New on DVD

Jean-Claude Van Damme was never much of an actor, but he had a good head for choosing directors. He followed John Woo's American debut, "Hard Target," by bringing over another Hong Kong action superstar, Ringo Lam, a director with a grittier, edgier, less epic approach to action cinema. "Maximum Risk" is the kind of solid B action thriller that the American cinema used to be so good at producing, a lean thriller that casts Van Damme as a cop from Nice who finds out that a recent murder victim was a twin brother he never knew, then sends him to New York and back to find his brother's killers. Van Damme still isn't much of an actor, but Lam strips his performance down to an austere focus and makes him an efficient, fierce dynamo of a scrapper. Natasha Henstridge provides the personality as the tough American girl who loved his brother and ends up on the run from the Russian mob and corrupt FBI agents trying to kill them both. Lam keeps the story tight and the action taut, building to an impressive conclusion in which half a dozen characters make their move in a chaotic crowd. Jean-Hugues Anglade, Zach Grenier and Paul Ben-Victor co-star. No supplements beyond the usual trailers.

The American Western, once a vibrant film genre but long out of favor on the big screen, found a new home on TV in the late 1970s. This magnificent miniseries, adapted from a sprawling novel by Larry McMurtry (who had originally developed the story as a big-screen last hurrah for John Wayne, James Stewart and Henry Fonda), is arguably the greatest TV Western ever made. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones saddle up as aging cowboys and former Texas Rangers Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call with easy authority for one last big cattle drive from Texas to Montana. They take the reins of a posse of dynamic characters on their odyssey through the gorgeous landscape of the American Southwest, battling horse thieves, angry Indian tribes, and a renegade half-breed killer named Blue Duck (Frederic Forrest) along the way. Robert Urich, Anjelica Huston, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, Diane Lane, Chris Cooper and D.B. Sweeney co-star in supporting (but by no means small) roles. The miniseries proved to be the ideal format for the story. Australian director Simon Wincer gives it a grandly epic feel and visual sweep while capturing an engrossing intimacy with leathery authenticity. The Western's finest hour (or rather, eight hours) on television, this cattle drive epic won seven Emmy Awards and spawned sequels, prequels, a TV series, and a veritable cottage industry of McMurtry TV Westerns.

The 1989 miniseries was produced in the squarish Academy aspect ratio of all TV shows of its era but the Blu-ray release has been mastered in the wide-screen ratio of HD TVs. It looks like it was made for the format and the wide-screen image emphasizes the scope of the landscape. The picture is generally sharp and clear, though it reflects the limitations of its source material, such as film grain from a faster stock than is generally used for feature films, and there's minor video noise in some scenes. The set features the 1991 documentary "The Making of an Epic," archival interviews with the cast and with novelist McMurtry, and original sketches and concept drawings. New to this release is a retrospective interview with Wincer looking back on the production and giving his blessing to this new wide-screen release.

Alec Baldwin was the original screen incarnation of novelist Tom Clancy's CIA analyst Jack Ryan, a desk man who finds himself thrust into the field when a Soviet commander (Sean Connery) hijacks a Russian sub. The nuclear submarine ends up under fire from both sides until Ryan convinces the Americans of the Russian rebel's true intentions: He's defecting and bringing a military prize with him. John McTiernan turns the sprawling novel into a riveting thriller and a solid screen adventure. The Blu-ray debut features the director commentary and documentary featurette "Beneath the Surface" that were originally produced for the DVD special edition of the 1990 hit.

All four Jack Ryan military thrillers are released on Blu-ray this week. Harrison Ford took over the role, playing an older Ryan with a family at stake in "Patriot Games," directed by Phillip Noyce. Retired from the CIA, he thwarts a terrorist attack on the royal family while on vacation in London and is forced to rejoin the agency to protect his family (Anne Archer and little Thora Birch). Director Noyce and star Ford are back for "Clear and Present Danger," where desk man Ryan goes into the field to rescue covert agents (including a memorable Willem Dafoe) abandoned by a government unwilling to risk revealing their illegal dealings. James Earl Jones plays his boss in all three films. After a break of about a decade, "The Sum of All Fears" takes the series back in time (sort of) to give us a younger Ryan (played by Ben Affleck) just starting out as an analyst under the tutelage of CIA director Morgan Freeman. And what a crash course he gets when neo-Nazi terrorists plot to make the cold war hot with a terrorist attack made to look like a Russian first strike. The latter features two commentary tracks and a handful of featurettes.

Leave it to Stephen Sommers to create an action movie out of the sleepiest of monster movie icons. Under his direction, "The Mummy" becomes a comic escapade through a yesteryear Egypt right out of the Hollywood adventure movies of old, but with a modern sensibility. Brendan Fraser is a bit callow as the wise-guy soldier of fortune who teams up with a cute librarian (Rachel Weisz) and her reckless gambler brother (John Hannah), and the script is almost too tongue-in-cheek for its own good. But Sommers' thrill-a-minute cliffhanger is a tribute, a parody, and a high energy period adventure all in one, and the mummy Imhotep (incarnated by Arnold Vosloo when he's not an elaborate digital effect) is a veritable walking plague.

In anticipation of a new sequel, Universal has released all of the Sommers-produced Mummy movies in Blu-ray editions. The Rock joins the cast of "The Mummy Returns" as the ancient warrior demon Scorpion King, but his role is brief and the film is stolen by a feral army of chattering, hopped-up pygmy Gremlin-like mummies. Where "The Mummy Returns" is a pulp update of old Hollywood action movies, a wise-guy "Raiders of the Lost Ark" by way of "Gunga Din," the subsequent "The Scorpion King" spin-off is more of a brawny barbarian adventure, with The Rock dropped into the sands of ancient Egypt with a wicked cutlass and a heavy arsenal of quip and flip wisecracks. Chuck Russell directs with breathless action, borderline camp comedy, and high-tech flair. If it's not exactly exciting, it's at least fast, furious, slick fun. In addition to the featurettes and commentaries and deleted scenes previously available on DVD, the Blu-ray releases feature an exclusive "U-Control" function, a kind of intermittent audio-visual commentary track where you can access picture-in-picture interview clips and behind-the-scenes footage. Each disc also includes a free ticket (up to $7.50 in value) for the theatrical film "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor."