There
were a few brief, if strange, years in the mid-1980s through the early
’90s, when heavy-lidded hoofer Gregory Hines was a bankable film actor,
appearing opposite stars like Billy Crystal in big screen fare like Running Scared and A Rage in Harlem.
His skill set was a unique one, rooted in a leonine charisma, and three
years after his unfortunate passing from liver cancer, two of his
better known movies from this period receive special edition DVD
treatments.

The first is 1985’s White Nights, the rather bloated story of
world-renowned dancer Nikolai Rodchenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), who,
eight years after defecting from Russia, finds himself back on his
homeland’s soil against his will when his plane is forced to make an
emergency landing. Concerned for their international image and wanting
to coax him into returning of his own volition, Soviet leadership sends
Nikolai to Siberia with American ex-pat Raymond Greenwood (Gregory
Hines), a talented tap dancer who’s requested Russian citizenship
because he’s tired of racism at home. Despite clashing ideologies, the
two men find that their love of dance overcomes principled differences,
even as they lean on one another in reverse fashion. Twyla Tharp’s
choreography and the two stars’ innate talent makes sequences set to
Lionel Richie’s “Say You Say Me” and Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin’s
“Separate Lives” compelling, but the political passages are typically
sludgy and inert.

1989’s Tap is the more interesting of the two movies. It
finds Hines cast as Max Washington, a recently furloughed criminal who
makes moves on an old girlfriend (Suzanne Douglas) and gets involved in
a jewel heist with a local crime boss (Terrence McNally) when the lure
of one big “last payday” becomes too tempting. The story, written and
directed by Nick Castle, is pure boilerplate, but it’s energetically
conveyed, nicely designed and allows Hines to toe-tap with Sammy Davis,
Jr., whose character Little Mo wants to cast Washington in a new revue.
Overall, it’s just a lot more affable and engaging than White Nights, which has a Reagan-era, dual-superpower gravity and somberness that’s out of step with modern circumstances.

Housed in regular Amray cases, Tap and White Nights
are each presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. The latter features
an English language Dolby digital 5.1 track, Portuguese audio track and
optional subtitles in French, Korean, Spanish and the two
aforementioned languages; Tap, meanwhile, features Dolby
surround tracks in English and French, as well as subtitles in those
tongues. Director’s commentary tracks anchor each release, and White Nights includes a nice little making-of featurette. Tap
doesn’t pull a hamstring, though, as four new mini-documentaries
include interviews with Castle, producer Fan Saperstein, Tony Award
nominee Savion Glover and many of the film’s dancers, as well as
beautiful vintage footage of Davis and Hines. C- (White Nights), B (Tap); B (Discs)