Thriller

Forget about the straight and narrow. Clever con Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) intends to go straigh ito the bank. Fresh from the slammer, he begins work on a heist that will either set him up for life-or send him up forever. Croker and his unruly lot of thieves take on the mob, the police and the gridlock traffic of Turin to rob a heavily armed shipment of gold bullion in The Italian Job. Entertainment legend Noel Coward (in his last film role) costars in this open-throttle caper as criminal mastermind Bridger.

Dennis Peck knows his way around the law. He can launder money, run a scam, fix a bad rap. He can even, for the right price, arrange a murder. "Trust me," he says, "I'm a cop." Richard Gere is Peck and Andy Garcia is Raymond Avila, the investigator determined to bring Peck to justice in this supercharged police thriller. Peck isn't going down without a fight. The slick, cold-blooded manipulator intends to take Avila's career, his marriage and even his sanity with him in Internal Affairs. "A fine tight script," says Gary Franklin (KABC-TV).

Based on Tom Clancy's bestseller, directed by John McTiernan (Die Hard) and starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin, The Hunt For Red October sweats with high-tech anxiety and the tension of men who hold Doomsday in their hands. A new technologically-superior Soviet nuclear sub, the Red October, is heading for the U.S. coast under the command of Captain Marko Ramius (Connery). The American government thinks Ramius is planning to attack.

The luminous Cate Blanchett (Elizabeth, The Lord of the Rings) stars as a British teacher living in Italy who's driven to plant a bomb on a drug dealer in cahoots with the police. When she is arrested and interrogated, she learns that her bomb went awry and killed four innocents; a young policeman (Giovanni Ribisi, Saving Private Ryan) is so struck by her grief that he falls helplessly in love with her and throws aside his entire life to help her.

New York City detectives "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) hope to breakia narcotics smuggling ring and ultimately uncover The French Connection. But when one of the criminals tries to kill Doyle, he begins a deadly pursuit that takes him far outside the city limits. Based on a true story, this action-filled thriller, with its renowned chase scene, won five Academy Awards in 1971, including Best Picture, Best Director (William Friedkin) and Best Actor for Hackman.

Catch him if you can. The Fugitive is on the run! Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones race through the breathless manhunt movie based on the classic TV series. Ford is prison escapee Dr. Richard Kimble, a Chicago surgeon falsely convicted of killing his wife and determined to prove his innocence by leading his pursuers to the one-armed man who actually committed the crime. Jones (1993 Academy Award and Golden Globe winner as Best Supporting Actor) is Sam Gerard, an unrelenting bloodhound of a U.S. Marshal. They are hunted and hunter.

Van Orton is a successful businessman who is always in control. He lives a well-ordered life - until an unexpected birthday gift from his brother destroys it all. The Game does a tremendous job of presenting the story of a rigid control freak trapped in circumstances that are increasingly beyond his control. Michael Douglas plays a rich, divorced, and dreadful investment banker whose 48th birthday reminds him of his father's suicide at the same age.

What if you could stop your heart to simulate a temporary death, and then be revived so you could describe your near-death experience to others? The mysteries of life--and the afterlife--compel five medical students (Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt) to experiment with their own mortality, and what they discover has unsettling psychological implications.

Harrison Ford and filmmaker Roman Polanski count thrillers among their best work. USA Today's Mike Clark wrote, "Frantic teams an imaginatively cast superstar and the greatest living suspense director in fine form." Ford plays an American doctor whose wife (Betty Buckley) suddenly vanishes in Paris. To find her, he navigates a puzzling web of language, locale, laissez-faire cops, triplicate-form bureaucrats, and a defiant, mysterious waif (Emmanuelle Seigner) who knows more than she tells. "It is the spirit of Hitchcock that reigns here." --Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times.

When Neil Jordan is really on his game, as he is with The Good Thief, his directorial skill is a marvel to behold. In the character-driven mode of Jordan's Mona Lisa and The Crying Game, this smooth, underrated caper provides an abundance of cinematic riches, not the least being Jordan's peerless knack for dialogue and a tailor-made role for Nick Nolte. For better or worse, Nolte's off-screen drug abuse served him well in portraying Bob Montagnet, ace thief, recovering heroin addict, and beloved denizen of the French Riviera, where his luck is about to take some very clever turns.