Sahara (2005) is a Dirk Pitt/NUMA adventure by Clive Cussler. Dr. Eva of the WHO is crusading against a mysterious plague in Africa and Pitt reckons he's on the trail of the Texas, a US civil war era ironclad, which is supposed to have sailed across the Atlantic and up the Niger river. The admiral gives him 72 hours to look for it and Dr. Eva hitches a lift to Mali.
   Pitt reckons the ironclad came up the river after the great storm of 1866. He & his pals run into a corrupt general's forces and the boat goes up in flames. Pitt realizes the soldiers were trying to kill the doctor. Dr. Eva takes a trip down a contaminated well, soldiers kill her companions on the surface but, luckily, Pitt is nearby to save her ass.
   Al finds a drawing of the ironclad at a Tuareg base as the admiral is blagging some CIA help. Pitt & Co. come across a solar-powered chemical waste disposal plant, which is paying off the general and which is leaking and contaminating an underground river. The admiral decides the world's oceans have had it if the contamination travels down the Niger to the sea. Pitt & Al have to shut it down and save Dr. Eva from the French guy operating the plant.
   While escaping, pursued by the general, they come across the wreck of the Texas, which is full of Confederate gold coins, and they use a civil war cannon to blow the general's chopper out of the sky. Then his troops surrender. Mainly because a million Tuaregs come over the dunes. And the French bloke gets to drink some contaminated water courtesy of the CIA.

The Saint (1997, Val Kilmer) Simon Templar was drug up in an orphanage run by homicidal Irish Catholics, and his young girlfriend was killed when the staff set the dogs on them. They tried to force the name of a saint on him, so the Saint uses the names of their saints as aliases in his criminal career. He steals a microchip from Ivan Petrovich, who is planning to restore the Russian empire with himself as the tsar. Ivan's son catches him in the act but the Saint gets away.
   The Saint receives a coded message from 'Boris the Spider'. Ivan wants him to steal the secret of a cold fusion process from Dr. Emma Russell. She hasn't actually perfected the process but she feels 'the truth of the concept'. The Saint falls for her, of course. Ivan threatens Emma when the Saint stalls him.
   The Saint delivers but Ivan says the formula is incomplete when the Saint asks for his dough. Ivan Jr. goes after the Saint but he's not good enough. The Saint invades a club disguised as Ivan and gets his dough. As he has over $50 million, he decides to retire. Emma tracks him down to Moscow and gets him arrested. But the corrupt cops bust her, too.
   Moscow is freezing due to a shortage of fuel oil. When the Saint & Emma escape, Ivan sends his lad after them with orders to kill him but catch her so she can make the fusion process work. After a long chase, Emma makes it to the US embassy and the Saint blows up Junior's car, frying him a bit. Ivan's scientist can't make the process work, so Ivan sells the useless formula to the Russian president.
   Ivan plans to launch a coup and topple the president when a public demonstration of the process flops. But the Saint gets Emma to finish things off. Ivan comes unstuck when he tries to take over and Emma gives the process, free, to the world.

Sanctimony (2000) features a male cop (Jim Bernard) who thinks about his job 24/7 and has a pregnant wilfe who thinks he needs to make some changes for the sake of their kid. The female cop (Dorothy Smith) thinks it's a good idea to chuck herself at the only suspect for a string of killings called the Monkey Murders because the victims have had eyes then ears then tongues removed. Tom Turner is a hotshot city trader who's loaded and who reported a body while in a bad part of town.
   Their boss tells Bernard and Smith that the Feds will take over the next day. But Smith becomes the next victim and Bernard's wife is nearly the one after her. Turner goes on a killing spree, starting with the presenter of the TV show where he's a guest, studio staff, and the people at the non-wedding party given by his rejected fiancée. He also sends all his company's cash down a black hole before committing 'suicide by cop' by threatening Bernard with empty guns.

Sands of Oblivion (2007) An episode of Egyptian mysticism to start, and a beast imprisoned with a control amulet and buried. In the present, a professor's ex-wife, Alice, is digging for the lost set of Cecil B. De Mille's film The Ten Commandments at Guadalupe, California. Ex-soldier Mark brings his grandfather there looking for a time capsule, which he buried during the filming.
   His box contains 'The Eye of Horus', and when the amulet is exposed to daylight, grandpa is dragged into the sand and his arm is bitten off! Jesse, Alice's ex-husband, arrives to help out and the monster starts killing more of the archaeologists.
   Part of the set is an authentic Egyptian room; De Mille bought a job lot of antiquities from Egyptian grave robbers for his film. Jesse thinks the room is a cell, and they unlocked its door. All the bits of set are going to Santa Maria for reassembly as an oil company is going to destroy the original desert site. Alice meets an old actor, who tells her about the artefacts.
   Jesse is attacked by the monster and goes nuts. Mark gets weapons from an old army buddy. Jesse, his face covered in festering spots, makes off with Alice. Mark quells the monster with the amulet and goes after them. The local lawmen join in and come unstuck. Jesse is swallowed by a sand monster. There's a silly battle back at the set and a dose of good old white phosphorus takes out the monster.

Scanner Cop (1994) is based on the work of David Cronenberg, who made the horror/sci-fi film Scanners, so we were all eagerly waiting for the exploding heads. The cop in question is a telepath produced by illegal experiments on humans, and he takes a drug to suppress his psychic abilities. Then a bad guy starts working a 'Manchurian Candidate' effect on people and making them kill cops. So the telepath is forced to use his talents to track down the criminal mastermind. Lots of special effects, lots of fun and you have to wait to the very end for the exploding heads.

The Scorpion King (2002) Before the pyramids, Memnon and his gang were running riot and planning to dominate the world with the aid of Memnon's sorcerer. The Rock (the former WW$ wrestler) and his gang of assassins took the job of taking the sorcerer out. The sorcerer turned out to be a lady (Kelly Hu) and The Rack was betrayed. He ended buried up to his neck and menaced by fire ants, but he got out by acquiring a comic sidekick.
   Memnon was planning to create a 1,000-year reich. The Rack's assassination attempt flopped. He was catapulted into the harem and he escaped from Memnon's castle with the sorceress. The Rack took out Memnon's guard in caves under the desert but he was stopped by an arrow coated in scorpion venom. The sorceress saved him. Meanwhile, Memnon's boffin had re-invented gunpowder, and he joined Rocky's gang.
   Rocky & Co. were captured by rebels at a water hole and Rocky had a hardcore match with the leader. The sorceress had all sorts of bad visions and went back to Memnon. Mayhem at Memnon's castle when Rocky & allies attacked as the sorceress was taking a cobra-detection test. There was a humungous battle, the gunpowder ran wild and The Rack became the Scorpion King.

Screamers (1995) is based on a story by Philip K. Dick. In 2068, the mining company NEB found a power source called berynium on Sirius 6B, but mining it led to the release of huge amounts of radiation, which led to a nuclear war between the company and its miners. It's now 2078 and a soldier from NEB is chopped to bits by screamers at a miners' base while trying to deliver an invitation to peace talks. The screamers are killing machines, which burrow under the sand of the planet and attack anyone who doesn't have a miner's IFF gadget.
   A troop transport crashes at the base. It has nukes aboard and Jefferson, the sole survivor, tells Joe, the commander, that it was going to attack the new NEB mining operation on Triton 4. He also says that the head of the miners' alliance has been dead for 2 years, so a communication sent to the base from HQ has to be as bogus as the peace talks.
   Joe decides that everyone on Sirius 6B has been abandoned and they're never going home. He and Jefferson head for the nearest NEB base, collecting a kid called David on the way. The NEB gang blow the kid away, proving that 'he' is an android built by the screamers. The NEB command centre is a charnel house, a woman is in charge, and it is infested with Type 1 screamers; which look like chicken-size dinosaurs.
   Davids are Type 3 and the computer fails to tell Joe what Type 2s are before everyone has to run for it. The miners' base is full of Davids when Joe & his enlarged gang return. So Joe nukes it. The Type 3 reveals itself and killed Jefferson. So Joe and the woman head for an escape shuttle. Joe's old mate Josh from the miners' base shows up to kill him, but Josh ends up in a laser beam.
   The escape shuttle is a single-seater. Joe offers it to the woman but, conveniently, she turns out to be another screamer, and she does battle with another screamer of her type. So Joe gets away. And guess what's inside the teddy bear he still has from the first David encounter!
   The film is described as Aliens meet The Thing, but it's more like Tremors meets the Replicators in Stargate SG-1 and the Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica.

Second In Command (2006) Jean-Claude van Damme plays Cmdr. Sam Keenan, who's posted to an embassy in Eastern Europe, where a bunch of skinhead commies are trying to depose the president. But he stops off along the way to bunk up with his journalist girlfriend. Mr. President asks for help from the Americans, Sam extracts him from his palace and takes him to the embassy; cue a siege there.
   The guards allow an RPG to be fired into the building, which kills the ambassador and puts Sam in charge. The commies threaten to kill his girlfriend and 2 guys if Sam won't turn over the president. Then a skinhead kills one of the prisoners. So Sam rescues the others and pokes the skinhead's eyes out. The president's relief army and US forces are several hours away, so the CIA guy wants to evacuate the embassy.
   The plan is to bug out via tunnels and drive off in a bus; which is blown up with most of the civilians aboard. Why? Because the skinheads planted a bug on Michelle, Sam's girlfriend, and no one scanned her when she arrived at the embassy. The bad guys attack, the Marines give them hell, then the president's army arrives. All suspiciously too easy.
   Bummer! The general is in league with the commies. But US Army helicopters arrived to blast the various bad guys as the head bald commie invades the embassy. Michelle fails to plug him when she has a clear shot, but Sam takes the scumbag out. Yeah!

The Shadow (1994) Lamont Cranston, an opium baron in 1930s Tibet, is kidnapped and taken to a temple to be educated whether he likes it or not. He is taught to 'cloud the minds of men' and sent back to New York, where his uncle is the crime commissioner, to fight evil. Starting with a gangster called Duke, who wanted to chuck a guy wearing a concrete boot off a bridge. The look of sets is very much 'Gotham City'.
   Lamont meets Margot Lane, a telepath whose mind he can't cloud. Ghengis Khan's last descendant arrives at a museum in a silver coffin and visits Lamont to join him in his plan to conquer the bits of the world that Ghengis didn't get to. Both were educated by the Tibetan priest who kidnapped Lamont.
   Khan is planning to build an atomic bomb and Margot's father just happens to have an essential piece of kit, which his bug-eyed assistant built. The Shadow can't cloud Margot's mind but Khan can, and he tries to get her to kill Lamont. Khan's HQ is the Hotel Monolith, which is disguised as an empty lot.
   The Shadow is trapped in a giant sphere, which fills up with water, for a time. Khan threatens to blow up New York and demands a billion dollar ransom. The Shadow does battle in his hotel. Fun & games with the bomb and in Khan's room full of mirrors. And he ends up in a looney bin, unable to cloud men's minds because he's had a lobotomy.

Shadow Man (2006) Steven Seagal is the usual kung fu expert and retired secret agent. Jack's daughter is kidnapped with explosions. The CIA comes after him because they think he was delivering a chip containing data on a bioweapon, which the Russians also want. The action takes place in Romania, and the cops are after Jack, too. A CIA traitor shoots Harry, the boss, and pins the blame on Jack.
   The taxi driver who strolled off with the kid was in league with Harry and she wants a passport and a ticket to the US. Jack shoots up a drug den to get operating cash. He hooks up with the taxi driver and gets into brawls with cops & Russians. CIA agents grab the girl. Cue another shoot-out where the girl was stashed but Jack finds the chip.
   Jack shoots the bad guys' chopper out of the sky and does a deal with the lady at the US embassy. Loads of Americans & Russians taken out, the bioweapon lab is destroyed by Jack's hacker using its own purge system, Jack ends up with his daughter and the taxi lady gets her US passport.

Shaft: the 2000 remake features Sam Jackson as the man himself, but Richard Roundtree is also in it. Detective Shaft busts a murder suspect in a bar but his barmaid witness does a runner and the racialist killer jumps bail. 2 years later, Shaft is busting Hispanic drug dealers. The killer returns and he is busted, too. In the lockup, he makes a connection with the main spic dealer. When the killer gets bail again, Shaft quits the force to get the guy in his own way.
   Shaft pursues the fugitive witness. The spic sends 2 bent cops after him. Shaft and his cop accomplice steal the $42K which the killer was going to use to pay for the hit on the barmaid.and plants it on the bent cops. So the spic makes the killer sell heroin instead.
   When Shaft finds his barmaid, there's a shoot-out and the spic dealer goes crazy when his brother is killed. He falls out with the killer. The barmaid tells Shaft what she saw, then admits taking $50K to get lost. The spic and his gang attack so Shaft & his allies go on the run. Mucho shooting and motoring mayhem. The spic gets his hands on the witness then he gets dead.
   Finally, the day of the trial. But shock-horror! The victim's mom shoots the killer dead on the courthouse steps.
   Note: This film holds a world record for the most instances of the f-word per square inch.

Shanghai Knights (2003) is the sequel to Shanghai Noon. The Shanghai Kid's dad is murdered in China and Lord Rathbone steals the Emperor's seal with its huge diamond. Lin, the Kid's sister, sends a message to Carson City, Nevada, where 'John Wayne' is the sheriff. He heads for New York to collect his old pal Roy O'Bannon, who has spent all the gold which they won in the last adventure.
   They head for the London of 1887, where Lord Rathbone is planning to kill the 9 people between him and the throne, and Wu Shao, for whom Rathbone stole the seal, is hoping to become the Emperor of China. Lots of kung-fu battles along the way. Our heroes team up with Inspector Conan Doyle of the Yard, a thieving kid makes off with the seal and our heroes have to escape from Lord Rathbone's blazing stables.
   Lin kicks Jack the Ripper into the Thames before being captured by Wu's men. Inspector Doyle, who has been sacked, tracks down the kid, there's a huge battle in Madame Tussaud's, and everyone is arrested. The kid, who's called Charlie Chaplin, rescues everyone from the paddy wagon.
   The plot to kill Queen Victoria and the others in Rathbone's way is foiled, Lin takes out Wu with a firework, and the Kid and Roy have a huge battle with Rathbone in the Big Ben Tower. They do a Douglas Fairbanks with a flag and drop in on Queen Victoria's anteroom. Knighthoods for Roy and the Kid, Doyle takes the seal back to China and takes up writing stories about Sherlock Holmes, an alias assumed by Roy, Roy gets Lin and everyone heads for Hollywood to make movies.

Shanghai Noon (2000) is a Jackie Chan film in which our hero heads from the Chinese court to the Wild West of the 1880 to rescue a princess, who didn't realize she was being kidnapped. Lots of battles with train robbers, Injuns, cowboys, a rogue sheriff and other Imperial Guards. Lots of references to the icons of Western films. Lots of laughs. The film does drag in a few places but it is a good way to fill an hour and a half in front of the box.

Shaolin Soccer (2001) is an enjoyable & spectacular kung fu meets soccer film. Fong, a.k.a. Golden Leg, blasted a winning penalty over the bar, throwing the match for the evil Mr. Hung. 20 years later, he was lame & washed up, and the hugely successful Hung wouldn't give Fong a job as a soccer coach and, by the way, Hung had Fong's leg broken. Then Golden Leg met Steel Leg, a Shaolin kung fuist, who was sweet on Mui, a kung fu lady baker.
   Fong advised Steel Leg to apply kung fu to soccer, so he recruited his 5 deadleg brothers. A practice match became a massacre. The Power came back to the brothers and they started doing the massacring. Meanwhile, Team Evil was also preparing for the up-coming $1M tournament.
   The Shaolin team didn't impress Mr. Hung but they won their opening match about 100-0. Natch, they met Team Evil in the final of the Super Cup. The Evils had an unbeatable goalie and the match was rigged. Mui had to go in goal to make up the numbers for the good guys, who scored as time ran out. And everyone in the area took up kung fu afterwards.

Shepherd (1999) After the apocalypse, everyone is living underground and competing religious cults are in charge, one run by Miles (Rowdy Roddy Piper, the WW$ wrestler) and the other by Sophia, the Amazon. Their 'shepherds' are male and female assassins. Cole, whose wife and child were killed sometime in the past, gets fed up with the job but agrees to do one last job.
   Cole's target, one of Sophia's outfit, has a son, so he goes on the run with her, pursued by Gideon, the head of Miles' shepherds. Lots of shooting and crazy driving. His target asks Cole if he believes that the surface is okay now and the cult leaders are keeping everyone underground to keep them under their thumbs.
   Cole parks mom & the kid, goes on a bender, gets beaten up by druggies but returns as mom is trying to save the kid from a cannibal. Mom does a spot of assassinating, borrows Cole's memory specs to have a lot at his family and climbs into bed with him. Gideon gets his ass into gear, resumes the hunt and grabs the kid.
   Miles & Sophia start their own armageddon, Gideon nails Miles in a crucifixion pose and admits to Cole that he killed his wife & kid. The cult leaders take each other out and the 2 shepherds, and the kid, make it through an exit tunnel to the glorious outside where, presumably, the gut-shot Cole croaks for lack of medical attention.

Shark Swarm (2008) Bad guys are dumping crap from the closed Full Moon Bay power station into the sea, killing the fish and turning the local sharks psycho. Hamilton Lux is buying up the town to turn it into a resort with condos. Only Daniel, the fisherman, and his brother Philip, the marine biologist, are refusing to join in the windfall.
   Daniel finds Nick's boat adrift with a hole in the side and lots of big shark teeth in the woodwork, and people are being eaten by sharks at an increasing rate. Lux is having problems with Amy of the EPA; he needs clearance for her for his development. Amy is nearly eaten by sharks while taking water samples at the power plant site.
   Philip's professor hacks a NASA satellite and sees a swarm of sharks heading for Spivey Point, where Dan's daughter is surfing. Dan falls in the sea with a taser but sees off the sharks. Then he spots the bad guys dumping crap. But his wife phones the sheriff and he's in Lux's pocket.
   Dan & his wife are taken prisoner by Killer Kane & his wife, who both end up dead after Dan & Mrs. Dan escape from drowning in a shark cage. The Prof. spots 3 swarms heading for beaches but the good guys zap them with the shark guns, Lux is eaten and the swarms disperse.

