Hard-drinking, burnt-out ex-CIA operative John Creasy (Washington) has given up on life-until his friend Rayburn (Oscar winner Christopher Walken) gets him a job as a bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning). Bit by bit, Creasy begins to reclaim his soul, but when Pita is kidnapped, Creasy unleashes a firestorm of apocalyptic vengeance against everyone responsible. Style trumps substance in Man on Fire, a slick, brooding reunion of Crimson Tide star Denzel Washington and director Tony Scott. The ominous, crime-ridden setting is Mexico City, where a dour, alcoholic warrior with a mysterious Black Ops past (Washington) seeks redemption as the devoted bodyguard of a lovable 9-year-old girl (the precociously gifted Dakota Fanning), then responds with predictable fury when she is kidnapped. Prolific screenwriter Brian Helgeland (Mystic River, L. A. Confidential) sets a solid emotional foundation for Washington's tormented character, and Scott's stylistic excess compensates for a distended plot that's both repellently violent and viscerally absorbing. Among Scott's more distracting techniques is the use of free-roaming, comic-bookish subtitles. [+]

Presenting a rare opportunity to practice alongside one of America’s foremost teachers of Yang Style Taiji Sword, Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming Taiji Sword, the "Lord of One Hundred Arms and the King of Short Weapons," is among the most subtle of forms in all of Chinese Martial Arts. Along with Dr. Yang, you can develop the feeling of the coiling and angling of the Form as well as the fundamentals, Qigong, key techniques, applications and the all-important matching drills. • Follow along with the complete Sword Form & Sword Qigong Set. • Learn the proper breathing patterns. • See rarely shown martial applications and matching drills. vhs ntsc • 82 Minutes.

Set in New York and Florida, this colorful early crime drama by Toshimichi Ohkawa (Nobody) is something of a Japanese film noir in the American underworld. Rubber Jack, a Big Apple-based Japanese thief in debt to mobsters, robs a convenience store and winds up with money from a major bank heist. With the help of bartender Cash, a mercenary buddy who first betrays him and then saves his neck, he tracks the source of the bills to Key West, Florida, and the two head south in search of a mysterious woman named Sunny. Meanwhile the mob has caught the whiff of a $2 million payday and is hot on their trail. A violent clash is more than inevitable: it's demanded. A mix of violent Hong Kong-style action, grungy American indie crime thrillers, and ambiguous Japanese gangster films of shifting alliances and revenge-fueled clashes, this film is more compelling than exciting, a rare action picture where the characters are more interesting than the blazing gun battles. The snaky plot and ambiguous alliances drive the film forward even when the direction sags, and there are enough revelations and surprises to keep you going to the end. -Sean Axmaker.

There's no getting around a simple, basic truth: watching Lawrence of Arabia in any home-video format represents a compromise. There's no better way to appreciate this epic biographical adventure than to see it projected in 70 millimeter onto a huge theater screen. That caveat aside, David Lean's masterful "desert classic" is still enjoyable on the small screen, especially if viewed in widescreen format. (If your only option is to view a "pan & scan" version, it's best not to bother; this is a film for which the widescreen format is utterly mandatory. ) Peter O'Toole gives a star-making performance as T. E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. [+]

Cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak, the cameraman behind Speed, Lethal Weapon 4, and The Devil's Advocate, makes his directorial debut with a lively but by-the-numbers film that mixes Hong Kong action pyrotechnics with gritty urban gang drama. Jet Li stars as a jailed cop named Han who hightails it to Oakland, California, to seek revenge for the gang-related murder of his brother. What he finds, though, is a fierce war between his father's syndicate and that of Isaak O'Day (Delroy Lindo) for control of the city's precious waterfront land, as both groups are trying to make a deal with a corrupt football-team owner to build a new stadium. The political shenanigans are basically just a backdrop for the kick-ass action, and to give Li a number of enemies to lock limbs with. It also provides him with a love interest, Trish (hip-hop star Aaliyah), who's O'Day's daughter and like Han, the only straight arrow in a family of crooked mobsters. Li and Aaliyah have a teasing, gentle chemistry, and when they're onscreen together, the movie lights up and glides along smoothly. Li even finds a way to work Aaliyah into one of his action set pieces, using her arms and legs to fight a female adversary because "I can't hit a girl!" However, when these two aren't onscreen (and that's a fair amount of the time) the movie plods along, despite a stately turn by Lindo and Isaiah Washington and Russell Wong as two family allies who may not be as loyal as they seem. Li's action, though, is still phenomenal as ever, from his prison breakout (as he takes out a platoon of guards-strung upside down by one leg) to a knockdown-dragout fight with the agile and dangerously sexy Wong. And despite the Romeo and Juliet overtones, this is one mighty chaste romance, albeit one with a happy ending for the star-crossed lovers. -Mark Englehart.

An American photographer becomes enmeshed in the dangerous world of drug and arms dealing when a young prostitute he once photographed is found murdered. He can learn to defend himself - but there?s no defense from the the unexpected.