The One (2001)

Starring: Jet Li

Plot Summary: It's like the Matrix but more.

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Some might call The One a cynical retread of The Matrix just because it's a dark scifi movie about a man, trying to become The One, decked out in tight black clothing, who speaks in the slow, deliberate cadence of a non-native English speaker. However, once you give it a chance, you realize that in addition to the fact that one Jet Li is worth about three and a half Keanu Reeveses, The One so much more than just The Matrix. It manages to take the best aspects from The Matrix, Highlander, and the TV show Sliders.

The premise of The One hinges on the concept of parallel universes, a physics concept first theorized by Star Trek. There exists not only the single universe we live in, rather a series of 125 parallel universes, or a "multi-verse" if you will. In each universe in the "multi-verse" there exists a version of you, who is almost identical to you except having a minor variation of your name. In our universe, Jet Li plays Gabe Law, an officer with the LAPD. In another universe, Jet Li plays Gabriel Yulaw, an ex-officer with the Multi-Verse Authorities (MVA), who is evil.

Well, technically Evil Jet Li has only recently become evil. He is a native of the one universe that mastered transport between universes within the "multi-verse." It involves wormholes and CGI effects from the Lawnmower Man. He worked for the MVA regulating travel between universes, sort of like Timecop except using a really fancy PDA. Two years ago in another universe, Evil Jet Li had to kill Random Other Jet Li in self defense. As predicted by Star Trek, this tore the hell out of the space-time continuum. The energy linking all the Jet Lis in the universe was disrupted, and the power (and in all likelihood chi) of Random Other Jet Li was distributed evenly among the 124 Surviving Jet Lis. They all became stronger, faster, and smarter.

The discovery of this Highlander Corollary to the Star Trek Theorem turned Evil Jet Li evil, and he quit the force to pursue a full-time career of killing all the other Surviving Jet Lis in order to become The One. The One would either be a "god" or a "singularity" destroying the entire "multi-verse." Evil Jet Li pretends not to care either way, but seems to be hoping for the first one. His former partner, Roedecker (played by Delroy Lindo, who had previously collaborated with Jet on the loving tribute to Oakland, CA, that was Romeo Must Die) now pursues him across the "multi-verse" to prevent him from becoming The One. Not with much success, though, since as of the opening sequence Evil Jet Li has dispatched 122 of the 123 Surviving Jet Lis, leaving only him and Good Jet Li (in our universe) alive, each with the combined strength of their fallen brethren. This complicates the apprehension of Evil Jet Li, because now killing Evil Jet Li will just make Good Jet Li into The One.

Roedecker and his rookie partner Funsch, played by Transporter star Jason Statham, pursue Evil Jet Li into our universe with orders to arrest and exile him to the Hades Universe, apparently an entire parallel universe sealed off and converted to a giant prison (which offers an enticing sequel prospect: Kurt Russell in Escape From Hades Universe). Failing that, they must simultaneously kill both Evil Jet Li and Good Jet Li, to prevent either of them from becoming a god and/or destroying the "multi-verse."

The two find Evil Jet Li just in time to foil his assassination attempt, and then explain the situation to an understandably confused Good Jet Li. They vow to protect him, failing to mention the "killing him" aspect of Plan B. Roedecker and Funsch then agree to split up and trail Evil and Good Jet Li, respectively. Thus begins the gripping race for the first major character death between the smartmouth rookie and the sole black man in an action movie.

The black guy wins, indicating that Roedecker must've held the "four days to retirement" tiebreaker. Roedecker confronts Evil Jet Li, loses his gun, and proceeds to fight him unarmed. It is just as the ancient general and essayist Sun Tzu said: "That's what you get." In this case, that's what you get for challenging a man with the strength of sixty two and a half Jet Lis in hand-to-hand combat.

Thankfully, the action choreography takes a firm stand against subtlety and nuance. People paid good money to watch superhuman Jet Lis battle for the universe. There can be no "over the top." The only thing better than Jet Li picking up a police motorcycle and using it as a blunt weapon is Jet Li swinging a police motorcycle in each hand. In a similar vein, the use of slow motion made popular by The Matrix is perfected in The One. When Evil Jet Li flings a cop through midair, the film speed slows to a crawl, allowing us to watch the super-fast Jet sprint over and kick his ass on the way down. This is the gift that The One gave to Hollywood: What was once mere hyperbole is now movie reality.

But seeing Evil Jet Li fling motor vehicles through the air, travel through wormholes, and kill dozens of innocent bystanders isn't really why we watch this movie. We watch this movie to see Evil Jet Li fight Good Jet Li, preferably in a building with a maddeningly intricate floorplan of catwalks and staircases and filled with large, explosion-prone equipment. Thankfully, that is exactly what we get in the wonderfully scripted finale. Granted, there are some people who would say that the first hour of the film is nothing but a drawn out prelude to this fight scene, but this neglects the ten-minute sequence where the two Jet Lis practice their contrasting forms of wushu. This chops up the plot development into two easy-to-digest half-hour segments.

Evil Jet Li sets the finale into motion by killing Good Jet Li's wife, thus establishing conflict beyond the trying to kill Good Jet Li and dominate/destroy the "multi-verse" thing. As a result Good Jet Li is driven into a suicidal rage and all-consuming desire for revenge, both of which, as hero, he is required to have. Thus they meet in a large factory with three stories of catwalks and twelve-inch pipes holding a mysterious green liquid, which according to Hollywood bylaws must be acid. The two Jet Lis fight at length, denting, rupturing, and detonating various sections of the plant.

Safety Note: Although at first the plant appears deserted, five minutes into the fight a generator is damaged and the foreman runs out to evacuate everyone. This indicates that "flying superhuman Chinese wushu masters fighting to the death" needs to be added to the list of emergency procedures.

Even though the two Jet Lis have the exact same strength and ability, the fight ends in a deadlock. Funsch springs into action with his wormhole-opening PDA, flinging all three of them into Funsch and Evil Jet Li's universe. After a brief misunderstanding when the sworn protectors of the "multi-verse" accidentally drag Good Jet Li off for exile because Evil Jet Li tells them to, they square it away and exile Evil Jet Li to the Hades Universe.

The Agency then tries to send Good Jet Li back to our universe for a life on the run from the cops, but Funsch intervenes and quickly changes the coordinates to a universe where Good Jet Li is a free man, the parallel version of his wife is still alive, there's no smog in L.A., and presumably people walk around town handing out free cotton candy. As the "multi-verse"-crossed lovers meet again for the first time, we fade out, content in the knowledge that Good Jet Li's life will be back on track right after he clears up the legal red tape in that universe surrounding his previous murder of himself by himself.

I would have to say that The One is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Fatal Error (1999)

Starring:
Janine Turner
Robert Wagner

Plot Summary: Computer virus goes on a killing spree.

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Science fiction is the art of asking "What if?" In the case of the small-screen gem Fatal Error, the question is "What if a computer virus evolved to the point that it could transmit itself to human beings and kill them?" One might respond to this question "Of course not. How stupid is that? That's downright retarded. No. No way." Not director Armand Mastroianni, though, who instead weaves that question into a taut thriller that forces us to reexamine the role of digital cable in our lives.

