Black Lagoon: Season 1 & 2 (Blu-ray + DVD)

Rokuro's mundane trip to South East Asia turns from pleasure cruise to festival of pain when modern-day pirates take him hostage. Revy, Dutch, and Benny are the ruthless crew of the Black Lagoon. For them, getting shot at while smuggling drugs, guns, and stolen goods is part of a typical day at work - and Rokuro is joining the team. The action-adventure series Black Lagoon (2006) shoots off more ammunition than a Clint Eastwood film festival. Rokura Okajima, a minor flunky in a major corporation, thinks his life is over when he's kidnapped by pirates, but it's only his business career that ends. He joins the pirates as "Rock," and the trio of Dutch, the understated leader; happy-go-lucky techie Benny; and trigger-happy, potty-mouthed Revy becomes a quartet. They're less pirates than soldiers of fortune, ready to do anything if the price is right. They pursue adventures involving treasure left on a sunken World War II U-boat, pornographers, drug- and arms-dealing nuns, kidnappers, and a terrorist plot to blow up US embassies. The second season of Black Lagoon ratchets up the action and the violence, as two sadistic assassins throw the underworld into an uproar: a pair of Romanian orphans who developed a taste for cruelty performing in snuff films. But most of the Second Barrage focuses on Rock serving as a translator when Russian crime boss Lady Balalaika intervenes in a yakuza gang war in Tokyo. Revy serves as his bodyguard, leaving Benny and Dutch behind. Rock falls for Yukio, a high school girl who succeeds her father as head of the Washimine crime syndicate. When Lady Balalaika comments, "We're all going to be knee-deep in blood before this ends," she isn't kidding. The Russian gangsters, who command more men, vehicles, and weapons than many national armies, quickly exterminate most of the Washimine gang. Amid the carnage, Yukio complains bitterly (and seriously), "Honor and justice are dead." Although bullets, blood, and four-letter words fly, it doesn't add up to much. The gun battles, car chases, knife fights, and explosions take up so much screen time, there's little left for character development or a coherent narrative. Extremely violent, misogynistic, and profane, Black Lagoon is not for squeamish or easily offended viewers. (Rated TV MA: graphic violence, violence against women, extensive profanity, grotesque imagery, alcohol and tobacco use, racial slurs, offensive ethnic stereotypes, Nazi imagery, offensive religious imagery, references to child pornography, suggested incest and torture) --Charles Solomon

(1. The Black Lagoon, 2. Mangrove Heaven, 3. Ring-Ding Ship Chase, 4. Die Rückkehr des Adlers, 5. Eagle Hunting and Hunting Eagle, 6. Moonlit Hunting Ground, 7. Calm Down, Two Men, 8. Rasta Blasta, 9. Maid to Kill, 10. The Unstoppable Chambermaid, 11. Lock'n Load Revolution, 12. Guerrillas in the Jungle, 13. The Vampire Twins Comen, 14. Bloodsport Fairytale, 15. Swan Song at Dawn, 16. Greenback Jane, 17. The Roanapur Freakshow Circus, 18. Mr. Benny's Good Fortune, 19. Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise, 20. The Succession, 21. Two Father's Little Soldier Girls, 22. The Dark Tower, 23. Snow White's Payback, 24. The Gunslingers)