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking (2004, Rupert Everett as Holmes) A young Holmes was on a drug binge when a female body was found on a Thames mud flat. Watson kibitzed at the post mortem. The victim was strangled with a silk stocking and dressed like a prostitute but she was Lady Alice, the daughter of the duke of Marlborough. The duke hired Holmes, who accused Watson of dogging his heels. Watson said he was just trying to get Holmes off drugs, then he introduced Holmes to his American fiancée, who was a shrink. She started profiling the killer.
   Lady Georgina was kidnapped next. "She's dead already," Holmes told Lestrade, and she was found hanging in the fog, dressed in Lady Alice's clothes. Holmes set a trap at Lady Georgina's funeral but Lady Imogen disappeared in the fog. Holmes shot up with coke but Imogen was recovered alive. The killer was a foot fetishist and she had a club foot.
   Holmes questioned Charles Allen, a footman on the duke's staff, Imogen freaked out when she was confronted by him in a corridor but the duchess reclaimed him (because she was having casual sex with him) and the duke fired Holmes. Holmes, wearing a brilliant disguise, set another trap at a ball. He caught a Charles Allen trying to abduct a girl but fingerprints said it was the wrong man. Holmes deduced identical twins.
   Lady Roberta was grabbed next. Luckily, she had a nose-bleed, which left a trail at the killer's lair. Watson shamed the duchess into helping while Lestrade worked over the prisoner in his cell. Lestrade lost his prisoner. Holmes tracked the killer to his lair, there was a confrontation with both brothers, and they both ended up in clink, destined for a date with the hangman.

Sherlock: Case of Evil (2002) Sherlock Holmes (who looks about 22) is busted for murder but there's no body. Even so, the papers credit him with killing Prof. Moriarty, who was blackmailing his client, Lady de Winter. Mr. Harrington, the drug dealer, wants to hire Holmes to catch whomever is killing off London's dealers. Holmes meets Dr. Watson at the autopsy on a dead opium dealer. Holmes tells Inspector Lestrade that the killer is short and hook-handed.
   The killer is found hanging and the police are happy with suicide. Holmes gets Watson to do an unauthorized autopsy to confirm murder. Harrington is done in next. Holmes hits the bottle to do some thinking over Watson's autopsy reports. He realizes that Moriarty is killing opium dealers to build a monopoly for himself.
   The drug-shattered wreck of Mycroft Holmes, one of Moriarty's victims, fires his brother up again. Holmes finds 'Lady de Winter' and shoots Moriarty again in his bullet-proof vest. Then he's taken for a ride and hooked on heroin, which Moriarty invented. Watson rehabilitates him and Holmes locates Moriarty's warehouse.
   The police go in shooting Moriarty's men to bits. Moriarty escapes, does in 'Lady de Winter', and battles with Holmes in the Big Ben clock tower. He's run through with Holmes' sword but his body vanishes into the Thames.

Sherlock Holmes and the Incident at Victoria Falls (1991, Christopher 'Count Dracula' Lee as Holmes, Patrick 'John Steed' McNee as Watson) It's 1910 and Holmes is about to retire to start a bee ranch in Sussex when his brother sends him to South Africa to escort a diamond called the Star of Africa back to England. The Matabele are after the diamond because it was part of treasure which they stole, which was stolen from them by the British. Holmes meets Mr. Marconi during his travels.
   The plan is for Holmes to switch the diamond for a fake but, before Holmes can do the formal switch but after he has handled the diamond privately, Chandra Seth organizes a gang to tunnel into the vault containing the safe, steal its contents and leave the safe-cracker dead inside. The Boer police superintendent is a complete dolt, who keeps arresting the wrong people.
   Red herrings flow thick and fast. Mr. Morrison at the hotel turns out to be A.J. Raffles, who is shacked with Lilly Langtree, the dumped royal mistress, so the stupid super busts him. Holmes & Watson bust a gut to get on a train for Victoria Falls to follow up a clue. Holmes meets ex-president Teddy Rosevelt on the train. Then he finds Mr. Seth stabbed with a Matabele knife.
   The president helps to trap a fleeing suspect. Watson catches up with Lord Roberts, with whom he served in the 2nd Afghan War. Holmes gets to shoot a charging lion. A Thug takes out the obnoxious Greek chancer, who is determined to marry the widow of a Maharaja, who is from the lowest cast and vulnerable to blackmail. A sinister African burns the treasure map as Holmes, as a hoody, is burgling James the rotter, whose father found the Star.
   James' wife is murdered and chomped by a crocodile. The treasure cave is blown up. Holmes & Watson scramble onto another train to race home to the funeral of Edward VII. 'Marconi' is an imposter and he has the diamond (or the fake). Holmes gives the fake to Lestrade and decides not to retire. Then his brother bursts in on him, demands the real rock.

Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1992, Christopher 'Count Dracula' Lee as Holmes, Patrick 'John Steed' McNee as Watson) A remote controlled detonator for a bomb is stolen in Vienna from the British government agent who buys it in 1910. Both the Kaiser & the Tsar want it. Sherlock Holmes suspects Irene Adler, who is performing in Die Fledermaus at the opera house, where the inventor is killed. Dr. Watson is convinced that Dr. Freud, who hypnotizes Adler for information, is a charlatan.
   Fun, games & skulduggery at an Austrian minister's castle. Adler's maid is killed instead of her. Then Simpson-Makepiece of the British embassy is found bludgeoned to death with the plan of the detonator in his pocket. Holmes decides it is a fake. Holmes has a Reichenbach moment with the bad guy Oberstein, who comes to a sticky end. Then he follows the trail of a fat Hungarian, with Dr. Freud taking over from Watson for a while.
   Holmes becomes involved in an impromptu auction for the plan, which he burns. So everyone chases the prototype of the infernal device, which is in the hands of Bosnian terrorists, who are planning to kill Emperor Franz-Joseph at the opera. Adler is kidnapped from the theatre because the bombers think Holmes is getting too close.
   Holmes deliberately walks into a trap but Eliot Ness, posing as a suitor to Adler, shoots the Serb whom Holmes was hoping to question, so Holmes is left clueless. Dr. Freud does some more hypnotizing and Holmes eventually realizes the bomb is at the opera. The emperor refuses to go somewhere else but Watson finds the bomb and chucks it into the river. Then Holmes & Adler got their separate ways.

Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) features Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as the world's dimmest Watson. Bad guys were after 'The Document' but they grabbed the courier after he had passed it on. Sherlock Holmes was put on the job of recovering The Document as he knew the missing 'Gregson' a.k.a. Pettibone. Holmes deduced that the document was on microfilm concealed in a match book, which was passed around frequently from hand to hand.
   Holmes received a trunk containing Pettibone's body in Washington, so he did his CSI act and went looking for a dodgy antiques shop. Meanwhile, the bad guys had kidnapped the woman into whose handbag Pettibone had dropped the match book. Holmes and the head bad guy took turns to fool each other but, of course, the great detective had the last laugh.

The Siege (1998) is a naive terrorist drama set in New York pre 9/11. The US military grab a terrorist sheikh and his followers start bombing New York, taking out the FBI's HQ with a van bomb. So martial law is declared and the army surround Brooklyn, where the Arabs live, and begins rounding up suspects with their usual heavy-handedness. We learn that the sheikh was groomed by the CIA as an opponent to Saddam Hussein then abandoned, and that the bombers are CIA trained.
   And at the end, we are invited to believe that New Yorkers would take to the street in support of their wronged Arab neighbours and the FBI would be allowed to bust the general in charge of the army expedition, who also captured the sheikh in the first place.

Signs (2002) Mel Gibson play a former minister, who lost his faith when his wife was run over 6 months before. He has 2 kids and his brother living in. They find signs flattened into his corn crop in Pennsylvania. One of the dogs goes crazy and the young son has to kill it. They report people messing about at the farm to the lady sheriff, but they didn't actually eyeball anyone.
   There's a worldwide plague of crop circles; either the most elaborate hoax of all time or aliens have arrived for real. The local army recruiting sergeant thinks they're scouting the human threat. The rest of the people in the town are also seriously weird. UFOs appear in the sky over Mexico City. MG's brother decide the crop circles are for navigation.
   The local vet admits killing MG's missus when he nodded off at the wheel of his car, and by the way, he has an alien locked in his pantry. Mexican TV shows pictures of an alien sneaking about. MG finds everyone wearing cooking foil hats when he arrives home after confirming there really is an alien in the vet's pantry.
   MG & Co. barricade themselves in their house. Luckily, the aliens have trouble getting through doors. Aliens get the other dog when they invade the house but MG's brother belts one of them with his baseball bat to save his nephew. Humanity defeats the evil aliens and MG puts his dog collar back on, his faith restored by his wife's apt dying words. A very silly film.

Silent Trigger (1996) is all about a sniper (Dolph Lundgren) who won't pull the trigger. Full of empty spaces and driving rain, it alternates between real time and flash-backs as the sniper and his female spotter set up operations which are never performed. The spotter is told to kill the sniper on both occasions and he is under attack by friend and foe alike. Which seems fair enough if he won't go through with his jobs.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1998) In Mongolia in 1934, a Professor White finds a live pterodactyl egg and a whole gang of dinosaur bats with big teeth. He tells Professor Challenger what he found just before he croaks and Challenger meets with much mockery in London. So he takes an expedition of misfits, including White's daughter, to Mongolia in search of dinosaurs.
   Miss White is almost fed to pterodactyls in a King Kong rip-off and a gratuitous balloon takes the expedition up to the plateau. Roxton, the mercenary hunter, tries to leave everyone in the lurch but he falls down a crocodile's hole in the ground. Only to appear later on and get what's coming to him.
   The dinosaurs chomp their way through the group, starting with the old professor who called Challenger a liar. Only Challenger and Miss White get off the plateau alive, and Challenger decides the world isn't ready for a place where there are live dinosaurs. And the mad Irish journalist is left alone on the plateau to survive for as long as he can manage.

