Peter Berg Movies

Filmmaker Peter Berg adapts Radical Publishing's comic series Hercules: The Thracian Wars for Universal Pictures with this big-screen adventure. Ryan Condal provides the script, with Berg handling producing duties. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

The team behind the box-office hit Hancock regroups for this follow-up that sees the return of the hard-drinking lush superhero (Will Smith) and his eternally bound goddess (Charlize Theron) as they face a foe that only the two can defeat. Jason Bateman returns to co-star, with Peter Berg once again helming the action comedy feature. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Director Phillip Noyce teams with screenwriters Kurt Wimmer (Equilibrium) and Brian Helgeland (Mystic River) to craft this thriller starring Angelina Jolie as dedicated CIA officer Evelyn Salt, who is accused by a defector of being a Russian spy. With each attempt Salt makes to prove her innocence, her mentor, Winter (Liev Schreiber), only grows more suspicious of her true motivations. The longer she eludes capture by ambitious CIA agent Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the higher the stakes get. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A spaceship from Earth is equipped with a virtual-reality device to help those aboard cope with their 10-year mission. But when the system malfunctions, it puts the Phaeton's crew -- and the fate of their planet -- in jeopardy. ~ Joe Friedrich, All Movie Guide

Friday Night Lights director Peter Berg writes, directs, and produces this true-life tale of survival set in Afghanistan and involving a Navy Seal whose entire squadron was killed in a Taliban ambush. Marcus Luttrell was a Navy Seal who led a team of soldiers into Afghanistan on a dangerous mission to kill a Taliban leader. One day, while preparing for their mission on the side of a mountain, the team was surprised to encounter an Afghan man, a farmer, and a young boy. Subsequently struggling with the decision whether to kill them and violate the military rules of engagement or to let them go and risk blowing their cover, the team took a vote and found themselves deadlocked at an even split. As the leader of the team, it was up to Luttrell to make the final call. Determining that the three were simple civilians, Luttrell made the call to release them. An hour later, his entire team was wiped out by dozens of heavily armed Taliban. When the smoke cleared, Luttrell was clinging to life -- the sole survivor of the brutal ambush. In the following days Luttrell would use his military experience to stay alive in a hostile landscape and avoid detection by the Taliban. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A hard-drinking lush finds himself thrust into superhero mode in director Peter Berg's unconventional look at the private life of a crime-fighter. Will Smith stars as the embittered do-gooder whose lifestyle is more akin to a rock star than a role model, and who has grown as disillusioned with his once-admiring public as they have of him. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In the aftermath of a deadly attack on American forces in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, diplomats are slow to act, but meanwhile, FBI special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) assembles a secret team of U.S. counter-terrorism investigators to enter the city and find the criminal behind what has quickly become an international incident. The crew, however, finds their attempt to capture the perpetrators stalled by bureaucracy and their presence unwelcome. Desperate to gain the trust they need to accomplish their mission in just five days, the team enlists the aid of a Saudi Arabian police officer (Ashraf Barhoum), but as the agents infiltrate the dark and complex world of the Saudi crime scene, they find that the perpetrator's next target may be them. Directed by Peter Berg, The Kingdom also stars Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide

When a shifty magician turns state's evidence against a Las Vegas underworld heavy, the high price placed on his head sparks a fevered race to rub the snitch out and collect a tidy paycheck in Narc director Joe Carnahan's dark action comedy. Buddy "Aces" Israel (Jeremy Piven) is a small-time scammer who has somehow managed to get the goods on big-time mobster Primo Sparazza. Upon discovering that Buddy is about to deliver the evidence needed to get him thrown in jail for life, Primo takes out a sizable contract on Buddy that entices every two-bit thug, grizzled bounty hunter, deadly vixen, skilled assassin, and ladder-climbing Mafioso within a hundred-mile radius into taking a shot at the prize. Now holed up in his luxurious Lake Tahoe hideout with only two FBI agents (Ryan Reynolds and Ray Liotta) standing between him from a virtual army of money-hungry rogues, Buddy is about to find out just how far this motley crew of killers is willing to go in order to take him out and hit the jackpot. Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Andy Garcia, Alicia Keys, and Martin Henderson co-star in a bullet-strewn, ensemble crime comedy that never stops to reload. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

