Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015)

Luke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen from the ashes of the Empire and will not rest until Skywalker, the last Jedi, has been destroyed. With the support of the REPUBLIC, General Leia Organa leads a brave RESISTANCE. She is desperate to find her brother Luke and gain his help in restoring peace and justice to the galaxy. Leia has sent her most daring pilot on a secret mission to Jakku, where an old ally has discovered a clue to Lukes whereabouts.
The First Order, led by the evil Kylo Ren, is landing stormtroopers to attack a small village, as Poe Dameron meets with Lor San Tekka in a hut. He is given a small bag containing the map to Luke Skywalker. Kylo Ren orders the stormtroopers to destroy Lor San Tekka's entire village and takes Poe captive. Captain Phasma, a stormtrooper wearing chrome-plated armor, leads the attack. Kylo Ren wears a black mask and uses a red, fiery lightsaber. Poe's X-Wing is damaged so that he cannot escape, so the pilot puts the map in a rolling droid unit called BB-8. He fires at Kylo Ren, who uses the Force to block a blaster bolt. As Dameron is captured, the troopers massacre the prisoners, but one stormtrooper FN-2187, refuses to fire. Meanwhile BB-8 rolls away across the sands, narrowly escaping capture. The droid runs into Rey, a young scavenger who is barely surviving on Jakku. Rey scavenges parts from old wrecks of Star Destroyers on the sands of Jakku, and exchanges them for food at Unkar Plutt's scrap yard. The marks on the walls of her hut indicate she's been on Jakku for a very long time. She rescues BB-8 from a Teedo scavenger. She can understand his beeps and whistles, and offers him shelter for the night.
On the First Order destroyer, Poe is unsuccessfully interrogated by the First Order. Kylo Ren is called in to use his Force powers to extract information from Poe about the whereabouts of the map. Poe resists, but ultimately divulges that the map is still on Jakku in his BB-8 unit.
Meanwhile Captain Phasma confronts FN-2187 about his behavior on Jakku. She orders him to take his unused blaster in for inspection and report to her division and ultimately reconditioning. Instead FN-2187 decides to run away. He needs a pilot to escape the star destroyer, so he rescues Poe, and the two board a black First Order TIE fighter and escape. Poe renames FN-2187 as Finn, and expertly pilots to an escape while Finn fires the ship's blasters. The fighter is hit by lasers from the destroyer and crash lands on Jakku. Finn has ejected but it appears Poe has gone down with the ship leaving only his jacket.
Finn wanders across the desert discarding his stormtrooper armor. Eventually, he arrives in Niima Outpost, the town where Rey trades scrap for food. While Finn is looking for water in the town, he sees Rey being accosted by two of Unkar Plutt's henchmen who are trying to make off with BB-8. He begins to rush to her aid, but before he gets far, Rey handily fights off her attackers using her staff. Clearly, she can handle herself. BB-8 spots Finn looking their way, and tells Rey that he is wearing Poe's jacket which they assume is stolen. Rey chases Finn down, knocks him to the ground and confronts Finn about the jacket. Finn tells them that Poe was captured by the First Order and that he helped him escape, but Poe was unfortunately killed. BB-8 is saddened and rolls off , but Rey is excited and impressed, and assumes Finn is a resistance fighter. Finn lies, telling her he is indeed with the resistance. Rey excitedly tells Finn that BB-8 is on a secret mission. Finn tells her BB-8 is carrying a map to Luke Skywalker and Rey is even more impressed, declaring that she thought Skywalker was a myth.
BB-8 returns and alerts Finn and Rey that they are in trouble. First Order stormtroopers are now looking for Finn and the BB-8 droid. Stormtroopers chase Finn, Rey and BB-8 through Niima Outpost and TIE fighters are called in and begin to bomb and strafe the town. To make their escape, they steal a "garbage" vehicle to escape the First Order. It is the Millennium Falcon. Rey takes the pilot's seat while Finn mans the guns. Neither is confident in their abilities, and their lift off is rough, destroying a substantial portion of the town as they try to get off of the ground. Finn is able to shoot down a pursuing fighter, but the guns are hit and locked in a position that prevents him from taking out the remaining fighter. Rey flies through the wrecked ships in the desert of Jakku, occasionally scraping through the sands as they try to keep low to confuse the TIE fighter's tracking. Rey takes the Falcon into one of the Star Destroyers and just as the pursuing fighter locks onto their ship, she turns the Falcon out into the open, and performs a flip which allows Finn to fire successfully at the remaining fighter, taking it down. They head off, away from Jakku, and on toward the wider galaxy. Not having flown in years, the Falcon is not in good repair, and almost immediately requires an emergency patch. Rey begins repairing the ship while Finn admits to BB-8 he is not part of the resistance, but is still able to convince BB-8 to tell them where the Resistance base is.
The Falcon is then captured and pulled into a larger ship. Finn is afraid they have been recaptured by the First Order. As the Falcon is boarded, he and Rey hide in a secret compartment, but the boarding party is actually Han Solo and Chewbacca.
Rey knows the history of the ship, and how to repair and fly it. Han is impressed, but the ship is then boarded by two more smuggler parties. Han is trying his hand at smuggling again, this time by carrying some menacing Rathtars. Han tries to talk his way out of his debts with the two smuggling groups while Rey and Finn escape. Rey tries to close blast doors to save Han, but instead opens the doors to the Rathtar containers. The Rathtars attack and eat the smugglers and almost get Finn, but Rey saves him by closing a door on the creature's tentacles, severing them. The heros escape in the Millennium Falcon and leave their attackers behind. The new-found allies travel to the green planet of Takodana to seek help from Maz Kanata, an orange skinned alien. There they are spotted in the cantina by both First Order and Resistance spies. Kylo Ren sends forces to re-capture the map. Finn, still fearful of being recaptured by the First Order, admits that he is not part of the Resistance and decides to run by joining a crew heading for the outer rim.
Meanwhile Rey is drawn to the lower floor of the cantina by the sound of a girl crying and opens a box to discover Luke Skywalkers lightsaber lost at Cloud City. When she touches the lightsaber she experiences a frightening vision. The dream has the voices of old Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. It flashes by quickly. She sees the hallways of Cloud City, a vision of Skywalker and R2-D2, a vision of Kylo Ren surrounded by bodies, thrusting his saber through the chest of a mysterious figure, a vision of herself being abandoned as a child on Jakku and finally she sees Ren pursing her in a snowy forest.
On Starkiller Base, a snowy, mountainous planet, General Hux addresses legions of First Order stormtroopers. He angrily declares the death of the Republic. The planet has a massive trench around the equator, and a continent-sized aperture. The base fires a massive red beam from the center of the planet, traveling across space, and splitting into four separate beams which destroy individual planets. We see crowds of people on populated planets look up into the sky to witness the conflagration as their planet is destroyed.
Rey is frightened by her vision and refuses Luke's lightsaber, running out into the forest of Takodana. Finn and the others look to the sky as the red beams can be seen destroying the other Republic planets. The First Order begin landing troops, including Kylo Ren's V-winged ship. Maz gives the lightsaber to Finn. As the stormtroopers attack Finn uses the lightsaber to fight back, but is knocked down by another stormtrooper (unnamed, but popularly referred to as TR-8R). The stormtroopers capture Han, Chewbacca and Finn.
Rey tries to use the blaster given to her by Han Solo, but inexperienced and frightened she fumbles with the safety and fires wild shots giving away her position. Overwhelmed she runs deeper into the forest. BB-8 follows, and she tells him to go further on while she tries to fight off their pursuers. Kylo Ren tracks down Rey in the woods. He chases her through the forest easily fending off her desperate attempts to fire on him with the blaster. She backs away, but he stops her, using the Force to hold her still. Ren uses the Force to read her mind and discovers that she has seen the map to Luke Skywalker's location. He decides he no longer needs BB-8, so he knocks her out and carries her off in his ship, as Finn watches.
The Resistance X-wing fighters arrive, finishing off the last troops. A troop ship lands carrying General Leia Organa and C-3P0. Han and Leia are reunited, but their relations are tense. It is revealed that Kylo Ren is actually their son. The heroes return to the Resistance Base, where Finn is reunited with Poe Dameron, who was not killed by the crash on Jakku. BB-8 is reunited with R2-D2 and C-3P0, but R2-D2 has been in shut down since Luke left many years before.
The Resistance fighters begin to plan an attack on the Starkiller Base to avoid being wiped out. Finn wants to rescue Rey, and claims he once worked at Starkiller Base and knows how to knock out the shields. Han and Leia say their goodbyes as the X-wings led by Poe Dameron prepare to attack a weak point on the base. As they part Leia asks Han to bring their son home if he sees him.
On Starkiller Base, Rey wakes to find her self locked in an interrogation chair like the one we have seen earlier in Poe's interrogation scene. Kylo Ren and she converse, and he removes his mask, revealing his face to her; he is a young and handsome man. Ren uses the Force to read Rey's mind. He senses her lonely life on Jakku, her dreams of a far away island and the closeness she feels towards Han Solo. She reacts with hostility but seems unable to keep him from reading her thoughts.
When he tries to extract the information about the map from her mind, however, he runs up against an unexpected barrier. Rey is not only able to resist his further probing, but pushes back into Ren's mind, and tells him that he is afraid that he will never be as strong as Darth Vader. Ren is shaken by this and by her obvious strength with the Force, and he runs away to meet with Snoke in search of guidance on how to proceed.
Kylo Ren and General Hux are scolded for not retrieving the droid, and Ren's inability to crack Rey's mind, by the Supreme Leader, who is only revealed as a massive hologram of an old and scarred man seated on a throne towering over them.
Rey now understands that she has some Force talent, and uses the mind-trick power to escape from the stormtrooper guarding her cell. She sneaks through the Starkiller Base to the hanger to escape. Meanwhile, Han and Chewie come out of hyperspace on the planet in order to evade the shields, and crash land in the snowy forest. Finn reveals he does not know how to disable the shields; he only came back to rescue Rey. They capture Captain Phasma and force her to lower the shields.
Finn, Han and Chewbacca head off to find Rey, but quickly discover that she has freed herself when they spot her scaling a wall of the base. They rush to meet her. She is surprised that they would come back for her, and embraces Finn when she learns from Chewbacca that it was Finn's idea that they come to the base to save her.
Poe and the X-Wing fighters arrive and begin to land torpedos on the weak point, but it is not enough. Han and Chewbacca improvise a plan to plant explosives to blow it up instead. They split up to lay explosives in separate locations. Kylo Ren finds that Rey has escaped and is very angry. He searches the base for Rey. He stalks off onto a catwalk where Han spots him. Han approaches him on the catwalk, calling him Ben. He asks his son to return with him, and Ren offers his lightsaber, but then activates it and kills his father, pushing him off into the pit. Chewbacca, having watched the entire conversation, fires on Ren, hitting him in the side, and then detonates the explosives.
Kylo Ren confronts Finn and Rey in the snowy forest. Ren is bleeding from his wound, but ignites his red fiery saber to fight. Rey raises her blaster to fire on Ren, but he throws her against a tree with a Force push and she lies unconscious in the snow. Finn rushes to her aid and then uses the blue lightsaber to fight Ren. Finn quickly finds himself outmatched. He manages to touch Ren with the saber, but this only enrages him.
Rey is revived by the sound of Finn's screams as he is burned by Ren's saber. Ren easily disarms Finn, tossing the saber off into the snow. He then uses the Force to pull the lightsaber to himself. It hurtles towards him but then flies past. Ren turns to discover the saber in Rey's hands. They begin to fight. Rey initially fights unsuccessfully and desperately, and begins to run from Ren. He pursues her and pins her against the edge of a cliff. Ren offers to teach her the Force, but this only ends up reminding her to tap into its power. She closes her eyes for a moment of meditation and then attacks Ren with a new vigor and power. She rapidly gains the upper hand, extinguishes Ren's saber and cuts him on the arm and across the face.
Meanwhile Poe Dameron and the X-Wing pilots fly into the Star Killer base trench, destroying the rest of the base. The planet begins to collapse and explode. A chasm opens between Ren and Rey as the planet continues to fall apart. Chewbacca arrives in the Millennium Falcon to pick up both Finn and Rey. The Falcon and X-Wings escape as the Starkiller Base explodes. Back at the Resistance base, Leia and Rey embrace in sadness, standing apart from the celebration of the rest of the Resistance base.
Back at the Resistance Base, R2-D2 awakens and reveals the missing part of the map to Lukes location. Finn is still unconscious, and Rey tells him goodbye while he rests. Rey and Chewbacca leave in the Falcon, Rey taking the pilot's seat. They fly to the planet indicated by the map, where Rey carefully climbs a rocky island. When she reaches the top, she finds an old cloaked and bearded Jedi with a metal hand. It is Luke Skywalker. Rey wordlessly offers him the lightsaber.

