What do you get if you take a generic action plot, an enormous pyrotechnics budget, two of the finest actors of their generation and spice it up with an IRA backstory? A complete turkey, apparently. Jeff Bridges is Jimmy Dove, the best of the best in Boston's bomb disposal department, which is in pieces left, right and centre following a series of massive explosions. It is, of course, personal: Dove's former best friend, recently escaped maniac bomber Ryan Geraghty (Tommy Lee Jones), is targeting the squad to punish Dove for letting him take the rap for a bungled IRA bombing years ago. Cue a predictable mix of cat and mouse suspense, red wire/blue wire dilemmas and Jeff Bridges running in slow motion. This really should have been at least equal to the sum of its parts and there are good moments: the explosive set-pieces are spectacular and when Geraghty's bombs, cobbled together from colourful bric-a-brac and electrical appliances, are triggered they're seen in looming close-ups. But it's all let down by a generally clumsy representation of Irishness and the conflict. Jones drinks watery Guinness, has an implausible "Oirish" accent and, since his motivation is abstractly political, has to start crying and cross himself before he can kill anyone. In addition, there's an unconvincing tacked-on ending, an overblown and intrusive orchestral score, lots of incongruous U2 records and limp direction from Stephen Hopkins, who seems capable of making a hamfist of even the most sure-fire prospect (such as The Ghost and the Darkness and Lost In Space). Blow your money on something else. -Paul Philpott.

Jonathan Kaplan (The Accused) directed this creepy thriller about an outwardly friendly cop (Ray Liotta) who attaches himself to a married couple (Kurt Russell, Madeleine Stowe) whom he helps during a crisis. In short order, he's revealed to be a psychopath who wants Russell's wife, but the film is about more than Liotta's mental state. A bold script and Kaplan's astute direction peel away the layers of masculine identity in the male leads and underscore the painful conflicts good men feel when faced with classic territorial challenges. This is not as profound as Straw Dogs, Sam Peckinpah's long-banned on video home-invasion classic, but it is honest and provocative, until mayhem overcomes the final act. -Tom Keogh, Amazon. com.

Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalises the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director's kinetic style is perfect for recounting Hill's ruthless rise to power in the 1950s as well as his drugged-out fall in the late 1970s; in fact, no one has ever rendered the mental dislocation of cocaine better than Scorsese. Scorsese uses period music perfectly, not just to summon a particular time but to set a precise mood. GoodFellas is at least as good as The Godfather without being in the least derivative of it. Joe Pesci's psycho improvisation of Mobster Tommy DeVito ignited Pesci as a star, Lorraine Bracco scores the performance of her life as the love of Hill's life, and every supporting role, from Paul Sorvino to Robert De Niro, is a miracle. Given the number of truly great Mafia movies over the years it would be a brave soul who classed GoodFellas as the best. But surely we can all agree that it is, at the very least, first among equals. Martin Scorsese took the factual details of mobster Henry Hill's life, as written by author Nicholas Pileggi, and turned it into a cinematic experience that has burnt itself indelibly into the consciousness of every viewer, and which now forms a touchstone in the lexicon of film and TV-making (what is The Sopranos if not GoodFellas: The Soap?) For aficionados it's a virtuoso exercise in filmmaking, showcasing remarkable and innovative use of steadicam shots, freeze-frame, voice-over narration, editing and incidental music (you'll never be able to listen to "Layla" the same way again). Every would-be hotshot director from Quentin Tarantino to Doug Liman to Jon Favreau has paid homage to it. But above all that, it's an extraordinarily visceral, gripping and thoroughly enjoyable piece of storytelling as we witness the glory days of organised crime from the protagonist's viewpoint; then, abruptly after one bloody murder too far, we see him decline in a spiral of drugs, violence and paranoia. [+]

San Francisco has been the setting of a lot of exciting movie car chases over the years, but this 1968 police thriller is still the one to beat when it comes to high-octane action on the steep hills of the city by the Bay. The outstanding car chase earned an Oscar for best editing, but the rest of the movie is pretty good, too. Bullitt is a perfect star vehicle for cool guy Steve McQueen, who stars as a tenacious detective (is there any other kind?) determined to track down the killers of the star witness in an important trial. Director Peter Yates (Breaking Away) approached the story with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, using a variety of San Francisco locations. Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Duvall appear in early roles, and Robert Vaughn plays the criminal kingpin who pulls the deadly strings of the tightly wound plot. -Jeff Shannon San Francisco has been the setting of many exciting movie car chases over the years but the one in Bullitt is still the one to beat when it comes to high-octane action on the city's steep hills. The outstanding car chase earned an Oscar for best editing but the rest of the movie is pretty good too. This 1968 police thriller is a perfect star vehicle for cool guy Steve McQueen, who stars as a tenacious detective (is there any other kind?) determined to track down the killers of the star witness in a major trial. Director Peter Yates (Breaking Away) approached the story with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, using a variety of San Francisco locations. Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Duvall appear in early roles, and Robert Vaughn plays the criminal kingpin who pulls the deadly strings of the tightly wound plot. [+]

Let's see-he has been Han Solo in three films and Indiana Jones in three more. So why shouldn't Harrison Ford take on a new continuing character in Tom Clancy's CIA analyst Jack Ryan? In this film, directed by Phillip Noyce, Ford picked up the baton when Alec Baldwin, who played Ryan in The Hunt for Red October, opted for a Broadway role instead. In this film, Ryan and his family are on vacation when Ryan saves a member of the British royal family from attack by Irish terrorists. The next thing he knows, the Ryan clan has been targeted by the same terrorists, who invade his Maryland home. The film can't shed all of Clancy's lumbering prose, or his techno-dweeb fascination with spy satellites and the like. But no one is better than Ford at righteous heroism-and Sean Bean makes a suitably snakey villain. -Marshall Fine.