An all-but-incoherent sequel to (and completion of) trendsetting martial arts director Chang Cheh's Water Margin adaptation of Seven Blows of the Dragon. The plot was so familiar to Eastern audiences that it's barely sketched in. Most of the picture is just fighting, Robin Hood-style daring-do staged and shot in the standard slapdash style of 1970s kung fu. China's emperor enlists the Liang Shan Po outlaws in a struggle against the traitorous lord Fang Lau. Seven heroes, complete with cool nicknames (David Chaing is Yen Ching, "The Graceful One") are assigned to infiltrate Lau's impregnable, water-guarded fortress, and several of these paragons get to die staunchly in rivers of blood. Ti Lung, who costarred in John Woo's The Killer almost 15 years later, fights minus an arm, before gallantly expiring. (The broadcast TV version, while nominally uncut, switches to black-and-white during the exsanguinate scenes. ) -David Chute.

James Taylor is The Driver, a car-obsessed racer with stringy hair and a concentration that precludes conversation. He travels the backroads of rural America with his buddy, The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys), an equally obsessed lost soul at home only in the car or under the hood. They have no names, only designations, and no life outside of their gypsy existence, riding the unending highway in their souped-up '55 Chevy from race to race. After picking up a hitchhiking Girl (Laurie Bird), whose presence breaks the tunnel-vision focus of the two men, they challenge a middle-aged hotshot, the garrulous G. T. O. (Warren Oates) to a cross-country race. Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop is the most alienated evocation of modern America ever made, an almost abstract study in dislocation and obsession set against a vague landscape of roadside diners and rest stops. Taylor and Wilson deliver appropriately blank performances, only expressing emotion when The Girl sparks jealousy between them. Oates is a glib dynamo constructing a new persona in every scene, as if trying on characters to play as he ping-pongs between the coasts. [+]

John F. Kennedy lived long enough to see this Hollywood account of his Navy career and his heroism following a ruthless attack by a Japanese ship on his small patrol craft. Cliff Robertson is an amiable choice to play Kennedy, though one won't find a lot of the late president's mannerisms in his performance. The key battle sequence, which finds Kennedy and his crew bloodied and battered while trying to stay alive in shark-infested waters, makes a big impression on young viewers. -Tom Keogh.

The explosive and edgy Lethal Weapon introduced America to its favorite modern buddy team: Mel Gibson's suicidal firecracker Martin Riggs, a Vietnam vet whose reckless stunts earn him a reputation as the Los Angeles Police Department's least desirable partner, and Danny Glover's aging family man Roger Murtaugh, a veteran detective who wants nothing more than to gracefully live to see his pension. Richard Donner's smash movie is sleek, stylish, and practically nonstop action, but it's the chemistry between the combustible energy of Gibson and the paternal reserve of Glover that makes this combination so lethal. A sequel was inevitable, so Lethal Weapon 2 sent Riggs and Murtaugh after a South African drug syndicate, tossed funnyman Joe Pesci into the mix as a comic foil, and upped the ante of explosions, car chases, and apocalyptic property damage. Kung fu-kicking Rene Russo signed on for Lethal Weapon 3, a "mad genius run amok" adventure rushed into production without a finished script (and it shows in sloppy ad-libbed scenes) and crammed with wild high-speed chases and spectacular explosions. When Lethal Weapon 4 hit screens in 1998, the starring cast had ballooned: hot comic Chris Rock joined Gibson, Glover, Russo, and Pesci to take on a Chinese counterfeiting and slavery ring led by Hong Kong martial arts superstar Jet Li. Director Richard Donner helms every installment of his series, topping the frenzy of action and pyrotechnics with each new feature; watching the arc of the Lethal Weapon franchise is like a crash course in American action cinema of the '90s: bigger, faster, louder. Yet at the heart of every film is Riggs and Murtaugh, mismatched partners who become unlikely buddies, ready to lay their lives down for one another. By the climax of Lethal Weapon 4, as they team up against the fighting fury of Jet Li, their friendship has become the defining drive of the series. -Sean Axmaker.

Mickey Spillane plays his own creation, street-thug-turned-PI Mike Hammer, in this 1963 adaptation of his novel. The film opens with Hammer on the downside of a years-long bender, scooped out of the gutter by a bitter cop intent on prying information from a dying man. Inspired to clean up his act by the secrets he hears, Hammer hits the streets on a personal crusade to find the love of his life. Future Bond girl Shirley Earton costars as a glamorous society widow who goes slumming with Hammer. Spillane, who brings the grace of a trained monkey and the sex appeal of a Bronx cheer to the role, is less a stoic, tarnished street knight than a street bum at a cocktail party, but it works for the working-class pug. The low-budget production is a rare black-and-white CinemaScope picture, rough and messy but lacking the raw edge and gritty look of more accomplished crime pictures. B-movie veteran Roy Rowland directs with a lazy pace and a prosaic style that drags until he takes his camera to streets of New York City. The definitive Hammer remains Ralph Meeker in Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, but Spillane makes a respectable runner-up. -Sean Axmaker It's outrageous good fun! Writer Mickey Spillane stars as his hard-boiled private detective Mike Hammer in this action-packed murder mystery. After seven years on a drunken binge over the disappearance of Velda, his former secretary, Hammer is picked up out of the gutter by the police and dropped smack-dab in the middle of a political bombshell where every lead seems to end in murder. [+]

