Pedro Armendáriz Jr.

The late 19th century Cuba during the Spanish rule, and a woman awaiting her execution by garrote while telling her story to a priest, to the actual events of that story. Luis Vargas (Antonio Banderas), a wealthy Hispanic Cuban businessman, sends for American Julia Russell (Angelina Jolie) to sail to his country to be his bride. Julia departs from the ship, looking nothing like the photos she's sent prior to her voyage. Julia explains she wants more than a man who is interested in a pretty face, and that's why she's been deceptive - substituting a plain-looking woman in place of her own picture. Luis also admits to deception; he's been misleading her into believing he's a poor working man, instead of the rich owner of a coffee company. Julia says that they both have something in common: that both are not to be trusted. But they assure each other that they will try to understand and trust each other in life. Luis and Julia wed within hours of her setting foot in Cuba. Luis and Julia make a stunning couple. Luis would not force himself on Julia and promises to come to her only when she wants him to. Luis falls passionately in love with his new wife, while Julia seems to be fighting inner demons. Luis lives in a huge estate with many servants and workers. Luis is a kind man who treats everyone very well. Luis gives Julia a tour of his vast business interests. The sex between Luis and Julia is amazing and, in his arms, Julia becomes a different woman. At an opera, Julia wanders off during half-time and Luis finds her backstage seemingly talking to a stranger. But by the time he could get to her, the stranger had vanished. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Julia wakes up kicking and screaming. Luis finds cut marks on the back of Julia's shoulder. Meanwhile, Julia's sister Emily (Cordelia Richards) has been trying to contact her, worried about her after such a long trip to a strange land. She sends an emotional letter asking about her welfare. Luis forces Julia to write back, fearing that if Julia continues to ignore Emily's letters, Emily will assume something terrible has befallen her sister and might send the authorities to check on her welfare. Holding off as long as possible, Julia finally pens a letter to her sister. In order to assure that his wife has everything she wants, Luis adds Julia to his business and personal bank accounts, giving her free rein to spend as she pleases. A detective, Walter Downs, arrives from Wilmington and tells Luis that he has been hired by Emily to find her sister Julia and would like to see her on the coming Sunday. Luis informs Julia about this, and she gets upset. Emily arrives in Cuba to meet Luis and shows the letter Julia wrote to her. Emily is adamant that the person who wrote the letter is not her sister Julia as the handwriting does not match. She informs Luis that she believes Julia to be an impostor and that her sister may be dead. Luis discovers Julia has run off with nearly all of his fortune. Luis opens the trunk brought by Julia and realizes that it belonged to the real Julia, implying that the impostor disposed of the real Julia on the ship to Cuba. Luis falls into a spell of depression and visits brothels to have sex with prostitutes to channel his rage. Walter approaches Luis in a bar, where he was drowning in sorrow and makes him realizes that Luis has not had closure with Julia. Luis says that he wants to kill Julia. Luis then teams up with detective Walter Downs (Thomas Jane) to find Julia. Walter reveals to Luis he believes Julia to be an impostor and the intended wife to be dead by her hand, and that she may be working with someone. The two set out together looking for her. Luis finds Julia and discovers she is actually working with Walter. Luis believes she loves him and lies to Walter, but when confronted by him a fight breaks out and Luis shoots Walter. Julia coldly tells Luis to go and buy them tickets home, but the minute he leaves, Walter gets to his feet; he had loaded the gun with blanks. Julia appears to love Luis, but Walter has too much control over her, so she continues to work for him as she and Luis run off to live in secret with the supposedly dead Walter on their tail. Walter turns out to be Julia's (Bonny's) old lover and partner, Billy. Billy makes a cut on Bonny's back before having sex with her, as he did during their previous encounters. Luis throws away his promising future and opens himself to living a lie with Julia. One night Luis follows Julia and discovers Walter is alive and the two are still working together; she is apparently going to poison her husband that very night. He returns home and waits for her, and when she arrives reveals, he knows of the plan, confesses his love for her once more and swallows the poisoned drink. Julia flees with the dying Luis, with Walter close behind. They run into him at a train station; Walter is furious that Julia has betrayed him. While Walter holds a knife to her throat, Luis shoots and wounds him, with Julia finishing him off. Back in the end scene, Julia finishes her story and asks the priest to pray with her. The next morning the guards come to her cell to take her to her execution, only to find the priest in her clothing. In Morocco, Julia is watching a card game. She walks around the table occupied by gamblers - including Luis - and thanks them for allowing her to watch. As Julia signals Luis about the other players' cards, he begins telling them the story of how they got there.

