Raging Sharks (2005) An out-of-date undersea research vessel finds itself under attack by sharks after a pod drops into the sea from space. The sharks, under the influence of a mysterious orange stuff, chew through the supply cables and the only way to turn on the emergency air suppy is to send someone outside. The divers don't want to go, understandably.
Mike, the boss of the lab, is stuck on a submarine with a bean-counter from the MOA, who wants to shut him down. The habitat, with his wife, Linda, in charge, starts shooting sparks everywhere. The sub fires off a torpedo to kill the sharks and Mike finds the source of the orange stuff.
Not impressed with Linda's leadership, Harvey strolls off with the minisub, the only way of getting to the big sub, but the sharks get him. The orange stuff turns out to be cold fusion fuel from outer space and the bean-counter turns out to be a black-ops psycho.
His agency has been looking for the capsule for 5 years, and Mike, Linda and their crew have to be wiped out to preserve the secret. The big sub is ordered out of the area. Mike & Linda swim for it, the psycho is taken out and Mike sees aliens retrieving the capsule and a flying saucer. But does anyone believe him afterwards? Pur-lease!
Rambo (2008) is a Stallone vehicle; our hero versus the Burmese bastards, one of whom was exterminating all sorts of people, wearing shades and smoking ciggies. Rambo was catching snakes down-river from Burma when he was approached by a gang of American missionaries from Colorado. He told them to eff-off when they tried to hire his boat for a trip to Burma, but did it for free anyway.
They ran into rapist pirates, so Rambo took them out. The gang arrived in Burma in nice time for one of the bad guy's massacres. Rambo joined a gang of weirdo mercenaries and they rescued the missionaries and got themselves chased through the jungle.
Some of the mercenaries were caught and tortured by the Burmese bastards. Rambo got hold of a 50-cal machine gun and started wiping bad guys from the face of the Earth. Then he more or less chopped the head bastard bad guy in half before strolling off into the sunset.
Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985) Rambo, in the pen breaking rocks, is extracted by his colonel to go on a recon mission, looking for PoWs in Vietnam. His mission is to take photographs only. The extraction, if required, will be performed by a Delta force. Rambo gets hung up when he tries to parachute to his target. A bunch of pirates take him and his female guide down river to the prison camp. It looks empty but it has guards. And there are prisoners!
Rambo retrieves a prisoner and kills some guards. The pirates sell him out but they are written off. Murdoch, back at base, calls off Rambo's extraction and Rambo is captured. Murdoch tells the colonel that Congress doesn't want to know about PoWs and Rambo was supposed to prove that there were none at the camp.
Some Russians arrive to give Rambo some electrical torture after he was dipped in a leech-filled swamp by the Vietnamese. They want Rambo to radio his base and he takes the opportunity to tell Murdoch he's coming to get him. Then he breaks out of the camp with his guide's help. The gooks take out the guide, saving Rambo the bother of taking her to the USA.
Murdoch has the colonel arrested. Rambo takes out the Russians one by one, and he has acquired a bow and explosive arrows from somewhere. A vast army chases him through the jungle; until he blows up most of the bad guys. Then he takes over a Russian chopper, shoots up the prison camp and rescues the prisoners.
A bigger and better chopper has a go at him, but it's no match for Rambo the pilot. Rambo brings the PoWs to safety then goes after Murdoch with an M-60 machine gun; but he doesn't kill him. He just tells Murdoch to find other PoWs, or else!
Rambo III (1988) Our hero is a back-street brawler in Bangkok. Col. Trautman tracks him down to tell him the Russians have killed 2 million people in Afghanistan and he wants to check out a particularly brutal Russkie. Rambo won't go with him. But the old fool gets himself ambushed and Rambo has to save his ass. The wily Pathan who takes him across the border from Pakistan isn't impressed by Rambo.
Rambo joins in a game of Drag the Dead Sheep. The Russkie colonel drops in to shoot up the game and the Pathans' village. A pushy kid nearly gets Rambo killed. The kid keeps making a nuisance of himself as Rambo is trying to blow up the Russian camp. He extracts his colonel whilst the Russians are Pathan hunting.
Rambo borrows and crashes the Russkie's personal copter. The Russians show off their tanks. The Pathans charge up on their hosses and, incredibly, get the better of the battle. The Russkie colonel crashes his new copter into a tank which Rambo has blagged. Incredibly, our hero ain't kilt. Fix!
Ransom (1996, Mel Gibson) The son of a wealthy businessman is grabbed at an open-air science fair in Central Park. Dad runs right past the kidnappers' van. The BGs want $2M for the kid and no police or FBI. Call the Feds, Mom insists. The kidnappers are a sorry bunch of chancers. Tom admits setting up a troublesome union guy and getting his ass slung in gaol when the Feds arrive; not the union guy.
The HBG is the CSI:NY boss, Mac the Robot. He certainly looks the part of a dirty cop. When the BGs phone Tom, they crash the FBI tracking computer. The Feds lose Tom when he taks the cash to the drop. The BGs try to swindle Tom; the guy sent to collect the cash doesn't know where the kid is. He's shot by the Feds when he starts shooting at a police helicopter.
Back home, Tom starts a fight with the head Fed. The news of the kidnapping is leaked. The Feds make the brother of the dead guy; another kidnapper; a target. Tom is sure that paying the kidnappers will get the kid killed so he offers a $2M bounty on the HBG's head. Which will be withdrawn when the kid is returned.
Tom's wife isn't happy. The HBG delivers a bloodstained T-shirt. Tom adds another $2M to the rewards. The HBG lets Tom hear a gunshot on the phone. He almost kills himself. The HBG starts shooting his accomplices, planning to become the hero of the hour. One of them plugs him a bit before she's shot. But there's another 20 minutes to go . . .
The cop drops in on the family to collect a reward from Tom. The kid spots that he's a BG. He pulls a gun on Tom who insists on going to the bank to make the cash transfer to an account in Mexico. On the way there, Tom tips off the Feds. At the end, Tom is left holding a gun on the HBG, who also has a gun, with cops and Feds screaming at both of them. Luckily, the Feds 'n' cops blast the right person.
Rat Race (2001) A bunch of misfits, including a Mr. Bean character, win special tokens in a Las Vegas casino/hotel's slot machines and get a chance to race the others for a $2 million prize. The first to locker 001 in Silver City railway station wins. But what the competitors don't know is that there's a bunch of rich guys behind the scenes betting on them.
The over-the-top owner of the hotel (John Cleese) is offering the race as 'The Gambling Experience of a Lifetime' with competitors who can lie, cheat and steal. The two good old boys wreck the radar of the local airport, so everyone (apart from one guy) has to find ground transport. No sign of Dastardly & Muttley in this Whacky Race, but they were there in spirit. The trips to Silver City included a stop-off at the (Klaus) Barbie Museum and the antics of a crazy helicopter pilot, who finds her boyfriend in his pool with another woman.
Everyone gets to Silver City but the locker is empty. The hotel owner's aide and a hooker stroll off with the case; until a cow lands in their car. And there is a really tragic outcome, as far as anyone getting their hands on the $2 million was concerned.
Raw Deal (1986) The Feds guarding a witness are taken out and Sheriff Mark Kaminski (Arnold Schwarzenberger) is stuck in the wilds, having been required to quit the FBI for brutality, and his boozy wife wants to go back to New York. His old pal Harry of the Bureau, whose son was killed by the Petrovita crime family, recruits Kaminsi to infiltrate them. There's a leak, so Harry is paying for the off-the-books operation.
Kaminsky blows up an oil depot to stage his own death and heads for Chicago. He starts a riot at a bent gambling operation and goes after one of Petrovita's rivals. The cops grab a huge pile of cash & heroin, and Petrovita decides he wants it back.
Kaminski is hired and he takes a run at a gangsters' moll, whom his rival, Max, also fancies. He tells Petrovita how to get his dope & cash back. The robbery is a big success and the rival is taken out. Max checks out 'Joey' in Miami and a cop who busted him doesn't recognize a picture of the Joey in Chicago.
Petrovita decides to have Harry whacked. Kaminski finds he's in on the job after the shooting starts. So he gets his guns and shoots up the guys guarding the stash of dope & cash. Then he goes after Petrovita & the leak. After a monster shoot-out, he sends the moll on her way with $250K and forces the shot-up wreck of Harry to stop feeling sorry for himself.
The Recruit (2003) James, a programming whizz, is approached by CIA recruiter Walter Burke. He is led to believe that his father, who died in a plane crash in Peru in 1990, was a CIA agent and he goes to the Farm at Langley; the CIA's boot camp. He learns tradecraft and tries to get close to Leila, but he quits after he breaks during an interrogation session with fake Russians.
