Kate Nelligan

Two Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) agents are gunned down while trying to intercept a briefcase exchange taking place in a United Nations (UN) parking garage. The murders are caught on a CCTV camera but the killer escapes with the top-secret information. The person who delivered the money also escapes. Six months later, Senior Deputy US Marshal Samuel Gerard and his team capture a pair of fugitives in Chicago. His team includes Noah Newman, Cosmo Renfro, Savannah Cooper and Bobby Briggs. Gerard is very close to his team, and they function like a well-oiled machine. Gerard reports to US Marshal Catherine Walsh (Kate Nelligan). Catherine admonishes Gerard for hitting the fugitives while they were in handcuffs, which is against the law. Gerard says that the fugitive was huge and was throwing the team around and this was the only way to bring him under control. At the same time, tow truck driver Mark Warren (Wesley Snipes) is arrested for a weapons violation after a firefighter finds a pistol in his truck after a car accident, enabling the Chicago Police Department to discover he is the federal fugitive Mark Roberts wanted for the double-homicide. Roberts boards a prisoner transport back to New York, sharing the flight with Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones), who is escorting prisoners unrelated to Roberts' case. Roberts thwarts an assassination attempt by Chinese prisoner Vincent Ling with a zip gun (which was concealed in the toilet paper handle in the plane's loo), but the bullet pierces the window and depressurizes the cabin, forcing a crash landing. The pilots cannot find any airport nearby and decide to the land the transport plane on a highway. The plane crashes into the Ohio River, and Gerard tries to rescue the surviving prisoners as Roberts escapes. Gerard discovers Roberts has fled the crash site and DSS Special Agent John Royce (Robert Downey Jr.) is assigned to join Gerard's team to hunt Roberts. They corner Roberts in a Kentucky swamp before he wounds Gerard and flees. Roberts calls his girlfriend Marie Bineaux, explaining that he was a government agent until he was betrayed in New York. Roberts makes it to New York City, secures money, weapons and fake ID. Returning to New York City, Roberts secures supplies from a Force Recon comrade and tracks a Chinese diplomat Xiang Chen (Michael Paul Chan). In Chicago, Gerard and the marshals pursue several leads, including Roberts' girlfriend Marie Bineaux (Irène Jacob) as well as the airplane mechanic who hid the zip gun, the latter of whom the marshals find killed by Chen. Gerard suspects that Royce is concealing information about Roberts and the murders. Gerard and team watch the UN surveillance footage of the murders in the parking garage and realize that Roberts acted in self-defense and was wearing gloves; thus, couldn't have been identified by fingerprints at the scene as was claimed. Confronted with the evidence, DSS Director Bertram Lamb (Patrick Malahide) informs Gerard that "Mark Roberts" is in fact Mark Sheridan, a highly trained covert operative and a former CIA Special Activities Division Agent, that went rogue during an investigation to find the mole within the U.S. State Department that had been selling secrets to China. Sheridan was suspected of selling U.S. State Department classified intelligence to the Chinese government. Chen was delivering money to Sheridan for the information when the DSS agents tried to apprehend Sheridan, who escaped with the documents. Gerard's team tracks Sheridan to a cemetery. The team catches up with Sheridan (and Gerard brings Marie along) in the Bohemian National Cemetery where Sheridan meets with, and threatens to expose, DSS Special Agent Frank Barrows (Rick Snyder) as one of the conspirators who framed him. Chen tries to snipe Sheridan as he leaves the cemetery, but inadvertently kills Barrows instead. Sheridan flees to a retirement home followed by Gerard, Royce and Deputy Marshal Noah Newman (Tom Wood), while Chen is caught and detained by Deputy Marshals Savannah Cooper (LaTanya Richardson) and Bob Biggs (Daniel Roebuck). At the retirement home, Gerard and Royce chase Sheridan to the eighth floor and search for him, room by room. Royce walks in the room of an Emphysema patient where Sheridan jumps on him and the two fight. Newman overhears the fight and walks into the room where he witnesses Royce holding Sheridan at gunpoint. Royce suddenly shoots Newman with his Taurus PT945 pistol and later lies to the team, claiming Sheridan got a shot