The Skulls (2000) Luke is invited to join a secret society, to which 3 past presidents belonged, and get his college fees paid. His pal Will gets bent out of shape when Luke is made a 'soul mate' to private school type Caleb Mandrake. The new recruits get a watch, a skull brand on the arm, a key to the society's 'ritual room', a rule book and a flash car. Judge Mandrake is a top Skull, and so is Dr. Grissom of CSI:Las Vegas, who poses as a senator.
   Luke finds $20,000 in his bank account when he takes his other pal, Chloe, out for a meal. Will steals Caleb's key, intending to expose the Skulls in his student newspaper. He has a confrontation with Caleb and he's found hanging; an apparent suicide. A detective tries to frame Luke as a murderer.
   In the society's Truth Chamber, Caleb tells Luke he caught Will in the ritual room and Will fell and broke his neck. Caleb's father says they tidied things up to protect the Skulls. But Luke turns to his criminal school mates for help and steals a surveillance tape, which shows Will surviving the fall until the university provost, a Skulls stooge, killing him.
   Luke takes the tape to the police but the detective switches it for a blank tape and busts him for murder. Luke ends up drugged in a mental hospital. Chloe tells Caleb he didn't kill Will, she rescues Luke and the detective saves their asses when killers come after them.
   Luke uses Skulls' Rule 119 to challenge crack-shot Caleb to a duel, then he urges him to tell the truth. Caleb shoots his dad when he tries to intervene. Luke stops him killing himself. The senator is now top Skull and tells Luke he's seen how the world can be made to work for him. But Luke dumps the Skulls.

Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow (2004) It's 1938 and Hindenburg III is flying to the strange, sepia world of New York. A scientist tells reporter Polly that he's the last survivor of a secret German team and Totenkopf is coming for him. Flying robots attack New York; one of a string of attacks worldwide. Sky Captain Joe is summoned but doesn't achieve much, and Polly gets to run around with giant robots stomping nearby.
   Joe delivers a dead robot to Dex, his techie, and Polly arrives at his base to harass him. He tells her the machines have been hitting targets for 3 years, and vanishing after stealing various items. Dr. Jennings gives Polly 2 vials and tells her Totenkopf is after them, and the count-down to the end of the world has begun.
   Joe's base is attacked, he & Polly fly along New York streets, Dex is captured and Joe's plane can become a submarine! Totenkopf is a genius, who's building a doomsday device. Joe & Polly head for Tibet and Shangri La. They find a uranium mine just before it's blown up, and end up in a monastery.
   They follow a lead to Totenkopf and land on a British aerial aircraft carrier to get reinforcements for an attack on Totenkopf's island. The bad guy is building an Ark; a rocketship containing examples of all life on Earth and he plans to blow up the Earth when his ship clears the atmosphere.
   Shock, horror! Totenkopf has been dead since 1918. The island is now Totenkopf. Joe & Polly battle aboard and make the rocket fall to bits after the launch and the Earth is saved! A well-made and very watchable film.

Skyjacked (1972) Charlton Heston is Captain O'Hara, an airline pilot who gets to smoke his pipe during take off! Some rotten sod writes a message on a toilet mirror in lipstick telling the plane to divert from Mineapolis to Anchorage because there's a bomb aboard. Not to mention people smoking! There's a senator and a pregnant woman aboard, but no nuns.
   Bad weather means no fuel margin and an instrument landing, courtesy of the US air force, at Alaska; and an encounter with a small plane with no radio on the way. Capt. O'Hara lights his pipe to celebrate the successful landing. The psycho army sergeant hijacker pulls a grenade out of his sock when he spots Feds lurking on the tarmac. He wants to go to Moscow.
   The Fed who infiltrates the cargo hold is a frozen flop. After being buzzed by the Soviet air force, and after the pregnant woman has given birth, the plane lands and the sergeant offers his services, and his aircraft, to the Russkies. By the way, there's no bomb, he adds to Capt. O'Hara before shooting him cosmetically. Then the Russians blow the nutter away.

Slap Shot (1977) Paul Newman stars in this ice hockey comedy with wall-to-wall extreme bad language as Reg Dunlop, the player/coach of the Chiefs. Their home town is going down the pan and the owner takes on the 3 Hanson brothers, who all have thick specs, as new team members. Dunlop comes up with a strategy of violence and taunting to turn him team into winners. He also tries to find out who owns the team and spreads a story about a company in Florida being interested in buying it.
   The violent Chiefs become winners, and the Hanson brothers are arrested in Hyanisport when they retaliate against a thug in the crowd. Dunlop eventually tracks down the team's owner, only to find that she thinks it makes better financial sense to fold the team and take a tax loss than to sell the team.
   Dunlop admits to the team that he made up the story about a move to Florida and asks them to play their last ever match, for the championship, in a clean, old-style way. Fine, except that Syracuse turns up with hockey's biggest criminals on the team. The brawling starts after Dunlop learns that there are scouts in the crowd. No. 10 takes the piss out of the whole thing by doing a strip, Syracuse are disqualified for abuse of an official and the Chiefs end up winners!

Small Soldiers (1998) features the Emergency Medical Hologram from Cap'n Quack's Voyager. Toymakers put military chips into 'Action Man' type toy soldiers and monsters, making them much too clever to be let loose. Only a group starts a war in an American suburb and the "Sir, Yes, Sir!!!" soldiers nearly wreck the homes of a toy store owner and his neighbour. The lead characters are a couple of youngish teenagers but the film is full of laughs, thanks mainly to the antics of the robots, and suitable for adults.

Snake Eyes got 4 stars and it proved to be an interesting and different film. A politician is shot at a boxing match, which the champion throws to settle his debts. And the crooked cop finds out that the whole thing was arrange by his best buddy, the naval officer in charge of the politician's security. The film is all about whistle-blowing on a defence contract for a missile that didn't work. There are lots of replays from different points of view as the cop works out what really happened, and he goes from hero to zero – facing gaol time in the end. Oh, yes, and the twist is that the politician – the US Secretary of Defense – isn't crooked!

Sneakers (1992) has become a bit of a historical film, as far as the computer technology is concerned. A gang of lovable experts, who get paid to try to penetrate security systems, recover the ultimate code-breaking gadget for the NSA. Only they are suckered by a former pal of the lead character (Robert Redford). And an ingenious scheme to retrieve the gadget doesn't quite go to plan for everyone, including the real NSA.

Solar Attack (2005) The Sun starts 'shedding its skin' and firing off Coronal Mass Ejections into space. Some, inevitably, head towards the Earth. Meanwhile Mr. Foster, our hero, is spending $100M on a private enterprise spaceship called Gallileo (which looks like a small version of Thunderbird 2) to measure the level of methane in the atmosphere. He thinks there's 5%, which is way more than the US government admits. A CME ignites a pocket of methane in the atmosphere and takes out Gallileo.
   A downed satellite takes out a big lump of Chicago. Foster reckons the ozone layer stops CMEs reaching the Earth but hey, we've blown holes in the ozone layer so CMEs can get through and set fire to all that methane, which will use up all the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere and everyone will suffocate in a few hours!
   US and Russian submarines on manoeuvres lose their satellite communications. Foster knows the captain of a Russian sub, so he flies out to it in a helicopter and persuades the captain to nuke the North Pole, which he manages to do with a gung-ho American sub commander shooting at him.
   And the huge fountain of (radioactive?) water caused by the nukes puts out the methane fire in the atmosphere!

Solaris (2002) is a remake. A much longer version of the 1961 novel by Stanislaw Lem was made in Russian in 1971. George Clooney plays Dr. Chris Kelvin, a psychiatrist, who is invited to the space station around Solaris to help sort out what is happening to the crew. A security force sent there has vanished.
   On arrival, Kelvin finds 2 body bags and Reese has disappeared, the whacked-out Snow tells him. Dr. Gordon is holed up in her room and not letting anyone in. She tells Kelvin that 'until it starts happening to him, there's no point in discussing it'. Snow advises Kelvin to sleep with his door locked.
   "Solairs seems to be reacting, almost as if it knows it's being observed," Kelvin is told in a dream about Reya, his dead wife, who is there when he wakes up. Kelvin freaks out, puts her in the airlock and spaces her. Snow's visitor is his brother. Reya is there again the next time Kelvin wakes up. Dr. Gordon refuses to take a construct back to Earth. "If you think there's a solution, you'll die here," Kelvin is told. "There are no answers, only choices."
   Reya tries to kill herself by drinking liquid oxygen but it doesn't work. Dr. Gordon can kill constructs with Higgs anti-bosons. Kelvin tries to stay awake by taking pills but he dreams about finding Reya's body. The construct is gone when he wakes up. Dr. Gordon has killed it.
   Dr. Gordon puts the Artificial Intelligence back on-line to go home. Then Kelvin finds Snow's body. The Snow they've been dealing with a construct! It says Solaris is taking on mass exponentially and they need their power for the drive, rather than making Higgs anti-bosons to kill 'him', to escape Solaris' gravity. Some stuff nicked from 2001: A Space Oddity as the station leaves Solaris. And at the end, Kelvin finds himself with another Reya.

Solo (1996) is the plot of Universal Soldier combined with The Magnificent 7. An android soldier is deemed a failure when he chooses not to kill some civilians on an operation against South American bandits. The US military want him shut down and reprogrammed but he does a bunk, without his power management chip, when realizes being shut down violates his self-preservation directive.
   Solo deserts and a stroppy colonel is sent to bring him back. The peasants decide to bury him, instead of rebuilding the bandits' airstrip, because Solo looks dead while he's recharging his power system. He agrees to teach them to defend themselves in exchange for electricity.
   The bandits lose the battle, Solo's creator is killed (after he gives Solo his power management chip and makes him able to do superhero stuff again) by the stroppy colonel, who teams up with the bandits; only to blow them up when they have served their purpose. The colonel is killed but he is reincarnated as the Mark #2 android, which is eventually written off with a Mayan temple. And the military think Solo was crunched, too. But he wasn't. Cue the sequel.