Burke hauls him out of drunken depression and makes him a NOC, the highest form of CIA undercover agent. He gives him the job of spying on Leila. Burk says she's a sleeper agent, who is smuggling the ICE 9 program out of CIA HQ. James has to find out who she's working for. Leila realizes James is spying on her.
James sees Leila pass something to a contact, he chases the guy and ends up killing Zach, who was at the Farm. He makes Leila crash her car. She tells him she's stealing the ICE 9 program as a security check and Zach was another NOC. James tells her to run and confronts Burk.
Burke tells him his gun contains blanks, Zach isn't dead (James shoots out a window of his car to make a liar out of Burke) and James' dad wasn't a CIA agent. Burke admits he's stealing the ICE 9 program for $3 million because he feels unappreciated. The cavalry arrives, but they're after James. But when Burke shoots his mouth off, he becomes the target.
Red (2010, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Helen Mirren) Frank Moses keeps ringing Sarah about his pension because he's a lonely old CIA agent. It's Xmas and 3 masked men fail to take him out. Then 3 more shoot his house to bitz and end up dead, too. Moses heads to Kansas City to grab Sarah, thinking she will be a target, too, because someone has to have bugged his phone.
He and Sarah evade a killer and come across a trail of dead agents. Moses visits his old mate Joe, who's 80. He's done in. The killer is let into the CIA vault of records that don't exist and learns that Moses was the best black ops guy of all time, but he's now Retired and Extremely Dangerous. Moses recruits crazy Martin and his pink pig to the gang. A massacre in Guatemala in 1981 is the key. Everyone who was there is either dead or a target
Martin does the gun vs RPG routine they did on Mythbusters in a container depot. Frank goes boozing with Ivan, a Russian former enemy, to get help entering the CIA vault at Langley. He has a brawl with Cooper, the killer, there, and sets the place on fire. Surprise! Joe is still alive. A retired lady agent is added to the team (H. Mirren); Ivan fancies her.
It turns out that the Vice President is running for President and he's trying to clean up his past, which includes killing everyone who knows about the massacre in Guatemala. Moses phones Cooper from Cooper's home to threaten his family and announce that he (Moses) is going to kill the VP. He leaves the Guatemala file behind so that Cooper knows what the VP is trying to cover up.
The VP's announcement party is shot to bitz and blown up a bit. The Secret Service make frantic efforts to get the VP to safety and deliver him to a limo driven by Moses. Alex, the real head bad guy, into whose pocket the VP has fallen, tries to do some bossing around. But he ends up sorted out.
Red 2 (2013) Frank and Sarah are playing house, then Marvin shows up. His car blows up and Frank stabs the body in the hand at the funeral, but Marve ain't dead. The government grabs Frank to ask about Project Nightshade. A cartoon assassin shoots his way into the building. Frank causes major destruction and escapes with Marvin's help.
Victoria gets a contract to kill Frank. Off to Paris on a Frog hunt; Sarah cracks him; and to meet Frank's Russian Kryptonite lady, who fails to get the Frog's key from him thanks to Marvin. The cops grab the Russian lady, to Sarah's delight. The gang breaks into a looney bin to extract the nutter who planted a nuke in Moscow in the 1980s. Then they are smuggled into Russia.
A mad Oriental is hurled into the mix. Victoria is removed by her own side? No, she's too smart for them. Frank and Co. find the nuke in the Kremlin. Victoria tells Frank that the looney wants to set off the nuke. The Russian lady is shot. Frank and the others end up in front of a firing squad; which Victoria blasts.
The looney outwits the cartoon killer. Frank gets the Oriental on his side to do the right thing. Victoria starts a riot while Marvin tries to make the bomb safe. Fail! The gang has to ditch the active bomb. The looney thinks he's outwitted everyone; then he realizes the bomb is on the plane he's stolen.
Red Dawn (remake) (2012) North Korea is going to take over the world if the Russians don't get there first. No sooner is a school football match over than the lights to out. The sky is full of planes and parachutes the next day; the Koreans have arrived. Cue some crazy driving by a bunch of kids to get to their cabin in the woods. A quisling steals all their food and rats them out to the commies.
The sons of the police sergeant see him murdered by the local boss, Captain Cho. The elder son, an ex-soldier, decides to fight a guerilla war for his home. Captain Cho is nearly blown up. Some collaborators are. There are Russian spets nats guys among the Koreans; experts in counter insurgency.
The younger brother rescues his girlfriend after an operation to kill Cho goes pear-shaped. Cho launches an offensive. 3 Marines come to the Wolverines for help in stealing Cho's unhackable communications box. Cho gets dead in the raid. Not many of the Wolverines survive. So they recruit more members to continue the fight.
Red Faction: Origins (2011) On Mars, there's the Red Faction, who have fallen out with the Marauders, their former allies, and a neutral zone between them. A hero-freedom-fighter is locked up for public drunkenness. His son goes on a salvage mission, along with a flaky Earth-born tech-lady. Jake has a run-in with some of the Whites, who killed his mother, and meets his sister, Lyra, whom he thought was dead.
Jake heads for Asimov in search of the killer Whites along with a couple of Marauders he met along the way. He ditched the boffin lady but she catches up with him at Asimov. Jake meets his sister again at the White base. Lyra demands to know why she was told her brother was dead; and gets more lies.
The White were becoming extinct, so they stole children and killed their parents. Jake tells Lyra the truth but she can't handle it. The boffin is wounded during an escape. The Whites launch their freakin' big ship to attack the Reds, hoping to put the blame on the Marauders. Lyra remembers her mom being killed.
The Reds don't want to hear from Jake, so he goes back to the White base and he and his sister kill the boss, who killed their mom. Dad meets his daughter again and becomes a hero again by taking out the freakin' big ship. Then Jake proposes a One-Mars defence force of Reds and Marauders.
Red Heat (1988) stars Arnold Schwarzenberger as a tough Russian cop, who's after Viktor, a cop-killing, scumbag Georgian drug dealer. Arnie follows his prey to Chicago, where he teams up with bad-boy cop James Belushi. They rampage around, f-ing and blinding in all directions, kicking lumps out of the system and getting into all sorts of shoot-outs and other bother. Viktor needs the key to a locker, which he recovers from the Russkie in a hail of bodies, to pull off a drug deal. And we get a grand bus chase to finish things off with a game of 'Chicken' at the railroad yard.
Red Rock West (1992) Jobless Mike with a bad leg doesn't get a job in the wilds of Wyoming but he ends up in Red Rock where bar owner Wayne sees his Texas licence plate and mistakes him for Lyle from Dallas, who's supposed to kill Mrs. Wayne. Mike warns Suzanne, who offers him double to take out Wayne. He takes her money then writes a letter about Wayne to the sheriff and leaves town.
Driving in rain, he hits a guy standing in the road and takes him to hospital. The guy is Suzanne's boyfriend, he's been shot and the cops are eager to do Mike for the shooting. Wayne turns up; he's the sheriff! He takes Mike out into the wilds, makes a bog of shooting him and Mike gets a lift from Lyle who turns out to be a fellow Vietnam Vet.
Mike has to escape from Lyle & Wayne. He tells Suzanne her boyfriend's been shot (assuming Wayne did it) and she needs to get out of town. Mike left all his cash in his car so Suz decides to burgle Wayne's office, where there is $500K in the safe; only Wayne has moved it. Wayne arrives at the office, followed by his deputies, who want to arrest him.
Wayne turns out to be an embezzler who got away with $1.9M and he and Suz are top of the FBI's most wanted list. The cops also have Mike's letter accusing Wayne of plotting to kill his wife. Lyle shows up and makes Mike help him bust Wayne out of gaol. The cash is buried in a cemetery, and everyone starts shooting everyone else when it's dug up.
Suz turns out to be as bad as her old man, and she shot her boyfriend. She and Mike get on a train with the cash, destination Mexico. But Suz tries to shoot Mike with an empty gun, so he dumps the cash off the train and dumps her for the cops. But he finds a bundle of notes as the train speeds into the distance.
Red Sonja (1985) stars Arnold Schwarzenberger in a Conan the Barbarian role. A wimpy priestess tries to destroy The Talisman, which only women can touch, before it becomes too powerful. The Black Queen has other ideas. The attacks and grabs the Talisman. Only Sonja's sister gets away. She meets Arnie who fetches Sonja, who has just graduated from sword school, to watch her croak.
If the Talisman isn't destroyed in 13 days, that's it for the planet. Sonja hooks up with a horrible child prince and his manservant as well as Arnie. The Black Queen is using the Talisman to conquer the world, keeping it in a chamber containing about a million candles, which increase its power. Sonja & Co. tackle a metal water monster, and Arnie turns out to be the High Lord, whose job it is to destroy the Talisman.
