Ultraviolet (2006) is nothing to do with the TV series of the same name. The Americans have modified an old virus and release a version into a CGI world which has created haemophages, a.k.a. vampires. There's a resistance movement fighting a blood war with government forces, which are trying to wipe out the vampires. Agent XPD154 is given the job of delivering a case containing a weapon. But Violet the vampire takes her place, slays lots of guards and escapes with the weapon.
Told not to open the case, Violet does so and finds a child inside. The child, called Six, is supposed to be carrying the equivalent of haemophage insecticide. But Garth, a vampire boffin, finds that the kid is no use to the vampires and he has a shelf life of about 8 hours more. The kid contains a tracker and he's grabbed.
The kid contains an antigen which could kill every human on the planet. He's clone 6/8 and his 'father' wants to hold the rest of the human race to ransom to keep them in order. The kid croaks. Violet is shot but Garth brings her back. The kid wrote down the basis of a cure for the haemophagic virus so Violet goes after him.
Millions more guards are slain, and also the kid's 'father'. Violet, a frustrated mother, brings the dead kid back to life. He tells her there's a cure for her condition and she tells him she knows.
Unbreakable (2000) David (Bruce Willis) is the sole survivor of a train crash on his way back to Philadelphia, where he works as a security guard at the stadium. He's never had a sick day off in 5 years, and he doesn't remember ever being ill. In contrast, there's Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who has brittle bones and he's always breaking them. He runs a gallery of original art for comics and he thinks that as he's so breakable, there should be someone who's totally unbreakable as a counterbalance.
David thinks Price is a con-man. Elijah falls down a flight a stairs trying to prove that David has super powers. David's stupid kid nearly shoots his dad to find out if he's bulletproof! David has a weakness; water, and he nearly drowns when he gets tangled up in a swimming pool cover while rescuing a woman held prisoner by a criminal janitor.
When he visits Price, David is alarmed to find out that Price has been committing mass murder to find a sole-survivor like himself. Price is totally crazy.
Under Siege (1992) Steven Seagal plays Corey Ryback, a former US Navy Seal, whose unit was wiped out in Panama. He's currently serving out the last of his 20 years as a cook on the battleship USS Missouri. Pretending to be organizing a party for the captain's birthday, terrorists take over the ship and prepare to nick the nukular weppns. Cmdr. Krill, Ryback's enemy, has him locked up but he outsmarts the men sent to kill him.
The head bad guy (Tommy Lee Jones) is a lunatic whom the CIA tried to kill after they lost control of him. He does a crazy act for the Pentagon to make the US military think he plans to fire off the nukes rather than sell them. He intends to load the nukes onto a captured North Korean sub, which the CIA paid him to sink. A Seal team is sent to retake the ship with an air-strike as back-up.
Ryback is stuck with the stripper from the cake. He contacts the Pentagon with a sit rep then rescues some of the crew. Krill tells Ryback he plans to drown the prisoners in the foc'sul to divert his attention. The sub wipes out the Seals' choppers so the Pentagon orders the air strike. Ryback attaches a home-made mine to the sub and prevents it from submerging.
Krill can fix the sub but Ryback's team shells the sub and sink it. The bad guys launch a couple of missiles at Honolulu. One is shot down but Ryback has to stick a knife into the top of the head bad guy's head, after a lengthy punch-up, to get the destruct code for the other one and save the day.
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995) Steven Seagal plays again Corey Ryback the former US Navy Seal turned chef, who sorts out terrorists. This time, the US military launches Grazer One, an orbiting weapon disguised as a weather satellite. Ryback and his niece just happen to be on the train, which is hijacked by bad guys led by the nutter who created the satellite, who has faked his own death. He has a band of mercenaries led by a grim-faced, grey-haired bloke.
The nutter gets access codes from 2 air force officers of ATAC before they are chucked off the train. The plan is to hack into ATAC, using a system which can't be detected while it's moving with the train, and gain control of the satellite. After causing an earthquake in China, the nutter invites bad guys around the world to contribute one trillion dollars to pay for the destruction of the Pentagon and its nuclear reactor, which will take out the eastern seaboard of the USA.
Ryback gets out a warning then he starts killing the mercenaries with the help of a black porter from the train's crew. He does some hanging by his fingertips from a cliff before getting back on the train, which is put on a collision course with a gasoline express among Dark Territory canyons, where radios don't work.
Ryback and his ally have to save his niece and split off the part of the train containing the surviving prisoners. Ryback gets to have a duel with the grey-haired bloke then escape dramatically from the huge train wreck, writing off the nutter in the process.
