Carl Franklin

Chief Matthias Whitlock (Denzel Washington) gets a call from a woman about an intruder. He finishes his beer and heads over. She invites him in to her bedroom for the investigation, they end up on the bed kissing, it was a ruse and just foreplay. The chief gets another call interrupting the "assault with a deadly weapon" fun. In Banyan Key, FL, Chief Whitlock has breakfast in a cafe, he engages the owner, Chris Harrison (Dean Cain) with some edgy banter. Chris' wife, Ann (Sanaa Lathan) the caller from the previous evening, says hello politely. Matt goes to his office and meets his friend Jay (John Billingsley), the medical examiner. Ex wife Alex Diaz-Whitlock (Eva Mendes) comes asking for keys to get some stuff, Matt gives her a hard time. Matt goes fishing from his deck and Ann arrives her husband, is away for the weekend. They have a quickie in the hallway. Later in bed, Ann gets a call and has to leave. At Mercy Hospital Oncology she meets a Dr (Alex Carter) and has Matt there acting as her brother. The Dr says her cancer is out of remission, she has 6 months to live. Matt asks about alternative approaches, the Dr says they are expensive, no guarantees. Matt talks to a tearful Ann. There is a clinic in Switzerland with 17% success rate. Ann wants to break off the relationship. Matt buys flowers for her. Ann shows Matt a $1mil insurance policy her husband took out on her on her 32 birthday, her mother died at 33. Chris arrives and Matt slips out. Chris grills her about the Dr visit, they argued loudly. Matt knocks on the front door and says he is checking out a prowler. Ann calls Matt and says she had figured out how to get to Switzerland. She takes Matt to meet a guy who will give her $750k in return for being named the beneficiary on the insurance. Later she is upset, there Is a rule that one cannot change beneficiaries after 1 year, which is in 2 days. Matt and Jay have beers at a bar. Chris confronts him after Jay leaves. Chris hints he knows Ann is seeing another guy, Matt. Matt almost admits it is him as tensions rise between the two. Ann comes by Matt's house the next day apologetic. She gives him an envelope, making him the beneficiary. She is leaving town, needs some peace. Matt is served with divorce papers and is upset. He brings Ann police custody drug money to pay for Switzerland. Later, back at his house Jay is there but Matt herds him out. He tries to phone Ann, the phone keeps ringing. He drives to her house, it is dark. A motion sensor light comes on, the neighbor sees him. Matt leaves. Later the house explodes in flames. In the morning two burnt corpses are in the embers. Alex shows up, she is a homicide detective. The fire chief shows a device, it was arson. Alex catches a lift with Matt and apologizes for the divorce paper timing but says it has been 8 months. Alex and Matt go to Ann's work, her boss, a dentist, says she had cancer. A co-worker says she was having an affair, she received flowers. Matt fakes a call to the flower shop and reports the husband sent them. Next Alex plans to go to the oncologist, Matt begs off, they argue. Matt shows off his GPS device that allows him to track everyone on his force. She gets him to come but in the office, he goes to the washroom but stops when he hears the doctor's name. They see her doctor, a woman who says Ann was healthy. Matt rushes to the hospital office he was in with Ann, it is another Dr. Friedland, but he has no patient named Ann. Matt takes a gold pen in an envelope. In the car Alex is calling for phone records, Matt is nervous. Back at the cop shop the neighbor is giving info to a sketch artist. The woman says Matt was the man, no one believes her. Matt sends a junior staff to Miami with the pen to check fingerprints. The DEA (Terry Loughlin) calls and says they are coming for the evidence money that afternoon. Matt becomes very tense. A cop has found a lead on the insurance policy, Matt says he will track it down. At the fax machine Whitlock intercepts the incoming records with his name on the list. He scans the list and tries to edit the