Soulkeeper (2001) is a comedy horror film, in which two young thieves are commissioned to steal a talisman from the sorcerer Simon Magus. Lots of weirdness and laughs, and visual tricks. Then Magus tries to make one of the thieves into the host for his spirit and things get a bit serious at the end.

Something Beneath (2007) Gloop comes up through the ground at a construction site and a worker dies horribly. Dr. Connelly wants the work closed down because the local wildlife is disappearing. A year later, there's a conference centre open for business and Father Middleton (Kevin Sorbo) has filled it with tree-huggers.
   His star speaker is killed. So is a pushy actress. Alvin, the hotel's manager, keeps stashing bodies instead of calling the cops to avoid damaging the conference trade. The plumbers find the sewers blocked and fall victim to hallucinogenic gloop. The Rev Kev & the lady conference manager find Connelly lurking in the woods. He shows them that the gloop is alive.
   Connelly thinks the creature saw building the sewer as an attack on it and it has invaded the hotel's plumbing. Connelly is eaten alive by the creature and the stupid woman nearly follows him. But an ancient Indian prayer sees the creature off. Temporarily.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983) is a Mad Max type adventure with its own Thunderdome thrown in. A bounty hunter takes on the job of rescuing 3 Earther females, who fled a doomed space liner and crashed on a plague planet full of mutants. Lots of creatures and lots of laughs along the way.

Spawn (1997) Al, a hit-man for A 6, a US government agency, takes out some by-standers while taking out a target at Hong Kong airport and tries to quit. So Jason, his boss, takes him out on an operation to destroy a North Korean biological warfare plant. The Devil returns him to Earth as Spawn, a scorched wreck, 5 years later after Al agrees to lead his army in return for revenge.
   Al's widow is now married to Terry, Jason's media guy, his daughter thinks Terry is her dad but the family dog recognizes Al. Spawn's necroplasm hurts and he gets the Clown from Hell as his minder. Spawn crashes a reception to send Jason to Hell, but doesn't manage it, despite causing lots of mayhem, because Jason is working for the Devil.
   Jason gets himself an implant, which will trigger a massive release of a deadly virus and provide the Devil with a new army if he's killed. The Clown turns into a huge demon for a scrap with Spawn and kicks his ass. Spawn gets help from another undead guy, who's been around for 500 years.
   Terry leaks Jason's Armageddon plan to the meeja so Jason takes Terry and his instant family prisoner. Spawn won't play the Devil's game, the Clown gets what's coming to it and Director Jason is busted, leaving Spawn at a bit of a loose end and available for a sequel.

Species (1995) begins with a little girl in a glass tank objecting to being poisoned with cyanide and breaking out of a research station. The SETI programme received signals from outer space, one giving a new way to make methane for use as a clean fuel and a second containing a DNA sequence. Mad scientists incorporated it into a human embryo and produced a fast-growing creature. The creature metamorphoses into an adult while a team of 4 misfits are hunting it down. An experiment to make another creature for study goes horribly wrong. Earthers are Galactic weeds, one of the team realizes, and the creature's job is to stop them spreading through the universe. Lots of chases and fun and games, but the trouble really starts when the creature gets itself pregnant – and we are left with the obligatory residual menace in the sewers.

Species II (1998), a sequel to Species, begins with a Mars mission bringing back alien DNA. Two members of the crew are affected – one female, who is written off quite quickly, and the male captain, who goes round mating with Earther females and producing alien children in a matter of minutes. There's another experimental female/alien clone in a government laboratory and she just has to mate with the captain. But good old defective human genetic material saves the day. Lots of blood and alien bits, high yecch factor.

Species III (2004) A Dr. Abbot escapes with Eve, a female/alien hybrid, and a fat child, which kills Eve with its chameleon-like tongue after she gives birth to yet another hybrid. Abbot runs off with the kid and back to his life as a nutty professor. The fat boy, now grown up, melts in Abbot's office as half-breeds have unstable DNA. Sarah, the 3rd generation hybrid in Abbot's basement lab, however, seems to be stable. Her only problem is that she can't find anyone she's interested in mating with.
   After metamorphosing into a woman, Sarah kills Dr. Turner, who's in charge of the university's fusion reactor and who got up the nose of Dean, a student whom Dr. Abbot takes under his wing. There's a messy autopsy of sorts on the fat boy. Another femalien turns up and kidnaps Dean's room mate to help with an alien breeding programme using eggs taken from Sarah by Dr. Abbot.
   A government agent press-gangs Dean into helping him clean up the mess 'by unofficial means'. Sarah's eggs end up in the fusion reactor and its explosion is blamed on the late Dr. Turner. Three weeks later, the room mate is appalled to find that Dean has created a mate for Sarah. But the sting in the tail is that he's sterile.

Speed (1994) features Dennis Hopper as a mad, ex-cop bomber who wants $3M, Keanu Reeves as the cop who gets involved with catching him and Sandra Bullock as a by-stander who has to drive a bus at over 50 mph to stop a bomb going off under it. Lots of bangs and crashes, lots of vehicles totalled by the careering bus, an airliner written off in a massive explosion and a ride on a subway train to finish. Totally daft but fun in a destructive sort of way.

Speed 2:Cruise Control (1997) The sequel features Annie (Sandra Bullock) and her police officer boyfriend Alex. Annie, on the way to failing her driving test, becomes involved in a shambolic police ambush and she finds that Alex is a member of the Suicide Squad. She complains that she knows nothing about Alex so he takes her on a Caribbean cruise.
   Surprise! Mr. Geiger, who designed the ship's computer system and who was fired by his company when he got sick, is aboard and planning to steal a multi-million dollar collection of jewellery. Alex, meanwhile, is looking for an opportunity to propose to Annie.
   Geiger chucks the captain overboard, takes over the ship's computer and persuades the first officer to evacuate the ship. Of course, Annie, Alex, some of the crew and some of the passengers are left behind. Geiger runs rings around Alex and sets the ship on a collision course with an island.
   Annie saves Alex from a trap set by Geiger and they discover that the ship is aimed an an oil tanker. So there are frantic attempts to slow it down and change the course. Geiger leaves the ship with Annie as his prisoner. The ship has a fender-bender side-on collision with the tanker.
   The ship ends up on a collision course with a town on the island, so lots of destruction. Alex has to rescue Annie from Geiger's plane, which ends up spiked on the mast of the tanker, dripping fuel. So the tanker & Geiger go up in a massive fireball. And Alex proposes to Annie at the end.

Spider-Man (2002) Peter Parker, the school nerd, who lives with an aunt & uncle and fancies Mary-Jane, the girl next door, is bitten by a genetically modified spider on a school trip. Meanwhile, Norman Osborn, founder of Oscorp and the father of Parker's best mate Henry, faces losing his US military funding to a rival.
   Parker mutates. Mr. Osborn tests a performance enhancer on himself and becomes the Green Goblin, a raging psychopath.
   Parker finds he no longer needs glasses, he has muscles, he can climb up buildings like Count Dracula (or a spider) and he can shoot out a sticky web. He vanquishes the school bully and realizes he's a superhero, which means he needs a costume. A steel-cage wrestling match with Bonesaw give him the name Spider-Man instead of his own version, The Human Spider.
   He is paid $100 instead of the promised $3,000, so he lets a thief stroll off with the night's takings. But the guy car-jacks and kills his uncle. So Spiderman goes after him. Meanwhile, Mr. Osborn (as the Goblin) zaps the general who's causing him trouble and also an exoskeleton stolen from Oscorp by a rival.
   After graduating from school, Parker starts fighting crime and gets a job as a freelance photographer for the Daily Bugle. Mr. Osborn is sacked by Oscorp's board, so the Goblin kills the lot of them. Spiderman has to chase him off and save Mary-Jane, who's attached to Henry now.
   The Goblin tries to recruit Spiderman, fails, and attacks first his aunt then Mary-Jane. Eventually, after lots of battles, the Goblin is hoist with his own petard, Henry blames Spiderman for killing his dad and Parker tells Mary-Jane they can be nothing more serious than friends.

Spider-Man 2 (2003) Parker's life sucks. He can't keep a job because he's always late through rescuing people, he's flunking out of university, the bank is about to foreclose on his aunt, a relationship with Mary-Jane is still off because it would be too dangerous for her because she'd be a target for Spiderman's enemies, and she's marrying the astronaut son of the editor of the Daily Bugle.
   Henry sponsors the work of Dr. Octavius, who is working on a fusion reactor, which requires a 4-arm bio-mechanical control system plugged in to his nervous system. There's a control chip to stop the gadget taking him over, but the chip is fried when the reactor runs wild and New York, and the Bugle, acquire a new super-villain – Dr. Octopus.
   Doc Ock robs a bank to rebuild his reactor, and it just happens to be the one which has turned down Parker's aunt for a loan. So a big battle and lots of peril for auntie. Parker is losing his spider powers, so he bins his costume and becomes an excellent student. He tells his aunt it's his fault that Uncle Ben was killed. Meanwhile, Doc Ock dangles Henry off a building to get some tritium. Henry tells him he can have as much as he wants if he kills Spiderman.
   Parker rescues a kid from a burning building. His aunt moves out of New York and Parker decides to become Spiderman again. So he's rejecting M-J again when Doc Ock arrives looking for Spiderman. Ock grabs M-J, he has a huge battle with Spiderman on a train, Spiderman is unmasked, remasked and delivered to Henry.
   The reactor runs riot again. Dr. Octavius comes to his senses and drops it into the river along with himself. M-J is dumped again. Henry discovers the secret of his father's criminal past as The Goblin. And at the end, M-J dumps the astronaut at the altar and rushes to Parker to undump herself from him.

Spies Like Us (1985) features incredibly young versions of Dan Aykroyd and Chevvy Chase. They play a couple of misfits recruited as decoys for a pair of real US agents. They end up in Pakistan then Afghanistan (Soviet territory at the time) as a plot by rogue elements in the US military unfolds. The big idea is to launch a Soviet missile to test a Star Wars defence system. Which doesn't work.
   The backup plan is to start World War 3 to preserve The American Way of Life. Luckily for the rest of us, that doesn't happen. Lots of comedy of the slapstick sort along the way. A bit strained in places but good for a laugh most of the time.

Spy Hard (1996) Leslie Nielsen of Police Squad fame stars in this spoof – James Bond not Die Hard. An exploding head to finish the titles! Agent Barbara Doll (daughter of the deceased Victoria) is trapped by the armless Gen Rancourt, who expects his Nemesis Agent Dick Steele to come after her. Steele, fresh from dumping the President in the drink in Florida, unassassinated, meets Mr. Cosby of I Spy at the golf club.
   Some Butch Cassidy biking. Dick chooses not to sit next to Mr. Culp on a plane. Fun & games at the spy HQ and the Q Dept. then Agent WD40 heads for a hot reception in L.A. and a ride on a bus (Ray Charles does the driving) with Agent 3.14 (daughter of the professor who invented the computer chip which the general wants), who's grabbed.
   More fun & games with assassins. Steele dresses up as a nun to rescue Agent 3.14 but the professor is grabbed. Fun & games on the general's dinosaur-infested island. Dick's laser works a treat and Hulk Hogan helps out. Finally, the general gets a brief ride on his rocket before the explosive finish.

Starsky & Hutch (2004) is a comedy set in Bay City in the 1970s. Starsky is a straight-laced cop, Hutch is a dirty one. So Captain Doby makes them partners. A Jewish drug dealer has made a version of cocaine which police sniffer dogs can't detect. Huggy Bear is a Godfather figure but still Hutch's snout. Starsky is all fired up to investigate a floater shot by the dealer while Hutch wants to shove the body back into the Bay. He then steals all the cash in the guy's wallet.
   S&H make an Easy Rider expedition to a biker bar. Big Earl, the owner, yanks S&H's chains in gaol but they get hold of some super-coke. Which the police lab says is just sweetener. Starsky puts some in his coffee and ends up totally spaced out. Starsky's car is shot up so S&H invade the dealer's daughter's birthday party and Starsky shoots the kid's pony. So our heroes are suspended.
   Hutch's house is blown up, and the guys go after the dealer again. Starsky's wig guy gets a call and the coke racket is blown. The dealer runs for it and ends up on his yacht. An attempt to jump onto the yacht puts Starsky's car at the bottom of the Bay. But Huggy is aboard, looking for payback. He also cops for a briefcase full of cash. And Starsky gets another car with go-faster stripes from the ancient originals from the TV series.

Star Trek – First Contact; The Movie features the return of the Borg – and where the scriptwriters sourced the basic plot became clear after about 15 minutes. It is a recycle of the Jum Kirk era Star Trek episode The City at the Edge of Forever. The Borg have come up with the idea of going back in time to assimilate the Earth in the mid-21st Century before Star Fleet is invented. Captain Picard has to fight ghosts from his own assimilation experience, and the poor old inventor of the warp drive has to put up with tremendous amounts of hero worship from his future fans.
   As usual, the crew of the Enterprise is fought to a standstill and all seems lost. But the evil Queen of the Borg finds out that everything hasn't quite gone to plan and Earth makes contact with the Vulcans, who are probably best equipped to deal with mad Earth scientists, weird American whiskey and recycled 1950s/1960s rock 'n roll music.

Star Trek Generations (1994) gives employment to the casts of the original show, TNG and a few others, including Mr. Tuvok from Voyager (but without his Vulcan ears). Jum Kirk is written off in the first 20 minutes then we jumped forward 78 years to the TNG crew messing about in their rumpus room. Data has had an emotion chip installed, which was a terribly bad move.
   A mad scientist is switching off stars to get to the "Nexus" and Enterprise gets involved in a fatal ass-kicking contest with some Klingons. The ship and everyone aboard are crunched when the mad scientist zaps the next star, but Captain Piccard finds himself in the Nexus and recruits Jum Kirk to save the universe.

Star Trek Insurrection (1998) The Federation is spying on a rural community. Mr. Data runs amuck and exposes the observation post and the crew of Enterprise gets the job of sorting him out. Captain Picard gets 12 hours to catch or terminate him in a region of space where communications are difficult. Picard sings HMS Pinafore at Data to get his attention while Worff switches him off.
   On the planet, Picard learns that the locals, the Baku, turned their back on technology. Mr. LaForge finds that Data was damaged by weapons fire before he ran amuck. Picard starts to investigate and the dodgy admiral in charge of the surveillance tells him to get off the planet. Data drains a lake and finds a Federation ship containing a holodeck, which simulates the nearby village.
   Picard realizes that the ship is to be used to relocate the population. Everyone who has visited the planet is in great shape and it turns out the radiation from its rings has a rejuvenating effect. The admiral is in partnership with some rather festered aliens, the Sonar, who have the technology needed to collect metaphasis particles from the rings, but they want the locals off the planet first.
   Picard doesn't do forced relocations and he leads the Baku into the hills, where minerals in the rocks will shield them from attempts to beam them off the planet. The Sonar harass them all the way. Rikker, sent to report to the Federation, tangles with Sonar ships. Enterprise is scragged but the bad guys are zapped.
   Meanwhile, Picard is captures and the Sonar turn out to be Baku who left the planet 100 years before in search of somewhere more interesting. The admiral is killed and Picard gets into a shoot-out with the Head Bad Guy and the Federation has to rethink relocating the Baku.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) The Romulans refuse to unite with the Remans so the Senate is exterminated. Riker is planning to marry Troi and become captain of Titan, so Picard has to break in another first officer after 15 years. Enterprise E detects an android in 6 pieces on the way to Betazed. The locals are hostile but the bits are retrieved with the aid of some fancy driving by Picard and fancy flying by Data.
   Picard tells Cmdr. La Forge to reassemble the android, which is called B-4; it's a Data prototype. Admiral Janeway sends Picard to Romulus to find out how a Reman; undesirable cannon-fodder; became Praetor of the Empire. The Praetor turns out to be human; a Picard clone. The Romulans had planned to replace Picard with the clone as a means of infiltrating the Federation, but the regime changed.
   Shenzon invades Troi's mind and he beams B-4 aboard Scorpion, his ship. Then he grabs Picard. But he has Data and Shenzon has been fed bogus data on the Federation fleet. Data frees Picard, they blag an attack fighter and they get off Scorpion the hard way. Shenzon is sure that the Federation will be cripled within 2 days. Dr. Crusher thinks he will die if he doesn't get a DNA transplant from Picard.
   Data deactivates B-4, judging it to be dangerous. Scorpion can swamp a planet with lethal radiation and the target is Earth! Enterprise attacks and is shot to bits, so Picard tries to talk his clone into being a better person. Luckily, 2 Romulan ships arrives to even the odds a bit. Troi attacks the Reman viceroy mentally to give Picard a fix on Scorpion.
   Remans board Enterprise, which rams Scorpion. Shinzan fires up his weapon. Picard beams across to Scorpion; Data crosses the hard way. Shinzan is stopped in his tracks. Data beams Picard back to Enterprise and does a Spock: destroying the weapon and himself. The Romulans decide to be friends with Picard. So Data has a wake, Enterprise ends up in a space dock and the Captain tells B-4 about his brother, Data.

Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country (1991) is full of old guys and gals in wigs messing about with the Klingons, who have blown up the planetoid which generates most of their power, which means they face extinction in 50 years if they don't stop their crippling cold war with the Federation. Peace will mean the military side of Starfleet will be disbanded; which doesn't go down well at all with those facing the chop.
   Mr. Spock nominates Captain Kirk, whose son was killed by the Klingons, to escort the Klingon high chancellor to a peace conference. So Enterprise appears to fire on the Klingon ship and 2 crew members go aboard to shoot up the Klingon leaders. Kirk & Bones beam over, the high chancellor croaks and they end up in front of a kangaroo court, which sentences them to the Klingons' Devil's Island.
   Spock deduces that a new Klingon ship, which can use its weapons while cloaked, did the shooting, and he orders a massive search of the Enterprise for the assassins and their equipment. Meanwhile, Kirk, Bones and a shape-shifter stage a gaol-break. Kirk has to fight himself when the shape-shifter turned out to be an agent provocateur, and Enterprise beams Kirk & McCoy up just before they get the details of the conspiracy against the peace conference.
   The Vulcan traitor on Enterprise is unmasked and Spock does a mind-meld on her to get the names of the conspirators and the location of the secret peace conference. Mr. Sulu joins in when Enterprise is attacked by the new Klingon ship and General Chang is destroyed, which stops him quoting any more Shakespeare. Mayhem at the conference, then peace breaks out. At the end, Enterprise is supposed to be decommissioned; but only when Captain Kirk feels like obeying orders again.