First-time writer/director Scott Burns spins this suspenseful yarn about a nuclear technician who has a curious encounter with a notoriously violent Russian gangster (Nikolaj Lie Kaas). The year is 1995, and Timofey (Paddy Considine) is a nuclear power-plant worker in post-Soviet Russia. After being exposed to dangerous levels of radiation while working to avert a disaster, Timofey discovers that the authorities have deliberately misled him about the severity of his exposure, and that he will likely die in just a few days. Determined to provide for his wife (Radha Mitchell) and young son before he succumbs to the effects of radiation, Timofey absconds with a small amount of weapons grade plutonium, straps the vial to his body, and makes his way to Moscow in hopes of making a quick and profitable sale in the criminal underground. This is the "new Russia," where everything has its price, and Timofey is determined to secure his family's future even if he himself has none. Oscar Issac and Jason Flemyng co-star in a film produced by Section Eight and Beacon Pictures for HBO Films, and distributed by Picturehouse. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

H.G. Bissinger's best-selling true-life account of a few months in the life of a high-school football team comes to the screen in this adaptation written and directed by Peter Berg. Odessa, TX, is an oil town in the western part of the state that's home to the Permian High School Panthers, the football team with the best winning record in the state. Odessa is a town with more than its share of problems; the decline of the oil business in Texas has set the city's economy into a tailspin, and racial tensions still erupt into violence on occasion. But football is the one thing that brings all the people of Odessa together, and on Friday nights every fall, as many as 20,000 people fill Permian's football stadium to watch Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) and his boys try to lead the team to victory. As Gaines works to build a winning team in a town where victory is prized above all else, however, his players struggle through the emotional trials common to any teenager and ponder the fact that there is little future in their hometown...and that a championship season can be as much a burden as a triumph. Friday Night Lights also stars Lucas Black, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, and country singer-turned-actor Tim McGraw. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Beck (The Rock) is a "retrieval specialist" in hock to a powerful and not particularly nice gentleman named Walker (William Lucking). Beck is anxious to retire from his dangerous work and open a small restaurant. Walker tells Beck he'll be free and clear with enough cash to fulfill his dream if he does one more job. He sends Beck into the Brazilian rainforest to bring back his wayward son, Travis (Seann William Scott). Travis is down there looking for a legendary idol, El Gato Diablo, which he could sell for millions if he found it. A pretty local, Mariana (Rosario Dawson), offers Travis the use of her boat in exchange for a cut of the take on the statue. But the powerful Hatcher (Christopher Walken) owns the area's huge mine, where locals work for slave wages, and feels that anything found in the area is his property. He refuses to let Beck take Travis back to the U.S. until the statue is in his hands. Using his estimable fighting prowess (he doesn't like guns), Beck manages to get Travis out of town, but Travis doesn't want to go home, and he ends up getting them stranded in the jungle, where they're confronted with horny monkeys and angry guerrillas. To make matters worse, Hatcher and his thugs are hot on their trail, and Mariana turns out to have her own motives for getting involved. The Rundown, the second film directed by actor Peter Berg (Very Bad Things), features a brief, uncredited cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Sydney (Jennifer Garner) returns to America with her ex-lover and fellow SD-6 agent Noah (Peter Berg), who offers her a way out of the spy game once and for all. But Sydney has to take care of unfinished business: Now convinced that her mother, KGB agent Irina Derevko, is still alive, she will not rest until she finds the woman. Meanwhile, Vaughn (Michael Vartan) puts a tail on an assassin known as "The Snowman" in hopes of tracking down the elusive Khasinau, who may or may not be "The Man" behind all the skullduggery occurring in previous episodes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This series is a gritty hard-driving look at an insane asylum. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide