Sports

Iron Will

A complete lack of imagination is what qualifies this as a B movie. Thankfully, this snowy adventure about a boy and his dogs is charming enough to entice the kiddies. Charismatic MacKenzie Astin plays a teenager trying to save the family farm by entering a 522-mile sled-dog marathon. Except for Astin, the lusciously scenic background has more depth than most of the characters. This is so predictable you could take a nap and miss nothing except a few rousing scenes in the 1917 Winnipeg-to-St.-Paul sled race. Although this is visually more appealing than most family fare, one wishes more attention had been paid to the script. --Rochelle O'Gorman

Movie DVD

Wind

As he proved with The Black Stallion, Never Cry Wolf, and Fly Away Home, director Carroll Ballard has a gift for creating exhilarating movie experiences. And although Wind received only mixed reviews when released in 1992, it's a technically astonishing film that does for yacht racing what The Black Stallion did for horse racing--it puts you right into the action with breathtaking camerawork and gripping excitement. Matthew Modine and Jennifer Grey star as experienced sailors determined to win the prestigious America's Cup yacht race. Their love for each other is put to the test when she's removed from the crew and joins up with a maverick designer (Stellan Skarsgård) whose new boat design represents the cutting edge of sailing competition. Eventually Modine leaves his millionaire sponsor (Cliff Robertson) and reunites with Grey, and their race against the Australian World's Cup champion leads to a thrilling climax on the high sea. Cinematographer John Toll (who later won back-to-back Oscars for Legends of the Fall and Braveheart) takes his cameras where no sailing movie had ever gone before, and the results are nothing less than spectacular. --Jeff Shannon

A young man achieves his childhood dream to sail in an America's cup race, first taking part in a losing team and then trying again the next year.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 1-MAY-2007
Media Type: DVD

Le Mans

Almost in breadth and depth of a documentary, this movie depicts an auto race during the 70s on the world's hardest endurance course: Le Mans in France. The race goes over 24 hours on 14.5 kilometers of cordoned country road. Every few hours the two drivers per car alternate - but it's still a challenge for concentration and material. In the focus is the duel between the German Stahler in Ferrari 512LM and the American Delaney in Gulf Team Porsche 917. Delaney is under extraordinary pressure, because the year before he caused a severe accident, in which his friend Lisa's husband was killed.

A classic auto-racing movie starring Steve McQueen, Le Mans puts the audience in the driver's seat for what is often called the most grueling race in the world. The French auto race Le Mans is a 24-hour affair through the French countryside, a demanding ordeal for any driver. McQueen (Bullitt, The Great Escape) plays the American driver, locked in an intense grudge match with his German counterpart even as he wrestles with the guilt over causing an accident that cost the life of a close friend. McQueen is his usual stoic magnetic self, and the racing sequences are among the best ever committed to film. A solid character-driven story combines with raw visceral power to make Le Mans a rich tapestry of action and thrills. --Robert Lane

Best of the Best

Movie DVD

Bloodsport

A well-oiled Jean-Claude Van Damme makes his starring debut in what may be one of the few kickboxing films to be based on a true story. The Muscles from Brussels plays Frank Dux, the first Westerner ever to win the extreme "whupfest" known as the Kumatai (a long-running, no-holds-barred fighting tournament in Hong Kong). While a bit deficient in the script department (to say the least), this undeniably exciting flick succeeds by letting Van Damme play to his strengths: namely, minimal acting and a lot of impossibly acrobatic splits while kicking people in the head. A guilty-pleasure testosterone blast of the highest order, with a memorable villain (the massive Bolo Yeung from Enter the Dragon), and a multitude of well-choreographed fight scenes. An embarrassed-looking Forest Whitaker cameos as a hapless (and non-kickboxing) cop. --Andrew Wright

FRANK DUX HAS ENTERED THE KUMITE, AN ILLEGAL UNDERGROUND MARTIAL-ARTS COMPETITION WHERE SERIOUS INJURY AND EVEN DEATH ARE NOT UNKNOWN

Rocky Balboa

Rocky Balboa' examines one of America's greatest icons at a vulnerable period in his life--middle age. A former heavyweight boxing champion, known and renown throughout the world for going the distance, Rocky finds a new venture: giving back to his community. This is where he, once more, finds himself at the opposing side of opportunity, not unlike the one he has seen decades ago. Heavyweight champ Mason Dixon and his representation offer Rocky a shot for the title. For Balboa, it'll be one last hurrah he'll never forget.....but with his glory days far behind him can he withstand the inevitabilities of what's to come? A look at going full circle and wanting more, when life turns out how you least expect it and then some.

