Gangster Films

Dick Tracy

A flawed but stylish adaptation of the Chester Gould comic strip by director Warren Beatty, who also stars in the title role. The minimalist plot involves a battalion of baddies who confront the intrepid detective in a series of strung-together vignettes. Al Pacino is a comedic if overblown standout as Big Boy Caprice, and Madonna simply smolders as aggressive blonde bombshell Breathless Mahoney. It matters not that the plot is Spartan, as this dazzling eye candy is much enhanced by Stephen Sondheim's songs, including the Academy Award-winning ditty, "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)." Beatty took his cue from the source material and concentrated on the relationships between these people, whether strained, romantic, or hateful. The performances are subtle and more amusing than you would expect from such a visually bold picture. Shot in bright, primary colors, this also won Oscars for Best Art/Set Direction and Makeup (for those inventively hideous criminals). Watch for well-known names, such as Dustin Hoffman and Dick Van Dyke, in cameo appearances and supporting roles. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Mystery, adventure, and romance in the life of comic strip detective Dick Tracy.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG
Release Date: 5-JUL-2005
Media Type: DVD

Shottas

In Jamaican patois, a gangster is a "shotta" or "shot-caller." Like The Harder They Come and Third World Cop, Cess Silvera choreographs his crime drama to a reggae beat. Bob Marley's son Stephen provides the music, while Wyclef Jean drops by as a dealer. The saga begins in late-1970s Kingston. Teenagers Biggs (J.R. Silvera) and Wayne (Carlton Grant Jr.) have had their fill of poverty, so they get a gun and start looting and shooting like the shottas they idolize. Flash forward 20 years and Biggs (Stephen's actor/musician brother, Kymani Marley) has just been deported from the States. He picks up where he left off, joining Wayne (DJ Spragga Benz) and the psychopathic Mad Max (Paul Campbell, Dancehall Queen) in the thug life. As with Pacino's Tony Montana, Miami is their ultimate port of call. Silvera acknowledges the debt to Brian De Palma's Scarface, but there isn't as much drama here--just a lot of violence (spurting blood is a running motif). Cinematographer Cliff Charles uses all manner of visual trickery to lively up the joint, like grainy black and white, slow motion, and jump cuts. The soundtrack also helps to keep things moving, but it's hard to feel sympathy for those who feel no sympathy for anyone but themselves. Vicious as he was, Montana still had a smidgen of sensitivity. As with The Harder They Come, this English-language production is subtitled due to strong accents and pervasive slang. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

An unapologetic raw urban drama about two friends raised in the dangerous streets of Kingston who take on the 'shotta' (Jamaican term for gangster) way of life to survive and bring it with them to the U.S.. As they struggle to achieve their dreams of wealth and power their demands become too much for the powerful local drug dealers and the shottas loyalty is tested.Features:Other (Shottas Dictionary; Video Introduction by Ky-Mani Marley and Cess Silvera); Audio commentary (with Director Cess Silvera & Cast)System Requirements:Run Time: 95 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 043396136076 Manufacturer No: 13607

Last Man Standing

Best known for making movies about men and violence, director Walter Hill scored a misfire with this ambitious but ultimately dreary remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai classic Yojimbo. The story's essentially the same but the setting has been switched to a dusty, almost ghostly Texas town in the 1930s, where two rival Chicago gangs are locked in an uneasy truce. Bruce Willis plays the lone drifter who allies himself with both gangs to his own advantage, working both sides against each other according to his own hidden agenda. The violence escalates to a bloody climax, of course, with Christopher Walken, David Patrick Kelly, and Michael Imperioli as trigger-happy lieutenants in a lonely, desolate war. Fans of gangster movies will want to see this, and, if nothing else, Hill has brought his polished style to a vaguely mythic story. It's far from being a classic, however, and although its action is at times masterfully choreographed, the movie's humorless attitude is unexpectedly oppressive. --Jeff Shannon

