Renny Harlin

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Geena Davis and her former husband, director Renny Harlin, attempted to pick up the pieces after the debacle of their box-office disaster, Cutthroat Island. What they came up with was this repulsive ode to American film noir, based on a script by Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) about an amnesiac schoolteacher (Davis) who searches for her true identity and finds she is actually a secret agent immersed in a deadly plot to topple the government. Mechanistic in its violence, obnoxious in its attitude, the film makes Davis, a once-promising actress, nothing more than a special effect. She tosses one to sadists in the audience by allowing her character to be beaten, punched unconscious, and tortured. The DVD release has optional full-screen and widescreen presentations, plus Dolby surround sound, theatrical trailer, cast information, optional French-language soundtrack and optional Spanish subtitles. --Tom Keogh

Davis is a schoolteacher whose former life as a lethal cia assassin suddenly catches up to her with a vengeance. Jackson is the detective who helps her uncover the past before it buries them both. Together they make an unbeatable team that will blow you away. Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 11/11/2008 Starring: Geena Davis Samuel L. Jackson Run time: 120 minutes Rating: R Director: Renny Harlin

Die Hard Collection (Die Hard / Die Hard 2 - Die Harder / Die Hard with a Vengeance / Bonus Disc)

Die Hard is the movie franchise that made a movie star out of TV star Bruce Willis, and created an entire action-movie genre of its own. In the original 1988 film, Willis plays wisecracking New York cop John McClane, who arrives at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles to meet up with his estranged wife, Holly (Bonny Bedelia), at her office Christmas party. As luck would have it, the company ends up in the middle of a terrorist plot led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang of expert killers, and with little help coming from outside, McClane has to pick off his enemies one by one. Thus was born the "Die Hard genre," epitomized by such films as Under Siege ("Die Hard on a ship"), Passenger 57 ("Die Hard on a plane"), Speed ("Die Hard on a bus"), and Cliffhanger ("Die Hard on a mountain"). But few measure up to the explosive brilliance of Die Hard. Director John McTiernan develops the action at a fast and furious pace, culminating in some fantastic set-pieces on the top of the building, in the elevator shaft, and in the building's outer plaza. Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza's script, based on Roderick Thorp's novel Nothing Lasts Forever, is smart, funny, and full of memorable lines (among them "Welcome to the party, pal!" and of course "Yippee ki-ay, motherf*****"), and the cast is perfection, especially Rickman as the cunningly evil villain, and Willis, whose McClane character--bloodied, beaten, bruised, and barely breathing, as he battles both bad guys and bureaucrats--is someone audiences could genuinely cheer for.

Directed by Renny Harlin, the 1990 sequel, Die Hard 2 (unofficially referred to as Die Harder), doesn't match the level of the original, but it's still an exciting thrill ride with some terrific action sequences. One year after the Nakatomi incident, McClane (Willis) is awaiting his wife's (Bedelia) plane to arrive at Dulles Airport when he stumbles onto a plot to paralyze the entire airport, including all the planes trying to land. It's up to McClane to take on the cadre of bad guys despite all the bureaucrats standing in his way, and before the planes run out of fuel and crash to the ground. The cast includes William Sadler as rogue military man Col. Stuart, Dennis Franz as the latest bureaucratic cop to get in McClane's way, Richard Thornburg as the annoying reporter from the original movie, John Amos as a special-forces commander, early-in-their-career John Leguizamo and Robert Patrick as terrorists, and future politician and Law and Order actor Fred Thompson as the head of air traffic control.

The third film in the series, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), was again directed by John McTiernan and uses a different concept. The villain (played by Jeremy Irons) claims to have planted bombs all over New York City and gives John McClane (Willis), now alchoholic and separated, a series of clues to try to track them down. Along the way, he's aided by, and eventually teams up with, a Harlem shopkeeper named Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson). The interplay between Willis and Jackson is engaging, but better suited to the Lethal Weapon franchise it was previously considered for, and not till the end does the movie return to the familiar McClane-vs.-villains-showdown format.