The sixth installment of the Rocky series picks up the story of the Italian Stallion 16 years after the morose Rocky V. And sure, at his advanced age, Sylvester Stallone now looks like one of those sides of beef his character used to pound on. No matter. Somehow you buy the premise after all these years, even if it takes forever for Rocky Balboa to stop wallowing in self-pity (Adrian is dead, his old haunts are demolished) and get down to the business of drinking raw eggs and running up staircases. The business at hand is an unlikely exhibition fight with champion Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver), which the near-sexagenarian Mr. Balboa has no business accepting. Of course, just as sure as the horns of Bill Conti's theme music are even now trumpeting through your head, the ol' Rock might have a punch or two left in him. Stallone wrote and directed, and there isn't much to say except that the movie steps in its pre-determined paces with a canny sense of what has come before (it's practically an homage to all the previous Rocky pictures, complete with fleeting flashbacks). Burt Young is around again, and Geraldine Hughes makes an appealing, rather chaste female companion for Rocky. Stallone's Rocky has gotten suspiciously articulate over the years, but he still knows how to slouch. If Stallone never forgets that, he can probably keep the franchise rolling. --Robert Horton

Stills from Rocky Balboa (click for larger image)

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The Films of Sylvester Stallone

Best of the Best 2

In this elaborate 1993 sequel to the 1989 karate-action feature, three masters and friends lose one of their own when Travis (Chris Penn) is killed during an illegal fight held in a secret society for gladiators (and well-heeled spectators) operating within a dance club. His death comes at the hands of a chemically-altered super-fighter, Brakus (Ralph Moeller), and is witnessed by the son (Edan Gross) of Travis' black-belt pal, Alex (Eric Roberts). Alex and Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) try to get to the bottom of Travis' demise, but find themselves running instead from the club's owner (Wayne Newton), who sends an army of killers to take out Walter and the others. The only solution for the good guys: take on Brakus, a process that involves special training from an unlikely source and a lot of dodging of various villains. Best of the Best director Bob Radler returns for another round with some of the same characters, and delivers a crisp and engaging revenge story with an above-average respect for the audience's intelligence. --Tom Keogh

Studio: Tcfhe Release Date: 02/06/2007

Driven

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.

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

The Last American Hero (AKA Hard Driver)

Based on Tom Wolfe's magazine article, this film follows the unlikely career of race car driver Junior Johnson. Jeff Bridges stars.

Undisputed II - Last Man Standing

Sequel to the 2002 film. This time Heavyweight Champ George "Iceman" Chambers (White) is sent to a Russian jail on trumped-up drug charges. In order to win his freedom he must fight against the jailhouse fighting champ Uri Boyka (Adkins) in a battle to the death. This time he is not fighting for a title he is fighting for his life!Running Time: 98 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE UPC: 794043104336 Manufacturer No: N10433

Michael Jai White replaces Ving Rhames in Undisputed II: Last Man Standing, a sequel to the 2002 Undisputed, in which a heavyweight champion boxer is sent to prison as a ruse to get him to fight a champion pugilist on the slammer circuit. White is serviceable as "Iceman" Chambers, this time arrested in Russia (framed for drug possession) and sent to hard time in a horrible prison. There Iceman resists efforts to convince him to fight a champion kickboxer (Scott Adkins), but the system is determined to break him or get him to cooperate with the plan. This brutal adventure is pretty much by-the-numbers as follow-up features go, but it is generally exciting, and martial arts buffs will certainly enjoy the taut action sequences. --Tom Keogh