Django Unchained

In 1858, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, is chained to a bunch of other slaves and being marched to his new owner's estate in Texas by the Speck brothers. At nightfall, a German man in a dentist cart pulls up and hails the Speck brothers. He introduces himself as Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz).
Schultz is clearly more intelligent and enlightened than the Specks. He says he is looking for a slave who can identify a band of wanted fugitives known as the Brittle brothers. Django announces that he knows the Brittle brothers and can identify them. Schultz offers to buy Django, but his polite and educated manner rubs the ill-mannered Specks the wrong way, and Ace Speck threatens to shoot him with his shotgun. In response, Schultz lowers his lantern, whips out a revolver, and shoots Ace, then Dicky's horse, causing Dicky to fall off his horse. The horse carcass then lands on and crushes Dicky's leg, leaving him screaming in pain. Crippled, he agrees to sell Django, and Schultz pays the man (for both Django, and the dead Speck's horse), gets an official title to Django, and prepares to ride off.
Before Schultz leaves, however, he frees the remaining slaves (clearly, Schultz finds slavery abhorrent) and says that they may either carry the remaining Speck brother back to town, or shoot him and flee. As Django and Schultz ride off, we hear Speck pleading for his life. We hear a gunshot and can see blood splatter as Dicky's brains are blown out.
Django and Schultz arrive in the small town of Daughtrey near El Paso. As they travel through the streets, townspeople stop to stare in disbelief at the sight of a nigger on a horse, much to Schultz's confusion. As Schultz ties his cart down at a hitching post, he checks some papers to make sure he's in the right place. The two then walk into a saloon despite the fact that Django is forbidden from doing so because he is black due to the South's segregation laws. When Schultz insists on being served, the barkeep runs out of the saloon, Schultz calling after him to specifically bring the sheriff, not the town marshal.
While they wait, Schultz pours beers for himself and Django and leaves money on the bar. He explains that he is no longer a dentist, but a bounty hunter in search of the Brittle brothers who are wanted dead or alive. He admits that although he knows the general location of the brothers, near Gatlinburg, they have adopted aliases, and he needs somebody who can identify them. Schultz tells Django that if he helps him bring in the Brittle brothers, Schultz will give him his freedom, pay him a $75 share of the reward, and let him keep his horse. Django immediately agrees, when, as if on cue, Schultz sees the sheriff coming down the sidewalk.
The sheriff enters the saloon, shotgun in hand, and tells Schultz and Django to leave. The two comply, and exit out the swinging doors. We see that a number of townspeople are watching the spectacle unfolding as the sheriff asks them why they are coming into his town and showing themselves with the sole purpose of causing trouble. Schultz is silent, then steps forward. A spring-mounted Derringer pops up in his right hand, and he shoots the sheriff in the stomach. The townspeople are stunned as the sheriff stumbles to the ground, moaning in pain from the bullet wound. Schultz walks around the wounded sheriff, aims his Derringer, and shoots him in the head, killing him. The townspeople immediately run for their lives. Schultz looks up and tells the bartender that now is the time to fetch the marshal. The bartender runs off while Schultz and Django go back into the saloon to wait.
The town marshal and most of the town arrive and train rifles on the front door of the saloon. Schultz hears that he has 100 rifles aimed at his head, and gets the marshal to agree to not have him shot dead like a dog in the street when he comes out. Schultz then exits, hands raised over his head, and a paper in his hand. He announces to the marshal and to the assembled townsfolk what has really happened: that the dead man the people of Daughtrey saw fit to elect as their sheriff, who went by the name of 'Bill Sharpe', is a wanted cattle rustler named Willard Peck, with a $200 bounty on his head. Schultz suggests that the marshal pay him the $200 fee.
Later, while camping, Django admits to Schultz that what he wants to do once he is liberated is buy freedom for his wife, a slave girl named Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington) who had been a servant of a German mistress before being sold into slavery in the U.S. Their owner Carrucan (Bruce Dern) was cruel and disapproved of their marriage, so the pair attempted escape. They were caught by the Brittle brothers, who tortured and branded them both with the mark of a runaway, a small "R" on their right cheeks. Their owner then directed the Brittle brothers to sell the pair to separate owners, and to take the lowest price for Django.
Django and Schultz eventually develop a plan to infiltrate an estate near Gatlinburg where they suspect that the Brittle brothers reside and for Django to identify them. Django is to play-act as a freed slave who has been hired as Schultz's valet. They arrive at the plantation owned by Spencer "Big Daddy" Bennett (Don Johnson). Schultz states he is looking to buy one of Bennett's slave girls for an exorbitant price. As he and Bennett talk business, Django is given free range to look around the estate.
Django asks Betina, his escort, if she knows of the Brittles. Betina admits that she doesn't know them, leading Django to suspect that the Brittles are using an alias name. At this, Betina reveals that three overseer brothers known as the Schaeffers did arrive in the past year. She points out the first one in the field. Django looks through his telescope and sees that it is Ellis. Seeing Ellis causes Django to have a lengthy flashback over running away with Broomhilda and pleading with Big John to spare Broomhilda from the whip, unsuccessfully. The flashback ends with Big John saying, "I like the way you beg, boy."
Snapping out of his flashback, Django learns that Big John and Little Raj are on a different part of the plantation, about to whip a young slave girl for breaking eggs. The two have tied her to a tree by the arms and Big John is about to use the whip on her when Django appears and shouts Big John's name. Big John turns, stunned to see Django, who suddenly produces a Derringer similar to Schultz's and shoots him through a Bible page glued to his shirt. He looks down at his bullet wound, stunned, as Django tells him, "I like the way you die, boy," and Big John pitches forward, dead. Little Raj attempts to grab his revolver, but Django grabs Big John's whip and uses it to beat him unconscious. He then takes the gun and unloads it into Little Raj, just as Schultz comes racing in. Django tells Schultz that Ellis is already galloping away across the cotton field. Schultz tracks Ellis through his sniper rifle, and once Django says he is sure he is right, Schultz fires. Blood sprays the cotton flowers as Ellis falls off his horse, a bullet in his chest. Though Bennett is incensed when he arrives, he is forced to let them go once Schultz explains they are legally authorized to kill and collect these men.
That night, out for revenge, Bennett calls out all the fellow white men of the plantation to kill Django and Schultz, spotting their dentist's cart camped outside of town. The men make their charge over the hill in KKK style masks, and surround the small campsite. The scene then changes to earlier, when Bennett is giving instructions to the other Klansmen to not shoot Django or Schultz unless they are shot at. He puts his bag hood on, and a funny scene ensues as Bennett finds he is unable to see through the eye holes in his mask. Everyone else starts to bicker about how badly made their masks are, which ends with Willard, whose wife Jenny spent all afternoon making masks for them, giving up and riding away, furious. Eventually, the Klansmen get their act together.
As they surround the cart, one of the men spots what he thinks is Django and Schultz hiding under the cart. He peeks under, only to find that the 'bodies' are actually bedrolls. Bennett wonders where the two bounty hunters actually are. In response, the scene cuts to Django and Schultz hiding in a tree a short distance away, Schultz carrying a rifle. Schultz says, "auf wiedersehen," and fires at the cart, setting off a bundle of dynamite hidden in the tooth on the roof of his cart. It blows up and kills most of the Klansmen. Bennett manages to survive the detonation and begins riding away. Schultz sees this and hands the rifle over to Django, letting him do the honors. Django tracks, and then fires, hitting Bennett and shooting him off his horse. Schultz realizes that Django is a formidable natural sharpshooter.
King asks what Django will do now that he is officially free, and Django says he will locate his wife (believed to be in Mississippi) and try to purchase her freedom. King, who has bonded with Django and is impressed by both his intelligence and marksmanship, proposes to help Django rescue his wife if Django will work with him over the winter in collecting bounties. King is also impressed with Broomhilda's name (and her ability to speak German), telling Django the German legend of Siegfried and Brunhilde. In the legend, the beautiful Brunhilde is captured and imprisoned in a tower on a mountainside that is guarded by a dragon and surrounded by hellfire. Her lover, Siegfried, rescues her, facing the mountain and dragon simply because he is brave, but also overcoming the hellfire out of his love for Brunhilde. Django is quite taken with the tale.
Django agrees to King's proposal, finding him to be a deeply honorable man in spite of his line of work. King trains Django to not only be an expert with a gun, but also how to read and present himself in public. On one mission, Django and King perch themselves on a hill overlooking a small farm where Django hesitates to kill a man who is now peacefully working on the farm and has a son. King explains that before the man owned this farm and started a family, he murdered several people while robbing stagecoaches, and that he has a $7,000 bounty on his head. King explains that it is this own man's actions in a dirty world that has brought the bounty hunters to his door. Hearing this, Django shoots and kills the man in front of his son. King tells him to keep the wanted poster, as a bounty hunter's first successful poster is good luck. Throughout the winter, Django imagines he and Broomhilda free and happy.
Jumping forward to March 1859, once winter passes, the two head back to the South in search of Broomhilda. King discovers that she was sold to a man named Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), the owner of a plantation known as 'Candie Land'. Candie is famous for breeding "mandingos"--slaves who are bred to fight each other to the death (bare-knuckle) for their owner's amusement (and for betting purposes). King says that he will pose as a wealthy European who seeks to purchase one of Candie's mandingos to take to fight in Europe, and that Django is his business partner and talent evaluator.
