Mr. Wydey's Film Guide Letter R

Rambo: First Blood, Part II (1985) Rambo, in the pen breaking rocks, is extracted by his colonel to go on a recon mission, looking for PoWs in Vietnam. His mission is to take photographs only. The extraction, if required, will be performed by a Delta force. Rambo gets hung up when he tries to parachute to his target. A bunch of pirates take him and his female guide down river to the prison camp. It looks empty but it has guards. And there are prisoners!
   Rambo retrieves a prisoner and kills some guards. The pirates sell him out but they are written off. Murdoch, back at base, calls off Rambo's extraction and Rambo is captured. Murdoch tells the colonel that Congress doesn't want to know about PoWs and Rambo was supposed to prove that there were none at the camp.
   Some Russians arrive to give Rambo some electrical torture after he was dipped in a leech-filled swamp by the Vietnamese. They want Rambo to radio his base and he takes the opportunity to tell Murdoch he's coming to get him. Then he breaks out of the camp with his guide's help. The gooks take out the guide, saving Rambo the bother of taking her to the USA.
   Murdoch has the colonel arrested. Rambo takes out the Russians one by one, and he has acquired a bow and explosive arrows from somewhere. A vast army chases him through the jungle; until he blows up most of the bad guys. Then he takes over a Russian chopper, shoots up the prison camp and rescues the prisoners.
   A bigger and better chopper has a go at him, but it's no match for Rambo the pilot. Rambo brings the PoWs to safety then goes after Murdoch with an M-60 machine gun; but he doesn't kill him. He just tells Murdoch to find other PoWs, or else!

Rat Race (2001) A bunch of misfits, including a Mr. Bean character, win special tokens in a Las Vegas casino/hotel's slot machines and get a chance to race the others for a $2 million prize. The first to locker 001 in Silver City railway station wins. But what the competitors don't know is that there's a bunch of rich guys behind the scenes betting on them.
The over-the-top owner of the hotel (John Cleese) is offering the race as 'The Gambling Experience of a Lifetime' with competitors who can lie, cheat and steal. The two good old boys wreck the radar of the local airport, so everyone (apart from one guy) has to find ground transport. No sign of Dastardly & Muttley in this Whacky Race, but they were there in spirit. The trips to Silver City included a stop-off at the (Klaus) Barbie Museum and the antics of a crazy helicopter pilot, who finds her boyfriend in his pool with another woman.
Everyone gets to Silver City but the locker is empty. The hotel owner's aide and a hooker stroll off with the case; until a cow lands in their car. And there is a really tragic outcome, as far as anyone getting their hands on the $2 million was concerned.

Raw Deal (1986) The Feds guarding a witness are taken out and Sheriff Mark Kaminski (Arnold Schwarzenberger) is stuck in the wilds, having been required to quit the FBI for brutality, and his boozy wife wants to go back to New York. His old pal Harry of the Bureau, whose son was killed by the Petrovita crime family, recruits Kaminsi to infiltrate them. There's a leak, so Harry is paying for the off-the-books operation.
   Kaminsky blows up an oil depot to stage his own death and heads for Chicago. He starts a riot at a bent gambling operation and goes after one of Petrovita's rivals. The cops grab a huge pile of cash & heroin, and Petrovita decides he wants it back.
   Kaminski is hired and he takes a run at a gangsters' moll, whom his rival, Max, also fancies. He tells Petrovita how to get his dope & cash back. The robbery is a big success and the rival is taken out. Max checks out 'Joey' in Miami and a cop who busted him doesn't recognize a picture of the Joey in Chicago.
   Petrovita decides to have Harry whacked. Kaminski finds he's in on the job after the shooting starts. So he gets his guns and shoots up the guys guarding the stash of dope & cash. Then he goes after Petrovita & the leak. After a monster shoot-out, he sends the moll on her way with $250K and forces the shot-up wreck of Harry to stop feeling sorry for himself.

The Recruit (2003) James, a programming whizz, is approached by CIA recruiter Walter Burk. He is led to believe that his father, who died in a plane crash in Peru in 1990, was a CIA agent and he goes to the Farm at Langley; the CIA's boot camp. He learns tradecraft and tries to get close to Leila, but he quits after he breaks during an interrogation session with fake Russians.
   Burk hauls him out of drunken depression and makes him a NOC, the highest form of CIA undercover agent. He gives him the job of spying on Leila. Burk says she's a sleeper agent, who is smuggling the ICE 9 program out of CIA HQ. James has to find out who she's working for. Leila realizes James is spying on her.
   James sees Leila pass something to a contact, he chases the guy and ends up killing Zach, who was at the Farm. He makes Leila crash her car. She tells him she's stealing the ICE 9 program as a security check and Zach was another NOC. James tells her to run and confronts Burk.
   Burk tells him his gun contains blanks and Zach isn't dead. James shoots out a window of his car to make a liar out of Burk. And James' dad wasn't a CIA agent. Burk admits he's stealing the ICE 9 program for $3 million because he feels unappreciated. The cavalry arrives, but they're after James. But when Burk shoots his mouth off, he becomes the target.

Red Heat (1988) stars Arnold Schwarzenberger as a tough Russian cop, who's after Viktor, a cop-killing, scumbag Georgian drug dealer. Arnie follows his prey to Chicago, where he teams up with bad-boy cop James Belushi. They rampage around, f-ing and blinding in all directions, kicking lumps out of the system and getting into all sorts of shoot-outs and other bother. Viktor needs the key to a locker, which he recovers from the Russkie in a hail of bodies, to pull off a drug deal. And we get a grand bus chase to finish things off with a game of 'Chicken' at the railroad yard.

Red Rock West (1992) Jobless Mike with a bad leg doesn't get a job in the wilds of Wyoming but he ends up in Red Rock where bar owner Wayne sees his Texas licence plate and mistakes him for Lyle from Dallas, who's supposed to kill Mrs. Wayne. Mike warns Suzanne, who offers him double to take out Wayne. He takes her money then writes a letter about Wayne to the sheriff and leaves town.
   Driving in rain, he hits a guy standing in the road and takes him to hospital. The guy is Suzanne's boyfriend, he's been shot and the cops are eager to do Mike for the shooting. Wayne turns up; he's the sheriff! He takes Mike out into the wilds, makes a bog of shooting him and Mike gets a lift from Lyle who turns out to be a fellow Vietnam Vet.
   Mike has to escape from Lyle & Wayne. He tells Suzanne her boyfriend's been shot (assuming Wayne did it) and she needs to get out of town. Mike left all his cash in his car so Suz decides to burgle Wayne's office, where there is $500K in the safe; only Wayne has moved it. Wayne arrives at the office, followed by his deputies, who want to arrest him.
   Wayne turns out to be an embezzler who got away with $1.9M and he and Suz are top of the FBI's most wanted list. The cops also have Mike's letter accusing Wayne of plotting to kill his wife. Lyle shows up and makes Mike help him bust Wayne out of gaol. The cash is buried in a cemetery, and everyone starts shooting everyone else when it's dug up.
   Suz turns out to be as bad as her old man, and she shot her boyfriend. She and Mike get on a train with the cash, destination Mexico. But Suz tries to shoot Mike with an empty gun, so he dumps the cash off the train and dumps her for the cops. But he finds a bundle of notes as the train speeds into the distance.

Red Sonja (1985) stars Arnold Schwarzenberger in a Conan the Barbarian role. A wimpy priestess tries to destroy The Talisman, which only women can touch, before it becomes too powerful. The Black Queen has other ideas. The attacks and grabs the Talisman. Only Sonja's sister gets away. She meets Arnie who fetches Sonja, who has just graduated from sword school, to watch her croak.
If the Talisman isn't destroyed in 13 days, that's it for the planet. Sonja hooks up with a horrible child prince and his manservant as well as Arnie. The Black Queen is using the Talisman to conquer the world, keeping it in a chamber containing about a million candles, which increase its power. Sonja & Co. tackle a metal water monster, and Arnie turns out to be the High Lord, whose job it is to destroy the Talisman.
Lots of scrapping in the Black Queen's collapsing stronghold. The Black Queen and the Talisman both plunge into the lava lake beneath the stronghold, which goes up like a volcano. The boy prince gets his realm back. And Sonja gets Arnie.

Red Water (2003) A shark swims up a Louisiana river and starts eating people, so the locals put a $50,000 bounty on it. Meanwhile, John, a retired oil driller, is being hassled by the bank over the loan for his charter boat, so he has to take an offer from Kelly, his ex-wife, to explore a vast deposit of natural gas in a conservation area, and do it sensitively.
   The oil rig just happens to be parked where the shark arrives; and also a gang of criminals, who are looking for $3 million in drug money, which Jerry had to dump in the river. Kelly saves Brett from drowning when Jerry tries to kill him. Then the demented gangsta in Brett's party starts shooting people.
   The drilling crew are taken prisoner then the oil rig blows up. The shark gets the guy closing a valve on the river bed and nearly gets John. The prisoners are sent out to do a night dive and the shark bites into John's air tank. The box that Jerry dumped turns up. Brett is fed to the shark by the other criminals.
   John's boat is blown up and everyone ends up in the water. The shark chews the box of money open then chomps the gangsta. John and his Cajun crewman drill the shark to death. Then the sheriff rolls up with the news that the bounty on the shark is now $100,000, which might just pay off John's loan.