Lots of scrapping in the Black Queen's collapsing stronghold. The Black Queen and the Talisman both plunge into the lava lake beneath the stronghold, which goes up like a volcano. The boy prince gets his realm back. And Sonja gets Arnie.
Red Water (2003) A shark swims up a Louisiana river and starts eating people, so the locals put a $50,000 bounty on it. Meanwhile, John, a retired oil driller, is being hassled by the bank over the loan for his charter boat, so he has to take an offer from Kelly, his ex-wife, to explore a vast deposit of natural gas in a conservation area, and do it sensitively.
The oil rig just happens to be parked where the shark arrives; and also a gang of criminals, who are looking for $3 million in drug money, which Jerry had to dump in the river. Kelly saves Brett from drowning when Jerry tries to kill him. Then the demented gangsta in Brett's party starts shooting people.
The drilling crew are taken prisoner then the oil rig blows up. The shark gets the guy closing a valve on the river bed and nearly gets John. The prisoners are sent out to do a night dive and the shark bites into John's air tank. The box that Jerry dumped turns up. Brett is fed to the shark by the other criminals.
John's boat is blown up and everyone ends up in the water. The shark chews the box of money open then chomps the gangsta. John and his Cajun crewman drill the shark to death. Then the sheriff rolls up with the news that the bounty on the shark is now $100,000, which might just pay off John's loan.
Reign of the Gargoyles (2007) Those rotten Narzis turn stone statues into live gargoyles with some poor sod's blood. A USAF squadron is attacked by them and wiped out. A few reach the ground in one piece and hook up with some British chaps. A local French woman tells them that the creatures are gargoyles. A bunch of Pagans made them but the Spear of Destiny was used in the past by French Catholic knights to turn them back to stone.
So the chaps have to dig up the Spear to do it all over again. Which involves fighting gargoyles and nasty Narzis along the way. Natch, they write off lots of little brutes, and our heroes nick a Narzi plane to crash into the major gargoyle and stick it with the spear.
The Relic (1996) might be the most brilliant film ever made, but most of it is shot in the bowels of a Chicago museum with the lights off and you can't see a bleedin' thing most of the time. Apparently, a researcher for the museum eats some leaves in South America and turns into a chimera, which goes on the rampage in the museum, ripping people's heads off. Definitely a candidate for the worst production job ever, as far as the lighting goes.
Remote Control (1998) is a sciffy comedy, which has cars from the Fifties running around in the Video Age. People who watch a video called Remote Control, which has a Fifties-style alien invasion plot, suddenly see themselves on the TV screen and turn violent. Our young heroes, who work in a video rental store, find themselves hunted as cop-killers while trying to track down the plant which is making the deadly videos.
There are a lot of Japanese bad guys running around, and plenty of death and mayhem. In the end, the surviving hero is sure that he has destroyed the production plant and all of the videos, and made Earth safe. But one of the Japs still have one . . .
Renegades (1989) A big stand-off between cops and crooks in a street at night. An undercover cop strolled out of a bar and defused the BGs; and got a night in a cell for his pains. McHenry was involved in a diamond robbery, which included gratuitous murder. The remains of the gang ended up in a Red Indian museum and stole a sacred Lakota lance.
McHenry was also looking for a dirty cop. One of the Injuns went after the lance. McHenry was shot and dumped, so the Injun took him to a medicine man instead of a hospital. McHenry tried to ditch the Indian because he wanted the BG alive and the Injun wanted to kill him for killing his brother.
The cop attached himself to a BG lady; and got her killed. He was given 24 hours to get hold of the diamonds after the BG did some more killing; from the dirty cop lieutenant for whom his dad went to gaol as a dirty cop. Big shoot-out at a ranch. The dirty cop was filled fulla lead by the BG and the cop gave the spear back to the BG; in his chest.
Repo Man is Alex Cox's story of a kid with attitude, who get drawn into the vehicle repossession business, a dying man who's driving around in a car containing a lethal, radioactive something in the boot [possibly dead aliens?], sinister Government agents and a guy who refuses to learn how to drive a car but who can fly the (at the end) green-glowing vehicle with something radioactive in the boot.
Replicant (2001) Jake, a cop, just survives an encounter with a serial killer called The Torch (Jean Claude Van Damme) on his last day in the job. The National Security Force recruits him to continue the hunt for the SK. The NSF has made a telepathic clone of the guy (also the Muscles from Brussels) as part of a programme to track down terrorists using Replicants of them.
Jake takes the clone to the scene of the first Torch murder to trigger memories. Jake finds the SK's lair and the clone saves him from being blown up in it. The SK and the clone see each other and the clone chases the SK, who beats him up in a bar and kills most of the occupants.
A hooker picks up the clone and he takes out her pimp posse before Jake collects him. The SK kills again at an hotel; the clone ditches Jake there. The SK, Luke, visits his mom in her secure hospital; she killed his father, locked him up and set fire to the house. Luke survived only because it rained.
Mom croaks. Luke beats the clone up in the mortuary. The clone refuses to kill Jake when he arrives. After causing mayhem, Luke splits in an ambulance but Jake makes him crash. The clone saves Jake from being incinerated and Jake gets to kill Luke. Is the replicant killed in an almighty propane explosion? No way, and he ends up with the hooker.
The Reptile (1966, Hammer) A nosy bloke is horribly done to death and body-dumped. Harry (his brother) and his new wife take over the cottage of the late Charles Spalding, and find the place has been wrecked. The locals all walk out of the pub when a stranger walks in! Dr. Franklin feels free to search the cottage whenever he likes and Mad Peter attacks Harry.
Mad Peter doesn't last long. The landlord of the pub says the locals call it The Black Death. Anna Franklin drops in at the cottage with flowers and a dinner invitation. Her father has been to India, where he was horrified. He's a control freak with his daughter but under the thumb of a sinister Indian servant.
When his daughter plays her sitar, Franklin goes crazy and wrecks it. The landlord digs up Mad Peter and finds bite marks on his neck. Same with Charles Spalding. Looks like a king cobra bite, Harry thinks. Anna puts a note through his door asking for help. Harry meets the monster at her home, and he's bitten.
The sinister servant orders Franklin to find out if Harry is still alive. The landlord gives him the bum's rush from the cottage. Franklin sees off the Indian and tells all to Valerie Spalding. Anna, in her monster form, bites her father. Valerie escapes from the monster as the Franklin house burns down.
Reptilian (2001) is a thoroughly silly B-Movie. A mad scientist digs up a 225 million year old fossil 50 times the size of T. Rex, invading aliens re-animate the monster and start beaming it around the planet and encouraging it to cause havoc. The US air force tries to zap the monster with missiles and destroys the city that the monster is in instead. A mad security agent tries to get control of the monster. Another monster turns up for a battle with the first one and loses. So the aliens zap off and Monster #1 is awarded its own island.
Reservoir Dogs (1992) is a load of fukin' crap. That's all. Nothing more need be said. Except that it's two hours of your life which you'll never get back.
Resident Evil (2002) The Umbrella Corporation is huge in the 21st Century. Some blue stuff was released in an underground laboratory and the computer control system went into lockdown and people were trapped in lifts, rooms flooded by sprinklers and rooms filled with gas.
A woman woke in a shower in a vast, empty country house. Armed soldier crashed in on Alice and a cop, who just appeared from nowhere. They were taken for a ride on an underground train, picking up another guy with amnesia on the way. The head of the troops announced that the civilians were security guards for Raccoon City and an underground research facility called the Hive. They'd been exposed to nerve gas, which had caused temporary amnesia.
The team entered the lab complex with the objective of shutting down the Red Queen, the control system. Then they found that the corpses weren't dead and the Queen's defence system hacked most of the troops to bits. The Red Queen was shut down after telling the intruders that they were all going to die. A survivor turned out to be a crazed, flesh-eating zombie! Another soldier was killed; eaten!
One of the security guards had tried to steal the virus and its antidote. Alice had been working with the cop's sister to expose what Umbrella was doing. They had an hour to get out before the Hive was sealed off forever. The virus reanimated dead bodies with only limited intelligence and a desire to feed on living tissue. The team escaped through service tunnels, pursued and whittled down by zombies.
The Red Queen is zapped, the team gets to the train and a female soldier gets the anti-virus, which doesn't work. Then a mutant monster attack the train. Only Alice and Max, the cop, escape from the Hive and they fall right into the hands of the Umbrella Corp. Alice wakes up in a medical centre and staggers out into the wreck of Raccoon City, where "The Dead Walk" according to a newspaper headline.
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2002) The Umbrella Corporation re-opens the Hive and the T-virus escapes into Racoon City. The zombies start mass murder and the city is placed under quarantine. Alice is revived and finds herself in the middle of the zombie plague. UC tries to evacuate key personnel but a Dr. Ashford refuses to go when Angela, his daughter, is stranded in the hot zone.
A reporter and a couple of cops; one stroppy female, one black male and bitten by a zombie; hole up in a church where they are stalked by mutant monsters. Alice turns up to zap the monsters. The gang nips through a churchyard, where zombies erupt from the ground to attack them! UC activates the Nemesis programme when the T-virus reaches a peak; a huge killer creature with a big gun.
Dr. Ashford offers Alice & Co. a way out of the city if they save Angela. The city is due to be nuked to destroy the infection. Alice battles the Nemesis creature. The black cop turns into a zombie and is shot but the ladies acquire a black guy called L.J. to keep up their numbers. Dr. Ashford also recruits some Special Forces guys.
The reporter is eaten by zombies. The lady cop finds Angela. Zombie dogs attack. Angela has the T-virus but her dad has created an antidote for her. UC catches up with Dr. Ashford as Alice & Co. are heading to hijack a helicopter. Alice records her story on the journalist's camera. The gang are captured at the helicopter and Alice gets to fight the Nemesis monster, which is Max, the cop from the previous film. Like Alice, UC had him genetically monstered.
Alice refuses to kill him. Max takes out the UC goons and a couple of choppers. Everyone else escapes as the head of UC is being eaten by zombies. The nuke takes out the city. Only Alice is found at the crashed chopper. Her film is leaked to the media but UC manages a successful cover-up. Alice is revived in a UC lab and then allowed to escape as part of the next UC research programme.
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) Alice wakes up in a shower and doesn't know where she is. She's in a really weird building. A gadget shoots her. Guys in biological isolation garments sample her blood and dump her with a whole gang of other Alice clones at a compound surrounded by zombies in the middle of the desert. Earth is dying and the T-virus is wiping out all humans. The few survivors keep on the move.
Alice runs into a pack of human gargoyles but sees them off. At the desert compound science dept., Dr. Isaacs, the former head of Project Alice, thinks he can reverse the T-virus, stop the zombies being compelled to eat human flesh, which they don't need, and turn them into docile workers. But his serum doesn't work.
A member of a big convoy is bitten by a zombie. Dr. Isaacs activates clone 87 and he's told that the real thing is nearby; being tracked via her psyonic abilities. The convoy is attacked by zombie crows but Alice sees them off with her super powers. Some of the convoyers want to head for Alaska. The convoy heads for Vegas to resupply.
Dr. Isaacs is told not to grab the Alice in the desert but he edits a "no" order into a "go" order. Vegas is a huge sandpit, full of zombies, which need slaying. Will any humans be left? Isaacs is bitten by a zombie while trying to grab Alice, and turns into a mutant monster. But he's diced to death. Then Alice goes after the global Umbrella organization with the help of hundreds of Alice clones.
Retroactive (1997) is a limited version of Groundhog Day or the TV series Seven Days. A scientist working at a soon to be closed US military outpost invents a device for sending people back a short period in time – e.g. 20 minutes. A woman who has failed as a hostage negotiator finds herself getting a lift from James Belushi – playing a fast-talking Texan psychopath – and sees lots of people get killed.
She ends up at the outpost, gets sent back in time 20 minutes knowing what is going to happen – but she screws things up even worse. So she goes back and back in time until she gets a satisfactory conclusion on her final trip after the device has blown up in spectacular style. The film has a very slow start and the serious action doesn't start until about 45 minutes in.
Return of the Jedi (1983) Your mission is to rescue Han Solo, who's still frozen in carbonite and hung up on Jabba the Hutt's wall. So begins part VI of the Lucas epic but, just to confuse everyone, the third film made. Princess Leia gets the job and makes a bog of it. Enter Luke Skywalker to sort everyone out, including Monsters in the Pit Version 1 & 2. Then we are off to do battle with the Death Star Mark II, which looked half built but the look is deceiving. Entertaining chases through the forest on hoverbikes. Blokes in white plastic armour versus little furry aliens with bows and arrows. And more flying around inside a Death Star after the emperor and Darth Invader have been written off.
Return of the Living Dead II How do you know if a film's a comedy? When people who don't know anything about it come in part way through and start laughing. That's just what happens with this film. The plot, if anyone cares, is that the US Army loses some drums of nasty stuff, some kids open one and the contents drift into a cemetery and turn all the inmates into brain-eating zombies. The special effects are a hoot and vast numbers of the dead are zapped using the usual electrocution method at the end. Great fun.
The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) The failing gangster Douvier is told that New York will be impressed if he gets rid of Inspector Clouseau, who is 'too dangerous'. Clouseau collects a new disguise and survives the delivery of a bomb. Then he sets fire to his boss's office. Mr. Chong from Hong Kong arrives to kill him but Clouseau mistakes him for Cato.
Clouseau drives to an obvious trap but he is hijacked by a transvestite on the way. The transvestite is demolished and Clouseau, in the transvestite's female clothes, is taken to the asylum where Chief Inspector Dreyfus has made a miraculous recovery after hearing that Clouseau is dead. Dreyfus gets to investigate the murder.
Clouseau escapes from the looney bin and finds that Cato has turned his apartment into a Chinese brothel. Clouseau decides to let everyone think he's dead. Dreyfus gets to deliver the eulogy at the funeral.
Douvier dumps Simone, his secretary, and she ends up with Clouseau. She tells him that Douvier was responsible for 'killing' Clouseau. Assassins arrive to kill Simone and she and Clouseau end up in Dreyfus's flat while escaping. Dreyfus keeps seeing Clouseau and wondering if he is mad.
Everyone heads for Hong Kong, where a French Connection heroin deal is about to happen. Clouseau dresses up as the Godfather for a meeting with the Americans. Everyone ends up at the Lee Kee shipyard. Cato manages to drive into the harbour. Twice. Everyone has fun in a firework warehouse, which catches fire. The bad guys are busted and Clouseau gets another medal.
Revenge of the Yeti (2011, Yancy Butler) is a creature feature, which looks like it was assembled after an explosion in the cutting room and unlabelled bits of film were stuck together anyhow. In the Arctic, the Witchblade lady and her party do a mayday after being attacked by unknown, bulletproof animals. There's an old ship stuck in the ice. Elsewhere, 2 thieves in a stand-off in a museum with armed guards get a phone call. Their zillionaire boss wants them to put their loot back because he has another job for them.
A pick-up plane, sent by the zillionaire's rival, is crashed in the Canadian Arctic by yetis. The human survivors head for a deserted Canadian outpost. The thieves, and a bunch of others, are told that HMS Victoria has thawed out of the ice on Mercy Island after 150 years and there's an ancient codex aboard, which the zillionaires both want. On the way to the outpost, the rescuers meet yetis and lose Linda.
The vet (recruited as a mistake instead of a doctor), thinks there could be a pack of the invisible, bulletproof snow gorillas led by a BIG Boss. The codex explains that they are yerren from Mongolia, dumped on the captain of HMS Victoria by a Chinese emperor, who didn't want them.
The zillionaire decides he wants a live yerren and he'll pay everyone a million bucks because his rival is after one. 3 guys desert the team and a yerren trapped in the outpost has to be killed. The art thieves go after a medical kit, and get it after the deserters run into the yerren.
Our heroes bury the yerren in an avalanche and get back to the outpost, but yerren take out the rescue copper. But its battery lets them use a snow tractor, which is great for squishing all the yerren but the BIG One. But a thermal lance sees it off, and the zillionaire arrives in a submarine.
Revolver (2005) Jake Green got out of gaol after 7 years. 2 years later, he was rich and he confronted Mr. Mackar, a casino boss. Jake walked out with a bundle of cash, fell down some stairs and got a check-up in hospital. Someone kept leaving notes for him. Mackar sent "the man who never misses" out to kill Jake but he survived. The hospital got in touch to say Jake had 3 days left to live.
A pair of loan sharks took Jake over and he meekly surrendered all his money and did what they tell him to do. Mackar got Jake's brother's wife killed and Jake sent to gaol for 7 years. He met 2 master con-men inside, and they just vanished from the gaol when they'd worked out the perfect con.
The loan sharks stole dope from Maccar after he'd done a deal with the invisible Major Boss. Then they did the same to the Chinese gang run by Lord John. There were outbreaks of cartoons for no apparent reason. His doctor told Jake he'd made a miracle recovery. Lord John's killers failed to kill Maccar.
Jake, who had been hearing voices in his head all along, finally went out of his tiny mind. The man who never misses took out a lot of bad guys before he was finished off. At the end, Mackar went out of his mind and blew his brains out. A very strange film, which doesn't explain itself adequately.
