Browse Movies : Released : 2003 : Crime

On the afternoon of July 1, 1981, Los Angeles police responded to a distress call at 8763 Wonderland Avenue and soon discovered a grisly quadruple homicide, later compared to the gruesome slaughter at the Tate household at the hands of the Charles Manson family 10 years earlier. Ron Launius (Josh Lucas), Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner) and Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo) were brutally murdered, and Ron's wife Susan (Christina Applegate) was left in critical condition. The police investigation that followed - led by detectives Sam Nico (Ted Levine), Louis Cruz (Frankie G.) and Mike Peters (M.C. Gainey) - would unearth a seedy world of drugs and violence, ultimately revealing a motley crew from LA's underbelly including ex-con David Lind (Dylan McDermott), nightclub impresario Eddie Nash (Eric Bogosian), the most unlikely of American heroes - porn legend John Holmes (Val Kilmer) - Holmes' estranged wife Sharon (Lisa Kudrow) and his teenage lover Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth).

Based on Louis Sachar's popular children's book. It's about a young boy who is punished for a crime he didn't commit and is sent to a juvenile detention center where he is forced to dig holes under the watchful eye of a mean-spirited warden.

Takeshi Kaneshiro stars in this thriller as Miyamoto, an assassin who accidentally wounds a young woman during a shoot out. When Miyamoto goes to help her, she tells him that she has been sent from the future to prevent an alien invasion that will occur in 72 hours. She informs him that because he has injured her, he must now help her carry out her mission or else be responsible for the destruction of humanity.

Women prisoners strike up a friendship with a young law student who works as a part-time prison guard. Together they discover that a corporation funds and is profitting from the plantation-like work environment they are forced to work under. In a botched attempt to organize a protest against their "slave labor", the women take over the prison - A rare glimpse of the effects of the prison industrial complex on female inmates.

From the Mexican writing-directing team behind the Oscar-nominated "Amores Perros" comes this explosive, emotionally charged English-language drama about a woman (Naomi Watts), her cheating lover (Sean Penn), and an ex-convict (Benicio Del Toro).

This documentary captures what happened in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 12th, 2000 when Bus 174 was highjacked by an armed young man, Sandro do Nascimento, with a dozen passengers. Nascimento threatened to kill all of the passengers, but eventuallly agreed to surrender, as TV cameras were rolling and an entire nation was glued to their screens watching the event take place. Then, a police officer decided to fire at Nascimento anyway, accidentally killing one of the female passengers instead. What followed was a revolt among the city's population, enraged at police brutality. The film intertwines the story of the standoff with biographical information about Sandro do Nascimento, including his childhood as a survivor of the "Candelaria" child mass murders in the early 1990s, and the trauma of seeing his mother stabbed to death in front of him.

Set in the New York nightclub scene of the late 1980's and 1990's, this is the story of Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin), a Club Kid party organizer originally from Indiana, whose extravagant life was sent spiralling downward when he boasted on television that he had killed his drug dealer and roommate, Angel Melendez (Wilson Cruz).

In the explosive action-thriller "S.W.A.T." starring Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell, and inspired by the '70s television series, Farrell portrays Jim Street, an L.A.P.D. officer whose recent demotion to a desk job leaves him desperate for a second chance to don the elite S.W.A.T. uniform. That break comes when team commander Hondo (Samuel L. Jackson) is assigned to recruit and train five top-notch officers for a new Special Weapons and Tactics unit (S.W.A.T.).

When sex and greed mix with cops and criminals, things get messy in this Guy Pearce crime comedy, directed by Scott Roberts.

Focuses on Filomena Capadscio, the matriarch of a family who is abruptly visited by tragedy. Filomena's husband and two sons are brutally murdered by the sons of Firmino Santos Guerra. Thirty years earlier, Filomena had been engaged to Santos Guerra but left him before their wedding to marry his rival Borges Capadscio. The result of this union filled Santos Guerra with rage and promise to someday exact revenge on the newly married couple. Filomena buries her husband and sons and begins to set plans to have revenge against the Santos Guerra family. She brings together her three daughters (Maria Francisca, Maria Rosa and Maria Pia) and sends them off into the backlands of Brazil to locate and hire three ruthless killers. Maria Francisca has to find the gunman known as Zi das Cobras, who has not spoken to a woman since the death of his mother. Maria Rosa looks for Chief Tensrio, a backwoods cop who is also a knife specialist, and convince him to break the laws he defends. Maria Pia goes off in search of Jesulino Cruz, also known as "The Devil's Horse," but there is a slight obstacle in her path: this killer is locked up in prison."

