Thriller

Panic Room

Trapped in their New York brownstone’s panic room, a hidden chamber built as a sanctuary in the event of break-ins, newly divorced Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) play a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with three intruders--Burnham (Forest Whitaker), Raoul (Dwight Yoakam) and Junior (Jared Leto) -- during a brutal home invasion. But the room itself is the focal point because what the intruders really want is inside it.

The Package

Gene Hackman is a career officer assigned a routine mission well beneath him: deliver a prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) from Europe to the United States. However, the simple assignment becomes a daring cat-and-mouse game played as the last flames of the Cold War are flickering. This is the first of three films that teamed Jones with director Andrew Davis. In 1989 Jones was a wild card: an actor respected but only popping up in grade B fare. After Davis's Under Siege and The Fugitive, Jones was America's favorite gruff character actor, with an Oscar on his mantel.

Phone Booth

A single phone call can change a man's life... or possibly end it. Colin Farrell delivers a captivating, off-the-hook performance as Stu Shepard, a self-centered New York City publicist who suddenly finds himself on the deadly end of a high-powered rifle scope. Now it's a real-time race against the clock as Stu must outwit a psychotic sniper in a frantic scramble from phone booth to freedom.

No Way Out

Imagine being a hunter leading highly trained bloodhounds in pursuit of a killer - and the trail leads directly to you! Starring Academy-Award winners Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman, No Way Out is "a mesmerizing look at Washington power" (The Hollywood Reporter). Capturing a well-deserved four stars from critic Roger Ebert, this "taut and stylish" (Newsweek) thriller is fast-paced and powerful - "a perfect nailbiter" (Variety)! In a fit of rage, Secretary of Defense David Brice (Hackman) murders his mistress.

A Perfect Murder

Wall Street titan Steven Taylor seems like a devoted husband. He isn't. Beautiful Emily Bradford Taylor seems like a faithful wife. She isn't. And when Steven hires Emily's lover to kill her, it seems like A Perfect Murder. It isn't. In fact, little is what it seems in this sleek thriller. Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow and Viggo Mortensen star in A Perfect Murder, inspired by the play Dial M For Murder, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954. Fans of that classic will be in for a lot of surprises. So will Steven. At each unexpected twist in his "perfect" plot, he improvises brilliantly.

Patriot Games

Harrison Ford stars as Jack Ryan in this explosive thriller based on Tom Clancy's international best-seller. His days as an intelligence agent behind him, former CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ford) has traveled to London to vacation with his wife and daughter. Meeting his family outside of Buckingham Palace, Ryan is caught in the middle of a terrorist attack on Lord Holmes. Ryan helps to thwart Holmes' assailants and becomes a local hero. But Ryan's courageous act marks him as a target in the sights of the terrorist whose brother he killed.

The Net

The Net, the first of Hollywood's big cyberthrillers of the mid-1990s, was also the most successful, thanks in large part to the natural appeal of star Sandra Bullock. Still riding high from Speed and While You Were Sleeping, Bullock plays a computer expert victimized by sinister cyberforces who steal her identity for reasons unknown. It's a clever combination of high-tech paranoia and Hitchcockian references (including Jeremy Northam as a romantic stranger named Devlin, after Cary Grant in Notorious).

Marathon Man

John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy) directed this gripping, entertaining 1977 thriller that centers on graduate student Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Tootsie). Hoffman plays a sullen and cowardly loner haunted by the suicide of his father, a suspected communist. He is drawn into a murky web of international intrigue when his brother, CIA agent Doc Levy, played by Roy Scheider (Jaws, The French Connection), is murdered by a former Nazi (Laurence Olivier) who has come to the United States to reclaim a valuable stash of diamonds.

Man On Fire

Two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington ignites a masterpiece of mayhem in this "powerful" (Los Angeles Times) action-thriller. Hard-drinking, burned-out CIA operative John Creasy (Washington) has given up on life - until his friend Rayburn (Oscar winner Christopher Walken) gets him a job asia bodyguard to nine-year-old Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning). Bit by bit, Creasy begins to reclaim his soul, but when Pita is kidnapped, Creasy's fiery rage is released and he will stop at nothing to save her.

The Manchurian Candidate

You will never find a more chillingly suspenseful, perversely funny, or viciously satirical political thriller than The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon (author of Winter Kills). The film, withheld from distribution by star Frank Sinatra for almost a quarter century after President Kennedy's assassination, has lost none of its potency over time. Former infantryman Bennet Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by nightmares about his platoon having been captured and brainwashed in Korea.

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