We open on a corporate teleconference in the city of Seattle, as played by Vancouver. As the long late night meeting is getting underway, everyone is killed in a freak case of spontaneous human calcification. Now everyone has been in a meeting or two during which you prayed for the sweet release of death, but human calcification is not the way to go. First, it seems quite painful by the way the executives were writhing and screaming. Second, it must be very confusing, since your final thoughts on this earth are, "Hey, where is all this calcium coming from?"

The janitor on duty sees the room full of writhing executives slowly and painfully turning to chalk, and is understandably driven bat-shit insane. He wanders, disoriented, out onto the street in the early Canadian dawn. Here he is met by our hero, Nick Baldwin (played by Melrose Place veteran Antonio Sabato Jr.), a brilliant paramedic who doesn't play by the rules. Formerly a brilliant doctor, he lost his license because he didn't play by the rules. Now he operates an ambulance and proves his dedication to saving lives by illegally practicing medicine without a license at the drop of a hat.

He meets and is quickly ushered off the scene by Dr. Samantha Carter, played by Janine Turner (Maggie O'Connell of Northern Exposure Fame, here with longer, redder hair and 30% more spunk). She leads a crack Army team that is expert in biological outbreaks but very bad at crowd control, as Nick is able to just follow them into their base of operations. After refusing to leave O'Connell's side for nearly an hour, she is worn down by his rebellious charms and drafts him on her team.

Despite being outfitted with all the state-of-the-art biohazard lab equipment, including a computer that can take any known virus and simulate a billion years of evolution to try and match it to the known samples (it appears to be a Pentium), the crack Army team has nothing. The virus strikes, turns the entire body to chalk, and then vanishes. The only upside is that Nick and O'Connell can walk around the lab without bunny suits.

It's not until the computer operator mysteriously dies of the deadly chalk disease within a sealed room and Nick has had a few drinks in the hotel bar that the pieces come together. All of the cases involved people watching a beta release of a cable/internet/telecom package. No one believes Nick's theory that computers can give people viral diseases by flashing complicated subliminal graphics, FOX News notwithstanding, until they notice the large and gratuitous HAL 9000 red eye atop each cable unit. The director even suggests through red-filtered fish-eye shots that the cable unit can actually see its victims through the lens, although we're not sure how accounting let them slip a camera and evil artificial intelligence into the budget for a digital cable box.

Further proof that the technology is behind the deaths comes in the form of Robert Wagner playing the Digicron CEO, Albert Teal. It is refreshing to see that the successes as Number Two in the Austin Powers franchise didn't make him too big for a small art house project like Fatal Error. Robert delivers the role with a cutthroat menace, like Bill Gates with a handsome sleaze. He is pushing for a timely release of the telecom package and isn't going to hold up the billion-dollar project just because it will unleash a plague that will destroy every human being who wants 500 channels, no matter what an unlicensed doctor has theorized in a hotel bar.

At this point the director reveals a series of cunning plot twists using the time-honored technique of having the villain explain how and why he did everything. Ace computer programmer and new VP Ned Henderson (played by David Lewis, who despite all indications is not the illegitimate son of Ed Begley, Jr.) has a conversation with a former executive and explains that he was charged with writing a virus that would destroy all of this former executive's code. Ned went one step further and designed the virus so it could mutate and kill the user by violating the laws of physics and/or biology. A series of flashbacks shows us that Ned was able to code the deadly virus in safety by wearing welding goggles. The protective lenses were able to filter out the virus using science.

Ned's dream of turning a digital cable system into a tool of wholesale slaughter makes sense thanks to some just-in-the-nick-of-time character development where we discover that a combination of paternal disapproval and a Stanford education has led to a desire to destroy all of mankind through the medium of combined cable television/internet services. Having thus clarified the horror of the picture to the former executive, Ned kills him by strapping him down in front of his computer.

Once the team determines that Ned is the evil genius and Robert Wagner merely a fetching red herring, O'Connell decides to charge solo into Ned's basement, much like in Silence of the Lambs except Jodie Foster had a gun. O'Connell is promptly caught from behind. Ned duct tapes her into a chair in front of the computer, thus ensuring her death the moment she opens her eyes. Secure in the knowledge that she has to open her eyes sooner or later, Ned wanders off. Luckily, Nick rescues her just in time before the computer notices that her eyes are closed and starts beating her to death with the mouse.

At the grand unveiling of the technology that would eat Seattle/Vancouver, Nick chases down Ned deep into the cable internet headquarters. Meanwhile, O'Connell is able to convince Robert that his technology is flawed after the teleprompter tries to kill him. Nick finds the control center, which apparently was built on the site of a 1950s physics lab. Using nothing more than an oscilloscope and a handy puddle of water, Nick is able to knock out the digital cable system and kill Ned, thus closing the circle of life and saving the world from consolidated telecommunications packages.

I would have to say that Fatal Error is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Exit Wounds (2001)

Starring:
Steven Seagal
DMX
Tom Arnold

Plot Summary:

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A young rapper with aspirations of becoming a rapper/actor must hitch his wagon to a proven box office star. For DMX in 2001, Steven Seagal was that star. They combine for Exit Wounds, Hollywood's long awaited Detroit martial arts cop thriller fusion masterpiece.

We open on a stump speech by the Vice President on gun control. The people of Detroit promptly try to kill him. Specifically, the VP's convoy is ambushed on a bridge by a militia group using a fake police escort, a yellow delivery van, and a red helicopter with a smiley face painted on the side. Throw in some very advanced-looking explosives and a whole lot of machine guns, and you have the biggest budget assassination attempt ever. It just can't fail. Except they haven't accounted for one man: Steven Seagal. The Secret Service closes off the bridge, but they haven't accounted for Steven Seagal either. The delivery van driver/assassin definitely doesn't account for Seagal, and is shot for his troubles. Seagal steals the van, runs over half of the militia members, and shoots the rest, in a coy nod to the growing popularity of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. To ensure the safety of the Vice President, Seagal throws him over the bridge, despite protests that he couldn't swim and was several stories above the water.

After saving the VP and making the world safe for gun control, we would think that Seagal would return to fanfare and medals. Instead, he is dressed down just because he "disobeyed federal orders" and "threw the Vice President of the United States off a bridge." Seagal may be a loose cannon that doesn't play by the rules, but you can't argue with the results. You can however, transfer him to the 15th precinct, a violent and corrupt hellhole even by Detroit standards.

Even worse, Seagal is sent to anger therapy. You'd think that nothing kills momentum like group therapy, but that's before you discover that group includes Tom Arnold. After destroying the desk he was wedged in as part of a brilliant anger-therapy-outburst-irony/Seagal-fat exacta, Seagal leaves to find a gang of five punks breaking into his truck. He promptly flattens the five heavily armed youths with his bare hands, as is his custom, and turns around to the realization that the anger group has named him their king. Especially enthralled is Tom, whose character I'm sure had a name, and he gushes of Seagal's strength and bravery in a scene with rather impressive homosexual tension. And I've seen Jackass.

Meanwhile, we meet DMX as Latrell Walker, visiting Shaun Rollins, played by Drag-On, in the county jail. In one of the best prison scenes involving two actors with silly names, we learn that Mr. X (possibly Mr. MX, I am not sure what DMX stands for) is on the "outside," taking care of everything for his brother. Assisting Mr. X is his overweight comic sidekick TK, played by Anthony Anderson, notable not only for having a real name, but also for playing the overweight comic sidekick in the 2003 Outback adventure Kangaroo Jack.

We next see TK outside an office building in the middle of the night holding a pair of binoculars. However, instead of the predictable comic peeping tom scene, he is keeping an eye on Mr. MX who is making a heroin deal. Seagal happens to be driving around the area, and decides to savagely beat TK on suspicion of being a black man holding binoculars after midnight. TK responds by shouting out a string of pop-culture references on the top police brutality stories of 2001, which some may argue dates the film, but I say joking about racially-motivated police brutality is timeless. Following standard operating procedures, Seagal handcuffs TK to the grill of his truck and wanders off to check out the drug deal.

Seagal breaks up the drug deal with ruthless efficiency, except for letting Mr. X escape. Unfortunately, it was an undercover drug deal, and Detective Montini promises to have Seagal busted down to directing traffic. This begs the question, if off-duty cops aren't allowed to charge blindly into dangerous situations without calling for backup or telling anyone, how do they expect to fight crime? To make matters worse, TK tears off the grill with his bare hands, thus ruining both Seagal's truck and any chance of a promotional tie-in with Ford.

Matching a soundtrack to the action on screen is a lost art. In recent years the soundtrack has become just another heartless way to make money off a film. At least that's what I thought until I saw a long montage of Steven Seagal directing traffic to James Brown's "I Feel Good."

Getting back to the plot, a well-trained team breaks into the evidence locker to steal fifty kilos of heroin. Johnny-on-the-Spot Seagal is visiting the hall of records in the same building, so he beats SWAT onto the scene. After saving the janitor, Seagal is rewarded with a new beat and a new partner George (Ghost Ship's Isaiah Washington).

Having regained his job for several hours, Seagal decides to rip shit up at Mr. X's business front, a dance club headed by TK. The booty shaking is interrupted by a gripping, if not entirely explained, fight between Seagal and the bouncers. While they beat each other with surprisingly deadly objects decorating the club, TK screams encouraging nonsense at his goons. However, three goons armed with iron chains and fluorescent lights are no match for a master of the deadly arts, and Seagal has soon broken into the main office so he can rummage around. George waits outside so he doesn't have to commit any felonies.

The illegal search and seizure leads to Mr. MX's name. The always savvy Seagal, knowing that judges tend to get hung up on legal technicalities like search warrants, takes the name to an incognito Tom Arnold in a strip club. In one of the better Tom-Arnold-receiving-a-lap-dance sequences I've seen, we learn that although he is a morning talk show host, he has deep connections to the local private eye community. We also learn that with a big fake mustache and low lighting, Tom Arnold looks a lot like Cheech Marin. Makes you think.

The dirt that Tom digs up is this: Mr. DMX's brother was arrested for heroin possession under sketchy circumstances, but is the beneficiary of a huge trust fund established by Mr. X. This money comes from Mr. MX's fortune as an "Internet start-up billionaire," but neither Tom nor Seagal believe this because (a) Mr. DMX is black, and (b) his name is an acronym. So they conclude the more plausible version that Mr. DMX invented the Ebay of heroin.

At this point director Andrzej Bartkowiak, hip-hop/action crossover specialist, lets us know that it was a bunch of crooked cops who pulled off the drug heist. Specifically, it was every cop in the 15th except Seagal and his partner George. The cops let Seagal know by grabbing him off the street and driving off in an unmarked van. They threaten him with a large syringe, presumably because the van is a rental and if they shoot him and mess up the van they'll get in trouble. Seagal asks if the syringe is "to make me talk?" and Montini responds, "No, it's to make you die." Much like Goldfinger, this exchange was written to reassure the audience that Seagal is not actually in any danger. Despite being handcuffed to the inside wall of the van, Seagal is able to force the syringe of liquid death into the driver, savagely beat the three other cops, free himself from the handcuffs, and jump clear from the van before the now very dead driver crashes and burns.

Feeling confident, Seagal confronts Mr. DMX, and we finally reach the pinnacle the movie has been building towards: Steven Seagal beating the crap out of a rapper half his age. As Seagal has decades and decades more practice, things look bleak for Mr. MX, until he abruptly stops fighting and invites Seagal into his apartment building. Showing once again that politeness wins over even the most psychotic cops, Seagal agrees and is shown that Mr. DMX is not a heroin dealer as was assumed. He really is just a typical useless Internet billionaire. The only difference is that he amuses himself in his retirement by exposing the corruption of the establishment. Incidentally, that's also printed on most of Mr. DMX's album liners. He is surrounded by a crack team of high tech surveillance experts, including TK and a sorely underutilized Eva Mendes. The culmination of the sting, the purchase of the stolen heroin from the cops for $5 million the next night, will be the greatest episode of Punk'd ever. Seagal offers backup.

The cops have developed the most innovative smuggling operation in movie history. They have taken control of a t-shirt factory, and invented a process in which each shirt is soaked in a dilute solution of heroin and sealed in plastic. All Mr. X will have to do is wash, separate, and purify the heroin stains from a few million t-shirts. I find it surprising that the DEA allowed the film to suggest this method to the drug community, but I guess this is just one of those sacrifices of public safety for the sake of art.

The gripping finale involves gun play, kickboxing, George coming in with what seems to be the National Guard as backup, TK getting shot in the leg (surprisingly, not by Seagal), some very convincing bluescreen shots of Seagal on a motorcycle, and a fire sprinkler scene with Mr. MX symbolic of both his baptismal cleansing and his being very hot.

Mr. DMX delivers the evidence to the Chief of Police (played by Bill Duke, veteran of both Commando and Predator). Although it will not result in any investigation since every cop in Detroit besides Seagal and George has been killed, it does clear his brother.

Then we see what separates Exit Wounds from your run of the mill action film. The director takes the time to wrap up all the loose ends, and as TK is being lifted into a waiting ambulance, he spots Tom (soon to be a first-ballot inductee to the overweight comic sidekick Hall of Fame) and exclaims his love for Tom and his show. Tom offers to do TK's surgery live, and one jump cut later, we find the two have become co-hosts. At long last, Tom Arnold has found a partner he can share a highly ambiguous relationship. The credits roll as they joke, and laugh, and tease, and fall in love.

I would have to say that Exit Wounds if the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Starring:
Keanu Reeves
Ice-T
"Beat" Takeshi
Dolph Lundgren

Plot Summary: Can Ice-T keep Keanu's brain from melting in this dystopian sci-fi thriller?

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It is the second decade of the 21st Century. Any movie that starts out like that, well, you know it's not going to be a musical. Most of the scenery will be futuristic, and by futuristic I mean dark grey. There will be very little sunlight and very little good news. Sure enough, we open on a world where bio-mechanical implants augment human strength, speed, and intelligence, but also cause a disease known as Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS) to run rampant throughout the globe, not to mention completely ruining the Olympics. Corporations like the drug-maker PharmaCom have aligned with the yakuza crime syndicates as part of a massive paradigm shift towards more killing of people, and are locked in constant battle with a vigilante movement known as the LoTeks, essentially modern-day Luddites in hipper outfits.