Relic, The (1996) might be the most brilliant film ever made, but most of it is shot in the bowels of a Chicago museum with the lights off and you can't see a bleedin' thing most of the time. Apparently, a researcher for the museum eats some leaves in South America and turns into a chimera, which goes on the rampage in the museum, ripping people's heads off. Definitely a candidate for the worst production job ever, as far as the lighting goes.

Remote Control (1998) is a sciffy comedy, which has cars from the Fifties running around in the Video Age. People who watch a video called Remote Control, which has a Fifties-style alien invasion plot, suddenly see themselves on the TV screen and turn violent. Our young heroes, who work in a video rental store, find themselves hunted as cop-killers while trying to track down the plant which is making the deadly videos.
There are a lot of Japanese bad guys running around, and plenty of death and mayhem. In the end, the surviving hero is sure that he has destroyed the production plant and all of the videos, and made Earth safe. But one of the Japs still have one . . .

Repo Man is Alex Cox's story of a kid with attitude, who get drawn into the vehicle repossession business, a dying man who's driving around in a car containing a lethal, radioactive something in the boot [possibly dead aliens?], sinister Government agents and a guy who refuses to learn how to drive a car but who can fly the (at the end) green-glowing vehicle with something radioactive in the boot.

Replicant (2001) Jake, a cop, just survives an encounter with a serial killer called The Torch (Jean Claude Van Damme) on his last day in the job. The National Security Force recruits him to continue the hunt for the SK. The NSF has made a telepathic clone of the guy (also the Muscles from Brussels) as part of a programme to track down terrorists using Replicants of them.
   Jake takes the clone to the scene of the first Torch murder to trigger memories. Jake finds the SK's lair and the clone saves him from being blown up in it. The SK and the clone see each other and the clone chases the SK, who beats him up in a bar and kills most of the occupants.
   A hooker picks up the clone and he takes out her pimp posse before Jake collects him. The SK kills again at an hotel; the clone ditches Jake there. The SK, Luke, visits his mom in her secure hospital; she killed his father, locked him up and set fire to the house. Luke survived only because it rained.
   Mom croaks. Luke beats the clone up in the mortuary. The clone refuses to kill Jake when he arrives. After causing mayhem, Luke splits in an ambulance but Jake makes him crash. The clone saves Jake from being incinerated and Jake gets to kill Luke. Is the replicant killed in an almighty propane explosion? No way, and he ends up with the hooker.

Reptilian (2001) is a thoroughly silly B-Movie. A mad scientist digs up a 225 million year old fossil 50 times the size of T. Rex, invading aliens re-animate the monster and start beaming it around the planet and encouraging it to cause havoc. The US air force tries to zap the monster with missiles and destroys the city that the monster is in instead. A mad security agent tries to get control of the monster. Another monster turns up for a battle with the first one and loses. So the aliens zap off and Monster #1 is awarded its own island.

