Heads up, everybody: In Faster, the character known only as Driver (Dwayne Johnson) just got out of doing 10 years in the slammer for a bank robbery, after which his fellow criminals double-crossed him and murdered his brother. He’s making a list, checking it twice, gonna be up on their asses like white on rice. He’s armed with maps, a gun and a super-speedy Chevelle. Faster, Dwayne Johnson! Kill! Kill!

His spree of revenge ain’t that easy, though, what with two people on his tail. One is Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), a British hit man; the other is Cop (Billy Bob Thornton), a, well, um, cop. As with all cinematic officers of the law, Cop’s nearing retirement. But he’s also addicted to smack, so there’s that.

Despite the screenwriters putting zero thought into naming their characters, Faster is no generic actioner. In fact, it’s fast, furious and fairly no-holds-barred, with Driver never hesitating to raise his weapon, pull the trigger, and launch a bullet clean through his target’s forehead. Director George Tillman Jr. (Notorious) goes for a slick look, but also one that’s down and dirty along its edges, echoing the great revenge pictures of the 1970s.

The concept is simple — a little too simple, which accounts for the occasional padding. Tom Berenger has one scene upfront as the warden. Lost loser Maggie Grace shows up in her underwear. Carla Gugino is another cop, which the movie doesn’t need, but I’m cool with it, because I love to look at Carla Gugino. The same cannot be said of Dexter second banana Jennifer Carpenter, who has a cameo as a stick with a crooked mouth. —Rod Lott

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When I heard a straight-to-video sequel to the 2003 actioner S.W.A.T. was right around the corner, the special weapons and tactics unit in my pants became visibly mobilized. That being said, S.W.A.T.: Firefight has absolutely nothing to do with the first one. Sure, there is a S.W.A.T. team present, but it’s a whole new cast, led by Gabriel Macht (The Spirit) as Cutler, a by-the-book S.W.A.T. superstar in L.A. who, through a student-exchange program sponsored by Homeland Security, is sent to Detroit to train a ragtag group of misfits to adapt to the fast paced-world of post-9/11 S.W.A.T. procedures and practices. (Personally, I would’ve just built a RoboCop. But I think outside the box.)

The first hour and 10 minutes is the best damn training video you’ve ever seen, something you’d watch on your first day on the force. It’d be called So You Think You Got What It Takes to Be in S.W.A.T.? From hand-to-hand combat to target practice, it’s all here and occasionally filmed first-person video-game shooter-style, which is fun for us, but might cause impressionable youths to shoot their classmates.

While all this is going on, Robert Patrick minimally toys with the crew, in a bid for poorly plotted revenge: He’s an ex-CIA spook who is pissed they kinda-sorta-but-not-really killed the woman (Kristanna Loken, for about one minute) he’s been stalking. We’ve all been there, right?

Next Day Air director Benny Boom does a good job here, especially with the material he’s given. If anything, Firefight feels like an above-average TV pilot for a new S.W.A.T. television incarnation, which I’m sure would air on CBS after JAG: The Next Generation and NCIS: Surf Patrol ’11. Oh, and that iconic Barry De Vorzon theme? A few bars of it show up dutifully over the opening credits, and proceed to disappear, never to be heard again. However, they had plenty of room for rapper Tony Yayo’s “S.W.A.T. 2,” which manages to prove everything un-hip white people have said about hip-hop absolutely true in only three minutes. —Louis Fowler

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The one thing you have to know about the misunderstood masterpiece that is Bitch Slap is that you shouldn’t go into it expecting to see a whole lotta nipples. You will see at least two (by my count), but since they don’t belong to any of the three scorchingly hot protagonists, many confused genre enthusiasts have chosen to denounce the film as a failure.

They are morons. Do not listen to them. Instead, do what I did and listen only to the rock-hard, throbbing critic in your pants. Seriously, if you can make it through Bitch Slap without having to adjust yourself in order to accommodate a prolonged and painful tightness, you’re either a eunuch, a girl, a homosexual or so incredibly and specifically jaded in your perversions, the only chance of finding what you need can be found at www.balloonpoppingplushymilfsquirters.com. It’s the purest form of cinematic Viagra I’ve ever seen, and the fact that it achieves this distinction without overdosing on nips and pubes should be praised, not derided.