And in this futuristic dystopia, Keanu Reeves is Johnny, a mnemonic courier that smuggles data in his brain implant. Just a simple boy from the big city, Keanu travels the globe, staying in luxurious suites at five-star hotels with expensive champagne and even more expensive hookers as he tries to scrape together enough money to afford an operation to remove the implant, recover his memories, and get out of the harsh, unforgiving business. His reptilian agent Ralphie (pardon me, Ralfi, and I'm sure there's an accent or an umlaut or something) offers him one last job that could get him out of those penthouses for good and back to the farm, or something.

Despite the fact that Rälfí speaks with a thick German accent and in such a hoarse whisper that he can't possibly not be evil, Keanu trusts him. He leaves his Beijing hotel and wades through a throng of Chinese protesters, all wearing white dust masks. Apparently, even in a futuristic dystopia, Asians are still hypochondriacs.

To max out his storage capacity at 160 GB, Keanu transfers his childhood memories and three-quarters of his personality to some kind of futuristic Zip drive. Personally, I would have erased all memory of puberty instead, but perhaps Keanu didn't have awkward years. Damn good-looking bastard.

We meet Keanu's clients, a bunch of geeky former PharmaCom researchers who immediately start warning him that they have 320 GB of data and if he doesn't have sufficient capacity he will suffer synaptic seepage as the data overloads his neurons, resulting in death within 48 hours. Keanu, clearly overwhelmed by all the talk of neural physiology and numbers that are bigger than other numbers, brushes the nerds off and prepares the data transfer.

Keanu uploads the sensitive data from the 3-inch optical disc into his brain. This form of transport is necessary because apparently due to a Great Disaster in the Past, the technology of pockets and briefcases were lost forever. It also seems to be impossible for Keanu to duct-tape the CD to his ass, but the creative element behind the film refrains from overtelling the story.

As is often the case, before the geeks can fax the encryption code to the delivery point, the PharmaCom yakuza attack. Along with the usual large, martial-arts-proficient, gun-toting men, the crew is headed by the one known as Shinji. Shinji is armed with the traditional "glowing red wire of death," a whip made out of plasma or evil or something that he pulls out of an artificial thumb and can cut just through just about any material known to man. He is a grandmaster of this weapon, meaning he can use it without slicing his own arm off. The yakuza dispatch the nerds with deceptive efficiency, since they allow Keanu, the real target, to fight them off armed with nothing but a towel rod from the bathroom.

Meanwhile the yakuza president of PharmaCom, Takahashi, tries to determine what to do about this breach of security, or more precisely, who should sever, freeze, and return Keanu's head for data recovery. Played by Beat Takeshi, (known for his stylized-violence Japanese epics including Violent Cop and Violent Topiary Gardener) he can even look menacing when sitting cross-legged on a desk talking into a videophone. He does this while hiring the assassin known as the Street Preacher, played by Dolph Lundgren, the thinking man's Arnold Schwarzenegger. He has the spirituality of Pat Robertson, the brawn of Dolph Lundgren, and the violent psychosis of Pat Robertson.

Keanu is able to evade his yakuza killers and make it to the drop-off point in the urban wasteland that is Newark, New Jersey. This goes to show that even in a futuristic dystopia, Jersey jokes are still gold. However, Keanu is in a bad position. Not only is he on the run with a potentially fatal overdose of raw data in his head without the encryption code needed to extract it, he is consumed by a need to try to negotiate with the corporate gangsters that are trying to kill him. About the only thing that could help would be to find a hot female bodyguard, preferably one wearing nothing but black tights and a chain mail shirt.

Enter Jane, played by Dina Meyer, better known as the actress in Starship Troopers that agreed to the nude scenes. She finds Keanu right after he is recaptured by Shinji, and in exchange for ten grand, agrees to save his life and develop sexual tension. Once safe, Jane promptly suffers a seizure - the dreaded Black Shakes, which is "street" for NAS. So Keanu hauls her twitching, yet somehow still a little alluring, body to her "doctor," a man named Spider.

Dr. Spider, played by punk rocker, music producer, and ranting machine Henry Rollins, occupies a warehouse that looks a lot like Dr. Frankenstein's lab except dirtier. He starts to treat Jane but decides to first explode into a freestyle rant in Keanu's general direction about how the Black Shakes are not actually caused by the myriad bio-electronic implants in people, but by information overload from too much technology, possibly orchestrated by The Man. And if anyone is going to know the secret cause of NAS, it's some guy named Spider. Keanu is understandably confused, since he never expected the global epidemic of the century to be the result of CNN and FoxNews and their damned tickers.

After taking a look at Keanu's condition, Dr. Spider decides to drive him to a hospital in his Mad Max issue garbage truck. At Newark's Our Lady of Festering Decay, Dr. Spider is a respected surgeon, inasmuch as he gets to wear a white labcoat and carry around a clipboard. He then reveals the contents of Johnny's data: a cure for NAS. All the medical underground has been able to come up with is how to merely treat the symptoms. Well, that or not implanting shit inside their brains in the first place, but a cure would be a lot more convenient. And if Keanu would just submit to a routine power-tool lobotomy, then the world would have that cure.

This movie presents one of the classic scruples questions: would you save humanity if it meant having Henry Rollins perform brain surgery on you with a hacksaw and a melon baller? In one of Keanu's less heroic moments, he declines, not wanting to risk his emotional range or ability to enunciate. Before they can discuss alternatives, Dolph plows onto the screen. Dr. Spider tells Jane and Keanu to run to J-Bone and talk to Jones, while he holds off Dolph, and by hold off I mean get brutally beaten and tortured by.

Keanu and Jane seek out J-Bone, but not before Keanu tries once again to negotiate with PharmaCom. Keanu is not one to hold multiple assassination attempts against someone, and perhaps I'm just a jaded old film critic, but I find that refreshing. It's also all too easy to understand, as Keanu realizes this is about the only way he and Takeshi will be able to do a scene together. So Keanu tells the yakuza drug-makers to meet him at the LoTek Secret Headquarters, giving them directions and some tips on how best to assault the compound.

There is a slight delay at the LoTek Secret Headquarters when due to a cultural misunderstanding, the LoTeks drop a flaming Volkswagen bug on Dr. Spider's garbage truck, a typical example of futuristic Jersey humor. Keanu then is greeted by J-Bone, played by the beyond-hip Ice-T. He sports a frizzy 80s layered look not seen since Lea Thompson in the 1986 epic Howard the Duck, and yet still looks like a badass. Remarkable.

Despite calling Keanu a "suit" in the same tone of voice that he would use for "honkey," Ice-T seems to take quite a shine to Keanu, in that he doesn't kill him. He even takes Keanu over to meet Jones, the Six Million Dollar Dolphin. Surgically enhanced, from the looks of it with a chainsaw, and trained to hack enemy computers through submarine hulls, Jones offers to hack Keanu's brain to retrieve the cure for NAS with a much lower chance of the lobotomy side-effect. Spotting an obvious upgrade from Henry Rollins, Keanu goes with the dolphin.

It is at this inopportune moment that the yakuza decide to attack the LoTek Secret Headquarters with bazookas and automatic rifles. The LoTeks are armed with crossbows. Incidentally, this is also why the yakuza work in pristine high-rises and the LoTeks live underneath a bridge on the outskirts of Newark. The brain hack is interrupted because everyone in the movie shows up to kill Keanu. Even people who wanted to kill Keanu in other movies show up. First Shinji comes after Keanu with his glowing red wire of death, then Dolph rumbles in, presumably after torturing Dr. Spider into revealing where Keanu was going, and then torturing pedestrians in Newark for directions. Keanu is able to dispatch them in sufficiently ironic fashion, and then confronts Takeshi.

