Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter L

LA Confidential (1997) is set in LA in the 1950s, when the cops were as corrupt as the gangsters and the local crime boss had just been sent down for tax evasion. The cosy set-up falls apart when drunken cops beat up prisoners in the cell block with a news photographer nearby, and end up on the front page of the local paper. Ed, a pushy young cop wearing glasses, decides to tell the truth about what happened and gets promoted to detective lieutenant. The worst offender becomes the fall guy and his partner, Jack Vincennes, does a deal to get into Homicide.
   The fall guy is killed in a massacre in the Nite Owl diner. Captain Smith takes charge and three black punks are busted. Ed is vastly unpopular, Jack is taking pay-offs for stories from Hush Hush magazine and narcotics cop Bud White is chasing a big stash of heroin and having an affair with a hooker who looks like the film star Veronica Lake. Jack keeps digging into the massacre and finds a body. Ed also becomes eager to crack the case properly.
   Jack & Ed go to Parchett, the man behind the hookers, for answers. Captain Smith kills Jack when he gets too close to the truth then Smith [Irish and obviously a crook] gives himself away to Ed. Smith gets blackmail photos from the Hush Hush guy, then kills him. Bud & Ed have a brawl, then they team up to strong-arm the DA, who spills his guts.
   They find Parchett dead; Smith is tidying up loose ends. Smith plugs Bud during a major shoot-out and Ed shoots him in the back. Ed tells the truth in the interrogation room about the rottenness in the LAPD and Captain Smith's takeover of organized crime, the blackmail of city officials and the murder of police officers. But he tells the right story in public to give LAPD a dead hero. And finally, Bud gets his girl.

Lake Placid (2000) is an extremely silly 'creature feature'. A diver was attacked by 'something' in the lake and his mate hauled just the top half of him into their boat. A female dinosaur expert was sent to Maine, where she identified a tooth extracted from the body-half as reptilian. She insisted on visiting the lake; city girl in the woods and not too happy about it. A nutty expert arrived and said they were looking for a crocodile. "Yeah, right!" was the general response.
The lady took lots of unscheduled plunges into the lake, a deputy had his head bitten off the, surprise! Everyone witnessed a bear being chomped by a 30-foot crocodile! And it turned out that it was a Pacific crocodile which had found its way to America's east coast somehow, and a nutty old lady had been feeding it cows.
The croc expert decided he had to catch the creature, which involved dangling a cow into the lake from a chopper as bait. More by accident than design, the croc ended up trapped in the wreckage of the chopper, and the sheriff got to use his BIG GUN to blow away the croc's unsuspected mate. At the end, the croc headed off to be exhibited on a low-loader and the dotty old lady, now on her own again, resumed feeding a gang of infant crocs.

The Last Boy Scout (1991) Bruce Willis plays Joe, ex-Secret Service turned private eye, who gets to protect a stripper. Mike, who's screwing Mrs. Joe, gives him the job and gets blown up in his car. Joe hooks up with Jimmy, the former quarterback of the LA Stallions. Joe has to get away from a hit-man while Jimmy strolls off with the client. She's gunned down and Joe & Jimmy take out the hit squad, which doesn't please the local cops.
Jimmy's place is trashed by bad guys looking for the dead stripper's blackmail evidence. Joe's car stereo eats a compromising cassette and 2 wise guys get blown up with the rest of the evidence. Jimmy gets to meet Mrs. Joe and an appalling daughter. Jimmy's old coach is trying to bribe some senators into making gambling legal. The last one is holding out for $6M. So the coach plans to frame Joe for the senator's murder.
The senator's bodyguard gets a bomb instead of the cash. Joe's daughter is grabbed. Everyone heads for the LA Colosseum for the pay-off. The coach's assassin doesn't manage to fall through the blades of a helicopter and the coach gets the bomb instead of his money back. At the end, Joe & Jimmy become partners.

