During the Vietnam War, a soldier finds himself the outsider of his own squad when they unnecessarily kidnap a female villager.
A horrific crime is given an upright, but a bit homespun treatment as a Hollywood melodrama; nevertheless, there are memorable moments and some excellent performances.
Halliwell*: "Simple minded, melodramatic account of a true incident."
Maltin**: "As the Voice of Reason, Fox is well cast, but his clean-cut decency gets to be a bit much; Penn and Thu Le...are more effective. For all its good intentions, film has a jumbled, detached feel to it..."
In a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact
through surrogate robots, a cop is forced to leave his home for the
first time in years in order to investigate the murders of others'
surrogates.
Fairly entertaining sci-fi tale with an amusing premise (war is fought by surrogate soldiers while the real ones rest in a building full of cots) doesn't quite live up to its existentialist implications.
Maltin***: "Smart science-fiction tale...Slick entertainment has some provocative ideas behind it."
The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of
diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.
Arguably Quentin Tarantino's best movie, a stroke of genius concerning several intertwined plots swinging back and forth in time, a treasure trove of cinematic allusions, tongue-in-cheek humour and a very carefully and accurately selected cast; all his subsequent movies have been more or less variations of what you can find here.
Halliwell***: "Clever, witty, violent celebration of junk culture, drawing rather too heavily on past thrillers but blessed with some excellent performances which crackle with menace."
Maltin***1/2: "Audacious, outrageous look at honors among lowlifes, told in a soemwhat radical style overlapping a handful of separate stories. Jackson and Travolta are magnetic as a pair of hit men who have philosophical debates on a regular basis; Willis is compelling as a crooked boxer whose plan to take it on the lam hits a few detours. (In fact, there are no slackersin this cast.) This voluble, violent, pumped-up movie isn't for every taste - certainly not for the squeamish - but it's got morevitality than almost any other film of 1994."
While investigating a series of murders, a homicide detective becomes
the prime suspect when the FBI uncovers his close personal ties to all
the victims.
OK serial killer thriller in a similar vein as Se7en, but much less surprising or compelling.
