The Prestige (2006)

The Prestige begins with shots of several dozen top hats inexplicably strewn about in a forest.
Cutter (Michael Caine), in voiceover, explains the three parts of a magic trick while performing a disappearing bird trick for a little girl. Part one is the pledge, where the magician shows you something ordinary, like a bird. Part two is the turn, where he does something extraordinary, like make the bird disappear. But this isn't enough. There always has to be a third act, the prestige, where you have a twist, and bring the bird back. Only then will the audience applaud.
Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), stage name "the Great Danton," attempts a transporting trick that involves walking under a giant electrical machine with a Tesla coil and then disappearing through a trapdoor. Except that he falls straight into a giant tank of water that has been placed under the stage, and is automatically locked inside. A man in the audience, who we shortly learn is fellow magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), stage name "the Professor," forces his way beneath the stage in time to see Angier drown.
After this introduction, we follow three timelines at once. In the present day (19th century England), Borden is on trial for murdering Angier, who we learn was his greatest rival. Cutter is revealed to be Angier's engineer, the man who builds the machinery for his tricks, and the little girl is Borden's daughter Jess (Samantha Mahurin).
Cutter confides to the judge in a private meeting that the machine Angier was using wasn't built by him, but by "a wizard," and it legitimately did what it appeared to do.
The trial does not go well for Borden, and he faces execution. Later, in jail, Borden is approached by the solicitor for a collector, Lord Caldlow, who is interested in buying his secrets, particularly the secret of Borden's famous "Transported Man" trick. The same collector has also bought all of Angier's equipment and props. When Borden refuses, the solicitor threatens that Jess is in danger of being declared an indigent orphan and sent to the workhouse unless his patron intervenes. As an incentive, he gives Borden Angier's diary, which documents the time he spent in Colorado trying to learn Bordon's secret.
Borden's reading of the diary in prison frames the second part of the narrative, which is from Angier's point of view. Angier is on a train in the Rocky Mountains, headed to Colorado Springs, Colorado, on his way to see the notorious scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Disembarking at the train station in town, Angier is taken by coach to the inn, where he gets an unusually warm welcome from the hotel staff. The manager tells Angier that he's their first guest of the winter. Angier asks if a ride can be arranged to take him up to Pike's Peak the next day, but is told that the peak is closed for experimentation.
The next day, Angier is dropped off on a dirt track in the woods, at the farthest point the carriage can take him. He makes his way up to the fence surrounding a clearing. He is immediately thrown back as the fence is electrified. Tesla's assistant Alley (Andy Serkis) comes out of the gatehouse, thinking at first that Angier is another intruder, then recognizes him, saying he's seen Angier's London show. Angier says he's come to ask Tesla to build him a machine like one that he believes Tesla built for Borden -- the machine that allows Borden to do the "Transported Man" trick. Alley says he can't help Angier, and Angier heads back to the hotel, disappointed. Alley takes satisfaction when Angier, back turned to him, correctly guesses that Alley is holding a gold watch in his hand.
Angier sits down in his room and begins decoding a diary he stole from Borden, which is encrypted with a particular five-letter-word passcode (important later).
Borden's diary frames the third thread of the narrative, which goes back to the very beginning.
Angier and Borden are partners, up-and-comers working for an elderly magician named Milton (Ricky Jay). Milton also employs Cutter and Angier's wife Julia (Piper Perabo). Their best trick is an underwater escape act. In this act, Angier and Borden are planted in the audience and called up to the stage to tie Julia's wrists and ankles before she is hoisted up on a pulley and dropped into a water tank. A curtain descends on the tank, and Julia slips the knot around her wrists and escapes using a trick lock on the tank. As a safety precaution, Cutter is positioned stage right, behind the curtains, with a stopwatch and an axe.
Angier and Borden are on friendly terms, though Angier is somewhat concerned that Borden might be using a knot that is more difficult for Julia to slip. We learn that Angier is using an alias so he won't embarrass his prominent family with his theatrical pursuits, while Borden and his engineer Fallon come from a rougher background. Borden is much more ambitious than Angier, isn't afraid to do dirtier tricks, and wishes Milton would try more dangerous tricks, like a bullet catch. Borden claims to have created a trick that will be his masterpiece.
One day, Cutter sends Angier and Borden to watch a Chinese magician, Chung Ling Soo (Chao Li Chi), and figure out exactly how the man makes a heavy goldfish bowl (filled with water and goldfish) appear from under a cloth. Borden immediately deduces that the old magician is really putting up a front: he's holding the bowl between his legs under his skirt, hiding the strength required to accomplish the trick by always appearing frail in public. Borden admires the way the Chinese magician goes to such an extreme that he "lives" his performance at home. Angier is surprised, since when he tries holding an empty goldfish bowl at home, he has a hard time carrying it.
As his prize for working out the fishbowl trick, Borden gets a few minutes onstage assisting Milton during a performance, where he performs a trick where a bird and cage disappear simultaneously, and then the bird reappears. A boy in the audience becomes upset when he realizes the bird in the cage isn't the same as the one that reappears. Borden tries to help the boy's aunt, a woman named Sarah (Rebecca Hall), to console him. After the show, we discover that the bird in the cage has to die to achieve the illusion, as Borden is seen tossing the original bird in the trash. Borden and Sarah strike up an acquaintance and become romantically involved.
Disaster strikes during the next performance of the underwater escape. Borden ties, stops, and then reties the knot around Julia's hands as they prepare to put her on the hoist. She can't manage to slip the knot underwater, and Cutter isn't able to break the glass of the tank in time to save her. Julia dies onstage, leaving Angier devastated and Milton ruined. During the funeral, Angier confronts Borden, asking which knot he tied. His answer is that he "doesn't know," which Angier cannot accept. This is the beginning of their bitter rivalry.
Borden and Angier both strike out on their own, but there are obvious tensions. Borden marries Sarah and starts doing his own act, the climax of which is a bullet-catching trick. The secret, as Borden explains to his pregnant wife, is that the bullet is palmed, so that it's already in the magician's hand when the gun is fired. All that comes out of the pistol is gunpowder. But magicians have died during the trick because of audience members sticking buttons or their own bullets into the guns.
Borden is next seen performing for a very rowdy audience. After whipping out the gun to silence the audience, he asks for volunteers, then hands the gun to a man who is actually a disguised Angier. Angier, knowing the trick, deliberately puts his own bullet into the gun, and confronts Borden again about the knot he tied. When Borden's answer is still "I don't know," Angier shoots him, blowing the ends of two fingers off his left hand and jeopardizing Borden's career. Sarah encourages him to quit magic. She isn't happy that Borden keeps secrets from her as part of his trade. Their marriage is an uneven one, and she claims that when he says that he loves her, she can tell on some days he doesn't mean it. Borden admits this is true and they make a sad little game of it: some days he loves her, some days he loves the magic.
One day at a bar, Angier is approached by Cutter, whom no one will hire because of his association with Milton. They start their own act, with Angier performing as "the Great Danton" (a name suggested by his late wife and rejected at the time for being "too French"). His lovely assistant is a blonde bombshell named Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson). Because Angier doesn't want to get dirty, Cutter comes up with a new version of the "disappearing-bird-in-the-cage" trick where members of the audience keep their hands on the cage as it disappears. The trick involves mechanical gadgetry that Angier wears under his suit to fold away and retract the cage. Best of all, the bird is unharmed.
Angier debuts the trick at his show. The audience is negative at first, complaining that they've seen the trick numerous times, but Angier says he'll make it a bit harder. He asks for two volunteers to come up from the audience. Two are selected: an elderly woman and a man who is actually a disguised Borden. Although Angier recognizes Borden the moment he puts his hand on the cage, he is unable to stop Borden from jamming the machinery. The cage malfunctions, causing the bird to be killed onstage and the other volunteer's hand to be caught. The theater owner cancels Angier's booking and Angier's reputation is left in tatters.
Cutter sends Angier to a science lecture to get some new ideas. Nicola Tesla is preparing to demonstrate several huge, fantastic Tesla coils, generating immense electric charges that seem to fill the room. Because of the perceived danger, the demonstration is canceled by the authorities. But Angier spots Borden in the crowd and follows him, learning about Sarah and their new baby, Jessica. Fed by jealousy of Borden's happiness, which Angier feels should have been his, Angier's obsession over the rivalry grows.
Intercut with this storyline are Angier's attempts to meet with Tesla and commission his own transporter machine. Tesla has supplied all of Colorado Springs with electrical service in exchange for being allowed full use of the generators at night (when the residents are sleeping) to conduct experiments. He's even rigged up his own electric fence. When Tesla finally agrees to build the machine for Angier, he warns that it will take a great deal of time and money.
In Borden's diary, we learn that both magicians start performing again. Borden, as "the Professor," has a dramatic new trick called the Transported Man that has been getting him attention. Angier and Olivia, who is falling in love with her magician, watch it repeatedly and are unable to tell how he does it. The trick appears amazingly simple: Borden gets into a cabinet on stage right and gets out of another cabinet on stage left. Cutter insists that he must be using a double, but Olivia insists that she can see the bandaged stumps on his left hand both when Borden disappears and when he reappears, even though Borden wears padded gloves to hide his short fingers.
Angier and Cutter copy the trick and add the bit of showmanship and flair that Borden's version is missing. In his version, Angier throws his hat across the stage and walks through a door on one side of the stage, secretly drops through a trapdoor hidden behind the door frame onto a padded cushion, while a double simultaneously is hoisted out of another trapdoor behind the door on the other side of the stage to catch the hat. They hire an out-of-work actor named Gerald Root (also played by Hugh Jackman) to be Angier's double. He's a drunk and a lout, but he can perform.
Their act, dubbed "the New Transported Man," is an amazing success. But there's one small drawback: Angier has to be the one who sells the buildup of the trick, so he's always under the stage during the prestige and misses out on the audience reaction. Root is getting all the glory, even if Cutter makes sure that he keeps a low profile so the secret doesn't get out. Even worse, Angier still doesn't know how Borden does his version of the trick.
Angier decides to send Olivia to work for Borden and spy on him to get the secret. Olivia, who is in love with him, doesn't like the idea, but does as Angier asks and becomes Borden's assistant. To gain his trust, she tells Borden how Angier's trick is done and offers to help him improve on his own act.
Meanwhile, a big problem develops -- with Root, of course. Root realizes that he can control Angier because he's necessary for Angier's biggest trick, and demands money. It turns out that Borden has been influencing him, and Cutter thinks Olivia may have betrayed them. Borden's version of the "Transported Man" has improved, and now includes one of Tesla's electricity-generating machines. Cutter gets Angier to agree to phase out the trick.
Root's performances get more intentionally sloppy, and one night he simply isn't there at all. When Angier goes through the trapdoor, the cushion to break his fall has been removed, and he breaks his leg. He watches Borden pop out of Root's trapdoor and proceed to humiliate him, suspending a tied-up Root from the ceiling with an advertisement for Borden's own act, before running out of the theater to his own show.
Angier confronts Olivia, who insists that Borden's trick is accomplished using a double, because she's seen makeup and wigs lying around. He deduces that such items are planted by Borden as misdirection for her. When he questions her loyalty, she produces Borden's encrypted diary as proof that she didn't betray him. However, the five-letter-word to decrypt the diary is still necessary. Angier and Cutter kidnap Fallon, Borden's engineer, and nail him in a box to hold for ransom.
When Borden comes to the meeting place in a cemetery to get Fallon back, Angier demands to know the secret of Borden's "Transported Man" in exchange. Borden writes down one word, "Tesla," which will decode the diary, and suggests that he's teleporting using a machine Tesla built. Borden is then told that Fallon has been buried alive, and Angier asks him how fast he can dig.
Angier leaves for America to track down Tesla, for the second section of the narrative, while Cutter stays behind. He was shot by Fallon in the shoulder while nailing the box up, and doesn't want to pursue the secret of the trick any further. Tesla refuses to meet with Angier, and the latter learns that Tesla has run out of funding and is being hounded by his rival, Thomas Edison. Angier assures Tesla that money is no object and Tesla tells him in turn that the machine is already being built.
Borden's private life starts falling apart. He's having an affair with Olivia, and his wife is drinking because of their deteriorating marriage. At one point, he instructs Fallon to deal with his family while going to see Olivia. He appears to genuinely care for both women.
Sarah eventually hangs herself in Borden's workroom, after trying to confront her husband about one of his secrets.
In Colorado, Tesla and Alley have been unsuccessfully testing the machine they built for Angier. They've zapped his top hat time after time with an impressive electrical apparatus, but the hat won't move an inch.
Angier comes to the end of Borden's diary and realizes that Olivia actually did betray him. She was in love with Angier, but since he used her as a spy without concern for her feelings, she knew she didn't have a future with him. She gave Angier the diary to prove her loyalty to Borden, who wrote it for Angier. The last entry in the diary tells him that "Tesla" was the keyword to decrypt the writing, which is true, but it's not the secret to the trick at all. Tesla never built a teleportation machine for Borden, and Angier has been sent on a wild goose chase.
He goes back to Tesla's lab several times, where the scientist insists that he is capable of building a teleporter, but he never built one for Borden. He tests the machine again, this time using Alley's precious black cat. Alley warns Tesla not to harm the cat. Alley, using the cat's beautiful collar, chains the cat to the spot for the experiment, as Tesla thinks it may be a matter of needing something living. The cat does not like the procedure and hisses, but is completely unharmed. However, the cat doesn't move at all, so Angier leaves in disgust. Then the cat is freed and runs out the front door.
As Angier walks back through the woods, we revisit the first shot of the movie: a heap of top hats on the forest floor. And this time, there are two identical (proved by the collar) black cats among them. The machine has been working all along, but instead of moving an object from one place to the other, it creates a duplicate at the destination. Tesla and Alley are amazed, moving from hat to hat and measuring them with calipers. When Angier leaves, Tesla tells him to take his hat. He asks which hat is his and Tesla, smiling for the first time, says "They are all your hat."
Tesla and Alley continue to refine the machine now that they know how it works. They have to leave suddenly in the middle of the night when their lab is burned down by Edison's goons. However, in the care of the hotel manager, Tesla leaves a large, trapezoidal wooden box for Angier, containing the components of the machine with instructions in a note. Tesla's note cautions Angier that using the machine is inviting Angier's doom and warns him to destroy the machine rather than use it.
Angier takes the box back to England and reunites with Cutter. He's ready to perform again, but this time he's extremely secretive about his methods, hiring blind stage hands and not allowing Cutter backstage at any time. As he demonstrates to an influential promoter, he is zapped with electricity from the machine's Tesla coil, disappears from plain sight, and then reappears up in the balcony, appearing to traverse the distance instantaneously.
The show is a hit and Borden is mystified. All he can tell is that Angier's trick involves a trapdoor, but he has no idea what's going on under the stage. Every night, he can see the blind stagehands removing a box from the theater.
A few nights later, at another performance, Borden sneaks under the stage, as we saw in the prologue, and watches Angier fall through the trapdoor into the tank and drown. It's clear that Borden didn't have anything to do with it, and he actually tries to save his rival's life by attempting to break through the glass of the tank with a pipe. Cutter runs down under the stage and gets the wrong idea. Borden is arrested. Angier is confirmed dead with Cutter identifying the body.
In his prison cell back in the present day, Borden comes to the end of Angier's diary, which gloats that Borden is being blamed for his death. Borden believes the diary must be a fake, until he's called out of his cell to say goodbye to Jess and meet the collector who wants to buy his secrets.
The collector, Lord Caldlow, is Angier. Borden is dismayed that he would go so far and involve his child in their rivalry. Caldlow/Angier refuses to help clear his name, and won't even take the secret of Borden's "Transported Man" when bribed, telling him "mine is better." Borden swears he'll get out and have his revenge, promising Jess he'll come for her.
Cutter discovers Angier alive when he calls on Lord Caldlow to offer him the machine, hoping to convince him to destroy it. Cutter quickly realizes that Angier is remorseless about framing Borden. He says he's figured out the secret to Angier's version of "the Transported Man" and thinks he's gone too far.
Borden has one last visitor: Fallon. Borden tells him what he's learned, gives him the rubber ball he sometimes uses for tricks, and tells Fallon to go "live for both of us."
Cutter brings the machine to Angier, and as he leaves, we see Fallon arrive to confront Angier. This is intercut with scenes of Borden being hanged. Borden dies just as Fallon shoots Angier. The camera pans up to reveal that "Fallon" has two missing fingers and Borden's face.
Angier finally realizes that the secret of Borden's "Transported Man" was simple: Borden had a twin brother, and they were switching back and forth between the double roles of Borden and Fallon. One of them loved Sarah, and one of them loved Olivia. They both lived half of the same life, never telling anyone in order to maintain the illusion. In a flashback, it is shown that the unmutilated twin willingly let his brother amputate the ring and pinkie fingers on his left hand so that they could make the swaps without anyone telling the difference. Sarah, in a scene we've seen before, is puzzled and worried as to why the wound looks new and bruised again; Borden distracts her by slamming a fist down and saying they can't afford a doctor.
Angier, who only ever cared about the glory of wowing an audience, went to far more terrible extremes. In his "New Transported Man," he knowingly created a double of himself every time he used Tesla's machine, and he rigged the trapdoor to drown the one onstage. He never knew if he would be the prestige or the man in the box. The room where the machine is being kept is filled with water tanks, all of which hold a drowned double of Angier for every time he performed the trick. Several times, he mutters to himself a line we've heard before in a different context: "No one cares about the man in the box."
Angier falls and kicks over the lantern as he dies from his wound, and the resulting fire ensures the machine and all the evidence are destroyed.
We loop back to the trick with the small birds in the opening scene (though this time, no birds are harmed) while Cutter reiterates the three parts of a magic trick. As Cutter has told Jess Borden, "before the audience can clap, you have to make the disappeared man come back." On cue, her father appears to reclaim her. She runs into his arms, and Borden and Cutter exchange nods.

