Clifton Collins, Jr.

The indestructible hopped-up hitman Chev Chelios, played to the hilt once again by Jason Statham, returns in Crank 2: High Voltage, picking up where the first film left off -- except this time, Chelios is chasing a Chinese gangster who hijacked his heart and substituted it with a mechanical one that needs to be jolted with an electric charge to stay pumping. The maverick directing/writing team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor returns to inject more caffeinated craziness into Lionsgate's burgeoning action series, with Amy Smart and Dwight Yoakam set to reprise their roles from the original. Efren Ramirez, Bai Ling, Clifton Collins Jr., and Corey Haim round out the cast. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

William Dear (Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann) helms the period baseball drama The Perfect Game, a cinematization of real-life events that transpired in 1957. Clifton Collins Jr. stars as Cesar Faz, a 1950s baseball player who immigrated from Mexico to the U.S. with the intent of making it as a Major League player. After encountering racism and hostility that stand squarely in the way of his success, Faz high-tails it south of the border and decides instead to coach a Little League team, ultimately guiding it all the way to the Little League World Series. The film co-stars Emilie de Ravin (Lost); W. William Winokur authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Emotionally distanced form his two young sons following the untimely death of his devoted wife, an troubled detective investigates a series of murders that seem to be based on the Biblical prophecies concerning the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in a dark psychological thriller starring Dennis Quaid and Zhang Ziyi. Patrick Fugit, Clifton Collins, Jr.}, Neil McDonough, and Peter Stormare co-star in a film by Spun director Jonas Åckerlund and Doom screenwriter Dave Callaham. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Two brothers are victimized by a weak and jealous man in this drama shot on location in Louisiana. Beaux Dupuis (Jonathan Schaech) lives on a houseboat with his brother Pemon (Fred Koehler) in the swamps of Cajun country. Beaux is a handsome and responsible man who supports his family by running a bait shop and looks after Pemon, who is mentally handicapped. Beaux used to love Mary-Louise (Tamara Braun), a dark-eyed beauty, but she's recently married local ne'er do well Carl Lebauve (Jeremy Davidson), who has a mean streak and a jealous nature. As it happens, Carl has reason to suspect Mary-Louise -- she still stops by the Dupuis home occasionally to bring snacks for Pemon, and is sometimes tempted into infidelity by Beaux. Carl's father is the local sheriff, and when he's killed in the line of duty, his son takes his place; it isn't long before Carl learns Mary-Louise has been having an affair with Beaux, and he uses his new authority to put Pemon behind bars on false change as a way of punishing his big brother. Little Chenier was directed by actress and filmmaker Bethany Ashton Wolf, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jace Johnson, whose short story provided the basis for the story. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

After years of upholding law and order on the cop drama Homicide: Life on the Street, Andre Braugher crossed over to the criminal side as the title character in the FX network weekly Thief. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, the series cast Braugher as Nick Atwater, who supplemented his income as a vintage-car dealer by masterminding a team of thieves. Although Nick tried to keep his personal and professional life secret, this proved difficult when he was forced to shoulder the responsibility for his resentful and trouble-prone stepdaughter, Tammi Deveraux (Mae Whitman), after his wife, Wanda (Dina Meyer), was killed in a car accident. (In the first episode, Nick was arranging to get Tammi out of a jam with the New Orleans cops even as he and his cohorts were in the middle of pulling off a jewel heist in San Francisco!) Further complicating his life was a botched assignment in which Nick's team wound up with money stolen from a particularly vicious band of Chinese gangsters -- not to mention our "hero"'s ongoing struggle to play on both sides of the legal fence in order to keep his head above water. Also in the cast was Michael Rooker as Nick's nemesis and verbal sparring partner John Hayes, a corrupt police detective to whom extortion was second nature; Linda Hamilton as Rosalyn, Nick's fence, who like many TV-series outlaws had her own peculiar code of ethics; Clifton Collins Jr. as Nick's confederate Jack "Bump" Hill, the obligatory "crook with a conscience"; Yancey Arias as Gabriel "Gabo" Williams, the equally obligatory loose cannon of the gang, who also had a hit-and-run romance with Detective Hayes' wife; Malik Yoba as comedy-relief character Elmo "Mo" Jones, who like his boss Nick did his best to be a good family man; and Will Yun Lee as irascible Chinese hit man Vincent Chan, who was willing to let Nick live only long enough to get his mob's money back. By the time the series had concluded its initial six-week run, Nick and company were neck-deep in a scheme to steal govnerment money originally intended to pay off local authorities in the Colombian drug war. Based loosely on the 