Last Man Standing (1996) This is a remake of A Fistful of Dollars set in Texas in the Prohibition era with Bruce Willis as the man with no name. 'John Smith', a gun for hire on his way to Mexico, stops at Jericho, 50 miles from the border, to make a few bucks in a town taken over by 2 gangs of bootleggers. The Doyle mob wrecks his car for looking at Doyle's girl. The sheriff tells Smith to get a gun because he's on his own.
   Smith shoots up the car wreckers and gets himself hired by Strasi, Doyle's rival. Doyle's booze shipment is ambushed and his men are massacred by turncoat Mexicans. Doyle tries to outbid Strasi for Smith's services. Smith fires Strasi and goes round causing trouble.
   Hickey, Doyle's killer, goes to Mexico to get payback for the hijack and to kidnap Giorgio, Strasi's nephew. The head Ranger for the area drops in for a drink and tells Smith to get rid of one of the gangs in Jericho then split. Surprise! When Doyle tries to sell Giorgio for $100,000 and the trucks, he finds that Strasi has kidnapped his girl for an exchange.
   Smith signs on with Doyle then he knocks off the lady's bodyguards and sends her to Mexico. Hickey works out what he did so Doyle is bashed to bits but he escapes. Strasi and his gang are wiped out. Joe from the hotel is tortured for Smith's whereabouts. The sheriff gives Smith a couple of guns to let him free Joe.
   Smith calls out Doyle & Hickey. Joe shoots Doyle and Smith takes out the others. Then he heads for Mexico and a doctor.

The Last Winter (2006) This is supposed to be a horror film but it fails completely to be horrible! Ed Pollard crashes into a small base camp in Alaska, eager to push his company's drilling operations deeper into the wilderness. He collides with environmentalist James. It's supposed to be winter but the frozen tundra is melting and the company can't build an ice road, so Ed decides to bring the drilling rig in on rollers.
   Abby, the boss of the camp, upsets Ed by having a relationship with James. Maxwell, James' nephew, goes crazy, takes a stroll in the nude at night trying to photograph some airy-fairy threat to the camp and ends up frozen to death. Did he have cabin fever? Is hydrogen sulphide leaking out of the tundra or is there some terrible supernatural threat released by global warming? Who know?
   The equipment keeps going wrong. One of the guys dies of a gushing nose-bleed. A plane arrives and crashes onto the buildings for no apparent reason; other than to leave the survivors without heat or power. James suggests taking the last snomobile to Fort Crow. Ed insists on going further to the ice road builders; who aren't there when they arrived.
   The snomobile won't work, so they have to hike 9 miles toward Fort Crow and Ed, the dummox, falls through the ice! The misfits back at the camp get crazier and fewer. At the end, Abby comes to in a hospital, which is deserted apart from the guy hanging from a light fitting, and there's a huge puddle outside. If you're looking for a film to give a miss to, this is it!

The Lathe of Heaven (2002) is a based on a science fiction story by Ursula le Guin. It concerns George, a bloke whose dreams can change the world. The sinister Dr. Haber, a psychiatrist treating George after he stole drugs to stop himself dreaming, hijacks the dreaming process for his own benefit. But when George starts resisting him, things don't go too well for the good doctor!

