Dennis Rucker Movies

After his brother is badly beaten by a street gang, Jean-Claude Van Damme deserts the foreign legion in order to avenge his honor in this action film also known as A.W.O.L. and Wrong Bet. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Richard Gere plays Zack Mayo, an aloof, taciturn man who aspires to be a navy pilot. Once he's arrived at training camp for his 13-week officer's course, Mayo runs afoul of abrasive, no-nonsense drill sergeant Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.). Mayo --or "Mayonnaise," as he is dubbed by the irascible Foley -- is an excellent cadet, but a little cold around the heart. Foley rides Mayo mercilessly, sensing that the young man would be prime officer material if he weren't so self-involved. Zack's affair with working girl Paula Pokrifi (Debra Winger) is likewise compromised by his unwillingness to give of himself. Only after Mayo's best friend Sid Worsley (David Keith) commits suicide over an unhappy romance does Zack come out of his shell and mature into a real human being. Take away the R-rated dialogue and the sex scenes, and Officer and a Gentleman could have been a 1937 MGM flick, maybe with Robert Taylor as Zack, Wallace Beery as Foley, and Jimmy Stewart as Sid. An Officer and a Gentleman was nominated for 7 Oscars, with wins to Gossett and to the hit song "Up Where We Belong." The closing scene has surely become a classic of movie romance. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hal Ashby's 1978 melodrama examines the impact of the Vietnam War on the "war at home" among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer at the V.A. hospital where her new friend Vi (Penelope Milford) works. There she meets Luke Martin (Jon Voight), a former high-school classmate and Marine who has returned from 'Nam a bitter paraplegic. As their relationship grows, Sally sees the effect of the war on the soldiers after they come back, inspiring her to rethink her priorities; Luke's spirits begin to lift, and a hospital tragedy helps focus his anger toward meaningful protest. After a Hong Kong visit with her increasingly withdrawn husband, Sally finds a love and companionship with Luke that she had never known with her husband. Once Bob comes home with his own injury, however, the three must find a way to deal with a changing world and with a system that betrayed the men fighting for it. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

An expensive war epic, Midway emulates The Longest Day and Tora! Tora! Tora! in attempting to re-create a famous World War II battle from both the American and Japanese viewpoints. The 1942 battle of Midway was the turning point of the War in the Pacific; the Japanese invasion fleet was destroyed, and America's string of humiliating defeats was finally broken. Though the battle itself was sufficiently dramatic to fill two films, Midway also has plotline involving the mixed-race relationship between Ensign Garth (Edward Albert), son of Navy Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston), and Haruko Sakura (Christina Kokubo), a Hawaiian girl of Japanese descent. The real-life personages depicted herein include American Admirals Nimitz (Henry Fonda), Halsey (Robert Mitchum) and Spruance (Glenn Ford), and Japanese Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mifune, his voice once again dubbed by Paul Frees, whom Mifune personally selected for the job). For its original road show release, Midway was offered in the "Sensurround" process, which electronically shook and vibrated the audience's chairs during the battle sequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The paramedics try to persuade the son (Sean Kelly) of a stabbing victim (Wayne Heffley) to abandon his plans to avenge his father--which proves difficult, since the boy is heavily armed. Elsewhere, a young mother tries to abandon her deformed baby, a man is electrocuted by his TV set, and a hang-glider pilot ends up stuck in a high tree. And on a lighter note, paramedic John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) is shamed into inaugurating a strenuous physical-fitness regimen. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Though it sometimes looks like a TV "Movie of the Week' deflected to big screen, You'll Like My Mother is all in all a neat little nailbiter with a strong cast. Pregnant army widow Francesca Kinsolving (Patty Duke), conditioned by her late husband to expect a warm welcome, visits her in-laws in snowbound Minnesota. Mother-in-law Rosemary Murphy is not only resentful of Patty's presence, she refuses to acknowledge fact that her son ever married. There are other surprises in store for Francesca, including a homicidal son-in-law Richard Thomas and a mentally-challenged sister-in-law Sian Barbara Allen. In addition, Francesca's mother-in-law harbors a "little" secret: she's not Patty's real mother-in-law at all, but a scheming aunt who wants to inherit family fortune and wants no inconvenient relatives blocking her path. Slowly and deliberately, terror builds upon terror, right up to the bone-chilling finale. Jo Heims adapted the script from a Naomi A. Hintze novel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Investigating a missing-child report, officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord) expose an illegal adopting ring. In another incident, the two cops probe a report of stolen narcotics on a college campus, following the trail of clues to a star football player. And this being Adam-12, the episode is capped by a high-speed car chase. Featured in the cast are two former child stars, Jackie Coogan and James Lydon. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Shot during a jewelry-store holdup, Sgt. Ed Brown (Don Galloway) owes his life to a man (Michael Callan) who rushed to his aid--and then disappeared into the crowd. It soon develops that the good samaritan is actually an AWOL Vietnam veteran who may or may not have killed a comrade in arms. Convinced that the soldier is blameless, Ed puts his life on the line--again--to clear the man's name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide