Randall Batinkoff

When the most wanted man in America surfaces in a small Kentucky town, his violent history _ and a bloodthirsty mob seeking vengeance and a king's ransom _ soon follow. As brothers face off against one another and bullets tear the town to shreds, this lightning-fast gunslinger makes his enemies pay the ultimate price for their greed.

In this updated version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, a young man comes face-to-face with personal treachery after suspecting that his father may have been murdered. A college student launches an investigation into his wealthy father's death when he suspects his mother and his uncle may have been involved. His suspicions seem cemented when the two announce their impending marriage only shortly after the death. The student's girl friend is also revealed to be increasingly unstable as the investigation progresses. Satch also is revealed to be deeply involved, but the connection has to be found. —John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net>

Outside a church celebrating an Eastern Orthodox baptism in Pale, Bosnia, the Bosnian Finance Minister, a moderate pushing for peace in the ongoing Yugoslav Wars, is murdered. At a missile base in Kartaly (Chelyabinsk Oblast), Russia, ten nuclear warheads that belong to a SS-18 Satan ICBM are loaded onto a train for transport to a dismantling facility. However, Russian Army General Aleksandr Kodoroff (Aleksandr Baluev), along with a rogue Spetznaz unit, kills the soldiers on board while the train is on its way. The Spetznaz unit boards the train by jumping on to it from another train which was running on a parallel track. Kodoroff transfers nine warheads to this other train while they are running parallel to each other. Kodoroff then activates the timer on the remaining warhead and sends the transport on a collision course with a passenger train. Kodoroff hides his train inside a nearby tunnel to protect himself from the nuclear blast. First, the 2 trains collide and then a few minutes later. the 500-kiloton warhead eventually detonates, killing thousands of civilians and delaying an investigation of the accident. The detonation attracts the attention of the US government. Dr. Julia Kelly (Nicole Kidman), head of the NSC Nuclear Smuggling Group, believes that Chechen terrorists are behind the incident. Terry Hamilton (Gary Werntz) is the National Security Advisor and Appleton (Holt McCallany) is Julia's immediate boss. Julia tells Terry that the nuclear blast occurred 4.5 minutes after the trains collided (as captured by satellite imagery) and is 100% sure that a nuclear detonate cannot be triggered by a train collision. Which means that someone deliberately set off a nuclear explosion. Meanwhile, Kodoroff transfers the warheads from the train onto a waiting truck for transport through the Ural Mountains. The truck is disguised as a Red Cross vehicle as they are allowed to cross borders under the Russian nuclear protocol. Former US Army Ranger and Special Forces turned Military Intelligence Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Devoe (George Clooney) interrupts her briefing to suggest that the incident was staged to hide the hijacking of the warheads (satellite photos indicated people jumping off the passenger train before the collision, but nobody jumping off the warhead train as they were all dead). A functioning nuke is worth $200 million on the open market. Julia realizes that she does not know how many nuclear warheads were on the train. Russian nuclear command confirms that there were 10 nuclear warheads and a list of military personnel who were on the train. Devoe is shocked to see Kodoroff's name on the list as that would be like Ivanka Trump riding the subway. Kodoroff is deemed alive as intel confirms that someone has been calling his mistress in Helsinki, at the usual time that Kodoroff calls her daily. A call to Devoe's friend and Russian counterpart, FSB Colonel Dimitri Vertikoff (Armin Mueller-Stahl), adds reliability to his theory, and he is assigned as Kelly's military liaison. Kelly and Devoe secure information about the terrorists' hijacking operation through an Austrian trucking company that works as a front for the Russian Mafia. They meet Vertikoff in Vienna and assume identities to visit Shummaker (Alexander Strobele), who organizes the Russian's trucking. After Devoe tortures Shummaker for information (and takes information from his computer), he and Kelly leave the building and get in Vertikoff's car. They are chased by Shumaker's men, who kill Vertikoff while he is offering a bribe. Devoe shoots at the attackers and drives away but finds he and Kelly are being followed. Another chase ensues, followed by a crash, but Devoe and Kelly escape, after Devoe kills all the men involved in Vertikoff's death. Information from the trucking company says that the nukes are going to Iran via Azerbaijan. When US spy satellites place the truck in a traffic jam of refugees in Dagestan, Devoe uses a ruse to identify it. He calls Kodoroff directly, who was riding in the truck, and makes him believe that a missile his headed for his position. Kodoroff panics and moves the truck, which is picked up by American satellites. This information is passed on to Russian authorities in hopes of stopping the transfer to Iran. The Russian military stops Kodoroff at a roadblock, but he and his men kill the soldiers. Devoe leads an airborne Special Operations team from a U.S. base in Turkey to stop them. Denied entry into Russian airspace in Azerbaijan, one of the three Special Ops helicopters is shot down by a Russian missile, but the remaining two manage to locate Kodoroff's truck. Firing missiles which disable Kodoroff's truck, they then engage in a gunfight, killing Kodoroff and securing the warheads. However, interrogation of the group's surviving member, a U.S. educated Pakistani nuclear scientist Amir Taraki (Harsh Nayyar), reveals that one warhead had been sent off with an operative before the truck was intercepted. The scientist says that the last warhead is now mobile and fits inside a regular backpack. Julia knows that a mobile primary will still take out 10 city blocks and kill 100,000 people in a densely populated are with a yield of 1 to 2 KT. The information from the trucking company leads IFOR to a Sarajevo address. Inside is a video cassette of Dusan Gavric (Marcel Iures), a Bosnian who disclaims allegiance to any particular faction in the Yugoslav Wars, but blames other countries for supplying weapons to all sides in the conflict. Kelly's further analysis of the trucking company documents suggests that Gavric intends to bomb a meeting at the UN headquarters in NYC. The invoice had a code 44E, which Julia translates to 44th East, which is the address of the UN building in NYC. Gavric arrives in Manhattan with the Bosnian diplomatic delegation, having replaced the murdered Finance Minister. Gavric actually wants to avenge the death of his wife and daughter, who died in Sarajevo during a sniper attack. Julia orders the shutdown of all airports in the US, but Gravic makes it out as he was travelling on a diplomatic passport and smuggled the nuclear bomb in the same way. Julia tracks the Bosnian delegation's hotel, but Gravic had left by then. She knows that the backpack is leaking radiation and orders trackers on all streets. A copter picks up the radiation source. Gravic and his brother are later found by Devoe and Kelly. When his brother is killed by Devoe, a wounded and enraged Gavric flees into a parochial school. Devoe and Kelly confront Gavric, who commits suicide, knowing that the bomb is set to go off in minutes. With only seconds to spare, Dr. Kelly manages to remove part of the bomb's explosive lens shell and stop the primary explosion from establishing critical mass within the plutonium core. The primary explosives detonate, wrecking the church, as Devoe and Kelly dive out of a window. However, Kelly's efforts prevent it from causing a nuclear explosion. Kelly later is seen swimming laps in a pool. Devoe stops by and asks her out for a drink, which she accepts.