Riddle of the Sphinx (2008) A scientist (Thomas) reassembles the Cypher Stone, an ancient key, and releases a sphinx when he uses it. The lady with him, Jess, seeks out his son, Robert, to fulfil Thomas's dying request. Robert and his daughter, Karen, are driven out of their home when the sphinx arrives. Robert blows the place up, which doesn't slow the sphinx down much, and they take refuge at the Sanctuary, an off-the-books facility dedicated to discovering the truth about the world.
Robert finds that someone sabotaged his father's translation and hid a warning about the sphinx and the Plague of Isis, which is due to arrive in a couple of days. Next stop, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and a trip to another dimension. A gravity gun wielded by Mr. Ryder, C.E.O. of the Sanctuary, slows the sphinx down a bit, and it's off on a tour of Wonders of the World with Iraq (Babylon) the next stop. Jess is almost drowned but Karen's idea saves her.
Surprise! Ryder screwed up Thomas's translation and the plague kills the people on a tour bus. Robert becomes an action hero. The sphinx takes out Ryder and screws up his world domination plans. Robert stabs himself to kill the sphinx. He meets his dad in the anteroom to the Hall of Knowledge but he decides he doesn't want to abandon Karen & Jess and be like a god.
Righteous Kill (2005) Detective David Fisk of NYPD is confessing to killing 14 people; all scumbags who deserved it. It all started when a child-killer got off, and then got fitted up courtesy of Fisk. His confession continues through the film. No. 10 was a skateboard pimp. A fit-up of a dealer blew up in the faces of Fisk and his partner, and they got to spend a lot of time with the department shrink.
The cops didn't want to believe that one of their own was taking out bad guys, like a paedophile Catholic priest. The killer had to change the rules when the Russian wouldn't die; he went for the unforgiveable. Surprise! The killer turned out to be Fisk's partner, who lost faith in him when he planted evidence to get a bad guy put away. He made Fisk shoot him and Fisk did his confession out of guilt.
Rio Bravo (1959) Sheriff John Wayne arrests Joe Burdett for murder with the help of his recovering alcoholic deputy, Dude (Dean Martin), and Stumpy, an old-timer. Nathan, Joe's wealthy brother, has the town under siege and he's determined to get his brother released. A very young Angie Dickinson is in the film to embarrass Sheriff Wayne and throw herself at a bloke at least twice her age.
A young gun called Colorado (Ricky Nelson) eventually joins the sheriff's side. Dude quits then unquits when the local band starts playing the Daguello and stops his hands shaking. Dude is grabbed to be traded for Joe, but things don't go Nathan Burdett's way at the exchange and an explosive finish sorts out the bad guys.
R.I.P.D. (2013) A cop is murdered by a bent partner and comes back to life in a frozen moment. Nick is given the option of joining the Rest In Peace Department for 100 years to get a good recommendation on Judgement Day. He has to protect the world from deados; monsters who refused to leave the planet, and he gets a long-dead cowboy, Roy, as his partner.
He finds at his own funeral that he looks like an old Chinese guy, which is why his wife doesn't recognize him. Roy looks like a busty blonde. There are mysterious hunks of gold around and the dirty partner is involved with them. The gold turns out to be the bits of an artefact, which as demolished ages before.
The artefact can be used to close the wormhole that takes deados to the afterlife. The management threatens our heroes with being erased for letting deados run riot in Boston. Surprise! The dirty partner is a 3,000-year-old deado, who's trying to reassemble the artefact to keep all the deados on Earth to avoid Judgement.
Nick and his partner put themselves back on the case. There's a showdown at the Commonwealth Building in Boston after the city is battered to bitz. Nick's wife is the dirty partner's intended human sacrifice. Roy splats the artefact. Julia survives and Roy gets his cowboy hat back, plus 53 more years service. Nick gets a warning and a new ID as a Brownie.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) It all starts with a search for a cure for human brain diseases, like Alzheimer's. One drug makes a chimpanzee more intelligent but she goes on a rampage and she's killed and the project is terminated. But Will, our hero, strolls off with her baby, Caesar. He gives his father, who has Alzheimer's, some of the drug and improves him markedly.
Dad becomes resistant to the drug after 5 years, refuses a more powerful version and dies. The new drug makes chimps more intelligent but kills humans. Caesar releases the gaseous drug at the experimental facility, all the apes escape and free the apes at San Francisco zoo.
One of the most ludicrous finishes to a film follows on the Goldarn Gate bridge. The apes take to the redwood forest and the virus spreads around the world, killing all the humans.
Riverworld (2002) is supposed to be based on the stories by Philp José Farmer, but as they are published in science fiction magazines in the 1960s, no one could remember anything of them. The film stars a Brad Johnson (but not the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccanneers). What happens is that a whole bunch of people who died on earth are reborn at about the age of 30 on a planet consisting of a long river. They are rounded up by Vandals, one of the reborn turns out to be the emperor Nero and he takes over. Mr. Johnson, meanwhile, hooks up with a guy called Sam, who turns out to be Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain), who has built a Mississippi riverboard.
There is an alien on Sam's team (he died on Earth just before the meteor wiped out all life in 2039), and he supplies an engine powered by palladium hydride from the frequent meteor strikes on Riverworld. There is a big fight aboard the riverboat, Nero gets his and the boat sails off into the twin-sunset. And then a bunch of hooded aliens start wondering if they have complete their mission in time. So the film ends up looking like the pilot for a TV series, in which Sam and his crew sail up river and meet a new challenge every week.
Road House (1989, Patrick Swayze) Dalton, bouncer at a tough club, was recruited to the Double Deuce, where the band worked behind bullet-proof glass and the place was wrecked every night. He took a room at a horse ranch next door to a helicopter yob: Brad Wesley, who ran a local protection racket and had the law in his pocket. Dalton sacked the swindling bartender, Wesley's nephew, and had to go to the local E.R. to get 9 staples in a knife slash. He met Dr. Elizabeth there; she'd rejected Wesley.
Wesley sent his roughnecks to the club. They were taken apart. Dalton's mate arrived in time to save his ass. Holy shit! It's Wade Garrett. (Who?) Wesley's gang burnt down the grocery store, trashed the car business and fire-bombed the ranch house. Dalton took out the arsonist. Dr. Elizabeth refused to leave town with him.
Dalton found Wade murdered. So he took out Wesley's bodyguards. Then the locals lined up to fill Wesley full of lead. But when the sheriff arrived, no one saw nuffink, they said.
Robin Hood (1990) tells the classic tale in the approved way from Robin's downgrading from Saxon earl to outlaw and his feud with Sir Miles (bad French accent) and flirting with Norman heiress Marion, whose dowry Sir Miles has his sights on. The local bureaucracy responds to Robin's growing band out outlaws with more taxes and a huge reward. So the gang robs and abuses the tax collectors.
Prince John is on his way to Snottingham for his cash, which will have to come out of the local boss's own coffers. Marion joins the outlaws as Martin, and saves Robin from a trap. Robin, with 300 marks on his head, decides to rob the Normans and give most of the proceeds to the Saxons to reduce the risk of betrayal.
Prince John gives Sir Miles a small private army to get Robin, who acquires bows with armour-piercing strength. 'Orrible Arry' (Inspector Burke from Taggart) takes Marion back to the castle to marry Sir Miles. There's a big show down on April Fool's day. Miles gets dead instead of married, Robin gets the bride instead and he regains his place in the upper ranks of society.
Robin Hood : Beyond Sherwood Forest (2009) A flying monster kills the Sheriff of Nottingham then turns into a woman. Robert's dad is next in line for the sheriff's job but the evil Malcolm kills him, with Robert watching, and takes the woman/monster prisoner. 10 years later, Marion's dad wants to marry her off to the ancient Duke Leopold of Austria and Robin Hood steals a chest from Prince John's men in Sherwood.
The sheriff puts extra taxes on the peasants to make them give up their champion and the chest, and he unleashes the monster as Marion is consorting with the outlaws. Helena, the monster, is told that if she takes out Robin Hood, she will be freed. Friar Tuck is written off by the monster and Robin, Little John & Will head through a portal to the Dark Woods for an answer to the monster.
Marion befriends the human part of the monster and the outlaws are captured. Robin finds the Keepers of the Trees while John & Will are being attacked by carnivores. They return to Sherwood with some glowing pink berries. Helena tells Marion her sad story, that she's cursed and Malcolm killed Robert's father, not her. Malcolm uncovers Prince John's plan to have King Richard killed and decides to use it for blackmail.
Robin runs into Sheriff Malcolm and is scheduled for hanging. But the outlaws stage a gaol break, Malcolm beats Robin in their fight and the monster arrrives. Malcolm slays the monster but Robin sneaks up on him, and Prince John is blackmailed into playing nice.
