Ruben Fleischer

NEW YORK – A quirky bank robbery and tire-screeching car chases play key roles in “30 Minutes or Less,” a black comedy in which a pizza deliveryman and his hapless pal are coerced into pulling off a bumbling holdup by a pair knuckleheaded masterminds.

So it stands to reason that the movie’s four stars and its director – Jesse Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari, Danny McBride and Nick Swardson, plus helmer Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) – would have their own rosters of favorite, go-to heist movies and car-chase pictures to inspire them.

They were each asked to list their favorites during a pre-release press conference staged by Columbia Pictures. Here’s what they said.

Nick Swardson (Travis): “I love ‘Point Break.’ It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. I was obsessed with that movie for a long time. Car chase films – I love all the car stuff in ‘Ronin,’ there’s some great car chase stuff in that and in …umm, ‘Fried Green Tomatoes.’”

Danny McBride (Dwayne): “‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ is probably my favorite bank heist film, and ‘Bullitt’ has my favorite car chases.”

Jesse Eisenberg (Nick the pizza guy): “Yeah, I also like ‘Dog Day Afternoon,’ and I watched some of the ‘Lethal Weapon’ movies because my character referenced it and I’d never seen it. It was interesting to see the way our characters think of themselves as being like Danny Glover and Mel Gibson when we run into the bank.”

Aziz Ansari (Chet): “Like Ruben said, we had a big folder of all the bank robbery movies. And the day we filmed the bank robbery I just kept watching the one from ‘Heat’ over and over again. I love that one and also ‘Point Break.’ And one movie I watched that I hadn’t seen before was ‘The Killing’ by Stanley Kubrick that had one of the coolest endings. And – let’s see – the car chases in ‘Steel Magnolias’ are really awesome.”

Ruben Fleischer: “My favorite car chase is from ‘The Blues Brothers,’ just because I think it’s be best version of a comedy car chase and the massive scale of the cars in it is incredible. And I love all the heist movies that the cast mentioned. But a movie that I’d never seen before that a producer introduced me to was called ‘Straight Time,’ that Dustin Hoffman stars in. That has a couple of really good heists, both a bank and a jewelry store. And I tried to get a line from that in our movie but they wouldn’t say it. It was like, ‘what, are you in love with me? Then stop looking at me,’ or something like that. I kept trying to feed that line to Aziz but he just wouldn’t say it.”

Ansari: “I was like, three people total are going hear that and think, ‘Oh, cool, that’s from ‘Straight Time.’”

- Dennis King

BY DENNIS KING

If sweltering summer heat, buzzing mosquitoes, noisy fireworks and charred hot dogs aren’t your idea of celebrating the Fourth of July, you can still be a Yankee Doodle Dandy in the comfort of your own La-Z-Boy.

Just pop a patriotic DVD into your player and a bag of popcorn into your microwave, sit back and enjoy your own Independence Day film festival. Here is a list of flag-waving movies to help you get the best bang out of your July 4th celebration.

“1776” – Imagine Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as Broadway chorus boys, singing and dancing their way to the founding of the nation. This stage musical adapted for the big screen in 1972 campily blends history and Broadway razz-ma-tazz and ensures a toe-tapping kickoff to your Independence Day festivities.

“Independence Day” – If your tastes run more to big-bang action and sci-fi adventure, check out the noisy fireworks generated by this 1996 summer blockbuster in which angry aliens obliterate Los Angeles, New York and – most spectacularly – aim their death rays at the White House. A determined band of human survivors fights back and lends rousing new meaning to the words Independence Day.

"Independence Day" fireworks

“Born on the Fourth of July” – With America currently at war on two fronts, Oliver Stone’s 1989 biography of Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic and his transformation into an anti-war and human rights activist seems all the more meaningful and urgent on this day.

“Yankee Doodle Dandy” – A little bit of good, old-fashioned flag waving can be good for the American soul, and no citizen was more jauntily patriotic than vaudevillian composer-singer-dancer George M. Cohan. James Cagney’s spirited, light-on-his-feet star turn in this uplifting biopic is sure to inspire patriotic stirrings in even the most surly holiday curmudgeons.