A joyous pastiche of all that is great about genre cinema, Bitch Slap essentially plays like a greatest-hits collection of all your favorite movies from Memento and The Usual Suspects to Kill Bill and Sin City, ad infinitum. But most of all, the film is a celebration of the badass femme fatales best epitomized by Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

The plot is essentially unimportant — a slender thread upon which to hang its vast collection of references and homages — but the cast is key to the flick’s success. As its trio of dangerous vixens, Julia Voth, Erin Cummings and America Olivo will sear themselves permanently into your consciousness, each one representing a different kind of archetypal hotness. Voth plays the doe-eyed innocent, trapped in the body of the world’s sexiest stripper; Cummings is the calm, voluptuous professional, dressed to kill in a pencil skirt and fishnets; and Olivo is the psychotic hothead in the tight leather pants with the killer abs. Whatever your personal kink, one of them is guaranteed to linger in your dreams.

Unless you only get off on blondes. In which case, you can go fuck yourself. —Allan Mott

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Hollywood has little clue what to do with Jackie Chan. Their ideas boil down to: a) pair him with a wacky black guy, and b) surround him with special effects. The first one works; the second one never will. There’s no point in hiring the world’s most renowned kung-fu acrobatic clown and dressing him up with lots of wires and CGI; if you’re going to do that, you might as well get, say, Tim Kazurinsky.

In the FX-laden crapfest The Medallion, Chan is a Hong Kong security specialist named Eddie, working with American Interpol agents to track down Julian Sands, obsessed with getting this medallion from a mystical Asian boy. It ends up in Chan’s nimble hands, but he gets killed in the process, but yet is revived by its supernatural powers. So now he can jump real high and fly like Superman. It’s lazy and uninspired, not to mention inane and embarrassing, like the montage of him dancing to “Twist and Shout.”

Normally, bad Chan scripts can be made bearable by the ad-libbing of a crazy partner. But Lee Evans is no Chris Tucker or Owen Wilson. As a most unlikely love interest is Claire Forlani, so bad you’ll be praying for the relative grace and panache of The Tuxedo’s Jennifer Love Hewitt. Not even the outtakes that play during the end credits are any good, although it is worth noting that it contains the third instance of Chan being interrupted by a cell phone (first spotted in the bloopers for Rush Hour 2 and Shanghai Knights).

But that’s about all worth noting for this film, Chan’s absolute worst since breaking through on these shores in ’96. Even as a big Chan fan, I can safely say to avoid The Medallion at all costs. —Rod Lott

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“You know what the problem with Hollywood is?” asks John Travolta at the beginning of Swordfish. “They make shit. Unremarkable, unbelievable shit.” The same could apply to this slick, brainless action-porn from Joel Silver and Dominic Sena (Gone in 60 Seconds) that manages to be merely mildly entertaining.

X-Men’s Hugh Jackman is the true star, playing a world-renowned hacker fresh off serving an 18-month prison term for his electronic crimes. Despite orders never to touch a computer again, he is drafted by slimy rich guy Travolta into cracking a few codes in exchange for money he can use to reunited with his estranged daughter. It’s a move he’ll soon regret, as the FBI is soon on his ass, while Travolta reveals himself to be a deluded terrorist wishing to embezzle $9 billion from secret DEA accounts with Jackman’s expertise.

For every good scene in Swordfish, there’s a terrible one. The opening city-block explosion shown in some sort of 360˚ bullet-time is a stunner; paradoxically, having Jackman forced to infiltrate a Department of Defense at gunpoint in 60 seconds while he’s receiving a blowjob is a howler.

Halle Berry’s bared breasts are nice; the montage of Jackman unconvincingly hacking away is not. Don Cheadle livens up every scene he’s in; Travolta — in another laughably miscast role — kills every one he’s in. It’s almost like the film is its own love/hate relationship. Seeing a school bus airlifted by a helicopter in the finale is absurd, but hey, ‘splosions a-plenty, amIright? —Rod Lott

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