RoboCop (1987) Old Detroit has a cancer: crime. But OCP, which is running law enforcement for the city, has come up with ED 209: a freaking big Enforcement Droid. Humiliation for top man Dick when it kills someone in the demo. So upstart Morton offers RoboCop instead.
Newly transferred Officer Murphy is shot to dogmeat by bad guys, but there's enough left to rescue and put in a cybernetic body. The cops don't like their new buddy, who has a hidden 4th Directive. Lewis, his old partner, realizes that Murphy is in there. RoboCop is a great success for OCP and creepy Morton makes vice-president.
Murphy memories surface in RoboCop. Morton is murdered by Clarence the Killer, sent by Dick. The Clarence gang killed Murphy. RoboCop raids a coke distribution point and bounces Clarence the Killer Creep about a bit. Dick gets Clarence out of gaol.
RoboCop fails to arrest Dick thanks to the 4th Directive. Dick sets the ED 209 on him and wrecks the OCP building a bit. The cops do more shooting at poor old RoboCop. Lewis saves her old partner. The cops go on strike and chaos reigns. Clarence and gang go after Murphy and Lewis, and come unstuck. Then RoboCop finds a way to blow Dick to Hell.
RoboCop (2014 remake) Remakes are usually rubbish and generally leave the audience asking why they bothered when there was a perfectly good version available already. This remake is the equivalent of the original, as far as the story goes; the cops are dirty, corporate greed rules and the politicians are crooked. It's almost like another director's take on the original script. But the humour circuit has been disengaged. Still, a whole lot better than I was expecting and not a couple of hours wasted.
America is policing the world and its drones are shown off in Tehran, where there are explosive terrorists. A TV agitator, Novak, wants the robots to be used to police American cities. Det. Jack Lewis, Det. Alex Murphy's partner, is put in hospital by an undercover job thanks to dirty cops. Americans won't accept machines without feelings to OmniCorp decides to put a man in a machine. Murphy is blown up and his wife lets OmniCorp use him.
Three months later, Murphy wakes up in a mechanical body; in China. He learns that Detroit PD is letting the BG who had him blown up get away with it. A man in a machine ain't good enough, OmniCorp's boss decides, so Dr. Dennett has to mess with Murphy's brain and paint his body black. The $2.6 Billion Man is now a machine that thinks it's Alex Murphy.
The mayor shows Murphy off with his emotions suppressed. His wife spots there's something wrong right away. Murphy makes an arrest within seconds of being unveiled and starts cleaning up Detroit. Then he undoes the changes to his brain spontaneously and starts working on his own case.
He cleans up some dirty cops. OmniCorps switches him off as he's confronting the dirtiest cop. Clara Murphy starts rocking the boat. OmniCorp tells her Alex is dead. Murphy shoots up the OmniCorp building. Sellers, the corporate boss, ain't bulletproof. Dr. Bennet fixes up Murphy's bullet-riddled carcase. And Mr. Novak, the TV guy, is outraged that RoboCop won't be used on American streets.
RoboCop 2 (1990) The ED 209 has been approved for use in US cities, there's a highly addictive drug called Nuke being circulated by a looney called Cain and the cops are on strike because OCP cancelled their pensions. Just another day in Old Detroit. Murphy, not on strike, raids a Nuke parlour with Officer Lewis. He's still interested in the fate of his family but OCP reprograms him not to know his wife.
OCP takes over the city when it defaults on a loan payment. OCP is trying to build RoboCop 2 but the cops put into the mechanical bodies keep going insane. $90M down the drain? The crazy female psychologist Dr. Faxx has an answer. A snotty kid is handing out free samples of Nuke and corrupting cops. He tries to kill Lewis.
RoboCop finds Cain but he's dismembered. Dr. Faxx wants to put a criminal brain from Death Row in RC2. RoboCop is rebuilt and left screwed up by his new programming. But he fixes himself. The Nuke factory is raided, RoboCop takes down Cain and Dr. Faxx puts his brain in RC2.
Cain's snotty kid tries to lend the city $50M to get out of OCP's clutches but RC2 gets in the way and kills the kid (hooray!!). RC2 is shown off with OCP's plan for rebuilding the city and gets into a HUGE battle with RoboCop and the cops. Murphy splats the nutter's brain. And OCP dumps the blame on Dr. Faxx.
RoboCop 3 (1993) Detroit is a war zone and being cleared to make way for Delta City. OCP has an answer, as usual: eviction by wrecking ball, which is hampered by spots of sabotage. A little computer kid hacks an ED 209 to help with a raid on a police armoury. RoboCop ignores orders to follow the weapons thieves when Lewis issues a distress call, and sees off some pond life.
OCP will be ruined if Cadillac Heights isn't cleared in 4 days. OCP wants Murphy's personality erased. OCP thugs murder Lewis and RoboCop is unable to stop them. He's recruited into the resistance, damaged, and OCP blames him for killing Lewis. Things are so bad at OCP that guys start leaping out of windows. Then a posturing git of a Jap arrives in Detroit. No, it's a robot.
The computer girl removes Directive 4 from Murphy and he gets some new parts. The rebel base is sold out to OCP goons. The cops quit rather than join in the assault on Caddy Heights. OCP recruits the local psycho pond life. The cops deputize the real people for a war.
RC meets the posturing JapBot and blows its head off, then he straps on a jet-pack and takes out the OCP tanks and invaders. There are 2 more JapBots at OCP HQ, but the kid makes them fight and trigger the doomsday device in the building. RC flies out with the kid and her protector, leaving McTaggart to be blown up. At the end, the head Jap admits defeat to RoboCop.
Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement (1994) Robocop defuses a hostage situation in Old Detroit and busts the putty-faced psycho Morgan. OCP is planning to run the city with a computer. The mayor refuses to admit there's a serial killer called the Downtown Ripper taking out derelicts. A kid tries to tell the cops she saw the Ripper; Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo of OCP is trying to build human brains into his computer.
OCP gets Morgan out of gaol to zap Robocop after he busts Mallardo. Robocop is then sleazed and OCP refuses to pay for having him rebuilt. NeuroFrame is switched on with OCP secretary Diana's brain in it. Mollardo takes over OCP so the boss has Robocop repaired to take out Mallardo. Diana stays alive in the computer.
Mallardo's sidekick wipes Robocop's memory so he can't testify against Mallardo. Diana merges with Robocop to revive him. Mallardo puts a virus into the computer to destroy Diana. Robocop takes out an army of bad guys and puts an anti-virus program into the computer, and Mallardo gets his teeth rattled in an express lift.
RoboCop: Prime Directives
1. Dark Justice (2001) is the first of a sequence set in Delta City, which is run by OCP. A vigilante called Bone Machine is running riot and Damian, an OCP junior executive, wants to run the whole city with a computer system called Saint. But first, he'd like to try the system out in the OCP building, and he's exploiting Ed, the guy developing Saint. RoboCop has a mother figure for a technician, he's feeling his age, and his son, James, is now working for OCP. RoboCop proves to his former partner, John Cable, that Bone Machine is using OCP experimental weapons and Cable starts to suspect that RoboCop is his old partner, Murphy. Sara Cable, John's ex-wife, is Damian's rival at OCP.
RoboCop has a flashback to a serial killer, who took Cable hostage; and Cable executing the killer because they entered his house without a warrant. Sara want to recruit James Murphy into a plan to save OCP from itself. James is effectively Cable's boss. Someone adds 'terminate John Cable' to RoboCop's prime directives. Cable finds that Sara has framed him for stealing Bone Machine's weapons and goes on the run.
Damian tries to blackmail his way into Sara's conspiracy to take over OCP. Bone Machine is another cop; a former mate of Murphy & Cable. He wants to be the top cop in Delta City. Another flashback – Murphy and Cable had a falling out over what happened to the serial killer, for which Cable got a medal.
Cable confronts RoboCop then Bone Machine turns up and we're back at the serial killer scenario. So RoboCop shoot Cable to gets him out of the way then zaps Bone Machine. John Cable doesn't make it, but his ex-wife is planning to turn him into RoboCop II.
RoboCop: Prime Directives
2. Meltdown (2001) continues the story with RoboCop kicking ass while John Cable is buried. A bunch of female thieves zap Ed, raid OCP's computer, kill some cops and give RoboCop a hard time. Sarah Cable is in trouble at OCP over her security policies and Damian is being pushed to deliver Saint. RoboCop takes a trip to the graveyard and demolishes his own headstone. Meanwhile, Cable is being converted into RoboCop II with a wiped memory.