In the Autumn of 1955, working-class Hebrew teenager David Greene (Brendan Fraser), from Scranton, Pennsylvania, receives a football scholarship to St. Matthew's, an exclusive Massachusetts prep school, for his senior year due to his grades and ability to play football. Even back home David was used to dealing with Anti-Semitism and frequently got into fights with the white Neo-Nazi gangs who targeted David due to his Hebrew race. Alan Greene (Ed Lauter) tells David that St Matthews is a school that 2 presidents went to. He asks David to fit in and not fight through life. Upon arrival, he meets his teammates Rip Van Kelt (Randall Batinkoff), Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon), Jack Connors (Cole Hauser), and his roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell), the most well-known and popular students who are from well-to-do families and learns of the school's cherished honor code system. Soon learning that his new friends are Anti-Semites, he suppresses his background. "Mack" McGivern (Andrew Lowery) is the joker of the bunch, but not in the team as he is frail. Mr. Cleary (Zeljko Ivanek), French language teacher is also the hostel warden, and doesn't like the boys as they mock him on his rounds. Dillon doesn't like David as Dillon was supposed to be the team quarterback until the coach decided to bring in David. The school had been losing to their rivals for 3 yrs in a row and the alums were upset and wanted the coach to do something to break the losing streak. David was the answer. Dillon also struggles in the history class. McGivern is flunking French and is worried that he might not get into Princeton as 5 generations of his family have gone there. Cleary assigns 25% of the grade to a class monologue in French and consistently harasses McGivern during his speech. He humiliates McGivern. That night Mcgivern is found in his French class, alone in the catatonic state. David confronts Cleary for pushing McGivern till he broke. David and the entire student community retaliates by putting Cleary's beloved vintage car inside his room and filling the room with smoke. David becomes the team hero (Coach McDevitt (Kevin Tighe), football coach) and attracts beautiful debutante Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane), whom Dillon claims is his girlfriend (But David spoke to Sally and she told him that she not was seeing Dillon. She starts dating David). At a alum dinner, Dillon finally realizes that Sally and David are together and is even more angry. After a victory over the school's chief rival St. Luke's (in which David is hailed as the hero by everyone), Dillon inadvertently discovers David's Judaism (when he speaks to the school trustee, who says that St Luke's would never have taken a Hebrew to win a game). Out of jealousy, Dillon sensationalizes this, causing Sally and his teammates to turn against David. David's classmates, led by Richard "McGoo" Collins (Anthony Rapp) and his bodyguard-like roommate Chesty Smith (Ben Affleck), constantly harass him, with only Reece and another unnamed student remaining loyal. The final straw comes when he finds a sign above his bed bearing a swastika and the words "Go home Hebrew." Finally having enough, he furiously posts a public confrontation with whoever made the sign outside the building the following night. No one shows up, however, and David calls out the students' cowardice when he sees them looking out their dorm windows. Sally refuses to meet David anymore and breaks up with him. Overwhelmed by pressure from his prestigious family, Dillon uses a crib sheet to cheat in an important history exam. David and Van Kelt spot him doing so but keep quiet. After the exam, Dillon gets pushed while leaving class and drops the sheet on the floor. When the teacher, Mr. Geirasch (Michael Higgins), discovers it, he informs the class that he will fail all of them if the cheater keeps silent. He instructs the students, led by Van Kelt, the head prefect, to find the cheat. When David confronts Dillon and threatens to turn him in if he does not confess, Dillon tells him about his pressure, apologizes for his actions against him and unsuccessfully attempts to buy David's silence with money. Just when David is about to reveal Dillon to the other students as the cheat, Dillon accuses David. They fight until Van Kelt breaks it up and tells them to leave and let the rest of the class decide who is being honest. Both agree to do so. The majority of the class blame David out of antisemitic prejudice, while Reece, the unnamed student, and Connors, going against his own self-professed antisemitism, argue that it is unlike David to cheat or lie. Despite this, the class votes to convict David, prompting Van Kelt to tell him to report to the elitist headmaster, Dr. Bartram (Peter Donat), to confess to cheating. David goes to Bartram's office and says that he was the cheater. Unbeknownst to him, Van Kelt has already told the headmaster that the real offender was Dillon. Bartram tells David and Van Kelt that they should have reported the offense, but he absolves the both of them. As David leaves the headmaster's office, he sees an expelled Dillon leaving the school. Dillon says that he will be accepted to Harvard anyway and that years later everybody will have forgotten about his incident. The two coldly exchange final insults to each other before Dillon leaves.