Resident Evil (2002) The Umbrella Corporation is huge in the 21st Century. Some blue stuff was released in an underground laboratory and the computer control system went into lockdown and people were trapped in lifts, rooms flooded by sprinklers and rooms filled with gas.
   A woman woke in a shower in a vast, empty country house. Armed soldier crashed in on Alice and a cop, who just appeared from nowhere. They were taken for a ride on an underground train, picking up another guy with amnesia on the way. The head of the troops announced that the civilians were security guards for Raccoon City and an underground research facility called the Hive. They'd been exposed to nerve gas, which had caused temporary amnesia.
   The team entered the lab complex with the objective of shutting down the Red Queen, the control system. Then they found that the corpses weren't dead and the Queen's defence system hacked most of the troops to bits. The Red Queen was shut down after telling the intruders that they were all going to die. A survivor turned out to be a crazed, flesh-eating zombie! Another soldier was killed; eaten!
   One of the security guards had tried to steal the virus and its antidote. Alice had been working with the cop's sister to expose what Umbrella was doing. They had an hour to get out before the Hive was sealed off forever. The virus reanimated dead bodies with only limited intelligence and a desire to feed on living tissue. The team escaped through service tunnels, pursued and whittled down by zombies.
   The Red Queen is zapped, the team gets to the train and a female soldier gets the anti-virus, which doesn't work. Then a mutant monster attack the train. Only Alice and Max, the cop, escape from the Hive and they fall right into the hands of the Umbrella Corp. Alice wakes up in a medical centre and staggers out into the wreck of Raccoon City, where "The Dead Walk" according to a newspaper headline.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2002) The Umbrella Corporation re-opens the Hive and the T-virus escapes into Racoon City. The zombies start mass murder and the city is placed under quarantine. Alice is revived and finds herself in the middle of the zombie plague. UC tries to evacuate key personnel but a Dr. Ashford refuses to go when Angela, his daughter, is stranded in the hot zone.
   A reporter and a couple of cops; one stroppy female, one black male and bitten by a zombie; hole up in a church where they are stalked by mutant monsters. Alice turns up to zap the monsters. The gang nips through a churchyard, where zombies erupt from the ground to attack them! UC activates the Nemesis programme when the T-virus reaches a peak; a huge killer creature with a big gun.
   Dr. Ashford offers Alice & Co. a way out of the city if they save Angela. The city is due to be nuked to destroy the infection. Alice battles the Nemesis creature. The black cop turns into a zombie and is shot but the ladies acquire a black guy called L.J. to keep up their numbers. Dr. Ashford also recruits some Special Forces guys.
   The reporter is eaten by zombies. The lady cop finds Angela. Zombie dogs attack. Angela has the T-virus but her dad has created an antidote for her. UC catches up with Dr. Ashford as Alice & Co. are heading to hijack a helicopter. Alice records her story on the journalist's camera. The gang are captured at the helicopter and Alice gets to fight the Nemesis monster, which is Max, the cop from the previous film. Like Alice, UC had him genetically monstered.
   Alice refuses to kill him. Max takes out the UC goons and a couple of choppers. Everyone else escapes as the head of UC is being eaten by zombies. The nuke takes out the city. Only Alice is found at the crashed chopper. Her film is leaked to the media but UC manages a successful cover-up. Alice is revived in a UC lab and then allowed to escape as part of the next UC research programme.

Retroactive (1997) is a limited version of Groundhog Day or the TV series Seven Days. A scientist working at a soon to be closed US military outpost invents a device for sending people back a short period in time – e.g. 20 minutes. A woman who has failed as a hostage negotiator finds herself getting a lift from James Belushi – playing a fast-talking Texan psychopath – and sees lots of people get killed.
She ends up at the outpost, gets sent back in time 20 minutes knowing what is going to happen – but she screws things up even worse. So she goes back and back in time until she gets a satisfactory conclusion on her final trip after the device has blown up in spectacular style. The film has a very slow start and the serious action doesn't start until about 45 minutes in.

Return of the Jedi (1983) Your mission is to rescue Han Solo, who's still frozen in carbonite and hung up on Jabba the Hutt's wall. So begins part VI of the Lucas epic but, just to confuse everyone, the third film made. Princess Leia gets the job and makes a bog of it. Enter Luke Skywalker to sort everyone out, including Monsters in the Pit Version 1 & 2. Then we are off to do battle with the Death Star Mark II, which looked half built but the look is deceiving. Entertaining chases through the forest on hoverbikes. Blokes in white plastic armour versus little furry aliens with bows and arrows. And more flying around inside a Death Star after the emperor and Darth Invader have been written off.

Return of the Living Dead II How do you know if a film's a comedy? When people who don't know anything about it come in part way through and start laughing. That's just what happens with this film. The plot, if anyone cares, is that the US Army loses some drums of nasty stuff, some kids open one and the contents drift into a cemetery and turn all the inmates into brain-eating zombies. The special effects are a hoot and vast numbers of the dead are zapped using the usual electrocution method at the end. Great fun.