The 2007 Die Hard Collection is a four-disc set that comes up short when compared to the previous six-disc Ultimate Collection , which is now out of print. That 2001 set had two discs for each film (plus, Die Hard was a Five Star Collection release). This set does away with all of the second discs, though it retains the features that were on the movie-only discs, including director commentaries and the seamlessly branched version of the first film with a scene added back in. There's also a brand-new fourth disc, but it's pretty minor. "Wrong Guy, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" is a 40-minute retrospective of the original movie. Wide-ranging but rather dull, it collects interviews with director John McTiernan, cinematographer Jan De Bont, screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Steven E. De Souza, other crew, and actors Reginald Veljohnson, Hart Bochner, and William Atherton. Also from 2007, "The Continuing Adventures of John McClane" looks at the second and third movies in the series. It's a mere 13 minutes and only interviews the two directors, Renny Harlin and (in new and old footage) John McTiernan. Last, three trailers for the 2007 film, Live Free or Die Hard, make this set look like something that was released merely to have something on the shelves while the new film was in theaters. --David Horiuchi

Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 10/16/2007 Run time: 396 minutes

The Covenant

Four young men who belong to a supernatural legacy are charged with stopping the evil force they released into the world years earlier. Another great force they must contend with is the jealousy and suspicion that threatens to tear them apart. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 01/22/2008 Starring: Taylor Kitsch Toby Hemingway Run time: 97 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Renny Harlin

The Exorcist - The Complete Anthology (The Exorcist/ The Exorcist- Unrated/ The Exorcist II: The Heretic/ The Exorcist III/ The Exorcist: The Beginning/ The Exorcist: Dominion)

The exorcist the exorcist: version youve never seen (2000) exorcist ii: the heretic exorcist iii exorcist: the beginning & exorcist: dominion Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 11/13/2007 Starring: Linda Blair Lee J Cobb Run time: 700 minutes Rating: R Director: William Friedkin

Die Hard 2 - Die Harder

Directed by Renny Harlin, the 1990 sequel, Die Hard 2 (unofficially referred to as Die Harder), doesn't match the level of the original, but it's still an exciting thrill ride with some terrific action sequences. One year after the Nakatomi incident, McClane (Willis) is awaiting his wife's (Bedelia) plane to arrive at Dulles Airport when he stumbles onto a plot to paralyze the entire airport, including all the planes trying to land. It's up to McClane to take on the cadre of bad guys despite all the bureaucrats standing in his way, and before the planes run out of fuel and crash to the ground. The cast includes William Sadler as rogue military man Col. Stuart, Dennis Franz as the latest bureaucratic cop to get in McClane's way, Richard Thornburg as the annoying reporter from the original movie, John Amos as a special-forces commander, early-in-their-career John Leguizamo and Robert Patrick as terrorists, and future politician and Law and Order actor Fred Thompson as the head of air traffic control. --David Horiuchi

When a band of military commandos seize an airport detective mcclane there with his wife must fight for her life. Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 11/20/2007 Starring: Bruce Willis William Atherton Run time: 124 minutes Rating: R

Deep Blue Sea

Researchers ont he undersea lab aquatica have genetically altered the brains of captive sharks to develop a potential cure for alzheimers disease. Theres an unexpected side effect: the critters got smarter and meaner. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 05/31/2005 Starring: Thomas Jane Michael Rapaport Run time: 105 minutes Rating: R Director: Renny Harlin

With a voracious trio of mako sharks wreaking havoc, Deep Blue Sea dares to up the ante on Jaws, but director Renny Harlin trades the nuanced suspense of Spielberg's 1975 blockbuster for the trickery of the digital age. In other words, why build genuine terror when you can show ill-fated humans getting torn into bloody chunks? The aforementioned makos have been lab rats in an effort to harvest a miracle cure for Alzheimer's disease from the brains of sharks, but the research has an unfortunate side effect: the sharks get smarter, and they're determined to break out of Aquatica, the deep-sea complex where they've been penned.

Model-actress Saffron Burrows plays the researcher; Thomas Jane pulls double-duty as shark expert and action hunk; Samuel L. Jackson's the corporate sponsor who chooses the worst time for an Aquatica tour; and rapper LL Cool J is nicely cast as Aquatica's cook and comic relief. Michael Rapaport, Jacqueline McKenzie, and Stellan Skarsgård round out the cast, most of whom are turned into shark food as the makos turn Aquatica into a floating junkyard. Harlin takes devilish pleasure in providing sudden, unexpected shocks--no small feat in such a derivative thriller--and as a series of action set-pieces, Deep Blue Sea never disappoints. It's inevitable that Burrows should end up in her underwear like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, but even then the movie offers a credible reason for the strip-down; that Deep Blue Sea can be simultaneously ridiculous and sensible is just another one of its shlocky charms. --Jeff Shannon

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane

A private investigator specializing in cases involving around rock n roll acts follows a groupie through the nightclubs of l.A. To find the clues to the death of a heavy metal singer. Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 12/16/2003 Starring: Andrew Dice Clay Maddie Corman Run time: 100 minutes Rating: R

Cliffhanger (Collector's Edition)