Now, some directors would be concerned about working with an actor like Takeshi, whose English is not so good. Luckily, Takeshi has Keanu to lean on. Their long-awaited scene begins with a standoff where Takeshi takes a few slashes at Keanu with his katana, but his heart clearly isn't in it. Takeshi hands over the encryption code, as he and Keanu communicate their mutual weariness and desire for a peaceful resolution using surprisingly little dialogue.

The encryption code is not quite complete, meaning Keanu must still hack his brain. This is incredibly difficult, as the data is chock full of viruses, and more importantly, because computer hacking sequences are notoriously difficult to film in an entertaining manner. Incidentally, this is why hacking was combined with oral sex in the 2001 opus Swordfish. Director Robert Longo flexes his directing muscles when he renders the hacking sequence in state-of-the-art computer graphics, where Keanu transforms himself into the Slim Jim guy in order to confuse the viruses, portrayed by laser cannons from a Nintendo game. Keanu is able to break the encryption (which was apparently based on the first level of Contra), releasing the cure for NAS and giving the world the best animated self-brain-hacking sequence in movie history. Ice-T immediately begins broadcasting the 320 GB of data on all channels satisfied that someone, somewhere out there is TiVo-ing it.

Thus having made the futuristic dystopia safe for love, freedom, and bio-mechanical manipulations that are an affront to god and man, Keanu falls into the arms of Jane as an approving Ice-T looks on. I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

The Glimmer Man (1996)

Starring:
Steven Seagal
Keenen Ivory Wayans

Plot summary: Steven and Keenan Ivory are together again for the first time.

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I am often accused of being a sentimental man, old-fashioned to a fault. I admit it, as clichéd as it may sound, my favorite movie is still "Them!" I miss the days when Steven Seagal weighed less than 300 pounds and Keenen Ivory Wayans had a career. So to be transported back to 1996 when all that were true is a film experience not to be passed up.

Steven Seagal is Jack Cole, a New York cop who has atoned for his shady past by adopting a New Age outlook. He is a Buddhist, an ass-whomping Buddhist, but a Buddhist nonetheless. The first we see of him, he is wearing a multi-toned gold lamé Mandarin jacket designed by MC Escher, looking like a kung fu pimp. He moves to L.A. and meets Keenen Ivory Wayans as Jim Campbell, in a rare break from directing his brothers' films.

It's New York-Los Angeles, black-white, East-West, martial arts-guns, funny-unfunny, it's every character conflict ever faced by two partners. Keenen brings to the table his uncanny comic timing that made him the best thing on In Living Color after Damon Wayans, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, David Alan Grier, T'Keyah 'Crystal' Keymáh, and SW1. Seagal brings his martial arts and the uncanny ability to communicate any emotion using a series of pained winces.

Seagal and Keenen are assigned to solving the "Family Man" serial killings, marked by the shooting and mutilations of entire households at a time. Since this would make for a pretty heavy movie, Seagal instead does everything but investigate the killings. First he intervenes in a hostage situation at a Catholic school involving future Fast and Furious star Johnny Strong as Johnny Deverell, troubled young man with gun. His mental issues are understandable since he has just lost his girlfriend Millie, played by the absurdly endowed WB star Nikki Cox. At 18. In a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Seagal saves Johnny before the SWAT team arrives by tackling him through a plate glass window, leaving us all to think, "We had better see Millie again later in this movie."

Operating without orders on another department's turf and potentially causing the death of the suspect, himself, students, nun, and sweet, sweet Millie may be grounds for discipline against the average cop, but not Seagal. His most notable case in New York was another serial killer case with an ironic nickname, and when he was trying to apprehend the suspect without backup, he had to shoot him to death to bring him in. Seagal is, in a sense, Dirty Harry with fewer facial expressions.

Johnny's father Frank Deverell (played by Shawshank Redemption warden Bob Gunton) is the richest man in town, and as per buddy cop movie regulations, is therefore evil. He offers Seagal a bribe to get his son off the hook, which of course is turned down. This is the cue for the evil mastermind to overreact in a patently insane manner. Deverell comes through nicely by ordering five of his Russian mobster friends to set up an ambush for Seagal. Russian mobsters is widely feared and heavily armed, but have two fatal weaknesses. They have very large, obvious tattoos on their arms and tend to stand way too close to people they plan on shooting. This allows Seagal to disarm all five of them with one slash of his credit card, which would inspire Jackie Chan to choreograph fight scenes using ordinary objects, except Chan prefers ordinary objects that are somewhat plausible as weapons.

Despite the best efforts of Seagal to distract us from the plot, the director (John Gray, in the midst of the difficult made-for-TV movie to real movie to made-for-TV movie transition) reminds us of it. The Family Man strikes again, killing Seagal's ex-wife and new husband. Coincidentally, these Family Man killings started soon after the arrival of Seagal in L.A., and share some similarities to the rash of New York killings that Seagal was investigating. Forensics even finds a latent fingerprint on the corpse, left by Seagal. There can only be one logical conclusion: Seagal is the victim of an intricate conspiracy in which an assassin, possibly CIA or ex-CIA, is performing copycat crimes of local serial killers and has a synthetic fingerprint of Seagal's, probably identical in design to the one James Bond used in Diamonds are Forever, all in order to frame and discredit him.

And just as you suspect, there is a CIA conspiracy, headed by Brian Cox as Mr. Smith, a man so mysterious we never figure out his first name. Brian Cox has the distinction, from the 1986 movie Manhunter, of playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter before it was cool. Mr. Smith is involved in a small business partnership with Deverell smuggling chemical weapons out of Russia, but admirably, doesn't let that put a damper on his positive life outlook. Whether he's ordering the death of someone who knows too much or just finalizing the deal to cause unspeakable horror for a profit, in every scene he's enjoying a nice meal or lounging by a swimming pool. If not for the fact that he's clearly supposed to be evil, you'd never know it.

Seagal gets a lead on the Family Man killer. Well, not so much a lead as the actual suspect Christopher Maynard, played by Stephen Tobolowsky, the future Sammy Jankis in Memento. He arranges a meeting in a church to tell Seagal that some of the killings were not done by him, perhaps as part of an intricate conspiracy involving some CIA or ex-CIA agents. It is a very tense scene, with Christopher holding a gun on Seagal. Seagal, using a time-honored police negotiation tactic, slowly pulls his gun out of his back pocket, and shoots Christopher in the face.

A victim of the new LAPD no-tolerance policy for homicides, Seagal is suspended, on the verge of being arrested, and has the Russian mob out to get him. He has to find out the truth the only way he knows how: by savagely beating every CIA spook in LA. Luckily, they all hang out in one obscure Chinese restaurant. Seagal confronts Mr. Smith and we learn that he used to work for Mr. Smith, which is why he has no personal records of any kind before the NYPD. It would probably be less suspicious to create some false records rather than just destroying everything before age 25, but I am not learned in national security.