The Underworld (2003) Vampires & werewolves (who used to be their daytime slaves) have been at war for a millennium. The vampire Selene finds herself in the middle of a shoot-out in a subway system when lycans try to grab a human called Michael Corvin, the Candidate. She takes charge of Michael after he has been bitten by a lycan, who gets a blood sample, which proves that Michael is the goods.
Michael escapes from the vampire mansion. In 2 days' time, it's the full Moon. Kraven, the current head vampire, claims to have killed Lucien, the head werewolf, 600 years before, but he did a deal with him. Selene wakes Victor, the vampire who turned her, because she suspects that Kraven is in league with Lucien. Victor doesn't believe her.
Lycans wipe out the vampire Council from Europe. Selene brings Victor proof. Michael is a descendant of Corvinus, the first true immortal, and the key to creating a vampire/werewolf hybrid with the powers of both. Victor tells Selene to kill him. Selene learns that Victor, who killed his own daughter for marrying Lucien, also killed her family and blamed their deaths on werewolves.
Kraven back-shoots Lucien and there's a HUGE battle in caverns. Selene turns Michael, creating the hybrid. He isn't able to see off Victor, but when Selene slices half of Victor's head off with his own sword, that's it for him.
Underworld: Evolution (2006) 600 years before, a vampire army captured and imprisoned William Corvinus, the first werewolf, the brother of Marcus, the first vampire. Both are sons of Alexander Corvinus, the first immortal, who had a 3rd son, who remained human and was Michael's father.
In the present, Selene takes Michael to a safe house. Markus wipes out Kraven and tries to do the same to Selene & Michael, who investigate a pendant found inside Victor's body. It's the key to the prison for William, which Victor built.
There's lots of fighting, lots of stabbing, lots of shooting lots of bullets which don't seem to do a lot of damage, and lots of bodies. Alexander proves not to be as immortal as advertised but he gives Selene some extra blood-power.
William gets out of his Iron Maiden cell and werewolfs around a bit before being slain. Selene shoots of millions of rounds, Michael gets rather spiked and Selene backs Marcus into the spinning blades of a crashed helicopter, which doesn't do much for his corporeal integrity. And Selene finds that drinking Alexander's blood made her resistant to sunlight.
Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood) A cowboy slashes an employee of the whorehouse and makes her unworkable. So that's a fine of 7 ponies and no whipping or lynching. So the ladies put up a $1,000 reward for the death of the cowboy and the young guy with him.
Will, the meanest s.o.b. on the planet and a stone killer, has been reformed by his wife, now dead, and he's living on a farm with 2 kids when the Scofield Kid stops by looking for a partner to go after the reward. Will says no at first, then follows the kid with his Black neighbour, Ned.
English Bob, another decrepit gunslinger, arrives in town on the quest and he's beaten up and run out of town by Little Bill, who acquires Bob's French biographer. Old Will also gets a kicking from the sheriff.
Our heroes kill the younger cowboy. Ned gives up and goes home, but he dies while being whipped by the sheriff. The half-blind kid shoots the other cowboy, who did all the damage with his knife, and splits.
When he hears about Ned's fate, Will storms into town to kill Little Bill and his deputies, and be quizzed by the biographer.
Universal Soldier: The Return (1998) Dead Luc Deveraux (The Muscles from Brussels) and Maggie lose a training exercise with a team led by dead Romeo (Bill Goldberg, ex-WCW). Back at base, one of the Unisols ran amuck but Deveraux takes him out. The Defence budget is to be cut, so the Unisol project has to be closed. So Seth, the computer, implants new chips in the Unisols and takes control of the project.
There is an auto-shutdown built in to the system, so Seth has either to crack the password or obtain it. Seth recruits Squid, who was fired from the project. Deveraux, stuck with a female reporter, has to do battle with Romeo while the Unisols take out the units surrounding the building, which houses chemical weapons.
Seth has a miniature version of itself implanted in a body supplied by Squid to create a Super-Unisol. Deveraux takes a team into the building to blow up the generators and gets them killed. Then he causes a riot at a sleazy club and goes after Squid, who gets dead. Seth threatens Hilary, Deveraux's daughter, who is in hospital with a subdural haematoma, and takes her back to its base, which General Radford is about to blow up.
Deveraux gets the kid fixed in the base's hospital while taking out Seth. Then he runs into Romeo. Deveraux and the kid escape from the building just before it blows up, so that's it for the Unisols.
Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009, J.-C. Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren) A bit of shooting plus dangerous driving, and the prime minister of Ukraine's kids are extracted by helicopter. The head terrorist has grabbed the Chernobyl reactor site and he's going to blow it up if 227 terrorists aren't released from gaol. In his lab there, Dr. Frankenfurter is rebuilding his shot-up super-soldier kidnappers. At Langley, the CIA unfreezes its own Unisols.
