This week’s multi-review comes our way from the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent out a variety of impressive titles for us to tackle, and we’ll be looking at a real mixed bag of them today with Blood Out, Pros And Ex-Cons, and Rabbit Hole.

We kick things off with Rabbit Hole, a movie that introduces us to Becca and Howie, a young couple who kicked off life together in the grandest of fashions, together, along with their young son only eight months prior. But fast forward to eight months later and we see how much life can change in even the shortest of times. But will the loss that Becca and Howie find themselves forced to endure break their life apart again and provide them with a whole new loss, each other?

Considering that this is based on a stage play, you probably have a pretty good idea of what we’re in for here, a downer on an absolutely epic scale that some people will take the opportunity to call “powerful” or “moving” but for the most part just means is the opportunity to feel really, really depressed for ninety minutes or so. And, just as a bonus, it will feel much, much longer. That’s not to say the whole thing is bad, of course–it’s got some really nice moments in here that should make you smile–but for the most part we’re watching a movie about a couple whose kid has recently died and they’re moving apart as a result. It hangs over everything, and though this is, for the most part, the point, it still doesn’t exactly make for light-hearted entertaining fare.  Good, but not good if you’re looking for a happy, fun experience.

Next up is Pros And Ex-Cons, and now we join a pair of the titular ex-cons who’ve joined up with a crime boss who has a mysterious project in mind for them. They finish the job nicely, but discover that the job didn’t go as smoothly as they’d thought when they took it on. Now they’ve got to undertake a much more dangerous project in order to correct the first before it’s too late. And moreover, they’re going to be in the middle of a whole lot of other affairs as well.

I know I’m being a little bit cryptic about this one, and with good reason. If I go too far into it and tell you about the projects in question, I’ll actually give away large parts of the movie. And on the surface, you might think this sounds like one of those great English crime dramas like Layer Cake, Snatch, or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Indeed, that’s just what’s going on here. It’s actually quite fun in a few parts, very much Ocean’s 11 style as done by complete incompetents.  If you like your crime dramas with a little bit of comedy involved, then you’ll be very happy with Pros And Ex-Cons.

Lastly, we’ve got Blood Out, a movie that gives us a man who loses his brother to gang violence far too soon in life. And now, a small town sheriff is the only thing that can get justice for the murder when the big city police refuse to step in and do the job. But the further in the sheriff gets, the more he discovers that things were never really as they seemed.

Admittedly, the biggest red flag in this one is the appearance of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which has never exactly been a bell-ringer as far as quality filmmaking goes. But still, the end result isn’t too bad. It’s very much an action title, but without the comic edge that we got from Pros And Ex-Cons. Straightforward and predictable were the watchwords for this one, but still, it’s reasonably likeable. It’s got something of the Walking Tall vibe in it, though without the fun that one put up thanks to the unusual styling that The Rock brought along in the role of county sheriff. Blood Out takes itself substantially more seriously than it probably should, and this is to its detriment, but the end result is still of fairly good quality.

And there you have it, another three choice titles from Lions Gate to make up our weekly multi-review. Some better than others, of course, but no matter what your taste there was likely something in here for you today.

Not too long ago, the folks out at Acorn Media sent out a copy of Prime Suspect Series One for me to review. And while Acorn has sent out a whole lot of prime drama for us previously, you’ll find that this particular batch is on par with some of their best.

Prime Suspect follows DCI Tennison, who’s out to solve a murder. Tennison’s been bucking to get charge of a murder case for quite some time, and now Tennison’s finally got the opportunity. But as Tennison will rapidly discover, this murder may not just be a murder, but rather a beginning. A beginning of something much larger: a serial killer, and quite possibly, a cover-up within the police department itself. Will DCI Tennison survive this newfound promotion? Or will Tennison not live to collect the enhanced pension?