The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) The failing gangster Douvier is told that New York will be impressed if he gets rid of Inspector Clouseau, who is 'too dangerous'. Clouseau collects a new disguise and survives the delivery of a bomb. Then he sets fire to his boss's office. Mr. Chong from Hong Kong arrives to kill him but Clouseau mistakes him for Cato.
   Clouseau drives to an obvious trap but he is hijacked by a transvestite on the way. The transvestite is demolished and Clouseau, in the transvestite's female clothes, is taken to the asylum where Chief Inspector Dreyfus has made a miraculous recovery after hearing that Clouseau is dead. Dreyfus gets to investigate the murder.
   Clouseau escapes from the looney bin and finds that Cato has turned his apartment into a Chinese brothel. Clouseau decides to let everyone think he's dead. Dreyfus gets to deliver the eulogy at the funeral.
   Douvier dumps Simone, his secretary, and she ends up with Clouseau. She tells him that Douvier was responsible for 'killing' Clouseau. Assassins arrive to kill Simone and she and Clouseau end up in Dreyfus's flat while escaping. Dreyfus keeps seeing Clouseau and wondering if he is mad.
   Everyone heads for Hong Kong, where a French Connection heroin deal is about to happen. Clouseau dresses up as the Godfather for a meeting with the Americans. Everyone ends up at the Lee Kee shipyard. Cato manages to drive into the harbour. Twice. Everyone has fun in a firework warehouse, which catches fire. The bad guys are busted and Clouseau gets another medal.

Rio Bravo (1959) Sheriff John Wayne arrests Joe Burdett for murder with the help of his recovering alcoholic deputy, Dude (Dean Martin), and Stumpy, an old-timer. Nathan, Joe's wealthy brother, has the town under siege and he's determined to get his brother released. A very young Angie Dickinson is in the film to embarrass Sheriff Wayne and throw herself at a bloke at least twice her age.
A young gun called Colorado (Ricky Nelson) eventually joins the sheriff's side. Dude quits then unquits when the local band starts playing the Daguello and stops his hands shaking. Dude is grabbed to be traded for Joe, but things don't go Nathan Burdett's way at the exchange and an explosive finish sorts out the bad guys.

Riverworld (2002) is supposed to be based on the stories by Philp Jos� Farmer, but as they are published in science fiction magazines in the 1960s, no one could remember anything of them. The film stars a Brad Johnson (but not the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccanneers). What happens is that a whole bunch of people who died on earth are reborn at about the age of 30 on a planet consisting of a long river. They are rounded up by Vandals, one of the reborn turns out to be the emperor Nero and he takes over. Mr. Johnson, meanwhile, hooks up with a guy called Sam, who turns out to be Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain), who has built a Mississippi riverboard.
There is an alien on Sam's team (he died on Earth just before the meteor wiped out all life in 2039), and he supplies an engine powered by palladium hydride from the frequent meteor strikes on Riverworld. There is a big fight aboard the riverboat, Nero gets his and the boat sails off into the twin-sunset. And then a bunch of hooded aliens start wondering if they have complete their mission in time. So the film ends up looking like the pilot for a TV series, in which Sam and his crew sail up river and meet a new challenge every week.

Robin Hood : Beyond Sherwood Forest (2009) A flying monster kills the Sheriff of Nottingham then turns into a woman. Robert's dad is next in line for the sheriff's job but the evil Malcolm kills him, with Robert watching, and takes the woman/monster prisoner. 10 years later, Marion's dad wants to marry her off to the ancient Duke Leopold of Austria and Robin Hood steals a chest from Prince John's men in Sherwood.
   The sheriff puts extra taxes on the peasants to make them give up their champion and the chest, and he unleashes the monster as Marion is consorting with the outlaws. Helena, the monster, is told that if she takes out Robin Hood, she will be freed. Friar Tuck is written off by the monster and Robin, Little John & Will head through a portal to the Dark Woods for an answer to the monster.
   Marion befriends the human part of the monster and the outlaws are captured. Robin finds the Keepers of the Trees while John & Will are being attacked by carnivores. They return to Sherwood with some glowing pink berries. Helena tells Marion her sad story, that she's cursed and Malcolm killed Robert's father, not her. Malcolm uncovers Prince John's plan to have King Richard killed and decides to use it for blackmail.
   Robin runs into Sheriff Malcolm and is scheduled for hanging. But the outlaws stage a gaol break, Malcolm beats Robin in their fight and the monster arrrives. Malcolm slays the monster but Robin sneaks up on him, and Prince John is blackmailed into playing nice.