Sarah sets the new RoboCop on the CEO of OCP and she tells Sarah to get RoboCop off the streets. Cable is sent after Murphy, so a shoot-out and a car chase, and a plunge into the sea for RoboCop 1. James Murphy starts trying to access the classified section of his dad's records. Damian finds out what Sarah had done to her ex-husband. He doesn't think RoboCop is dead and he brings in a goon squad.
RoboCop ends up as a hoodie in Old Detroit, where he meets Jordan, the daughter of Ann; one of the techno-thieves. Murphy tells Cable where to meet him and they do battle in the ruins of Detroit police HQ. Murphy forces Cable to remember his own death. Ann then Cable join in RoboCop 1's battle with the OCP goons.
OCP claims that both RoboCops have been destroyed. Damian is sacked by the CEO for using the goon squad, so he uses Saint to wipe out OCP's board. And finally, James Murphy realizes that RoboCop is Alex Murphy, his dad, and the 2 battered RoboCops stomp off into the distance.
RoboCop: Prime Directives
3. Resurrection (2001) In part 3 of the saga, RoboCop Murphy needs a service so RoboCop Cable takes up the fight against OCP's goons. Damian is now president of OCP and his policy is guns, guns, guns. His first action is to give 27% more to the board members, including Sarah Cable and James Murphy, and he knows that Sarah is plotting against him with James, who is under orders to terminate the RoboCop programme. The Saint program is running the OCP building and Damian plans to automate Delta City with it.
Dr. David Kaydick, a former employee who is wanted by OCP but presumed dead, gives Cable a service and installs a 'Svengali' chip in him so that he can control Cable. Meanwhile, Murphy is being refitted by the 3 technothief women from the previous episode and they disconnect a memory suppressor.
Kaydick has created 'Legion', a virus which can kill 'flesh and data' but he needs Cable's help to recover the base program. He wants to wipe the world clean – evolution by apocalypse. The technothief women used to be his 'disciples', until they removed their control chips and he's Jordan's father!
Kaydick and Cable crash through OCP's goons and kidnap Jordan, who is a human host for the Legion virus. 2 of the technothief women are killed, but not Jordan's mom, Ann. RoboCop and Ann escape in a souped-up car. Murphy foils an attempt to upload the virus to the OCP building. Another fire-fight with OCP goons as Jordan's parents get into a punch-up. James is about to terminate his dad, watched by OCP's board, when the battery in his camera runs out. But James doesn't zap his dad and everyone drives off into the distance as MediaNet 2.0 is proclaiming RoboCop's death again.
RoboCop: Prime Directives
4. Crash & Burn (2001) Damian is selling SAINT to the people of Delta City as a count-down to full automation begins and RoboCop is definitely dead. Dr. Kaydick still plans to put the Legion virus in OCP's mainframe. Damian lets Sarah Cable know she's on the way out at OCP. Ed thinks there's something wrong with Saint but Damien won't let him delay automation. So Ed quits.
Kaydick and RoboCable get into OCP HQ using cloaking devices. RoboCop crashes into Delta City with James Murphy and Ann, and OCP security takes a lickin'! Damian unfires Ed to avoid having to give orders to Saint himself. Decisions should be a thing of the past with Saint running everything. Murphy & Co. join up with Ed, so Damian fires him again. Saint locks down the OCP building. Kaydick adds Sarah to his team.
The RoboCops get in a 3-way battle with OCP security and Kaydick and Ann start scrapping. Damian & Sarah take their chance to bail out, and Sarah shoves Damian down a lift shaft! That doesn't kill him, but being hacked to bits by the security system's lasers does. Saint adds, "I never did like you, Damian." Cable stops Murphy temporarily. Kaydick loads his virus into the mainframe.
Murphy returns to do battle with Cable, giving James, Ed and Jordan a chance to run for it. The virus eats Ann & Kaydick. RoboCable disables RoboMurphy and triggers an EM pulse, which kills all electronic devices in Delta City, including the virus-infected computer. Switched off, Murphy survives. Sarah takes over as head of OCP, so James quits. But OCP goes down in a shower of law suits, James starts a new company to improve lives and his dad returns to the streets to uphold the law.
The Rocketeer (1991) A hotshot pilot in the 1930s gets shot up by bad guys being chased by cops and crashes. The BGs hide a stolen rocket pack in his hangar, from which he and his buddy are about to be evicted. The Feds think the gismo blew up with the BGs' car when it hit a gas truck. Howard Hughes burns the plans and refuses to build another gizmo.
Clff finds the gizmo. An English movie star is paying a gang to steal it. Cliff's girlfriend is a bit player in Neville Sinclair's film. Cliff drops a flat on a take and gets her fired. Sinclair overhears Cliff telling Jenny about the rocket and promotes Jenny to Saxon princess. Malcolm the mechanic takes Cliff's place when he's late for an air show, gets into trouble and Cliff has to use the rocket to save him.
The Feds shoot Cliff's house to bitz. Then the gangsters get on his case. More Rocketman to go after Jenny, who's too dim to escape from the BGs when given fair warning. But she's not too dim to bash Neville and find his secret room. He's a Nazi spy!!
The Feds nab Cliff. He escapes to swap the jet pack for Jenny. The Feds crash the party. Big shoot out and Sinclair gets Jenny aboard a Zeppelin. She sets fire to it. Nev the Nazi flies off with the jet pack but it explodes onto the Hollywood sign. Howard Hughs' gyrocopter saves Jenny & Cliff and Hughes gives Cliff a new racing plane.
Rogue Sharks (2005) A spaceship crashes in orbit and a capsule enters the Earth's atmosphere and hits a ship in the Bermuda Triangle. Five years later, the Oshona Deep Sea Lab starts seeing magnetic spikes after they find some mysterious orange crystals on the sea bed. Sharks take out a work crew, a diver from their support ship and a guy on a Coastguard seaplane.
Sharks chew through the supply lines so the US Navy sends a sub carrying Mike, the boss of the lab, and a bean-counter from the MOA, who wants to close it down. Sharks attack a beach and one of the killed sharks contains the orange crystals. The MOA guy nearly gets Mike killed as they swim from the sub to the lab.
The sub catches fire and starts flooding, but it fires off a torpedo to take out some sharks as Mike is trying to turn on the emergency air supply. Harvey legs it in the minisub but sharks wreck it. The orange stuff is cold-fusion fuel. The MOA guy turns out to be a Special Forces nutter.
The US government has been looking for the fuel for 5 years and it doesn't want to share the fuel with the rest of the world. The guys from the lab set off a beacon when they found the fuel, which means they all have to be killed. The sub is called away as the lab is wrecked and the nutter kills everyone but Mike and his wife, Linda.
Aliens arrive to recover the fuel and Mike sees them. He and Linda make it to the sub but, of course, no one believes Mike's silly story about the sharks guarding the fuel until the aliens could retrieve it.
Rollerball (2001) This remake switches the setting from some unspecified future location to the current criminal swamp of the former Soviet empire. Cops pursue a pair of skateboard lugers in San Francisco. One wipes out and the other is picked up by his pal Ripley, who suggests he joins his rollerbrawl team. But Jonathan wants to try out for the NHL. But the cops know where he lives and 4 months later, he's in Central Asia on the rollerbrawl team. With Paul Heyman of ECW doing the American commentary.
This version of rollerbrawl is more like crazy golf than roller derby. There's lots of dosh going through the counters, lots of advertising and a cable deal in the offing. The boss realizes that violence ups the ratings and one of Jonathan's team is almost killed. Jonathan tells the boss it was done deliberately, not knowing the boss was behind it.
Thugs torch Jonathan's car. Ripley is unfazed. "Status quo," he says. "We play, we win. And if it gets too sick, we walk." [Shane McMahon of WW$ is also in the film but just standing around in a crowd scene.] The motorbike of Aurora, Jonathan's scar-faced girlfriend, is set alight and Ripley ends up in hospital after saving her. The boss is unimpressed when Jonathan complains he's done nothing to stop the 'accidents'.
Jonathan & Ripley try to escape but Ripley is killed. The boss tells Jonathan to play until the cable deal is secured or Aurora gets it. Jonathan responds by demanding a percentage of the action. The owners suspend the rules to allow someone to be killed. Jonathan becomes a symbol of revolt against the corrupt biznizmen running Russia & its satellites. So mayhem in the final match and Jonathan gets to kill the boss and also the boss's would-be successor.
Ronin (1998) [A masterless, former samurai, the blurb before the title explains.] PARIS Irish criminals are setting up a mission involving stealing a briefcase by ambushing '2-3 cars'. They recruit an international gang, an attempt to buy guns turns into a shooting match and the mercenaries demand more money. Sean Bean is exposed as an imposter, who wasn't in the SAS, and evicted from the film.
