Hard Boiled [Blu-ray]

• HARD BOILED BLU-RAY (BLU-RAY DISC)

Chow Yun-Fat stars as one of the all-time toughest, coolest cops, who teams up with an undercover agent to bring down a ruthless gun smuggling ring. Features some of the most amazing action cinematography in film history.Masterful Hong Kong action director John Woo (The Killer, Face/Off) turns in this exciting and pyrotechnic tale of warring gangsters and shifting loyalties. Chow Yun-fat (The Replacement Killers) plays a take-no-prisoners cop on the trail of the triad, the Hong Kong Mafia, when his partner is killed during a gun battle. His guilt propels him into an all-out war against the gang, including an up-and-coming soldier in the mob (Tony Leung) who turns out to be an undercover cop. The two men must come to terms with their allegiance to the force and their loyalty to each other as they try to take down the gangsters. A stunning! feast of hyperbolic action sequences (including a climactic sequence in an entire hospital taken hostage), Hard-Boiled is a rare treat for fans of the action genre, with sequences as thrilling and intense as any ever committed to film. --Robert Lane

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Crossing Over

• CROSSING OVER (DVD MOVIE)

Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones films) is on a quest for justice as an immigrations agent investigating the case of a missing illegal. In a cross-fire of crime and bureaucracy, fraud and murder, he must race against time to try to save a family from becoming collateral damage in the fight for the American dream. Critics rave, “Harrison Ford is terrific. An engrossing, thoroughly entertaining movie with great performances from a first-rate ensemble cast” (Pete Hammond, Hollywood.com). Co-starring Ashley Judd (Twisted), Ray Liotta (Smokin’ Aces), Jim Sturgess (21), and Cliff Curtis (10,000 BC); Crossing Over will keep you riveted until the final mystery unfolds.

Stills from Crossing Over (Click for larger image)

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The director of The Cooler tries a bigger canvas: Crossing Over is Wayne Kramer's take on nothing less than the vast subject of illegal immigration, coming at the topic from a dozen or so directions. Hefting the most star power is Harrison Ford, scurrying about as an L.A. Immigration and Customs officer whose conscience is sore from having trundled so many illegals back over the border--now he's worried about the child of a particularly vulnerable woman (Alice Braga). Cliff Curtis plays Ford's partner, an Iranian-American whose family ! is not as assimilated as his casual manner might suggest. There's a bit of pulp swagger in other sections of the picture, as Kramer tries to channel his inner Sam Fuller: for instance, an Immigration official (Ray Liotta at his piggiest) coerces an Australian actress (Alice Eve) into a sex-for-green-card affair, and an adolescent Arab-American girl (Summer Bishil, from Towelhead) gives a cheeky speech at school that puts her family under suspicion as possible terrorists. Other strands of this scenario aren't as urgent, as Ashley Judd dreams of adopting the African child she's tending, and Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe), as a British non-believer, tries to convince Immigration authorities of his commitment to working at a Jewish school. The movie's single best scene has him "auditioning" to convince a rabbi of his commitment to Judaism, a funny moment that also carries an echo of the history of Jewish exodus. The movie has a tendency to bash from one thing ! to the next, too neatly connecting its Crash-like plotl! ines, li ke a really spirited first draft of a better movie. --Robert Horton

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