Out for Justice

Steven Seagal has always been an awkward action hero. Initially, he had a certain amount of credibility thanks to his nebulous association with secret government agencies and mastery of aikido, which helped to excuse his bad acting. But as a self-righteous action hero in the vein of Schwarzenegger and Stallone (which helps to explain his bad acting), Seagal fell into unintentional self-parody faster and more dramatically than either of his two predecessors. In Out for Justice, Seagal plays Gino Felino, a Brooklyn-born cop known and respected by everyone--both good and bad--in his neighborhood. The worst of the neighborhood baddies is Richie Madano (William Forsythe), a crack-smoking killer who murders his partner and terrorizes the neighborhood. Technically, Felino is a terrible cop--touching evidence at murder scenes, stealing evidence, intimidating witnesses--but only by breaking those rules can he bring in this horrible criminal. As his soon-to-be-ex-wife discovers, he does everything because he cares too much. Julianna Margulies (ER) has a small but thankless role as Richie's hooker girlfriend, and Gina Gershon (Face/Off, Bound) has an equally thankless role as Richie's foul-mouthed, bar-owning sister. The movie plays like a vanity piece for Seagal, and in that vein, it is fascinating to watch. --Andy Spletzer

No Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 8-FEB-2005
Media Type: DVD

Desperado (Special Edition)

It's Sergio Leone meets Sam Peckinpah meets Quentin Tarantino in this ultraviolent, mythological shoot-'em-up by auteur Robert Rodriguez. In Desperado, Rodriguez creates larger-than-life, genre-tweaking stock characters and puts them through their paces. As they stride bravely through an Old West lightly dusted with camp humor, they're periodically called upon to nimbly dodge bullets and fireballs through outrageously choreographed displays of Hollywood pyrotechnics. In this bigger-budget semi-remake/semi-sequel to Rodriguez's indie sensation, El Mariachi (made, famously, for $7,000), Antonio Banderas is the darkly charismatic El Mariachi, the Mysterious Stranger in town; Steve Buscemi is perfectly cast as his weasely, motor-mouth Comic Sidekick, laying the groundwork for El Mariachi's entrance by spinning saloon stories to build up his legend; Cheech Marin is a standout as the Bartender, who really knows how to handle a toothpick; and gorgeous Salma Hayek is, well, the Girl--treated to the kind of full-blown, slow-mo introduction the movies traditionally lavish on beautiful new stars. It doesn't add up to much, but it's a kick. Be careful not to blow out your speakers with the DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. --Jim Emerson

A mysterious Mexican guitar player searches for vengeance against the men who murdered his girlfriend.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 5-JUL-2005
Media Type: DVD

El Mariachi (Special Edition)

All he wants is to be is a mariachi like his father his grandfather and his great grandfather before him. But the town he thinks will bring him luck brings only a curse of deadly mistaken identity. Forced to trade his guitar for a gun the mariachi is playing for his life in this critically-acclaimed film debut from director Robert Rodriguez. Financed with earnings from a month-long stay in a research hospital this astonishing action adventure was shot with no second takes using borrowed equipment and a talented cast of unknowns. The riveting result is a wild bullet-dodging ride through a world of bandido violence from the suspense of the opening shoot-out to the tragedy of the unexpected conclusion. With little more than a great story and a lot of heart Rodriguez has created pure movie pleasure setting new standards for independent filmmaking and establishing himself as an unquestionable talent. "An enormously entertaining movie." (Roger Ebert CHICAGO SUN-TIMES)System Requirements:Running Time: 81 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: R UPC: 043396093065 Manufacturer No: 09306

The Killer

This 1989 rouser is apocalyptic pulp--the bloodiest, showiest, most shamelessly sentimental specimen of Hong Kong's gangster melodramas. A torch singer named Jennie (Sally Yeh) is accidentally blinded during a slaying in a night club, and Chow Yun-fat's sad-eyed Jeff, a self-lacerating assassin, drags himself out of retirement to take on one last job--rubbing out a major mobster for major bucks--so he can pay for the singer's cornea transplant operation. But Jeff pauses to ferry a wounded child to the hospital during this final outing, and because of this a cop finally gets a good look at him: "He was seen on the job," snarls a saturnine Mr. Big, "and I want him wasted." Armies of thugs converge on the saintly slayer. Some of writer-director John Woo's flourishes are kitsch classics (doves flying upward in a candlelit church), while the action sequences are rapturous. "Life's cheap," a character opines. "It only takes one bullet," but in this case it actually takes about a dozen spewing bullet hits to kill anyone, as soulful triads in mirror shades and duster overcoats blaze away with high-tech weaponry. (A favorite trick involves grasping an enemy by the lapels, pulling him into a waltz embrace, and pumping several slugs into his duodenum.) Danny Lee, Chow's costar in City on Fire, is the intense, young officer who fixates on the killer's contradictory personality. --David Chute