The Silence of the Lambs

Promising FBI Academy student Clarice Starling is pulled from her training at the FBI Training Facility at Quantico, Virginia by Jack Crawford of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, who tasks her with presenting a VICAP questionnaire to the notorious Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant forensic psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial murderer. After learning the assignment relates to the pursuit of vicious serial killer Buffalo Bill, Starling travels to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and is led by Dr. Frederick Chilton to Hannibal Lecter, a sophisticated, cultured man restrained behind thick glass panels and windowless stone walls. Although initially pleasant and courteous, Lecter grows impatient with Starling's attempts at "dissecting" him and viciously rebuffs her. As Starling departs, another patient flings fresh semen onto her face, enraging Lecter who calls Starling back and offers a riddle containing information about a former patient. The solved riddle leads to a rent-a-storage lot where the severed head of Benjamin Raspail is found. Starling returns to Lecter, who links Raspail to Buffalo Bill and who offers to help profile Buffalo Bill if he is transferred to a facility far from the venomous, careerist Dr. Chilton.
Hours and miles away, Buffalo Bill abducts Catherine Martin, the daughter of United States Senator Ruth Martin. Starling is pulled from Quantico and accompanies Crawford to West Virginia, where the body of Bill's recently-discovered victim resides, and where Starling helps perform the autopsy and extracts the chrysalis of a Death's-head Hawkmoth from the victim's throat. At Quantico, as news of Catherine Martin's abduction sweeps the country, Crawford authorizes Starling to offer Hannibal Lecter a fake deal promising a prison transfer if he provides information that helps profile Buffalo Bill and rescue Catherine Martin. Instead, Lecter begins a game of quid pro quo with Starling, offering comprehensive clues and insights about Buffalo Bill in exchange for events from Starling's traumatic childhood. Unaware to both Starling and Lecter, Dr. Frederick Chilton tapes the conversation and after revealing Starling's deal as a sham, offers to transfer Lecter in exchange for a deal of his own making. Lecter agrees and following a flight to Tennessee reveals Buffalo Bill's real name, physical description and past address to Senator Martin and her entourage of FBI agents and Justice Department officials.
As the manhunt begins, Starling travels to Lecter's special cell in a local Tennessee courthouse, where she confronts him about the false information he gave the Senator. Lecter refuses Starling's pleas and demands she finish her story surrounding her worst childhood memory. After recounting her arrival at a relative's farm, the horror of discovering their lamb slaughterhouse and her fruitless attempts at rescuing the lambs, Lecter rebuffs her, leaving her with her case file before she is escorted out of the building by security guards. Later that evening, Lecter escapes from his cell. The local police storm the floor, discovering one guard barely alive and the other disemboweled and strung up on the walls. Paramedics transport the survivor to an ambulance and speed off while a SWAT team searches the building for Lecter. As the team discover a body in the elevator shaft, the survivor in the ambulance peels off his own face, revealing Lecter in disguise, who kills the paramedics and escapes to the airport.
After notified of Lecter's escape, Starling pores over her case file, analyzing Lecter's annotations before realizing that the first victim, Frederica Bimmel, knew Bill in real life before he killed her. Starling travels to Bimmel's hometown and discovers that Bimmel was a tailor and has dresses with templates identical to the patches of skin removed from Buffalo Bill's victims. Realizing that Buffalo Bill is a tailor fashioning a "woman suit" of real skin, she telephones Crawford, who is already on the way to make an arrest, having cross-referenced Lecter's notes with Johns Hopkins Hospital and finding a man named Jame Gumb. Crawford instructs Starling to continue interviewing Bimmel's friends while he leads a SWAT team to Gumb's business address in Calumet City, Illinois. Starling's interviews lead to the house of "Jack Gordon", who Starling soon realizes is actually Gumb, and draws her weapon just as Gumb disappears into his basement. Starling pursues him, discovering a screaming Catherine Martin in the dry well just before the lights in the basement go out, leaving her in complete darkness. Gumb stalks Starling in the dark with night vision goggles and prepares to shoot her when Starling, hearing the machinations of his revolver, swivels around shoots Gumb dead.
Days later at the FBI Academy graduation party, Starling receives a phone call from Hannibal Lecter, now in the Bahamas. As Lecter assures Starling he has no plans to pursue her, he excuses himself from the phone call, remarking that he's "having an old friend for dinner", before hanging up and following Chilton through the streets of the village.