It is often said that Seagal shines so bright it is hard for another star to share the screen with him. And for the first half of the film, you have to fear that Keenen's talents will be wasted. But just when you think he's going to pull a Danny Glover, Keenen starts doing stuff. Granted, it's more a matter of people doing stuff to him, but it's still action. Deverell, not doing so well at the elimination of Seagal, sends a man to kill Keenen in his apartment. As is usually the case when a hit man is sent to someone's apartment, it turns into a fistfight, ending with Keenen driving off the assailant. While he's still lying on the ground, Keenen sees that the gas line to his stove has been cut, and a spark is tracing its way back to the source. Displaying reflexes that didn't even show in his seminal work I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, he is able to scramble to his feet and beat the fireball in the 40-yard dash out of his home.

Not to be outdone, Seagal takes the next assassination attempt scene. In it, Internal Affairs comes to arrest him, but in reality they are Russian mobsters. We discover this when one mobster's sleeve slides up his arm a quarter of an inch, revealing the enormous Russian mobster tattoo. Sadly, Russian mafia bylaws state that everyone must have the enormous Russian mobster tattoo, even those doing undercover work. Seagal fights with the driver long enough to cause the car to hit a ramp bought at the Dukes of Hazzard fire sale and flip over onto the roof. Luckily, Seagal is very tough, so he is able to recover from rolling in a car without a seat belt quick enough to kick out the back window and slide out before the car hits a gas tanker truck.

On a side note, if I am ever fortunate enough to star in a buddy cop movie, the first thing I'm going to do is clear all the tanker trucks out of the city. They're nothing but trouble.

There is finally a break in the case that doesn't directly implicate Seagal, so they follow it up to find Johnny as the movie turns full circle. Which is a good thing, because full circle also brings us back to Millie for a precious few moments. What comes next are a few scenes with neither incredible action scenes nor beautiful WB stars, but do serve to connect the Russian mob, the Family Man killings, and global warming back to Deverell and Mr. Smith. First Keenen and Seagal kidnap Mr. Smith and interrogate him by shooting him in the foot, after which Mr. Smith says to Seagal, "God, I miss you." See, you just can't help but admire that positivity. The interrogation fills in all the gaps in the plot, which frees up Seagal and Keenen to make arrangements for the final showdown with Deverell's gang at a local apartment building.

The final sequence is a little confusing, so here are the highlights. Seagal and Keenen go after Deverell's top henchman Donald (John Jackson, proving in this role that no matter what kind of violent badass you are, the name Donald just isn't threatening). Seagal charges blindly into a room full of heavily armed men with nothing but the knowledge that he is impervious to bullets. Donald survives the shootout and runs off. Keenen promptly gets shot by Donald and falls out of the fourth story window. Seagal looks down from the roof and sees Keenen dangling from a ledge. Thankfully, someone in the apartment building stores their rock climbing gear up there so Seagal is able to harness himself and repel down a cable to save him. Seagal crashes through a window on the third floor, tosses Keenen in, and proceeds to final showdown on the ground floor. Donald pulls a gun on Seagal, as though this somehow gives him an advantage. Seagal easily slaps the gun pointed at his face out of Donald's hand, setting up a final fistfight that is a loving tribute to the training scenes in Karate Kid. Following standard Seagal operating procedures, he throws the suspect out the window to save the city the troublesome expenses of arrest, trial, and incarceration.

After this triumph of what could arguably be called justice, Keenen is lifted into an ambulance, happy that at least he didn't die in the first ten minutes. The credits roll, and we learn Seagal produced this film. Actually, Seagal has produced about three quarters of the films he's starred in, kind of like the Ross Perot or Steve Forbes of the film industry. Truly a Renaissance man.

I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Five Card Stud (1968)

Starring:
Dean Martin
Robert Mitchum
Roddy McDowell

Plot Summary: Dino is a professional poker player in the Old West. Can he outwit, outshoot, or outcool Robert Mitchum? Of course he can, he's Dino.

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As the credits flash across the western desert landscape, the title theme song is sung by the star, Dean Martin. The crooner's voice is so full-bodied it takes over your brain and you miss all the details of who directed, produced, or did make-up (Henry Hathaway, Joseph Hazen, and Adelbert Acevedo). Dean Martin was such a smooth singer his voice had a nice ass.

We open, predictably, on a five card stud game in the town of Rincon, with the incomparable Dean Martin (as professional gambler Van Morgan) dealing. Sitting to his left in the one seat is Roddy McDowell fresh off his defining performance as Cornelius in Planet of the Apes (as the young and irritating Nick Evers). Also in the game are five extras. Dino passes the deal and goes to the bathroom, which is always a mistake. Any student of the Old West knows that the moment you turn your back on a poker game, the new guy will be caught cheating and the rest of the table will form a lynch mob.

Dino comes out to find the saloon cleared. The bartender, a pre-Mr.-Big-in-Live-and-Let-Die Yaphet Kotto (as the ironically named Little George), informs Dino that they're off lynching the new guy. Dino rushes off to try to stop the madness, leaving Little George to pilfer the cash on the table. He arrives at the bridge just in time to be of no use whatsoever. Roddy McDowell (on second thought, we'll just call him Cornelius since that's what the rest of the world does) has assumed the lead of the mob. Cornelius then pistolwhips Dino from behind and sends him back into town slumped over his horse like Shane.

If there's one thing old Dino learned out on the road with Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack, it's that drinking and gambling is all fun and games until the new guy gets hanged. Then it's time to skip town and find a new game. He goes out to Evers' Ranch to say goodbye to his love interest Nora (played by a Katherine Justice twenty-odd years his junior), sister of Cornelius and daughter of Sig Evers. The elder rancher is played by Denver Pyle (Uncle Jesse of The Dukes of Hazzard fame), who apparently was born looking 75 years old and made a career as the crusty caretaker of a beautiful young brunette.

Dino makes it to Denver and has enough time to play about three hands of poker before Little George shows up to bring the bad news. Shopkeeper Fred Carson was found drowned in a barrel of flour in his own store, and ranch hand Stony Burrow was found strangled with barbed wire out on Evers' Ranch. They were both in on the poker game/lynch mob and Little George fears their killer may come after Dino next. Given this threat from an unknown maniac and the fact that he wanted to leave Rincon, the logical thing for Dino to do is return to face death, thus setting into motion the ultimate prequel: I Know What You Did 130 Summers Ago.

Upon his arrival in Rincon, Dino checks back into his room above the saloon. He unpacks his framed poker hand, showing the king, queen, jack, and ten of diamonds. Little George comments on the famous hand, and wonders aloud what the hole card was. Was it the ace of diamonds? Did he have the royal flush? Dino says the other guy folded, and puts it away. He finds a few things have changed in town. There's a new preacher in town, Reverend Jonathan Rudd, played by Robert Mitchum. In case the fact that he's Robert Mitchum wasn't threatening enough, he carries around a gun and shoots up bars to encourage attendance to the Sunday sermon.

But let's get back to that poker hand. If the other guy folded, he still had some money left. Poker games don't end with a fold, they end when someone loses the last of their money. This means Dino must have stopped the game, had the hand framed, discarded the rest of the deck, and started up again fresh with a new deck. That is balls above and beyond the call of duty.