Star Wars Episode 1 : The Phantom Menace (1999) has weird aliens, fantastic gadgets and fighting machines and evil goings on – it can only be the start of George Lucas's 12-movie epic. The underwater bit at the start is very like Stingray! A pinball racing sequence is won by the young Darth Invader, who is the sort of know-all punk kid who sends every right-minded citizen in search of piano wire. A grand battle on a planet with aliens versus mechanical soldiers, another battle in space and the forces of light triumphant for the moment – having sown some heavy seeds of destruction.

Starship Troopers (1997) got 4 stars and a diamond in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine. According to someone who'd actually read the orginal version, Robert Heinlein probably spins in his grave while it is being shown and the only things left from the original Sixties SF mag serial are the title and the war against the bugs.
   That said, it is fairly entertaining, gung-ho send-up of American war films and the animation of the multitude of bugs is very well done. And they splatted and splashed nicely when blown to bits with combat rifles that rarely ran out of good, old-fashioned bullets. Wot, no lasers!

Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2003) Despite the propaganda back home, the war with the Bugs isn't going well. A rabble of troopers holes up in a battered outpost after losing a battle with the Bugs. They find ex-captain Dax, a hero, locked up there for killing a superior officer who was getting too many troops killed. Millions of Bugs converge on the outpost and Dax is released to save the day.
   The troops' General turns up with some strangers. A borderline pregnant psychic trooper gets a feeling that the Bugs have a plan to wipe out everything human. The unit's psychic lieutenant won't admit anything is wrong. The new medic sets small bugs on a couple of guys. Dax is framed for murder and everyone but Dax and the psychic lady is, or becomes, infested with small bugs.
   Dax and the psychic are locked up but a sergeant releases them before killing herself. Dax and the psychic go bug-hunting. A pick-up arrives for the general, so Dax kills him and sends the psychic home with a warning for the Federation. He then stays behind to kill bugs and die a hero's death.

The Stone Killer (1973, Charles Bronson, Michael Winner, director) Lou Torrey, a tough New York cop, moves to L.A. when N.Y. goes soft on teenage punks with guns. He gets to deliver a hit man to New York. The guy tries to do a deal, saying there's going to be a big hit, before he's hit. Torrey is left just with the name Wexton. A prisoner is helped to break out of custody, then he's hit. Torrey gets tough with a guy involved in the second hit.
   A Mafia boss is planning revenge for the Sicilian Vespers, a massacre on 1931/04/10, on the 40th anniversary. Langley, the guy who made the plates for the car used in the 2nd hit, escapes a bust. Torrey gets to visit an Ashram in Carmel. Some of the mobsters don't like using stone killers; Vietnam vets; for the big hit. The 9th victim in a New York Mafia war goes down.
   Torrey chases Langley through an outdoor market and runs him down when he pulls a gun on him. The killers have a base out in the California desert. The guy Torrey bashed is released to lead the cops to the base, but he ends up ambushed and dead. The camp is busted after the stone killers have gone.
   Torrey makes the 10th April connection and realizes there will be a BIG hit at a Mafia council meeting. The cops load up for a war. The New York hit goes down. HUGE underground car-park battle. And Al, the head bad guy, gets away with it.

Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992) is a Sylvester Stallone comedy that works! Sgt. Joe is a tough San Francisco cop whose New Jersey mom is about to visit him. She won't pick up the phone when he tries to call her so he can't put her off. He has history with his Lieutenant, who dumps him. Mom arrives, Joe tackles a jumper on the way home, mom embarrasses him thoroughly and the jumper decides his problems are nothing in comparison with Joe's.
   Mom does hoovering in the middle of the night and she gives Joe's gun a wash. So she feels obliged to buy him a new one. She ends up buying a Mac 10 from a guy in the street and witnesses a big shoot-out. Then she invades the police station and as she has to stay in San Francisco as a witness, she decides to help Joe crack the case.
   Joe catches up with the bad guys briefly but his mom is driving and she ends up in a dumpster. The guns are supposed to have been destroyed in a fire, but they're really being shipped to South America. Only a couple of crooks ripped some of them off and sold one to Joe's mom. Joe goes for a look at the warehouse where the fire was; so the bad guys try to demolish it onto Joe & mom.
   Joe gives mom a set of rules and she tells him how to persuade Lt. Gwen to undump him. One of the guys who ripped off guns surrenders to Joe, he handcuffs him to mom but she gets loose. Mom is nabbed at the airport where the guns are being flown out of the country, Joe wrecks the plane and mom shoots the head bad guy. Cue a closing joke at the airport as mom spots a bad guy as she's going home.
   American comedy can be totally tedious, but 'mom' saves this one by being a pest but also a human being with a sense of humour.

Storm Cell (2008) Two kids see their stupid parents make no effort to get out of the way of a twister. One becomes a meteorologist specializing in extreme weather and the other becomes a cop in Seattle. The Prof. reckons global warming equals more violent weather. Her daughter, Dana, gets upset when a twister destroys her school and Mom isn't there to hold her hand.
   When they visit Uncle Sean, Seattle has its first ever tornado and the dumb ass cop thinks his sister caused it! Dana gets pally with the spoilt son of a local developer, feeling neglected by her mom, whose attention if focussed on a forming supercell. The storm throws an F3-ish twister and the Prof. goes for a helicopter ride with TV newsman and old pal Travis.
   Dana sneaks off with the yob. Shock, horror! Travis is her dad and mom never told him. Dana gets into a punch-up with the delinquent as the storm closes in, then she finds a twister in the back yard! Mom & the cavalry arrive, however, the storm misses them and the yob is busted.

Storm Chasers: Revenge of the Twister (1998) is another in the 'silly sciffy' category. The US military is trying to generate and steer hurricanes as a non-nuclear weapon of mass destruction. Only things aren't going too well and the likes of Hurricane Andrew in 1992 are the consequences of their blundering. College professor Dr. Ron Young has some success in steering a storm but he loses his pilot's licence and his job. So the Brigadier (Martin Sheen) recruits him to a project run by a Dr. Platt at a research station in L.A.
   Here, Young meets an old girlfriend, who's a TV reporter, and he quickly falls foul of the station's psychotic security officer. Ryan, Young's pal back at the university, does some hacking and uncovers the list of storms created by Dr. Platt. Then Ryan is killed in a car crash and Young is fitted up for a hit-and-run killing. So he tells the reporter to keep an eye on a storm heading for Mexico.
   Mexico is thinking of nationalizing its oil, the US is upset and a hurricane for the Mexicans is the reprisal. But Dr. Platt steers it away from Mexico, for which he is killed, his plane is destroyed and the amplified storm heads for L.A.! Young is sent up in another plane to regain control of the storm. Lots of fun & games, and the security guy is tossed off the plane's cargo ramp. Then the pilot starts shooting at him.
   Young bails out, the plane hits the gadget amplifying the storm and it dissipates after wrecking L.A. a bit. Young's story goes out to the Great American Public but the investigation is cut short when the brigadier has a car crash.

Strange Days is a film released in 1995 and set at the end of 1999 – the bogus millennium change. It's all about Lenny, a guy who sells illegal "recorded reality" tapes, who finds himself looking at murders and then has guys trying to kill him and his friends. The even worse news is that the bad guys are cops.
   At the back of it all is the death of a trouble-making rapper against a background of the LAPD trying to keep order in the streets with riot squads and tanks. Lenny finds that some of his friends aren't too solid but some will stick with him, no matter what.
   The best bit of the film is where Lenny is leaning over a hotel balcony with a bad guy hanging on to his tie and dangling into space, and Lenny pulls the knife out of his own back and cuts his tie!

Stripes (1981) is a comedy which takes the mickey out of the US army. John the photographer loses his job as a taxi driver, his car and his girlfriend in the same morning, so he talks his mate Russell into joining the army with him. They end up at Fort Arnold under the control of Sgt. Hulker. Everyone is a psycho, including the officers who aren't useless but excluding the nice lady MPs.
   John tries to desert but Russell stops him. Fun at a mud-wrassling club and everyone is busted. After their sergeant in injured due to a bungling officer, the misfits stay up late rehearsing for a passing out parade and get there late. But they impress the general with their fancy drill and he sends them to Italy.
   They are reunited with Sgt. Hulker at Fort Milano. John & Russell stroll off with the general's Urban Assault Vehicle to see their MP girlfriends in Germany. Their captain goes after them with the rest of the misfits, and steers them into Czechoslovakia and a confrontation with 200 Russians.
   Sgt. Hulker bales out and sends a distress signal. So John, Russel & the ladies charge to the rescue in the UAV, show the Russians what's what and end up heroes.

Submerged (2005) A mystery man triggers a massacre at the US embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, using a mind-control system. A US assault force sent to take out his base is ambushed. Cody the convict (Steven Seagal) is sprung from gaol for another mission of the sort that got him gaoled in the first place. Agent Fletcher is wished on him, so Cody dumps Fletcher and avoids an ambush.
   Cody assaults the base under the dam after the bad guys have gone and rescues the brainwashed, Trojan horse prisoners from the first assault team. World War 3 breaks out on the submarine transporting Cody & Co. The Navy wipes it out with a missile; after Cody & Co. have taken to the lifeboats.
   Dr. Brainwash has been hired to do his stuff on the president's girlfriend because El Presidente isn't friendly to a big company, which has decided to sort him out. Cody takes a trip to the opera. His crew has a head-on crash but they arrive for the shoot-out.
   Dr. Brainwash doesn't get his $250 million, the opera house is trashed, the bad guys are vanquished but there are still brain-washed Trojans around.

