Michael Talbott

Will Graham (William Petersen) is a former FBI criminal profiler who has retired because of a breakdown after being attacked by a cannibalistic serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox). Graham is approached at his Florida home by his former FBI superior Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina), who is seeking help with a new serial killer case. Promising his wife (Kim Greist) that he will do nothing more than examine evidence and not risk physical harm, Graham agrees to visit the most recent crime scene in Atlanta, where he tries to enter the mindset of the killer, now dubbed the "Tooth Fairy" by the police for the bite-marks left on his victims. Having found the killer's fingerprints, Graham meets with Crawford. They are accosted by tabloid journalist Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang), with whom Graham has a bitter history. Lounds' paper had run photographs of Graham taken secretly while he was hospitalized. Graham pays a visit to Lecktor, a former psychiatrist, in his cell and asks for his insight into the killer's motivations. After a tense conversation, Lecktor agrees to look at the case file. Lecktor later contrives to obtain Graham's home address by deceit. Graham travels to the first crime scene in Birmingham, Alabama, where he is contacted by Crawford, who tells him of Lounds' tabloid story on the case. Crawford also patches Graham through to Frederick Chilton (Benjamin Hendrickson), Lecktor's warden, who has found a note in Lecktor's personal effects. Reading it, they realize it is from the Tooth Fairy, expressing admiration for Lecktor and an interest in Graham. Crawford brings Graham to the FBI Academy at Quantico, where a missing section of the note is analyzed to determine what Lecktor has removed. It is found to be an instruction to communicate through the personals section of the National Tattler, Lounds' newspaper. The FBI intended to plant a fake advertisement to replace Lecktor's, but they realize that without the proper book code the Tooth Fairy will know it is fake. So they let the advertisement run as it is, and Graham organizes an interview with Lounds, during which he gives a false and derogatory profile of the Tooth Fairy to incite him. After a sting operation fails to catch the killer, Lounds is kidnapped by the Tooth Fairy (Tom Noonan). Waking in the killer's home, he is shown a slideshow of William Blake's The Great Red Dragon paintings, along with the Tooth Fairy's past victims and slides of a family the killer identifies as his next targets. Lounds is forced to tape-record a statement before being set on fire in a wheelchair and killed, his flaming body rolled into the parking garage of the National Tattler as a warning. Graham is told by Crawford that they have cracked Lecktor's coded message to the Tooth Fairy: it is Graham's home address with an instruction to kill the family (ending with "Save yourself. Kill them all," revealing that Lecktor believes Graham would find the Tooth Fairy). Graham rushes home to find his family safe but terrified. After the FBI moves Graham's family to a safehouse, he tries to explain to his son Kevin why he had retired previously, and he does so at a supermarket, of all places. At his job in a St. Louis film lab, Francis Dollarhyde (the Tooth Fairy) approaches a blind co-worker, Reba McClane (Joan Allen), and ends up offering her a lift. They go to Dollarhyde's home, where Reba is oblivious to the fact that Dollarhyde is watching home-movie footage of his planned next victim. She kisses him and they make love. Dollarhyde is confused by this newfound relationship, though it helps suppress his bloodlust. Just as Graham comes to realize how much the Tooth Fairy's desire for acceptance factors into the murders, Dollarhyde watches as Reba is escorted home by another co-worker. Mistakenly believing them to be kissing, Dollarhyde murders the man and abducts Reba. When she calls him Francis, he tells her: "Francis is gone. Forever." Desperately trying to figure out a connection between the murdered families, Graham realizes that someone must have seen their home movies. He and Crawford deduce where the films were processed. They identify the lab in St. Louis and fly there immediately. Dollarhyde has been casing the victims' homes through home movies, enabling him to prepare for the break-ins in extreme detail. Graham determines which employee has seen these films and obtains Dollarhyde's home address, to which he and Crawford travel with a police escort. At Dollarhyde's home Reba is terrified as he contemplates what to do with her. As he struggles to kill Reba with a piece of broken mirror glass, police teams assemble around the house. Seeing that Dollarhyde has someone inside with him, Graham lunges through a window. He is quickly subdued by Dollarhyde, who retrieves a shotgun and uses it to wound Crawford and kill two police officers. Wounded in the firefight, Dollarhyde returns to the kitchen to shoot Graham, but misses because of his injuries and is killed himself when Graham returns fire. Graham, Reba, and Crawford are tended to by paramedics before Graham returns home and retires permanently.