Sounds pretty straightforward, until you consider that DCI Tennison is played by none other than Helen Mirren, who is pretty much the center of awesome in the known universe as far as actresses go. And DCI Tennison is taking charge of a murder investigation back in a time when murder investigations simply were not headed up by women. Thus, Tennison’s going to be taking on the department just as much as the possible serial killer, as the department very clearly does not want her there.

But even better, it’s not really this simple. There will be plenty of good twists and turns involved with this one, as only British drama can present them. Crime drama is always pretty good; British crime drama is an order of magnitude above that. Folks, if you liked CSI or all those other crime dramas, then frankly, you owe it to yourself to at least check out Prime Suspect Series One.

It’s a lovely, extensive piece of work that’s nicely put together, and is elevated at least a couple notches by virtue of having Helen Mirren around. There’s even some nifty extra stuff showing Tennison’s home life, which is a nice aside from all the murder and mayhem going on elsewhere. It’s some surprisingly fun stuff, and amply worth the three hours twenty-seven minutes you’ll have to invest in it to watch it all.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Prime Suspect Series One an eight out of ten for being some top-notch crime drama, backed up by an overwhelming British influence and the sheer raw awesome that is Helen Mirren. Crime drama fans, you’re in for a great time here.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of The Heavy for us to review, and if British crime movies in the style of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are your cup of tea, then you’ll definitely want a look at The Heavy. It may not be everything you’ll hope for, but it might be sufficient for a rental to satisfy your tastes.

The Heavy follows a thug by the name of Mitchell “Boots” Mason. Boots is a gifted thug, who does a great job with collections and beating the hell out of people who are behind in their loan payments. And when he’s off to perform a hit for his boss, he discovers that a hit has been placed on him in turn. But Boots isn’t going to take getting a price on his head lightly. And so, Boots goes off on a revenge spree that will leave a whole lot of people very, very unhappy.

Indeed, this is a lot like some previous modern-era British crime dramas, though this one, unlike a lot of them, doesn’t pack in any humor, nor very much action. It grinds on, rather slowly, pretty unpleasantly besides. It’s dull. And a movie called “The Heavy” really shouldn’t be dull. It should feature plenty of explosions, at the very least the pops of gunfire. While there is a story here, and a pretty decent one at that which is just loaded with twists and turns and suchlike, the problem is that, even with the twists and turns and suchlike, the story itself is still almost shockingly dull.

As an action movie, The Heavy is limp and lifeless. But as a drama, it does get a little of its own back. It perks up toward the end, which is generally to be expected, but it still can’t quite get off the ground. This is a shame, frankly, as they’d done a great job with stuff like Snatch and Lock, Stock…, so I was definitely hoping for a real winner here. Sadly, I didn’t get it. What I got was mostly all right, but just a little too slow and unwieldy for proper action.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, hands over a six out of ten for The Heavy, a movie that proves to be just a little bit too heavy in its own right–Lions Gate’s got it heavy with drama, heavy with substance, but not heavy enough in the engaging plot department.

The folks out at A&E have sent me a little dose of history in the form of the complete megaset of Rumpole of the Bailey, a little dose of British legal drama with some comedy tossed in for variety. And the experience is something of a surprise–subdued, but still pretty entertaining owing almost completely to Leo McKern’s thoroughly masterful work.

Rumpole of the Bailey follows Horace Rumpole, a master barrister, who humbly calls himself an “Old Bailey Hack”, who finds himself defending a host of England’s criminal elements against the various accusations of the law. There will be a host of cases here, fully forty episodes, about fifty minutes each, give or take. And even more, it won’t be just courtroom issues here as we also get to see some of Horace Rumpole’s family life, which is also somewhat compelling in his own way.

Horace Rumpole is himself a master character in a decent character drama: he refers to his wife as “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. He dotes on his son, sharing a drink with him after hours and discussing a case. He is, completely, a believable and likable character. And with a great character like Horace Rumpole serving as the engine of Rumpole of the Bailey, it’s not so hard to believe that this would be a potent and refreshing drama. Even better, Rumpole himself is sufficiently competent that you expect him to win without being so plot-skewingly competent that you believe he ever has a chance to fail. He could, at any time lose a case, but you can safely figure he won’t. That careful mix of competence and real-world skill lends an extra note of authenticity here, even in the midst of something so authentic as a courtroom drama.

