One would expect Ruggero Deodato, the director of the notoriously nihilistic Cannibal Holocaust, to bring something different to an Italian cop film. In Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, he does just that: basic disregard for human life. Enjoy!

The best part of this crime story comes right out of the gate, as thieving hoodlums on a motorcycle drag an innocent woman along the city sidewalks, because her purse is chained to her wrist. Plainclothes buddy cops Alfredo (Marc Porel) and Antonio (Ray Lovelock) witness this, setting off an ass-kicking, near-10-minute motorcycle chase through the streets (partly shot with no permits). When they catch up to the crashed bandits, only one survives; rather than arrest him, they snap his neck. Justice!

Mind you, this is merely the first scene in a film full of “shoot first, fuck questions” scenarios. We simultaneously root for and abhor Alfredo and Antonio as they go about their really lethal-weapon ways. They rest only long enough to sexually harass women, pestering them for threesomes or sometimes not bothering to ask at all. Chivalry!

All of these elements combine for a one-of-a-kind experience, albeit bookended by ill-fitting, Yankee folk ballads of the era. Our poliziotti violenti anti-heroes play like Starsky & Hutch with undiagnosed pathological problems, where blowing up a bunch of people just seems like a really good joke to amuse themselves. And you. Kaboom! —Rod Lott

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Coming not-so-fresh off The Scorpion King, wrestler-turned-actor The Rock (not yet billed as Dwayne Johnson) fully earned his action-hero credentials in the enjoyable comedic adventure romp The Rundown.

He plays a “retrieval expert,” which mostly means he collects gambling debts, by force if he has to, although he hates guns. Eager to get out of the biz, he’s cajoled into the requisite One Last Job: plucking the boss’ snot-nosed son (American Pie’s Seann William Scott) out of Brazil and bringing him back home to L.A. Scott, however, doesn’t want to go, seeing as how he’s stumbled on to a treasure he’s hidden in the jungle – a treasure also wanted by a group of rebels led by barmaid Rosario Dawson, as well as the poor city’s devious slave ring owner Christopher Walken, (who is, no shock, 100 percent pure Walken).

So The Rock and Scott get to bicker and spar like The Defiant Ones, forging a bond only out of necessity to stay alive. They find themselves in the middle of a machine-gun riot, at the mercy of hallucinogenic fruit and having their faces humped by crazed monkeys. Their greatest adversary proves to be Ernie Reyes Jr. (the Surf Ninjas star all grown up), who unleashes his “spinning Tarzan jujitsu” on The Rock, in not only the film’s best fight scene, but best scene, period.

I’m not so much surprised by how pleasurable The Rundown is to watch than I am how charismatic The Rock is on screen. He’s a natural, a logical heir to the throne of Arnold Schwarzenegger (who cameos early in the film to pass the torch, so to speak) and can dispense lines like “You’re threatening me? You’re threatening me with pee?” with note-perfect delivery. —Rod Lott

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Officially, I Am Omega is not based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. Yeah, whatever, but po-tay-to fucking po-tah-to: It’s totally based on the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend. After all, we’re talking a production of The Asylum, which specializes in taking popular movies to Kinko’s and then Liquid Paper-ing just enough names to satisfy legal.

This one, of course, only exists to coincide with Will Smith’s end-o’-the-world blockbuster I Am Legend of the same year. But Omega star Mark Dacascos is no Will Smith — and thank God for that, because this last man on Earth gets to do what America’s favorite Man in Black did not: train with fighting sticks and practice martial arts, not to mention beat the steering wheel of his crappy car like a drum kit while listening to generic stock rock on cassette.

I expected Omega to suck completely, because it kills the MILF within less than two minutes from starting. But all is mostly forgiven by the time Dacascos is beating back the undead with nunchucks. Sometimes when he fights zombies, Itchy & Scratchy music squeals away on the soundtrack.

Anyhoo, Dacascos’ character is not the last human alive, of course. A video feed reveals there’s an undernourished but not unattractive out there. She’s being sought by rednecks for the antivirus that lives in her blood. Don’t get too excited, viewers, because her high-pitched, whiny voice mitigates any good looks. Speaking of voices, don’t zombies realize they’d be more successful if they didn’t announce their arrival with a cry of “ROWR!” each and every time? —Rod Lott

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I’m not sure why audiences and critics were so harsh toward Poseidon, Wolfgang Petersen’s remake of the inexplicably Oscar-winning 1972 disaster flick The Poseidon Adventure, as it’s a perfectly acceptable, escapist summer movie: A boat flips, people die. What more do you want?

Poseidon wastes precious little time getting the giant wave to tip that cruise ship upside down. I think it’s chapter 5 on your DVD player, and Petersen (director of the equally water-logged The Perfect Storm and Das Boot) milks the spectacle for all it’s worth. True, that causes the film to suffer in character development, giving us extremely simplified personalities that pretty much begin and end with the stars’ images; for example, Kurt Russell is basically playing Kurt Russell, with Josh Lucas doing Josh Lucas. And the rest of the cast includes Hot Daughter, Single Mom, Token Kid, Expendable Minority and Fussy Richard Dreyfuss, who, because he wears an earring, doubles as The Gay Guy.

Ultimately, as an effects-heavy action-adventure, that doesn’t matter. That Russell still harbors nice-guy charisma and Emmy Rossum sports wet cleavage through the whole thing helps even more. It even has bite, with one person in particular meeting a gruesome death worthy of a slasher flick. Like Paul Gallico’s original novel, Peterson’s film could be accused of a little racism, if subconscious, doing away with almost all the Latinos and blacks in one fell swoop. Just seeing Andre Braugher in the role of the ship’s captain is an automatic death knell.

The film gives water a sense of real menace. Claustrophobia is very real, and Poseidon takes advantage of that. So for a disposable thriller with good special effects, Snake Plissken and a little Fergie ass-shaking, Poseidon will do you right for a night’s rental. —Rod Lott

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I’m not a fan of war movies, but leave it to Hong Kong to make one well worth watching. Sort of like a cross between The Dirty Dozen and any movie with the words “punch” or “kick” in the title, Eastern Condors has big, round Sammo Hung leading a ragtag group of criminals on a suicide mission to find discarded U.S. weaponry in the jungles of Vietnam.

The film introduces a load of characters in a flash, so if it’s character development you seek, you’re up a creek here. Sammo’s men include notable Asian directors Cory Yuen (The Transporter) and Yuen Woo Ping (Drunken Master), a guy who wears goofy goggles, and a guy who stutters so bad that when he’s told to count to 20 before he pulls his chute when jumping off a plane, he dies because he only makes it to 16 before he slams to the ground!

Those who do make it find immediate action, in a flick jammed full of it — and largely gory! — ranging from a dude getting stabbed right in the taint or another blowing up after having a grenade shoved in his mouth to your more standard, everyday decapitations and dismemberments. Although armed with machine guns, the men get inventive when it comes to defeating their enemies; Sammo even uses leaves to fell the bad guys by sending them flying through their necks.

People jump, bounce and all over the place; Oscar winner Haing S. Ngor (The Killing Fields) plays comic relief; and Yuen Biao sports an entirely unfortunate ‘80s haircut that completely covers half his face. Yessiree, this movie just about has it all. —Rod Lott

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