By James Whittington, 29th August 2024
Ten epic adventures have their Channel Premieres this September, including the star-studded neo-noir thriller L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, Jim Mickle's twisty crime thriller COLD IN JULY, John G. Avidsen's powerful South African drama THE POWER OF ONE, John Amiel's masterful psychological mystery ENTRAPMENT, starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Robert Aldrich's classic violent Western ULZANA'S RAID starring Burt Lancaster.
Other primetime channel premieres are action thrillers CROSS THE LINE, starring Michelle Barton and Luke Goss, ASSAULT ON STATION 33, starring Weston Cage Coppola (Nicolas Cage's son), THE HUNTED, starring Christopher Lambert, THE NEGIOTIATOR, starring Samuel L. Jackson and the biographical war film LONE SURVIVOR, starring Mark Wahlberg.
There is also the Channel premiere of Series 2 of the hugely popular THE A-TEAM and the cult fantasy/science fiction anthology series THE TWILIGHT ZONE continues on Saturday and Sunday nights with the Channel premiere of Season 3.
We start on the 5th with the gritty western, ULZANA'S RAID. Acclaimed director Robert Aldrich pulls no punches in his unrelentingly brutal story of a reign of terror perpetrated on Arizona settlers by the titular Apache warrior. Burt Lancaster is the laconic Indian scout who leads a young Cavalry officer (Bruce Davison) on a discouraging mission to bring Ulzana to justice. A gritty, violent, and powerful film that challenges typical Western notions of good and bad, re-examining the history of the American West with a fascinatingly revised perspective. Then on the 7th we CROSS THE LINE. When the daughter of veteran 911 call centre operator Pamela (Mischa Barton), and her estranged husband Jeremy (Luke Goss), a Senior Police Officer, is kidnapped they have no choice but to follow the kidnapper's rules: send messages through dispatch for all police and fire units to scatter to remote locations throughout the city where they are met with chaos. Not knowing who or why, the one thing they do know is if they fail to collaborate with one another - they will be solely responsible for the biggest crime in the city's history. Now they must race against the clock to make the choice of their lives - save the city - or save their daughter.
Based on the novel by James Ellroy, the critically acclaimed drama L. A. CONFIDENTIAL comes to Legend on the 8th. Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito) is a rag-mag mogul who bribes Detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) to set up celebrity arrests that he can scoop in his magazine. Millionaire pornographer Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn) runs a high-class operation, and his call girls are plastic surgery enhanced to resemble movie stars. Detective Bud White (Russell Crowe) thinks one of the girls, Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger), knows something a mass murder that appears to be mob related, as does Detective Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). As the three detectives set out to solve the crime, both the glamorous and the seedy side of the film industry and Los Angeles surrounds them. ASSAULT ON STATION 33 on the 13th follows decorated veteran and PTSD sufferer, Jason Hill (Sean Patrick Flanery) meets his wife, Jennifer, for lunch at the Veteran's Affairs hospital where she works. After Jennifer is called away for an emergency consultation with the head of US Military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, the hospital is taken hostage by heavily armed terrorists. Jason becomes the last line of defence and must battle the terrorists and his own PTSD induced demons to save his wife, the General, the hospital's staff and patients.
We meet THE HUNTED on the 14th, where New York executive Paul Racine (Christopher Lambert) is on a business trip in Japan when he meets the stunning, enigmatic Kirina (Joan Chen). They spend the night together in her hotel room, and Racine returns the next day to retrieve his forgotten keys. But once he's there, he witnesses Kirina's assassination by Kinjo (John Lone), the leader of a ninja cult. Realizing that Racine has seen everything, Kinjo will do everything in his power to end the executive's life. More crime drama on the 15th in THE NEGOTIATOR. Danny Roman (Samuel L Jackson), a skilled police negotiator, anxious to clear himself of false accusations, takes a group of people hostage in an office building to gain the time he needs to find the truth. The hostage negotiator, Chris Sabian (Kevin Spacey) , the Negotiator, comes in to try and defuse the situation and bring Roman in.
COLD IN JULY is another channel premiere on the 21st and asks the question, "How can a split-second decision change your life?" While investigating noises in his house one night in 1989, Richard Dane kills a low-life burglar, Freddy Russell. Although he's hailed as a small-town hero, Dane soon finds himself fearing for his family's safety when Freddy's ex-con father, Ben arrives, hell-bent on revenge. However, not all is as it seems. Shortly after Dane kills the home intruder, his life begins to unravel into a dark underworld of corruption and violence. Twists and turns continue to pile up as the film reaches its inevitable destination: a gore-soaked dead end. Crime thrills with Sean Connery on the 22nd, ENTRAPMENT. Insurance investigator Virginia "Gin" Baker (Catherine Zeta-Jones), looking into a stolen Rembrandt painting, suspects that accomplished thief Robert "Mac" MacDougal (Connery) is responsible. She decides to go undercover and help Mac steal an ancient artifact. When a suspicious Mac confronts Gin about her real intentions, she claims that she is, in fact, a thief and that the insurance job is a cover. To prove it, she proposes a new target that could net them $8 billion. But who is playing who?
Based on The New York Times bestselling book of the same name, LONE SURVIVOR is on the 28th. This is a true story of heroism, courage and survival, as four Navy SEALs go on a covert mission to neutralize a high-level al-Qaeda operative who are ambushed by the enemy in the mountains of Afghanistan. Faced with an impossible moral decision, the small band is isolated from help and surrounded by a much larger force of Taliban ready for war. As they confront unthinkable odds together, the four men find reserves of strength and resilience as they stay in the fight to the finish. We take you to the 1930s on the 29th, for THE POWER OF ONE. As the people he cares for die or leave his village, young South African P.K. bonds with much older Doc (Armin Mueller-Stahl). A foreigner, Doc is detained when World War II starts, but from his prison cell he encourages P.K. to learn boxing. As he travels to different bouts, the adult P.K. (Stephen Dorff) forges relationships that anger the state's apartheid government, made more complicated when he meets Maria, a young white South African, and falls in love, only to discover Maria's father is an Apartheid leader. But its his reunion with his onetime schoolyard nemesis (Daniel Craig) that presents him with his biggest challenge yet.
Related show tags: THE TWILIGHT ZONE, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, COLD IN JULY, THE POWER OF ONE, ENTRAPMENT, ULZANA'S RAID, CROSS THE LINE, ASSAULT ON STATION 33, THE HUNTED, THE NEGIOTIATOR, LONE SURVIVOR, THE A-TEAM MORE FEATURES LEGEND will take you on an exhilarating ride in March with ten channel premieres Posted on 27th February 2025
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