Seven

In an unidentified city of constant rain and urban decay, Detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is preparing to retire and leave the horrors of the city. Before he retires, he is partnered with Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt), a cocky, young and short-tempered cop from Springfield, a comparatively small town. The two investigate the murder of a highly obese man (Bob Mack) who was fed spaghetti until a kick to his stomach burst him open. Somerset investigates the murder while Mills is given the murder case of Defense Attorney Eli Gould (Gene Borkan), with GREED written in Gould's blood on the floor. Gould was forced to carve a pound of flesh off of his body, and subsequently bled to death. The police captain gives Somerset an evidence container with three slivers of a plastic-like material found in the stomach of the obese man, which he was forced to consume along with the spaghetti. Going to the victim's house, Somerset finds three groove marks in front of the refrigerator and finds that the plastic-like slivers fit into them perfectly. Knowing the slivers resulted from the refrigerator being moved, Somerset looks behind it. He finds the word GLUTTONY written behind the fridge in grease, along with a note containing a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost. Somerset theorizes that a serial killer is basing his crimes on the Seven Deadly Sins, with five more to go.
To give Mills and Somerset a chance to get along with each other, Mills's wife, Tracy Mills (Gwyneth Paltrow) invites Somerset over for dinner. While they are eating, a train passes by on the track nearby, making the building and all its contents and inhabitants tremble: the couple mention that that's why the realtor was so nervous for them to see the apartment quickly. After Tracy goes to bed, Mills and Somerset examine case evidence from the two scenes. They find a picture of Gould's wife with blood painted around the eyes. Realizing that this means she is supposed to spot something about the murder scene that nobody else would, the detectives have a distraught Mrs. Gould (Julie Araskog) look at the pictures in a safe house and she notices an abstract painting that is upside down. Brushing powder on the wall behind the painting, Somerset finds fingerprints outlining the words "Help Me."
After running the fingerprints through AFIS, the prints are traced a day later to a pedophile named Victor (Michael Reid MacKay), who escaped conviction for the rape of a minor due to the efforts of his lawyer, Eli Gould, the GREED victim. SWAT and the detectives raid his apartment and find Victor to be the SLOTH victim, having been bound to his bed for one year to the day, as evidenced by pictures at the scene; one taken every day from the day he is discovered. Remarkably, he is still alive but suffering from severe physical and mental deterioration. His hand was cut off and pushed onto the wall behind the painting to leave the prints. Mills and Somerset ask to interrogate Victor in the hospital, but the doctor says that he's chewed off his tongue and that "his brain is mush" from the ordeal.
That evening, Tracy calls Somerset and requests that he meet with her. The next morning, Somerset meets Tracy in a diner where she tells him how miserable she is in "the city." At Somerset's urging, Tracy reveals the truth of her request to meet: she is pregnant, afraid of raising a child where they now live and afraid of telling David. Somerset advises her to tell her husband only if she decides to have it, and he sets himself as an example: he insisted his partner have an abortion, that he finally convinced her, and now he is remorseful.
Later that day, using a contact in the FBI, Somerset gets a library list of people who have borrowed books related to the Seven Deadly Sins. The list leads the detectives to a man named John Doe, whose apartment they visit soon after. Doe, his face hidden, sees them as he comes home, pulls out a gun and begins shooting. After a short chase, Doe hits Mills with a tire iron, keeps him subdued at gunpoint, but lets him live and suddenly flees.
While examining Doe's apartment (after bribing a resident to claim she had called the detectives about Doe) they find notebooks of his thoughts, trophies of the crimes and a picture of Mills fighting off Doe, who, at the time, was posing as a press photographer. John Doe calls the apartment and congratulates the detectives on them finding him and apologizes for hitting Mills, also telling the young detective that he "admires" him greatly. Their actions, he says, have caused him to change his plans, and he hangs up. They also find a photo of a young woman, a prostitute (Cat Mueller), who they believe may be the next victim. A receipt leads them to a S&M leather shop where Doe placed an order for a sexual device. The girl is soon found dead in a room with LUST written on the door. Also found in the room is a visibly shaken man (Leland Orser) forced by Doe at gunpoint to wear and use the device, a large strap-on dildo with a blade attachment, to rape and kill the girl. The owner of the place, Wild Billy (Martin Serene) can give no clue to the physical aspect or the briefcase John Doe used, as every customer used to carry special clothes or equipment into the place.
The next morning, a model (Heidi Schanz) is found dead with PRIDE written on the crime scene. Her nose has been cut off ("to spite her face") upon which Doe gave her the choice of suicide by sleeping pills or calling for help and living scarred. She chose the former, and swallowed the pills. As the detectives return to the police headquarters, John Doe walks up to them, his hands bleeding (he shaved the skin from his fingertips to avoid identification) and gives himself up. He talks to his lawyer and agrees that if he can take Somerset and Mills to two more bodies, he will confess to all the murders. Wanting a confession, the detectives agree. Somerset and Mills both have microphones taped to their chests so the rest of the task force can monitor their conversation with Doe. During the prep, Mills tries to tell Somerset about a concern he has with Tracy, but can't bring himself to talk fully about it.
As the three travel to the desert outskirts of the city in a car, they are trailed by a police helicopter for security (flown by John Santin and James Deeth). Doe explains his rationale behind the murders as a way of showing people the truly evil nature of the world, as well as his desire to punish the wicked. He goes on to say he will be remembered and admired for what he has done, having been "chosen" to do so. As Doe speaks, the disgusted Mills is driven to rage, and screams at Doe while Somerset remains calmly worried.
Once they reach the outskirts, Doe directs them to a specific spot near some power cable towers. The detectives walk Doe out to an open spot. After a few moments, a van appears and Somerset stops it several hundred yards away, leaving Mills behind to cover Doe. The driver (Richmond Arquette) claims someone paid him $500 to deliver a box to Mills at this place at exactly 7 o'clock. As Somerset opens the box, he recoils in horror from what he sees inside. As he races back to Mills and desperately yells for him to throw his gun away, Doe states to Mills that he admires Mills's life, to the point of being envious of his wife and the love they share. He states that he tried to "play husband" with Tracy that day but it didn't work out and he took a souvenir instead: "her pretty head." It was Doe's plan that Mills will kill him, as Doe himself was guilty of ENVY, as he became jealous of Mills's simpler life. He also reveals to Mills that Tracy was pregnant, and that she begged to be kept alive for the child's sake. Mills, despite the pleading of Somerset, is so devastated by his wife's death and the knowledge that she was pregnant, that he empties his gun into Doe. In killing Doe in vengeance, Mills comes to embody the sin of WRATH, completing Doe's "masterpiece."
After a catatonic Mills is taken away, their captain tells Somerset that they'll "take care of Mills," knowing the jury will condemn him. Somerset answers, "Whatever he needs". He also tells his captain that he will be "around;" implying that he will be staying on the force. As the camera pans out from the desert, the movie ends with Somerset quoting Ernest Hemingway: "'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.' I agree with the second part."

The Other Side of the Tracks

The synopsis contains information that may give away important plot points. You may not want to read any further if you've not already seen this title.
Ten years after a tragic train accident killed his girlfriend, Josh still lives in the same run-down house and works at the same diner, haunted by memories. His buddy, back in town for their high school reunion, tries to wake Josh from his painful past, telling him to "move on," while a young waitress who looks exactly like his girlfriend did shows up and sparks an instant attraction.
The diner's owner is having financial difficulties. Her daughter's lover is a nurse who is taking care of the daughter's uncle, who apparently has been unconscious but stable for a long time. The daughter half-seriously asks her to "pull the plug." The nurse seeks counsel from her lover's mother, who tells her that sometimes you have to let go. Josh's buddy urges Josh to take an interest in the daughter, which Josh finds absurd because of her obvious lesbianism.
The waitress sees Josh's mementos of his girlfriend and weeps. She begs Josh to leave the diner. She and Josh's buddy know each other but keep their mysterious connection secret from Josh. She seduces Josh but afterwards he has a vision of her as a corpse. Finally, in a flashback to the train accident, we see that Josh, his buddy, and his girlfriend were together in a car when the train hit them. An old newspaper clipping shows that both his buddy and girlfriend died. Josh walks onto the train track as a train approaches. The scene shifts to the hospital, where the nurse's patient has just died. Apparently, Josh was the uncle. The buddy and girlfriend have a cryptic conversation about Josh being gone and neither of them winning.