That evening, Django and King arrive at a Candie's Cleopatra Club and they meet Candie's lawyer, Leonide Moguy (Dennis Christopher), who explains that Candie is obsessed with French culture (although Candie, unlike the actually cultured King, does not speak French). The two are brought upstairs where they watch a mandingo fight, which is very brutal and fatal for the loser, who gets his eyes gouged out by the winner. As Candie congratulates his winning mandingo, the owner of the dead mandingo, an Italian businessman named Amerigo Vessepi (Franco Nero, the star of the original 'Django' in a suprise cameo) frets over the loss of his fighter and retires to the nearby bar for a drink. Django introduces himself to Vessepi before he walks out (a clear homage and wink-to-the-audience of the two Django actors in the same scene in the only time in this movie). It turns out that Candie is boorish and clearly arrogant and ignorant despite his wealth and high upbringing. Django is incredibly offensive to Candie and his guests, talking back to all the white men. Candie finds Django's rude and defensive behavior amusing and King to be charming. King and Django state that they are willing to pay an exorbitant amount ($12,000) for one of Candie's better mandingos and they arrange to return with him to his estate.
The next morning, the group travels in a convoy to the Candieland ranch. Django continues to act defiantly, insulting both slave and white man alike, and displays his intelligence. When King asks Django why he is so belligerent, Django says he is playing his role in this dirty world. Candie states that he believes one in 10,000 black men are exceptional, and believes Django to be one of those rare few.
At one point on the travel into Candyland, they see one of Candie's slaves chased up a tree by some of Candie's white trash work-men and their vicious hounds. It turns out the slave, D'Artagnan (named by Candie after the hero from The Three Musketeers, a book written by Frenchman Alexandre Dumas, whom Candie admires), is a mandingo who was caught running away. Candie convinces D'Artagnan to come down from the tree where D'Artagnan pleads he can't handle any other fights despite having won three in a row. Candie states that his slaves can't retire from fighting until they have won at least five matches in order for him to recoup his $500 investment in them, and that D'Artagnan must be killed. Schultz suddenly offers to pay Candie $500 to spare D'Artagnan's life, but Django, realizing such odd behavior would blow their cover, loudly declares that D'Artagnan isn't worth a single penny. Schultz, coming to his senses, agrees not to pay for D'Artagnan, and Candie has the slave ripped to pieces by the hounds as they all look on. Django glares at Candie, but imagines himself reunited with Broomhilda to keep his anger suppressed.
A little later, they all arrive at Candie Land and meet Candie's widowed older sister Lara Lee (Laura Cayouette) and his loyal house-slave and foreman trustee Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson). It is clear that Stephen is appalled that Django is free and riding on a horse into the estate along with his master and other white men. Django also takes an instant dislike to Stephen.
Stephen informs Candie that, while he was gone, Broomhilda also attempted to escape and is now locked in the Hot Box, a metal pit in Candie's field. Schultz says he wants to meet Broomhilda, saying he heard legend of her German-speaking abilities. Candie, wanting to please his guest, orders Broomhilda to be cleaned up and sent to Schultz's room. Once there, Schultz explains to Broomhilda (in German) that he and his "friend" are here to rescue her. He then signals Django to come into his room, and Broomhilda faints with happiness upon seeing her husband. Schultz, impressed with Broomhilda's intelligence, begins the next phase of his plan.
That evening at dinner, Broomhilda serves Candie and his many guests - including Schultz and Django. Lara notes that Broomhilda seems to be attracted to Django. This piques Stephen's curiosity (we see that Stephen is clearly invested in Candie's success, and forces the other slaves to call him "Sir," or "Mister Stephen" as though he were their master) and he begins to interrogate Broomhilda in a back room. Broomhilda denies knowing Django, but Stephen knows that she is lying because she bears the same small 'r' brand (for "runaway") on the right side of her face as Django does.
Meanwhile, Schultz, despite Django's "objections," offers to buy Candie's third-best mandingo for $12,000. They agree that Schultz will return to the estate in five days with a lawyer to complete the transaction. Candie, clearly thrilled at this windfall, is then asked by King whether he can also purchase Broomhilda and take immediate possession of her (King claims he is interested in her ability to speak German, though Candie is convinced Schultz is simply sexually attracted to her).
Before Candie can accept the deal, Stephen interrupts and asks to speak to his master in another room. Once there, Stephen (who is drinking brandy) tells Candie that he is convinced that Django and Broomhilda know each other and that Schultz and Django intend to buy her, leave the property, and never return for the mandingo. Candie is incensed and returns to the dining room with a small bag containing the skull of an old slave of his plantation, Ben. He then explains that he collects the skulls of his dead slaves and, invoking the pseudoscience of phrenology, has determined that the reason they don't rise up and kill their masters, despite easily outnumbering the whites, is that their brains are predisposed to subservience whereas white brains are built for dominance and ingenuity. Candie then reveals he knows that they want Broomhilda, and unless they immediately pay him $12,000 for her, he will kill her and examine her skull in front of them. King immediately agrees to these terms, and Candie tells Django that he is not exceptional after all.
Schultz pays the $12,000 and Candie has his lawyer, Leonide Moguy, begin drawing up the papers transferring ownership of Broomhilda to King. Candie gloats about his victory and intelligence, and Schultz begins to think of D'Artagnan's brutal death. The papers are signed, but before they leave, King insults Candie's intelligence, noting how especially stupid Candie is, since he names his slaves after characters in novels written by Dumas even though Dumas was a black man.
Candie, seeking to humiliate Schultz and recognizing that Schultz finds him to be a disgusting human being, says he will not allow the travelers to leave with Broomhilda unless King shakes his hand, a Mississippi & Southern tradition. This is more than Schultz can take. As he stretches out his hand to shake Candie's hand, the spring-loaded pistol he used on the sheriff of Daughtrey pops into his right hand and fires through the flower on Candie's lapel. Candie looks down at the bullet wound, clutches his chest, staggers backwards and falls over, dead. Stephen screams, "No!" and rushes to Candie's side. Butch Pooch, Candie's bodyguard, turns around. Schultz apologizes to Django for being unable to resist temptation, and then Pooch fires his shotgun. The bullet hits Schultz with enough force to throw him back into a bookcase, dead.
Just as Schultz's body hits the ground, all hell breaks loose as Django grabs the distracted Pooch's revolver and shoots him. Moguy tries to run, screaming for help, but is shot multiple times as he tries to enter the foyer. Django then is thrown back into the foyer, and a shootout ensues as he trades fire with numerous white ranchers. Blood flies everywhere and bodies fall left, right and center. The shootout ends when Django runs out of ammo, while Stephen and Billy Crash capture Broomhilda and threaten to kill her unless Django surrenders. Feeling that he has no other choice, Django does surrender and he is brutally beaten by Candie's crew.
When Django awakens, he is naked and tied upside down. Billy Crash is preparing to castrate him with a red hot knife. Stephen enters and tells the man that the plans have changed, and Django is no longer slated for castration. After the man leaves, Stephen explains that Django would have died too quickly if he had been castrated. Stephen, wanting Django to suffer, has arranged to sell him to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company as a slave, where Django will spend the rest of his days.
En route to the mining company, Django is able to get the attention of one of the transporters (a group of Australians, including a cameo by director Quentin Tarantino). He tells them that he is a bounty hunter, not a slave, and that he was tracking a man worth $7,000 before he was captured. He promises that if they free and arm him, he will give them the lion's share of the reward. They find the bounty notice (from Django's first kill) on his person and also question the other slaves, who admit that Django is a bounty hunter and rode in to Candie Land with a white man on a horse. The transporters unwisely free Django, give him a pistol and he immediately kills them all and frees the other slaves bound for the mine. He takes a horse, guns, and dynamite and heads back to Candie Land.
Django first stops and massacres the men (trackers) who had hunted down the escaped D'Artagnan with their hounds, killing them all in D'Artagnan's name (the masked female tracker is played by Zoe Bell, and another tracker is played by Tom Savini). He then finds King's dead body in a stable with the freedom papers for Broomhilda still on him. After he takes the papers, Django swears that his next act of vengeance will be in honor of King.
Django sneaks back onto the estate and finds and frees Broomhilda. He has her wait outside Candie Land while he engages in further preparations. That evening, Candie's family and friends return from Candie's funeral, Django is there waiting and shoots them all, even Lara (despite the fact that Lara never harmed him in any way; one can conclude that because she suggested (with the help of Stephen) that Django be sent to the LeQuint Dickey Mining Company, Django eliminated her). He then shoots Stephen in the kneecaps, stating that, in the 9,999 slaves Stephen has likely betrayed while working for Candie, he has never met one like Django. Stephen defiantly cries out that Django will be hunted down and killed by bounty hunters for his crimes, and that the South will never die. Django lights a fuse, and walks out on Stephen. The explosion utterly destroys Candie's mansion.
Django meets his wife, who waits for him with two horses outside the estate. The two are finally reunited, and ride off into the night to face whatever destiny awaits them. Django is destined to become a legend, just as Siegfried before him did.
After the end credits, we cut to the slaves Django freed from the mining company transporters. They remain seated where Django left them, still in awe of what they witnessed. Then, one asks what the name of that black man was (suggesting Django may not yet become a legend).