Robocop: The Future of Law Enforcement (1994) Robocop defuses a hostage situation in Old Detroit and busts the putty-faced psycho Morgan. OCP is planning to run the city with a computer. The mayor refuses to admit there's a serial killer called the Downtown Ripper taking out derelicts. A kid tries to tell the cops she saw the Ripper; Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo of OCP is trying to build human brains into his computer.
OCP gets Morgan out of gaol to zap Robocop after he busts Mallardo. Robocop is then sleazed and OCP refuses to pay for having him rebuilt. NeuroFrame is switched on with OCP secretary Diana's brain in it. Mollardo takes over OCP so the boss has Robocop repaired to take out Mallardo. Diana stays alive in the computer.
Mallardo's sidekick wipes Robocop's memory so he can't testify against Mallardo. Diana merges with Robocop to revive him. Mallardo puts a virus into the computer to destroy Diana. Robocop takes out an army of bad guys and puts an anti-virus program into the computer, and Mallardo gets his teeth rattled in an express lift.

RoboCop: Prime Directives
1. Dark Dominion (2001) is the first of a sequence set in Delta City, which is run by OCP. A vigilante called Bone Machine is running riot and Damian, an OCP junior executive, wants to run the whole city with a computer system called Saint. But first, he'd like to try the system out in the OCP building, and he's exploiting Ed, the guy developing Saint. RoboCop has a mother figure for a technician, he's feeling his age, and his son, James, is now working for OCP. RoboCop proves to his former partner, John Cable, that Bone Machine is using OCP experimental weapons and Cable starts to suspect that RoboCop is his old partner, Murphy. Sara Cable, John's ex-wife, is Damian's rival at OCP.
   RoboCop has a flashback to a serial killer, who took Cable hostage; and Cable executing the killer because they entered his house without a warrant. Sara want to recruit James Murphy into a plan to save OCP from itself. James is effectively Cable's boss. Someone adds 'terminate John Cable' to RoboCop's prime directives. Cable finds that Sara has framed him for stealing Bone Machine's weapons and goes on the run.
   Damian tries to blackmail his way into Sara's conspiracy to take over OCP. Bone Machine is another cop; a former mate of Murphy & Cable. He wants to be the top cop in Delta City. Another flashback – Murphy and Cable had a falling out over what happened to the serial killer, for which Cable got a medal.
   Cable confronts RoboCop then Bone Machine turns up and we're back at the serial killer scenario. So RoboCop shoot Cable to gets him out of the way then zaps Bone Machine. John Cable doesn't make it, but his ex-wife is planning to turn him into RoboCop II.

RoboCop: Prime Directives
2. Meltdown (2001) continues the story with RoboCop kicking ass while John Cable is buried. A bunch of female thieves zap Ed, raid OCP's computer, kill some cops and give RoboCop a hard time. Sarah Cable is in trouble at OCP over her security policies and Damian is being pushed to deliver Saint. RoboCop takes a trip to the graveyard and demolishes his own headstone. Meanwhile, Cable is being converted into RoboCop II with a wiped memory.
   Sarah sets the new RoboCop on the CEO of OCP and she tells Sarah to get RoboCop off the streets. Cable is sent after Murphy, so a shoot-out and a car chase, and a plunge into the sea for RoboCop 1. James Murphy starts trying to access the classified section of his dad's records. Damian finds out what Sarah had done to her ex-husband. He doesn't think RoboCop is dead and he brings in a goon squad.
   RoboCop ends up as a hoodie in Old Detroit, where he meets Jordan, the daughter of Ann; one of the techno-thieves. Murphy tells Cable where to meet him and they do battle in the ruins of Detroit police HQ. Murphy forces Cable to remember his own death. Ann then Cable join in RoboCop 1's battle with the OCP goons.
   OCP claims that both RoboCops have been destroyed. Damian is sacked by the CEO for using the goon squad, so he uses Saint to wipe out OCP's board. And finally, James Murphy realizes that RoboCop is Alex Murphy, his dad, and the 2 battered RoboCops stomp off into the distance.

RoboCop: Prime Directives
3. Resurrection (2001) In part 3 of the saga, RoboCop Murphy needs a service so RoboCop Cable takes up the fight against OCP's goons. Damian is now president of OCP and his policy is guns, guns, guns. His first action is to give 27% more to the board members, including Sarah Cable and James Murphy, and he knows that Sarah is plotting against him with James, who is under orders to terminate the RoboCop programme. The Saint program is running the OCP building and Damian plans to automate Delta City with it.
   Dr. David Kaydick, a former employee who is wanted by OCP but presumed dead, gives Cable a service and installs a 'Svengali' chip in him so that he can control Cable. Meanwhile, Murphy is being refitted by the 3 technothief women from the previous episode and they disconnect a memory suppressor.
   Kaydick has created 'Legion', a virus which can kill 'flesh and data' but he needs Cable's help to recover the base program. He wants to wipe the world clean – evolution by apocalypse. The technothief women used to be his 'disciples', until they removed their control chips and he's Jordan's father!
   Kaydick and Cable crash through OCP's goons and kidnap Jordan, who is a human host for the Legion virus. 2 of the technothief women are killed, but not Jordan's mom, Ann. RoboCop and Ann escape in a souped-up car. Murphy foils an attempt to upload the virus to the OCP building. Another fire-fight with OCP goons as Jordan's parents get into a punch-up. James is about to terminate his dad, watched by OCP's board, when the battery in his camera runs out. But James doesn't zap his dad and everyone drives off into the distance as MediaNet 2.0 is proclaiming RoboCop's death again.