Inception (2010)

A young man, exhausted and delirious, washes up on a beach, looking up momentarily to see two young children (Claire Geare and Magnus Nolan) playing in the sand before he passes out. An armed guard (Tohoru Masamune) discovers him and has him brought to a large, seaside palace where the proprietor, an elderly Japanese man, is told of the stranger's arrival. The only objects found on him were a handgun and a brass top. The old man allows the stranger entry. He is dragged in and given some food which he struggles to eat as the old man picks up the brass top and says, "You remind me of someone...a man I met in a half remembered dream. He was possessed of some radical notions." The stranger looks up in realization as the scene shifts...
Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner, Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), speak to a prospective client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), in an eerily similar dining room about the services they provide; specifically protection against thieves specialized in extracting valuable information from a subject while they're dreaming. Cobb explains that, when one is asleep, one's mind is vulnerable to attack and what he can do is train Saito's mind to subconsciously defend against extractors to protect whatever secrets he may be hiding. He backs up his claim by revealing that he is the most skilled extractor there is and knows all the tricks involved. Appearing skeptical, Saito stands to leave, telling Cobb he will consider his proposition, and exits the room to join a small party in the main hall.
Arthur casts Cobb a glance, saying, He knows as the room begins to shake. They walk to an outside balcony where other partygoers mingle and Arthur points to a woman nearby, asking Cobb what she's doing here. Cobb assures him that he'll take care of it and to proceed with the job. He knows where Saito's secrets are; he glanced over at a safe the minute Cobb mentioned the word.
Cobb approaches the woman who asks if he misses her. He responds that he does but can't trust her anymore. They retreat to a private room where Cobb ties a rope to the leg of a chair and tosses the end out of the window. He tells the woman, Mal (Marion Cotillard), to take a seat as she asks him if the children miss her. Cobb pauses a moment before saying, "I can't imagine." He then repels out the window to a ledge below, nearly falling when Mal leaves her seat. He breaks into the room below and accesses the safe, swapping out the manila folder inside for another, as the lights in the room turn on. He turns with his gun out to see Mal aiming a gun at him and standing beside Saito and a guard holding Arthur. Cobb asks Saito if 'she told him' as he slides his gun across the table. Saito responds, "That you are here to steal from me, or that we are actually asleep?"
This proves true: the three of them are hooked up to a PASIV (Portable Automated Somnacin IntraVenous) device which feeds them the sleep drug Somnacin, keeping them all asleep and allowing dream-sharing. They are watched over by Nash (Lukas Haas), another of Cobb's partners. He checks Saito, sleeping on a bed, before going into another room to check on Arthur and Cobb, both asleep in chairs. Cobb's chair sits above a tub full of water. Explosions and shouts outside get closer as a mob of rioters moves down the street.
Inside the dream, Mal holds her gun to Arthur's head but Cobb tells her the threat is empty, as he hands the manila folder over to Saito, since shooting him will only wake him up. Mal smiles in agreement but says that pain is only in the mind and perceived as real as she shoots Arthur in the knee, causing him to cry out. Cobb dives across the table and retrieves his gun before shooting Arthur in the head. He then dashes out of the room under gunfire from Saito's guards.
Arthur wakes up and instructs Nash that things are falling apart but Cobb still has time to finish the job before he checks on the still sleeping Saito.
Saito frantically opens the manila folder as the dream begins to collapse and shouts in anger as he finds blank pages inside. Cobb manages to hide away for a moment to look at the contents of the real folder which he'd hidden in his jacket, gazing over the confidential files as the building crumbles around him. Saito is crushed by debris and wakes up in the apartment, unseen to Arthur as he reaches under his pillow. Arthur tells Nash to wake Cobb by giving him the kick. Nash pushes Cobb backwards into the tub and, as he hits the water, Cobb's dream is flooded with massive waves cascading through the windows before he wakes up. Saito, having reached under his pillow for his gun, grabs Arthur but is subdued by Cobb who tells him that not all the information he needed was in the file he stole. Saito laughs and claims that all the information he had was in the file because he knew of Cobb's ruse all along. He allowed Cobb and Arthur into his mind as part of an audition which they failed, saying that 'your deception was obvious.'
Asserting that his employer, Cobol Engineering, won't accept failure, Cobb throws Saito on the floor and demands that he tell them what they need to know about his expansion project. With his face pressed into the carpet, Saito begins to laugh again and reveals that he is familiar with the material of the carpet; it is supposed to be made of wool instead of polyester. Thus, he comes to the conclusion that he is still sleeping.
Sure enough, Saito, Arthur, Nash, and Cobb are all asleep in the car of a train, watched over by a young man named Tadashi (Tai-Li Lee) who monitors the time remaining on the PASIV device. He places headphones over Nash's ears and plays music as a cue that their time is running out. The music plays faintly within the dream but enough that Nash can hear it. As the rioting mob outside draws nearer, Saito commends Cobb on creating a dream within a dream but becomes confused at his inability to control this dream. Nash reveals that they're not in Saito's dream...they're in his. The mob breaks through the door, attacking everyone in the room, and Arthur, Nash, and Cobb wake up on the train. Cobb berates Nash, the architect of the dream, for designing the carpet wrong and throws Tadashi a wad of money before leaving, telling them 'every man for himself'. Saito wakes up moments later to find himself alone in the car, save for Tadashi who's resumed a casual pose, but smiles wryly to himself. In his apartment, Cobb spins his brass top and takes his gun, pointing it at his temple as the top spins. When it falls, he breathes a sigh of relief and puts the gun down. His phone rings and he picks it up to hear his two children, James and Phillipa (Johnathan Geare and Taylor Geare), on the other line with their grandmother. They ask when he's coming home and he responds that he can't because of work. When James asks if their mother is with him - an image of Mal crosses his mind - Cobb pauses and tells him that 'mommy's not here anymore'. He tells them to behave and that he'll send presents with grandpa before their grandmother hangs up.
Arthur knocks on the door and tells Cobb their ride is on the roof. Cobb decides to fly to Buenos Aires to lie low in lieu of their failed job for Cobol while Arthur says he's returning 'stateside'. Cobb asks him to send his regards as they open the door to the helicopter and see Nash, beaten and bruised, and Saito waiting for them. Apparently, Nash had tried to sell out Cobb and Arthur for his own safety but Saito has other interests. He offers Cobb a job performing 'inception' for him, something Arthur claims is impossible. Cobb, however, says that it's not impossible but extremely difficult since it involves planting an idea in someone's mind rather than extracting one. He turns away, insisting that he'll find a way to resolve relations with Cobol himself but Saito then asks him if he wants to go home to his children in America. He promises Cobb that, if he succeeds, all he will need to do is make a phone call and the charges keeping Cobb out of the country will be dropped. Desperate, and to Arthur's exasperation, Cobb accepts.
They board the helicopter with Saito while two thugs carry Nash away to an uncertain fate. En route, Arthur explains to Saito the nature of inception, telling him that simply planting an idea in someone's head does not guarantee that the idea will take. The subject may very well discover that the idea is not theirs and reject it. True inspiration, Arthur claims, is impossible, despite Cobb's thoughts otherwise. Saito shares with them his reasoning for the job; he needs the CEO of a competing energy conglomerate to split up his father's company, ensuring Saito's own Proclus Global complete domination over the energy production industry. Despite the daunting task, Cobb agrees to perform the job. Saito drops them off at the airport and advises Cobb to choose his team wisely.
Cobb travels to Paris where he meets up with his father-in-law, Miles (Michael Caine), a professor at a university and the one who taught Cobb and Mal about dream-sharing and designing dreams. Cobb asks for an architect, one as good as he, and Miles points him to someone better. He introduces Cobb to a graduate student of his, Ariadne (Ellen Page) who is immediately put to the test by Cobb to design a maze that takes one minute to create and two to solve. After impressing Cobb with her skills, he tells her more about his line of work and what is required of her. Her job as architect will be to design dreams and create virtual mazes for the dreamers subconscious to inhabit while allowing Cobb and his team to work. As they talk outside a café, Cobb attempts to make Ariadne aware that they are actually in a dream. The realization causes Ariadne to panic and the dream violently collapses. When they awake, Ariadne finds they are in Cobb's warehouse workshop where Arthur is monitoring them. Ariadne shows surprise when Arthur says they'd been under only five minutes when it felt like hours. Cobb explains that the mind functions faster in a dream, so time moves slower. They go under again and Ariadne is given the opportunity to creatively alter the physics of the dream. Her architectural wonders cause the people in the dream - projections of Cobb's subconscious - to search for the intruder - Ariadne - like white blood cells drawn to a virus. When Ariadne makes the mistake of creating a bridge from her memories, Cobb recognizes it and his subconscious reacts as a mob, separating Ariadne from Cobb until Mal appears and stabs her.
She wakes up and Cobb rushes to the restroom while Arthur explains that Cobb's subconscious became aware of her as an invasive being and she was unable to wake up right away because there was still time on the clock. The only way for her to wake up was if she died. Cobb takes out his top and spins it, sighing as it topples over. Ariadne leaves the warehouse, angry and refusing to open her mind to Cobb if his subconscious is as tormented as it seems. Cobb returns to the room and assures Arthur that she'll be back but he needs to make a trip to Mombasa to recruit an old friend to the team. He finds Eames (Tom Hardy) gambling at a bar and offers him a place on his team as a forger/imitator. Eames agrees before telling Cobb he's being tailed, pointing to two men at the bar. Cobb recognizes them as Cobol thugs who must be aiming to collect the bounty on his head for the botched Saito job. Eames creates a distraction while Cobb escapes, leading the thugs on a chaotic chase through the city streets. At the last moment, Saito pulls up in a limousine and picks up first Cobb, then Eames. He explains that he's been tracing Cobb to protect his investment.
Eames takes them to a local chemist he knows who experiments with Somnacin and who might be an asset to their team. Yusuf (Dileep Rao) listens as Cobb explains that his job may require the use of a three-layered dream. Yusuf says that this would be otherwise impossible, due to the instability of dreams the further down you go, if not for a special solution he's concocted with a powerful sedative. To show its effectiveness, Yusuf takes them downstairs where they see dozens of men sleeping under the watch of an old man (Earl Cameron). He tells Cobb that these men come here to 'wake up'; dreaming has become their reality. With the aid of the sedative, their sleep is deep and stable and they are able to dream for what feels to them like years. Cobb tries the sedative himself and is impressed with its affects, though shaken after waking from a vivid dream with Mal. He convinces Yusuf to join his team.
Meanwhile, Ariadne returns to the workshop where she tells Arthur that she meant to stay away but couldn't resist the pure creation involved in architectural dreaming. Arthur takes her into a dream and introduces the notion of creating paradoxes, such as the Penrose steps. He also reveals that Mal was Cobb's wife and has since passed away. Despite Mal's malevolent nature within the dreams - her existence now only as a projection of Cobb's - Arthur tells Ariadne she was lovely in real life.
The team bands together and decides that they will create a three-level dream with the third level containing the planted idea. The target in mind is Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the CEO and heir of Fischer Morrow, whose father, Maurice (Pete Postlethwaite), is slowly decaying with illness. Eames targets Robert's godfather and business partner, Peter Browning (Tom Berenger), to get a better grasp on the father-son dynamic and to use his imitation skills at their best. The team decides that, in order to get Robert to split up his father's company and because of their complicated relationship, a positive idea will trump a negative one; 'my father wants me to be my own man.' Saito oversees most of the plans and, because he wants full verification of any success or failure, decides that he will accompany the team into the dreams as a 'tourist'.
As the team prepares over the next few weeks, Arthur shows Ariadne the significance of 'totems'; small, personal objects that enables a person to differentiate between dreams and reality. Cobb's totem is his top, which topples over in the real world and keeps spinning in a dream. Arthur's is a loaded die and he instructs Ariadne to create one for herself that only she can touch to ensure its validity. She creates a semi-hollowed bishop chess piece as her totem. Wanting as much time as possible to complete the job, the team decides, with Saito's help, that they will perform the job on a Boeing 747 during an international flight from Europe to Los Angeles, a 10 hour flight. This will give them a week in the first stage of the dreams. Saito reveals that he's bought the entire airline, making the job neater and without having to buy out certain sections of the plane for access.