file. He re-sends it to the fax machine from his PC but then has to go and delete the first incoming resend from the phone company without anyone noticing. Jay arrives with the autopsy report. Then another cop shows up with cell phone records, there is one regular number, it is Matt's. He quickly uses his cell to turn off his voice mails. Jay is there, recognizes the number and tells Alex it is his. Outside, Matt comes clean to Jay and says he was setup, he gave Ann the drug money. The phone call comes in from Miami, the fingerprints on the pen are from Tony Cabot, an ex-con. Matt asks for the last known address, it is closeby. Matt goes with Jay to the address. It is deserted but they find a credit card statement in a trash can and Cabot's Mercy Hospital pass. They return to the station, Jay offers to drive him to the airport to go to Costa Rica. Matt says he is not running. At the office, the insurance company phones and on speakerphone tells the cops Chris Harrison was the beneficiary, but wait, there seems to be a change form coming, might be in the mail room. Alex asks him to find it and call back in half an hour. Matt finds out from the credit card company where the card was last used, a hotel in Miami. He hears Alex also asking about Paul Cabot in the squad room. As he is leaving two DEA agents arrive for the evidence money, DW buys time by telling them he sent it to their office, he has a telecon with their angry boss. In the hotel Cabot is on the phone with Chris, planning their escape. At the hotel Matt pretends to be Cabot and gets a new room key from the front desk, he goes up to room 715. Entering with gun drawn he is jumped by Cabot and the two men fight. They end up crashing through the slider onto the balcony, it collapses and both men hang in mid air. Finally Cabot falls to his death, Matt crawls back up and finds a briefcase, the money is there. Trying to leave, Alex arrives with backup, the front desk clerk points him out as Matt dashes to a stairwell, the chase is on, but Alex didn't get a good look at the runner. Then Matt re-appears and says he just got here too. In the confusion he manages to get out the back door with the money to his car. He calls Jay to say he has the money. Alex arrives at his car and says they need to talk. They go to a bar and talk about their relationship, then Alex asks Matt if wants to say anything, he doesn't. They return to Banyan Key in silence. Back in the squad, Alex once again looks at the cell phone records. She tells Matt the hotel clerk will be there in 30 minutes. A weeping Ann phones and says she is sorry but Chris made her do it, she still needs the money. Matt gets the address and ducks out the washroom window. The hotel clerk arrives. Alex looks again at the face sketch and clues in it is Matt. The call comes in, the new beneficiary is Matthias Whitlock. The three DEA agents show up asking to see Whitlock, Alex hears all the details about the $485,000. Jay is driving when the GPS unit in the glovebox beeps and he sees a dot flashing at Runyon Pt. A short time later his car breaks down. Matt arrives at a dark shack. He enters warily and sees a beaten Ann. Chris appears and starts shooting, a gunfight. Chris is out of ammo, trying to escape he is shot by Ann. She points the gun at Matt, and admits she was behind it all. She shoots Matt in the thigh but before she can kill him as he screams, Alex shoots and kills her from behind. Alex checks the briefcase and only sees a GPS tracking unit. The rest of the police arrive, Alex gives a plausible explanation. The three DEA agents arrive demanding the money, just then Jay arrives with the satchel, saying there was a mistake with the address. As Matt is loaded into an ambulance Alex asks if he loved Ann he says no, but was just stupid. Later, Matt is fishing from his deck. Alex arrives relaxed and friendly talking about moving her stuff. Jay arrives with mail, the insurance company informing him he is to get $1 mil. Alex says he can't accept it as conflict of interest. Matt agrees as Alex says she is moving back in together.

