Film fans might someday recognize 1997 and '98 as the years Hong Kong came to Hollywood. Stars Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Chow Yun-Fat, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh all appeared in major Hollywood projects and directors John Woo, Ronny Yu, and Tsui Hark directed Face/Off, Bride of Chucky, and Knock Off, respectively. Another entry into this new era of entertainment is The Big Hit, directed by Che-Kirk Wong (who also directed Jackie Chan in Crime Story), executive produced by John Woo, and produced by Wesley Snipes. Mark Wahlberg leads this all-American cast in a played-for-laughs macho blowout. Rounding out the testosterone brigade are Lou Diamond Phillips (sprouting a gold-capped tooth and a dirty mouth), Bokeem Woodbine (who, according to this DVD's director audio track, wore extra socks where it counts), Antonio Sabàto Jr. , and Avery Brooks. Wahlberg plays Melvin Smiley, a nice-guy hit man with an ulcer and a severe insecurity problem. He's short on cash due to the spending habits of his unsuspecting fiancée Pam (Christina Applegate) and his girlfriend-on-the-sly Chantel (Lela Rochon). He and his crew decide to do a little freelancing and cook up their own heist to make a little mo' money-specifically by kidnapping Keiko (China Chow), the daughter of a Japanese businessman whom they target for ransom. Little do they know her dad is broke and she's the goddaughter of their boss. [+]

Ghosts of Mars may not be one of John Carpenter's finer efforts, but you can't knock the veteran director for staying true to his roots-it's clearly a Carpenter film, reveling in its B-movie blood lust, and fueled by the director's rock & roll rebellion as well as the sex appeal of star Natasha Henstridge. This rickety sci-fi/horror hybrid recalls Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, with various connections from throughout the director's career-for better and worse. It's the year 2176, and human colonists on Mars are controlled by a political "matronage," with women (for reasons unexplained) holding court in the capitol city of Chryse. Mars Police Force Lt. Ballard (Henstridge) has been sent to retrieve James "Desolation" Williams (Ice Cube), the planet's most notorious criminal, from a remote mining-colony prison. With her ill-fated crew, Ballard discovers that the colonists have nearly all been possessed by ancient Martian spirits bent on reclaiming the planet, turning them into an army of self-mutilating freaks suggesting an unholy union of Marilyn Manson and the sadomasochistic Cenobites from the Hellraiser films. None of this makes much sense, and the shaky alliance between cops and criminals is a predictable excuse for rampant battle scenes between surviving humans and the ghost-possessed maniacs. Exotic weaponry abounds (along with cheap special effects and some laughable dialogue), resulting in the gruesome dispatch of expendable costars Pam Grier, Joanna Cassidy, Robert Carradine, and Clea Duvall. Driven by Carpenter's synth-metal score, this violent free-for-all has a few brief highlights, but it's suspenseless and ultimately absurd. It's not much, but for loyal fans it's probably enough. [+]

Anyone want to venture a guess that Keanu Reeves was sorry he passed up Speed 2 to make this turkey? Both a ridiculous suspense piece about a renegade intelligence community and an ill-considered hunk of do-gooder agitprop about alternative energy technology, Chain Reaction makes Reeves and almost everyone else involved look about as dumb as dumb can be. Hollywood's own Little Buddha plays a streetwise lab technician who survives an organized assault on his hydrogen-power project. The FBI assumes he's really a spy working for some foreign power, but the truth is that a CIA offshoot is behind the project's funding. Morgan Freeman plays the ramrod-straight company man who sabotages Keanu's excellent experiment, and Rachel Weisz portrays a physicist who goes on the run with the alleged saboteur. Directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), who seems more interested in seeing how many absurd places he can mount a chase scene than offering a solid clue as to who these characters are and why we should care about them. -Tom Keogh.

After a two-year hiatus that included recovery from heart surgery, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned to the big screen in November 1999 with End of Days, a Thanksgiving turkey if ever there was one. Overcooked and bloated with stuffing, this ludicrous thriller attached itself to the end-of-the-millennium furor that kicked in a year too early. A prologue begins in 1979 with panic in the Vatican when a comet signals the birth of a child who will, 20 years later, become the chosen bride of Satan, destined to conceive the devil's spawn between 11 p. m. and midnight on December 31, 1999. It's hard to decide who has the more thankless role-Robin Tunney as Satan's would-be bride, or Schwarzenegger as Jericho Cane, the burned-out alcoholic bodyguard assigned to protect the girl from Satan, billed as "The Man" and played with cheesy menace (and an inconsistent variety of metaphysical manifestations) by Gabriel Byrne. With kitschy character names like Jericho and Chicago (Arnie's partner, played by Kevin Pollack) and lapses in logic that any 5-year-old could spot, End of Days is a loud, aggravating movie that would be entertaining if it were intended as comedy. But Schwarzenegger and director Peter Hyams approach the story as an earnest tale of redemption and tested faith, delivering a ridiculous climax full of special effects and devoid of dramatic impact. You're left instead to savor the verbal and physical sparring between Satan and Jericho, resulting in the most thorough pummeling Schwarzenegger's ever endured onscreen. Of course he eventually gets his payback, just in time for New Year's Eve. [+]

