Cynthia Gibb

In a violent and corrupt prison, decorated cop Louis Burke must infiltrate the jail to find answers to a number of inside murders. What he finds is a struggle of life and death tied in to his own past. The Canadian policeman Louis Burke is assigned in a jail to investigate some murders of prisoners and jailors. When in jail, Lois, using his outstandings martial arts, is able to save his life and make himself respected in that violent world. At last, helped by two another prisoners, he succeeds in finding the truth about the dreadful crimes. —Tognacci Sebastiano <seblog@maya.dei.unipd.it> In an abandoned house, detective Louis Burke confronts a maniac called the Sandman. Although the Sandman nearly kills Burke, Burke manages to stop him with a bullet. Sixteen months later, Burke joins a task force put together by the governor to investigate a series of unexplained deaths in the Harrison Penitentiary. While Burke poses as an inmate, attorney Amanda Beckett acts the role of his wife. In the penitentiary, Burke is forced to survive in an environment so dismal and filthy that it makes a public restroom in New York City look like a room in a five star hotel. Burke does succeed in befriending a few of the inmates, including Hawkins and Priest, who help him with the investigation. More inmates are mysteriously murdered. Burke's cell-mate is killed, and prison guard DeGraff puts Burke in solitary confinement, where he's interrogated and beaten. As if that's not enough, the Sandman ends up at Harrison. As it turns out, the prisoners are being murdered for their body organs. Back on the outside, Beckett attends a party given by Vogler, the state's attorney general. Just as she's preparing to tell him about the murders at the prison, Beckett receives a call from her assistant, who identifies Vogler's henchman Keane as the man behind the murders, which also involve Dr. Gottesman, the surgeon who harvests the organs to be sold to people who are in desperate need of them. The assistant's suspicions are confirmed when Vogler tries to kill Beckett. Burke begins an escape from the penitentiary, pursued by the Sandman and hundreds of angry inmates who have been set free and armed with the knowledge that Burke is a cop. Burke and the Sandman have brutal showdown in which Burke tries to get the Sandman out of the way so he can go after Vogler, Keane, and Gottesman. —Todd Baldridge

In this sequel to the first 'Short Circuit' film, former tech scientist Ben Jahrvi (Fisher Stevens) has relocated to New York City from his homeland in India. He attempts to make a living peddling miniature toy robots, which he builds in the back of his truck. When one of Ben's robots rolls through the office of toy buyer Sandy Banatoni (Cynthia Gibb), she offers to purchase 1,000 models for a major department store. Although Ben does not have the means to produce the toys in mass quantities, a sleazy con artist named Fred Ritter (Michael McKean) overhears the conversation and negotiates a deal to serve as Ben's business partner. Fred obtains money from a loan shark, and leases a vacated warehouse to use as a factory. Meanwhile, two jewel thieves tunneling underneath the building worry that the business will thwart their plans to steal a case of valuable diamonds from the bank across the street. Hoping to drive them away, the criminals don masks and destroy all of Ben's equipment. Dejected, Ben considers giving up the business until his two old friends, Stephanie Speck and Newton Crosby, send him a large package from their home in the rural Midwest containing the original life-size robot, Number Five (voiced by Tim Blaney), which Ben helped create and was thought destroyed at the end of the previous film. Fully sentient, the robot calls itself "Johnny Five" and offers to build the toys for their order. The next morning while Ben closes the deal with Stephanie (voiced by an uncredited Ally Sheedy), Johnny Five sneaks out to explore the city. The naive robot is amazed by urban life, but addled by most residents' rude and deceitful natures. Meanwhile, Fred conspires to sell Johnny Five, but the robot resists capture, and continues its efforts to assimilate into human society. Eventually, two police officers find Johnny Five wandering the streets and bring it to the station, where they lock it up with other stolen property. Learning of Johnny Five's "arrest," Ben rushes to the police station and retrieves the robot. Johnny Five explains that being treated like a sub-human machine has caused it to experience painful emotions, such as loneliness. Ben commiserates, sharing his own desire for companionship. Using information obtained from books about human behavior, Johnny Five offers to help Ben pursue a romantic relationship with Sandy Banatoni. Elsewhere, the jewel thieves team up with a greedy bank executive named Oscar Baldwin (Jack Weston), hoping to use his budding friendship with Johnny Five to regain access to the warehouse tunnel. After kidnapping Ben and Fred and imprisoning them in a large walk-in freezer, Oscar convinces the robot to finish digging until they reach the vault. When Oscar steals the jewels, however, Johnny Five realizes the trick and attempts to stop him. The thieves retaliate by attacking Johnny Five with an ax, leaving it severely damaged. Meanwhile, Ben and Fred escape captivity, but the police mistake Ben for the jewel thief and arrest him. As Johnny Five's systems malfunction, Fred is forced to repair the robot himself. Although still leaking battery fluid, Johnny Five swears vengeance on Oscar, and chases his getaway car to the docks. Using its last remaining power, Johnny Five attacks Oscar and detains him until Ben arrives with police. Johnny Five's memory drive fails, but Ben uses a defibrillator to revive it. Sometime later, Johnny Five gains national fame and becomes the first legally recognized robotic citizen of the U.S.A.

California, 1980 Veteran photojournalist Richard Boyle (James Woods) has been taking his camera to the world's trouble spots for over 20 years. While he does good work, Boyle's fondness for booze and drugs, and his colossal arrogance, have given him a reputation that's left him practically unemployable. One morning, he finds that his wife has abandoned him, taking their child with her. Broke and with no immediate prospects, Boyle and his best friend, Doctor Rock (Jim Belushi), an out-of-work disc jockey, head to El Salvador, where Boyle is convinced that he can scrounge some lucrative freelance work amidst the nation's political turmoil. However, when Boyle and Rock witness the execution of a teenage high school student by government troops just as they enter the country, it becomes clear that this war is more serious than they were expecting. After he asks a soldier for a general he met during the Football War, he and Rock are taken to him in a school-turned-barracks where both discuss the situation and he learns that the army is supplied by the United States. Feeling that El Salvador is a disaster starting to happen, Boyle eventually decides that it's time to get out, but he's reunited with an old flame named María (Elpidia Carrillo) and her two children (one of whom is his), and he doesn't want to leave her behind. In the meantime, both he and Maria go to a mass by Archbishop Oscar Romero. During the mass, the Archbishop is killed by an assassin sent by the far-right ARANA party (a fascist parody of the real-life ARENA party) and the army outside opens fire on the escaping crowd with Boyle and Maria barely escaping. Following this, he goes to the United States Embassy to convince the ambassador (Michael Murphy) to cut aid for the Salvadoran government as their human rights abuses increase but is denied and is told to leave the country for his own safety, prompting him to leave the embassy in anger. While attempting to get her out of the country, Boyle is harassed by the military due to his profession and eventually leads to the deaths of innocent people either close to him or María by death squads. John Cassady (John Savage), Boyle's friend and fellow photojournalist, is also killed during a battle between the government and rebels in Santa Ana when the Salvadoran army starts using American vehicles and air support to crush the left-wing rebels. Boyle and María eventually leave the country and travel through Guatemala, and later Mexico towards the United States. However, upon entering California, their bus is stopped by immigration officers and María allows herself to be deported alongside her children due to the guilt of leaving her home country behind while Boyle is arrested after desperately arguing with the officers. An epilogue reveals that Maria and her children survived and were last rumored to be in a refugee camp in Guatemala by the time of this film's release. Doctor Rock eventually returned to San Francisco. John Cassady's photos were published and Richard Boyle is still looking for Maria and her children.