The Hire Film Series.(Brief Article)

You probably have already watched the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And there isn't a copy of Snatch to be had at the local video store. Nothing new or exciting on the shelves? Not to worry. You can still catch the work of directors Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie. For your home-viewing (or office-viewing) pleasure, BMW has financed a series of short films you can access from the Internet.

BMW has funded a first-rate production. The series features award-winning directors, star-quality actors and BMW vehicles. The films trickled out over several weeks to build interest, but the series is complete now. Catch it before it's gone.

The first film is Ambush, directed by John Frankenheimer, whose direction of the 1998 film Ronin with its breathtaking chase scenes, apparently inspired The Hire Film Series. In Ambush, the bad guys pursue a 740i in a wonderful, in-your-face chase scene.

We found the films, each slightly more than six-minutes long, fun to watch, even if we did have to squint at times and

position ourselves a matter of inches from the screen. Digital quality is a little different from what you get on even the smallest of television screens. Not worse, mind you, just different. Audio quality varied from film to film. We found ourselves raising the volume to fully hear dialogue and lowering the volume during tire-squealing chase scenes.

Although each short film is a complete story, there's a connecting thread in the persona of the driver, or ``the hire,'' running throughout the series.

Clive Owens is the chauffeur, the leading man and supporting actor to each of the starring cars. We see many different qualities in him. First, his driving abilities: Tremendous. Under the direction of Lee, his car seems to dance. We witness his tender side, his powers of deductive reasoning. He's a Renaissance Man who is completely as one with his modern driving machines.