David Huband

Chris is a once promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As he tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist. An admired high school hockey player with a bright future foolishly takes a drive in the night with his girlfriend and two other friends with his headlights off with devastating results. The former athlete is left with a brain injury that prevents him from remembering many things for extended periods of time. To compensate, he keeps notes in a small notebook to aid him in remembering what he is to do. He also lives with a blind friend who aids him. Obviously, with the mental incapacitation, he is unable to have meaningful work. Thus he works as a night cleaning man in a bank. It is there he comes under the scrutiny of a gang planning to rob the bank. The leader befriends him and gets him involved with a young woman who further reels him in. After they get close and after reeling him in with his own failures, the bank plan unfolds. Confused but wanting to escape his current existence, he initially goes along with the scheme. After realizing he is being used, he attempts to stop the robbery, which of course immediately goes awry. —John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net> Since reckless driving 'to impress them' killed Chris Pratt's passengers and left him a memory-impaired half-wit, he lives with resourceful blind Lewis, takes a course and hopes against hope for promotion from cleaner to teller in a bank. Cool Gary Spargo recruits Chris, whom he convinces to be getting such a bad deal the world owes him, as look-out to help his violent gang rob the local bank branch. After a promise he may try out as teller, Chris wants to bail out, but is now forced to betray his real friends and see some hurt. After a shoot-out, surprises follow for Chris, he physically got away with the loot, and Gary, who is confident to roll over him easily again, even gun-wounded. —KGF Vissers Up until four years ago, the world was Chris Pratt's oyster - from a well off Kansas City family, he was a promising young hockey player - but an automobile accident caused by his recklessness resulted in among other things he sustaining a brain injury. While that injury manifests itself in many ways, the most problematic for him is that he often forgets things, and when he does remember, he usually doesn't remember the proper sequencing, which results in he having to write things down in a notebook he carries with him all the time. He lost many people in his life an outcome of the accident, with his best friend and biggest supporter now being his roommate Lewis, a blind man who was also going through the social work process at the same time. While Chris' parents still provide him with some financial support, they provide little true emotional support which acerbic tongued Lewis can see more clearly than Chris. Obtained through his life skills class, Chris has a job as the nighttime janitor at a branch of the Noel State Bank and Trust in rural Redpath County, the bank where he, with the help of the chief teller Mrs. Lange, hopes to become a teller himself, something he will probably never be able to convince the branch manager, Mr. Tuttle. Chris' only other true friend is the County Deputy Sheriff Ted, who stops by the bank every working evening to bring Chris doughnuts and shoot the breeze. Out at a bar one evening in an attempt to socialize himself especially with women, Chris runs into Gary Spargo who went to school with Chris' sister. Gary and Chris become friends, and it is through Gary that Chris meets Luvlee Lemons, the first woman who has shown him any interest since the accident. It isn't until Chris becomes ensconced within Gary's social circle, including being intimate with Luvlee, that he discovers that their meeting was not by chance as Gary and his friends had been planning on robbing a bank - Chris' bank - and require his help in pulling off the heist. Gary is able to convince Chris that he can regain much of the life lost from the accident by his share of the heist. The question then becomes if Chris will be able to see through Gary's lies before it's too late, his life and that of those close to him at risk in the process. —Huggo

(Note: Unlike the other films in the trilogy, Cube and Cube 2: Hypercube, the story of Cube Zero is observed from both the interior and the exterior of the cube.) The film focuses on a Cube technician, Eric Wynn, and Cassandra Rains, a woman placed in the Cube. The film starts with a man, Ryjkin, trying to escape from the Cube. He is sprayed with liquid in one of the cubes, but he believes it is only water. However, when he rubs the back of his hand he realizes that his body is disintegrating. Eric is watching this in an observation room with his co-worker Dodd. Afterwards, Eric is shown to be sketching a portrait of Dodd (in the form of a superhero called Chessman), whilst playing chess with Dodd, who has a chess board in front of him which Eric is not looking at. After Eric wins, he asks Dodd questions about their missing colleagues, but Dodd tells him not to ask too many questions or get involved with the occupants of the Cube. Both Eric and Dodd get an order from "upstairs", which asks them to record the dream of a subject, Cassandra Rains. In her dream, Eric sees that she was captured, while walking in a pleasant forest with her daughter Anna. After waking, Cassandra meets the other occupants of the Cube. One of the males placed in the cube, Robert Haskell, has a tattoo on his forehead like the soldier that captured Cassandra. However, Haskell, like everyone else, has no recollection of his former life. According to what Eric knows, everyone in the cube was facing a death sentence and were presented a choice: go in the Cube with their memory wiped or be put to death. Only if a person signs the consent form will he or she then be placed in the cube. Eric finds out that Cassandra has no consent form and argues with Dodd that they should inform the people "upstairs." Just when he is about to make a call to the superiors, the phone rings. They are instructed to perform the "exit procedure" for a subject who has reached the exit of the Cube and is facing his final challenge. They see that it is one of their former colleagues, Owen. During the exit procedure, Owen is asked if he believes in God, and when he answers no, is immediately incinerated. Eric argues with Dodd over the fate of Owen. Eric realizes the Cube is inhumane and decides to enter the cube to help Cassandra escape. Jax, one of the Cube's supervisors, and two of his analysts come to the control room to stop Eric from helping Cassandra. Despite their efforts to stop them, Eric and Cassandra make it to the exit room with the help of Dodd, who sabotages the control panels servicing the cube and pays with his life at the hands of Jax. The sabotage causes the cube to go into "reset mode", which vaporizes any living body inside the Cube after a limited period of time. Once Eric reaches an "exit room", they escape using a secret auxiliary exit. However, soldiers searching for them have already arrived. Cassandra manages to escape, but Eric is shot by a dart and passes out. Eric wakes up in a surgery room and confronts Jax, who reveals that Cassandra may have gotten away, but Eric had been found guilty of "high treason" and "sabotage" against "country and God." He has been sentenced to "two lifetimes" and will be implanted with a brain microchip. Jax claims Eric has already been convicted in a trial. Jax shows him his consent form and says he had been put in the Cube as an observer. Eric dreams about Cassandra reuniting with her daughter and praising Eric as "a superhero." Eric is then given a lobotomy, to eliminate his intelligence. In the final scene, Eric is shown inside the cube with several others victims of the government to test out the cube.

The Saturday Night Live (1975) character gets a big screen treatment. Because of his salacious language, late-night radio advice-show host Leon Phelps, along with his sweet and loyal producer Julie, is fired from his Chicago gig. They can't find another job. About that time, two things happen: he gets a letter from a wealthy former lover who offers to take care of him (but she doesn't sign her real name, so Leon, an inveterate Casanova, has no idea who she is), and a group of angry cuckolds, all of whom have surprised their wives in flagrante delicto with Leon (who has a distinctive tattoo on his booty), are closing in, armed and dangerous. Can he find the sugar mommy and escape the wrath of the mob of husbands? What about Julie? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>