They are the products of Operation Black Tower, which was replaced by White Tower 5 years before to produce tuned-up Unisols. One was stolen and the US has 4. A Dr. Fleming is trying to rehabilitate a 5th Unisol; Luke.
The Chernobyl complex is attacked and the stolen Freak is more than a match for the CIA's freaks. A CIA guy is sent in to extract the kids. The Ukrainian PM releases 111 terrorists with the other half to follow whent he bomb is removed. Dr. Frankenfurter takes over and gets one of his Freaks to kill the terrorist leader.
Andrew starts asking him questions. Then he squashes Dr. F's head and restarts the timer on the bomb. Luke is sent in to sort him out. Lots of ultra-violence and Luke wins. Then he has to finish rescuing the kids, stop the bomb, and take out another of Dr. F's Unisols. At the end, all the broken Unisols end up back in their freezers at Langley.
The Unknown (2005) recycles the Jaws plot. The white man, after gold, saw off the Indians and the creatures they called Takahey. Cue a bunch of poachers in the woods. One of them wakes up after being clonked on the head to find the others dead. The mayor of Pine Tree is worried about the effects on tourism of a rogue bear in the woods. The Injun on the sheriff's team, Eagle Heart, goes for a look around.
Meanwhile, 2 final year schoolkids, Richard and Jay, take a couple of girls into the woods in search of material for a paper on endangered species which will let them pass biology. Richard gets to take an up-close picture of a brown bear. The mayor says, "No reporters!" and the sheriff tells Ed, the poacher, not to go back to Eagle Mountain; which is exactly where he goes with some more bozos.
The poachers plan to kill Eagle Heart if they come across him. One of them is sent back to the jeep for more booze (with an empty gun) and guess what happens to him! Eagle Heart finds a dead bear pinned to a tree as a warning and tells the kids to get the hell off the mountain. He tells the poachers to do the same so they tie him up as bait for the monster.
The kids fail to get out of the woods before dark and meet the creature. Another poacher is taken out and Joe shoots the other survivor. Jenny runs into Joe. Eagle Heart is suddenly running around free again. Joe shoots Eagle Heart and Richard shoots Joe with the Takahey lurking nearby. Jay gets the creature on videotape but the two lads submit a not very good term paper to their biology teacher and use the video to stitch him up as a hoaxer, who took pictures of someone running around in a monkey suit. Which solves the problem of not frightening the tourists away.
Unstoppable (2010, Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, dir. Tony Scott) A train yard in N. Pennsylvania. There's a million kids on a rail safety field trip when Dewey gets off his 39-car goods train to work some points before the brakes are connected, the throttle pops open magically and the train is a runaway. In S. Pennsylvania, our heroes, Frank and the rookie Will, take out another goods train aboard engine 1206.
A guy is sent to switch some points to move Dewey's train onto a siding but he gets there too late because Dewey left the throttle on full and the "coaster" is going like a bat out of Hell. Dewey bogs up getting his mate onto the train. The runaway is carrying molten phenol. An attempt to derail it goes horribly wrong and provides a fireball for the news helicopter.
Derailment drops out of the picture as the train approaches a set of small towns. Our heroes go after the runaway and they're threatened with being fired. Only Frank has already had the sack and he has only 3 weeks left in the job. 1206 catches up with the runaway going backwards at 75 mph!
Will struggles to get the coupling fastened and gets his stupid self stuck in the works. Our heroes start slowing the runaway but there's a curve they can't negotiate. Natch, the brakes fail. But our heroes do get the job done.
Until Death (2007, J.C. Van Damme) A drug bust by undercover cop Tony Stowe in New Orleans in January 2006 becomes a shooting match and his lady partner is killed. His wife looks like $135,000 well spent when Stowe joins her in a restaurant – he looks like 3¢ in rusty coins. She tells him she's pregnant, it's not his and she's leaving him. Shock, horror! Stowe is a junkie as well as an abominable human being. The husband of his dead partner takes a pop at him and an old cop comes to him for help and ends up fired with no pension.
He nearly gets himself kilt on the next job. Then Stowe is set up, ambushed, shot in the head and ends up in a coma for 6 months. The drug-dealing gangster Callaghan [Not Dirty Harry. Ed.] starts wiping out competition and prosecutors. Stowe's wife gets $750,000, and police protection after she's told she can't leave Stowe now
A fake cop fails to kill Stowe in the hospital. Callaghan's mob keep on killing rivals. Stowe tells the New Orleans police chief that he wants his job back. The chief says, "No way!". Stowe gives his compensation money to Walter, the old cop who lost his pension. Callaghan's mob grabs the pregnant wife when she moves back in again after moving out.