off and Newman walked into it. Sheridan escapes by jumping from the building onto the roof of a passing Metro-North train. Newman is mortally wounded, and dies during the ambulance ride to the hospital, with a devastated Gerard by his side. After finding empty motion sickness pill containers in a stolen car, Gerard tracks down Sheridan on a freighter bound for Canada. During a brief scuffle, Sheridan gains the upper-hand and grabs Gerard's gun, aiming it at him but then lowering it without taking the shot. Sheridan is then shot from behind by Royce who fires rather recklessly, almost hitting Gerard. The Marshal notices the D.S.S. agent now carries a Glock 22. Sheridan is taken into custody. Gerard begins to suspect Royce may be associated with the mole within the U.S. State Department when Royce hands him the pistol he used to kill Newman (Gerard is tipped off because Royce has filed off the serial number, but he still remembers Royce showing it to him when they first met). Left alone to guard Sheridan's hospital room, Royce wakes Sheridan up, releases him from his restraints and plants a knife to claim an attempted escape and therefore justifiable self-defense in shooting Sheridan. Gerard interrupts Royce before he can shoot a weakened Sheridan with his Glock and tricks him into revealing his status as the rogue agent, before revealing that he has also removed Royce's magazine to disarm him. Royce pulls his concealed backup firearm but is shot by Gerard on warning from Sheridan. After leaving the hospital, Sheridan's charges are dropped, and he is released. Sheridan is exonerated and reunites with Marie, while Gerard and his team depart to drink a toast to Newman.

Will Randall (Jack Nicholson), an editor-in-chief of a large, New York City publishing house, is driving home to Manhattan from Vermont on a cold March night. The road is quite dark and icy and he hits a large wolf with his car. While he inspects the wolf's body and tries to drag it off the road, the uninjured wolf, playing dead, suddenly bites him and trots off. Will walks slowly back to his car, noticing that several other wolves are watching him in the woods nearby, their yellow eyes glowing in the dark. Will makes it back home to his penthouse and his wife, Charlotte. He ends up sleeping for some 20 hours, waking up only when Charlotte comes home in the evening. They have dinner together and Will becomes very passionate with her, to her sly delight. When he returns to his office, he notices that his sense of smell is greatly enhanced; he can smell tequila on a coworker's breath as he passes him and hear every conversation going on among the office's other employees. Will is also able to edit a manuscript quickly and without his glasses. Will's new boss, Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer), a rich tycoon who has bought the publishing house, throws a lavish dinner party at his Long Island estate. He tells Will that he's demoted as chief editor and his replacement will be Will's protégé, Stewart Swinton (James Spader). Raymond offers Will a job as editor in Easter Europe. While stalking away from the meeting with Raymond, Will gets too close to a few prized horses Raymond is showing and they become spooked. Will also feels pain in his chest like a heart attack and is forced to sit down near a guest house. While he recovers, he meets Alden's headstrong daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is polite but sullen and withdrawn. She comforts him with a glass of liquor and firmly rebuffs Will's advances. Will rejoins Charlotte and Stewart and genially congratulates the latter on his promotion. Stewart, feigning incredulity, claims he had no knowledge of Raymond's decision until right before the party. Will and Charlotte drive home, both seething over the turn of events. At home later, with Charlotte out of town for work, Will takes several deep sniffs of a robe. He becomes very agitated and goes to Stewart's apartment. Steward lets Will in the building, tries to grab him to talk to reason with him and Will bites him viciously on the arm. Will jumps up the grand staircase to Stewart's apartment with seemingly superhuman agility and finds Charlotte there. Will stalks off without another word, leaving his wife unharmed. Will checks into Manhattan's Mayflower Hotel. The next day he consults his secretary Mary (Eileen Atkins) and his assistant Roy (David Hyde Pierce) and plots to draw his and Roy's clients into a new firm with new investors, a move that Will hasn't backed up with a shred of truth, much to the admiration