Lava Storm (2008) The teenage kids of a couple on the verge of breaking up find 2 friends dead while messing about in an old mine. The parents, emergency workers, spot 3 simultaneous forest fires, then their kids ring them with their news. Ground water starts boiling and ash drops out of the sky. Grandpa thinks someone's dropped the Bomb.
Mom & Dad realize they're dealing with a volcano. Grandpa take the kids down to his death-trap of a nuclear bunker, from which they have to be rescued. On the surface, lava starts flowing and it's snowing volcanic ash. Grandpa's home goes up in smoke and the emergency base is a wreck when the family reaches it.
Mom wants to go and hide in the mine. Dad wants to blow up a dam to quench the volcano. The kids just want to be stroppy. Mom, Grandpa & Daughter go down the mine and up to the Cavern; higher than the flood. Dad & Son take out the dam with an avalanche gun (like that's going to happen). And then we're invited to believe they saved the entire planet and the film is based on something that could really happen.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) has the look and feel of a contemporary Batman film set in Victorian times. In 1899, a tank breaks into the British Museum and a German airship factory is attacked. A month or so later, Mr. Reed of Her Majesty's Government tracks down Alan Quartermain in Kenya. The Empire needs him to lead a league of unique men to prevent a world war. An attack by armour-plated assassins with automatic weapons makes up Quartermain's mind.
   He meets 'M', the head of the league, and Captain Nemo in grey, wet London. The Phantom is behind the attacks. He's advertising his weapons and he plans to attack a secret conference in Vienna. The Invisible Man, Mrs. Mina Harker and Dorian Gray join up, and an attack by the Phantom ruins Gray's home while trying to recruit the League people to his cause.
   Gray turns out to be invulnerable and Mrs. Harker is a vampire. Special Agent Sawyer of the US Secret Service also joins up. Nautilus takes the gang to Paris to capture Mr. Hyde in the Rue Morgue. The Phantom has a spy in Nautilus and someone steals a flask of Dr. Jekyll's potion.
   The Phantom starts blowing up the Venice but one of Nemo's missiles stops the rot. Gray is the spy! And M is the Phantom! M's bombs almost destroy Nautilus, triggered by a rant on a gramophone record, but Mr. Hyde saves the sub, which heads to Mongolia, where the Phantom has his weapons plant and he's building submarines.
   M turns out to be Professor Moriarty. The League raids his stronghold. Mrs. Harker shows Gray his portrait to finish him off. One of the Phantom's men drinks about a gallon of Dr. Jekyll's potion and becomes a super-Hyde. The stronghold is destroyed and just about everyone is kilt, including Quartermain. So Sawyer gets to shoot the Phantom.

Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) is definitely a sequel too far. The film begins with a massive explosion as an attention-getter. A modern Ned Kelly in armour sprays things with a flame thrower for no apparent reason, he goes up in flames and a petrol tanker practically goes into orbit. Riggs and Murtagh are about to become a father and a grandfather respectively, and they are both promoted to captain as the police force's insurance company won't stand for the destruction which they cause as sergeants.
The bad guys are Chinese snakehead people-smugglers and the leader of the snakeheads has a hilarious haircut. Our heroes set fire to a freighter, which runs aground with its cargo of slaves. Then nothing much happens for an hour or so. There is a whole bunch of aimless yakking, particularly by Leo, the former federal witness/accountant, the Chinese bad guys are a bunch of kung fu-ing, characterless zombies and the end is dull.

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (2004) features Noah Wyle (Dr. Carter from ER) and Bob Newhart. Wyle plays a perpetutal student, who is in his 30s and has 22 degrees. His professor kicks him out into the big, bad world and he gets a job at a weird library, which keeps fabulous treasures in a high-security basement. He is now their guardian.
The Serpent Brotherhood steals the library's third of the Spear of Destiny – whoever owns it becomes the greatest conqueror in the world, so it was broken into 3 pieces. Wyle heads off to the Amazon in search of another bit of the spear, teamed up with Nicole, a real Action Woman, who chucks him off a plane. They have fun with a collapsing bridge, do a Butch & Sundance leap off a cliff into a river and end up in a Mayan temple.
The bad guy turns out to be the previous librarian, who is supposed to be dead and about whom Nicole feels guilty because she failed to protect him. Off we go to the Himalayas for the spearhead, ending up in Shangri La. Next stop Mongolia, where Nicole and the spearhead disappear. So back to the university for a major punch up and the destruction of the bad guy.