A very true movie. So true I could not watch it until now. From someone who has been there, seen it, lived through it, I can say it was written by someone who was there as well. The story is of a young woman, Ellen (Renee Zellweger) who comes home for the weekend from her busy life in the city and with a possible writing career in front of her to find out from her father (William Hurt) that her mother, Kate (Meryl Streep) is ill. She is about to have cancer surgery and he expects that she will drop her life and come home to take care of her mother. She will need help after the surgery and the following chemotherapy. Ellen does not know what to think. She is a writer, as her father, an english professor, does he not understand what her life and future career mean to her? She has never seen self sacrifice before, or so she thinks. As her mother grows ever weaker Ellen gets a glimpse into her mother's life. She is involved with the community on special ocassions, she refinishes furniture, makes curtains, cooks everything wonderful, and even comforts friends in times of challenge, but most important of all, she makes her husband's life possible. At first Ellen tries to step into her mother's shoes and has a tough time for she is more like her father, she writes, she doesn't cook, clean, and comfort. Soon she finds her mother's shoes are a lot harder to fill than she ever realized. As she gets better at caring for her mother and the home front she realizes just how little her father does at home. Many of us see what many probably don't see, he is not completely self-scentered he simply can't imagine his life without her and can not be around to watch her fade. Ellen does not know this, at one point she believes he is having an affair and becomes very angry with him. She believes all he can do is think about himself. At Thanksgiving her father surprises everyone by bringing home two writers he admires, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this might well be his family's last Thanksgiving together. He asks that his wife whip up some great appetizers, as though she were in any shape to do so, which leaves Ellen to make them. Ellen is enraged with the unexpected visitors, famous or not, she wanted a quiet family Thanksgiving. Ellen becomes confrontational at every turn with her father. He wants everything to remain the same, he's not willing to help out with anything, and to top it all off, she believes when he calls to say he is working late that he is with "the other woman" who drops him off in front of the house later that evening. Ellen finally has a bitter confrontation with her father in a diner that ends up with him walking away stating that she will no longer be needed she can return to the city. Before this can even be discussed her mother is hospitalized. They are told the cancer has spread and there no need to continue therapy, all they can do now is make her comfortable. Her mother has noticed what is happening with Ellen and her father and calls her into a room to talk. She looks Ellen in the face and tells her that she does not know anything about her husband that she doesn't know. Life and marriage changes as it moves along and you find yourself accepting things you told yourself you'd never do. That it can be unbearable at one point and joyous the next. That you reach a point where if you remove someone from your life all it does is leave is a great big hole in your life, you live for your family, the ones you love. She then tries to tell Ellen things she might need for later in life and Ellen does not want to hear them. Her mother begins to cry and tells her that she's tired of people not letting her talk when she wants to talk, when Ellen agrees, she thinks a minute then says, I said it already. Ellen is charged with caring for her mother and giving her pains pills, morphine, now that the pain is much worse. Even though Ellen knows she's dying, and that she is in a wheel chair, and that a nurse comes in to help her, all these facts are really made quite clear when her mother calls out for the nurse who is not there and Ellen enters the bathroom to find her mother in the tub unable to get out. For the first time she is not seeing her bulky sweaters and cap; she sees her mother with her half bald head and barely covered bones. She is so skinny that Ellen can easily lift her from the tub. At that moment Ellen realizes exactly what is happening; to know something is one thing, to see it is almost too real. After she gets her mother settled into her chair she asks Ellen for a pain pill, as she takes it she whimpers, "This is no way to live" in her weakened voice that tells volumes. She asks Ellen to help her make it stop, Ellen's mother is now staying down stairs in a hospital bed. When she sleeps you hear her struggling to breathe, eating is no more, drinking is barely so, and talking is barely so. Then we see Ellen take out the small dish we all have for our cancer victims to put a little bit of applesauce to try in vein to get them to eat anything, and to help get medications down. Then she takes out the morphine and begins to smash the pills, first one, then another, then another. Then stands there knowing she can't do this. As much as she knows it would be a kindness, as much as she knows it would make it easier for her mother she can not do it. Her father comes home early, Ellen takes a bath and when she comes down we see her father wash out a small dish, wipe it and put it back in the cupboard. He tells Ellen, "your mother says this is not living, and she was right." Ellen goes into to be with her mother and finds awake and she tells her, "I love you." In the morning Ellen's father comes downstairs to find Ellen holding her mother's hand and staring, he realizes she is gone. Throughout the movie we have seen Ellen telling a man the story of her mother's illness but we don't know who he is, a greif counselor? A priest? It is a man wanting to know how Ellen's mother died of an overdose. Ellen has been providing stories that make it impossible for her father to be responsible, while not implicating herself either. In the last scene Ellen is at her mother's grave planting bulbs in the freshingly dug up soil. Her father approaches her and watches what she is doing and asks her how it went. She tells him it went fine that the man will also want to speak to him as well. Her father then says he admires Ellen's strength, he wanted to do it but could not. Ellen hears him but it doesn't sink in right away. She finally lifts her head and says, "I didn't do it, I thought you did it." They both take a moment and then shake their heads while stating, "oh, she couldn't have, she was too weak!" Ellen's father then shares how much he loved her, that she made his world warm and comfortable, she was his One True Thing. As the movie concludes her father attempts to help plant the bulbs and they work the soil together.

In 1948 Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins has seen better days. So he accepts a job to locate the mysterious Daphne Monet but ends up in a web of murder, brutal cops and city politics.