Shane Black

A detective, a thief posing as a struggling actor and an actual struggling actress get entangled in a murder mystery with twists, turns, betrayal and, most importantly, romance.

Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return as buddy cops Riggs and Murtaugh who must deal with members of a Chinese triad trying to break their leader out of prison.

It's suburban Pennsylvania at Christmastime, and '90s mom Samantha Caine is living the life with her wholesome boyfriend and cute kid. She's even in the Christmas parade on TV! But this picturesque life is fairly recent; just 8 years ago, she was found washed ashore nearly dead on a beach in New Jersey, 2 months pregnant with no memories of who she was. Since then, she's made a good life for herself as a schoolteacher, but never stopped trying to find out what happened, hiring a string of PIs to dig into her origins. The latest is Samuel L. Jackson, a.k.a. Mitch Henessey, who's at the lower end of the pay scale. He's checking things out for her and finds a suitcase of her old stuff, but something happens before he can get it to her. Driving an old man home from a Christmas party, Samantha is distracted by his drunken antics and hits a deer, throwing her through the windshield and knocking her out. When she wakes up in the snow, something has clicked - she calmly walks barefoot through a freezing stream and snaps the deer's neck to put it out of its misery, then lays down beside it, leaving the man in the car to burn to death. Back at home, while her sweet boyfriend cooks, she helps him prep veggies by slowly and very badly chopping a carrot. Again, something clicks - and suddenly her knife skills are super badass. This skill comes in handy before long, because an old enemy happened to catch the Christmas parade on prison TV and escaped to take revenge. When he breaks into her house, Samantha shows off her new-found fighting skills and kills him, but not before he blasts a hole in the side of her house. To protect her family, Sam heads off with Mitch to figure out what the hell is going on. The suitcase Mitch found contains a note to a Dr. Nathan Waldman, so they track him down and arrange to meet up, unaware that the government is tapping his phone. On the way to meet Dr. Waldman, Sam discovers that the suitcase has a false bottom, and under it is a disassembled sniper rifle. Muscle memory kicks in, and she easily reassembles it. At the station, they are attacked by a team of agents with no regard for bystanders, but they escape with Dr. Waldman. He fills her in: she's actually a CIA assassin named Charly Baltimore, and everyone thought she was dead until her lil' Christmas parade appearance. Sam and Mitch leave Waldman behind and head out alone to follow up on another lead from the briefcase, a guy named Luke. They spy on Luke and Sam remembers personal details about him, so she thinks they were in a relationship - but that turns out to be a very big mistake. Waldman catches up to warn them, but Luke kills him and WHOOPS they realize that he was a target she'd been surveilling. Newly revealed Evil Luke tortures Sam for info by tying her to a water wheel and repeatedly dunking her in freezing cold water. This shock treatment jolts the final pieces into place, and her Charly persona fully emerges. She frees herself, kills Luke, and she and Mitch get away. Back in a hotel room, she cuts and bleaches her hair, busts out an aggressive smoky eye, and gets some new clothes. Turns out, Samantha Caine was a cover identity to get close to Luke 8 years ago. Meanwhile, another old enemy re-emerges: Timothy, a psy-ops specialist and former lover. Looking for leverage, he kidnaps her daughter Caitlin and takes her to Niagara Falls. Sam, now fully in Charly Mode, uncover more details about the case that led to her near-death - she had unknowingly disrupted a CIA false flag operation designed to secure more funding by detonating a chemical bomb in the city of Niagara Falls and blaming it on Islamist terrorists, down to using the corpse of an innocent middle-eastern man. But there are people within the CIA trying to resurrect the operation, including Timothy. Mitch and Charly head to Niagara Falls, but Timothy catches them and dumps Charly in an industrial freezer with her daughter. She tries to save them by telling Timothy that Caitlin is his kid, but he doesn't care and locks them in. Charly manages to break them out with just kerosene and a baby doll, then frees Mitch. Together they go after the trucks getting ready for the attack, forcing Timothy to launch things early - but a scared Caitlin has hidden in one of the trucks. In a last-ditch effort to stop the attack and save Caitlin, Charly chases down the truck and overpowers the driver, diverting it from town and finally overturning it on the bridge to Canada. Timothy pops up and they fight, but she knocks him into the falls. He may be out of the way, but the bomb is still about to explode and Caitlin is still stuck in the truck. To complicate things, more baddies are coming in a helicopter. She shoots the guys and one of them falls out and gets tangled up in some Christmas lights on the bridge. She gets to Caitlin with 7:30 left on the bomb timer and gets her free. Charly is beaten all to hell and resigned to dying, so she tries to send Caitlin away, but that brave little toaster won't leave. Charly musters her strength just as the helicopter picks up a very not-dead Timothy for a final showdown. Time is running out for Charly to get Caitlin off the bridge, so she uses a ham radio to make a hail-mary call - and a profoundly injured Mitch hears it and comes running. They get Caitlin into the car and Charly tries to cover them from the gunfire coming from the helicopter. She grabs a gun and, using a corpse as a counterweight, rides a string of Christmas lights up so she can shoot Timothy out of the helicopter. She makes it back to the ground and Mitch comes to the rescue at the last moment. They all speed away and into Canada just in time to avoid the explosion, which kills Timothy & Co. and destroys the bridge. Now that she and Caitlin are safe, Charly gets to decide who she wants to be - and she wants to like mostly like Samantha but throw knives like Charly on a cute farm her boyfriend, daughter, and some goats. Emily Winsauer - Adventurelings: The Adventure Movie Podcast

Police officers Riggs and Murtaugh team up for the third time. This time they must track down a crooked cop who has stolen weapons from the Los Angeles police depot.