RoboCop: Prime Directives
4. Crash & Burn (2001) Damian is selling SAINT to the people of Delta City as a count-down to full automation begins and RoboCop is definitely dead. Dr. Kaydick still plans to put the Legion virus in OCP's mainframe. Damian lets Sarah Cable know she's on the way out at OCP. Ed thinks there's something wrong with Saint but Damien won't let him delay automation. So Ed quits.
   Kaydick and RoboCable get into OCP HQ using cloaking devices. RoboCop crashes into Delta City with James Murphy and Ann, and OCP security takes a lickin'! Damian unfires Ed to avoid having to give orders to Saint himself. Decisions should be a thing of the past with Saint running everything. Murphy & Co. join up with Ed, so Damian fires him again. Saint locks down the OCP building. Kaydick adds Sarah to his team.
   The RoboCops get in a 3-way battle with OCP security and Kaydick and Ann start scrapping. Damian & Sarah take their chance to bail out, and Sarah shoves Damian down a lift shaft! That doesn't kill him, but being hacked to bits by the security system's lasers does. Saint adds, "I never did like you, Damian." Cable stops Murphy temporarily. Kaydick loads his virus into the mainframe.
   Murphy returns to do battle with Cable, giving James, Ed and Jordan a chance to run for it. The virus eats Ann & Kaydick. RoboCable disables RoboMurphy and triggers an EM pulse, which kills all electronic devices in Delta City, including the virus-infected computer. Switched off, Murphy survives. Sarah takes over as head of OCP, so James quits. But OCP goes down in a shower of law suits, James starts a new company to improve lives and his dad returns to the streets to uphold the law.

Rollerball (2001) This remake switches the setting from some unspecified future location to the current criminal swamp of the former Soviet empire. Cops pursue a pair of skateboard lugers in San Francisco. One wipes out and the other is picked up by his pal Ripley, who suggests he joins his rollerbrawl team. But Jonathan wants to try out for the NHL. But the cops know where he lives and 4 months later, he's in Central Asia on the rollerbrawl team. With Paul Heyman of ECW doing the American commentary.
   This version of rollerbrawl is more like crazy golf than roller derby. There's lots of dosh going through the counters, lots of advertising and a cable deal in the offing. The boss realizes that violence ups the ratings and one of Jonathan's team is almost killed. Jonathan tells the boss it was done deliberately, not knowing the boss was behind it.
   Thugs torch Jonathan's car. Ripley is unfazed. "Status quo," he says. "We play, we win. And if it gets too sick, we walk." [Shane McMahon of WW$ is also in the film but just standing around in a crowd scene.] The motorbike of Aurora, Jonathan's scar-faced girlfriend, is set alight and Ripley ends up in hospital after saving her. The boss is unimpressed when Jonathan complains he's done nothing to stop the 'accidents'.
   Jonathan & Ripley try to escape but Ripley is killed. The boss tells Jonathan to play until the cable deal is secured or Aurora gets it. Jonathan responds by demanding a percentage of the action. The owners suspend the rules to allow someone to be killed. Jonathan becomes a symbol of revolt against the corrupt biznizmen running Russia & its satellites. So mayhem in the final match and Jonathan gets to kill the boss and also the boss's would-be successor.