“Johnny Tremain” – History according to Walt Disney gives us this charming, family-friendly 1957 film about a colonial Boston silversmith’s apprentice who finds himself taken in by the Sons of Liberty, crossing paths with Paul Revere and Sam Adams, participating in the Boston Tea Party and taking up arms in the battles of Concord and Lexington. It’s still a great way to get kids excited about the Revolutionary War.

“The Patriot” – A more down and dirty portrait of Revolutionary War combat is presented in Mel Gibson’s 2000 portrait of South Carolina planter Benjamin Martin, who is reluctantly drawn into the Continental Army in the wake of British atrocities against his family and neighbors. Call it Gibson’s Yankee Doodle “Braveheart.” Freeeedom!

“The Music Man” – Small-town good cheer, flag waving and 76 trombones are reason enough to include this 1962 film version of the hit Broadway musical in any July 4th film festival. Everyone knows the story of con man Harold Hill and his scheme to bilk the repressed citizens of River City, Iowa, with a bogus boy’s marching band scheme. Only the healthy skepticism and love of Marian the Librarian saves Harold from his darker self and ultimately proves the essential goodness of the American heart. Pick a little, talk a little, cheep, cheep, cheep.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” – Unadulterated American idealism was the driving force behind Frank Capra’s 1939 classic about freshly appointed U.S. Sen. Jefferson Smith (James Stewart), leader of the Boy Rangers, who does noble battle with Congress’s corrupt, old-boy system of kickbacks and graft. In this age of partisan carping, gridlock politics and an angry citizenry that has lost faith in its politicians, this might seem like a cinematic relic from a naïve era. But perhaps we should revisit it at this time of year to remind us of the elegant beauty of our political system when it’s run by men and women of true principles. A dated, unrealistic ideal? As Jeff Smith said, “the only causes worth fighting for are the lost causes.”

Happy July 4th.

The release of the caustic thriller “Edge of Darkness” reminds us not only of what a potent screen actor Mel Gibson still can be but also of what a powerful jolt to the political zeitgeist the story delivered when it originally aired on British television in 1985.

The neatly Americanized film version, with Gibson returning to the screen after an eight year absence as taciturn Boston cop Thomas Craven looking for the truth behind his activist daughter’s apparent drive-by murder, is directed by Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”), who not coincidentally was also behind the camera for the six-part BBC TV miniseries.

That series starred the late everyman character actor Bob Peck as Craven and the brilliantly idiosyncratic Joe Don Baker as Jedburgh, a shadowy, golf-obsessed political fixer (played also brilliantly in the new film by the silky, sinister Ray Winstone).

Released during the archly conservative (some would argue reactionary) regime of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, at a time when England was awash with anxious conspiracy theories concerning nuclear warfare, renegade plutonium and government secrecy, “Edge of Darkness” clearly touched a sensitive nerve among its rapt British audience. It also was during this general period that edgy films such as “Defence of the Realm” and “The Whistle Blower” and TV series such as “A Very British Coup” and “Traffik” would tickle Britons’ paranoid fancies.

The original script by Troy Kennedy Martin cunningly tapped into that paranoia and juiced it up with some controversial scientific gobbledygook (notably the nuclear theories of radical environmentalist James Lovelock) and more than a little mythical and mystical subtext. Oddly, on that score, Martin’s original ending for the story reportedly involved Craven turning into a tree. But apparently more down-to-earth heads prevailed and a somewhat more conventional, though nonetheless chillingly symbolic, conclusion was employed.

Still, Campbell and screenwriters – American William Monahan and Australian Andrew Bovell – don’t shy away from a sentimental touch of mystical mumbo-jumbo at the end of their film version. But, for the most part, the movie necessarily pares away many of the twists, turns and political complexities of the original and offers a far more simplified, Hollywoodized take on the story.

So it’s unlikely that the new “Edge of Darkness” will have anywhere near the urgent cultural impact that the BBC version had in its time. The film is a serviceable political thriller, notable mainly for reintroducing Gibson to an audience made skeptical by his ultra-conservative religious and political views and his tawdry personal antics off screen.

“Edge of Darkness,” the BBC series, on the other hand, was widely hailed by critics of its time as “groundbreaking” television that “captured the spirit of its age.” One critic in the Daily Telegraph newspaper deemed it “a masterpiece” and observed it as “one of those rare television creations so rich in form and content that the spectator wishes there was some way of prolonging it indefinitely.”

“Edge of Darkness: The Complete BBC Series” is available on DVD.