The burning intensity of Russell Crowe (L. A. Confidential) first lit up screens as a hate-filled, Mein Kampf-spouting skinhead in this brutal Australian drama. Crowe glowers from under his deep-set eyes as Hando, the creepy but charismatic leader of a racist gang who declares war on the Asian immigrants pouring into Melbourne. His rage erupts in violent attacks on the local Vietnamese community, but when his victims fight back his gang breaks up, and Hando flees the city with his best buddy Davey (Daniel Pollock) and redheaded hellion Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie), a rich-girl runaway who turns the dynamic duo into a splintered love triangle. Writer-director Geoffrey Wright's matter-of-fact treatment of this subculture eschews social commentary for visceral immediacy. His portrait of white supremacist punks living like squatters on the fringes of Australian society is powered by coiled anger and simmering frustration, which finds its outlet in brutal fights and murderous rampages. The lack of moral position may bother some people, especially in light of Wright's sympathetic treatment of particular members of Hando's racist army, and the cold, hate-driven violence is sometimes hard to watch, but his vivid characters and richly drawn world create a compelling drama for adventurous filmgoers. -Sean Axmaker The burning intensity of Russell Crowe (LA Confidential) first lit up screens as a hate-filled, Mein Kampf-spouting skinhead in this brutal Australian drama. Crowe glowers from under his deep-set eyes as Hando, the creepy but charismatic leader of a racist gang who declares war on the Asian immigrants pouring into Melbourne. [+]

Nick Chen (Chow Yun-Fat) is not your average New York cop. Working in Chinatown has its multifarious cultural nuances and its fair share of ubiquitous enticement, both of which are reflected in detective Chen's weary face. He had to get into bed with the highest echelons of the Chinese Mafia as a way of augmenting his own career, while maintaining a semblance of control over the dime-a-dozen hoods who proliferate on this turf. To make matters worse, he now has to break in rookie detective Danny Wallace (Mark Wahlberg), who has asked to be assigned to the Chinatown division. Apparently Wallace is infatuated with all things Chinese, or is suffering from "Yellow Fever," as his fellow colleagues would have us believe. Chen, not one to suffer fools gladly, takes young Wallace under his protective wing, oft-warning the shady powers of the neighbourhood not to sink Danny into their sordid pool of corruption. But before he knows it, both he and Wallace are caught in a deadly ring of double-crosses, shady-dealings, murders, and car chases. And all of this under the suspicious eye of Internal Affairs. Part Serpico and part Hard Boiled, this film seems at first to be a major departure from director James Foley's previous work. However, Foley has frequently revealed a keen eye and understanding for emotionally complex relationships, especially between teacher and pupil (Glengarry Glen Ross) or father and son (At Close Range). [+]

In Cross of Iron Sam Peckinpah weighs in on World War II from the German point of view. The result is as bleak, if not quite as bloody, as one expects from the director of The Wild Bunch, in part because this 1977 film was cut to ribbons by nervous studio executives. The assorted excerpts that remain don't constitute an exhilarating or even an especially thrilling battle epic. The war is grinding to a close, and veterans like James Coburn's Steiner are grimly aware that it's a lost cause. The battlefield is a death trap of sucking mud and barbed wire, and the German generals (viz. , the martinet played by James Mason) seem to pose a bigger threat to the life and limbs of Steiner's men than the inexorable enemy. Not even Peckinpah's famous sensuous exuberance when shooting violence is much in evidence; the picture is a depressive, claustrophobically overcast experience. The bloody high (or low) point isn't a shooting; it's a wince-inducing de-penis-tration during oral sex. For a fun time with the men in (Nazi) uniform, try Das Boot instead. -David Chute, Amazon. [+]

With Red Rock West and The Last Seduction, writer-director John Dahl established himself as America's leading maker of tough, twisted, funny little neo-noir pictures. Red Rock West is a spare, tight reworking of noir-ish motifs-the lone man caught in a web of circumstance and betrayal, the rich femme fatale, the corrupt policeman, the wounded military veteran, the homicidal psychopath-that brings to mind such classics as Detour, Out of the Past and Bad Day at Black Rock. Cage-warming up for his career-peak (so far) performance in Leaving Las Vegas a few years later-plays an unemployed former Marine (his leg injured in the truck-bombing of the base in Beirut) who stumbles into a nightmarish situation when he stops at a bar in the isolated Wyoming town of Red Rock West. With one fateful step, he's trapped; and no matter how hard he tries, he just can't seem to leave town. The late JT Walsh is (as always) splendidly corrupt as the bar owner who harbours some deadly secrets, and Dennis Hopper does a variation on his patented Blue Velvet/River's Edge psycho that suits the treacherous environs of Red Rock West just fine. -Jim Emerson, Amazon. com.

Walter Hill's controversial 1979 drama was blamed for causing gang violence at theatres, but now it looks as highly stylised and pulpy as Hill (Last Man Standing) intended. The plot finds a New York gang having to cross the territory of rivals in order to get to their own 'hood. A sort of urban Western with a comic-book pace, artificial colours, fable-like tone and broad acting, the film isn't intended to steep us in gritty realities so much as spin a decadent fantasy out of them. Still, this is a tough film with an almost futuristic element to its characterisations of gang activity, and it is more absorbing than Hill's more elaborate youth opera of punk wars, Streets of Fire. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.