Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter W

War (2007, Jet Li) FBI agent John Crawford got into a shoot-out and ended up on sick leave. Meanwhile, the bad guy, a rogue CIA agent called Rogue, went after his Chinese partner (dressed as the Phantom of the Opera) and wiped out the partner and his family. 3 years later in San Francisco, Rogue took out most of the Yakuza gang he was supposed to be working for; Crawford recognized his distinctive titanium case, depleted uranium ammo.
Rogue got cosy with Chang, the head of a Triad, who was losing a war with the Yakuza and who wanted to recover 2 gold horse statuettes. But bent cops did a St. Valentine's Day massacre on a crew of Yakuza delivering the horses. Crawford tracked down the leader of the cops, who was whacked by a sniper. Rogue brought the Feds to Chang's warehouse after warning Chang to get in tighter with him.
Rogue hotted up the Yakuza/Triad war and held a massacre at Chang's mansion. Then he took out the Jap head of the Yakuza. Chang's wife and the Yakuza's horrible daughter got a gold horse apieces. Shock, horror! The killer wasn't Rogue, he was Crawford's partner, who'd killed Rogue after Rogue had killed his family, got plastic surgery and stolen Rogue's identity to get Crawford, who had been working for the Yakuza!

Warbirds (2008) The Japs occupying an anonymous Pacific atoll in World War II release something that starts killing them. 3 months later, a crew of female pilots are detailed to fly a B29 carrying Colonel Toller, his gang and a secret cargo from Hawaii to a destination in the Pacific. But they run into a storm and they're buzzed and damaged by something big. They land on an island with abandoned Zero fighters and 3 Japs.
   A flying something grabs one of the Yanks. Miss West, the head pilot, suggests sending a stripped down Zero to Australia for help and using other Zeros to cover its departure. But scores of pterosaurs attack and she loses the pilot in the lightened Zero. The Jap Captain, who was educated in the USA, plans to escape in the B29 after it has been repaired. He also wants to know what the colonel's mission is; like everyone else.
   The Japs are allowed to work on the plane. The Captain recognizes a Geiger counter and an atomic bomb when he sees them. Col. Toller goes to get fuel from a Jap dump and loses another man. Meanwhile, the Japs gain the upper hand. But Toller saves the day and the Japs end up dead.
   Miss West flies Toller & the bomb off the island with 2 pilots covering in Zeros. The pterosaurs attack, one of the pilots is killed and Toller drops the bomb on the island when a pterosaur attacks the B29. Betsy in a Zero survives, but she will have to ditch in the sea. Miss West promises to mark her position and send help, but everyone will probably be dead from the radiation in a few days anyway.

War of the Worlds (2005) is a Tom Cruise remake of the H.G. Wells story. Ray is a divorced crane driver with a stroppy teenage son and a wiseguy little girl, who are dumped on him by his pregnant ex-wife. Magnetic storm start hitting the Earth and knock out phones and power and vehicles. Ray, of course, is able to tell a mechanic pal how to repair his car.
   Martian creatures travel down bolts of lightning to machines, which were buried on Earth zillions of years before. The machines start zapping humans with ray guns and Ray heads for his ex-wife's place in the only working car. But Mom isn't there, she's in Boston.
   A plane nearly crashes onto the house. Ray is clued in about the tripod machines by a TV news lady. A crazed mob grabs the car but Ray and the kids make it on to a car ferry; which is sunk by the machines. Ray's useless son abandons the family to watch the US military scrapping with the machines. Ray's daughter is nearly kidnapped by a well-meaning couple.
   They end up in a crazy guy's bunker, which is invaded by Martians but the humans aren't found. The machines are harvesting humans outside. Ray murders the crazy guy then the stupid kid gets herself and her dad harvested. But the machines start croaking, the occupants killed by Earth's bugs, and Ray and his daughter are reunited with Mom and the useless son in Boston.

War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (2008) Two years after the Martian invaders were wiped out by terrestrial bugs, they return for another shot at humanity using a wormhole. The humans have been trying to adapt left-behind Martian techology and they have space-capable fighters. George Herbert's stupid kid gets himself zapped by a Martian Walker, which makes George mad enough to confront a Walker.
   George wakes up inside a Martian blood farm, surprised to find he's not dead. The Martians need human blood and they're working on cleaning it up. When the Martians start trashing Earth again, retro-fitted fighters go after their mothership, which dives into a timehole. George and some others escape from the factory and find themselves on what looks like Earth; but they're still on Mars.
   Major Kramer and his fighters, which find themselves in orbit around Mars, go after the mothership. George is turned into a bioweapon and he gets himself captured so that he can contaminate the blood factory. He finds his stupid kid there. The Martians start to croak big time. Major Kramer flies a bunch of survivors back to Earth.
   Three months later, George is cured of the infection but he starts to pick up Martian radio signals again . . .