Lightspeed (2006) is based on a Stan Lee comic strip and rips off the plot of the Six Million Dollar Man, and admits it by including Lee Majors in the cast as the head of the Ghost Squad. The Squad runs into Snakeman, a.k.a. Python, and his gang of thieves in a tower block, which Python blows up after escaping.
   Jump to 4 years earlier, when Python was experimenting with snake DNA to repair burned skin, his funding was cut off, he trashed his lab, set it (and himself) on fire and his DNA machine turned him into Python.
   Daniel of the Ghost Squad, a former friend whom Python blames for his loss of funding, is dragged from the wrecked building and rebuilt. Python sneaks into his hospital and gives him an overdose of radiation, which turns Dan into a guy who can set a new landspeed record on foot. Dan gets himself a fancy aerodynamic outfit and becomes Lightspeed.
   Python goes after a piece of kit which can save the world from global warming; only he wants to turn it into a weapon. He collides with the Ghost Squad and Daniel, so he grabs Daniel's girlfriend. The boss of the Ghost Squad isn't bothered because he reckons that Beth is working for Python.
   Python is just telling Daniel that he plans to barbeque Beth with the piece of kit when the Ghost Squad arrives. Shock, horro! Their boss is Python's mole. So the bad guys get what's coming to them, Python goes up in flames and Dan saves Beth.

The Loch Ness Terror (2008) A kid sees his dad and an expedition wiped out by the Loch Ness monster in 1976. Cut to the States, where Sean, a bloke with dementia, reckons there's a Nessie in his local lake. James Murphy, whose dad was eaten by Nessie, now a cryptozoologist, turns up at the bait store of Josh, Sean's nephew. Josh's mom is the local sheriff and her deputy is Gen. Hammond of the SGC (in retirement).
   Uncle Sean gets a picture of the monster; just before it eats the camera and most of him. Josh is plagued by Brody the jerk, who has claimed Zoe's attention. A bloke out fishing is chomped next. Murphy finds a huge underwater tunnel, though which the monster arrived from Scotland. The deputy's sister is chomped and bits of Uncle Sean's body are found. Josh tells his mom about a huge sonar target, which Murphy chased while on Josh's boat.
   Brody & Zoe go to Pike Island with 2 other kids, who are chomped. A fisherman finds a dead baby Nessie. Mom busts Murphy when he blags the head but she has to believe his monster story. Josh goes looking for Zoe and ends up treed on the island with Brody & Zoe, surrounded by mini-monsters. But Josh is able to go for help.
   Sheriff Mom has to recruit Murphy to a rescue mission. He gives the monster a headache while Mom fishes Josh out of the lake. The jerk is chomped by the babies, and so is the deputy. But Murphy has a big monster barbeque, and Josh gets Zoe & Murphy gets Mom.

Locusts (2005) Is another daft creature feature. A lady takes some grub to a huge tankful of locusts and they go for her. Dr. Peter, the former professor of Matty (now a big wheel with the US Dept. of Agriculture), has made pesticide-resistant locusts for the Dept. of Defense. They breed 10 times faster than normal locusts and live 3 times longer. Matty thinks he's crazy, so she fires Peter and orders the destruction of the locusts.
   Of course, the US Army rescues some locusts and, of course, they lose some in Maryland and the rest in California. Dan, Matty's husband, feels like giving her the sack because she's never there. But she's pregnant. The locusts run wild in California, attacking people & animals as well as crops. They also attack the school bus, on which Peter's daughter is riding.
   In the east, Pittsburgh is threatened. The airport won't listen to a warning from Peter and a cargo plane crashes after running into a cloud of locusts. The FBI takes Peter into custody. The US Army wants to use VX nerve gas to kill the locusts and maybe 10% of the population. Matty leaks the plan to CNN.
   Dan suggests taking in the harvest early before the locusts can eat it and cause a world famine. Matty visits her farmer dad (Dr. B.J. from M*A*S*H). They turn a steel grain store into a giant electrical bug-zapper and Peter croaks from locust bites after getting fuel for the generator.
   A lady from the Dept. of Energy uses the power grid to create 2 huge electric fences, which zap the locusts on both sides of the country so the army can't use its VX. And a year later, Matty has had the baby and she and Dan are still together.