Businesses are also springing up in the gold-rush town of Rincon. Dino steps into a barbershop for a shave and finds Lily Langford (played by the very blonde and very Swedish Inger Stevens, former star of The Farmer's Daughter) running the place, and a host of beautiful young women employed as barbers. After he gets cleaned up, he notices that in addition to the one-dollar shave and two-and-a-half-dollar haircut, there is a twenty-dollar "miscellaneous." That is a damn good barbershop.

Dino does a little investigating for an hour or two, and then heads right back to the combination barbershop/whorehouse. Realizing that he is Dean Martin, he seduces the madame Lily instead of settling for one of the dime-a-dozen barber/whores. For the rest of the picture he alternates days with her and with Nora, since as twice the man anyone else is, he should have twice the women any other man has.

Afterwards, Dino and Bob Mitchum see each other on the street. Usually, two strangers crossing paths in the middle of the night would probably not even result in eye contact. With two alpha males like Dino and Bob, it immediately becomes a showdown. But before they can figure out what they're having a showdown over, they hear the churchbell ringing. This not being standard operating procedure at 3 in the morning, the two rush in to discover Mace Jones hanged on the cord. Now that three members of the poker game have been killed, Dino really only has to wait until everyone else dies to figure out who the killer is by process of elimination.

At Mace's funeral, Cornelius and Joe Hurley, the two other survivors of the five card stud game, confront Dino. Little George stands by Dino, and for his troubles gets accused of being the murderer by Cornelius. Cornelius then picks a fight, but not being a fool, he picks it with Dino, not Little George. He hits Dino in the face with a shovel, a potted plant and a cross ripped from a nearby grave, and still manages to lose the fight. It's a scene that really makes you wonder what that hole card was.

Joe Hurley, despite being the last surviving extra in the poker game, commits a classic rookie mistake by turning his back on the camera in an attempt to relight a lantern in his barn. The killer of course takes this opportunity to sneak up from behind and strangle him, dumping him in the trough. Dino gives chase to the man in black, but can't quite catch him. See, if the hole card was an ace, nine, or a diamond, that would make a straight or flush and enough to win. But maybe he only had a king high. You can't help but think that the hole card will reveal a lot about Dino's soul.

Since Cornelius is the only survivor of the card game besides Dino, and he's evil, we are forced to conclude that he is behind all of this. However, since he is also the biggest candyass in the West, he must have some help. We learn the answer when we cut to Bob leaving flowers on the tomb of the unknown card cheat. Cornelius meets him there, and we discover that he's been feeding names of the lynch mob to Bob one by one so Bob can avenge the death of his brother, the cheat.

Cornelius gives Bob the second to last name: Little George, trying to frame him since he is his nemesis for some reason. Bob lies in wait in Little George's room, and attempts to strangle him. Unlike the poker playing degenerates, though, Little George is very strong. And if Bob couldn't handle Gregory Peck in Cape Fear, you know he's going to have trouble with a future Bond villain. Sure enough, Bob is forced to shoot him and run off, ruining his streak of ironic strangling-related deaths and giving Little George a few last moments alone. With them he smears his own blood on his hands and glues them together in prayer to implicate the preacher, the most deranged clue since 38 orphans left for dead spelled out the social security number of their kidnapper with their bodies in the Lifetime movie Betrayal of Innocent Courage.

Dino finds the hands of the outspoken atheist clasped in prayer, but the clue takes a little time to sink in. Just enough time to tie up all the loose ends of the plot, in fact. Bob meets Cornelius in the graveyard for the last name, but ends up on the wrong end of his gun. It seems that evil will triumph over vengeance, but Cornelius lets Bob read a prayer for his brother out of a bible that conceals a derringer. This fatal mistake perhaps seems understandable to a modern audience, but in the Old West, at least half of the bibles in circulation were hollowed out to hold guns, so Cornelius really should have seen it coming.

After making that prayer-preacher connection, Dino comes looking to make a citizen's arrest on Bob right after he's finished his mission of killing half the people in town. Bob tries the same bible scam, but Dino has had that pulled on him at least a dozen times, so he outdraws Bob and completes the Old West circle of life. He bids a fond farewell to both of his girlfriends, and rides off into the sunset. As the movie fades out, we never find out what his damn hole card was, further whetting our appetite for Five Card Stud 2: I Still Know What You Did 130 Summers Ago. Sadly, we are left with only a Godfather and no Godfather: Part II. Still, I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Sudden Death (1995)

Starring:
Luc Robitaille
Jean-Claude Van Damme

Plot Summary: Terrorists threaten America during her most treasured sporting event - the Stanley Cup Finals.

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All of the major sports in the United States have had movies glorifying them: Field of Dreams, Hoosiers, and Necessary Roughness are just the archetypal examples. Sadly, there have been few efforts to promote hockey, the bastard child of American sports. During the 1990s expansion of hockey to warm-weather climates that offered large TV markets, non-worthless currency, and a hockey-illiterate local population, Peter Hyams sought to direct the great American hockey movie, starring 600-goal scorer Luc Robitaille and co-starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Peter Hyams gives us Game 7 of a hypothetical Stanley Cup Finals between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most exciting game in sports. Jean-Claude Van Damme shows his blue-collar work ethic by shoring up the film with a subplot involving terrorists holding the Vice President of the United States hostage in a luxury box. The winning combination of playoff hockey with domestic terrorism made this the best hockey movie of the decade, better than all seven Mighty Ducks films and even better than MVP: Most Valuable Primate.

Jean-Claude is Darren McCord, a shell-shocked firefighter turned fire marshal working the Pittsburgh arena for Game 7. He scores two tickets for his 10 year-old son Tyler and his 8 year-old daughter Emily. Unfortunately he can't get another ticket for his ex-wife or any other adult supervision while he is working during the game. This is probably why he is only allowed to see them on weekends anyway.

The audience is treated to some early pre-game cameos as Jean-Claude takes his kids through the Penguins locker room, sowing the seeds in Tyler of a life-long love of hockey and in Emily of a life-long fear of naked men. His kids meet future Hall of Fame left winger Luc Robitaille and Brett Tolliver, who appears to be a goalie of some kind. Jean-Claude even introduces the children to the head chef, which although lacking in excitement, is also lacking in naked men.

Jean-Claude abandons his children for the three-hour game and goes to work. Meanwhile, the terrorists gain access to the Vice President's luxury box by holding the chef's wife hostage, spilling a lot of unnecessary blood in the process. Cutting back to the game, Pittsburgh draws first blood, with Stevens beating Belfour at the ten-minute mark of the first period. The unsung hero of the movie, real-life Pittsburgh announcer Mike Lange, captures the drama with his trademark call of, "Gramma, the bingo game is ready to roll!"

We return to the terrorist subplot and meet Joshua Foss, portrayed by Powers Boothe of Red Dawn fame. He contacts the Secret Service outside the arena to inform them that if $1.7 billion of frozen assets aren't transferred to his offshore accounts, he will blow up the entire arena. The catch is that one third of the amount has to be moved during each period or he will shoot hostages. This is the best attempt to structure a hostage ransom to parallel a sporting event since Rip Taylor demanded one-eighteenth of a $1 million ransom be delivered during each hole of the Masters at Augusta in the straight-to-video Masters of Evil.