A Vietnam War veteran named John Rambo finds out that an old war buddy died from the effects of Agent Orange and makes his way to Hope, Washington, on foot in the early 1980s. Assuming Rambo is a vagrant, the local sheriff, Will Teasle, takes him to the edge of town and orders him to leave. Rambo is arrested after he turns around and heads back into town. Rambo becomes defiant while being processed at the police station, and Teasle's deputies-led by the cruel chief deputy Art Galt-abuse him, bringing back memories of the torture Rambo suffered in Vietnam. After battling his way out of the sheriff's office, Rambo takes back the knife that was taken from him and runs into the woods. Teasle sets up a search team that includes a helicopter, dogs, and rifles. Galt attempts to use a sniper rifle to kill Rambo from the helicopter while flagrantly disobeying Teasle's orders. The pilot momentarily loses control of the helicopter after Rambo hurls a rock at it. In a gorge below, Galt loses his footing and dies on the rocky rocks. Rambo tries to turn himself in to Teasle, claiming that Galt's death was an accident and that he does not want any more trouble, but he is shot at by the deputies and runs away. Despite learning that Rambo is a Medal of Honor recipient and Green Beret warrior, Teasle keeps looking for him. By employing guerrilla warfare, Rambo defeats every deputy. Rambo corners Teasle, puts a knife to his throat, and threatens him with "a war [Teasle] will not believe" if he does not give up the chase because the deputies are injured and unable to continue. He then withdraws deeper into the forest. Along with Col. Sam Trautman, Rambo's former commanding officer and mentor, the Washington State Patrol and Washington National Guard are sent to help Teasle. Teasle rejects Trautman's advice that Rambo will move on and be able to be arrested anywhere without any problems if he stops. Rambo refuses to surrender when Trautman tries to reach him via radio, accusing Teasle and his deputies of abusing him and saying that they "drew first blood." A National Guard unit encircles Rambo at the entrance to an abandoned mine. Rambo appears to be killed when the guardsmen fire a rocket launcher, destroying the mine entrance, despite Teasle's orders to wait for him. Teasle yells at the guardsman for defying his commands and insists that their commander, Clinton Morgan, unearth Rambo's remains. Rambo, on the other hand, escapes the mine via a ventilation shaft, takes control of a military truck that is loaded with ammunition and an M60 machine gun, and then returns to Hope to exact revenge by causing as much damage as he can. Rambo shoots the sheriff's station, blows up a gas station, destroys a sporting goods store, and cuts off power to most of the town in an attempt to divert the attention of the authorities. Knowing that Teasle is outmatched, Trautman makes another attempt to persuade her to leave Rambo. Perceiving Rambo's outburst as a personal assault, Teasle disobeys Trautman's orders once more and attempts to pursue Rambo on the station's roof. However, Rambo is able to shoot Teasle and cause injuries during a gunfight. Rambo is about to kill Teasle when Trautman shows up and reminds him that he is the last member of his group and threatens to kill him unless he surrenders. Rambo rants about the atrocities of war and his horrific experiences, such as witnessing his friends die in Vietnam, receiving bad treatment upon his return, losing his job, and being forgotten in spite of his sacrifices. Rambo sobs as he describes how a Viet Cong child soldier used a shoeshine box wired with explosives to kill a close friend. Teasle is taken to a waiting ambulance for hospital transport, while Rambo surrenders and is taken into federal custody after being consoled by a visibly distressed Trautman.

The New Deal used car lot in Mesa, Arizona is in danger of being taken over by the Roy L. Fuchs car dealership across the roadway where they do business. Both dealerships are managed by twin brothers, Roy L. Fuchs and Luke Fuchs (both played by Jack Warden). However, Roy L's dealership is easily the more lucrative than his brother's, which deals in often junked used cars. One of New Deal's most prominent salesmen is Rudy Russo (Kurt Russell), a young man who never shies away from making a deal, and also has plans to run for a seat on the State Senate. Along with Rudy, there's Jeff (Gerrit Graham), a superstitious fellow, and Jim (Frank McRae), the mechanic who is easily excitable. Recently, Luke has been having problems with his heart, much to the delight of his other brother. Roy L. is desperate to keep his car lot from being demolished and replaced by a proposed freeway exit. He sends one of his mechanics over to the car lot under the guise of an 'interested party', and gets Luke to give him a test drive. However, Roy L's mechanic takes Luke on a wild ride around the block during which Luke has a heart attack and dies. Rudy, Jeff and Jim attempt to cover this up by burying Luke in an old Edsel in a service pit out back. When Roy L. and his lawyer Sam Slaton (Joe Flaherty) show up looking for Luke, Rudy explains that Luke drove to Florida in the Edsel. However, Roy L. believes that Rudy is lying, but Sam explains that there's no way to disprove this claim. The following night, Rudy and his friends go through with the first of several advertising stunts. Taking his camera crew out to a packed football stadium, they intend to hijack the signal for the football game to tell of their car lot. Things don't go as planned, when Jeff begins cursing on camera that the car he's standing by is red (he's superstitious about the color), and the woman they hired for the commercial ends up getting her dress ripped open and exposed on public television. The technique works, as the stunt makes newspaper headlines, and brings many kinds of people out to see the New