Gladiator

Shouting "Roma Invicta!" as his forces attack, General Maximus Decimus Meridius leads the Roman Army to victory against Germanic barbarians in the year 180 A.D., ending a prolonged war and earning the esteem of elderly Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Although the dying Aurelius has a son, Commodus, he decides to appoint temporary leadership to the morally-upstanding Maximus, with a desire to eventually return power to the Roman Senate. Aurelius informs Maximus and offers him time to consider before informing Commodus, who, in a bout of jealousy, smothers his father.
Declaring himself the emperor, Commodus asks Maximus for his loyalty, which Maximus, realizing Commodus' involvement in the Emperor's death, refuses. Commodus orders Maximus' execution and dispatches Praetorian Guards to murder Maximus' wife and son. Maximus narrowly escapes his execution and races home only to discover his family's charred and crucified bodies in the smoldering ruins of his villa. After burying his wife and son, a grieving Maximus succumbs to exhaustion and collapses on their graves.
Slave traders find Maximus and take him to Zucchabar, a rugged province in North Africa, where he is purchased by Proximo, the head of a local gladiator school. Distraught and nihilistic over the death of his family and betrayal by his empire, Maximus initially refuses to fight, but as he defends himself in the arena his formidable combat skills lead to a rise in popularity with the audience. As he trains and fights further, Maximus befriends Hagen, a Germanic barbarian, and Juba, a Numidian hunter, the latter becoming a close friend and confidant to the grieving Maximus, the two speaking frequently of the afterlife and Maximus' eventual reunification with his family.
In Rome, Commodus reopens the gladiatorial games to commemorate his father's death, and Proximo's company of gladiators are hired to participate. In a recreation of the Battle of Zama (incorrectly named the Battle of Carthage) at the Colosseum, Maximus leads Proximo's gladiators to decisive victory against a more powerful force, much to the amazement of the crowd. Commodus descends into the arena to meet the victors and is stunned to discover Maximus as the leader of Proximo's gladiators. The Emperor, unable to kill Maximus because of the crowd's roaring approval for him, gives the thumbs-up sign allowing Maximus to live and sulks out of the arena.
As the games continue, Commodus pits Maximus against Tigris of Gaul, Rome's only undefeated gladiator, in an arena surrounded by chained tigers with handlers instructed to target Maximus. Following an intense battle, Maximus narrowly defeats Tigris and awaits Commodus' decision to kill or spare Tigris. As Commodus votes for death, Maximus spares Tigris, deliberately insulting the Emperor and garnering the audience's approval. His bitter enemy now known as "Maximus the Merciful," Commodus becomes more frustrated at his inability to kill Maximus or stop his ascending popularity while Commodus' own popularity shrinks.
Following the fight, Maximus meets his former servant Cicero, who reveals that Maximus' army remains loyal to him. They are camped at the port Ostia. Maximus forms a plot with Lucilla, Commodus' sister, and Senator Gracchus to reunite Maximus with his army and overthrow Commodus. Commodus however, suspecting his sister's betrayal, threatens her young son and forces her to reveal the plot. Praetorian guards immediately storm Proximo's gladiator barracks, battling the gladiators while Maximus escapes. Hagen and Proximo are killed in the siege while Juba and the survivors are imprisoned. Maximus escapes to the city walls only to witness Cicero's death and be ambushed by a legion of Praetorian guards.
Concluding that legends born in the Colosseum must die there, Commodus personally challenges Maximus to a duel in front of a roaring audience. Acknowledging that Maximus' skill exceeds his own, Commodus deliberately stabs Maximus with a stiletto, puncturing his lung, and has the wound concealed beneath the gladiator's armor. In the arena, the two exchange blows before Maximus rips the sword from Commodus' hands. Commodus requests a sword from his guards, but they refuse to lend him their weapons. Maximus drops his own sword, but Commodus pulls a hidden stiletto and renews his attack. Maximus then beats Commodus into submission and kills him with his own stiletto.
As Commodus collapses in the now-silent Colosseum, a dying Maximus sees his wife and son in the afterlife. He reaches for them, but is pulled back to reality by the Praetorian prefect Quintus, who asks for instructions. Maximus orders the release of Proximo's gladiators and Senator Gracchus, whom he reinstates and instructs to return Rome to a Senate-based government. Maximus collapses, and Lucilla rushes to his aid. After being reassured that her son is safe and Commodus is dead, Maximus dies and wanders into the afterlife to his home and family in the distance. Senator Gracchus and Proximo's gladiators carry his body out of the Colosseum. That night, a newly-freed Juba buries Maximus' two small statues of his wife and son in the Colosseum (in the patch of Maximus' blood), and says that he too will eventually join them, "but not yet."