Warlock (1989) An evil Warlock was hurled forward in time from the Massachusetts of 1691 and a witch hunter went with him. The warlock rampaged around and made Kassandra, who was in her twenties, age at 20 years/day. So she became the witch-hunter's ally. He was after the warlock for zapping his wife and the warlock's mission was to recover the missing third part of the Grand Grimoire, which contains a secret name of God which, if spoken backwards, will cause creation to reverse.
The witch-hunter had a witch compass to track down his prey and they had a confrontation at a farm in the mid-west. The warlock got away but not before Kassandra had recovered a bracelet which he had stolen to undo the ageing spell. Everyone headed to Boston, and then it was off to a graveyard for a punch-up and the final confrontation.

Waterworld is Mad Max after the polar icecaps have melted, so the bad guys are racing around on jetskis instead of dune buggies. And there seem to be plenty of ciggies and bullets in circulation. The 'good guy' is a mutant with gills and the principal bad guy has lost an eye and put on a patch over the socket in the approved pirate style. The floating town is a good idea and the hero's gadget-strewn catamaran is great. The big old ship rowed with giant oars is a hoot. So is the mini airship. And it turns out that dry land isn't a myth, after all.

Weather Wars (2011) A mad scientist called up a storm over Washington DC; blood rain and red lighting! Dr. Grange swore revenge when Senator Aldridge cut off the funding to Grange's weather control project. He had 2 sons, David (a cop) and Jacob, who was contacted by Samantha, his dad's research assistant. She told Jacob: "We're all in danger."
   Crazy dad took out the Pentagon with a storm. David tried to track him down. Mythbusters(?) blew off manhole covers near the senator, who set the Feds on David, Jacob and Sam when they tried to warn him that he was in danger. A tornado took out the Washington Monument then the sons worked out what dad was doing.
   The senator's daughter was killed by another storm. Big hail took out the aerospace museum. Jacob found Dad lurking in a decommissioned nuclear power station, and joined him there because he wanted to be like dad. David declared weather war on his dad by using an orbiting weapon, which saved D.C.
   Missiles took out the power station, which was hit by a tornado next. Dad didn't make it and Jacob was never found, but he was still around 6 months later and ready to carry on his dad's work in a sequel.

Webs (2003) Workers checking a building due for demolition find a nuclear-powered device, which is a portal to another dimension. They find a vanload of cash then zombies attack them and one guy is killed. A man and a woman rescue them. Ray, the motormouth, screw-up black guy, won't shut up and a giant spider appears! Ray and Sheldon make it back through the portal but Dean is left behind.
He meets Dr. Morelli, who built the portal 30 years ago. In going to his alternate Chicago, he also opened a portal to somewhere else, which let the spider queen through. She has been eating everyone and turning some of her victims into zombie soldiers ever since. Ray & Sheldon return with guns, having been unable to persuade the authorities in their Chicago that their story about the zombies and the spider is true.
Dr. Morelli is captured during a battle with zombies, so everyone goes after the spider queen apart from Ray, who has a broken leg. He makes some booby traps. Ray fucks up one last time and the zombies eat him. Dean has to take out a Sheldon zombie. The queen gets Dr. Morelli but Dean electrocutes her and dives into the portal with the girl as the queen explodes with the portal mechanism. They come out on a tropical beach, which sounds like it's deep in spider territory!