One evening, after a day of formulating plans, Ariadne finds Cobb dreaming alone in the workshop. Curious, she hooks herself up to his machine and finds herself descending in an elevator. She sees Cobb sitting in a living room with Mal who quickly detects Ariadne's presence. Cobb gets up and joins Ariadne in the elevator, leading her through some of the levels that Ariadne discovers are each specific memories; something he originally told her never to do. Horrified after seeing Cobb's torment over leaving home without saying farewell to his children, Ariadne takes the elevator alone to the last level where she sees a hotel room, the contents of which are strewn on the floor. She steps on some broken glass and Mal looks up from the couch, asking what she's doing here. Ariadne tries to explain that she just wants to understand but Mal becomes defensive and picks up a shard of glass. Cobb arrives and takes Ariadne back to the elevator as Mal rushes forward, shouting at Cobb that he didn't keep his promise.
Ariadne and Cobb exit the dream and Cobb explains that the reason he can't go home is because of Mal's death, because it was thought that he killed her. He thanks Ariadne when she doesn't ask him if he did or not but she does warn him that he's mistaken if he thinks he can cage Mal like that. He needs to release his guilt over her death. Ariadne convinces Cobb to allow her to go with the team into the dreams because he needs someone who understands what he's going through. At that moment, Saito and Arthur arrive and announce that Maurice Fischer has died and Robert will be accompanying the body to the States in a few days.
The team boards the flight and sits with Robert in a sectioned-off first class cabin. Cobb returns Robert's passport, pick-pocketed by Arthur, as a conversation starter and then drugs his water before proposing a toast in his father's honor. Within moments, Robert is asleep and the paid-off flight attendant (Miranda Nolan) assists setting up and activating the PASIV device. All together, the team descends into, first, Yusuf's dream. It is raining heavily in New York City as members of the team are picked up. Arthur and Saito commandeer a taxi, pick up Robert and Eames and then Yusuf as Saito holds a gun to Robert as part of the kidnap ruse. Cobb and Ariadne follow in a separate car until a train suddenly barges down the middle of the street, hitting their car and temporarily stalling them. Gunfire then opens on the taxi and the team is forced to take immediate evasive maneuvers, hiding out in a warehouse where its discovered that Saito has been shot in the chest.
Robert is taken into another room while Saito is laid on a table. Before Eames can shoot him to end his misery and wake him up, Cobb stops him and explains that, due to the sedatives they've taken, they won't wake up if they die. Instead, they'll be sent to limbo; a shared dream-state of raw subconscious where time is practically non-existent. The team is angered by this, wondering why they've taken such a risk, as they contemplate what to do about the armed forces closing in on their location. They find out that Robert's subconscious has been trained to fight against extraction and the projections attacking them are part of that defense. With Saito's condition deteriorating and unable to wait much longer due to the approaching defense projections, the team decides they need to complete the job as quickly as possible.
Ariadne confronts Cobb about the control he has over his own subconscious and he confesses that he can't keep Mal out of his head. He tells her that they had been experimenting with dream states and wanted to see how far down they could go into their subconscious. They wound up in limbo together, unable to leave because of the time remaining on their PASIV clock. They recreated their lives, spending years worth of building. After so long, they began to perceive limbo as their reality. After something like 50 years, Cobb and Mal killed themselves on train tracks to bring them back to reality. Despite returning to the real world, Mal continued to believe that she was still dreaming and believed that dying was the only way to 'wake up', but she refused to leave without Cobb; she loved him too much. On their wedding anniversary, Cobb went to the hotel room they always stayed in to find it trashed and the window open. Outside, on an opposite ledge, sat Mal who revealed to Cobb that she filed a letter to their attorney expressing a fear for her life, effectively framing him in the event of her death and forcing him no other way than to join her. Cobb refuses to jump and attempts to bring Mal to her senses, but she ignores him and jumps to her death. Since she declared herself legally sane by three psychiatrists, Cobb's case for his innocence is overruled by the outstanding evidence against him. With no other choice, Cobb leaves his children behind with their grandmother and flees the country.
Ariadne tries to convince Cobb that Mal's death was not his fault and that he needs to focus on the mission. Eames prepares himself as an impersonation of Browning while Cobb and Arthur interrogate Robert, demanding to know the combination to his father's safe. They pressure Robert by using 'Browning' as leverage. Eames shouts from another room as if being beaten before he is brought into the room with Robert to try and get him to remember. He tells Robert that the safe contains an alternate version of his father's will, one that will dissolve the company if Robert chooses so. 'Browning' tells Robert that his father loved him and wanted him to build something of his own. As Robert's defenses close in on the warehouse, Robert reveals that one word he could decipher out of his father's last words was 'disappointed', convincing him that his father didn't love him.
With the warehouse in danger of being infiltrated, the team pressure Robert once again for a combination. He tells them a series of random numbers that come to mind before they load him into a van and drug him to sleep. They all get in and prepare to enter the second level of the dream while Yusuf drives the van away from the pursuing projections.
In Arthur's dream, Cobb resolves to use 'Mr. Charles', a method in which he introduces the subject to the fact that he's dreaming in order to garner trust. He meets Robert at a bar and tells him that he is there to protect him and someone is trying to access his mind. He convinces Robert that he's dreaming by introducing the strangeness of their surroundings and calms Robert to control them. He helps Robert remember that he's been kidnapped and leads him to a hotel room (the first few numbers of which match the first digits Robert thought of for the combination) where the rest of the team regroups. Saito is in better health in this level of the dream, but soon begins coughing. Robert's projection of Browning arrives and he confesses that he was the one behind the kidnapping; he couldn't allow Robert to access the safe and destroy everything that his father built. Cobb suggests to Robert that they enter Browning's dreams to figure out what was really in the safe so that Robert can decide for himself. Robert agrees, now unknowingly assisting in his own inception and the team is hooked up again, this time with Arthur remaining behind to watch over them and administer a synchronized kick when its time.
As the team goes into the third dream, in actuality Robert's, Arthur is forced to fight off more of Robert's defensive projections while in the first dream Yusuf continues to drive the van. The third dream is set in snow covered mountains where Robert's safe is heavily guarded in a mountainside fort. The team splits up to draw the guards away. Cobb goes with Ariadne, Eames travels alone to ward off the guards, and Robert and Saito begin ascending a mountainside to access a blind side of the fort.
Meanwhile, Yusuf momentarily loses control of the van and it tumbles down an incline, the tumbling effect translates into Arthur's dream as he fights off Robert's projections, the environment around him spinning as gravity reverses and then rights itself. As Yusuf continues driving, he becomes cornered on an elevated bridge with one car full of projections stuck with him. Yusuf plays music through Arthur's headphones to warn him of the incoming kick before driving backwards off the bridge. Upon impact, the force sends Arthur in his dream flying and, as the van plummets in mid air, there is a loss of gravity in Arthur's dream. The impact also translates into the third level of the dream. Saito and Robert look up the mountainside and are forced to cut their lines as an avalanche sweeps down upon them. Cobb realizes they've missed the first kick, but they still have time for the second one when the van hits the water off the bridge.
Van drives off the bridge: 10 seconds left to impact.
Dream 2: 3 minutes to synchronize the kick. Arthur struggles with a way to do this without gravity.
Dream 3: 60 minutes left.
With little time left, Cobb demands to know if there is another way into the fort and Ariadne relents into telling him of a secret underground entrance that Robert and Saito can access. Cobb send them there, all while Saito's condition deteriorates. They finally enter the main room where the safe is located while Cobb and Ariadne watch from a snipers angle. Succumbing to his injuries, Saito is left to lay down, coughing blood as Robert continues forward. However, as Robert comes into Cobb's view, so does another person. Mal drops in from the ceiling and shoots Robert down before Cobb comes to his senses and shoots her. Eames is ordered to the room as Cobb and Ariadne rush to the site. Finding Robert dead, Cobb labels the mission a failure, since the only other place where Robert has gone is limbo. Ariadne, however, convinces him that, if they go into limbo, they'll have enough time to find Robert and bring him back. Eames agrees to use a defibrillator to jump start Roberts heart to help while Cobb and Ariadne go under.
Meanwhile, in dream level 2, Arthur devises a unique plan. He uses phone wires to tie the team together and brings them into the elevator. He lines the outside of the car with explosives, timing down till the kick with the intention of using explosive force to create gravity and instigating a kick.
In limbo, Cobb and Ariadne tour the deteriorating world that he and Mal once built. They see old homes and buildings before they find the one where Cobb knows Mal must be. If they find Mal, they'll find Robert because Mal will want to use something Cobb wants to bring him to her. Sure enough, they enter the apartment and Mal is waiting for them. She tries, again, to convince Cobb that his place is with her in their real home with their children but Cobb reveals a terrible truth, the reason why Mal believed that her dreams were real.
While they were in limbo, Mal had stored away a truth that she didn't want to believe anymore; her totem, placed within her safe, lying on its side, immobile; telling her that her dream, her limbo, was reality. In an effort to save her mind, Cobb broke into her safe and spun the top to convince her that this world was not real. However, he did not know that, once they really woke up, she would continue to believe that. This was how he knew inception would work; because he performed it on Mal first and his guilt over her subsequent death has been plaguing him ever since. He tells Mal that he will stay with her in limbo if she tells him where Robert is and she reveals he's on the porch. Ariadne finds him there and pushes him off as an improvised kick.
Robert comes back to life in dream level 3 with Eames' aid and opens his own safe, finding within an image of his bed-stricken father muttering his last word. Robert acknowledges that his father was disappointed that he couldn't be him, but Maurice says, "No...no. I was disappointed that you tried." Maurice then points to a cabinet where Robert finds the will...and a paper fan his father made for him once as a child. Tearfully, Robert looks up to see his father has passed and breaks down as the van hits the water.
Dream 2, Arthur hits the detonator and the explosives force the elevator down, creating artificial gravity on the team.
Dream 3, a series of explosions set by Eames rock the fort, collapsing the main floor.
In limbo, the synchronization of kicks pulls on Ariadne and she calls for Cobb to join her. Cobb says that he will stay in limbo, but not with Mal. By this time, Saito has died and joined limbo as well. Cobb must find him but promises to return. Ariadne leaps off the side of the building and rides the kicks back to dream 1. In the van, Robert wakes up and escapes the submerged van with 'Browning'. Arthur and Ariadne share an oxygen tank with Yusuf before they escape the van, leaving Cobb.
Robert and 'Browning' make it to shore where Robert reveals that his father really did want him to be his own man and that he's going to do just that and liquidate his father's company. Knowing the mission is a success, Eames drops the Browning mask.
In limbo, Cobb washes ashore where the armed guard finds him. He is brought to the seaside palace where the elderly Japanese man recognizes his brass top. Cobb recalls what he was there to do and calls to Saito, asking him to come back with him and honor their arrangement. The elderly Saito reaches for Cobb's gun.
Cobb wakes up on the airplane and looks around, startled, to see Arthur and Ariadne smiling at him. He looks at the now awake Saito who remembers, picking up his phone and dials. The plane lands in Los Angeles and Cobb nervously moves through customs where security checks his passport, but allows him passage through, welcoming him home. Cobb walks past the rest of the team and Robert, who pauses a moment as if recalling a half-remembered dream. Ahead of him, Cobb sees Miles calling him over. They drive home together where Cobb hesitates before taking out his brass top. He spins it on the table in the kitchen as his children appear at the back door. He runs to them, elated to see their faces again as the top continues to spin, wobbles a bit...and the screen turns to black.