A private detective's protected female witness is murdered, prompting him and the victim's boyfriend to investigate the crime that leads to a corrupt politician and a crooked football team owner. A down and out cynical detective teams up with a down and out ex-quarterback to try and solve a murder case involving a pro football team and a politician. —Ed Sutton <esutton@mindspring.com> Joe Hallenbeck is a burned-out detective. Jimmy Dix is an ex-LA Stallions player. Hallenbeck was hired to protect a stripper named Cory. Dix is Cory's boyfriend. When Cory is executed during a drive-by shooting, both Hallenbeck and Dix try to get to the bottom of the case. —Ridley Lavine When the girl that detective Joe Hallenback is protecting gets murdered, the boyfriend of the murdered girl (ex-football player Jimmy Dix) attempts to investigate and solve the case. What they discover is that there is deep seated corruption going on between a crooked politician and the owner of a pro football team. —Jason Ihle <jrihl@conncoll.edu>

A volatile pair of detectives with completely opposite law-enforcement styles must protect Leo Getz, an accountant who laundered half a billion dollars in narcotics money.

An unstable policeman who recently lost his wife is paired with a homicide detective with an impeccable record to investigate a suicide that leads to an international crime ring.

The Monster Squad is a society of young pre-teens who idolize classic monsters and monster movies and hold their meetings in a tree clubhouse. Club leader Sean (Andre Gower), whose five-year-old sister Phoebe (Ashley Bank) desperately wants to join the club, is given the diary of legendary vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing (Jack Gwillim) - but his excitement is toned down when he finds it's written in German. Sean, his best friend Patrick (Robby Kiger), and the rest of the Monster Squad visit an elderly man, known as the "Scary German Guy" (Leonardo Cimino), actually a kind gentleman, to translate the diary. When the Monster Squad wonders how the German man is knowledgeable about Van Helsing's battle with monsters, he wryly comments that "he has some experience with monsters" and his shirt sleeve briefly reveals a concentration camp tattoo. The diary describes, in great detail, an amulet that is composed of concentrated good. One day out of every century, as the forces of good and evil reach a balance, the otherwise indestructible amulet becomes vulnerable to destruction, and the next day of balance falls within a couple days, at the stroke of midnight. The kids realize they must gain possession of the amulet before the day of balance arrives; once they have the amulet, the kids can use it with an incantation from Van Helsing's diary to open a hole in the universe and cast the monsters into Limbo. As shown in the prelude, van Helsing had unsuccessfully attempted this one hundred years ago in order to defeat his old adversary Count Dracula; his apprentices then emigrated to the United States to hide the amulet, where it was out of Dracula's immediate reach. Dracula, meanwhile, seeks to obtain the amulet before the Monster Squad does, so that the Count can take control of the world and plunge it into darkness. To this end he assembles several monstrous allies: a mummy, and an amphibious gill-man, and a Wolfman, in addition to three school girls (Mary Albee, Joan-Carrol Baron, and Julie Merrill) whom the Count transforms into his vampiric consorts. Dracula steals a crate from an old World War II bomber in flight (the crate containing Frankenstein's monster), thus completing his allies. However, Frankenstein's monster is reluctant to aid Dracula, and wanders into the forest where he encounters Phoebe. Rather than being afraid, she shows him the kindness he has also sought, and he gets acquainted with her. After Phoebe shows the Monster Squad that Frankenstein's monster is not evil, he chooses to help the boys instead of Dracula. The amulet turns out to be buried in a stone room, under a house that Dracula and the other monsters now occupy and where Van Helsing's diary was found. The secret room is littered with wards which prevent the monsters from simply taking it. The Monster Squad finds and removes the amulet, and escape Dracula's grasp only with sheer luck and a talent for improvisation (like using a garlic pizza to burn the vampire's face). The German man informs them that the incantation must be read by a female virgin. As midnight approaches, the Squad makes their way to a local cathedral to make their last stand and in the nick of time, as shortly after they leave, Dracula destroys their clubhouse with a stick of dynamite. This also calls up another helper for the Monster Squad: Sean's father, Police Detective Del, who has been charged to investigate the strange happenings in town of late (as caused by Dracula's cohorts) but has been quite skeptical about their supernatural causes, not to mention Sean's hobby, in the first place. Del is further puzzled when he is getting warnings from the werewolf that his family is in danger, as the werewolf is actually also a reluctant pawn of Dracula in his human form. Unfortunately, the doors to the cathedral are locked, so the incantation must be read on the stoop, leaving the Squad vulnerable. The Monster Squad has the assistance of Sean's father and Patrick's older sister (Lisa Fuller), as she's the only virgin they know who speaks German. Unfortunately, with time winding down, the incantation fails since Lisa is actually not a virgin anymore. As Dracula's Brides and the other monsters close in, it is realized that Phoebe, being five, must still be a virgin, and the German Guy attempts to help her read the incantation as the rest of the Squad fends off the monsters. In the ensuing battle, the vampiresses, the Mummy, the Gill-Man, and the Wolf-Man are killed. Dracula arrives and is about to kill Phoebe when the Frankenstein Creature turns against him, impaling him on a wrought-iron fence. Phoebe finishes the incantation, opening the portal which begins to consume the bodies of the monsters. Dracula, still alive, attempts to drag Sean in with him, but Sean is saved at the last minute by stabbing Dracula with a wooden stake, and Van Helsing, who briefly escaped from Limbo to take Dracula to his doom. Although Phoebe tries tearfully to hold onto him, Frankenstein's Creature says he must also enter the portal, but accepts a gift of a stuffed animal to remember Phoebe. The portal then closes, ensuring the world's safety.