Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter I

Identity (2003) Rivers, a serial killer, is taken to a sanity hearing on the night before his scheduled execution. Then the film starts going through a series of accidents in reverse order to get a whole gang of people to a Nevada motel, which is cut off by flooded sections of road to either side. The cast includes an ex-cop, a hooker, a prisoner with a marshall, a past-it actress, and a family of 3 including Mom, who was badly injured when she walked in front of the ex-cop's car.
   The past-it actress is killed and put in a tumble-drier. The prisoner busts loose but he goes round in a circle in the pouring rain and arrives back at the motel. Hysterical Lou's demise is a welcome relief. The prisoner is bashed, tied up and killed next. Each body is being tagged with a room key – counting down from 10.
   There's a body in the freezer of Larry, the motel guy, and he kills another guy while trying to flee. Meanwhile, the sanity hearing has started. Larry says he found the frozen guy dead and just took over the motel, expecting the owner's relatives to show up. But none did. The survivors find they all have the same birthday; May 10th.
   The ex-cop suddenly finds he's talking to the sanity hearing in a strange body. He is told that Rivers has multiple personality syndrome and you, Edward, are one of the personalities. The motel exists only in Rivers' imagination and he is receiving personality reduction treatment. A shrink is trying to eliminate the killer personality.
   Back at the motel, Paris, the hooker, finds that the marshall is really a convict, who killed a marshall transporting 2 prisoners and took his place. Larry clobbers him but ends up shot. Ed is shot but he kills the convict. Rivers has his execution cancelled in favour of a transfer to the Nevada Nuthouse. But on the way there, the shrink finds that the killer personality isn't dead and he gets throttled!

The I Inside (2003) Simon Cable wakes up in hospital after being poisoned, dying and being resuscitated. He thinks it's 2000 but the date is really 2002/07/29. He also has a wife called Anna. His doctor says the lost 2 years will come back. 2 different women say they're his wife then he learns that Peter, his brother, is dead. Simon was in the hospital 2 years before after a car crash. Both wives walk out on him.
   Simon wakes in another part of the hospital. It's now 2000 and he's there after the car crash, not the poisoning. Anna visits his room but she doesn't know him. Then he's back in the MRI room in 2002. Simon finds a heart-transplant patient, Travin, who remembers him from 2000 as a crazy man. 'Anna' turns out to be Clair, the other woman in the marriage. Back in 2000, she was having an affair with Peter.
   Simon meets Anna, who has a recording of Peter accusing Simon Cable of killing him; which she used to blackmail Simon into marrying her. Simon sees himself kill his brother at their parents' house. Then he kills Travin, his room mate, and legs it back to 2002, where Travin is croaking.
   Simon decides he's going to change everything and get away from Anna, the blackmailer. But it's not so easy. His brother tells him to stop struggling, he's never going to change what happened. And Simon runs out of further chances.

Ignition (2001) got 2 stars and a good kicking in the newspaper reviews. A US Marshall, who was chucked out of the US army for chucking a torturer out of a window, is assigned to protect a judge trying a military corruption case. She has already had one close shave with a bomb but she keeps trying to give Deputy Gallagher the slip. A general has sent the torturer to kill a missing witness, and Gallagher is involved in a messy access battle with his ex-wife.
   Gallagher catches the mad bomber planting a bomb on the judge's car, he doesn't tell anyone and she's nearly blown up. The missing witness visits the judge and she finds out that most of his Desert Storm squad are dead or missing. The general is looking for a compromising CD. The torturer shoots Gallagher full of dope to screw up a court hearing, and he's suspended.
   The judge gets herself into the clutches of the mad bomber, but Gallagher steams in and the bomber is blown up. The corruption trail leads to Portland then Seattle, where the judge learns that the dodgy general busted a morphine theft ring, which included the missing witness, during Operation Desert Storm then went on to build a private army within the US military financed by cash stolen from the military budget.
   As well as the witnesses, the judge and Gallagher, the general also wants to do in the weak president by blowing up a satellite launch. The judge ends up under the rocket, Gallagher has to stop a bomb and rescue her, and take out the torturer. When the rocket launches without exploding, the general obligingly shoots himself. Then the bad guys in the military are busted and Gallagher gets access to his daughter and the judge.

I-Man (1986) stars Captain B. Acula from the TV series Enterprise looking incredibly young. He is exposed to an alien atmosphere brought back by a NASA spacecraft and he becomes indestructible. So the US government recruits him to recover a power-source, which is about to self-destruct, from a blackmailing billionaire.
One problem with the indestructibility, though – if he's left in the dark too long, he croaks. Even worse, his punk kid, who is also indestructible, stows away on the helicopter taking him to tackle the bad guys. And when all the struggle and strife is over, it turns out that Cap'n Acula's dog is also indestructible.

Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade (1989) [Harrison Ford, dir. S. Spielberg, writer G. Lucas] Indy clashes with grave robbers in Utah in 1912, has a chase involving a circus train, falls foul of a crooked sheriff and gets a hat. He has another clash with the looters in a storm off the Portuguese coast in 1938. Then Mr. Donovan, a benefactor of his museum, sends him off after the Holy Grail and his dad (Sean Connery), who has disappeared.
   Indy meets a blonde lady in Venice and demolishes the floor of a church turned into a library. They have to avoid rats and a fireball in the catacombs, and they have a canal chase with protectors of the Grail. Indy heads for a castle full of Nazis to rescue his dad. Gulp! The blonde is one of them! And so's Donovan.
   Indy's pal Dr. Brody is also nabbed in an Arab country but dad sets fire to the castle and father & son are involved in a motorbike chase. They take a trip to Berlin to get dad's Grail diary, which is autographed by the Führer! Then rides in a Zeppelin, a stolen plane and a car.
   The Nazis bribe the chieftain of Hatay. Indy and the Grail protectors have an argument with a tank, which goes over a cliff. Everyone ends up at Petra, where Donovan shoots Dr. Jones Senior so that he needs the Grail's healing powers. Indy has to negotitate booby traps to reach it. Donovan and the Nazi lady both come unstuck. Dr. Jones is repaired and the cheap set collapses.

Innerspace is a totally silly science fiction film based on the Joseph Skidmore story A World Unseen [published in Wonder Stories Vol. 7 Nos. 7 & 8 (1936)], which was also ripped off for the 1960s film Fantastic Voyage. Bad guys raided the lab after Dennis Quaid and his submarine had been miniaturized. He ended up being injected into hypochondriac supermarket employee Martin Short instead of a rabbit.
Lots of James Bondery and a villain with an artificial hand. Meg Ryan as Quaid's girlfriend helped to save the day, the head bad guy and his girlfriend were shrunk to half-size, and the nerd turned into bloke with a superhero complex at the end!

In The Line Of Fire (1993) features Clint Eastwood, looking like Dirty Harry's piano-playing dad, as a presidential bodyguard who didn't save JFK and who's being taunted by a guy who plans to kill the current president. The would-be assassin keeps phoning Clint and he's a master of confusing phone traces; mainly because the CIA trained him as a killer.
Passing thought: why were they playing the Monty Python theme when the president was doing an electioneering stop? Was it some sort of subtle comment on American politics? Anyhow, the killer is younger, smarter and luckier than Clint, and Clint doesn't get on with his bosses, who take him off the case. But that doesn't stop him being there at the vital moment.

I, Robot (2004) Will Smith stars. Chicago in 2035 is full of robots emptying dustbins and making deliveries, which bugs the hell out of Detective Dale Spooner, who hates them. So when he assaults a robot purse-snatcher, Lt. Bergen asks him how many robots in the world have committed a crime and forces Spooner to answer none, then he asks him if he's ready to go back to work (Spooner keeps dreaming about an underwater car wreck). Then a call comes in from US Robotics. Co-founder and robot designer Dr. Lanning has committed suicide.
   A jumper for sure, the CSIs say. Spooner meets the boss of USR, Mr. Robertson, and sounds off with his anti-robot prejudices. A female company shrink takes Spooner to Dr. Lanning's lab and tells Spooner he wasn't suicidal. Spooner wants murder and he thinks he's been proved right when a rogue robot pops up.
   The robot escapes and hides among 1,000 others, but it ends up caught. It says it's not a killer and it has emotions, it sleeps and it dreams. And it's called Sonny. As a robot can't be a murderer; only humans can murder other humans; the robot is returned to USR for destruction. Spooner goes for a poke around Dr. Lanning's home, and he and Lanning's cat are nearly demolished with the house.
   Spooner tells the USR shrink that he thinks Lanning found a problem with the new Mark 5 robots and Robertson was holding Lanning prisoner. Spooner's grandma wins a Mark 5 robot in the lottery. A whole gang of robots attack Spooner's car but he survives with the aid of his bionic arm! Arriving after the mess has been cleaned up, the lieutenant doesn't believe Spooner's story and suspends him.
   The shrink finds that Sonny isn't bound by the 3 Laws. Spooner tells him how he got his bionic arm and his robotophobia, and he adds that Lanning left a trail of clues and he thinks Sonny has the next one. Sonny is erased with nanytes. Robertson gets the Mark 5 robots to wipe out earlier ones as part of his plan to take over. Surprise! Sonny isn't dead but Robertson is! VIKI, the USR building's computer, is trying to protect mankind even if she has to take out a few humans in the process.
   So VIKI gets the nanytes after a massive battle and the Mark 5s become good guys again. Sonny gets his freedom and he turns into a robot messiah-figure.

