The Bride (Uma Thurman) gets her satisfaction--and so do we--in Quentin Tarantino's "roaring rampage of revenge," Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Where Vol. 1 was a hyper-kinetic tribute to the Asian chop-socky grindhouse flicks that have been thoroughly cross-referenced in Tarantino's film-loving brain, Vol.
Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, Vol. 1 is trash for connoisseurs. From his opening gambit (including a "Shaw-Scope" logo and gaudy '70s-vintage "Our Feature Presentation" title card) to his cliffhanger finale (a teasing lead-in to 2004's Vol. 2), Tarantino pays loving tribute to grindhouse cinema, specifically the Hong Kong action flicks and spaghetti Westerns that fill his fervent brain--and this frequently breathtaking movie--with enough cinematic references and cleverly pilfered soundtrack cues to send cinephiles running for their reference books.
Let's face it: No one is usually checking a Jet Li movie for the verbal sparring. In Kiss of the Dragon, Chinese undercover agent Li chops his way through Paris after he's framed in some sketchily defined drug sting operation. The fight sequences are tough and quite brutal, and the over-the-top finale is arguably worth the price of admission, wherein an implacable Li takes on the entire Paris Police Bureau, working his way up toward police chief TchÈky Karyo's office through cops, a pair of peroxide-blond twin henchmen, and a whole class of kung fu cadets.
Laura Croft is back in action and faces her most perilous mission. To recover what ancient civilization believed to be the essence of all evil, Pandora’s Box. She must travel the globe, from Greece to Hong Kong to Kenya and beyond to get to the box before it is found by a maniacal scientist whose plan it is to use it for mass annihilation. For this adventure Laura recruits her ex-partner, Terry Sheridan, a dangerous mercenary who has previously betrayed Laura and their country. She knows he's the best for the mission, but can she trust him again?
She;s rich, beautiful, smart...and deadly! Angelina Jolie leaps onto the screen as the hit video game character, Lara Croft. She's honed her skills as a butt-kicking artifact retriever, but now faces a formidable new challenge. A mysterious secret society has stolen a special key which threatens humanity, and it's up to Croft to retrieve it. As it is, this is an elegantly mounted adventure featuring exotic locations (in Cambodia and Iceland) and an exotic star born for her role.
While Japan undergoes tumultuous transition to a more Westernized society in 1876-77, The Last Samurai gives epic sweep to an intimate story of cultures at a crossroads. In America, tormented Civil War veteran Capt. Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise) is coerced by a mercenary officer (Tony Goldwyn) to train the Japanese Emperor's troops in the use of modern weaponry. Opposing this "progress" is a rebellion of samurai warriors, holding fast to their traditions of honor despite strategic disadvantage.
Director Zhang Yimou brings the sumptuous visual style of his previous films (Raise the Red Lantern, Shanghai Triad) to the high-kicking kung fu genre. A nameless warrior (Jet Li, Romeo Must Die, Once Upon a Time in China) arrives at an emperor's palace with three weapons, each belonging to a famous assassin who had sworn to kill the emperor. As the nameless man spins out his story--and the emperor presents his own interpretation of what might really have happened--each episode is drenched in red, blue, white or another dominant color.
Wonderwoman, Thief Catcher and Invisible Girl are the Heroic Trio. Hold on for the ride of your life, from the foreboding surreal atmosphere of the underworld to a magnificently staged train wreck, the action never lets up. The Heroic Trio, with their arsenal of traditional martial arts sorcery and weapons of modern warfare, wage battles filled with elaborate special effects in an attempt to defeat the baby-stealing Demon Lord of the Underworld and his sinister army of assassins.
Phoenix cop Ben Shockley's dream of breaking "the big case" has faded through the years. His assignment to escort from Las Vegas "a nothing witness for a nothing trial" seems like just another meaningless exercise. Until the fireworks start. Clint Eastwood runs The Gauntlet into an explosive movie embodying its title with a vengeance. The witness is a hardened hooker (Locke) whom everyone - including Vegas oddsmakers - wants dead.
Trapped by his image in 1976, Clint Eastwood resurrected his Dirty Harry character for a third go-round (out of a total of five) in this potboiler story in which the San Francisco detective takes on a group of revolutionary kids. Tyne Daly costars as a female cop who partners with the reluctant Harry Callahan, and she does very well by a role created merely to underscore and articulate the hero's various virtues. Inside the wrapping are good performances by the two leads.
