- DIE HARD
(1988)
 Starring Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman
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- Synopsis
This one made Bruce Willis box-office and established him as
a blue collar hero. After twenty minutes of set-up the film sprints
to the finish with lots of bleeding and sweating and grunting.
Firefights, fistfights and more. A half dozen hateful villains.
Funny and thrilling. Pure popcorn adrenaline.
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- FULL
CONTACT (1992)
- Starring
Chow Yun Fat and Simon Ringo, subtitled in English
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- Synopsis
- Chow Yun Fat and Simon Lam in
Ringo Lam's Hong Kong crime epic. Chow's a low-level hood who's
left for dead by his gang after a hold-up in Thailand goes terribly
wrong. Chow's revenge ends in a pile of bodies. An unforgettable
gunbattle in an ice warehouse. The first movie to do the "follow
the track of the bullet" gag that's common in movies now.
Stylish and mean.
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- PREDATOR (1987)
- Starring Arnold Swarzeneggar, Carl Weathers,
Jesse Ventura
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- Synopsis
- Arnold, Carl Weathers and the
Governor of Minnesota versus Sandanistas and a vicious alien
in the jungle. Blistering firefights (Jesse with a gatling gun!)
and a hand-to-hand fight with the titular alien is a bruiser.
Arnold looks miserable as he had walking pneumonia while filming
this. That just adds to the believability.
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- DIE
HARD WITH A VENGEANCE
(1995)
- Starring Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson,
and Jeremy Irons
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- Synopsis
- Willis and MacTiernan again
with Die Hard 3. This time he's teamed with Samuel L. Jackson
for the best Batman movie ever made. Bruce is after a sick professional
criminal (Jeremy Irons) who leaves riddles and corpses all over
Manhattan.
Chases, gun battles, fistfights and explosions follow one upon
the other. Great heist sequence. And brilliant casting of pop
singer Sam Phillips as a silent femme fatale who knows how to
handle a knife.
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- HARD
BOILED (1992)
- Starring Chow Yun Fat; subtitled in English
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- Synopsis
- Not the best of the Chow Yun
Fat/John Woo efforts but certainly the most action packed. It
opens with a tremendous gunfight and just picks up speed from
there. The closing half hour where the bad (REALLY bad) guys
take an entire hospital hostage has to be seen to be believed.
Chow at his most charming and deadly.
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- BIG
TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA
(1986)
 Starring Kurt Russell and Kim Catrall
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- Synopsis
- Disjointed and strange but filled
with surprises. Kurt Russell and a mostly Asian cast "shake
the pillars of Heaven" with a series of firefights and kung-fu
battles and nasty traps. Some truly funny scenes and great delivery
from Kurt.
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- EXTREME
PREJUDICE (1987)
- Starring Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, and
Maria Conchita Alonzo
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- Synopsis
- 100% guilty pleasure. Nick Nolte,
as the toughest Texas Ranger ever, against slimy Powers Boothe
with Maria Conchita Alonzo and a cast of unfortunate Mexican
stereotypes caught in the middle. Throw in a whacky, redneck-on-acid
played by Bill Forsythe and mix with lead! Walter Hill goes over
the top and never comes back as the cast backstabs, shifts loyalties
and shoots anyone who moves in Hill's homage to THE WILD BUNCH.
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- SUPERCOP
(1996)
- Starring Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh
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- Synopsis
- Jackie Chan's most punch crazy
movie. And THAT's saying something. Jackie's a Hong Kong cop
on the trail of druglords in the Golden Triangle of Southeast
Asia. He's partnered with the astounding Michelle Yeoh (who showed
Pierce Brosnan how it's done in TOMMORROW NEVER DIES) as a soldier
from mainland China. Amazing martial arts sequence and a high
octane gunfight in the jungle are just the beginning as we head
for a wild chase and fight in Singapore involving trucks, cars,
a freight train and the most consistently dangerous helicopter
in cinema history.
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- SIEGE
OF FIREBASE GLORIA
 Starring R. Lee Ermey and Wings Hauser
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- Synopsis
- You're gonna have to go on ebay
to find this one. R. Lee Ermey (the drill instructor from FULL
METAL JACKET) and Wings Hauser (straight to video action king)
star as Marines in Vietnam who man a forgotten firebase that
is being encircled by what seems like the entire North Vietnamese
army. Nasty, wicked, take-no-prisoners stuff. Favorite scene;
Ermey holding up two severed heads of guys decapitated by VC
when they fell asleep on guard duty. "These are BAD Marines,"
R Lee shouts in his famous frog croak/drawl.
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- HIGH
RISK
 Starring
James Brolin and James Coburn; with Lindsay Wagner, Ernest Borgine,
and Anthony Quinn
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- Synopsis
- Another one to look for on ebay.
This one tanked at the box office. It opened the same weekend
as RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Talk about bad positioning. James
Brolin leads a bunch of his unemployed blue collar pals down
to Colombia to rip off billionaire cokelord James Coburn. Great
action and a jungle chase. Some funny stuff and a cornball ending
that works. And the Bionic Woman is in it!
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