This week, we start in the Big Easy:

Streets of Blood

***

Rated R, 95 minutes

Coming Tuesday to DVD.

Six months after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, the city simmers. Gangs reassemble to fill the vacuum of illegal drugs. The outmanned police force works under unrealistic restrictions.

To bring justice to a rapidly out-of-control problem, a pair of good cops (Val Kilmer and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) try to walk a fine legal line. But they face several challenges, from an FBI investigation into police force corruption to another team of abusive cops who shame the department.

Poor Sharon Stone, looking bad and sounding even worse with her syrupy Cajun accent, plays the departmental shrink who must counsel detectives about their daily conflicts.

Director Charles Winkler supplies a steady dose of action and violence, visually supplemented by cinematographer Roy Wagner’s constantly moving cameras.

Universal Pictures

Vin Diesel returns as glowering Dom Toretto in Fast & Furious, the fourth installment in a series about illegal racing.

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Fast & Furious (**) When released in early April, this fourth The Fast and the Furious entry successfully relied on a tried formula to entice audiences. Now arriving in a variety of DVD formats, it is even more apparent that the action film simply rehashed the three previous Furious features. But that obviously is what fans wanted, and, as a result, watching this latest addition becomes a deja vu viewing experience.

To recapture past glories, the original four main actors reassemble, but actors matter little when the emphasis rests with action and special effects. Vin Diesel again plays taciturn, ever-whispering Dom Toretto, and Alex Rodriguez lookalike Paul Walker plays undercover agent Brian O’Conner. The two gratuitous females again appear in the forms of two of the most wooden actresses now working: Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez.

Here, Toretto and O’Conner fight together to capture a renowned drug smuggler who killed Toretto’s girlfriend. For director Justin Lin, the pursuit of the drug smuggler simply serves to create the film’s signature high-energy chase scenes. The film contains several charged sequences, mainly at the beginning and the end, with, respectively, an exciting highway heist of an oil tanker and a harrowing chase through border tunnels.

Rated PG-13, 107 minutes.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment continues to offer a pleasing variety of quality bonuses. The movie comes on two-disc Blu-ray, two-disc special-edition DVD and single-disc DVD.

Both the Blu-ray and the special edition contain a digital copy of the film, as well as commentary, a gag reel, a music video by Pitbull and nine featurettes on subjects such as the stunts, a driving lesson with Diesel, filming in Mexico, the reassembly of the cast and back story on the main characters.

Bart Got a Room (**1/2) This moderately amusing but undeniably thin comedy concerns not Bart but Danny (Steven Kaplan). A high school senior in Hollywood, Fla., Danny Stein faces the looming prospect of his upcoming prom.

He wants to ask out a hot sophomore, but she laughs at him. Other nominees fall aside, and Danny fears he will end up having to go with his lifelong best friend, Camille (Alia Shawkat). Of course, when he waits too long she makes her own plans, throwing poor Danny into panic mode.

Writer-director Brian Hecker’s slight premise gets stretched about as far as it can, but the good-natured farce stays entertaining for its brief run.

Good supporting work from William H. Macy and Cheryl Hines as Danny’s divorced parents helps bridge some of the gaps.

Rated PG-13, 79 minutes.

The DVD offers a pop-up notebook option, in which an icon appears sporadically on-screen to offer commentary of some sort.                  

An American Affair This tawdry tale gathered little notice and even less critical favor upon its release earlier this year.

The salacious story, which critic Stephen Holden called history-as-pornography, sees Gretchen Mol starring as Catherine, a Marilyn Monroe-inspired bimbo who just happens to be having an affair with President John F. Kennedy.

She draws the attention of her neighbor Adam (Cameron Bright), a precocious enough 13-year-old who likes to help her around her house — when he’s not spying, or peeping in, on her.

Adam eventually nabs Catherine’s diaries, which supplement his viewings of the president’s comings and goings. This hidden information puts him in the company of most of Washington, including CIA chief Lucian Carver (James Rebhorn).

William Olsson directed from Alex Metcalf’s screenplay, setting the action between the Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s assassination. Olsson mixes in plenty of archival TV and newsreel footage of the epoch, but it gets bogged down with itself while hinting at bizarre conspiracy theories. With Mark Pellegrino, Perrey Reeves and Noah Wyle.

Rated R, 93 minutes.

The DVD contains deleted scenes.

Universal Home Entertainment

On Tuesday, fans will be able to buy the complete series of the updated Battlestar Galactica on DVD and Blu-ray.

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Battlestar Galactica — Season 4.5 and Battlestar Galactica — The Complete Series This week’s top TV series sees the arrival of both the final season of the popular Emmy-winning program from Syfy (a.k.a. the Sci Fi Channel) and a supplement-filled packaged set of the complete series, both available on Blu-ray.

Season 4.5 includes: all the episodes from the second half of the fourth season, commentary, three unaired extended episodes, deleted scenes, interviews with producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, and about 10 “making of” featurettes. The featurettes cover such topics as the first three seasons, a look back at the series, composer Bear McCreary’s creation of the music, an interview with actor Richard Hatch, a look at how the series has evolved, and the series’ religious connotations.

The complete series comes on 20 Blu-ray discs or 25 standard DVD discs ($349.98 and $279.98, respectively).

Also coming to DVD this week: Knight Rider — Season 1, Fast & Furious 4-Movie Collection.

DR. BOO ALLEN is an award-winning film critic for the Denton Record-Chronicle.