Matrix

The screen is filled with green, cascading code which gives way to the title, "The Matrix"The Matrix.
A phone rings and text appears on the screen: "Call trans opt: received. 2-19-98 13:24:18 REC: Log>" As a conversation takes place between Trinity (Carrie-Anne MossCarrie-Anne Moss) and Cypher (Joe PantolianoJoe Pantoliano), two free humans, a table of random green numbers are being scanned and individual numbers selected, creating a series of digits not unlike an ordinary phone number, as if a code is being deciphered or a call is being traced.
Trinity discusses some unknown person. Cypher taunts Trinity, suggesting she enjoys watching him. Trinity counters that "Morpheus (Laurence FishburneLaurence Fishburne) says he may be 'the One'," just as the sound of a number being selected alerts Trinity that someone may be tracing their call. She ends the call.
Armed policemen move down a darkened, decrepit hallway in the Heart O' the City Hotel, their flashlight beam bouncing just ahead of them. They come to room 303, kick down the door and find a woman dressed in black, facing away from them. It's Trinity. She brings her hands up from the laptop she's working on at their command.
Outside the hotel a car drives up and three agents appear in neatly pressed black suits. They are Agent Smith (Hugo WeavingHugo Weaving), Agent Brown (Paul GoddardPaul Goddard), and Agent Jones (Robert TaylorRobert Taylor). Agent Smith and the presiding police lieutenant argue. Agent Smith admonishes the policeman that they were given specific orders to contact the agents first, for their protection. The lieutenant dismisses this and says that they can handle "one little girl" and that he has two units that are bringing her down at that very moment. Agent Smith replies: "No, Lieutenant. Your men are already dead."
Inside, Trinity easily defeats the six policemen sent to apprehend her, using fighting and evasion techniques that seem to defy gravity. She calls Morpheus, letting him know that the line has been traced, though she doesn't know how. Morpheus informs her that she will have to "make it to another exit," and that Agents are heading up after her.
A fierce rooftop chase ensues with Trinity and an Agent leaping from one building to the next, astonishing the policemen left behind. Trinity makes a daring leap across an alley and through a small window. She has momentarily lost her pursuers and makes it to a public phone booth on the street level. The phone begins to ring. As she approaches it a garbage truck, driven by Agent Smith, careens towards the phone booth. Trinity makes a desperate dash to the phone, picking it up just moments before the truck smashes the booth into a brick wall. The three Agents reunite at the front of the truck. There is no body in the wreckage. "She got out," one says. The other says, "The informant is real." "We have the name of their next target," says the other, "His name is Neo."
Neo (Keanu ReevesKeanu Reeves), a hacker with thick black hair and a sallow appearance, is asleep at his monitor. Notices about a manhunt for a man named Morpheus scroll across his screen as he sleeps. Suddenly Neo's screen goes blank and a series of text messages appear: "Wake up, Neo." "The Matrix has you." "Follow the White Rabbit." Then, the text says "Knock, knock, Neo..." just as he reads it, a knock comes at the door of his apartment, 101. It's a group of ravers and Neo gives them a contraband disc he has secreted in a copy of Simulacra and Simulation. The lead raver asks him to join them and Neo demurs until he sees the tattoo of a small white rabbit on the shoulder of a seductive girl in the group.
At a rave bar Neo stands alone and aloof as the group he's with continue partying. Trinity approaches him and introduces herself. Neo recognizes her name; she was a famous hacker and had cracked the IRS database. She tells him that he is in great danger, that they are watching him and that she knows that he is searching for answers, particularly to the most important question of all: what is the Matrix? The pulsing music of the bar gives way to the repetitious blare of Neo's alarm clock; it's 9:18 and he's late for work.
At his job at Metacortex, a leading software company housed in an ominous high rise, Neo is berated by his boss for having a problem with authority, for thinking he's special. Neo listens to his boss, but his attention is on the persons cleaning the window of the office. Back at his bleak cubicle Neo receives a delivery as "Thomas Anderson." Upon opening the package he finds a cellphone which immediately rings. On the other end is Morpheus, who informs Neo that they've both run out of time and that "they" are coming for him. Morpheus tells him to slowly look up, toward the elevator. Agents Smith, Jones, and Brown are there, obviously looking for him, as a woman points towards Neo's cube. Morpheus tries to guide Neo out of the building but when he is instructed to get on a scaffolding and take it to the roof Neo rejects Morpheus's advice, allowing himself to be taken by the Agents.
In an interrogation room the Agents confront Neo. They've had their eye on him for some time. He lives a dual existence: one life as Thomas A. Anderson, a software engineer for a Metacortex, the other life as Neo, a computer hacker "guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for." Agent Smith asks him to help them capture Morpheus, a dangerous terrorist, in exchange for amnesty. Neo gives them the finger and asks for his phone call. Mr. Smith asks what good is a phone call if he's unable to speak. Neo finds that his lips have fused together. Panicked, he is thrown on the interrogation table by the Agents and they implant a shrimp-like probe, a bug, in his stomach, entering through his belly-button.
Neo awakens with a start in his own bed, assuming it has all been a bad dream. His phone rings and Morpheus is on the other line. He tells Neo that the line is tapped but they've underestimated his importance. Morpheus tells Neo he is the One and to meet him at the Adams St. bridge. There he is picked up by Trinity and two others in a car; they all wear black latex and leather. A woman in the front seat, Switch (Belinda McCloryBelinda McClory), pulls a gun on him and tells him to take off his shirt. Trinity tells him it's for their mutual protection and that he has to trust her. He takes off his shirt and she uses a device to remove the probe that Neo believed had been part of a nightmare. Trinity drops the bug out into the road where it slowly goes dark in the rain.
Trinity takes Neo to Morpheus. Morpheus explains that he's been searching for Neo his entire life and asks if Neo feels like "Alice in Wonderland, falling down the rabbit hole." He explains to Neo that they exist in the Matrix, a false reality that has been constructed for humans to hide the truth. The truth is that everyone in the world is a slave, born into bondage. Morpheus holds out two pills. In his left palm is a blue pill. If Neo takes it he will wake up in his bed and "believe whatever you want to believe." But if he takes the red pill in Morpheus's right hand, then "you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." Neo takes the red pill.
As the rest of Morpheus's crew straps him into a chair, Neo is told that pill he took is part of a trace program, to "disrupt his input/output carrier signal" so that they can pinpoint him. Neo looks at a shattered mirror placed next to him which miraculously reforms itself. Neo touches the surface and the silver begins to creep over his skin, engulfing him as Morpheus's crew attempt to locate something on the monitors around them. The silver takes Neo over and he blacks out.
He awakens inside a pinkish/purple embryonic pod, extending from the side of a circular building, a massive power plant. He is hairless and naked, with thick black tubes snaking down his throat, plugged into the back of his skull, his spine, and invading most of the rest of his body. He finds his pod is open and that he is surrounded by tower after tower of pods just like his, all filled with bodies. Suddenly a menacing, hovering nurse robot grabs him by the throat. The tubes detach and Neo is flushed down a tube into an underground pool of filthy water. Just as he's about to drown in the muck a hovercraft appears above him, snags him and hauls him into its cargo bay. Neo finds himself surrounded by Morpheus's crew again, but they are dressed differently, in simple knit garments. Just before Neo passes out Morpheus says to him, "Welcome to the real world."
Neo drifts in and out of consciousness. At one point he asks, "Am I dead?" "Far from it," replies Morpheus. Again he wakes, his body a pincushion of acupuncture. "Why do my eyes hurt?" he asks. "You've never used them," Morpheus replies.
Neo finally wakes, fully clothed, with a short shock of hair on his head. He removes a connector that is sunk deep into his arm and reaches to find the large socket at the back of his neck when Morpheus enters the room. "What is this place?" Neo asks. "The more important question is when," says Morpheus, "You believe it is the year 1999, when in fact it is closer to the year 2199." Morpheus goes on to say that they really don't know when it is. He gives Neo a tour of his ship, the Nebuchadnezzar (they pass a plaque stating it was built in 2069). Neo is introduced to Morpheus's crew including Trinity; Apoc (Julian ArahangaJulian Arahanga), a man with long, flowing black hair; Switch; Cypher (bald with a goatee); two brawny brothers, Tank (Marcus ChongMarcus Chong) and Dozer (Anthony Ray ParkerAnthony Ray Parker); and a young, thin man named Mouse (Matt DoranMatt Doran).
Morpheus gets to the point. "You wanted to know about the Matrix," he says, ushering him to a chair. Neo sits down in it and Trinity straps him in. A long probe is inserted into the socket at the back of Neo's skull.
Neo wakes in a world of all white. He is in the Construct, a "loading platform" that Morpheus and his team use to prepare newly freed humans to deal with the Matrix world. Gone are the sockets in Neo's arms and neck. He has hair again. Neo heads for the stairs, but Smith has already appropriated another body and emerges from the doors of the train.
Meanwhile the Sentinels have arrived to attack the Nebuchadnezzar; there are five of them and they are closing fast.
Morpheus tells Tank to charge the EMP. Trinity reminds Morpheus that they can't use the EMP while Neo is in the Matrix.
"I know, Trinity, don't worry," says Morpheus, "He's going to make it."the tells him that what he is experiencing of himself is the "residual self image, the mental projection of your digital self" and bids him to sit while he explains the truth. "This," he says, showing an image of a modern city, "is the world that you know." A thing that really exists "only as part of a neural, interactive simulation that we call the Matrix."
Morpheus then shows Neo the world as it truly exists today, a scarred, desolate emptiness with charred, abandoned buildings, black earth, and a shrouded sky.
Morpheus goes on to say that "at some point in the early 21st century all of mankind was united in celebration as we gave birth" to artificial intelligence, a "singular consciousness that birthed an entire race of machines."
Someone started a war, and no one knows who, but it was known that it was mankind who blotted out the sky, attempting to deprive the machines of the solar power they required to function. Instead the machines turned to humans as a power source; Mopheus explains that a human's body provides "more electricity than a 120 volt battery and over 25k BTUs in body heat." Morpheus shows Neo fields where machines grow human beings, connecting them to their outlets, ensconcing them in their pods, and feeding them with the liquefied remains of other human beings. "The Matrix," says Morpheus, "is a computer-generated dreamworld created to keep us under control, to turn us..." into a mere power source, into coppertop batteries.
Neo rejects this information so feverishly that he pulls himself out of the Construct. He is back in the chair on the hovercraft. He fights to free himself from this harsh reality, only to end up vomiting on the floor and passing out.
When Neo wakes up in his bunk, Morpheus is beside him. "I can't go back, can I?" Neo asks. "No," says Morpheus. He apologizes to Neo for breaking a cardinal rule: after a certain age people aren't brought out of their simulacrum, but Morpheus explains he had to bring Neo out. When the Matrix was created there was a man born inside it who could create his own reality inside it. It was this man who set Morpheus and the others free. When he died, the Oracle (Gloria FosterGloria Foster) prophesied that he would return in another form. And that the return of the One would mean the destruction of the Matrix. As long as the Matrix exists, humanity will continue to live in complacency inside it and the world can never be free. "I did what I did because I believe that search is over," says Morpheus.
The next day Neo starts his training. Tank is his operator. Tank and his brother Dozer are "100% pure old-fashioned, homegrown human. Born in the real world; a genuine child of Zion." Zion, Tank explains, is the last human city, buried deep in the earth, near the core, for warmth. Tank straps Neo back into the jack-in chair, by-passes some preliminary programs and loads him up with combat training, starting with Jiu Jitsu. When Tank hits "load" Neo is shocked by the force of the knowledge pouring into him. "I think he likes it," says Tank, "want some more?" "Hell yes," replies Neo. Neo is fed a series of martial arts techniques including Kempo, Tae Kwon Do, Drunken Boxing and Kung Fu. Morpheus and Tank are amazed at Neo's ability to ingest information, but Morpheus wants to test Neo.
Morpheus and Neo stand in a sparring program. The program has rules, like gravity. But as in many computer programs, some rules can be bent while others can be broken. Morpheus bids Neo to hit him, if he can. They fight with Neo impressively attacking but Morpheus easily parrying and subduing him. The rest of the crew gathers around the monitors to watch the fight. Morpheus ends up kicking Neo into a beam, explaining to him that the reason he has beaten him has nothing to do with muscles or reality. They spar again. "What are you waiting for?" Morpheus asks him. "You're faster than this!" Neo finally brings a punch near his teacher's face. They can move on.
A jump program is loaded. Both men now stand on one of several tall buildings in a normal city skyline. Morpheus tells Neo he must free his mind and leaps from one building to the next. Neo nervously tries to follow him and doesn't make the jump, falling to the pavement below. Neo wakes back in the Nebudchanezzar with blood in his mouth. "I thought it wasn't real," he says. "Your mind makes it real," replies Morpheus. "So, if you die in the Matrix, you die here?" "The body cannot live without the mind," says Morpheus, underlining the very real danger faced in the simulation.
Later, Trinity brings Neo dinner. Outside his room, Cypher remarks that Trinity never brought him dinner. He asks Trinity why, if Morpheus thinks Neo is the One, he hasn't taken him to see the Oracle yet. Trinity says he'll take him when he's ready.
Morpheus and Neo are walking down a standard city street in what appears to be the Matrix. Morpheus explains that the Matrix is a system and that the system is their enemy. All the people that inhabit it, the people they are trying to free, are part of that system. Some are so inert, so dependent upon the Matrix that they can never be free. Neo notices a stunning girl in a red dress. "Are you listening to me?" asks Morpheus. He asks Neo to look at the girl again. Neo turns to face Agent Smith, pointing a gun straight at his head. Morpheus stops the simulation, which has just been created to look like the Matrix.