The Phantom of the opera

The movie starts with an auction being held in the Paris Opera House. The Opera has been shut down and they are auctioning off props to make some money. One of the items is a stuffed monkey dressed in Persian robes and playing the cymbals sitting on top of a music box. An older gentleman in a wheelchair buys the monkey and holds on to it tightly. The next item is a chandelier that was broken but has been repaired. When the chandelier is revealed, we are whisked back to 1870 ("Overture") where we see the opera house in full swing for it's performance of Hannibal by Chalemau. Rehearsals are under way when the Opera manager informs the cast and crew that he is leaving for Australia and that the Opera House is now under the command of Gilles Andre and Richard Firmin (Simon Callow and Cirian Hinds).
When they resume rehearsal, a stage prop falls on the lead diva, Carlotta (Minnie Driver). After she storms out refusing to sing, Madame Giry (Miranda Richardson), the ballet instructor, convinces the new owners to let Christine Daaé (Emmy Rossum), one of the dancers, to take Carlotta's part. After a stunning performance ("Think of Me"), Christine goes down to the small chapel under the Opera House to pray for her father who died long ago. Meg (Jennifer Ellison) one of the ballet dancers and Christine's best friend comes to find her inquiring of her singing prowess ("Angel of Music").
Later, Christine's childhood friend Raoul, the Vicomte de Changy and patron of the Opera House, comes to visit her in her dressing room. He had been in the audience and had recognized her. After inviting her to a party and leaving to prepare for the ride, Christine is locked in her room and hears singing. The Phantom (Gerard Butler) is mad at Raoul for taking credit in his work in training Christine to sing. He then lures Christine to a mirror where she sees him then follows him to his lair under the Opera House ("The Phantom of the Opera"). Once there the Phantom expresses his feelings for Christine and tries to convince her to stay with him ("Music of the Night"). Later she unmasks him and the Phantom is furious with her. Although he is raging and angry, he becomes vunerable and begins crying. He wishes he didn't have a loathsome gargoyle face ("I Remember/Stranger Than You Dreamt It"). He then returns her to the surface.
While Christine is gone, Andre and Firmin are upset because Christine has disappeared and they no longer have a lead to play in the operas. After receiving a series of notes all signed O.G. (Opera Ghost) they find out that Christine has returned and they have been instructed by the Phantom to put Christine in the lead role of the upcoming opera II Muto. They refuse and put Carlotta in the lead part after convincing her to return ("Prima Donna") and give Christine a silent role, which infuriates the Phantom. He then disables Carlotta's voice giving her the voice of a toad, which forces the Opera managers to put Christine in the lead role. While Christine is getting ready, Joseph Buquet (Kevin McNally) finds the Phantom in the rafters and after trying to escape is caught and hung from the rafters on stage in full view of everyone. This frightens Christine and she runs to the roof with Raoul pursuing her where he comforts her telling her that he loves her and will never leave her ("All I Ask of You") The Phantom overhears and is now in a state of shock because Christine loves Raoul and not him.
3 months later, we see that the Opera House is in full swing without any appearance from the Phantom since he disabled Carlotta's voice. The Opera House is holding a Masquerade to celebrate ("Masquerade"). During the Masquerade the Phantom interrupts and presents the managers with a new Opera he has written called Don Juan. He then gives them an ultimatum. Follow his instructions or bad things will happen. Christine visits the graveyard where her father is buried ("Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again"). The Phantom is also there and tries to lure her to him but Raoul arrives and fights off the Phantom in a sword battle. They then leave the Phantom there and he swears to get revenge.
The performance of Don Juan has finally come and everyone is nervous. Raoul, Andre, and Firmin are positive the Phantom will make an appearance so they set a trap. Christine is torn. She explains that she can't be a part of the trap without the Phantom taking her back. The play starts and Christine comes on stage singing. Backstage, Piangi (Victor McGuire) is getting ready for his next scene when the Phantom kills him and takes his place on stage. Christine sings with the Phantom, expressing her love for him. Raoul, who is in the audience, sadly realizes that Christine loves the Phantom ("The Point of No Return"). The Phantom then sings passionately to Christine who takes his mask off, revealing to the audience the distortion of his face. He takes her once again down to his lair, causing the opera theatre to catch on fire in the progress after bringing down the chandelier ("Down Once More/Track Down This Murderer"). The Phantom gives Christine the ring that he took from her at the masquerade ball, and asks her to stay with him. Meanwhile, Raoul gets Madame Giry to take him to the Phantom's lair. She leaves Raoul halfway through their journey, and Raoul goes the rest of the way alone. After nearly drowning, he shows up in the Phantom's lair to save Christine. The Phantom then gives Christine the difficult desicion: she can either stay with the Phantom and Raoul (who has been tied up by the Phantom) goes free, or she refuses the Phantom and Raoul dies but Christine goes free. Christine decides to stay with the Phantom and tells him that he is not alone. She kisses him passionately. At this the Phantom realizes that Christine truly loves him, but his horrible actions have ruined any chance they have together. In an act of selflessness, he frees both Christine and Raoul. Christine gives the ring back to the Phantom who sadly tells Christine that he loves her. Christine forces herself to leave with Raoul in the boat. She looks back at the Phantom sadly, knowing that she loves him. Heartbroken, the Phantom destroys the mirrors and escapes through a secret passage just before the mob shows up. Meg Giry finds only his mask.
The scene then switches back to 1919. The elderly gentleman now known to be Raoul leaves the monkey music box on Christine's grave. He looks down and sees that the Phantom has left a rose tied with a black ribbon (his trademark) and the ring that he gave to Christine: the Phantom still loves her. Raoul sadly looks at it knowing that Christine truly loved the Phantom.

