Passenger 57 (1992)

Starring:

• Wesley Snipes
• Bruce Payne
• Tom Sizemore

IMDB.com
"Passenger 57" is one of the many films that followed in the wake of the action film that re invented the genre, 1988's "Die Hard" with Bruce Willis in the lead. When I first saw P57, rented on video in the mid nineties, I wasn't expecting a re-run of Die Hard, but i was pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable an action flick it was.

Wesley Snipes and Bruce Payne spark well off each other as the troubled hero and psychotic villain. They are given competent support by the rest of the cast, although one of my small complaints is how under utilised the other actors are. That said, Ernie Lively does a nice turn as the local police chief and Robert Hooks (father of director Kevin Hooks) is good as an FBI Agent.

Essentially, Passenger 57 is a solid little action movie which is well paced and has enough intriguing characters and good action scenes to keep you interested right through to the finale. The story is perhaps a little thin and the script could have used a bit more depth to develop the characters, but it's very enjoyable none the less.

Don't view this expecting a great movie, but if you have an hour and a half to kill this film is well worth a watch.

White Men Can't Jump (1992)

Starring:

• Wesley Snipes
• Woody Harrelson
• Rosie Perez

IMDB.com
A gritty comedy set in some tough LA neighborhoods about two basketball hustlers, one white (Woody Harrelson), the other black (Wesley Snipes). After hustling each other, they finally team up to play in a tournament, where with a combination of skill and trash talk they defeat the two guys who normally would have left them in the dust. The trash talk gets silly at times, while the subplot of underworld characters who are chasing Harrelson for an unpaid debt seems to be there only to explain logically why he hustles in the first place, as if he would do something else with his life. In any event, the games go from Venice Beach to Watts, and the settings are as good as the stars. Especially so are the cheap motels where Harrelson and girlfriend Rosie Perez have to live, and the inner city apartment where Snipes and his wife Tyra Ferrel call home, all of which adds up to a realistic slice of life at the time, which now seems to look quite a bit different. Intelligently written and well photographed, it has laid in the back of the shelves at countless video stores waiting to be rediscovered.

Deep Cover (1992)

Starring:

• Laurence Fishburne
• Jeff Goldblum
• Victoria Dillard
• Gregory Sierra
• Clarence Williams III
• René Assa
• Alex Colon
• Roger Guenveur Smith
• Sydney Lassick
• Kamala Lopez
• Julio Oscar Mechoso
• Glynn Turman
• James T. Morris
• Sandra Gould

Storyline
Russell Stevens (Fishburne) is a police officer that is recruited by a drug enforcement agent to go undercover in Los Angeles to bring down a huge drug operation. While undercover, he is to rise in the ranks by working closely with David (Goldblum), a shady Jewish attorney who is connected with Barbosa (Sierra), a big-time kingpin that has ties with larger distributors and even a corrupt politician. As Stevens gets further involved in the street life, he comes at a crossroads between his duty as an officer of the law and surviving the underworld to stay alive.