Another action flick from an unlikely source (wildly inconsistent Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky), buddy movie Tango & Cash teams Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell as bullet-dodging cops who get on each others' nerves while uniting against a slimy French drug kingpin (Jack Palance). Violent, profane, and packed with implausibilities, this is one of those big-budget, stunt-laden affairs that gets by on the charisma of its stars, and they almost pull it off. Tango & Cash was Stallone's first attempt to share the spotlight with another hero, and he's casually laid-back in his change-of-pace role (well, OK, it's not that change-of-pace), while Russell is equally enjoyable as Sly's well-coifed sidekick. Ridiculous all the way, this one is entertaining if only as a virtual catalog of action-movie clichés. -Jeff Shannon.

Revenge rarely gets sweeter than it does in The Count of Monte Cristo, a rousing, impeccably crafted adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père's literary classic. Filmed countless times before, the story is revitalized by director Kevin Reynolds (rallying after Waterworld) and screenwriter Jay Wolpert, who wisely avoid the action-movie anachronisms that plagued 2001's dubious Dumas-inspired The Musketeer. Leading a superior cast, Jim Caviezel (Frequency) expresses a delicate balance of obsession and nobility as Dantes, the wrongly accused Frenchman who endures 13 years of prison and torment, then uses a hidden treasure to finance elaborate vengeance on those who wronged him. Memento's Guy Pearce is equally effective as Dantes's betraying nemesis, and Richard Harris tops his Harry Potter wizardry with a humorous turn as Dantes's fellow prisoner and mentor. Filmed on stunning locations in Ireland and Malta, The Count of Monte Cristo easily matches Rob Roy for intelligent swashbuckling entertainment. -Jeff Shannon.

This chaotic and gratuitously violent movie deservedly took a nosedive when released in 1996. It belongs in the same category of air-disaster movies as Con Air and Air Force One, but those films could be considered masterpieces in comparison to this schlock. Ray Liotta gives an over-the-top performance as the so-called Lonely Hearts Killer, who seizes control of a 747 during mid-flight and proceeds to wreak havoc. He kills just about everyone, but Lauren Holly survives as the flight attendant who eventually has to land the damaged airliner while the pilot of another 747 (Ben Cross) talks her through the landing procedure. Sound familiar? It ought to-Turbulence is another grab bag of thriller clichés. -Jeff Shannon.

Ice Cube cowrote, produced, and stars in this action caper. Bucum (Cube) is a bounty hunter (get it?) with dreams of big money. Reggie (Mike Epps) is a small-time grifter who also has dreams of big money and is at the top of Bucum's list to boot. Yep, you guessed it: tough guy/funny guy buddy flick. All About the Benjamins is pretty much a by-the-numbers piece of work. There's plenty of macho posturing, gunfire, big-ticket items exploding, and curse words inserted into the script in lieu of actual punch lines. The plot has holes big enough to drive a locomotive through, but then again the plot isn't really the point. Epps's attempts at wacky comedy wear thin early on, but Ice Cube does a fine job, and together they do make quite a few moments hit. Best recommended for when you want turn-your-brain-off excitement. -Ali Davis Ice Cube and Mike Epps are the driving force of this high style, high impact, action/comedy. [+]

Even when it misses a dramatic opportunity in favor of generic action, Set It Off benefits from a sharp understanding of its well-drawn central characters. They're a quartet of young African American women in Los Angeles (Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise), all struggling against a system that seems designed to prevent them from realizing their dreams. The movie establishes their plight with credible attention to emotional detail, making their decision to rob banks believable enough to give the ensuing plot its inevitably tragic momentum. Cowritten by the screenwriter of What's Love Got to Do With It?, the film conveys genuine compassion for its characters, and the ensemble cast is uniformly strong-especially Queen Latifah as a brash lesbian whose fate is as certain as her forceful attitude. Set It Off expresses a real sense that these women have been close friends for years, and that gives the film additional impact, even when their transition to crime and violence feels somewhat forced and superficial. A romantic subplot involving Pinkett and a social-climbing banker (Blair Underwood) is too contrived to be convincing, and director F. Gary Gray (Friday) tries too hard to combine hard-hitting action with social relevance (a weakness shared by Gray's following film, The Negotiator). Still, Set It Off effectively avoids passing judgment; its emotional complexity transcends simple notions of right and wrong, injecting vitality-and a kind of renegade integrity-into the traditions of a familiar plot. -Jeff Shannon.