Bovie Movie

A man who has made good in an illegal business discovers going straight is a more complicated matter than he imagined in this urban drama. Victor Rosa (John Leguizamo) is a drug dealer who has made a small fortune selling a heroin-based drug cocktail he’s concocted called “Empire.” Victor doesn’t see himself as a dope pusher; instead, he considers himself an entrepreneur and a businessman who is simply making the most of the economic opportunities presented to him in the ghetto. Through his girlfriend Carmen (Delilah Cotto), Victor makes the acquaintance of Jack Wimmer (Peter Sarsgaard), an upscale investment banker who admires Victor’s business savvy and street smarts. Victor is interested in getting out of drug dealing and into a legitimate business, and when Jack offers Victor the chance to buy into a new business, Victor eagerly accepts and makes a good profit in the deal. After this, Victor is all the more enthusiastic when Jack gives him the opportunity to invest in a much bigger project; the price, however, is more than Victor can afford, and he has to borrow from another high-stakes drug dealer, La Columbiana (Isabella Rossellini) in order to make the nut. It isn’t long before Victor learns La Columbiana is not a good person to be in debt to — and that Jack may not be all he imagined him to be. Empire marked the directorial debut of dancer and choreographer Franc Reyes; the supporting cast includes Denise Richards, Sonia Braga, Ruben Blades, and rapper Fat Joe.

Jackie Chan has often played a fish out of water, but he’s rarely found himself so far upstream as in this comic adventure, in which he puts his fighting skills to the test in the Old West of the 1850s. Lo Fong (Roger Yuan), onetime captain of the Chinese Imperial Guard, has traded upholding the law for smuggling opium. Needing some operating capital, Lo Fong kidnaps the Emperor’s daughter, Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu), and takes her to America. When the Emperor sends his best men to find her, Chon Wang (Chan), one of the Emperor’s less distinguished guards, insists on joining them; he feels at fault for Lo Fong’s capturing the Princess, and he wants to make amends. However, while the rescue party scours the West, Chon Wang gets separated from the group and soon becomes lost. When he crosses paths with Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson), a bright but arrogant train robber, the two become unlikely allies. While Shanghai Noon was billed as Jackie Chan’s follow-up to Rush Hour, his first successful American-made feature, it was actually filmed in Canada, as was Chan’s breakthrough film in America, the Hong Kong-backed Rumble in the Bronx.