Neo asks what the Agents are. "Sentient programs," says Morpheus, that "can move in and out of any software hard-wired into their system, meaning that they can take over anyone in the Matrix program. "Inside the Matrix," Morpheus says, "They are everyone and they are no one." Thus Morpheus and his crew survive the Agents by running from them and hiding from the Agents even though they "are guarding all the doors. They are holding all the keys and sooner or later, someone is going to have to fight them." But no one who has ever stood up to an Agent has survived; all have died. Still, Morpheus is certain that because the Agents live in a world of rules that they can never be as strong, never be as fast as he can be. "What are you trying to tell me," asks Neo, "That I can dodge bullets?" "When you're ready," Morpheus says, "You won't have to." Just then Morpheus gets a phone call. "We've got trouble," Cypher says on the other line.
The Nebuchadnezzar is on alert. They see the holographic image of a squiddy, a search and destroy sentinel, which is on their trail. They set the ship down in a huge sewer system and turn off the power. Tank stands at the ready switch of an EMP, electro-magnetic pulse, the only weapon man has against the machines in the real world. Two squiddies search for the ship -- the crew can see them -- but they move on.
Neo startles Cypher, who is working at a computer console streaming with green code. Cypher offers Neo a drink and says that he knows what Neo is thinking, "Why, oh why didn't I take the blue pill?" Neo laughs but is unsettled. Cypher asks Neo if Morpheus has told him why he's here. Neo nods. "What a mind job," says Cypher, "so you're here to save the world."
Cypher is now in a fancy restaurant with Agent Smith in the Matrix. Agent Smith asks if they have a deal. Cypher cuts up a juicy steak and ruminates that he knows the steak is merely the simulation telling his brain that it is delicious and juicy, but after nine years he has discovered that "ignorance is bliss." He strikes a deal for the machines to reinsert his body into a power plant, reinsert him into the Matrix, and he'll help the Agents. He wants to be rich and powerful, "an actor" maybe. Smith says he wants access codes to the mainframe in Zion. Cypher says he can't do that, but that he can get him the man who does, meaning Morpheus.
Meanwhile, inside the Nebuchadnezzar's small dining room in the real world, the rest of the crew is trying to choke down the oatmeal-gruel that they have as sustenance. Mouse muses on the mistakes the machines may have made trying to get sensations right, like the taste of chicken. Since they didn't know what it tasted like they let everything taste like it. Morpheus interrupts the meal, announcing that he's taking Neo to see the Oracle.
Morpheus, Trinity, Neo, Apoc, Switch, Mouse and Cypher are jacked into the Matrix. As they walk out of a warehouse Cypher secretly throws his cell phone into the garbage. On the car ride to the Oracle, Neo asks Trinity if she has seen the Oracle. Trinity says that she has but when she's asked just what she was told by the Oracle, she refuses to answer.
The Oracle, Morpheus explains, has been with them since the beginning of the Resistance. She is the one who made the Prophecy of the One and that Morpheus would be the one to find him. She can help Neo find the path, he says. He enters the apartment of the Oracle. Inside are the other potentials: a mother figure and numerous children. One child levitates blocks, one reads Asian literature, another is playing chess. One bald child is bending spoons. He gives one spoon to Neo and says, "Do not try and bend the spoon, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...that there is no spoon." Neo bends the spoon as he's called in to see the Oracle.
The Oracle is baking cookies. She sizes Neo up and asks him whether he thinks he is the One. Neo admits that he does not know and the Oracle does not enlighten him. Neo smiles and the Oracle asks him what is funny. Neo admits that Morpheus had almost convinced him that he was the One. She accepts this and prophesies that Morpheus believes in Neo so much that he plans to sacrifice himself. She tells Neo that either he or Morpheus will die, and that Neo will have the power to choose which one it will be. She then offers him a cookie and promises him that he will feel fine as soon as he's done eating it.
As the crew returns to their jack point, many floors up in an old hotel, Tank, in the control room, notices something odd. Meanwhile Neo, walking up the stairs, sees what appears to be the same cat cross a room twice. "Deja vu," he says, which gets the attention of Trinity and Morpheus. Deja vu, they explain to him, is a glitch in the Matrix; it happens when they reset the computer parameters. Outside, the phone line is cut. Mouse runs to a window which has now been bricked in. They are trapped. Mouse picks up two machine guns but he's no match for the police coming into the room. He's riddled with bullets.
Back on the Nebuchadnezzar, the real Mouse spurts blood from his mouth and dies in the chair.
More police and Agents stream into the bottom of the hotel. Morpheus has Tank find a layout of the building they're in, locating the main wet wall. The Agents arrive on the floor they're on, finding a coat that Cypher has left behind. They only find a hole in the bathroom wall. Meanwhile the crew is climbing down the plumbing of the wet wall. As the police approach Cypher sneezes, once more giving them away. The police open fire. The crew, including Neo, begin to fire back.
An Agent takes over the body of one of the policemen, reaches into the wall, and grabs Neo by the neck. Morpheus, who is above Neo in the walls, breaks through the wall and lands on the agent, yelling to Trinity to get Neo out of the building.
A fierce battle between Agent Smith and Morpheus ends with Morpheus face down on the tile. Agent Smith sends the police unit in to beat him with their batons.
Cypher returns to the Nebuchadnezzar before Trinity, Neo, Switch and Apoc. As Tank attempts to bring the others back, Cypher attacks him from behind with an electronic weapon. Dozer attempts to tackle Cypher, but Cypher electrocutes him as well.
Trinity attempts to call Tank but Cypher pulls the headset off of the smoking remains of Tank and answers. As Cypher talks to Trinity inside the Matrix he leans over the still form of Trinity in the hovercraft. Cypher recounts the things he hates about the real world, the war, the cold, the goop they have to eat, but most especially Morpheus and his beliefs. "He lied to us, Trinity."
Cypher pulls the plug out of the back of Apoc's head, and Apoc falls down dead in the Matrix. Cypher then moves to Switch and as she protests "Not like this..." in the Matrix, Cypher kills her on the ship. She falls down dead before Trinity and Neo. Cypher moves on to Neo's supine form, saying that if Neo is the One, a miracle will prevent Cypher from killing him:
"How can he be the One, if he's dead?" he asks. He continues badgering Trinity, asking her if she believes that Neo is the One. She says, "Yes." Cypher screams back "No!" but his reaction is incredulity at seeing Tank still alive, brandishing the weapon that Cypher had used on him. Tank fries Cypher with the electrical device.
Tank brings Trinity back and she finds out that Dozer is dead.
Meanwhile Agent Smith, a tray of torture instruments near him, marvels at the beauty of the Matrix as he gazes out at the city all around them. He informs Morpheus, who is tied to a chair, that the first Matrix was designed as a utopia, engineered to make everyone happy. "It was a disaster," says Agent Smith, people wouldn't accept the program and "entire crops were lost." "Some believed," continues Smith, "that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned." Agent Smith compares humans to dinosaurs and that evolution is taking hold. Another Agent enters and relays that there may be a problem (as they now know that Cypher has failed).
Back on the hovercraft the shuddering form of Morpheus betrays the torture he's being put through by the Agents in the Matrix. Tank realizes that they're trying to get the codes to the mainframes of Zion's computers; each ship's captain knows them. Because a breach of Zion's defenses would mean that the last remaining vestiges of mankind would be wiped out, Tank says their only choice is to unplug Morpheus, effectively killing him.
Back in the Matrix, the Agents process their next move. If Cypher is dead, they deduce that the remaining humans on the ship will terminate Morpheus. They decide to stick to their original plan and to deploy the Sentinels.
Tank is performing what amounts to last rites for Morpheus, laying one hand on his head as his other moves to the back of his skull to remove the jack. Just as he's about to pull it out Neo stops him. He realizes that the Oracle was right. He now has to make the choice to save himself or to save Morpheus; his choice is to head back into the Matrix. Trinity rejects the idea. Morpheus gave himself up so that Neo could be saved since he is the One.
"I'm not the One, Trinity," Neo says, relaying his understanding of the discussion with the Oracle: she did not enlighten him as to whether he was the promised messiah. And, since Morpheus was willing to sacrifice himself, Neo knows that he must do that same. Tank calls it suicide; it's a military building with Agents inside. Neo says he only knows that he can bring Morpheus out. Trinity decides to come with him, reasoning with Neo that he will need her help and she's the ranking officer on the ship. "Tank," she says, "load us up!"
Meanwhile Agent Smith continues to share his musings with a brutalized Morpheus. Because humans spread to an area, consume the natural resources and, to survive, must spread to another area, Smith says we are not mammals but viruses, the only other creature that acts that way.
In the Construct, Neo and Trinity get armaments. "Neo," protests Trinity, "No one has ever done anything like this." "That's why it's going to work," he replies.
Morpheus has yet to break and Smith asks the other Agents why the serum isn't working. "Maybe we're asking the wrong questions," responds one. To that Smith commands the other Agents to leave him alone with Morpheus. Smith removes his earphone and his glasses and confides that he hates the Matrix, "this zoo, this prison." Smith admits that he must get out of this "reality." He hates the stench. He's sure that some element of the humans will rub off on him and that Morpheus holds the key to his release. If there is no Zion there's no need for Smith to be in the Matrix. "You are going to tell me, or you are going to die."
Downstairs, in the lobby, Trinity and Neo enter, heavily armed. They shoot their way past the guards and a group of soldiers and make their way into the elevator.
Agents Brown and Jones enter the interrogation room to find Smith with his hands still fixed on Morpheus's head. Smith looks embarrassed and befuddled and the others tell him about the attack occurring downstairs. They realize that the humans are trying to save Morpheus.
In the elevator, Trinity arms a bomb. They both climb through a hatch to the elevator roof, attaching a clamp to the elevator cable. Neo says "There is no spoon" before he severs the cable with a few shots. The counterweight drops, propelling Neo and Trinity upward. The elevator falls to the lobby exploding upon impact and filling the floor with flames.
The Agents feel the rumble of the explosion and the sprinkers come on in the building. "Find them and destroy them!" Smith commands.
On the roof, a helicopter pilot is calling "Mayday" as Trinity and Neo take out the soldiers there. Agent Brown takes over the pilot and appears behind Neo. Neo shoots several rounds at the Agent, who dodges them and pulls his own weapon.
"Trinity," yells Neo, "Help!" But it's too late. The Agent begins to shoot. Instead of being shot, Neo dodges most of the bullets, though two of them nick him. As the Agent approaches Neo, who is lying on the ground, he levels a kill shot but Trinity shoots him before he can fire. Trinity marvels at how fast Neo has just moved; she's never seen anyone move that quickly.
Tank downloads the ability to fly the helicopter to Trinity, who can now pilot the aircraft. Trinity brings the helicopter down to the floor that Morpheus is on and Neo opens fire on the three Agents. The Agents quickly fall and Morpheus is alone in the room. Just as quickly the Agents take over other soldiers stationed nearby. Morpheus breaks his bonds and begins to run to the helicopter. The Agents fire on him, hitting his leg. Morpheus leaps but Neo realizes that he is not going to make the leap and throws himself out of the helicopter, a safety harness attached.
He catches Morpheus, but Agent Smith shoots the helicopter's hydraulic line.
Unable to control the helicopter, Trinity miraculously gets it close enough to drop Morpheus and Neo on a rooftop. Neo grabs the safety line as the helicopter falls towards a building. Trinity severs the safety line connecting Neo to the helicopter and jumps on it herself as the vehicle smashes into the side of a building, causing a bizarre ripple in the fabric of the building's reality as it does.
On the ship Tank says, "I knew it; he's the One."
On the ship Tank says, "I knew it; he's the One."
Neo hauls Trinity up to them. "Do you believe it now, Trinity?" asks Morpheus as he approaches the two. Neo tries to tell him that the Oracle told him the opposite but Morpheus says, "She told you exactly what you needed to hear." They call Tank, who tells them of an exit in a subway near them.
The Agents arrive on the rooftop but find only the safety harness and line. Though Agent Smith is angered, the other two are satisfied. A trace has been completed in the real world and the Sentinels have been dispatched to attack the Nebuchadnezzar.
In the subway, they quickly find the phone booth and Morpheus exits out of the Matrix. A wino watches this occur. On the rooftop Agent Smith locks in to their whereabouts through the wino and appropriates his body.
Meanwhile, as the phone rings, providing Trinity's exit, she confides to Neo that everything that the Oracle has told her has come true, except for one thing. She doesn't say what that thing is and picks up the phone just as she sees the approaching Agent Smith. Smith shatters the ear piece of the phone; it's impossible for Neo to exit there now.
Instead of running, which Trinity implores him to do as she looks on from the ship, Neo turns to face Smith. They empty their guns on each other, neither hitting the other. They then move into close combat, trading blows. Neo sweeps Agent Smith's head, breaking his glasses. "I'm going to enjoy watching you die, Mr. Anderson," says Smith. They trade some thunderous blows with Smith hitting Neo so hard he spits up blood in the Matrix and in the chair aboard the ship.
"He's killing him," says Trinity.
Neo gets back up, sets himself and beckons Smith to start again. This time it's Neo who delivers devastating blow after blow. But Smith counters, throwing Neo into a wall then pummeling him with body blows. A wind from the tunnel signals that a subway train is approaching and Smith has a wicked notion. He throws Neo into the subway tracks then drops down there himself. He puts Neo in a headlock and, in the glow of the oncoming subway says, "You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Good-bye, Mr. Anderson."
"My name," he replies, "is Neo." Then, with a mighty leap, Neo propels them to the ceiling of the tunnel. They fall back down and Neo backflips off the tracks, leaving Agent Smith to the oncoming train.
Neo heads for the stairs, but Smith has already appropriated another body and emerges from the doors of the train.
Meanwhile the Sentinels have arrived to attack the Nebuchadnezzar; there are five of them and they are closing fast.
Morpheus tells Tank to charge the EMP. Trinity reminds Morpheus that they can't use the EMP while Neo is in the Matrix.
"I know, Trinity, don't worry," says Morpheus, "He's going to make it."