Six hours of monosyllabic John Rambo high jinks, best savored in surround sound (for the bone-rattling explosions) and with your brain on pause (for everything else). Sylvester Stallone's second signature character, after Rocky, a seething ex-Green Beret killing machine, went from Viet-vet victim in the original picture, First Blood, flipping out over the ingratitude of his beloved homeland, to a muscle-bound terminator in Rambo III, mowing down Commies in the deserts of Afghanistan. You should consider bypassing the boxed set in favor of just the middle chapter, Rambo: First Blood Part 2, written by James Cameron and directed by George Pan Cosmotos. It's the most balanced and satisfying of the three films: Rambo is dropped back into 'Nam to rescue some POWs, and the action builds steadily in scale and ferocity. Each fireball seems to be bigger than the last. Of all the recent headbanger action movies, only the first Die Hard offers more bang for the buck. The underrated character actor Richard Crenna (a standout sleazebag in Body Heat), as Rambo's military mentor and staunch defender, is the series' secret weapon, providing some welcome human ballast. -David Chute.

Paul Schrader had established his reputation as a screenwriter (The Yakuza and Taxi Driver, among others) before embarking on his directorial debut. Blue Collar is the story of three working-class guys at the Checker auto plant who run their local union office. Richard Pryor delivers a funny, passionate, seething performance in one of his rare dramatic roles as a rabble-rousing union man. Trapped by family worries and crippling back taxes, he dreams up the robbery after scoping out the joint and enlists his coworker and buddies, family man Harvey Keitel and high-living bachelor Yaphet Kotto, who are in similar financial straits. This is a strictly amateur-hour heist, and their successful getaway is the last bit of good luck in store for the trio. The robbery turns up no cash, only incriminating files, and the inept thieves are soon blackmailing the powerful union, which fights back with force, seduction, and murder. Schrader's first film has little of the polish or style he developed by American Gigolo, but his portrait of lower middle class families in 1970s Detroit, interracial relations, and male camaraderie is sharp and insightful. His attention to detail shows in every frame and adds to the edgy material, which balances the thriller plot with social commentary about corruption, labor relations, and the lure of power. Schrader's later films show more subtlety and cinematic confidence, but time hasn't dimmed the power he unleashes in this angry working class drama. The DVD features commentary by Paul Schrader, his first such audio track, guided and prodded by critic Maitland McDonagh, who does her best to draw the director out of his long silences and launch him into his fascinating production stories. [+]

A pre-Phantom Michael Crawford plays Woody, a goofy cartoonist-accidentally-turned-spy in this Cold War-era lark. In Paris visiting his friend, a CIA "file clerk," Woody is sent on a cloak-and-dagger errand and is mistaken for an operative by his beautiful Russian counterpart. She then contacts the agency with the demand that he, and only he, help her defect. Writer adopts comic book persona and voilà: Condorman! This wide-winged hero thwarts the pesky Soviets at every turn. From the old run-down farmer's truck he's driving emerges a flashy race car that outruns a fleet of Russian vehicles. Later, in a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang moment, the car sprouts floaters, allowing the pair to escape their pursuers by sea. Barbara Carrera's Natalia-the true spy of the two-is really just along for the ride. It's Condorman's show, as confirmed by the ending: a shot-filled showdown off the shores of Monte Carlo. -Kimberly Heinrichs.

Abel Ferrara, the bad boy of American independent filmmaking, made his first splash with this violent twist on Death Wish and the revenge-vigilante genre. Nastassja Kinski look-alike Zoë Tamerlis Lund stars as a beautiful mute seamstress in New York's garment district, a shrinking violet who is brutally raped and assaulted not once but twice in the same day. After dispatching the second predator in an adrenaline-driven rush of panic, she pockets his handgun and disposes of the body in small chunks. Tamerlis makes the most of her wordless role, her wide-eyed vulnerability hardening to a dead-eyed determination as she transforms from quivering victim to avenging dark angel, a one-woman vigilante force hunting pimps, perverts, sickos, and slimeballs and using herself as bait. Consider this Ferrara's Taxi Driver, a very different portrait of New York's mean streets. Though this shot-on-the-cheap production occasionally suffers from amateurish performances in supporting roles, Ferrara's impeccable eye for composition and bravura sense of editing create momentum that carries it through to its memorable Halloween party finale. Tamerlis is decked out in a nun's habit with a slash of lipstick across her face, a handgun tucked in a garter, and a contract out on the entire male sex. It's a deliriously effective exploitation thriller that undercuts every expectation of the genre. Ferrara makes a cameo as the first attacker. Tamerlis later cowrote and costarred in Ferrara's most notorious production, Bad Lieutenant. [+]