Jamie Shannon is a soldier of fortune, a mercenary who will stage a coup or a revolution for the right price. In 1980, Mercenaries Jamie Shannon (Christopher Walken), Drew (Tom Berenger), Derek (Paul Freeman), Michel (Jean-Francois Stevenin), Terry (Ed O'Neill) and injured Richard (Harlan Cary Poe) make a hasty exit from a war-torn Central American country by forcing their way onto a government civilian DC-3 airplane. When a Central American officer demands Richard's body to be removed to make room for others one of the mercenaries shows he is still able to safely grasp the spoon of a hand grenade and Drew insists his friend "goes home". The flight barely manages to take off from a make-shift runway before the rebels completely overrun the airport and kill everything and everybody that remained. Shannon lives a lonely life and doesn't have any friends. He lives alone in his apartment. After Shannon returns home to another night of loneliness, he is approached by a mysterious stranger who calls himself Andean. Endean (Hugh Millais) is a Briton who is interested in "certain resources" of a small African nation named Zangaro. Endean says that the investors he represents are willing to put up several hundred million dollars to extract the resources from Zangaro. Before money can be invested, they need to know much more about the stability of the regime. Endean pays Shannon $15,000 to go on a reconnaissance mission in Zangaro which is run by a paranoid and brutal dictator named General Kimba. Shannon arrives in Zangaro's capital of ClarenceTown, with a cover story of being an Ornithologist for a popular nature magazine back in the states. At the airport itself, a corrupt customs official takes half of everything Shannon has, like whiskey, cigarettes, porn and hard currency, before letting him into the country. He is given a lift into town by a catholic priest. Armed militia roam the streets, stopping vehicles, looking for an opportunity to make a quick bribe to avoid harassment. Shannon meets a British documentary filmmaker named Alan North (Colin Blakely) who tells him Zangaro's history and scouts out the defenses of the military garrison. North says that after independence there were 3 candidates for the President, namely Kima, Colonel Bobi and Dr Okoye. Okoye wanted to maintain links with the mother country. But the freedom fighters feared Neo-colonialism and thus Kimba got elected. A week later, he threw Okoye into prison and pushed Bobi into exile. Shannon activities, especially a suspected dalliance with a woman who turns out to be one of Kimba's mistresses, arouse the suspicions of Zangaro's police, and he is arrested, severely beaten and thrown in jail. His multiple wounds are treated by Dr. Okoye (Winston Ntshona), a physician who was formerly a moderate political leader and the only local politician of whom North approved but who was imprisoned by General Kimba four years ago. North agitates for his release and Shannon is deported after two days of torture. His physician tells him that all the damage he has sustained has taken years off his lifespan. After Shannon tells Endean that there is no chance of an internal coup Endean offers Shannon $100,000 to overthrow Kimba by invading Zangaro with a mercenary army. Endean intends to install a puppet government led by Colonel Bobi (George Harris), Kimba's brutal and greedy former ally. This would allow Endean to exploit the country's newly discovered platinum resources as Colonel Bobi has already signed away the mineral rights. Shannon refuses the offer and decides to leave his mercenary life behind. Shannon meets his estranged wife and proposes that they start a new life in Colorado or Montana. She turns him down noting that she does not think that he has changed. Shannon then accepts Endean's offer to organize an attack on Zangaro with the condition that he will have complete control of the operation. After Endean gives Shannon $1 million for expenses Shannon contacts his mercenary cohorts from Central America and three of them join him but one does not. They meet up at Liverpool Street Station to plan the coup and when all the options have been decided Michel proposes a toast followed by Shannon's reciting his motto "Everyone Comes Home". The group illegally procures Uzi sub-machine guns, ammunition, rocket launchers, mines and other weapons from arms dealers. He hires a small freighter and crew to transport the team to the coast of Zangaro and purchases a variety of other equipment that will be used in the attack such as Zodiac-style motorboats. By chance he encounters North who was expelled from Zangaro shortly after Shannon. North believes Shannon is a CIA agent heading back to Zangaro and tries to tail him. Shannon asks Drew to scare North away without hurting him but instead North is killed by someone who had been hired by Endean to follow Shannon and his crew. A furious Shannon kills him in turn and leaves his body at Endean's house during a dinner party held for Colonel Bobi. At sea the team is joined by a group of mercenary soldiers trained by a former mercenary colleague, Jinja, who will act as infantry. Once ashore in a night attack, the mercenaries and their troops use their array of weapons to attack the military garrison where Kimba lives. Drew bursts into a shack in the barracks' courtyard and finds only a young woman with a baby. When he turns to leave without harming them, she shoots him in the back with a pistol. After the mercenaries storm the burning, bullet-scarred ruins of the garrison, Shannon blasts his way into Kimba's mansion. There he finds the dictator stuffing packs of bills into a briefcase. When a whimpering Kimba offers Shannon some of the money to spare his life, Shannon kills him. The following morning, Endean arrives by helicopter with Colonel Bobi and they enter the presidential residence, where they find Shannon and Dr. Okoye awaiting their overdue arrival. Shannon introduces Dr. Okoye as Zangaro's new president who tells Colonel Bobi that he is under arrest, and when Endean protests. Shannon silences him by shooting Bobi. Shannon, Derek and Michel load Drew's body onto a Land Rover, in line with the toast they drank on planning the operation "Everyone comes home". The film concludes with the mercenaries driving through the deserted streets of Clarence until they are out of frame.

Forced by personal circumstances, Marshal Chris Adams recruits a writer and five prisoners to help him eliminate a gang of Mexican bandits. After his last adventure in the Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969), the former leader of the Seven and now a married U.S. Marshall, Chris Adams, declines his old friend Jim McKay's invitation to stop the outlaw De Toro and his marauding gang of bandits from attacking the Mexican border town of Magdalena. Filled with guilt, Chris decides to visit the town--now inhabited by widows--before the tough band's imminent return, having no other choice but to recruit a brand-new team of unlikely defenders. As always, the odds are against them. Can the new Magnificent Seven and the town's defenceless women put an end to De Toro's reign of terror? —Nick Riganas Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend's request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits. When his wife is killed by bank robbers and his friend is killed capturing the last thief, Chris feels obligated to take up his friend's cause and recruits a writer and five prisoners to destroy the desperadoes. —David Bassler