Psycho

In a Phoenix hotel room on a Friday afternoon, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and her out-of-town lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin) end a stolen lunchtime interlude with yet another disagreement about their future. Marion wants to marry Sam, but debts inherited from his father and his own alimony payments do not leave him enough money to support her as he would like. As they have done so often before on Sam's business trips to Phoenix, they part leaving their future uncertain.
Marion returns to the real estate office where she works as a secretary, arriving just ahead of her boss Mr. Lowery (Vaughn Taylor) and his client Cassidy (Frank Albertson) who buys a house from Lowery with $40,000 in cash. Lowery tells Marion to put the money in the safe deposit box at the bank until Monday. Pleading a headache, Marion asks to take the rest of the day off after her errand to the bank.
But Marion doesn't go to the bank. On the spur of the moment, she decides to keep the money, packs a suitcase, and starts driving out of town, only to be spotted by her boss at an intersection where he gives her a suspicious look. Worried that she has been found out already, she still proceeds out of town on her way to Fairvale, California, where Sam lives. All the while she keeps looking behind her, fearful that she's being followed. She drives well into the night and parks alongside the road to sleep.
In the morning, a highway patrolman (Mort Mills) stops to investigate her stopped car, and awakens her. Startled and nervous, she arouses the patrolman's suspicions. He looks at her license and registration, taking note of the plate number. He allows her to go on, but follows her for a while, which intensifies Marion's agitation.
Realizing that her car can easily give her away, Marion decides to trade it in for a different car. She stops in at a used car lot, hurriedly pays the salesman (John Anderson) $700 cash for a likely substitute, and completes the deal as the same highway patrolman watches from across the street. Nervous, she drives away and continues toward Fairvale.
As night falls on this second day, with her fears of pursuit crowding in around her, she drives into a rainstorm. Unable to see the road clearly, she spots the lighted sign of the Bates Motel, and decides to take a room for the night. As there are no other cars there, and no one in the motel office, she honks her horn upon seeing a light on in the house behind the motel, and a silhouette in the window. Someone dashes down the path to greet her, and he introduces himself as Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). He is soft-spoken and shy young man who tells Marion that he lives in the large house with his mother. He comments that the motel seldom has guests anymore since the new interstate bypassed the local highway, and Marion realizes that she probably took a wrong turn in the storm. Still nervous about being tracked by the police, Marion registers under a false name, and Norman checks her into Cabin 1 just next to the office. When she asks about food, Marion learns that Fairvale is only fifteen miles away.
Norman offers to share his supper with her so she doesn't have to go out again in the rain, and he goes back to the house. She begins unpacking, taking time to wrap the money inside a newspaper which she sets aside on the bed table. Then she overhears a shouted argument between Norman and his mother coming from the house. Mother Bates seems to have a low opinion of young women, and doesn't want Norman associating with them. Norman returns to the motel with sandwiches and milk and invites Marion to join him in the parlor just behind the check-in desk.
Marion is taken aback by the stuffed birds that fill the parlor, a product of his taxidermy hobby. In their conversation over sandwiches, Norman talks about being trapped. Just as Marion presently feels trapped by her recent hasty decision, Norman is more permanently trapped in his co-existence with his mother and her madness. But as Norman observes, "we all go a little mad sometimes." Taking Norman's situation as a cautionary tale, Marion decides to return to Phoenix to make amends, and try to pull herself out of the trap she's gotten herself into before it's too late.
When Marion goes back to her room, Norman takes down a picture from the wall and looks through a peephole where he can watch Marion changing. With a new burst of intensity, Norman hurries up the hill and goes into the house.
In her room, Marion sits in her robe and calculates some figures, working out how she can repay the $700 she has already spent. Then she tears up the paper containing the figures and flushes the pieces down the toilet. With newfound peace of mind, she slips out of her robe and slippers, and steps into the tub to enjoy a cleansing shower.
Unseen behind her, the bathroom door opens. A figure approaches and pulls back the shower curtain. It is the shadowy figure of an old woman wielding a large kitchen knife. Marion screams. The blade lifts high into the air, and then strikes, and strikes again and again. Marion cannot escape the slicing blows of the knife. The savage attack continues, and then her killer leaves. Marion sinks down, reaching for the shower curtain which rips under her weight, and she falls over the edge of the tub. The shower continues to run over her as her blood flows down the tub drain, her lifeless eyes fixed in a final hopeless stare.
From the house, Norman's voice yells out in shock, "Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!" He comes running down the hill and into Marion's cabin to find the aftermath of Mother's knife attack. He quickly cleans up the murder scene. He wraps Marion's body in the shower curtain and places her in the trunk of her car, and gathers her belongings into the trunk as well. At the last moment he spots the newspaper on the bed table and tosses it into the trunk, not knowing that it contains the stolen money. He drives to a swamp near the motel, where he pushes the car in and watches it slowly disappear into the dark bog.
One week later, Sam Loomis is sitting in the back office of his hardware store in Fairvale, writing a note to Marion. He has changed his mind, and if it's not too late he wants to marry her right away even if his finances are limited right now. Marion's sister, Lila Crane (Vera Miles), comes into the store and asks if Marion is there. Sam tells her she isn't. A private investigator named Arbogast (Martin Balsam) also enters the store and asks for Marion's whereabouts. His interest is in recovering the stolen $40,000, which Lila knew about, but Sam did not. Arbogast is convinced that Marion is somewhere in this town close to her boyfriend, so he sets out on a search of hotels and boarding houses around Fairvale to track her down.
When Arbogast gets to the Bates Motel, Norman tells him he hasn't seen Marion, and that there haven't been any guests in weeks. But Arbogast manages to look at the register and sees the false signature in Marion's handwriting. Caught in his lie that here hadn't been any recent guests, Norman admits to remembering her now, and says she stayed that Saturday night and left early on Sunday morning. Arbogast spots Mother's silhouette sitting at the window of the house and asks to see her, but Norman refuses, saying that his mother is an invalid and shouldn't be disturbed. When Norman lets slip his Mother's impressions of Marion, Arbogast becomes determined to talk to her, but Norman insists that he leave.
Arbogast phones Sam and Lila to tell them that Marion had registered the previous Saturday night at the Bates Motel in Cabin 1, and that he means to sneak back and talk to Mrs. Bates regardless of Norman's objections. When he gets back to the motel, Arbogast looks into the office and the parlor briefly to see if Norman is there, and spots the motel safe which is standing open. Then he heads up to the house and goes inside. Sensing that no one is downstairs, he starts up the stairs. As he nears the top of the landing, Mother Bates emerges from the bedroom and stabs him. He stumbles backwards down the stairs and falls to the floor, where he is set upon and stabbed yet again.
At the hardware store, Lila and Sam have been waiting for Arbogast, who was supposed to return hours ago. Sam tells Lila to stay behind while he goes out to the motel. When he gets there, he calls out but no one answers. Norman, standing by the swamp after having just disposed of the investigator's remains, hears Sam call out for Arbogast.
Sam returns to the store, having seen no one at the motel or the house. No Arbogast, no Bates, "only a sick old lady unable or unwilling to answer the door." Sam suggests they go see Sheriff Chambers (John McIntire) to report the missing Arbogast. At the sheriff's house, Chambers and his wife (Lurene Tuttle) listen to Sam and Lila tell their story. At their urging, Chambers phones the motel and talks to Norman, who says that the detective had been there but had left. When Lila presses Chambers about the mother, Chambers tells them that Norman's mother has been dead and buried for the past ten years, having poisoned her lover and herself in the only murder-suicide in Fairvale's living memory. But Sam and Lila insist that there is an old woman out there, and that Arbogast had told them that Norman wouldn't let Arbogast see his mother because she was too ill. That makes the sheriff wonder, if Norman's mother is up there at the motel, then who is buried in that grave in Green Lawn Cemetery?
Norman is worried about all the people who have been snooping around. His concerns lead to another unseen argument with Mother in which he tells her she should hide in the fruit cellar for a few days. She refuses. Norman says he will pick her up and carry her downstairs. She berates him, but in spite of Mother's protests to be put down, Norman carries his mother down the stairs.
The next morning, Sunday morning, Lila and Sam meet Sheriff and Mrs. Chambers coming out of church. The sheriff has already been to the motel before church services. He didn't see anything strange and suggests that the detective probably just moved on to pursue a lead without telling them. He offers to help Lila report a missing person and a theft, and let the law find her sister. Unsatisfied, Lila and Sam decide to go out to the motel for themselves. Their plan is to register as husband and wife and check into a cabin. Then they will search the place more thoroughly.
Norman assigns them to Cabin 10, and Sam insists on signing the register. As he pays and asks Norman for a receipt, Lila takes the key and goes ahead toward their cabin. On the way she checks that the door to Cabin 1 is unlocked. After a brief stop in cabin 10 to talk matters over, and after they are sure Norman is not nearby, Sam and Lila enter Cabin 1 to search for clues. Sam notices that the shower curtain is missing and Lila finds a scrap of paper with something subtracted from $40,000, suggesting that Norman possibly knew about the money. Lila wants to talk to the woman in the house because she might have told Arbogast something. She wants Sam to distract Norman while she goes to the house. Sam tries to dissuade her, but she insists she can handle a sick old woman.
Sam finds Norman in the office and engages him in conversation, while Lila circles around behind the motel to the house. She enters and looks through all the rooms upstairs. She goes into Mother's bedroom, filled with furnishings and clothes from the Victorian era but strangely preserved as if new. The outline of a woman's body is deeply impressed into the old mattress. She looks into Norman's bedroom, another room frozen in time containing the toys and small bed of a child.
Meanwhile, Sam has been trying to get Norman to talk about money, looking for some indication that Norman has the stolen cash. Norman begins to grow agitated. When Sam mentions Norman's mother, Norman realizes that his other guest may be snooping around at the house. Sam tries to keep Norman from leaving, and they struggle. Norman knocks Sam over the head, and Sam falls dazed to the floor.
Lila is just coming down the stairs when she sees Norman running toward the front door. She ducks around behind the stairs and partway down the cellar steps to avoid him. Norman heads upstairs. Lila starts to come back up, when she notices the cellar door at the bottom of the steps. This is a room she hasn't examined yet, and she risks the opportunity to look into it.
Walking through a storage room and into the barren fruit cellar beyond it, she sees an old woman sitting in a chair facing the far wall. She whispers, "Mrs. Bates." But the woman doesn't respond. She taps the woman on the shoulder. The chair swivels around to reveal the desiccated remains of an old woman's corpse, her face contorted into a near-skeletal grin and seemingly staring out of eyeless sockets.
Lila screams and turns away, and her flinching reaction sets the bare hanging light bulb to swinging. At that moment, the living semblance of an old woman enters at the door wielding a large knife, blocking the only escape route from the cellar. In the next moment, Sam's timely arrival saves Lila, as he subdues the would-be assailant from behind. The "woman's" wig falls away to reveal Norman Bates dressed in the guise of his mother.
Lila, Sam, and Sheriff Chambers are among a bewildered group of interested persons who sit in an office in the County Court House, waiting to hear from a psychiatrist who has been called in to examine Norman. The psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) enters to tell them he has gotten the whole story, but not from "Norman." He got it from Norman's "Mother." As a personality, "Norman" no longer exists. The other half, the "Mother" half of Norman's mind has taken over.
The psychiatrist goes on to explain that after the death of Norman's father, Norman came to depend on the undivided attention of his mother. But when she took a lover, Norman felt as if he had been replaced. His jealousy could not stand to share her. So he poisoned both his mother and her lover. Consumed with guilt over his crime, he stole his mother's corpse and treated it to preserve it as best he could.
To further the illusion that his mother was still alive, he began to divide his mind with his mother-- to think and speak for her. He walked around wearing her clothes and a woman's wig. At times he could be both personalities and carry on both sides of conversations. Other times, the "Mother" half, the dominant half, took over completely. "He was never all 'Norman,' but he was often only 'Mother.'"
Norman's "Mother" personality was pathologically jealous of Norman. When Norman met Marion, he felt a strong attraction to her. That attraction set off the jealous "Mother," and it was "Mother" who killed Marion-- and most likely, other women before her.
In a locked and guarded room, the physical shell of Norman Bates sits unmoving as "Mother"'s voice dominates his mind. She wants to prove to the world how harmless she is by sitting completely still. A fly crawls on Norman's hand and he doesn't swat at it, simply smirks as the voice of Mother's personality gloats that everyone must see that she wouldn't even harm a fly.
In a final image, a tow chain begins pulling Marion's car out of the bog.
END OF FILM