Sudden Impact (1983) The 4th Dirty Harry film is produced & directed by Clint Eastwood, and stars the then Mrs. Eastwood as Jennifer Spencer, the female lead. JS shoots someone at the start. The next day, DH arrives at the San Francisco court to hear a useless judge let a guilty guy go free. DH goes to a diner and gets involved in a shoot-out with some punks, who are robbing the place. 3 dead punks, "Go ahead, make my day!" to the 4th. Harry then crashes a Mob wedding and gives the mobster a heart attack.
   The guy shot at the start is found; shot in the groin and the head. His bosses think DH is a dinosaur and he is told to take some time off. JS has a sister in a vegetative state. Mobsters shoot up DH after dark but he outflanks them. Then the guy who got away with it in court, and a couple of mates, toss Molotov cocktails into DH's car and end up dead.
   The Lieutenant sends DH to San Paolo for information on the guy shot at the start. DH chases a robbery suspect in a bus and meets JS, who is an artist of sorts. She shoots another of the guys who gang-raped her and her sister 10 years earlier. DH's black mate, Horace, wishes an ugly dog on him and the dog helps DH to plug another assassin.
   JS plugs another rapist. DH busts her next target, so she plugs the town tomboy, who invited her to the gang bang. DH gives JS a lift home and gets to spend the night. Horace walks into a trap set for DH at DH's hotel. DH is also ambushed. JS walks into an ambush set by the police chief, whose rapist son is also a vegetable. Mick, the last surviving rapist shows up and the police chief is shot with JS's gun.
   DH finds Horace dead and the dog limping, so he gets his huge, .44 Magnum automatic out and goes to save JS from the bad guys. Mick gets the point on a fairground ride. The cops find JS's gun on him, so DH pins the blame for all the murders done with it on Mick and JS goes free.

The Sum Of All Fears (2002) Jack Ryan is suddenly a lot younger than when he was Harrison Ford. An Israeli plane carrying a nuke is shot down in 1973. 29 years later, a coup in Moscow and the Russians start shooting? No, it's all an exercise. But the Russians are up in arms about Chechnya. Meanwhile, some Arabs find the bomb. The Russian president suddenly collapses while going on about how healthy he is.
   Jack Ryan is recruited by the CIA as he's an expert on the new Russian leader, Alexandr Nemerov. A South African buys the nuke for $400 and sells it on for $50 million! Ryan is taken to Moscow with the presidential party, Nemerov likes him and he tells the Yanks to stay out of Chechnya. Ryan spots that 3 scientists who could build a bomb are missing from a nuclear decommissioning plant.
   Everyone at a posh do in DC is bleeped. The Russians have attacked Grozny with nerve gas. Ryan thinks Nemerov didn't do it; which is right only he can't admit having lost control of his military. But he has the rogue generals killed. A bunch of European Fascists is behind the scheme with the Israeli nuke. The CIA locates the bomb builders in Ukraine.
   Ryan deduces the Russians aren't building a bomb; he's right, they're refitting the Israeli one. Ryan is sent to Ukraine on a recce but all the gang finds is bodies and a few clues. The Fascists plan to make American and Russia take each other out. The CIA finds that the bomb is heading for Baltimore, where Ryan's girlfriend works in a hospital. The President is rushed away from a football match just before the bomb goes off.
   Ryan & the president survive, the head of the CIA croaks. Russia goes on military alert and a rogue general, paid by the Fascists, orders an attack on an American aircraft carrier. The CIA finds that the plutonium in the bomb was made in the USA and 'stolen' by Israel. The Russian airbase which attacked the aircraft carrier is flattened. Escalation!
   Ryan is attacked while sneaking round the docks at Baltimore. But he is rescued and he gets on the hot line to Moscow as the American president orders a missile launch. Ryan tells the Russians they need to pause to show good faith. De-escalation! Peace breaks out and the South African, the rogue general and the Fascist are all killed.

Sunset (1988, Blake Edwards) Bruce 'Wimpy' Willis play Tom Mix, the Hollywood cowboy. The time is the 1920s and Alfie, the sadistic studio boss, has brought the Wyatt Earp story. Mix is to star in it and the real Marshal Earp is to be in the crew as a technical advisor. As soon as Earp arrives, Alfie's second wife, who knew Earp in Denver, asks him to help her drunken son Michael, who is accused of beating a girl up.
   Earp & Mix walk in on the murder of Candy, a club owner, and they split with Michael just ahead of the corrupt cops. Cheryl, Candy's daughter, gives Earp her mother's client list. Earp gets himself clobbered while snooping around Dutch, a gangster who's in league with both Arnie and the cops.
   Mix takes Earp for a ride in his plane then our heroes stage their own OK Coral shoot-out at Mix's ranch. Mix is busted on a phoney rape charge at Candy's funeral, and he meets Michael in gaol. Michael says he was framed. A lawyer steers Cheryl to her mom's fortune and a letter from Candy saying she saw Alfie kill his first wife.
   Alfie puts his second wife in hospital in a terminal condition. A trip to the first ever Academy Awards ceremony, where Alfie's sister does a lot of shooting. Alfie's battered chauffeur drives his boss into the harbour, Mix saves the chauffeur then Alfie attacks him. So Earp plugs Alfie and heads back home.

Superman Returns (2006) Superman disappeared after astronomers discovered the wreck of his home planet and Lois Lane won a Pulitzer prize for her article: "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman". The man of Sup returns to the Kent farm, after 5 years' absence, as Lex Luthor is plundering his Arctic retreat. Looking very like Christopher Reeve, Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet to find that Lois is the unmarried mother of a sickly child.
   Luthor blacks out the US east coast with an experiment, forcing Superman to save Lois from the maiden flight of the new Genesis shuttle. Superman returns to fighting crime and stalking Lois, who keeps on rejecting him. Superman finds that his retreat has been invaded. Lois invades Luthor's boat with her kid. Luthor is planning to use crystals from Krypton to create his own continent and drown the United States!
   The asthmatic boy turns out to be spawn of Superman, not Lois's boyfriend. Metropolis starts dropping to bits when Luthor begins building his continent and Superman has to save Lois & family from the wreck of Luthor's yacht. Superman gets a beating after discovering that Luthor's new island is laced with green kryptonite, but Lois & family save him.
   Luthor's plan unravels. Superman ends up dead in an ER. Luthor, his girlfriend Kitty and her dog end up stranded on a tiny tropical island when their helicopter runs out of fuel. And the Man of Steel comes back to life for a final chat with the Kid of Steel and Lois.

Swamp Thing (1982) Scientist Alex Holland is trying to make hybrids from plants and animals to give plants an animal's aggressive survival instincts. Bad guy Arcane (Louis Jourdan) sends a bunch of thugs to steal his research and kill his team, including Holland's wife. Holland spills his fluorescent green liquid on himself and dives into the swamp on fire. Only Alice Cable escapes the massacre with notebook #7.
   The bad guys track her down in the swamp but the Thing saves her and goes after the baddies. Cable phones her emergency number but the call goes to Arcane. The Swamp Thing saves her again so Arcane traps it using Cable as bait. Arcane duplicates the formula and tries it on his man Bruno, who turns into a weak midget. Holland/Swamp Thing explains that it amplifies a person's qualities; or lack of them.
   Arcane takes some of the stuff himself and turns into a strong monster. The Swamp Things do battle in the swamp. Cable is stabbed but Holland repairs her. More battling then the head bad guy is slain and what's left of Alex Holland heads off into the swamp despite Cable's pleas to stay and carry on his work, even though he's a monster.

Sweeney 2 (1978) is now an historical documentar with the viewers going "he's dead" through the opening credits. Regan's old boss is going to gaol for corruption and there is a gang of armed criminals pulling off robberies in London. The bomb in the hotel sequence is a rather weird and pointless affair. The fishing expedition to Malta is similarly pointless. All the bad guys got wiped out eventually, and Regan's reaction to the last of them topping himself with a sawn-off, gold-plated shotgun seemed rather excessive.

Swordfish (2001) Rogue Federal agent Gabriel Shear (John Travolta) discusses what's wrong with the plot of Dog Day Afternoon while holed up in a bank under siege. Then the cops get cute and customer who's been turned into a human Claymore mine goes off in the street and bodies fly!
   4 days earlier, Ginger (Halle Berrie) offered a $100K job to Stan, the best hacker in America, who wanted access to his daughter. He was needed because the best hacker in the world had been stopped at LAX and killed on Shear's orders in FBI custody. And the head Fed on the case just happened to be the guy who'd sent Stan to gaol for trying to stop the US government reading everyone's emails.
   Stan had to hack into the Department of Defense. Surveillance told the FBI that Stan was in L.A. Shear offered Stan $10M to crack a 512-bit encryption code. Stan went to see his kid and had a run-in with the FBI. Ginger told him she was working for the DEA. Shear was planning to steal $9.5 billion, which the DEA had made while running operations against criminals. He planned to use the money to fight America's enemies and kill terrorists.
   The FBI had Shear's house under surveillance, the scumbag Senator who was running Shear found out, and he ordered a hit on Shear. Stan found what looked like Shear's body frozen in the wine cellar! Shear killed the Senator and roped Stan into his bank job by killing Stan's ex-wife and kidnapping his daughter. Stan moved the cash electronically but made a bog of hiding it from Shear.
   Shear used Ginger to make Stan make the money reappear, then everyone went for a ride in a bus, which was picked up by a helicopter! The useless pilot side-swiped a building with a bus and Stan shot down Shear's escape helicopter. But it was all misdirection. The DEA had never heard of Ginger, who reappeared in Monte Carlo to collect Shear's $9.5B, and some terrorists were wiped out to prove that the money was being put to good use.

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