of Mary and Roy. Will drives out to Raymond's estate again to tell him he's turning down the position in Eastern Europe. While leaving, Will sees Laura again, riding a horse nearby. The horse is spooked when it sees Will and throws Laura off. Raymond suddenly appears and, upon finding out that Laura is unharmed, takes another opportunity to slag Will, saying that he doesn't approve of Laura getting involved with Will. She turns down her father's offer of lunch and takes Will back to the guest house she's staying in. The two talk over peanut butter and jelly and wander around the estate. Will tells her about his encounter with the wolf and how he believes he might be becoming one. He feels sick again and lays down in her house while she tends to him. During the night he wakes up, clearly showing characteristics of a wolf and bounds out, hunting down a deer and killing it. In the morning Will finds himself on the bank of a stream, with blood all over his face and hands. He leaves immediately and sees his doctor, who tells him he's fine. Laura, believing Will had left her cold, refuses to take Will's calls. Will visits Dr. Vijav Alezais (Om Puri), a professor specializing in the supernatural. Alezais tells him that the wolf that bit Will was not a true werewolf but a demon wolf that simply passes the spirit of an animal on to it's victims. He also suggests that this spirit can be transmitted to another person simply through passion and that not all wolf spirits are evil, they are manipulated by the nature of the individual. The professor gives Will an amulet to protect him from turning completely into a wolf. Alezais also asks Will to bite him, as Alezais does not have long to live, and would prefer "demonization to death." After refusing, Randall keeps the amulet so that he won't transform at the next full moon. Calling Laura to explain, Randall, now a wolf, breaks into the Central Park Zoo and steals handcuffs from a policeman (David Schwimmer) who tries to arrest him. In another area of the park, muggers want his wallet, but he attacks and leaves one of them alive. He wakes up in his hotel, with no memory of what happened. Will outmanoeuvres Raymond and Stewart with his threat of stealing the publishing house's biggest authors. He finagles a new contract that will let him stay editor-in-chief and grant him a larger salary and greater authority. Raymond also grants him the opportunity to fire Stewart. The two meet in the men's room and although Stewart begs Will for a second chance, Will still fires him, urinating on his shoes. While washing his hands, he finds fingers in his handkerchief and realizes he killed someone, at least one of the muggers in Central Park. Will's biting of Steward when he discovered his affair with Charlotte has consequences. Stewart attacks and kills Charlotte and sets about framing Will for the murder. Will, who believes he's become too dangerous, handcuffs himself to the radiator in his hotel room and waits for Laura to arrive. She frees him against his objections and Will finally puts on the amulet Alezais had given him. The two spend the night together, having sex. The next day they both hear about Charlotte's murder and Will insists Laura take him to her father's estate and lock him in the horse stables. Laura gets a call from a Detective (Richard Jenkins), the chief investigator of Charlotte's death. He tells her that canine DNA was found on Charlotte's body. Alarmed, Laura goes to the police station. There she runs into Stewart, who makes an animal-like pass at her. Laura hurries away, making arrangements for her and Will to leave the country. Stewart follows her, viciously kills the two security guards on the property and attacks Laura, trying to rape her in front of Will in the stables. Will tears off the amulet, succumbs to the full power of the wolf and escapes confinement, attacking Stewart. The two fight ferociously until Stewart is shot to death by Laura when he tries to stab Will with a pair of garden shears. Will and Laura stare at each other, Will is frightened to touch her due his monstrous state. She looks at him with a loving glance and takes his hand but he still runs off, hiding in the woods where he makes a final transformation. Later, Jenkins arrives. Laura shows heightened senses while talking to the detective and the police that accompanied him, telling the detective that she can smell vodka on his breath. The final scene is a close-up of her face fading into dark, lupine eyes, and a close up of Will completing his transformation into a full werewolf.

While on a stakeout at an amusement park in Los Angeles, California, police detective Ned Ravine (Armand Assante) is approached by a flirtatious, sultry blonde woman (Sean Young). However, he must leave her to pursue culprit Milo Crumley (Blake Clark), known as the "pantyhose bandit." After arresting Milo, Ned, who is also a defense attorney, offers to represent him in court. At his law office, Ned relies on his devoted secretary, Laura (Sherilyn Fenn), who is always efficient except when tortured by flashbacks of her abusive husband. After successfully defending Milo in court, Ned receives a surprise visit from Lola Cain, the blonde woman from the amusement park. The beautiful seductress asks Ned to meet her the following evening to look over some papers that she cannot understand. While workaholic Ned is on police duty at night, his wife, Lana Ravine (Kate Nelligan), has been having an affair with auto mechanic Frank Kelbo (Christopher McDonald). Lana asks Frank's advice about her husband's accident insurance policy, and learns that it contains a triple indemnity rider worth $9 million, if Ned is shot with a pistol, falls from a northbound train, and drowns in a freshwater stream. Undaunted by the complications, Lana plots to murder Ned that weekend while he travels to a legal symposium in Santa Barbara, California, and agrees to share the insurance payout with her lover. She instructs Frank to tamper with Ned's car, so he will be forced to take the train. At his office, Ned receives instructions to meet Lola at Le Hot Club and from there, the two proceed to her mansion. After looking over her "papers," a laundry receipt and a lottery ticket, Ned succumbs to Lola's sexual advances and engages in various erotic scenarios with her throughout the house. In the morning, Ned reminds Lola he is married and cannot continue their affair. The rejection shocks Lola, and she gives Ned a deranged look. Meanwhile, criminal Max Shady (James Remar) is released from prison and is determined to take revenge on Ned for losing his case seven years ago. Laura shows Ned the multiple death threats Shady has faxed to the office, but the attorney believes the criminal just needs to vent his anger and is not concerned. At home, Ned wants to make amends with his estranged wife and buys her a pet skunk, but she is unimpressed and remains focused on killing him. When Ned treats Laura to shopping and dinner for her birthday, she looks at her handsome boss with affection, hoping he will take an interest in her. At the restaurant, an obsessive Lola interrupts them and threatens Ned with an ice pick, giving Laura another reason to worry about her boss's safety. Unable to use his car after the engine goes missing, Ned initially considers flying to Santa Barbara. He is fearful about taking the train since several members of his family have been killed in train wrecks, but Lana persuades him and advises that he stand in the vestibule between cars to calm his nerves. Lana and Frank secretly get on the train with Ned, who is also being followed on board by Max Shady. As the train leaves the station, Ned is anxious and sweating. After he gets up from his seat and walks toward the vestibule, Lana follows. She enters the area and shoots a man in the back, who is standing by the exit door and wearing a suit similar to Ned's. She believes she has shot her husband, but the man who falls out of the train, riddled with bullets, is Max Shady. Ned appears from the adjacent bathroom and is grateful to his wife for risking her life to protect him. However, as a police officer, he must arrest her for Shady's murder, but agrees to serve as her defense attorney. At the murder trial, Ned succeeds in convincing the jury that his wife should be acquitted. As soon as she is free, Lana kills her accomplice Frank over concerns he might betray her. Lola witnesses the deed and blackmails Lana. Ned walks in the house as Lola is talking to his wife, and denies knowing the blonde woman. Later, an angry Ned goes to Lola's mansion and warns her to stay out of his life. During their altercation, Lola reveals that Lana is her identical twin sister, who stole her boyfriend Dwayne, the love of her life. When a confused Ned remarks that the two women look completely different, Lola explains that Lana destroyed her original face with a shovel and she had to endure fifty-three plastic surgery operations. Ned is amazed at the beautiful result, but Lola disagrees, calling herself "ugly." She says Dwayne abandoned her for Lana after he saw her transformation. Lola's attempt to destroy her sister's marriage to Ned was part of her revenge. She also tells Ned that Lana murdered the mechanic. When Ned informs Lola that the mechanic's name was Frank Kelbo, she is devastated, realizing that Frank was the son of Dwayne, whose last name was Kelbo. Returning home, Ned finds hot water running in the bathtub, but his wife is absent. Laura, who has been conducting her own investigation, arrives to alert Ned that his wife and Frank were plotting to murder him so they could collect on his insurance policy. She also confides about her difficult past and fleeing from her obsessive-compulsive, abusive husband. As Ned and Laura talk in the kitchen, Lana saws a break in the upstairs handrail, but Lola surprises her sister and drowns her in the bathtub. When Ned goes to investigate the faucet noise, he discovers his wife's dead body and is assaulted by Lola. Meanwhile, downstairs, Laura's sadistic husband sneaks into the house and confronts his wife. After Ned and Laura subdue their attackers, they embrace and share a passionate kiss. Suddenly, the two apparently dead sisters recover and rush at Ned and Laura with sharp objects. However, Laura proves to be a skilled sharpshooter as she simultaneously kills Lana and Lola with two pistols, but blowing out Ned's eardrums when she fired the guns close to his head. In the final scene, Laura and Ned propose marriage and spend their first night together, as the pet skunk watches from his hiding spot in the dresser.