The Adventures of Pluto Nash

The Adventures of Pluto Nash was shelved for nearly two years, and when it was finally released, hardly anyone noticed. In the interim, Eddie Murphy made the marginally better Showtime and started fishing for a career revival that wasn't a sequel to his previous hits. In the satirical, lunar-colony hash of Pluto Nash, Murphy's a variant of Casablanca's Rick Blaine in the year 2087, happily running the moon's hottest nightclub, refusing a buyout offer from a greedy gambler, and suffering the consequences with his sidekick robot (Randy Quaid in yet another thankless role) and newest employee (Rosario Dawson, before doing similar time in Men in Black II). A visual hybrid of Total Recall and A.I., this nearly laughless comedy would be a total write-off if it weren't for Murphy's stalwart attempt to jump-start the flagging humor. He's got the chops of a superstar, but only when his collaborators are on the same page. --Jeff Shannon

Set on the moon in the year 2087, the action/adventure comedy "Pluto Nash" stars Eddie Murphy as the title character, an audacious nightclub owner who finds himself in hot water when he refuses to sell his club to the local mob.

The Killer - Criterion Collection

This 1989 rouser is apocalyptic pulp--the bloodiest, showiest, most shamelessly sentimental specimen of Hong Kong's gangster melodramas. A torch singer named Jennie (Sally Yeh) is accidentally blinded during a slaying in a night club, and Chow Yun-fat's sad-eyed Jeff, a self-lacerating assassin, drags himself out of retirement to take on one last job--rubbing out a major mobster for major bucks--so he can pay for the singer's cornea transplant operation. But Jeff pauses to ferry a wounded child to the hospital during this final outing, and because of this a cop finally gets a good look at him: "He was seen on the job," snarls a saturnine Mr. Big, "and I want him wasted." Armies of thugs converge on the saintly slayer. Some of writer-director John Woo's flourishes are kitsch classics (doves flying upward in a candlelit church), while the action sequences are rapturous. "Life's cheap," a character opines. "It only takes one bullet," but in this case it actually takes about a dozen spewing bullet hits to kill anyone, as soulful triads in mirror shades and duster overcoats blaze away with high-tech weaponry. (A favorite trick involves grasping an enemy by the lapels, pulling him into a waltz embrace, and pumping several slugs into his duodenum.) Danny Lee, Chow's costar in City on Fire, is the intense, young officer who fixates on the killer's contradictory personality. --David Chute

Hong Kong's preeminent director John Woo transforms genres from both the East and the West to create this explosive and masterful action film. Featuring Hong Kong's greatest star, Chow Yun-fat, as a killer with a conscience, the film is an exquisite dissection of morals in a corrupt society, highlighted with slow-motion sequences of brilliantly choreographed gun battles on the streets of Hong Kong.

Desperado (Superbit Collection)

It's Sergio Leone meets Sam Peckinpah meets Quentin Tarantino in this ultraviolent, mythological shoot-'em-up by auteur Robert Rodriguez. In Desperado, Rodriguez creates larger-than-life, genre-tweaking stock characters and puts them through their paces. As they stride bravely through an Old West lightly dusted with camp humor, they're periodically called upon to nimbly dodge bullets and fireballs through outrageously choreographed displays of Hollywood pyrotechnics. In this bigger-budget semi-remake/semi-sequel to Rodriguez's indie sensation, El Mariachi (made, famously, for $7,000), Antonio Banderas is the darkly charismatic El Mariachi, the Mysterious Stranger in town; Steve Buscemi is perfectly cast as his weasely, motor-mouth Comic Sidekick, laying the groundwork for El Mariachi's entrance by spinning saloon stories to build up his legend; Cheech Marin is a standout as the Bartender, who really knows how to handle a toothpick; and gorgeous Salma Hayek is, well, the Girl--treated to the kind of full-blown, slow-mo introduction the movies traditionally lavish on beautiful new stars. It doesn't add up to much, but it's a kick. Be careful not to blow out your speakers with the DVD's Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. --Jim Emerson

The Superbit titles utilize a special high bit rate digital encoding process which optimizes video quality while offering a choice of both DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. These titles have been produced by a team of Sony Pictures Digital Studios video, sound and mastering engineers and comes housed in a special package complete with a 4 page booklet that contains technical information on the Superbit process. By reallocating space on the disc normally used for value-added content, Superbit DVDs can be encoded at double their normal bit rate while maintaining full compatibility with the DVD video format.