Before there was Law and Order, before there was L.A. Law, there was a great crime drama going on in England. And though sometimes, Rumpole of the Bailey can prove a bit dry and a little too British to be easily followed by Americans of the latter era, it’s still an exciting bit of television history that will be fun to watch, and that’s a bit of a rarity.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this reasonably worthwhile legal drama a seven out of ten for being solid, though not without some flaws. If you want to see what the Brits were watching on television way back when, then check out a copy of Rumpole of the Bailey.

It may well be one of the greatest crime epics I’ve seen in some time, but Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, which the folks out at Anchor Bay sent me a copy of to review, will prove to both make me laugh and put me to the edge of my seat. It’s fantastic stuff, and I’m happy to be able to recommend it to you.

Think of it as Scarface: South Africa and you won’t be too far off.  Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema follows Lucky Kunene, a young man who started out idealistic, but after discovering that the world is hardly kind to poor young men from the middle of nowhere, branched out into crime. Starting off slow, but quickly escalating, he goes straight temporarily after almost dying in a botched store robbery. But when he becomes the victim of the same kinds of crimes he once committed, he decides he needs a whole new route, and thus decides to get ORGANIZED.  And his organization ends up not only making large portions of his area a better place for people to live, it also makes him rich. Naturally, this doesn’t sit well with those who favor the status quo, and thus he’s hounded on all sides by cops and criminals alike.

There’s an old saying that, when crime is sufficiently organized, it isn’t even against the law. And watching Lucky Kunene steal more money and property with a pen and a briefcase than he ever did with an AK-47 and handgun is a downright thrill. But Lucky Kunene is no sadistic psychopath of a gangster–if anything, he resembles the old Prohibition-era mobsters, the sort who would be willing to sit and have a quiet drink with you because you lived in the neighborhood rather than the sort who took everything you owned because you were in the way.

The plot is very well put together, rapidly paced, with plenty of trouble for Kunene that he often manages to overcome not by superior firepower but by superior intellect. And the cast does an excellent job of keeping the pace going as well.  This is great stuff, and though it will indeed be full of violence, nudity and harsh language, the end result is one well worth watching.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema a nine out of ten–they did a terrific job with this and should be rewarded accordingly.

Sometimes the greatest things lie just underneath the surface, and that’s a pretty good summary for Johnny Handsome, which Lions Gate sent me a copy of to review for its Blu-ray release.

Johnny Handsome follows a criminal with a serious facial deformity that’s earned him the name of the title character–Johnny Handsome. When he’s taking to jail following a botched robbery in which his old friend is killed and he’s betrayed by his fellow thieves, he gets a new chance at life following an assassination attempt in prison–he’s given a new face via surgery, a new identity, and a whole new opportunity…for revenge.

First off, Mickey Rourke is an absolute genius in this one–he does a great job as the facially-deformed title character, managing to be both sympathetic and horrifying by stretches. Second off, the rest of the movie around him does at least a fair job of being competently done.

And between Morgan Freeman and Lance Henriksen, you know you’ve got two more truly awesome performances.

The rest of the movie, meanwhile, is a surprisingly smart crime drama that will take plenty of twists as it proceeds, and will wind up being a caper flick that, in many ways, is easily on par with Ocean’s Eleven. I can’t tell you a whole lot about it, sadly, as I’d wind up spoiling most of it for you.  But you can remain assured that this does really well.

Admittedly, the ending is something of a downer in a roundabout sort of way, but still, it’s very appropriate given what we’ve been watching.  It too is a pretty big surprise, and very watchable.

Between great performances and a fantastic cast, it’s not at all difficult to recommend Johnny Handsome, and thus the Screenhead Ten Scale gives it an eight out of ten.  Sure, the ending is a bit of a downer, but the movie itself is sufficiently compelling to hold interest for its run time, and that’s definitely a worthwhile cause as far as movies go.  In the end, it’s really the only cause worth mentioning.

The folks out at Lions Gate sent me a copy of Caught in the Crossfire to review, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do today.  I have to admit, that when you’ve got a banner notice like this:

“From a producer of 16 Blocks and Righteous Kill”

across the top of the box, it sets off more red flags than a three-day NASCAR race.

Featuring Chris Klein and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Caught in the Crossfire follows a pair of police detectives as they investigate a gang-related crime in the area.  Well, the deeper their investigation goes, the more they run afoul of the various gangs in the area, as well as a host of cops who’d sooner keep things quiet.  And when you discover just what it is that’s got the cops and the gangs alike after the detectives, well…you really won’t be that surprised at all.

See, Caught in the Crossfire watches like a product order out of the Cop Drama Merchandise Catalog.  Every inch of this, from the Bereaved Loved Ones to the Thin Blue Line to the Corrupt Internal Affairs Agents  comes pretty much out of a standard pattern that’s shown up in cop movies since time immemorial.

On a personal note, however, I’m abundantly gratified to see that this was shot entirely in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as is evident from the names on the sides of the police cars.  This, however, isn’t anywhere near enough to make it much more than a second-tier warmed over cop drama.

On the other hand, I do know that there are limits inherent in this sort of production that make a lot of innovation downright difficult to pull off.  And I really do think they’re at least butting up against the most they could do, and as cop dramas go, this one isn’t half bad.

The problem, of course, is that it just can’t produce a whole lot more than the standard.  It’s so predictable, and so purely run of the mill that even where you don’t see the plot twists coming, you just plain old won’t care about them.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives a dismissive back-of-hand “bah!” in the grandest Dogbert fashion and hands this mediocre pile of unpleasantness a five out of ten.  It tried, I give it due credit, but it just couldn’t pull off anything out of the ordinary or, better, worth paying attention to.

The folks out at Anchor Bay sent me a copy of Brooklyn’s Finest, and it’s actually really good, but not as good as it might have been.

Brooklyn’s Finest is about pretty much what it says on the box, a coterie of Brooklyn cops sent to clean up the city’s infamous BK housing complex, but the further the three cops get into the assignment, the more they find out just how corrupt their department really is.  The three find themselves drawn to the same crime scene, and when all three come together, something’s going to happen to unify them all permanently…or possibly kill them.

One of the greatest parts of Brooklyn’s Finest is how incredible a job they do of justifying the assorted acts of illegality the cops engage in.  One cop’s pregnant wife has asthma and is living in a house full of mold, thus the cop in question wants to snatch up a little drug money so he can afford the down payment on a nice house.  It’s hard to disagree with such a ploy until you realize, oh wait, it’s ILLEGAL.

But there’s a substantial problem with Brooklyn’s Finest–it’s wildly disjointed.  While it does do a terrific job of making the cops into sympathetic figures that we’re all more than eager to permit to steal drug money lest it slip into the hands of some high-ranking city pusbag, it fails substantially in its narrative because it’s literally all over the map.  Sure, there are some common threads holding the different storylines together, but there are huge stretches where they focus on one or the other, leaving us twisting in the wind, wondering what, if anything, is going on with the other plotlines.

This is a problem, and a pretty substantial one, but what’s left here is pretty enjoyable.  It’s a great and gripping crime drama, and a powerhouse performance backed up by a powerhouse cast.  Don Cheadle’s good in pretty much anything, and you tack on Richard Gere and Wesley Snipes and you come out vastly ahead.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Brooklyn’s Finest a bit of a pass–despite the fact that the narrative is pretty shoddily assembled, the end result is still pretty nice–and thus hands over a seven out of ten.

Say what you will about Crazy Mel–and you can say most anything–but the man is a good actor, no matter what you put him in.  Though he does always seem to wind up in cop dramas, and that’s exactly what he’ll be hitting today with Edge of Darkness.