NICE The rest head for the South of France and turn Nice into a shooting gallery when the job goes off. A lengthy chase, lots more shooting when the case is grabbed, then the double crossing starts. Lots more rampaging and shooting, and some amateur 'meat-ball' surgery.
PARIS The IRA bunch end up back in the capital with Gregor, who knows where the briefcase is, as their prisoner. Another car chase when a couple of the others go after the package, and a lot of wrong-way driving on expressways until the IRA car runs out of road.
Off to an ice show next, where Russians want to buy the briefcase. Lots of bodies. The IRA bloke shoots the Russians but he gets plugged, too. (Hooray!) And peace breaks out in Ireland when the news of the death of the IRA terrorist Seamus O'Rourke gets out.
The Rookie (1990) Clint Eastwood loses his partner going after car thieves without calling for back-up so he's saddled with Ackermann, a rookie replacement (Charlie Sheen). He harasses Strong, the head bad guy (Gomez Addams from the recent movies), at a posh restaurant, where the kid is known as he has a rich family. Clint takes him to a Mexican bar to be beaten up and have his badge stolen. Then Ackermann is chased by guard dogs while Clint is harassing the owner of a scrap yard. Clint used to be a racer and he has some fancy motorbikes, one of which the kid fixes.
The kid's family thinks he's wasting his time as a cop and he resents it. Clint shuts down Strong's chop shops so he turns to robbery. When that flops, he holds Clint to a $2M ransom while planning to blow him up. Having been shot in the flak jacket after failing to shoot Strong's psychotic girlfriend, the kid borrows Clint's motorbike and gets $2M from his dad. When he gets tough in the Mexican bar, they set the fighting dogs on him, so he shoots the place up and sets fire to it.
Ackermann wrecks his own house in a fight with a minor bad guy then he goes after Strong. Who blows up the building as Clint and the kid crash out of it in a car and land on a neighbouring building. Then they follow the ransom money to Strong and have fun & games at the airport, where everyone gets shot, but only bad guys are shot fatally. So Clint is promoted to a desk and Ackermann, now a Clint-clone, is given a Hispanic female partner.
Lots of shooting and car chases in this one. Load up the TV with bullets before it starts.
Rules Of Engagement (2000, Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L. Jackson) In 1968, US troops run into a NVA trap and squad leader Childers takes extraordinary measures to save squad leader Hodges and his men. 28 years later, both are colonels and Hodges retires. Childers is sent to Yemen to extract the US ambassador from an embassy under siege by terrorists. The Marines take casualties and don't shoot back until way too late, and then not at the snipers.
83 dead rock-chuckers, including women & kids, not a weapon in sight and the State Dept. decides to dump the blame on Childers, who picks Hodges as his defence counsel. The prosecutor, a hotshot major, refuses to consider the death penalty but he wants to put Childers in gaol for 10-15 years for shooting the wrong people.
Hodges goes to Yemen to see what evidence the investigators missed. Meanwhile, good old Bill, who's trying to sink Childers, is hanging on to a security camera video which proves there were gunmen, gunwomen and gunchildren in the crowd, which was shot up. He also knows that the Yemeni authorities removed all the weapons and he gets the rescued ambassador to lie in court.
The prosecutor tries to tell the court that Yemen isn't a hotbed of anti-American terrorism. Hodges proves him wrong. Good old Bill lies to the court. Childers loses it on the stand. The prosecution digs back to Vietnam to try to blacken his name.
Hodges casts enough doubt to get Childers off most of the charges but Childers' career is over. Then Hodges goes after the liars and, in closing captions, we learn that both good old Bill and the ambassador get the sack.
Runaway Train (1985) John Voight stars as an inmate of a prison in Alaska. He's been welded in his cell for 3 years but he wins a human rights case and gets out of The Hole. Mannheim is a killer and an animal, the warden reckons. A convict attacks Manny with a knife at a prison boxing match and ends up stabbed by one of Manny's mates. Manny reckons the warden is pushing him to escape, even though it's 30 below outside.
Manny uses the old laundry basket ploy to escape, and one of the boxers goes with him. They go through the sewers, drive into a river and sneak aboard a freight train as the driver croaks of a heart attack and falls off! The throttle is stuck wide open and the brakes wear our quickly.
A collision with the caboose of another train wakes a female railway worker, who was asleep on the train against the rules. She blows the train's whistle, so an attempt to derail the train is called off. She tells the convicts they're on a runaway, and shows them how to slow it down enough to survive a trip over an old bridge. Meanwhile, the warden is after Manny on a helicopter.
The warden assaults a guy at the railway control room. Manny loses it and disillusions the punk kid boxer. The warden puts a man aboard the train but he falls off. The warden plays silly buggers on the chopper's ladder as the train is diverted onto a dead end. Manny struggles to the lead engine, ambushes the warden there and handcuffs him to a rail.
Then he uncouples the rest of the train, saving the kid and the woman, and takes the warden with him to an off-camera crash.
Rush (2013) is a biopic of the 1970s rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. Back then, 25 drivers started an F1 season and 2 were expected to die. They both started off in Formula 3. Hunt was driving for Lord Hesketh and hoping to be spotted in 1970. Lauda was a new guy on the scene, who was as serious as Hunt was frivolous. Hunt won their first race together after a coming together.
Lauda's family was dead against a career in motor racing. Both made it into F1. Hunt got a wife and Lauda became world champion with the Ferrari team. Lord Hesketh ran out of cash, leaving Hunt stranded and diving into the bottle. The Fitti-effin-paldi ditched McLaren and created an opening for Hunt.
In 1976, Hunt's car croaked and Lauda won the first race. And the second. Hunt won in Spain but was DQ'd on a technicality. Things got worse for McLaren. Suzie ditched Hunt for Richard Burton, some old actor. Hunt started winning. Lauda got married.
The German GP was very wet and Lauda failed to get the race cancelled on safety grounds. He crashed and burned, and received life-threatening burns to his lungs. Hunt had a chance to catch up on points whilst Lauda was out of action for 42 days. He returned for the Italian GP and finished 4th. Hunt didn't finish the race.
The final race of the season was in Japan, where it was wet. Lauda was 3 points ahead of Hunt. Rain bucketing down during the race. Lauda did a bit then retired because he thought the conditions were too dangerous. Hunt had to do one of the endless stops for tyres toward the end, but he managed to go from 6th to 3rd in the 4 remaining laps and become champion.
To close, our heroes exchanged philosophies of life. Hunt retired 2 years later and died at 45. Lauda was still going strong as part of the Mercedes F1 team at the time of writing (June 2015).
Strangest part of the film: seeing photographers lying on the grass, just feet from the track, to get dramatic pictures during races.
Rush Hour 2 (2001, Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker) Inspector Lee and his loudmouth American cop colleague Tyler Carter are on holiday in Hong Kong when they get involved in the explosive antics of Ricky Tan, who killed Lee's dad. Punch-ups in a gangster bar & a massage parlour, then the US Secret Service tells Lee to take his nose out of a hunt for counterfeit currency. Tan is shot during a punch-up on his boat and Tyler is chucked out of Hong Kong.
Tyler takes Lee to L.A., where they have fun with a bomb which isn't. The Secret Service is after Tan's printing plates. Our heroes get themselves captured but escape through a sewer in Las Vegas. They end up in the Red Dragon casino, where Isabella, the female Secret Service undercover, gets Lee into trouble again. Tyler creates a diversion while Lee get the plates, only he gets himself caught again.
Surprise! Tan isn't dead! Mayhem at the casino and Lee boots Tan out of a penthouse window. Then Lee and Tyler have to jump for it just before a mad Chinese female bad guy blows the place up. Cue the end credits and the inevitable string of bloopers.
Rush Hour 3 (2007) 3 years later, Inspector Lee arrives in L.A. with the Chinese Ambassador. The loudmouth Carter is on point duty there. The Ambassador wants to expose the leaders of the Triads, but he's shot by Kenji, Lee's brother. Natch, he gets away when Carter joins in. Our heroes battle an eight-foot giant at a dojo. They have a shoot-out at the Ambassador's hospital when bad guys go after his daughter.
Fun with a French-speaking Chinese killer and a nun. Next stop; Paris to look for the head of the Triads and be beaten up by French cops. The Chinks try to kill our heroes and Lee's bro grabs them. But they get away by going for a swim in a sewer. Lee learns that he is looking for a list of top Triads, not a single person.
A girl called Janvier has the list tattoo'd on her bonce! Surprise! The head of the world police force is a bad guy and the bro has taken one of Lee's family prisoner. Big battle around the Eiffel Tower. Splat! goes the bro. Surprise! The mad French taxi driver saves the day.
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