Cliffhanger was a 1994 comeback of sorts for action hero Sylvester Stallone, this time thanks to director Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2 and Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) and some spectacularly rugged and vertigo-inducing high-mountain terrain. The opening sequence alone delivers what the title promises, and there's a doozy of an airplane stunt that was later reprised, with modifications, in Air Force One. Stallone, looking as tough and craggy as the mountains themselves, is a rescue climber who finds himself going after a gang of crooks (headed by John Lithgow in his bad-guy mode) who've hijacked a U.S. Treasury plane and crash landed in the Rockies (played by the Italian Dolomites) with millions of bucks. --Jim Emerson

When merciless master terrorist john lithgow loses $10 million somewhere over the rockies he forces mountain climber extraordinaire sylvester stallone to find it. Special features: subtitles in english spanish portugues and cantonese talent files theatrical trailers production notes and much more. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/23/2006 Starring: Sylvester Stallone Michael Rooker Run time: 113 minutes Rating: R Director: Renny Harlin

Mindhunters

On a remote island the fbi has a training program for their psychological profiling division called mindhunters used to track serial killers. The training goes terribly wrong when a group of 7 young agents discover that one of them is a serial killer. Can the few that are left figure out who the killer is? Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 01/12/2007 Starring: Val Kilmer Ll Cool J Run time: 106 minutes Rating: R

Creepy, tense, and enigmatic, Renny Harlin's Mindhunters is a grisly cross between Agatha Christie's whodunit classic And Then There Were None and Jonathan Demme's horrifying The Silence of the Lambs. An interesting ensemble cast, including Christian Slater (Windtalkers), Jonny Lee Miller (Melinda and Melinda), L.L. Cool J (Harlin's Deep Blue Sea), and Kathryn Morris (television's Cold Case) portray promising FBI profilers-in-training. Val Kilmer plays their ambiguous instructor putting the candidates through their paces and leaving them for a weekend on a spooky island, where those who survive a terrifying exercise--penetrating the mind of a serial killer via elaborate clues--will go to the head of the class. The rules change, however, when the students themselves turn out to be victims, bumped off one after another, the survivors half-mad with suspicion and paranoia that the murderer is one of their own. The film's concept is sound even if the execution (so to speak) gets out of hand with problems of logic. Among other things, none of these characters could possibly find time to pull off some of the psychopath's more complicated killing rituals. Quibbles aside, however, Mindhunters is particularly watchable if one is in the mood for a movie that plays mind games. --Tom Keogh

Driven

Motorsport movies have a lousy track record, so it's not surprising that Driven joins the ranks of previous race-car clunkers like Grand Prix, Le Mans, Bobby Deerfield, and Days of Thunder. To varying degrees, all of these films offer spectacular racing footage (especially Le Mans), but what is surprising is that Driven was written by its star and coproducer Sylvester Stallone, who shows virtually no sign of the talent that created Rocky over a quarter-century earlier. Under the tepid direction of Renny Harlin, this superficial speedfest fulfills its primary obligation--the racing sequences are adequately exciting, despite the Cuisinart editing and a glaring lack of kinetic continuity. But whenever this adrenaline-pumped drama gets off the track, well... let's just say it's a hybrid of Top Gun and Days of Thunder, but makes those Tom Cruise vehicles look masterful by comparison.

Stallone's a retired Grand Prix champion, called back into action by his disabled crew chief (Burt Reynolds) to boost the career of a hotshot driver (Kip Pardue, the pretty-boy from Remember the Titans) who's trailing a German ace (charismatic Til Schweiger) in the current 20-race season. The female contingent consists of a reporter (Stacy Edwards, too talented for this tripe) who's writing about "male domination in sports"; Stallone's embittered, remarried ex-wife (Gina Gershon, parodying her bitchy persona); and the requisite kewpie doll (Estella Warren) who comes between Boy Wonder and the reigning champ. It's airhead melodrama all the way, so you'd better enjoy the breakneck racing scenes--including a ludicrous prototype-racer joyride through downtown Chicago--or you'll blow a piston on your straightaway sprint to the bad-movie finish line. --Jeff Shannon

Talented rookie race-car driver Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) has started losing his focus and begins to slip in the race rankings. It's no wonder, with the immense pressure being shoveled on him by his overly ambitious promoter brother as well as Bly's romance with his arch rival's girlfriend Sophia. With much riding on Bly, car owner Carl Henry (Burt Reynolds) brings former racing star Joe Tanto (Sylvester Stallone) on board to help Bly. To drive Bly back to the top of the rankings, Tanto must first deal with the emotional scars left over from a tragic racing accident which nearly took his life.