Back in the streets of the Matrix, Neo swipes a cell phone from a nearby suit. He calls Tank: "Mr. Wizard, get me the hell out of here." He races through a crowded market while Agents appropriate bodies right and left. They force Neo down a dark alley. He kicks in a door and rushes through an apartment complex where the Agents appropriate more bodies, including that of a sweet little old lady who throws a knife at Neo as Agent Smith. Neo leaps down into a pile of garbage with the Agents in hot pursuit.

On the Nebuchadnezzar the Sentinels have arrived. They begin to tear the ship apart.

In the Matrix, Neo arrives back at the Heart O' the City Hotel. Tank tells him to go to room 303. The Agents are literally at his heels.

The Sentinels breach the hull of the ship. They are inside. Trinity, standing next to Neo's body in the chair, begs him to hurry.

Neo reaches room 303 and enters. He's immediately shot, point blank in the gut, by Agent Smith. Smith empties his magazine into Neo's body. Neo slumps to the floor, dead.

On the ship Neo's vital signs drop to nothing. "It can't be," says Morpheus.

Agent Smith instructs the others to check Neo. "He's gone," one replies. "Good-bye, Mr. Anderson," says Smith.

The Sentinels' lasers are beginning to cut through the major parts of the hovercraft. Trinity leans over his dead body.

"Neo," she says, "I'm not afraid anymore. The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man... the man that I loved would be the One. So you see, you can't be dead. You can't be... because I love you. You hear me? I love you." She kisses him. In the chair Neo suddenly breathes. In the Matrix, Neo opens his eyes. "Now get up," orders Trinity.

The Agents hear Neo rise behind them and they open fire. "No," Neo says calmly, raising his hands. He stops their bullets in mid-air. They drop harmlessly to the floor.

"What's happening?" asks Tank. "He is the One," says Morpheus.

Back in the Matrix, Neo can see things for what they really are, green cascading code.

Agent Smith is furious. He runs to Neo and attacks him. Neo blocks Smith's blows effortlessly before he sends Smith flying with one well-placed kick. Neo then leaps into Smith's body and appropriates him. Smith's shell explodes in a sea of code and Neo is all that is left, the walls buckling in waves as they did when the helicopter crashed. Agents Brown and Jones look at one another and run away.

The Sentinels are now fully in the ship. They are right above Trinity and Morpheus.

Back in the Matrix Neo sprints to the ringing phone in the room.

Morpheus has no choice but to engage the EMP. He does and the Sentinels fall inert to the floor.

Neo has made it back. He kisses Trinity.

The screen is black. A command prompt appears: "Call trans opt: received. 9-18-99 14:32:21 REC: Log>" then "Carrier anomaly" "Trace program: running" As the grid of numbers appears again a warning appears "System Failure." Over it all is Neo's voice:

"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."

In the Matrix world, Neo hangs up the phone. He looks at the mindless masses around him, puts on his glasses and then looks up. From high above the city we see him take flight. The story is picked up in "The Matrix Reloaded", the second of three Matrix movies.

Elite Squad: The Enemy Within (2010)

The Brazilian most popular cinema character since "Retomada" comes back to screens. Now more mature, more strategic and more solidary, Colonel Nascimento gives BOPE structure and force. Gets the traffic away from lots of favelas. Denies the corrupt politicians to earn with traffic's "truce", only to discover that in the public security of Rio de Janeiro nothing is what it looks like and that the problem to be faced is not restringed to the traffic. The "hole" is lower.
The destiny of the city and of Nascimento intersect in "Elite Squad 2". Since intense researches, the director José Padilha and the writer Bráulio Mantovani constructed an actual history, based in real facts that mingle to the fake history of Nascimento, of his family and of his friends, to talk about Brazilian reality through cinema.
To face the challenge and present the publics a so surrounding history as "Elite Squad", Padilha and the producer Marcos Prado counted on almost the same team and cast from the first movie. An integrated team, which resumed hard and devotely the challenge to continue the saga and a character that marked Brazillian cinema forever.
In "Elite Squad 2", the system is reinvented and discovers how to gain money without the traffic intermediate. Following the way trodden by the system, the public accompanies Nascimento going out of the barrack's limits, revealing the connections between militia and Estate. And the discover's price is high. You don't know where the bullet is from.

Elite Squad (2007)

Captain Roberto Nascimento (Wagner Moura) narrates the film, briefly explaining how the police and the drug lords of Rio de Janeiro cooperate with each other (policemen collect periodic bribes and drug lords are left free to operate) in the 90's.
In 1997, In medias res, officer Captain Oliveira (Marcelo Valle) and his colleagues are shown driving through Morro da Babilônia towards a baile funk. Nascimento and his other colleagues are also shown in their armored car. Meanwhile, novice police officers André Matias (André Ramiro) and Neto Gouveia (Caio Junqueira) are shown riding a motorcycle at the same favela, though not with the other officers. Once they make it to a vantage point, Neto uses the telescope of a sniper rifle to check on the police team as they talk to some drug traffickers. Neto shoots one of them and provokes a deadly gunfight between police and thugs, both sides unaware of where the bullet came from, forcing Mathias and Neto to flee the scene. Nascimento leads his colleagues from BOPE, Rio Special Police Department, heading to the shootout to interfere and save the officers.
Six months earlier, Nascimento and his wife Rosane (Maria Ribeiro) are shown during her pregnancy of their first child. Not wanting to be an absent father when his child is born, Nascimento decides to search for a successor for his role as a captain, since he will be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. This coincides with an operation he will have to lead at Morro dos Prazeres in order to secure the location and clean it of drug dealers, so that Pope John Paul II can spend the night in Archbishop's home, located near the slum buildings and favelas. The operation will require daily trips into the favela filled with heavily armed drug lords, and Nascimento is initially against it, but is forced by his superiors to accept it as his last mission, due to Pope's regards and requirements which cannot be annulled.
Meanwhile, Neto and Matias debut as police officers. Both are honest and try to stay out of corruption, but are soon disillusioned by their corrupt superiors. While Neto starts at the police auto mechanic shop as a supervisor, being in charge of the mechanics who are fixing run-down police cars and bikes with parts from newer cars, Matias is responsible for repairing and listening to the police dispatchers and registering and filing every complaint in his small archive office with two other officers. Both share a small apartment in Rio and are long-time friends and flatmates.
Besides working at the local police, Matias is a Law student at "the best new Law university of Rio", according to Nascimento, where his classmates are shown as well-off young adults that tend to see the police as a repressive unit, while several others are selling marijuana around the campus. He soon befriends Roberta (Fernanda de Freitas), Edu (Paulo Viela) and Maria (Fernanda Machado) (whom he later dates). All three work at an NGO that takes care of poor children from a local favela. Roberta dates Rodrigues, who helps Maria administrate the organization, besides representing a senator who sponsors the NGO. All of them smoke marijuana regularly, with Edu being a salesman at his university for Baiano (Fábio Lago), the local drug lord, who allows the NGO to operate as long as it doesn't interfere with his business or bring police attention. None of the students or dealers are aware of Matias's police career as he keeps it a secret.
Neto is soon tired of working at the mechanic, but fails to be transferred to another department. By riding with his superior Captain Fabio (Milhem Cortaz), he learns about corruption schemes adopted by police officers commonly, owners of small establishments pay periodic bribes to the police in exchange for their presence in front of their places, so they are safer. Another scheme, learned by Matias, is the relocation of dead bodies to other battalion's areas, so that one's criminal statistics will artificially decrease and leave less work to the department charged to the battalion, which Matias learns the hard way when his superiors rage at him for filling their department with files they are too lazy to solve. Also, because the local government had no budget to pay tow trucks, they decided to hire private tows and pay for every towed car - towing vehicles had since become a lucrative activity and corrupt officers are shown to own tow trucks.
Wishing to raise some money to fix many police cars at once, Neto comes up with a plan to steal the bribes Oliveira collects periodically from the drug lords and asks Matias and Fabio to help him. Fabio declines, since he will not have a share in it. The duo succeeds in stealing the money, but Oliveira believes Fabio ordered them to do it and drags him to a baile funk in Babilônia, where he plans to give him over to the gang so they can kill him. However, while Neto and Matias (demoted to cooks at the kitchen for being suspects) confront him, he tells them about the funk party, hinting that he is going to be killed. Neto and Matias follow them and arrive at the vantage point to protect Fabio. When one of the dealers touches his gun, Neto opens fire killing the dealer and provoking a gunfight between the police and dealers. Fabio takes cover behind a bar and engages in a shootout with Olivera's men while his two protectors fight some of the heavily-armed dealers with only two pistols, a rifle and a sub-machine gun, but quickly run out of ammo.
Meanwhile, Nascimento is confronted by a woman claiming the body of her son, who was killed by drug lords after being forced to confess by Nascimento, who was then released knowingly of the danger. Feeling guilty and thinking of his upcoming child, Nascimento gathers some officers and goes after the body. Just as they are torturing a member of the boy's gang into telling them where they have left him, Nascimento is informed of the situation at Babilônia and ordered to interfere. After rescuing the trapped officers at Babilônia, Nascimento meets Matias and Neto and orders them to start loading up bodies, and they are photographed by the press in the process lifting the body of a local drug lord. They also learn that BOPE's training program is about to begin and they soon apply for it. Both decide to give it a try and Fabio joins them to escape from Oliveira. Meanwhile, Rafael, Nascimento's son, is born.
Just when the NGO program is about to start, Maria and her friends are confronted by Baiano, who found out about Matias's job as an officer after seeing his picture at a newspaper carrying the body of the drug lord - whom he reveals to have been his friend and a partner from another neighborhood with whom has been dealing drugs. Baiano threatens them to get rid of Matias and then leaves.
Meanwhile, BOPE's training program takes place over the course of a few weeks in the jungles of Brazil, and proves a tough challenge and all enrolled officers are subjected to severe physical and psychological punishments and are trained under extreme pressure "in order to eliminate the weak and, mainly, punish the corrupt", as Nascimento explains, as the goal is to eliminate all the corrupt and mentally weak officers and only keep the honest and tough ones. Many officers quit the program, including Fabio after he gets foot fungus, but Neto and Matias reach the final level, where they are brought into Nascimento's final operation. Neto also gets a BOPE tattoo.
Matias, now rejected by Maria and her friends, confronts Edu and orders him to arrange a meeting with Romerito, a boy with eyesight problems he met at the NGO and is now willing to provide him with a pair of glasses. Because Matias is aware that he will be killed once inside the slum, he blackmails Edu into arranging the meeting at the base of the slum. However, Neto informs Matias that he arranged a job interview for the same day and hour and offers to go in his place to bring Romerito the glasses.
Edu reveals to Baiano that he had been threatened by Matias, and the drug lord decides to take revenge on Matias for getting his friend killed, as well as interrupting his operations. After giving Romerito his glasses, Neto is taken down by Baiano and his men. Before finishing him off, Baiano sees Neto's tattoo and realizes he is a BOPE officer. Knowing that killing such an officer will invoke a heated search for himself, he kidnaps Roberta and Rodrigues and murders them, shooting Roberta in the head and necklacing Rodrigues, as a punishment for bringing a BOPE officer in his slum. He then goes into hiding in a Rio favela. Neto dies in the hospital soon after.
Seeking revenge, Matias, Nascimento and their fellow BOPE officers start making daily incursions into Baiano's slum to torture criminals into telling them of his whereabouts. One of them reveals that Edu told Baiano about Matias's meeting, which ultimately led to Neto's death. In a rage, Matias interrupts a peace walk, beats Edu up and insults Maria and the others, accusing them of being nothing but spoiled hypocritical drug users working for a dealer to provide for their work. Finally, the officers discover the exact location of Baiano and raid the slum. Baiano tries to escape, but as he runs across the rooftops, he is shot in the leg. Nascimento holds him at gunpoint, but Baiano pleads to the captain not to shoot him in the face, in order to perserve his face "for the wake". Nascimento then walks away, grabs a shotgun, hands it to Matias and tells him to shoot Baiano in the head, as a final test to ascertain Matias's worthiness as his true successor. Matias points the gun to the drug-lord's face, cocks the slide, and shows visible hesitation, but does not point the gun away. As the screen cuts to black a final gunshot goes off.