1981 James Caan theatrical feature of the same name, the weekly, hour-long Thief premiered March 28, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cuba Gooding Jr. and Clifton Collins Jr. portray a pair of former gang members who trade in their colors for badges, only to discover that life on the other side of the law isn't much different than life on the streets, in Nightstalker director Chris Fisher's tale of crime and corruption in the highest ranks of the inner-city police force. As anti-gang task force cops Armando Sancho (Collins Jr.) and his partner Salim Adel (Gooding Jr.) make their way through the sweltering concrete jungle of a decaying city, the lines between the law and the lawless grow increasingly blurred. His conscience stirred by his involvement in the murder of an innocent man, Sancho begins weighing the prospect of participating in an Internal Affairs investigation against his loyalty to his amoral partner and best friend Adel. When Sancho and Adel are called in by their division lieutenant (Cole Hauser) and assigned the task of delivering confiscated dope to the henchmen of feared gangster Damien Baine (Wyclef Jean), the deal is sweetened by Baine's offer to cut the pair in on the profits if they agree to bust a gang of newly arrived Canadian drug dealers looking to establish roots in the city. The task is complicated however, by the revelation that not only does the Canadian gang have direct ties to a well-established crime syndicate headed by ruthless Latino crime lord Roland (Robert La Sardo), but that the disgruntled girlfriend of a noted police informant is looking to exact deadly revenge on Adel for a previous wrongdoing as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The creation of one of the most memorable books of the 1960s -- and the impact the writing and research would have on its author -- is explored in this drama based on a true story. In 1959, Truman Capote (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was a critically acclaimed novelist who had earned a small degree of celebrity for his work when he read a short newspaper item about a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. For some reason, the story fascinated Capote, and he asked William Shawn (Bob Balaban), his editor at The New Yorker, to let him write a piece about the case. Capote had long believed that in the right hands, a true story could be molded into a tale as compelling as any fiction, and he believed this event, in which the brutal and unimaginable was visited upon a community where it was least expected, could be just the right material. Capote traveled to Kansas with his close friend Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), herself becoming a major literary figure with the success of To Kill a Mockingbird, and while Capote's effete and mannered personal style stuck out like a sore thumb in Kansas, in time he gained the trust of Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper), the Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent investigating the murder of the Clutter family, and with his help Capote's magazine piece grew into a full-length book. Capote also became familiar with the petty criminals who killed the Clutter family, Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino) and Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.), and in Smith he found a troubling kindred spirit more like himself than he wanted to admit. After attaining a sort of friendship with Smith under the assumption that the man would be executed before the book was ever published, Capote finds himself forced to directly confront the moral implications of his actions with regards to both his role in the man's death, and the way that he would be remembered. Capote also co-stars Bruce Greenwood as Capote's longtime companion Jack Dunphy, and Amy Ryan as Mary Dewey, Alvin's wife who became a confidante of Capote's. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Finnish-born Hollywood filmmaker Renny Harlin directs the suspense thriller Mindhunters with a screenplay by writer/director Wayne Kramer. Val Kilmer stars as Harris, an FBI official teaching a group of trainees the art of profiling serial killers. He takes them on a weekend retreat to a deserted island for some supplemental simulation exercises in which they catch a fake killer. When some FBI trainees get killed for real, the rest figure the murderer must be one of them. Class leader Sara (Kathryn Morris) must try to stay alive long enough to figure out if one of her colleagues is the murderer. Is it Gabe (LL Cool J), J.D. Reston (Christian Slater), Bobby (Eion Bailey), Rafe (Will Kemp), Lucas (Jonny Lee Miller), Vince (Clifton Collins Jr.), or Nicole (Patricia Velazquez)? ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Lex Vargas (John Leguizamo, who also directed the film) is a promising young boxer living in Jackson Heights, Queens. He works at the family bodega for his older brother, Paulie (David Zayas), but he and his best friend and manager, Loco (Clifton Collins Jr. of The Rules of Attraction), dream of getting out of the neighborhood. Lex wins a PAL championship, and things are looking up, when Paulie is shot by a robber. After Loco convinces him to go on, Lex manages to convince an experienced local trainer, Victor (Nestor Serrano, who starred with Leguizamo in Hangin' with the Homeboys and Empire), to work with him. Before long, Lex has the full attention of Mack (Omar Benson Miller), a shady music promoter who's looking to go into boxing management. Through Mack, he meets Lizette (Vanessa Ferlito), an aspiring singer whose interest in Lex seems tied to his financial fortunes. Before long, Lex finds himself in conflict with Loco and his old friends from the neighborhood, who don't fit in with his lavish new lifestyle. Mack introduces Lex to Seth Green (Robert Forster), a powerful promoter. Before long, Green has Lex fighting for the welterweight title, but the boxer still finds himself torn between his old loyalties and his desire to rise to the top. Undefeated was Leguizamo's directorial debut, and he also worked on the story with screenwriter Frank Pugliese. The film was produced for HBO, and features appearances by HBO boxing commentators Larry Merchant and Jim Lampley. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Bret Easton Ellis' controversial novel about the sexual, emotional, and chemical interactions of a group of wealthy and amoral college students is brought to the screen in this adaptation from writer and director Roger Avery. Sean Bateman (James Van Der Beek) is a student at Camden College, a well-respected private school on the East Coast. Sean is attracted to Lauren Hynde (Shannyn Sossamon), a high minded and seemingly unapproachable coed, while Lauren is infatuated with Victor (Kip Pardue), a handsome but self-centered ladies' man. Lauren's empty-headed roommate, Lara (Jessica Biel), is also attracted to Victor, while he has no qualms about being involved with both. Lauren used to date affected snob Paul Denton (Ian Somerhalder), but Paul, a bisexual, currently lusts after Sean. Meanwhile, friendly campus drug dealer Rupert (Clifton Collins Jr.) finds a ready market for cocaine among his classmates; Sean, a steady customer, finds himself financially embarrassed and begins dealing drugs to help pay off his debts, while leading Paul on for his ready supply of marijuana. The Rules of Attraction also features Eric Stoltz as Mr.
Lance Lawson, Faye Dunaway and Swoosie Kurtz as semi-concerned parents, and Fred Savage as one of Sean's customers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Robert Redford stars in this action drama as General Irwin, a respected three-star tactician whose career ends in disgrace when he's court-martialed and sent to The Castle, a maximum security military prison. Irwin quickly butts heads with the facility's autocratic warden, Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini), who runs his command with an iron fist, even killing prisoners when he deems it necessary. Irwin rallies his fellow convicts into a rag-tag army and leads them in a revolt against Winter, an action that the warden is ready to repel by violent means. Mark Ruffalo, Robin Wright Penn, and Delroy Lindo co-star in this Dreamworks production, the third feature film from one-time film critic Rod Lurie. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Described by director Steven Soderbergh as "Nashville meets The French Connection," this multi-character drama explores the effects of international drug trafficking on all fronts: from their source, to the U.S. border, to the federal government, to the private lives of users. Based upon a miniseries originally aired on Britain's Channel 4, Traffic divides its time among three main storylines and almost a dozen locales. The first and primary plot thread, set in Ohio and Washington, D.C., concerns freshly-appointed drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), whose enthusiasm for his new prestige position is quickly offset when he realizes his 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is graduating from recreational drug use to habitual abuse -- a secret that his wife, Barbara (Amy Irving), has kept from him. South of the border, Mexican cop Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) attempts to wage his own war on drugs, heading off a cocaine shipment in the middle of the desert with his less-than-virtuous partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas). Surrounded by corruption, Javier approaches the drug war with an attitude of patience and compromise, which opens him up to investigation from General Arturo Salazar (Tomas Milian), the country's dubious drug-enforcement liaison to the U.S. Meanwhile, San Diego drug kingpin Carlos Alaya (Steven Bauer) is caught in a sting operation spearheaded by DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzman), leaving behind his very pregnant and very oblivious wife, Helena (Catharine Zeta-Jones). At the behest of Carlos' lawyer and shady confidante, Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), Helena decides to carry on the family business -- with tragic consequences. Adapted by Rules of Engagement scribe Stephen Gaghan, Traffic marked Soderbergh's second major release in 2000 after the critical and box-office success of Erin Brockovich, as well as his second feature as cinematographer (credited under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). A favorite with various guild and critics' awards, Traffic won four Academy Awards in 2001, including statues for Best Supporting Actor (Del Toro) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gaghan), and surprise wins for Steven Mirrone's editing and Soderbergh's direction. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide