Bulletproof: Tough Guys of Action [2 Discs] [DVD]

The Anderson Tapes
This breathlessly paced high-tech thriller stars Sean Connery as Anderson, a career criminal who's just been released from his latest prison term. Seeking a quick financial turnover, Anderson uses mob funding to finance an ambitious robbery. With a gang of expert thieves, Anderson sets about to rob every wealthy tenant of a fancy East Side apartment building. What he doesn't know is that every move he makes is being monitored and taped by several law-enforcement agencies, who hope that Anderson will lead them to the Mob kingpins. Though the film may look like a "comment" on the Watergate break-in, The Anderson Tapes actually preceded that third-rate burglary by nearly two years. The Anderson Tapes boasts an impressive supporting cast, many of whom play wildly against type, including Alan King as an aging and infirm Mafia don. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Silent Rage
The sheriff of a small Texas town is pitted against a genetically engineered super-villain. ~ Deb Rainsbottom, Rovi

Shamus
This detective-themed action-adventure film spoofs The Big Sleep, which was based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Burt Reynolds plays McCoy, a hard-nosed private detective. The story has more tangles than a bowl of spaghetti, but it begins when McCoy is called to the house of Hume (Ron Weyand), an eccentric diamond dealer, and is given the task of recovering some stolen gems. McCoy is beaten by a gang of thugs to warn him off the job, and this lets him know that he's onto something really big. By the end of the film, McCoy will have hooked up with a gorgeous blonde (Dyan Cannon), driven a tank through a warehouse wall, and delivered numerous crooks to the police. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Russian Specialist
The muscle-bound Swedish screen icon Dolph Lundgren, who rose to fame as boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and held the title role in The Punisher, makes his sophomore directorial effort with the straight-to-video actioner The Russian Specialist (aka The Mechanik), a U.S./German co-production. Nick Cherenko (Lundgren), a Soviet Special Forces agent living and working in Russia, must flee the country when bloodthirsty gangsters massacre his wife and child. On the lam with his safety on the line, Cherenko escapes to Los Angeles, where he slips into a quiet, nonchalant life as an auto mechanic -- that is, until he is offered a massive amount of blood money to hunt down a kidnapper who abducted a young Russian heiress and to bring the girl back to the arms of her parents unscathed. Cherenko refuses -- until he discovers, by wild coincidence, that the kidnapper is the same Mafioso who rubbed out his next of kin. Packing heat, Cherenko does an about-face and hightails it to Russia to see that justice is served. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Into the Sun
When a fierce new breed of criminal emerges from the dreaded yakuza, the CIA must resort to a crime-fighting powerhouse whose penchant for mayhem rivals that of even the most hardened gangster in this effort from action icon Steven Seagal and Full Clip director mink. The yakuza's stronghold on Japan is legendary, but when the governor of Tokyo is assassinated and his wife's sister is kidnapped, ex-CIA agent Travis Hunter (Seagal) vows to find the men responsible for murdering his brother-in-law and rescue the girl before it's too late. The stakes are raised when Hunter learns of a deadly plot to detonate a nuclear device on U.S. soil, leaving the fate of a nation in the hands of the lethal but determined crime fighter. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Universal Soldier: The Return
Jean-Claude Van Damme returns as cybernetic warrior Luc Deveraux in this sequel to the 1992 action hit. After barely surviving his experiences as a part-human/part-robot Universal Soldier, Luc has opted to stay out of the front lines and work with a military project to refine and perfect the system. However, something goes wrong (as they so often do in films like this), and S.E.T.H. (Michael Jai White), the android supercomputer leading the new breed of soldiers, suddenly develops a murderous mind of his own. Soon S.E.T.H. is leading his fellow war machines on a rampage, and Luc is the only one who can stop them. The supporting cast includes Heidi Schanz and wrestling star Bill Goldberg. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Last Action Hero
Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as a pumped-up Shakespearian hero while an announcer bellows, "Something is rotten in Denmark -- and Hamlet is taking out the trash!" This gag sets the stage for the post-modernist action epic The Last Action Hero. The film concerns Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien), a lonely eleven-year-old boy who escapes from his bleak New York City reality by glorying in the action adventure movies of his favorite film character, Jack Slater (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Danny's friend is an elderly movie projectionist, Nick (Robert Prosky), who lets Danny into the shabby Times Square movie theater where he works so Danny can see Slater's new movie. He hands Danny a magic ticket given to him years ago by Houdini, and when Nick rips the ticket and gives Danny the stub, Danny finds himself catapulted from the theater into the back seat of Slater's speeding sports car in "Jack Slater IV." Danny becomes Slater's helper as Jack battles a trio of nefarious bad guys --Benedict (Charles Dance), Vivaldi (Anthony Quinn) and The Ripper (Tom Noonan). But things get out of hand when Benedict steals Danny's magic ticket stub and transports himself into Danny's reality. Benedict and The Ripper proceed to wreak havoc along Broadway, forcing Slater to cross into reality to get the villains and, in the process, learn about blood and pain. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The Stone Killer
The John Gardner novel A Complete State of Death became this bloody crime flick that united frequent action genre collaborators Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner. Bronson stars as Detective Lieutenant Lou Torry, a grizzled undercover New York City cop who ruins his career when he is caught going violently overboard while apprehending a ghetto punk. As punishment, Torry is banished all the way to the L.A. Police Department, where he begins investigating a mysterious chain of events involving ex-soldiers that seem to be Mob related. It turns out that Don Alberto Vescari (Martin Balsam), an aging Mafia chieftain, is planning the use of mentally disturbed Vietnam vets as assassins in a campaign of murder. With one broad, gory stroke, Vescari schemes to wipe out his underworld enemies, retaliating for a massacre that wiped out a generation of Sicilian mobsters 40 years earlier. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi