Technically, the eight films collected as The Hire are BMW commercials, but really, they’re rather exemplary models of short-form filmmaking. For the project, David Fincher and BMW rounded up A-list directors, with each assigned to bring their vision of The Driver (Clive Owen, Children of Men), a suave BMW wheelman-for-hire, to cinematic life. It’s like the Jason Statham franchise The Transporter reconfigured into an unofficial anthology film.

Unsurprisingly, the Asians fare very well, with John Woo’s “Hostage” being among the best of the lot. It has more thrills and twists in its 10 minutes than most feature-length action films (his especially). On the opposite end of the pulse meter — but every bit its equal in quality — is “The Follow,” from Chungking Express director Wong Kar Wai, about The Driver being hired to follow a wife suspected of infidelity. Ang Lee contributes a chase-as-operatic-ballet in “Chosen,” and manages to reference his much-hated Hulk in a clever ending.

Smokin’ Aces‘ Joe Carnahan delivers “Ticker,” a gritty tale with The Driver transporting Don Cheadle and his mysterious briefcase while they’re tailed by helicopters and machine-gun fire. “Ambush” was helmed by the late John Frankenheimer, who clearly knew a thing or two about car chases. The story from Amores Perros helmer Alejandro González Iñárritu — about getting a wounded combat photographer out of Central America — is a bit of a downer, but true to the filmmaker’s style.

Guy Ritchie’s “Star” lets then-wife Madonna poke fun at her image as a bitchy singer who gets roughed up by The Driver’s insane street driving. It attempts comedy with success, which cannot be said about Tony Scott’s entry, so embarrassingly over-the-top in its own pretentiousness that you can understand why critics hounded him his entire career. But one stinker out of eight cannot spoil the overall package. Even with so many unique touches at work, The Hire works as an overall whole, thanks to Owen’s cucumber-cool persona and pinwheel-precision skills behind the wheel. —Rod Lott

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One of many jungle bungles shot in the Philippines, Savage Sisters is a women-in-prison picture with a difference. And that difference is a pinch of Ginger: the star of the sleazy Ginger saga, Cheri Caffaro.

Sorry to disappoint potential viewers, but the Savage Sisters? Not real sisters. (Insert snare drum riff here.) They are subversive liberator and Navy daughter Jo Turner (Caffaro), political fanatic and commando Mei Ling (Filipino starlet Rosanna Ortiz), and their initial enemy, testicle-torture expert Col. Lynn Jackson (Gloria Hendry, Live and Let Die).

Believe it or not, but the story is too political for an AIP exploitation film. It has something to do with a hustler trying to smuggle a million bucks out of a banana republic — the country, not the clothing store — and naturally, everyone wants their hands on it. Everyone also wants their hands on these lithesome ladies, but that’s beside the point.

Jackson is assigned to find the two “hardcore insurrectionists” — revolutionaries Turner and Ling — and find out who they’re working for, or something like that; it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately, the scattered story is all about good vs. evil, with the latter being Capt. Juan Morales (Eddie Garcia). You know he’s bad, because who else wears those orange-tinted sunglasses?

Hidden in a poncho, WIP vet Sid Haig (The Big Bird Cage) is in this confused mess, and he plays his part as if he we were in a screwball comedy. He may be on to something. That would explain Caffaro’s ‘tude with the lines she so unconvincingly growls at her he-man opponents, from “No comment, pork chop,” to “You’re pissin’ in the wind, little man.”

And so does director Eddie Romero (the Blood Island trilogy), who helmed this disappointing flick. He not only forgot to deliver a coherent plot, but also — and most importantly — the nudity. —Rod Lott

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Hellbound opens with a Star Wars-esque crawl that reads in part, “When time began the soul of darkness was thrust into the depth. Its evil split from the light of humanity to be called forth in times of weakness and despair. Satan’s emissary, Prosatanos, would prowl the Earth searing all before him with fire and blood.”

Blah blah blah. That’s a dull, wordy way of just spitting out the movie’s lone selling point: Chuck Norris battles the spawn of Satan. Hell, yes.

The evil dude in question is Prosatanos (Christopher Neame, Licence to Kill), who’s a lot balder than I would’ve pictured the devil’s envoy to be. Sealed in a tomb in a Crusades prologue, he vows revenge and gets it after pesky minorities unknowingly let him loose in 1951, and he shows up in modern-day Chicago to ball a hooker (Zoe Trilling, Night of the Demons 2). Nearby are two of Chi-Town’s finest: Sgt. Shatter (Norris, natch) and his cornrowed African-American partner, Jackson (Calvin Levels, Adventures in Babysitting). The duo battles drug suppliers and pimps with their fists, feet and tuff-talkin’: “Watch this, you little piece of shit!”

Prosatanos rips the heart out of a rabbi and high-tails it to Israel, where Shatter and Jackson are summoned for questioning. While there, they attempt to track down the supernatural slayer — or at least Shatter does; Jackson just wants to eat, but the white man keeps foiling those plans. Food is all Jackson talks about, but at least it makes for the film’s best lines, from “Why don’t you just cut my nuts off with a dull-edged butter knife?” to “Either this guy’s nuttier than a Snickers or there is some real heavy shit goin’ down.” (Note I didn’t say they were any good — just the best of what there is.)

A similar sentiment could apply to Hellbound, which finds Norris squarely in both the phases of mullet-donning and formula-tweaking. With his bankability days behind him, the bearded big cheese experimented beyond mere action, but action with kids (Sidekicks), canines (Top Dog) and demons (this). It is as silly as you would expect, which is precisely what makes it stand out among his filmography. Where else will one find such a matchup of the prince of darkness vs. the prince of Cannon Films? (Just to clarify amid his extreme right-wing views of today, Norris was the latter at the time.) —Rod Lott

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Hell hath no fury like Robert Mitchum’s puppy-faced, denim jacket-donning second son sporting a Dutch Boy ‘do. Christopher Mitchum stars as the not so suavé Ricco, a young man out for revenge after getting sent to prison on phony charges. The man responsible, Don Vito (Arthur Kennedy, Fantastic Voyage), not only did that, but took over his murdered pop’s organization and has been balling his woman!

Out a year early for good behavior, Ricco’s itching for some bad behavior, and who can blame him? I would, too, if my sultry, go-go dancing girlfriend (Malisa Longo, White Emanuelle) were cheating on me with Don Vito, a middle-aged, wispy-‘stached exporter of soap and dope. Ricco’s real aim isn’t winning Rosa back, but finding out who blew his dad’s brains out. (That mystery is one you could solve right now by guessing.)

Aiding our hero is the scintillating Scilla (Barbara Bouchet, Caliber 9), a niece of Ricco’s old counterfeiting buddy and quite the con woman herself. Her skills give Mean Machine one of its two most memorable scenes, in which she performs a striptease on a foggy bridge at night to lure two of Don Vito’s goons out of their car.

The other is after another goon is caught canoodling with Rosa, so Don Vito orders his men to cut the poor sap’s genitals off and shove ’em in his mouth before dumping the guy in the soap factory’s pit of bubbling lye. Director Tulio Demicheli (Sabata the Killer) doesn’t shy away from portraying these acts — and their icky aftermath — in graphic detail, at least in the unrated cut, which makes the Italian crime entry a cut about the crap. Mitchum sure doesn’t have the presence to carry the film, so Demicheli lets the violence do the talking when the sex isn’t doing the doing; the prologue alone seems to off nearly as many men as the movie has minutes. —Rod Lott

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Here’s how you know The Evil That Men Do is going to be another Charles Bronson bad-asser: The film’s first shot is a slowed-down grab from a much later scene, of him throwing a knife just to the left of frame. This should’ve been used to start all his ’80s action movies, like his version of the 007 gun-barrel sequence; after all, Bronson’s post-Death Wish characters were pretty much variations of the same one-man-war assassin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and in my book, there isn’t.

Dr. Molloch (Joseph Maher, Under the Rainbow) may be the sickest of all Bronson villains. Often seen wearing an executioner’s black hood, the physician schools the troops of some 20 countries in how to maximize pain and torture of one’s enemies. South America is the latest.

Meanwhile, professional hit man Holland (Bronson, duh) is enjoying retirement in the Cayman Islands when he learns an old buddy has been killed while trying to take out Molloch. Reluctantly, Holland agrees to assassinate the Doctor, and travels to Central American under the guise of a family man, with his friend’s widow (Theresa Saldana, Raging Bull) and daughter.

Directed by frequent collaborator J. Lee Thompson (10 to Midnight), the nicely nasty Evil is thought to be one of Bronson’s most violent pictures, and I can not disagree. For example, when the Mexican equivalent of Richard Kiel paws and licks a disgusted Saldana in a bar, Holland subdues the giant by grabbing his penis and bending it, eventually using both hands. I had to wince and cheer. But Evil is not without humor, too, like when Holland is trapped under a bed while lesbian-loving occurs above him (the evil that women do?), and he’s practically smashed by the moving mattress. Dammit, do I miss this guy. —Rod Lott

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