Stowe has a confrontation with Callaghan, who says he's getting out of New Orleans. Surprise! The dead lady cop's husband is another dirty cop. He gets a bullet, there's a big shoot-out, and Walter joins in on Stowe's side. Callaghan has a chopper waiting but Stowe shoots it up and frightens the pilot away. Then he and Callaghan shoot each other at point-blank range, and Stowe becomes a dead hero.
The Untouchables (1987, Kevin Costner, Sean Canary) Chicago in the 1930s, Al Capone is in charge and lying like Tony Blair about the violence and corruption he's responsible for. The federal government sends in Elliot Ness, who tells his police squad to stop drinking. His first raid goes tits up due to a leak. So Ness gets help from an ancient, honest beat cop, Jimmy, and picks his own squad. Mr. Wallace, the accountant wished on Ness, suggests going after Al Capone for not paying any income tax since 1926.
Wallace gets to go on the Untouchables' first proper raid. The wiseguys threaten Ness' family, so he sends them to safety. Capone loses a big shipment and a ledger to a Wild West-style ambush at the Canadian border, and Jimmy intimidates a prisoner into decoding the ledger. Capone announces that he wants Ness dead. And his family.
Frank Nitti takes out the witness and Wallace. The DA wants to drop the case but Jimmy beats info out of a dirty senior cop. Then he's suckered and filled full of lead, but he gives Ness a lead to Capone's book-keeper before he croaks.
Nitti shoots a bailiff at the court building to liven up Capone's trial a bit. Ness pursues him and chucks him off a building. Then he finds that Capone has bought the jury, so he intimidates the judge (the only one in Chicago who isn't bent) into swapping the jury for another one. So Capone is done for and it's job done for Ness.
Untraceable (2008) There's an FBI unit catching cyber criminals. A mobile website appears showing a kidnapped kitten. The more hits it gets, the more poison the cat gets. Next, there's a kidnapped guy getting the same treatment. His body is dumped and the killer bags another victim, yet the head Fed refuses to ask the NSA for access to their supercomputer to track down the website.
The Feds bust a house; the killer is long gone. The killer puts the female FBI computer expert's house on-line and dumps a body in front of it. The NSA says no to using their supercomputer. The FBI lady's co-worker is bamboozled and bagged next. He tries to blink a clue as he's dying but no one gets it.
The lady Fed eventually comes up with a guy who committed suicide, whose death was put on-line. He has a brilliant but crazy son, who's just been released from the booby hatch. The lady Fed is bagged next. But she fights back and the sick creep is blown away on his own website.
Urban Justice (2007, Steven Seagal) Detective Ballard gets a phone call, but when he turns up at the meeting, he's shot. His father takes a room in the bad part of town to investigate, and falls foul of local gang-bangers right away. So Mr. Ballard beats up a couple of them. A dirty cop tells Ballard that the police have nothing, so Ballard puts himself about and gets himself chased by punks with automatic weapons.
The head banger tells his minions to kill Mr. Ballard, so more bangers are wrecked. The dirty cops hijack a drug deal with Ballard watching. The gang drops in on his base to shoot the place up and gets blasted. Ballard takes a bullet but his landlady gets him sewn up. Ballard is finally told that the dirty cop killed his son, so he joins in a drug buy with bags of baking soda and the dirty cop gets what's coming to him.
U.S. Marshals (1995) recycles allegedly The Fugitive plot. A driver not looking where he's going causes a repo guy, Mark, to crash, he has a gun in his tow truck, the Chicago cops take an interest in him and find he's wanted for 2 murders in New York. Tommy Lee Jones, in a chicken suit, leads his team of U.S. Marshals on a bust and he gets the job of escorting Mark to New York on a flight full of convicts.
One of them tries to shoot Mark but blows out a window. The plane's landing becomes a crash into a river, Mark escapes and Marshal Sam calls up his team and goes after him. Sam is told that the 2 men Mark killed were CIA agents, and he's saddled with Special Agent Royce. A long pursuit goes into and out of the swamps, and Mark gets away after ambushing Royce and putting 2 slugs into Sam's vest.
Mark gets help from his girlfriend, Marie. He's out to get whoever set him up and clear his name. CCTV shows that the official story about the murders is rubbish. Sam's boss confronts the Feds she is told that Mark was part of a team trying to bust a Chinese spy ring run by Mr. Chen.
Sam follows Chen's contact to a cemetery, where Mark turns up and grabs a messenger for the American traitor; only Chen shoots the guy. Mark does a runner and there's a big chase, during which Royce kills one of Sam's team, so he's the bad guy. Mark escapes on the roof of a train but he's located on a freighter and shot by Royce while having a scrap with Sam.
Mark is taken to hospital, where Royce tries to finish him off. But, luckily, Sam has realized that Royce is the traitor and he gets to shoot him.
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