Welcome To The Jungle (2003) What's The Rock been doing since WW$. Starring in this film, for one thing. Beck is a debt collector, who wants to open his own restaurant and who has the gimmick of giving people 2 options: Option A, do what he wants; Option B, be forced to do what he wants. He has to wreck half a football team and a club to get a part payment on a player's debt, then another guy on the team mugs him for the loot and delivers it to the boss.
   Beck says he wants out and Billy, the boss, gives him one last job; collect his son, Travis, from Brazil. Beck ends up in the jungle at the El Dorado mine. Travis is looking for El Gato, an 800-year-old golden artifact, which both Hatcher, the mine owner, and the local terrorists want. Hatcher double-crosses Beck so he wrecks Marianne's bar and Hatcher's army, and strolls off with Travis.
   Travis tips the jeep over the side of a mountain into a river. The guys are caught in traps set by the local terrorists. Beck has to fight them until Marianne shows up and squares things. Hatcher's men attack the terrorists and Beck, Travis & Marianne get away. Travis leads them to a cave, which starts crumbling. But they get out with El Gato, which Marianne plans to sell to buy prosperity for her people.
   She drugs the men and strolls off with the golden cat, only to be picked up by Hatcher. Beck & Travis send a stampede through the mining town and Beck destroys most of it. Hatcher ends up dead at the hands of the terrorists and Beck takes Travis back to California. He hands him over to complete his deal with Billy, then he drugs Billy and his entourage and lets Travis go.

Westworld (1973, Yul Brynner) It's the perfect resort, where customers can go jousting in the Mediaeval section, partying in the Roman section or kill the robot gunslinger and screw the robot saloon girls in the old West. But things are going wrong backstage. The robots are suffering brain failure in a way reminiscent of the spread of a disease in humans.
   A Westworld guest is bitten by a robot rattlesnake. Some of the boffins want to shut the resort down, but they can't do that, any more than they will be able to shut down the resort in Jaw'd in 1975. One of the guests is ever so slightly stabbed to death in the mediaeval section. The robots won't respond to shutdown codes. A guest is gunned down by the gunman in Westworld.
   His mate has to run for his life, pursued by the gunman in a way reminiscent of the film Duel (1971). The slaves revolt in Rome and start killing the guests. Worse, the control room has no fail-safe mechanism so that when the power goes off, the doors remained locked and the staff face being cooked as the temperature soars if they don't suffocate first when the air goes bad. The resort is a real cowboy outfit.
   A technician out in the wilds tells the fugitive he doesn't have a chance; just before the gunman plugs the tech. The fugitive gets in to the service tunnels under the Rome sector. A faceful of acid in a lab makes the gunman steam but not stop, but his vision becomes wonky. Being set on fire doesn't stop the robot right away, but he does go up in a shower of sparks eventually. The end.

When Eight Bells Toll (1971) Anthony Hopkins stars in this adaptation of the Alistair McLean novel as Calvert, a naval intelligence officer, who is sent to Tor Bay (in Scotland, not Devon) with a guy in specs (a Harry Palmer prototype?) to investigate the disappearance of shipments of bullion. Most of the natives are either hostile or under the thumb of the bad guys. Calvert's Rescue helicopter is shot down and Specs ends up tied to the anchor chain of their boat. So Calvert's Whitehall Warrior of a boss (Robert Morley) has to help out.
The wife of a holidaying Greek shipping magnate defects to Calvert's side as he and the boss go in search of the latest batch of missing bullion, which turns up on a deliberately scuttled ship. The bad guys are keeping their hostages in a cliff-top castle, which Calvert infiltrates. The Greek shipping magnate's real wife is among the prisoners.
Calvert enlists the local shark fishermen for an assault on the bad guys. And when the shooting is over, he lets the lady defector go (she's another bad guy) with one bar of gold, which is very nice of him.

Whiteout (2009) In 1957, drunken Russians start shooting on a plane and it crashes on Antarctica. 50-odd years later, a doctor warns some inmates of the Amundsen-Scott base about the perils of a whiteout and US Marshall Kerry is sent to investigate a body on the ice. The geologist looks like he fell from a great height and landed on his axe.
   Kerry has 2 days to tidy up the case or she'll be stuck at the base for the winter. She visits Vostok base, where there's a mad killer on the loose. A UN guy turns up to cover up the first ever murders on Antarctica. A gang of geologists, who were supposed to be looking for meteorites on the ice, have 40 lbs of plastic explosive.
   Kerry falls into a hole in the ice and finds a plane full of corpses. The geologists stole the plane's secret cargo. Kerry, the UN guy and their driver are trapped by an ice fall but manage to escape. Kerry loses a couple of fingers to frostbite. She confronts one of the geologists but the killer gets him: an Aussie geologist. He's captured but escapes.
   The lockdown goes ahead. The killer locks Kerry out in a whiteout, then he tries to kill her, but he's swept away by a blizzard. The cannisters from the plane are full of jelly beans! Kerry finds diamonds stashed in a dead body by the doctor. They were his pension. He takes a walk in the blizzard. 6 months later, the base is reopened and Kerry withdraws her resignation from the US Marshall service.