Set in the LAPD in April 1992, it takes place just days before the acquittal of four white officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King and the subsequent LA riots. In this racially charged climate, the LAPD's elite Special Investigations Squad (SIS) is assigned a high-profile quadruple homicide. As they work the case, veteran detective Eldon Perry (Kurt Russell) tutors rookie Bobby Keough (Scott Speedman) in the grim realities of police intimidation and corruption. Meanwhile, Assistant Chief Holland (Ving Rhames), the only man in the department willing to stand up to the SIS, threatens to end Perry's brand of single-handed "justice" on the LA streets. While navigating through tumultuous neighborhoods of South Central LA, Perry and Keough must track down killers and face their own demons.

After a fight with her coked-up boyfriend Marcus, Alex leaves a party to go home. She never gets there; instead she's raped in a desolate tunnel. Her angry boyfriend, and her buddy Pierre decide to take justice into their own hands and hunt down the rapist themselves.

Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is the unluckiest man in Las Vegas... he's so unlucky, it's contagious. Looking to knock out their highest rollers, one of the last mob-run casinos in town, the Shangri-La Hotel and Casino downtown, decides to use Bernie as a "cooler" to defuse their lucky streaks. The scheme goes fine until Bernie falls in love with a cocktail waitress, Natalie (Maria Bello), who becomes his "lady luck", much to the chagrin of the casino's crooked director (Alec Baldwin) who aims to break up the romance, and Bernie's newfound luck...

Ben is an overachieving high-school student in Orange County, Calif. He's at the top of his class and set to matriculate at an Ivy League school. But Ben has a darker side. While he maintains academic success, to alleviate the pressure put upon him by his parents, he indulges in acts of crime. His life slowly begins to spin out of control and he eventually joins a gang.

Polite, mild-mannered Dan Mahowny is an assistant bank manager with a head for numbers, a knack for making decisions, and a devastating appetite for gambling. Dan Mahowny is the unlikely hero who takes on two of the financial institutions everyone loves to hate, the bank and the casino, and, for a brief while, he wins.

Steve James's new film takes a deeply personal turn as he returns to the town where 10 years earlier he was a "big brother" to a troubled young boy named Stevie. As he resumes his connection with this emotionally and socially challenged man after so many years, we get a glimpse into the difficulties Stevie faced as a product of his environment. Abandoned by his mother at a young age, he bounced from foster home to foster home, abused and neglected. He soon found his way into trouble with the law, which complicated his strained relationships with what little family he had.

A band of thieves, led by Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg), pulls off the ultimate heist by rigging the stoplights of the city of Los Angeles so that they can drive right out of the city with a carful of gold (in a safe that they're stealing back after Croker's double-crossing ex-partner, played by Edward Norton, stole it from Croker first), with nothing but greenlights, while everyone else gets redlights, thus keeping the roads plugged with the largest traffic jam in L.A. history, and the police from pursuing them. Aiding their escape is the fact that the bandits are driving BMW Mini Coopers (tiny cars), so they're able to use sidewalks and the subway system in addition to L.A.'s streets and highways. That, of course, is how it's *supposed* to work...

"Gigli", is a new romantic gangster comedy from director Martin Brest, ("Scent of a Woman", "Midnight Run", "Beverly Hills Cop") about a lowly thug who lets love get in the way of a high-risk mob assignment. Gigli (Ben Affleck) is ordered to kidnap the psychologically challenged younger brother of a powerful federal prosecutor. When plans go awry, Gigli's boss sends in Ricki (Jennifer Lopez), a gorgeous, free-spirited female gangster who has her own set of orders to assist with the kidnapping. But Gigli begins falling for the decidedly unavailable Ricki, which could be a hazard to his occupation.

Two friends from Brooklyn (Jerry O'Connell, Anthony Anderson) are forced to deliver mob money to Australia. Their misadventures begin when one of them places his red jacket on a kangaroo while attempting to snap a picture. When the kangaroo bounces off, they realize the mob money is in the jacket and are forced to give chase through the Outback.

Uma Thurman's character, a pregnant assassin named the Bride, is shot by her boss, Bill, and her co-workers at her wedding (the wedding guests are also shot). She survives, though, waking up exceedingly angry after a five-year coma, and decides to hunt down and kill every single one of the assassins who were responsible, saving Bill for last.