Johnny has just been released from prison, and gets a job in a café beside waitress Frankie. Frankie is a bit of a loner, but Johnny is determined their romance will blossom. Johnny on his release from his jail joins the restaurant where Frankie works. Johnny discovered his talent for cooking when in jail. Love at first sight bites Johnny on seeing Frankie. He makes direct attempts to get her heart. But deep a wound in Frankie's heart would not let her give her heart to Johnny. Johnny's divorced wife and kids have moved to a new world of a different person. Frankie opens up her tragic story and Johnny promises to be with her in difficult times. —Thejus Joseph Jose Johnny is a lonely middle-aged man who gets a job in a restaurant owned by a greek family. There, he meets Frankie, a woman who doesn't seem very happy with her life, and he falls in love with her. The problem is that Frankie feels really lost in her monotony, so he can't convince her about his feelings... —Chris Makrozahopoulos <makzax@hotmail.com>

A troubled man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her in the process. The Wingo family is from South Carolina, living in a house on a tidal plain. The oldest offspring, Lucas, largely acted as the protector for his younger twins siblings, Tom and Savannah, in light of their dysfunctional growing up, with their shrimper father, Henry, distant and abusive if/when he did pay them any attention, and their mother, Lila, while not doting on them most concerned about appearances and striving for social standing. Now in middle age, Savannah is a New York based poet, Tom, still living on the South Carolina coast outside of Charleston with his wife Sally and their own three doting daughters, taking a break from his high school teaching/football coaching job, while Lucas has long since died while still standing up for himself and his beliefs. Lila, divorced and now remarried with that wealth and social standing she so long desired, receives news that Savannah is in the hospital following her most recent suicide attempt. Not wanting to face the blame directly as she suspects, she assigns Tom to go to New York to speak to Savannah's therapist, Susan Loewenstein, to provide any information of a family history nature that could help in Savannah's recovery. Tom agrees despite hating New York, and it being not a good time since he and Sally are experiencing marital problems, they both just knowing that things between them are not working, and not having been intimate in months. As Tom and Loewenstein (as he calls her) begin their sessions, Tom is slow to divulge the Wingo family problems to her. But he learns that she too is having her own family problems, with her concert violinist husband Herbert Woodruff being self absorbed and condescending, with their young adult son, Bernard, hating both largely because they were predestining his life also as a concert violinist. Tom and Loewenstein's sessions blossom into a friendship and romance, where their talks, in addition to helping Savannah, may help them both in dealing with their own life problems, of which Tom's had been long buried both figuratively and literally. —Huggo Tom Wingo is unhappy with his life. His wife doesn't understand him and he also doesn't get along with his dominant mother. When his sister attempts suicide, her psychologist Susan Lowenstein consults him. Patiently and cautiously she uncovers the terrible secret hidden in Tom and Savannah's childhood. On the other side she's unhappy too and so both help each other to find their way back to life. —Anonymous When a Southern born New York writer tries to commit suicide, her "unemployed-football-coach" twin brother, Tom Wingo, comes to her aid. While tending to his sister Savannah's care he meets her psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein. Dr. Lowenstein, desperate to unlock the door to her patient's self-destructive pattern, relies on Tom to be his sister's memory. What she doesn't realize is that the last thing Tom wants to do is remember. Haunted by a painful childhood and a domineering mother, Tom discovers the only thing worse than not remembering is not telling. —Robin <soonerzs@yahoo.com>