Who Am I? (1998) Sinister Chinese troops attack in South Africa to steal a weapon based on a meteorite and the scientists who created it. Agent Jackie Chan falls out of a chopper, loses his memory and is adopted by the local tribe in an area with coconut palms. Jackie saves the life of the brother of a female rally driver, and his boss orders him killed when Jackie gets his picture in the papers as a hero.
The guys making the weapon blow up their lab and destroy the local power grid. The South African Internal Security police grab JC but he escapes. Several times, reacquiring the rally driver and a female journalist, who's really a CIA agent. She takes him to Rotterdam after cracking a code. Morgan, JC's boss, spots him and tries to have him killed.
Cue another series of punch-ups and JC, as he's in Holland, invents clogate. Then he screws up a pay-off to the Head Bad Guy. Morgan bamboozles JC, but not completely. Morgan is bagged with overkill and no one gets the computer disk with the weapon's secret.

Wild Wild West (1999, Will Smith) is billed as a sci-fi Western comedy. Captain West, a post-US Civil War spy, gets in the way of General "Bloodbath" McGrath's arms dealing, in competition with US Marshall Artemis Gordon, who is lurking about in drag. So lots of fun and destruction.
   They are still building the Capitol when West gets back to Washington, where he finds Gordon impersonating President Grant. McGrath has kidnapped all of America's top scientists to build an ultimate weapon, so Gordon & West have to join forces to stop him.
   Gordon is a mad inventor with his own train of gadgets. West gets himself invited to a redneck lynching. There's an evil genius behind the general: Dr. Loveless, half a former Confederate in a wheelchair. The agents collect a Rita, who gets them captured by Loveless. He decamps in their train to kill the president, and he has built an enormous (80-foot) mechanical spider.
   Loveless captures the president but Gordon gets our heroes aboard the spider with his flying machine. Lots more fun and destruction before our heroes do in McGrath & Loveless. Then the president made them agents 1 and 2 of his newly formed Secret Service.

Wing Commander (1999) Earth declares war on the Kilrathi in 2654 and the Pegasus station falls, allowing the aliens to grab a nav-com, which will let them get to Earth in 40 hours while the fleet will need 42 hours to return. The admiral sends a message to Mr. Taggart's small ship, which is taking 2 pilots, Lts. Blair & Marshall, to the warship Tiger Claw in the Vega Sector. The captain is Hercule Poirot minus his moustache and the first officer used to be in charge of Das Boot.
   Blair falls foul of the female Wing Commander Deverell right away. Tiger Claw is ordered to gain intel on the Kilrathi. Blair, whose mother was an Pilgrim, also falls foul of other crew members. Pilgrims were the first humans to explore deep space and they 'lost touch with their heritage'. Fun & games in an asteroid belt and No. 1 keeps accusing Blair of being a traitor. Taggart turns out to be in naval intelligence.
   Tiger Claw takes a good battering in a huge battle. No. 1 takes over for the injured captain. The spaceships are a cross between a submarine and a 18th/19th Century ships of the line in operation & tactics. They use nuclear depth charges and fire broadsides from point-blank range!
   After some hand-to-hand combat, the humans find the nav-com, which tells them the Kilrathi's jump point for the assault on Earth. Taggart sends Blair to the fleet with the data as his Pilgrim genetics will let him accomplish the hazardous navigation involved. WC Deverell shoots out a missile heading for Tiger Claw and becomes stranded in space. Blair drops an enemy ship into a singularity. The rest of the Kilrathi fleet is shot to bits, Taggart rescues Deverell and Blair returns to Tiger Claw for a final clinch.