Fight club

We back out of the webbing of neurons and brain cells as the title credits appear, finding ourselves emerging from the sweat-glistened skin of the protagonist: our narrator (Edward Norton), as he looks down the barrel of a gun that's been stuck in his mouth. The gun is held by a man named Tyler (Brad Pitt) who checks his watch, counting down to 'ground zero' before he asks if the narrator has anything to say. The narrator mumbles through the gun before it's removed and reiterates that he can't think of anything. As Tyler looks out of the high rise window to the dark city below them, the narrator recalls just how he met Tyler before stopping himself and bringing us to the very beginning.
In six months, the narrator hasn't slept. His job as a traveling product recall specialist for a car company doesn't help his insomnia since he must travel often, experiencing bouts of jet lag in addition to the everyday stress of his position, admiring the 'tiny life' of single-serving soap and shampoo at every location. If he can't sleep, he surfs the channels or browses through Ikea catalogs purchasing the next piece of decor to add to his apartment; he's a self-proclaimed slave of consumerism. He goes to his doctor seeking help, but all the doctor can do is suggest that he visit a support group for testicular cancer to see real pain. There, the narrator meets Robert 'Bob' Paulson (Meat Loaf), the 'big moosie' and an ex-bodybuilder and steroid user who suffers from an extreme case of gynecomastia due to hormone treatment after his testicles were removed. Stuck between Bob's enormous breasts, the narrator finally finds peace and bursts into tears. The emotional release allows him to sleep and he subsequently becomes addicted to support groups, mapping out his week attending different meetings and feigning illness. However, the appearance of a woman named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) throws the narrator's 'system' out of whack. He recognizes her as a 'tourist', having seen her at multiple meetings, and he is disturbed by her lies to the point where he can't sleep anymore.
After one meeting, he confronts her. She argues that she's doing exactly what he does and quips that the groups are 'cheaper than a movie and there's free coffee'. Instead of ratting each other out, they agree to split up the week and exchange numbers. Despite his efforts, the narrator's insomnia continues. On a flight back from one of his business trips, the narrator meets Tyler Durden. Tyler offers a unique perspective on emergency procedure manuals in the plane and they strike up a casual conversation. Tyler is a soap salesman, if he's not working nights as a projectionist and slipping bits of porn between reels. The narrator arrives at the baggage claim to discover that his suitcase has been confiscated, most likely due to a mysterious vibration, before he taxis home. However, home, a fifteenth story condominium, has been blasted into the night by what was theorized to be a faulty gas line ignited by a spark on the refrigerator. Having nowhere to go, the narrator finds a business card for Tyler and calls him up. They meet in a parking lot behind a bar where Tyler invites the narrator to ask to come live with him...on one condition: that the narrator hit Tyler as hard as he can. The narrator, though puzzled, complies and they engage in a fist fight before sharing a couple of drinks. The experience is surprisingly euphoric.
Tyler and the narrator engage in more fights over the coming days and they soon attract the attention of other 'tough guys'. Finding their little fighting group growing, Tyler establishes a formal 'fight club' in the basement of the bar where they had their first fight. Membership quickly increases and Tyler and the narrator fashion a series of rules, the first two being 'you do not talk about fight club.' The rules are consistently broken. Time and again, Tyler proves his insightful, if unorthodox and immoral, views on life.
The narrator meets up with Marla by chance, telling her that he hasn't attended any other meetings because he's joined a new support group for men only.
While he still treats her with mild contempt, it's clear that he considers her with interest. When she overdoses on Xanax, she calls the narrator who, tired of her rambling, sets the phone down. He discovers later that Tyler picked up the phone, followed the call to Marla's home, and brought her back to the house where they engaged in vigorous sex, much to the narrator's disgust. The next morning in the kitchen, Marla finds the narrator, who is astonished to see her in his house. After she leaves, Tyler enters the kitchen and reveals that he and Marla had sex the night before. He also gravely makes the narrator promise that he'll never mention Tyler to Marla.
That night the narrator joins Tyler while he steals human fat out of the dumpster of a liposuction clinic. Tyler says that the best fat for making the soap he sells comes from human beings. Back in their kitchen, Tyler shows the narrator how to render tallow from the fat. After explaining a bit about the history of soapmaking, Tyler plants a wet kiss on the back of the narrator's hand and dumps pure lye on the spot, causing a horrific chemical burn. Tyler refuses to let the narrator wash the lye off his hand, saying that water will worsen the burn, and tells the narrator that the burn is a rite of passage -- Tyler has burned his own hand in an identical way. Tyler also forces the narrator to accept allegiance to him and then neutralizes the burn with vinegar. Later, when they meet with a cosmetics salesperson at a department store, the narrator remarks that Tyler's soap sells for a very high price.
With the narrator, he holds a college dropout (Joon Kim) at gunpoint and threatens to kill him if he doesn't pursue his dream of becoming a veterinarian. He allows Lou (Peter Iacangelo), the owner of the bar where their fight club is held, to beat him up before coughing blood all over him and demanding to stay in the basement. Horrified, Lou agrees.
After a period of days, Marla leaves and Tyler introduces the narrator to his newest hobby. Using his proficient skills in soap-making, Tyler has turned the basement of the house into a laboratory where he uses soap and other ingredients to make explosives. Tyler and the narrator continue managing fight club, but this time, at a much different frequency. Receiving flack at work, the narrator finally confronts his boss (Zach Grenier) with knowledge about substandard practice and negotiates to work from home with increased pay to keep his mouth shut. When his boss objects and calls security, the narrator begins to beat himself up severely so that, by the time security arrives, they are led to believe that the narrator's boss did that to him.
Tyler eventually assigns homework to his recruits and preaches to them about the detriments of consumerism and relying on society and authority figures. He proposes to revert back to the time where a man's worth depended on the sweat on his back and where he only used what he needed. This philosophy evolves into what Tyler calls 'Project Mayhem,' and the fighting in basements turns into mischievous acts of vandalism and destruction. Their actions do not go unnoticed, but Tyler manages to show the lead investigator that the very people he's hunting are those that they depend on; waiters, bus drivers, sewer engineers, and more. The dilapidated house where Tyler and the narrator live turns into Mayhem central, where each new recruit is put through a rigorous period of initiation and training and where the latest plans are hatched. While Project Mayhem grows, the narrator begins to feel more and more distant from Tyler and jealousy sets in, making him go so far as to beat up and disfigure one recruit (Jared Leto) because he 'wanted to destroy something beautiful'. When Tyler disappears for a while, the narrator is left at home with an ever increasing band of Mayhem members who watch television and laugh at their publicized acts of vandalism. When Bob, a member after being introduced to Fight Club, is killed during a botched sabotage operation, the narrator seeks to disband the group before things get out of control. He tries to find Tyler and discovers a list of phone numbers he recently used. The narrator trails the list all over the country, discovering that fight clubs have sprouted everywhere.
At one particular bar, the bartender addresses the narrator as 'sir' which prompts the narrator to ask if he knows him. The bartender, after being assured that he's not being put through a test, tells the narrator that he is Tyler Durden. In shock, the narrator returns to his hotel room and calls up Marla, asking if they've ever had sex. Though irritated, Marla confirms their relationship and states that she knows his name as Tyler Durden. Marla hangs up and Tyler suddenly appears in the room and confronts the narrator, confirming that they are, indeed, one person. The narrator has insomnia; he can't sleep so, whenever he thinks he is (or at random parts of a day), Tyler's persona takes over. The epiphany causes the narrator to faint. When he wakes up, he finds another phone list beside him with calls from all over the country.
He returns to his home to find it completely empty but one billboard yields a display of folders detailing certain buildings within the financial district. He finds that each one has been infiltrated by members of Project Mayhem and that Tyler is planning on destroying them, thereby erasing credit card company records and 'wiping the slate clean'. In a panic, the narrator grabs all the information and reports himself to the local police. However, after telling the inspector everything he knows and being left with two officers, the narrator discovers that the officers are Mayhem members and they tell him that they were instructed by him to 'take the balls' of anyone who interfered with Project Mayhem...even him. The narrator manages to escape and runs to one of the buildings set for demolition. He finds an unmarked van in the parking garage filled with nitroglycerin and attempts to disarm the bomb. Tyler appears and goads him but the narrator successfully disarms the bomb. He and Tyler engage in a fierce fight which appears oddly on the surveillance cameras since the narrator is only fighting himself. The Tyler personality wins and the narrator 'brings himself' to another building where they can safely watch the destruction.
This brings us back to where we started. The narrator, with the gun in his mouth, mumbles again and tells Tyler, "I still can't think of anything". Tyler smiles and says, "Ah, flashback humor". The narrator begs that Tyler abandon the project but Tyler is adamant. He professes that what he's doing is saving mankind from the oppression of consumerism and unnecessary luxuries and that there won't even have to be any casualties; the people who work in the buildings are all Mayhem members, completely aware of the plan. Near breaking point, the narrator comes to realize that whatever Tyler does, he can do. He sees Tyler with the gun in his hand and realizes that it's actually in his hand. He puts it up to his own chin and tells Tyler to listen to him. He says that his eyes are open and then puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The bullet shoots out of the side of his jaw and Tyler is 'killed' with a gaping wound to the back of his head. As the narrator recovers, members of Project Mayhem arrive with snacks and Marla in tow (Tyler had previously instructed her to be brought to them).
Seeing 'Tyler's' wounds, the Mayhem members leave Marla alone with him to fetch some medical supplies. 'Tyler' stands with Marla and tells her that everything's going to be fine as the first detonation ignites the building in front of them. The others on the block soon follow suit and 'Tyler' takes Marla's hand in his as the buildings collapse and the film reel ends.