Director Delmer Daves‘ 1957 western about a cattle rancher forced into the role of getting a dangerous killer out of town finds new life on home video as 3:10 to Yuma is the latest classic to get the Criterion treatment.
Dan Evans (Van Heflin) is a struggling rancher with a wife (Leora Dana), two sons (Barry Curtis, Jerry Hartleben), and cattle who are dying of thirst during one of the worst droughts in recent memory. When Ben Wade (Glenn Ford), the leader of an outlaw gang who has terrorized the territory for years, is caught, Dan accepts an offer of $200 to escort Wade to a nearby town and put him on the 3:10 train to Yuma for trial.
With only the town drunk (Henry Jones) at his side, Evans tries to keep Wade hidden and put him on the train before the rest of his gang can find them and release their leader.
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Based on the character created byLee Child, Tom Cruise stars as former Military Police officer turned professional nomad Jack Reacher who shows up after an old enemy (Joseph Sikora) is arrested for killing five people. What follows is part dumb action movie and part conspiracy thriller as Reacher uncovers the troubling fact that, as much as he wants the man to be guilty, the Army sniper the police have in custody was framed for the crime (which itself has complicated reasons far beyond a random crime by a lone gunman).
Reacher is the typical old school 80′s action hero, smarter than everyone else and able to take down five men without even breaking a sweat. Rosamund Pike stars as the man’s attorney, who also happens to be the daughter of the city’s cutthroat District Attorney (Richard Jenkins). Pike’s main job in the film is to get Reacher engaged in the case and then constantly question his theories before finally being relegated to the damsel in distress.
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jack reacher,
tom cruise
Based on the novels by Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) Dirk Gently was an all-too-short TV-series starring Stephen Mangan as the title character, a detective who relies on random chance and finding connections in the seemingly unconnected nature of things to solve the cases brought to him which includes a missing cat which leads him to solve a double-homicide, a man whose horoscopes are coming true, the theft of a valuable robot, and the murder of several of the detective’s former clients.
Managan is terrific in the leading role of a swindler whose methods, almost inextricably, get results. The show also starred Darren Boyd as Dirk’s old friend turned partner Richard MacDuff, Lisa Jackson as Gently’s secretary Janice, and Helen Baxendale as MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan.
Although the show only lasted four episodes (all included on this two-disc set), it managed to capture the quirky nature of Adams’ characters and is certainly worth a look for fans.
[Acorn Media, $39.99]
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douglas adams,
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Set in Whitechapel during the late 19th Century, only months after the last of the Jack the Ripper killings, Ripper Street stars Matthew Mcfayden as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid of Whitechapel H Division. After failing to catch Jack, and fearing his eventual return, H Division is responsible for 1.25 square miles of East London filled mostly the poor and homeless.
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Based on the nonfiction book by Abdel Sellou, this French odd couple comedy stars Omar Sy as an ex-con out on the street who is hired as a caregiver for a rich French aristocrat (François Cluzet) with whom he has nothing in common. Most of the humor early on deals specifically with Driss’ (Sy) learning his new responsibilities, his discomfort with various aspects of his new job such as dressing Phillipe and “draining the ass” of a man he doesn’t know, and his fumbling juvenile attempts to woo Philippe’s completely uninterested assistant (Audrey Fleurot) into bed.
From there The Intouchables moves into the inevitable phase of the two finding common ground and becoming friends. Subplots involve Driss’ attempt to be a painter and keep his cousin (Cyril Mendy) from following his same path, the relationship between Philippe’s daughter (Alba Gaïa Kraghede Bellugi) and her boyfriend (Thomas Solivéres), and Driss pushing Philippe to meet the woman (Dorothée Brière) he’s been corresponding with for months.
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Denzel Washington stars in the character study of an airline pilot whose heroic actions save the lives of an entire commercial flight of passengers, but when his history with alcohol and drug abuse sees the light of day new questions begin to be asked about that fateful day.
The screenplay by John Gatins is pretty straightforward. Washington’s Whip Whitacker is your basic hero with feet of clay who is unwilling and unable to admit or address his own demons. As such there are really only two possible outcomes to the film. Either Whitacker will get away with flying drunk the day of the crash or he’ll finally admit his problem with alcohol and drugs.
Robert Zemeckis gets the best out of his actors, paticularly Washington and Kelly Reilly as a recovering heroin user who tries to help Whip get and stay clean, but the themes of the film often feel too simplistic and it’s all too easy to see where Whip’s journey will eventually end.
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dvd and blu-ray
The Third Season of Rookie Blue continues to looks at the latest crop of police academy graduates now serving in uniform with the 15 Division. Three seasons in you can’t really call the group rookies any more, but the show’s continued focus is the growth and development of its five young officers (and their, at times soap operatic personal lives): 
