Action

Jackie Brown is the name of a flight attendant who gets caught smuggling her boss' gun money on the airline she works for. Luckily for her, the Fed Ray Nicolet and the LA Cop Mark Dargus decide to team up in order to arrest the arms dealer she works for, whose name they don't even know. Here's when she has to choose one way: tell Nicolet and Dargus about Ordell Robbie (the arms dealer) and get her freedom -except that if Ordell suspects you're talking about him, you're dead- or keep her mouth shut and do some time.

No computer graphic can ever surpass what a real human body can do--and what the body can do is on spectacular display in Ong-Bak, a Thai action movie starring the lithe and flexible Tony Jaa. When the head is stolen from a holy statue in Jaa's rural village, he goes to Bangkok to get it back. Of course, it just so happens that the thief is connected to a bar where criminal big shots gamble over bare-knuckle brawls, and Jaa is--despite his virtuous efforts--drawn into the game.

The 1970s were difficult years for the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Following the box-office failure of his 1970 film Dodes'ka-den and an unsuccessful suicide attempt, Kurosawa was unable to find financial backing in Japan, and he made his acclaimed 1975 film Dersu Uzala in Siberia with Russian financing.

The Warrior combines gorgeous cinematography, complex historical politics, and joltingly bloody action sequences to create a sweeping historical spectacular. A squadron of Korean soldiers, sent to protect a diplomatic envoy to China, find themselves unmoored when the envoys are killed in clashes with Chinese and Mongol soldiers. Struggling to return home, they rescue a high-handed Chinese princess (Ziyi Zhang, House of Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and decide that protecting her is their best chance to survive, and possibly improve Korean-Chinese relations as well.

San Francisco has been the setting of a lot of exciting movie car chases over the years, but this 1968 police thriller is still the one to beat when it comes to high-octane action on the steep hills of the city by the Bay. The outstanding car chase earned an Oscar for best editing, but the rest of the movie is pretty good, too. Bullitt is a perfect star vehicle for cool guy Steve McQueen, who stars as a tenacious detective (is there any other kind?) determined to track down the killers of the star witness in an important trial.

Corruption. Extortion. Sometimes, even, assassination. For the tradition-bound mob bosses of Manhattan's Chinatown, there are age-old ways of running things. And now there's police captain Stanley White's way. Mickey Rourke portrays White, a war veteran who has a Vietnam-sized chip on his shoulder when dealing with an emerging blood feud in Chinatown. John Lone plays the crime lord standing in the line of fire of White's relentless campaign.

Anybody hungering for a good old-fashioned Western needs to check out Warriors of Heaven and Earth, which--although it's set in 7th-century China--has all the valor and spectacle of a John Ford picture. It also has a goofy supernatural streak, for the chopsocky crowd. The opening 10 minutes or so offer an alarmingly convoluted plot, but it swiftly settles down. What's going on is that a long-exiled Japanese hit man (Kiichi Nakai), hired to kill a renegade Chinese warrior (Jiang Wen), temporarily teams up with his quarry in order to escort a camel caravan along the Spice Road.

The Warriors combines pure pulp storytelling and surprisingly poetic images into a thoroughly enjoyable cult classic. The plot is mythically pure (and inspired by a legendary bit of Greek history): When a charismatic gang leader is shot at a conclave in the Bronx meant to unite all the gangs in New York City, a troupe from Coney Island called the Warriors get blamed and have to fight all the way back to their own turf--which means an escalating series of battles with colorful and improbable gangs like the Baseball Furies, who wear baseball uniforms and KISS-inspired face make-up.

From the stars of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Zhang Ziyi) and Iron Monkey (Yu Ruan Guong) come this HK $60 million chivalric action epic. In 1375, the ancient Korean kingdom of Koryo sent an envoy of diplomats and soldiers to make peace with China, only to be charged as spies and sent to the remote Gobi desert to die. As they struggled to return to their home country alive, the warriors came across a princess (Zhang) who's kidnapped by the Mongolian troops.

Ryan O'Neal and Bruce Dern star in this fast-paced crime thriller filled with white-knuckle car chases. Known as the fastest getaway man on high-stakes robbery jobs, The Driver (O'Neal) is also relentlessly pursued by a detective on the police force who's obsessed with catching him (Dern). With its all-star cast, which also includes Isabelle Adjani and Ronee Blakley, and an action-packed story, The Driver is a metal-crunching, heart-stopping chase from start to finish!