Iron Eagle III is such a brilliant film that it got NO STARS AT ALL!!! in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine. A renegade USAF base commander is flying coke in to the US from Peru. But an over-the-hill air force flying a Lighning, a Zero, a Spitfire and an Me 109 for an aerial circus heads south of the border to sort the bad guys out, aided by a Peruvian lady who is built like Arnoldina Schwarzenberger.
The Jap pilot gets to do a kamikaze crash into the transport plane carrying the last of the coke and everyone but the Yank is shot down. And the evil Nazi behind the coke racket gets well and truly spiked by a jungle booby trap. The best bit of the movie is the church bell flying away from the blown-up church and wiping out the bad guy who pressed the plunger.

I-Spy (2002) is based on the 1960s TV series starring Robert Culp & Bill Cosby, and stars Eddie Murphy as his usual motormouth character. He play Kelly Robinson, a boxer, in this case. A secret agent extracts a traitor pilot from under the noses of the Russians. Robinson gets a call from the President and he is recruited for a job in Budapest with Alex, a Bureau of National Security agent who lives in the shadow of Carlos, their top agent.
   The head bad guy (Malcolm McDowell) is a boxing fanatic and he has stolen an invisible stealth plane from the Yanks. Alex has to stop him selling it to the highest bidder. Alex soon finds that Robinson's motormouth gives him a headache. Fun in Robinson's private jet. Fun at the hotel. Fun for Robinson during a mock kidnapping. Fun in the HBG's office and a rooftop escape from the guards. Our heroes take a ride on a balloon then a car transporter. Cue a chase.
   The guys hang out in a sewer. The bugged pen planted on the HBG moves, preventing Alex from having his evil way with Rachel, another BNS agent. There's a shoot-out at a bath house then Rachel falls into a trap and is blown up. Alex gets Robinson arrested then he finds the spy base trashed. Robinson gets out of custody in time for his boxing match.
   Alex takes a ride in the HBG's boot and finds the invisible plane. The purchaser is planning to use it to drop a nuke on Washington. Alex finds out the hard way that Rachel has swapped sides. Robinson goes to the rescue as Rachel is trying to torture Alex into stopping the self-destruct on the plane. Carlos turns up to save the day, Robinson decides he's a bad guy and Rachel tells Alex she's really a good guy. Alex takes off in the plane and drops it in the river. Rachel ends up in Monte Carlo with the HBG's dosh. And Carlos steals the credit for saving Washington.

The Italian Job (2003) isn't a remake of the Michael Caine film; it just has the same title and a few Minis in it. Master criminal John (Donald Sutherland) phones his daughter to tell her he's doing one last job in Venice. It's a very high-tech operation run by Charlie, whose team use computers and laser measuring devices to cut out the floor beneath a safe, which crashes down through the building. The owners think it's being removed in a boat but John cracks it at the bottom of the canal wearing scuba gear.
   The guys think they've got away with $35 million in gold bars but Steve arranges an ambush, unloads the gold and sends the van of the side of a dam into a frozen reservoir. John is killed but the others survive. A year later in Philadelphia, John's daughter is cracking safes legitimately. Charlie recruits her to a plan to get the gold back from Steve, which starts with sabotaging his cable connection and sending the lady into the house to fix it and look things over.
   The plan is to drive into the mansion and remove the gold in strengthened Minis. Steve shoots the middleman in a deal with the Ukrainian Mafia when the guy realizes he's selling gold stolen in Italy and strolls off with his gold and the cash. Steve gets to meet his 'dead' mates after their raid on his house falls through, so he decides to move the gold to Mexico using 3 armoured trucks, 2 of them decoys, but the techie spots the right one.
   The truck is steered to an ambush point and a section of road under it is blown away to drop the truck into a storm drain. The gold is moved to the Minis, which are chased to the railway station, through which they had a drive on the way to the ambush.
   Steve realizes the Minis have been loaded onto a train but when he tries to bribe his way to his remaining $27 million, he's ambushed and handed over to the Ukrainians.

It Came From Beneath The Sea (1954) [Colour, Ray Harryhausen effects] The US Navy's pride & joy, a nuclear submarine, runs into a giant sea beast, and limps to Pearl Harbour with bits of the radioactive beast stuck in the diving planes. A pair of boffins, Prof. Joyce & Dr. Carter, decide that the beast is huge and still alive.
   They conclude that the monster has always lived in deep ocean trenches, but US H-bomb tests have made it radioactive, its prey can sense the radioactivity, and the monster is looking for a new source of food; such as the human race.
   Commander Pete of the sub makes a play for Prof. Joyce, but she's more interested in Dr. Carter. The giant octopus attacks and sinks a freighter, but there's a survivor, who's treated as mad. But Prof. Joyce believes him. The US Navy closes the North Pacific and goes after the beast with depth charges.
   The creatures arrives at San Francisco, the Navy's HQ area. Dr. Carter comes up with a jet-propelled torpedo. The monster takes out part of the Golden Gate bridge and comes to the shore for snacks. The Army sends it packing with flame throwers, the sub fires off the torpedo but becomes tangled up with the creature.
   Cmdr. Pete then Dr. Carter have to go out swimming to annoy the monster. The torpedo sees it off and Cmdr. Pete gets the girl.