchant for exploitation remains deliriously intact. While borrowing elements from a variety of better sci-fi movies, Fortress indulges every prison-flick cliché, but does it with such enjoyable B-movie vigour that it qualifies as a bona-fide guilty pleasure (indeed, it deserves to be ranked with James Cameron's original Terminator in terms of its budgetary ingenuity). Featuring such giddy (and gory) devices as "intestinators" (deadly obedience devices implanted in prisoners' bodies) and a torturous "Mind Wipe Chamber", this is really just a drive-in action movie with lofty ambitions and the schlocky script hasn't a prayer of rising above the level of juvenile popcorn fodder. But there's no denying the energy and enthusiasm that Gordon brings to the film, which understandably became a global box-office hit and spawned a 1999 sequel starring Lambert and Pam Grier. -Jeff Shannon, Amazon. com.