A mother's love for her children leads to a son's revenge for her death in this dramatic thriller that begins during the Greek civil war. Nick is a writer in New York when he gets posted to a bureau in Greece. He has waited 30 years for this. He wants to know why his mother was killed in the civil war years earlier. In a parallel plot line we see Nick as a young boy and his family as they struggle to survive in the occupied Greek hillside. The plot lines converge as Nick's investigations bring him closer to the answers. —Robert B. Young <youngb@tastemaker.com>

In Whitby, England in 1913, Count Dracula (Frank Langella) arrives from Transylvania through the sailing ship Demeter one stormy night. Sickly Mina Van Helsing (Jan Francis), who is visiting her dear friend Lucy Seward (Kate Nelligan), discovers Dracula's body after his ship has run aground. The Count visits Mina and her friends at the household of Lucy's father, Dr. Jack Seward (Donald Pleasance), whose clifftop mansion also serves as the local asylum. At dinner, he proves to be a charming guest and leaves a strong impression on the hosts, especially Lucy. Less charmed by this handsome Romanian count is Jonathan Harker (Trevor Eve), Lucy's fiance. Later that night, while Lucy and Jonathan are having a secret rendezvous, Dracula reveals his true nature as he descends upon Mina to drink her blood. The following morning, Lucy suddenly finds Mina awake in bed, struggling for breath. Powerless, she watches her dear friend die, only to finds severe wounds on her throat. Lucy blames herself for Mina's untimely death, as she had leave her alone while she remained bedridden. At a loss for the cause of death, Dr. Seward calls for Mina's father, Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Lord Laurence Olivier), who suspects what may have killed his daughter: a vampire. Moreover, he begins to worry about what fate his seemingly dead daughter may now have since her encounter with the creature. Seward and Van Helsing investigate their suspicions and discover a roughly clawed opening within Mina's coffin which lead to the local mines. It is there that they encounter the ghastly form of an undead Mina and it is up to the distraught Van Helsing to destroy what remains of her daughter. Meanwhile, Lucy has been summoned to Carfax Abbey, Count Dracula's new home, and she soon reveals herself to be in love with this foreign prince and openly offer herself as his bride. After a surreal wedding night sequence, like Mina before her, Lucy is now deadly infected by Dracula's blood. However, the two doctors manage to give Lucy a blood transfusion to help prevent her vampirism, but nothing can prevent the inevitable now. Now assisted by Jonathan, the elderly doctors realize that the only way to defeat Dracula (and save Lucy) is by destroying him. They manage to locate his coffin within the grounds of Carfax Abbey, but the vampire is waiting for them. Despite this being daylight, Count Dracula is still a very powerful adversary. Dracula escapes their attempts to kill him and bursts into the asylum to free the captive Lucy. While there, he scolds his slave, Milo Renfield (Tony Haygarth), for warning the others about him. Renfield apologizes and pleads for his life, but Dracula kills him by breaking his neck. Dracula now makes preparations for him and Lucy to return to Transylvania. Harker and Van Helsing manage to get onboard a ship carrying Dracula and Lucy cargo bound for Romania. Below decks, Harker and Van Helsing find Dracula and Lucy sleeping together in the coffin. Van Helsing attempts to stake Dracula, but Lucy protests, waking Dracula. In the struggle, Van Helsing is fatally wounded by Dracula as he is impaled with the stake intended for the vampire. Dracula now turns his attention to Harker. Van Helsing uses his remaining strength to throw a hook attached to a rope, tied to the ship's rigging, into Dracula's back. Harker seizes his chance and hoists up the count through the cargo hold to the top of the ship's rigging, where he dies a painful death when the solar rays burn his body. Van Helsing dies from his deadly wounds. Lucy is now apparently herself again, and Harker comforts her. Lucy smiles as she notices Dracula's cape blow away into the horizon, hinting Dracula may have survived.