After watching Chicago tie the game at one with two minutes left in the first on a tip-in by Graham, Emily wanders unescorted into the ladies' restroom. Reflecting the fear of every American parent, Emily discovers that someone has killed the mascot and assumed her identity. This is a standard move from the terrorist handbook, which states in the prologue that he who controls the mascot controls the stadium. The evil Penguin mascot takes Emily to the skybox, after which Jean-Claude drops by to figure out where his daughter went.

Jean-Claude finally realizes that Icee the Penguin has been replaced with a lady terrorist when he discovers his daughter's hat by the elevator. They get into a knife fight in the kitchen, where Jean-Claude is threatened with a deli slicer, meat tenderizer, and the deep fryer. The only thing more embarrassing than fighting a woman in a penguin suit is getting beaten up by a woman in a penguin suit. He finally prevails after blinding her with crushed red pepper, proving that Jean-Claude is not some male chauvinist who thinks it's immoral to cheat while fighting a woman.

He goes to report the fight to a security guard who has also been replaced by a terrorist. Apparently they brought a crew of 500 to the arena. The security guard follows him into the kitchen, where he promptly blows his cover. Jean-Claude, now an experienced kitchen fighter, tortures him into providing the exposition.

Meanwhile, the Penguins suffer a complete defensive breakdown, allowing three Blackhawks all alone in front of Tolliver. Jeff Sims scores for Chicago, going up 2-1 with 6:00 left in the second. The terrorists blow up every car in the parking lot to repel an advance by the Secret Service, and the Penguins cycle the puck down low in the offensive zone. A Secret Service helicopter is shot down as it approaches the arena, and Sandstrom ties the game on a nice centering pass from behind the net. In perhaps the most seamless integration of the two plots, a dozen Secret Service infiltrators are sent back dead inside a Zamboni.

Jean-Claude is no ordinary fire marshal, and not in the usual kickboxer/fire marshal way. One of his extra skills is disarming C-4 explosives, which he learned in the Boy Scouts. The other skill is one he learned from watching MacGyver: creating elaborate weapons from random things found in a hockey arena. The lighter fluid/supersoaker flamethrower is outdone only by his power drill bit/plastic tubing blowgun.

In the third period Ron Francis dekes Belfour at the 11:30 mark to put the Penguins up by one. While cutting detonator wires using the time-honored eeny-meeny-miney-moe method, Jean-Claude is interrupted by a terrorist, whom he kills using his blowgun. Sutter scores for Chicago, and the goalie Tolliver leaves the game with a 107° fever. Jean-Claude uses his supersoaker flamethrower to surprise a couple terrorists who just can't believe that they are going to die to such a goofy weapon.

In order to further integrate the subplot with the hockey game, Jean-Claude runs through the crowd to evade some of the fully automatic rifle-toting terrorists, who don't seem to stick out too much in a Pittsburgh hockey crowd. He ducks into the locker room and disguises himself in Tolliver's uniform, coming out just in time to see backup goalie Wregget give up the go-ahead goal to Chicago.

Jean-Claude finds himself out on the ice playing net for the Penguins. He even makes a glove save on a breakaway, but, realizing he needs to stop playing hockey and get back to defusing the numerous C-4 bricks around the arena, he starts a fight with a Blackhawks forward to get ejected. A cynic might find this sequence wacky, incredible, unspeakably retarded even. A true film buff, on the other hand, recognizes this as the natural progression of Cinderella sports movies: first children, then chimpanzees, and in 1995, Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Despite leaving the Penguins shorthanded for the final four minutes, Chicago chokes in borderline New York Rangers quality. Protecting a one-goal lead during the final 10 seconds of the game, the Blackhawks call for a line change, allowing Ron Francis to feed Luc Robitaille on the breakaway, who beats Belfour with 0.3 seconds left. This sends the game into sudden death overtime, ironically enough, just like the title. It is not clear if the terrorists expect more money to be transferred in the extra periods.

At this point I felt that the director sort of loses control of the picture. In trying to give equal time to both arenas of action, he lets the Jean-Claude fighting terrorism subplot take too much of attention away from a very exciting hockey game. I do respect that he is given a very difficult task of doing justice to both with only 110 minutes of film. The game goes into sudden death overtime, but it's completely overshadowed by Jean-Claude running around setting terrorists on fire. And it's the good part of overtime, the first ten minutes, not even the third OT where everybody's too tired to skate and the coaches are out on the ice. I'm not saying that one second of Jean-Claude blowing a drill bit into a terrorist's neck could be cut, but maybe Peter Hyams should have made the film 150 minutes long and done equal justice to the OT period. I patiently await the director's cut on DVD.

At any rate, Jean-Claude mixes some white powder and a couple clear liquids he finds in the trainer's room in a jar and goes to the roof. Clearly he has an elaborate plan, one that involves opening the stadium's retractable roof, jumping onto one of the roof cameras, riding it down the tracks onto one of the hanging lights, swinging towards the luxury box, throwing the jar (which, unexpectedly, is a high-powered explosive) onto the roof of the box, and jumping through the hole to rescue the his daughter and Vice President. He also ends up throwing a terrorist into the scoreboard, shooting sparks in slow motion like The Natural except disgusting.

Unlike football, which cancels a game if there's lightning striking the field, or baseball, which cancels for a light mist, hockey isn't subject to weather. A corpse falling from a hundred feet onto center ice will stop the action, though, Game 7 or no Game 7. As the panicked fans rush towards the exit, Jean-Claude collects his traumatized children. Little Emily recognizes Joshua Foss making his escape, and gets re-kidnapped. This brings to mind the old country saying: "Abduct my daughter and hold her hostage once, shame on you, abduct my daughter and hold her hostage twice, shame on me."

To be fair, Jean-Claude always tries to save his kids from the dangers he exposes them to, and chases Foss up to the roof and his getaway chopper. Foss gets on the ladder and shoots at Emily to distract Jean-Claude, who gallantly takes the bullet in the shoulder. To bring home that crime not only doesn't pay, but inevitably ends in fiery death, he takes aim at the helicopter, and in a shot that would impress James Bond, penetrates the floor of the chopper and kills the pilot. Maybe this was a less than optimal strategy as the helicopter was directly above father and daughter at the time, but luckily it narrowly misses them and crashes on the ice.

This would pose serious problems for the Cup Finals. The Penguins earned home-ice advantage, but Game 7 couldn't be rescheduled for the Civic Arena with the various explosion damage. Presumably, the President announces that there will be no make-up game, rather declaring each team equally good. Pittsburgh will have the Stanley Cup Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; Chicago Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; with Sundays to be determined by coin flip. Let the healing begin.

I would have to say that this is the greatest movie I have ever seen.

Pittsburgh 4, Chicago 4 (OT)
Chicago 1 1 2 0 - 4
Pittsburgh 1 1 2 0 - 4

Scoring Summary:
First Period - 1. Pittsburgh, Stevens. 2. Chicago, Graham.
Second Period - 3. Chicago, Sims. 4. Pittsburgh, Sandstrom.
Third Period - 5. Pittsburgh, Francis. 6. Chicago, Sutter. 7. Chicago, Nichols. 8. Pittsburgh, Robitaille.
Overtime - No scoring. Game called on account of domestic terrorism.

Goalies - Chicago, Belfour (8 shots - 4 saves). Pittsburgh, Tolliver (6-3), Wregget (1-0), Van Damme (1-1).