Overview: Nine movies with A-list, Oscar winning actors who took on leading roles featuring characters who displayed the utmost courage.

DVD Verdict: In this incredible new 9 film collection we get: 'Freedomland,' 'No Good Deed,' 'In My Country,' 'BAADASSSSS!', 'The Last Days of Malcolm X,' 'The River Niger,' 'Out,' 'South Bronx Heroes,' and then 'The Mark of the Hawk.'

'Freedomland' (2006) was better than people give it credit for. I thought I was in for an average flick, but I was pleasantly surprised. And no, I don't mean that you couldn't figure out the gist of the plot, but it was well done, especially the scores.

The music really made the film. Julianne Moore delivered an accurate ex-drug-addicted, scattered person, and Samuel l. Jackson was right-on. I'd recommend this film to anyone who has an open mind.

'No Good Deed' (2002) is an interesting neo-noir/heist movie. Sam Jackson, a lonely and frustrated cop, starts off investigating a runaway daughter for his neighbor, only to stumble into a heist that is already underway. Taken hostage, he anxiously awaits his fate while trying to get some kind of angle on his captors.

The captors include a femme fatale, a violent thug, a cultured and domineering mastermind, and a racist elderly couple. They've also got an inside man that they're conning. This quirky group provides some black humor and tension. We're introduced to each character early, and the development is done rather well.

'In My Country' (2004) brings us Director John Boorman, who has taken on a weighty and incendiary subject, much like Terry George's recent take on genocide in 'Hotel Rwanda.' Although 'In My Country' (aka 'Country of My Skull') is set post-Apartheid, it still covers a hot topic: what do you do with the people that are to blame when a genocide occurs?

President Nelson Mandela formed a commission to get at the truth and in return for that information he was offering amnesty for those government officers that were only 'following orders'. An amazing precedent to say the least.

There have been many movies, usually bittersweet comedies, about movie-making with the director as the put-upon ringmaster of eccentrics, like Truffaut's 'Day for Night' or 'Living in Oblivion,' or bio-pics that show the director as eccentric visionary, like 'Ed Wood' or 'Matinee.'

But I think 'Baadasssss!' (2003) is one of very few to show the filmmaker as a driven artist, more comparable to the intense look at a ground-breaking creator like 'Pollock.'

Writer/director/producer Mario Van Peebles eerily reenacts how his father Melvin wrote/directed/produced the seminal 'Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song,' one of the first indie movies that also virtually created the potent blaxpoitation genre and guerrilla moviemaking.

In 'The Last Days of Malcolm X' (1981) aka 'Death of a Prophet', we get so admire Morgan Freeman ('Malcolm X') as a great actor with outstanding talents and a person who puts his very heart and soul into any role he tries to portray.

In this film, Morgan stars as a dynamic African-American activist who fought for racial equality during the rough and tough 1960s. Unfortunately, this film only portrays the final twenty-four hours of the civil rights leader's life.

Morgan Freeman made you feel the great power that this crusader had within his very soul and how he truly loved his calling to help the poverty stricken people and to bring his race into the light of the entire world.

'The River Niger' (1976) is very much a time capsule of the mid-1970s. There's a lot of good acting, some bad acting, and some pretty much middle of the road direction. The director, Krishna Shah, is probably the main thing which keeps this good film from being great. He just doesn't have a real vision for this sort of thing.

As you might expect from a stage adaptation, Joseph A. Walker's script is why this is worth watching. He writes excellent dialogue, characters, and best of all - poetry. Then again, there's a bit too much emphasis on the self-conscious black identity stuff, even for 1976.

Sadly, 'Out' (1982) is an experimental film that failed. If you want a good laugh, invite a friend to watch it. Tell them it is really intense and deep and watch them struggle with it as you sit back and pretend to know what it's all about! Frankly, this super-low budget mess is very good for a laugh between using it as a gag on a friend and just watching the insanity of it.

Danny Glover isn't on camera much, yet it's packaged as a Glover movie. The rest of the cast couldn't act their way out of a paper bag, except for Peter Coyote, which was the only other saving grace. To his credit, he acted well in this hideous film, but even an Oscar winning performance is not going to save it.

In 'South Bronx Heroes' (1985), real life siblings Mario and Melissa Van Peebles star as brother and sister about Mario coming home to the South Bronx after a stretch in a Mexican prison. Some of the neighborhood toughs find out in short order he can handle himself.

Luckily, 'South Bronx Heroes' is actually shot in the South Bronx as I most certainly recognized some of the locations. It's a sincere effort and young Mr. Ward is most appealing in his performance and they certainly sound like kids from New Yawk. Sad to say the production values are lacking and the cast could have used better direction.

Notable for being Eartha Kitt's screen debut, 'The Mark of the Hawk' (1957) is a political potboiler with heavy religious overtones. The setting is an unnamed country in pre-independence Africa, where Obam (Poitier) is a newly elected representative. Agitating for independence, he clashes with the colonial government, his firebrand younger brother Kanda (Clifton Macklin) and newly arrived missionary Mr. Craig (John McIntire).

Some of the speeches get tiresome and a ten minute flashback in the middle of the film slows the plot to a crawl, but the always watchable Poitier still manages to carry the film to it's improbable conclusion. Eartha is cast waaay against type as Obam's demure wife Renee, but then again we are treated to a rendition of her first gold record song ("This Man Is Mine") which is more than worth the wait. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.78:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.