Michael Taliferro

Sascha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal) is a car thief who's brought in by criminal Nick Frazier (Jeffrey "Ja Rule" Atkins) to work for crime boss Sonny Eckvall (Richard Bremmer), who apparently shot and killed Sascha's wife. FBI Special Agent Ellen "E. Z." Williams (Claudia Christian) and her team show up to nail Nick, but things go bad, and Sascha gets shot. After eight months of recovery following his brief bout of being clinically dead from the shooting, Sascha is incarcerated along with Nick in the newly reopened Alcatraz prison. Sascha Petrosevitch (Steven Seagal) and Nick Frazier (Ja Rule).Run by the charismatic warden, Juan Ruiz "El Fuego" Escarzaga (Tony Plana), the place is known for its new state of the art death chamber where the condemned can choose from five different ways to die -- lethal injection, gas chamber, hanging, firing squad, or electric chair. Lester McKenna (Bruce Weitz) is the first prisoner scheduled to be executed. An older man, he stole $200,000,000 worth of gold bricks in a heist that resulted in five deaths. Federal Bureau of Prisons head Frank Hubbard (Stephen J. Cannell) and Supreme Court Justice June McPherson (Linda Thorson) have arrived to witness the execution, which is a result of June sentencing Lester. But she's not the only one interested in Lester. A small but well-equipped team of terrorists who call themselves the "49ers" have parachuted onto the island, and gained control of it. Led by 49er One, a.k.a. Hubbard's assistant Donny Johnson (Morris Chestnut), and 49er Six (Nia Peeples), the team finds Lester, and they want him to give up the location of his hidden stash of gold. When Lester won't tell them, Donny shoots a nearby priest (Eva-Maria Schönecker), and threatens to kill others if the info isn't delivered. Donny's plan is disrupted, however, when Sascha decides to step in and fight back. It turns out that Sascha is actually an undercover FBI agent who's been trying to use Nick to get to Sonny Eckvall. When Sascha rescues Lester, the 49ers strap June to the electric chair and threaten to kill her, all while Ellen and her team prepare a rescue plan from the mainland. With the help of Nick and some of the other inmates such as Twitch (Ricardo "Kurupt" Brown) and Little Joe (Michael "Bear" Taliferro), Sascha sets out to rescue June and bring Donny down, before Alcatraz becomes everyone's final resting place.

The film opens with Shane Falco (Keanu Reeves), a former star quarterback at Ohio State University who choked in his final college game and failed to succeed in the pros, doing his job cleaning the bottoms of peoples' boats. While underwater, he finds a metal trophy football labeled "Shane Falco: All American" and pretends he is playing football again. Meanwhile, the fictional Washington Sentinels are shown playing a game in which commentators John Madden and Pat Summerall mention a players' strike taking place over salary disputes. As the game winds down, Sentinels quarterback Eddie Martel chooses to slide to the ground instead of scoring the game winning touchdown to avoid getting injured. Later that day, the owner of the Sentinels decides to hire Jimmy McGinty (Gene Hackman), the Sentinels' former coach who was fired after getting into a fight with the team's star quarterback, to recruit replacement players during the strike and coach the team for the rest of the season. He tells McGinty that all they need is three wins out of their final four games to advance to the playoffs. McGinty tells the owner he will only do it if he promises not to interfere with his coaching style. McGinty recruits many different ragtag players, and eventually convinces Falco to come off his boat and play quarterback again. Falco soon becomes attracted to the team's head cheerleader, Annabelle Farrell, who likes him as well, but doesn't want to date him because of her stereotype that all pro athletes are Prima Donnas. In the Sentinels' first game using replacement players, they trail by four with only a few seconds left to play. McGinty calls a passing play, but Falco gets scared and changes the call to a running play. Cochran, the team's running back, gets tackled just before he reaches the end zone, and the Sentinels lose. That night, the actual Sentinels players taunt the replacement players at a bar, leading to fight between the two teams. The replacement players get arrested, but are beginning to build team chemistry, which is something they lacked in the first game. The newfound team chemistry leads to a last second field goal victory in the next game, and then another last second victory the next week, leaving the team needing only one more victory to make the playoffs. The team's owner tells McGinty that Eddie Martel has crossed the picket line and will be re-activated by the Sentinels for the final game of the season. McGinty protests at first, saying that he will use Falco as his quarterback, but the owner convinces him that the team cannot afford to have Falco choke with the game on the line, especially since they are playing the best team in the league who has had their entire team cross. A heartbroken McGinty tells Falco that he has been cut in favor of Martel, but Falco accepts the news, saying that it's best for the team since Martel is better than him, to which McGinty says that Falco has heart and Martel does not. Falco stands Annabelle up on a date because of his depression. In the final game of the season, Martel has trouble connecting with the team due to his Prima-Donna attitude and scolds them whenever he makes a mistake. At halftime, the Sentinels trail 17-0, and reporter asks McGinty what they will need to win the game, to which he replies "miles and miles of heart" meant as a message to Falco. Falco hears him say this and comes to the game during halftime, and the rest of the team kicks Martel out of the locker room. Falco runs onto the field at the start of the half and draws loud and thunderous applause from the fans. He apologizes to Annabelle and kisses her on national TV. Cochran is able to run for a touchdown at the beginning of the half before injuring his leg. The Sentinels then score again to cut the lead to 17-14. With only a few seconds left in the game, McGinty calls for a field goal to tie the score and then go into overtime. But when Nigel 'The Leg' Gruff, the kicker, gets set, he tells Falco that he cannot kick the field goal, because several men in the audience will "take his pub". Falco then takes the snap then runs it all the way for a touchdown, only to have it brought back for a holding call. Falco then goes to the sidelines and tells McGinty that he wants the ball, implying that he has gotten over his fear of choking with the game on the line. Falco throws a pass to tight end Brian Murphy for a touchdown, and the Sentinels win 20-17, advancing to the playoffs, and the Sentinels begin dancing in synchronized formation. The film ends with a voiceover from McGinty saying that when the players left the game that night, there were no endorsement deals or victory parades waiting for them, just a locker waiting to be cleaned out, but it didn't matter, because they each got a second chance at glory, which lasts forever.

In 1932, two strangers are wrongfully convicted and develop a strong friendship in prison that lasts them through the 20th century. In the mid-1990s, two inmates bury the burned bodies of two lifers at Mississippi's infamous Parchman Farm as a third old-timer relates their story. They'd served 65 years for a murder they didn't commit, framed by a local sheriff while buying moonshine whiskey for a Manhattan club owner to whom they owed money. Flashbacks depict how this odd couple was thrown together (Ray is a fast-talking con man, and Claude is a serious man about to start work as a bank teller), the loss of Ray's watch (sterling silver, from his daddy), the murder and trial, the hardships of Parchman, and the love/hate relationship of Claude and Ray as they spend 65 years bickering and looking for a way to escape. —<jhailey@hotmail.com>