Devil's advocate

Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) is a successful defense attorney in Gainesville, Florida. After successfully defending a high school teacher, Gettys, who is accused of molesting a young girl named Barbara (Heather Matarazzo). He is celebrating with his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) when he is approached by a representative for a New York law firm, Leamon Heath (Ruben Santiago-Hudson). The Lomaxes go to New York, and Kevin proves his expertise while picking a jury. A sharply-dressed John Milton (Al Pacino) watches him from afar. The next day, Kevin receives word that Gettys has been acquitted. More so, the jury only deliberated for 38 minutes before bringing in the verdict.
Heath shows Kevin around the office, and he is distracted by Christabella (Connie Nielsen), a beautiful young lawyer. He meets Milton, and reveals part of his success is due to eavesdropping on juries while they deliberate. Milton shows Lomax the roof, which contains an infinity pool, and quizzes Lomax about his history. A job offer is implied. Heath and his wife Jackie (Tamara Tunie) takes the Lomax's to their spacious, luxurious apartment.
The next day, Kevin meets the team and Pam (Debra Monk), who hands him his first case. He meets his client, Phillipe Moyez (Delroy Lindo), who practices voodoo and is on trial after being found sacrificing a goat. Kevin begins his research while Mary Ann tries to decorate the apartment. Kevin successfully defends Moyez and Milton is impressed.
The Lomaxes attend a party at Managing Director Eddie Barzoon's (Jeffrey Jones) lavish apartment. Milton flirts with Mary Ann, suggesting she change her hair, and Kevin chats with Christabella. Milton brings Eddie, Heath and Kevin to his suite and tells them he wants Kevin for the high-profile murder trial of Alexander Cullen (Craig T. Nelson), a businessman accused of killing his wife, his wife's stepson, and a maid. Eddie and Heath are not happy with the decision to use Kevin as council. That night, Kevin returns to his apartment to find Mary Ann furious that she was left alone at the party.
Kevin meets Alexander and convinces him that he can defend him. Mary Ann, Jackie and Eddie's wife Diana (Pamela Gray) try on expensive dresses, and Mary Ann watches as Jackie's face transforms into a demonic scowl. Kevin tries to console Mary Ann to no avail. After sadly claiming that she misses Kevin and feels lonely, Kevin suggests that they try to have a child. They begin to have sex, and Kevin imagines Mary Ann as Christabella. Mary Ann realizes something is wrong, and they stop.
Kevin conducts a briefing of Alexander, and shows skill. On the way back from a fancy dinner, Kevin, Mary Ann and Kevin's mother (Judith Ivey) meet Milton. Milton tries to charm her, but she seems struck by Milton, as if she knows him from somewhere. Kevin resists the impulse to meet with Milton and hot women in his suite, but Mary Ann sees through it and gets angry. Kevin's mom tries to convince him to leave and return to Florida.
Kevin begins research and interviews. He finds Eddie working late, shredding documents. Eddie tells Kevin to ignore the activities going on, and mentions Weaver at the Justice Department. Milton shows up and invites Kevin to a boxing match. On the subway, they are accosted by a punk, and Milton tells him (in perfect Spanish) to check on his girl, who is cheating on him...
The night continues, with Milton partying and Kevin trying to explain himself to Mary Ann over the phone. Milton and Kevin sit with a group of beautiful women, Kevin talking with them as Milton watches with a smile. Meanwhile, Mary Ann is awakened by a noise, and finds a child in the apartment. She notices, to her horror, that the child is playing with a pile of ovaries. The next day, Kevin tells her it's a dream, but she is still freaked out. She tells Kevin that she found out that she's incapable of bearing children. He's interrupted by the phone.
Alexander tells Kevin he's been unfaithful, and was having an affair with his secretary during the night of the murder. Milton wants Kevin to quit the case and take care of Mary Ann, but Kevin wants to prove himself. Milton relents.
The trial starts. Kevin's strategy is to make Alexander look awful, so he can later prove Alexander was sleeping with his secretary at the time of the murder.
Eddie later confronts Kevin about his promotion, and threatens to go to the Justice Department. Kevin tells Milton about the threat, and Eddie is chased by phantom joggers, then is beaten to death by homeless men who appear as demons. Mary Ann watches from her apartment window.
Kevin briefs the secretary, Melissa (Laura Harrington), and in doing so figures out that she has never had sex with Cullen. He then learns about Eddie's death. He is perturbed by both the death and the secretary's lies. On the subway again, Milton tells Kevin to go with his gut. Back in the courtroom, as Milton watches, Kevin calls the secretary to the stand. She testifies, and Alexander is cleared. Upon returning home, Kevin discovers Mary has gone to a local church and is very ill.
Mary Ann tells Kevin that Milton came to the apartment and talked with her for hours. Lonely and desperate, Mary Ann began to have sex with Milton, but when she told him to stop, Milton violently raped her. Kevin thinks Mary is crazy, as he had seen Milton in court. She insists that she isn't crazy and shows Kevin that her body is covered with bloody scratches. Thinking that she has done this to herself, he has her committed to a mental hospital.
Later, Kevin attends Eddie's funeral, and Alexander arrives with his 14-year-old stepdaughter, Alessandra. Kevin watches as Cullen begins stroking Alessandra's skin sensually, and suddenly has a vision of Cullen as Gettys, the pedophile he had defended in Gainesville. Realizing that Cullen was having an affair with his underaged stepdaughter and that Mary Ann may not be crazy after all, Kevin leaves the church. He is met by Mitch Weaver (Vyto Ruginis), who tells him that Eddie was going to testify against Milton. He convinces Kevin only after telling him that Gettys was found with the body of ten-year-old girl in the trunk of his car. Weaver tries to cross to Kevin to talk further, but is hit by a car and killed. As this happens, Milton smirks and boils holy water with his touch.
Kevin goes to visit Mary Ann in the psych ward, and his mom is there. She tells Kevin his father was a NYC waiter, and Mary Ann sees Pam as a demon. She locks the door and slits her throat while Pam looks on. Later, Kevin's mother tells him the truth about his father - it's Milton! Kevin realizes Milton has been watching and helping him all along.
Kevin leaves to see Milton, and Pam reassures him. No one is on the streets as he walks through New York. Kevin confronts Milton in his office and shoots him, but it has no effect. Milton reveals that he indeed is Satan, and Christabella is his half-sister. Milton wants them to take over the firm and conceive a baby. Kevin starts negotiating the deal, and the sculptures come alive. Christabella seduces Kevin, but at the critical moment, he commits suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Enraged, Milton explodes into flames. As Kevin falls to the floor, Christabella shrivels to a mummified corpse, and Milton changes to his true angelic form, which looks exactly like Kevin. Suddenly, the entire scene rewinds back to the opening scene of the movie where Kevin finds himself facing a restroom mirror in the Florida courtroom. Kevin is contemplating defending the teacher whom he knows is guilty. He also finds Mary Ann waiting for him outside the men's room as he returns to the courtroom to begin cross examination of Barbara the victim to discredit her testimony. Before he can begin, he announces to the judge and jury that he cannot proceed with the trial and quits as the legal council saying that it's the right thing. Kevin, aware of what has happened to him, realizes that by divine intervention, he has been given a second chance to do good rather then for what he is told to.
As Kevin and Mary Ann leave the courthouse, he is pursued by a reporter (the same one from the restroom at the beginning) to ask him for an exclusive interview about his decision to quit the case and of being "a lawyer with a conscience". Kevin initially refuses, but when the reporter and Mary Ann both encourage him, Kevin agrees to phone him later for the exclusive.
As Kevin and Mary Ann walk out of the courthouse, the reporter morphs into John Milton, who smiles and adds the closing line: "Vanity... definitely my favorite sin."

Keanu Reeves
Kevin Lomax
Al Pacino
John Milton
Charlize Theron
Mary Ann Lomax
Jeffrey Jones
Eddie Barzoon
Judith Ivey
Mrs. Alice Lomax
Connie Nielsen
Christabella Andreoli
Craig T. Nelson
Alexander Cullen
Tamara Tunie
Mrs. Jackie Heath
Ruben Santiago-Hudson
Leamon Heath
Debra Monk
Pam Garrety
Vyto Ruginis
Mitch Weaver - Justice Department
Laura Harrington
Melissa Black
Pamela Gray
Mrs. Diana Barzoon
George Wyner
Meisel
Chris Bauer
Lloyd Gettys (as Christopher Bauer)
Connie Embesi
Mrs. Bernice Gettys
Jonathan Cavallary
Gettys' Son
Heather Matarazzo
Barbara
Murphy Guyer
Barbara's Father
Leo Burmester
Florida Prosecutor
Bill Moor
Garson Deeds - Florida Judge
Neal Jones
Larry - Florida Reporter