Ronin (1998) [A masterless, former samurai, the blurb before the title explains.] PARIS Irish criminals are setting up a mission involving stealing a briefcase by ambushing '2-3 cars'. They recruit an international gang, an attempt to buy guns turns into a shooting match and the mercenaries demand more money. Sean Bean is exposed as an imposter, who wasn't in the SAS, and evicted from the film.
   NICE The rest head for the South of France and turn Nice into a shooting gallery when the job goes off. A lengthy chase, lots more shooting when the case is grabbed, then the double crossing starts. Lots more rampaging and shooting, and some amateur 'meat-ball' surgery.
   PARIS The IRA bunch end up back in the capital with Gregor, who knows where the briefcase is, as their prisoner. Another car chase when a couple of the others go after the package, and a lot of wrong-way driving on expressways until the IRA car runs out of road.
   Off to an ice show next, where Russians want to buy the briefcase. Lots of bodies. The IRA bloke shoots the Russians but he gets plugged, too. (Hooray!) And peace breaks out in Ireland when the news of the death of the IRA terrorist Seamus O'Rourke gets out.

The Rookie (1990) Clint Eastwood loses his partner going after car thieves without calling for back-up so he's saddled with Ackermann, a rookie replacement (Charlie Sheen). He harasses Strong, the head bad guy (Gomez Addams from the recent movies), at a posh restaurant, where the kid is known as he has a rich family. Clint takes him to a Mexican bar to be beaten up and have his badge stolen. Then Ackermann is chased by guard dogs while Clint is harassing the owner of a scrap yard. Clint used to be a racer and he has some fancy motorbikes, one of which the kid fixes.
   The kid's family thinks he's wasting his time as a cop and he resents it. Clint shuts down Strong's chop shops so he turns to robbery. When that flops, he holds Clint to a $2M ransom while planning to blow him up. Having been shot in the flak jacket after failing to shoot Strong's psychotic girlfriend, the kid borrows Clint's motorbike and gets $2M from his dad. When he gets tough in the Mexican bar, they set the fighting dogs on him, so he shoots the place up and sets fire to it.
   Ackermann wrecks his own house in a fight with a minor bad guy then he goes after Strong. Who blows up the building as Clint and the kid crash out of it in a car and land on a neighbouring building. Then they follow the ransom money to Strong and have fun & games at the airport, where everyone gets shot, but only bad guys are shot fatally. So Clint is promoted to a desk and Ackermann, now a Clint-clone, is given a Hispanic female partner.
   Lots of shooting and car chases in this one. Load up the TV with bullets before it starts.

Runaway Train (1985) John Voight stars as an inmate of a prison in Alaska. He's been welded in his cell for 3 years but he wins a human rights case and gets out of The Hole. Mannheim is a killer and an animal, the warden reckons. A convict attacks Manny with a knife at a prison boxing match and ends up stabbed by one of Manny's mates. Manny reckons the warden is pushing him to escape, even though it's 30 below outside.
   Manny uses the old laundry basket ploy to escape, and one of the boxers goes with him. They go through the sewers, drive into a river and sneak aboard a freight train as the driver croaks of a heart attack and falls off! The throttle is stuck wide open and the brakes wear our quickly.
   A collision with the caboose of another train wakes a female railway worker, who was asleep on the train against the rules. She blows the train's whistle, so an attempt to derail the train is called off. She tells the convicts they're on a runaway, and shows them how to slow it down enough to survive a trip over an old bridge. Meanwhile, the warden is after Manny on a helicopter.
   The warden assaults a guy at the railway control room. Manny loses it and disillusions the punk kid boxer. The warden puts a man aboard the train but he falls off. The warden plays silly buggers on the chopper's ladder as the train is diverted onto a dead end. Manny struggles to the lead engine, ambushes the warden there and handcuffs him to a rail.
   Then he uncouples the rest of the train, saving the kid and the woman, and takes the warden with him to an off-camera crash.

Rush Hour 2 (2001) Inspector Lee (Jackie Chan) and his loudmouth American cop colleague Tyler Carter are on holiday in Hong Kong when they get involved in the explosive antics of Ricky Tan, who killed Lee's dad. Punch-ups in a gangster bar & a massage parlour, then the US Secret Service tells Lee to take his nose out of a hunt for counterfeit currency. Tan is shot during a punch-up on his boat and Tyler is chucked out of Hong Kong.
Tyler takes Lee to L.A., where they have fun with a bomb which isn't. The Secret Service is after Tan's printing plates. Our heroes get themselves captured but escape through a sewer in Las Vegas. They end up in the Red Dragon casino, where Isabella, the female Secret Service undercover, gets Lee into trouble again. Tyler creates a diversion while Lee get the plates, only he gets himself caught again.
Surprise! Tan isn't dead! Mayhem at the casino and Lee boots Tan out of a penthouse window. Then Lee and Tyler have to jump for it just before a mad Chinese female bad guy blows the place up. Cue the end credits and the inevitable string of bloopers.