Detective Tom Craven is a doting father and a dedicated police officer who lives by a handful of very simple rules.  Do the best you can by your family, speak your mind, go to work every day, and never take anything from the bad guys–this is Tom’s guiding light.  So when his daughter comes home for a visit, he’s pretty happy about the whole thing until she’s shot on his front porch. Now, Tom’s left with nothing to lose and a whole lot of unanswered questions, and will show us the lengths one angry cop will go to when he’s sufficiently provoked.

This is actually based on a BBC series, so chances are it’ll be completely new to most everybody.  The good part about this, of course, is that it won’t matter, because the movie will stand on its own merits.

Frankly, I think the biggest thing this movie can do is not to serve as a wakeup call for corrupt corporate interests but rather as a wakeup call to change the grading system on Rotten Tomatoes.  A six out of ten, which is what this movie’s averaging over there, shouldn’t be considered “bad” (or in their words, rotten).  It should be considered “pretty good”, which is exactly what Edge of Darkness is.

Sure, there are some plot points in here that feel downright tacked on like the whole nuclear arms thing, and there are some parts that feel rather pointless, like Tom’s hallucinations.  And there are some parts that just plain old don’t make any sense at all, like how Jedburgh’s hallucinations figure into ANYTHING that’s going on here.

But what we have is a marginally effective noirish thriller that does a pretty fair job of exhibiting Gibson’s far from inconsiderable talent and even throws in a few good shocks.

There’s absolutely no reason to see this in a theater, though–it WILL make a nice popcorn flick for your home theater, however, so bear that in mind.

The Screenhead Ten Scale agrees on a limited level with Rotten Tomatoes and would give it a 5.8 out of ten if it could, but instead prefers to deal with round numbers.  Thus, it gives Edge of Darkness a six out of ten for being slightly better than the average but still having a few problems that keep this from being really worth seeing.

With the recent revelation that The Godfather will be getting a fresh release on Blu-ray once more with the Sapphire Edition in early January, it allows me to do something that I’ve wanted to do since I started writing movie reviews, but never had the opportunity to do:

Review The Godfather.

Believe me, this is harder than you think.  This may well be one of my all-time favorites.  I’ve seen it literally dozens of times.  I will cheerfully recommend it to anyone, and I’ll say that much up front.  It features some of Hollywood’s greatest names–Al Pacino, Robert De Niro (in the second one), James Caan and Marlon Brando–and allows them to shine to their fullest potential.

The plot is deep and extensive, showing the inner workings of one of the great Five Families of crime in New York, the Corleones.  And as the Corleones tackle their various rivals, they find themselves embroiled with betrayal, assassination, and a changing world from both within and without.  Control of the Corleone family will pass through several holders–from patriarch Vito, to violent, vicious hood Santino (also known as Sonny), down to Michael, the honorable war hero who discovers a ruthless streak.

If you were to call this a slice-of-life drama you wouldn’t be terribly far wrong, even though all the characters are fictional to at least some degree.  It’s almost terrifyingly easy to slip into the New York that The Godfather presents–it’s immersive on a level that few other movies are.  It’s a deep and rich tale, and it’s not hard to believe why this sucker got two sequels, a legion of follow-ups and imitators, and a host of rereleases.

It may well be one of the finest movies of its type.  Sure, some might find it overlong, with some parts that could’ve been removed, and they might be right.  But removing these parts would remove some of the shine from the whole package, almost like taking the chrome off a classic car.

And I tell you this much, I still get goosebumps whenever I hear the Godfather Waltz.  It may well be among the most easily recognizable waltzes ever made, and I personally find it one of the most beautiful.

The whole thing builds to a fever pitch with an ending both complex and beautiful in its machinations, displaying a plot of incredible dimensions.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, nods its assent to my love for The Godfather and hands it a full-on ten out of ten.  A deep and powerful classic the likes of which no man has ever seen, it deserves every rerelease and accolade it gets.  For those of you who have yet to see this one, do.  Absolutely do.  It’s too good not to.