Lone Wolf McQuade (1983) is all about a Texas Ranger who is a total scruffbag; but he gets the job done. And his boss, like Supt. Chander of Sun Hill (anyone remember his spell with The Bill?), hates him for it because he doesn't have the required image. There is a lot of "Who's he?" when McQuade is saddled with a young partner – who turns out to be Mr. Chakotay in Star Trek Voyager. We have a midget bad guy, who isn't the main threat, David Carradine as a kung fu gun runner, lots of people – and McQuade's wolf – getting wiped out, lots of shoot-outs, and lots of explosions along the way. A 3-star thriller.

The Long Kiss Goodnight got four stars and a triangle in the Daily Mail's Weekend magazine. It is described as a "shoot-'em-up action movie which is as breathlessly exciting as it is ridiculous". Well, we couldn't way we weren't warned about the ridiculous side, and the film is quite a hoot for most of the time. I'm not sure it deserved 4 stars, though. That many requires 'totally terrific' or 'real turkey' status, and this film is neither. But it was fun, I've got to give it that.

Lost City Raiders (2008) is a daft enviro-movie. The Rising has left just 10% of Earth's land surface above water in 2048 but Mr. Kubiac takes his sons diving in the L.A. Basin to retrieve a book for a cardinal at the New Vatican. The cardinal thinks that finding The Sceptre is their only hope, but their enemies are also on its trail. Cue some Indiana Jones stuff to get hold of The Box; which contains an 800-year-old Templar dagger instead of The Sceptre.
   Elsewhere, lady boffin Giovana (who dumped Jack Kubiac) is recruited by Russian bad guy Filomenov, who says he wants to undrown his real estate using The Sceptre. Everyone collides at Dresden. Pa Kubiak wrecks a catacomb and himself to get The Case. The cardinal thinks that a sceptre which Moses stole from Rameses II will stop The Rising. Jack Kubiac doesn't buy This Crap but his brother Thomas is willing to believe it.
   The cardinal persuades them to carry on their father's work and they recruit a female Jonah as the engineer for their tramp steamer. The Russian, meanwhile, has sold his real estate and he plans to build floating cities. He gets hold of the Sceptre of Sopik, planning not to use it, and Jack has to save Giovanna from a watery grave.
   The lads sink Filomenov with his ship but the traitor cardinal, who thinks drowning the world will speed The Second Coming, makes it to the tramp steamer. The Sceptre was made by ancient astronauts to raise and lower tectonic plates to control the sea level! The good guys find an ancient control room and initiate a planet-saving explosion. Jack gets to toss the crazy cardinal into a fiery pit. And vast amounts of water disappear into the interior of the Earth.

The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon (2008) is a 'period piece' but nothing to do with the real Grand Canyon. Dr. Jordan takes an expedition into a cave system, they run into homicidal Aztecs then something horrible starts killing everyone. A month later, his daughter, Susan, shames other members of the archaeological dig into looking for her dad. Most of them end up stuck in quicksand but Dr. Thane (Dr. Jackson of Stargate SG-1) extracts them.
Dr. Thane finds the secret entrance to the canyon, where Aztecs are ripping the hearts out of survivors of Dr. Jordan's expedition. A Quetzalcoatl rips the rest of Dr. Wilson to bits. Dr. Jordan finds the rescue party, then he lets the Quetzalcoatl eat him to save the others, who keep doing the dirty on one another.
Dr. Thane does a conjuring trick with a heart from a storage jar to bamboozle the Aztecs and let the others escape. Dr. Jordan isn't dead; the Quetzalcoatl let him live. Dr. Thane wrecks the temple and kills the monster. He has to agree to become the Aztec's god if the others are to get out of the canyon. But he does a bit more conjuring to make them think he burnt himself alive.