Without A Clue (1988) Michael Caine & Ben Kingsley star in this Sherlock Holmes spoof. It begins with 2 crooks stumbling into a trap. Another triumph for Sherlock Holmes? so why is Dr. Watson so loudly pised off? Because he created the character, he hired actor Reginald Kincaid to play the role, and the actor is getting all the credit for Watson's detective work.
   Mrs. Hudson approves when Watson throws the drunken actor out. The editor of The Strand is less than thrilled by a new series by Watson featuring The Crime Doctor. Watson is forced to take the actor back for the next case. The plates for printing £5 notes are missing, and so is Mr. Giles, the head printer.
   Everyone, including Lestrade, heads for Windermere, where Giles seems to have drowned. Professor Moriarty nearly kills Holmes while trying to assassinate Watson and Holmes freaks out when he learns that Moriarty is behind everything. Roughs fail to kidnap Miss Giles, proving to Watson that the Windermere affair was just a sham.
   Moriarty gets away after a shoot-out at the riverside and Holmes gets Watson killed (apparently). Holmes carries on alone when Lestrade rubbishes Watson. Fun & games for Holmes & Mrs. Hudson at the theatre where Kincaid played his last role. Watson returns from the dead at Moriarty's printing plant and exposes the fake Miss Giles. Holmes sets fire to the fake money, he and Moriarty fight a duel on the stage and the gas main goes up, taking Moriarty with it(?) And Watson gets a round of applause from the press at the end.

The Woman In Green (1945, Rathbone/Bruce) 'Orrible murder in London. Sir George was murdered after being relieved of £10,000 by a blackmailer. Holmes suspected that Moriarty had not been hanged in Montevideo. Moriarty confirmed this by trying to warn Holmes off.
Cpl. Williams, the hypnotized sniper, was foiled and handed to Insp. Gregson, but Moriarty had him done in. Watson made a fool of himself at the Mesmer Club. Holmes, of course, proved to be a much tougher proposition and he was able to fool Moriarty and his lady hypnotist. Did Moriarty fall to his death after being busted? Only if the scriptwriters don't need him again!

The World Is Not Enough (1999, Pierce Brosnan) A Swiss banker offers Bond some money; Bond offers him his own life instead. But the guy gets dead anyway. Cue some James Bondery when the cops arrive. At MI6, oil tycoon Mr. King is blown up with his own money by a female assassin. Cue a chase and Bond shagging the doctor to get cleared for duty.
   Q introduces his clumsy successor (J. Cleese). King's daughter, Electra, was kidnapped, but escaped, and the ranson was the dollar equivalent of the £50 notes used to blow up her father, who went to his pal M for help. The bad guy, Rennard, ended up with a bullet moving around in his head, making him stronger but destined to kill him. He's back and after Electra again.
   Off to Azerbaijan, where the natives are revolting against the King pipeline. Cue a chase on skis and a bit of an avalanche. Then Electra drops a million bucks in a casino. Bond stands in for Davidov to visit a bomb factory in Kazakhstan, where Rennard steals a nuke. Bond saves Dr. Jones, a lady nuclear expert, from being blown up with the site.
   M foolishly goes to join Electra and ends up a prisoner. Bond & Dr. Jones take a trip in the pipeline to sort out a bomb. Meanwhile, beside the Caspian Sea, Bond harasses the casino owner then plays tag with a chopper with a tree-trimmer gadget. He deduces that the plan is to put plutonium from the stolen nuke in a nuclear submarine's reactor and take out all oil pipelines north of the King pipeline.
   M sends out a distress signal. Bond has to escape from Electra's strangling chair; with the casino guy's help; then he shoots her. Then he invades the sub in search of Dr. Jones. Rennard is trashed and so is his sub. At the end, Bond gets to shag Dr. Jones and M gets to disapprove.

Wyvern (2009) Something escaped from a melting glacier and chomped a guy out fishing in Alaska. There was a festival in a nearby town. (Jaws plot warning!) The doctor disappeared next. An ancient hunter told the sheriff about a near miss with a flying monster. The sheriff thought it was Alaskan Midnight Sun Madness. Then he found the doctor's arm with wristwatch.
   The sheriff called a town meeting to tell everyone to be careful but the Solstice Festival remained on. General Hammond, who moved to Alaska after retiring from the SGC, thought it was an invasion of Reptilian Aliens. The monster landed on the radio station and wrecked local communications.
   The old hunter realized it was a Norse wyvern released from the glacier by the Great Global Warming swindle. The sheriff was chomped, leaving Jake, the damaged ice road trucker, in charge. A radio call for help got as far as an idiot. Surprise! The doctor wasn't dead; he was armless in the monster's nest. The monster used him as bait to try to get more lunch.
   Jake & his gang found the nest and grabbed a surviving egg after General Hammond shot the rest to bits. Jake put it on a tractor unit for a big rig, and drove it over a cliff, bailing out at the last minute, to finish off the monster.