Deal car lot. The next morning, Jeff cons a family into buying a station wagon by having the car lot's mascot, Toby, fake being run over during a test drive. Roy L. counters this with a little stunt of his own, but in the war to win customers, Rudy does one better, and steals away Luke's customers, by setting up a gaggle of strippers to entice vehicle buyers from Roy L's car lot. Roy L. counters this with purchasing airtime to denounce New Deal's business tactics as harmful. It is then that Rudy plans to really up the stakes, and wants to attempt and interrupt the broadcast for the President's State of the Union address. Matters are further complicated when a woman shows up claiming to be Luke's daughter, Barbara Jane Fuchs (Deborah Harmon). She visits the car lot in hopes to reunite with her father, having dropped out of college more than 10 years before to reside in a hippie commune. Rudy conceals the truth about her father by taking her out on a date, but finds that he slowly is growing to like her. Rudy eventually distracts her during the night of the broadcast, by taking her to dinner, and then to his place. Jeff and Jim do the commercial, with Jeff on drugs as a cowboy named Martial Lucky, who shoots out and blows up several of Roy L. Fuchs' vehicles for the commercial. After the broadcast, Roy L. drives immediately to the New Deal car lot and angrily picks a fight with Jeff for destroying his cars. As they fight, Roy L. notices a picture of the service pit in an old picture, and remembers how Rudy and the others were filling it in. Roy L. rushes out back, and after digging down always, finds the roof of his brother's old Edsel. Shortly after this, Jim contacts Rudy to come to the car lot right away. Rudy does not explain to Barbara why he has to go, leaving her curious. In the morning, the police arrive at the car lot along with Roy L. and his lawyer. Rudy makes up the lie that Luke came back the night before, and went to get some breakfast. During the night, Rudy, Jeff and Jim exhumed the Edsel, and have moved it out of the pit area. Jim has poured gasoline on the vehicle, and sends it off with the accelerator on. As everyone's attention is drawn to the car, they watch as it speeds out of control towards a power transformer, that erupts in a fireball, destroying Luke's body. Roy turns to Rudy, and assumes that since Luke is dead, the car lot is now his. However, Rudy explains how Luke's daughter returned, and she's staying with him. It is just then that Barbara appears after listening to a message on Rudy's answering machine and finding out about Luke's death. Barbara fires Rudy, Jeff and Jim for their cover-up scheme, and assumes control of her father's car lot, but knows very little about advertising. Roy L. gains access to the script for her commercial, and has his connections at a local television station doctor up her commercial. In place of her saying 'style of cars', the word 'mile' is substituted for 'style', making this as though Barbara has committed a case of false advertising. Meanwhile, Rudy's luck changes when Jeff's superstitious nature causes him to win a bet he made on the night's football game, guaranteeing him enough money for his campaign, and the next day, he meets with the party chairman, named Tucker (Dub Taylor). However, on their way to their destination, the car passes by the New Deal car lot, which has been closed by court order. Tucker explains that a 'concerned citizen' reported the car lot after the commercial mentioned a 'mile of cars', and that the trial is scheduled for the same day. Rudy immediately grabs back his money, and bolts from the car, heading towards the courthouse; he arrives in time for the trial to begin. As Barbara is questioned if she does indeed have a mile of cars on her car lot, Rudy mimes in the back of the room to lie and say 'yes'. Barbara does so, to which Roy L's attorney claims he can prove she is lying to the court. Rudy mushily shouts from the back of the room, "Why don't you see for yourself, Judge?" This buys Barbara some time, as the judge decides to come by the car lot the next day. After the trial, Rudy uses most of his campaign funds to purchase over 250 cars from a Mexican dealer he knows. Using the town's driver's education class, he sets out with all 250 cars headed towards the car lot in less than two hours. Rudy has the student drivers ramp their vehicles up to 70 mph, but hits a snag when a policeman ends up hitting one of the vehicles, leaving them without a 'safety margin' for error. After the incident, Rudy sends Jim up ahead to scout for any other possible issues. Jim eventually finds a police roadblock, and Rudy has his student drivers take their vehicles off road. Meanwhile, Roy L. has heard of the cars, and drives out to attempt and intercept Rudy; a fight breaks out between the two, leading to Rudy winning, and the cars heading towards the car lot. Eventually, the student drivers arrive, and fill the car lot to capacity, just as the judge arrives. This soon becomes apparent that Jim has not arrived and Rudy radios Jeff, who is sitting along the side of the road. Jeff explains that some water washed off the blue paint on his car...revealing this as a red Fire Chief's car...and per Jeff's stigma, he can't drive a red car! Rudy attempts to convince Jeff that there is actually 'gray primer' underneath the red paint, and tells him that he is the key to helping them keep the car lot. Jeff manages to overcome his fear of the red color, and makes it just in time to help them save the car lot. Roy's attorney informs Rudy and Barbara that once the freeway ramp across the street is constructed, New Deal will become the largest dealership in the state. While everyone celebrates, Roy L. curses out the judge, who then decides to see Roy L. in court for his outburst. The film then ends with Barbara, Rudy, Jim and Jeff presiding over their saved car lot.