Movie - Ace in the Hole (1951)

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Plot

After being fired from eleven major newspapers due to his behavior, temper, and alcoholism, Charles "Chuck" Tatum winds up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and offers himself to the publisher of the small Sun-Bulletin. Skeptical of Tatum, editor and publisher Jacob Boot hires him for $60.

A year later, Tatum has grown bored with the slow pace of Albuquerque life. Boot sends Tatum and the newspaper's young photographer, Herbie Cook, to cover a rattlesnake hunt. When they stop for gas, the pair learn about Leo Minosa, a local man trapped in a collapsed cliff dwelling, and the two investigate. Tatum talks his way past the deputy sheriff and enters the cave with Cook. Despite falling rocks, Tatum ventures close enough to Leo to pass him some amenities. Tatum takes photographs of the trapped man, tries to cheer him up, and begins scheming his big story.

Leo's wife Lorraine is eager to leave Leo and their struggling gas station, but as tourists flock to the rescue site, the financial windfall leads her to go along with Tatum's scheme. After filing an initial report on the accident, Tatum persuades local sheriff Gus Kretzer to give him exclusive access to Leo in return for reportage that will guarantee Kretzer's reelection.

Kretzer and Tatum convince construction contractor Sam Smollett to drill down to Leo from above rather than through the cave, extending the rescue time from twelve hours to a week to keep the story going. The rescue site becomes an all-day carnival and Tatum starts drinking again. Cook loses his idealism and dreams of selling pictures to high-profile papers. Tatum quits the Sun-Bulletin, persuading Cook to quit with him, and talks Nagel, his former boss in New York, into hiring him to report exclusively from the scene for $1,000 a day.

Five days into the event, Leo develops pneumonia and is given twelve hours to live. Tatum sends a news flash to Nagel: Leo will be rescued in twelve hours. However, Smollett tells him that shoring up the cave walls is now impossible due to the drilling. Leo tells Tatum that there is a fifth-year anniversary present for Lorraine in their bedroom. Tatum forces a reluctant Lorraine to open the gift, a fur stole, and Tatum makes her wear it. She protests, and Tatum begins to choke her with the stole. She stabs Tatum with a pair of scissors, and he drives away.

Tatum takes the local priest to Leo to administer his last rites, and Leo dies shortly thereafter. Tatum announces this to the crowd, proclaiming that "the circus is over." The other reporters send off the story to their newspapers ahead of Tatum. The carnival and crowd pack up to leave, and Lorraine hitch-hikes out of town. Tatum stumbles into his room, where Cook tells him that Nagel has fired him for letting other newspapers break the story of Leo's death. Tatum calls Nagel and tries to confess to killing Leo and purposely delaying the rescue, but Nagel hangs up on him without hearing his confession. Tatum and Cook drive back to the Sun-Bulletin offices, where a drunken Tatum asks Boot for his job back. He collapses from his stab wound and dies beneath an embroidered sign reading "Tell The Truth".

Movie - Bastille Day | The Take (2016)

My views Plot On the eve of Bastille Day in Paris , American drifter and pickpocket Michael Mason steals a woman's handbag, not knowing that it contains explosives . After taking the cash from the bag, he discards it, caught unwittingly on CCTV as he does so. The bag then detonates and kills four people. Upon being captured by CIA agent Sean Briar, who is being reprimanded for irresponsible conduct on the job, Mason protests that he is not a terrorist and tells Briar that the bag contained a cellphone owned by a woman named Zoé. The bomb was set up by a group of corrupt policemen , all of them members in the French special police RAPID unit led by Rafi Bertrand, who intend to pull a robbery at the Bank of France . Zoé was told to plant the bomb at the office of the French Nationalist Party (as part of a diversion for the heist), but after seeing the night cleaning crew arri...

Movie - Se7en (1995)

My views Plot In an unnamed city overcome with violent crime and corruption, disillusioned police Detective Lieutenant William Somerset is one week from retirement. He is partnered with David Mills, a young, short-tempered, idealistic detective who recently relocated to the city with his wife, Tracy. On Monday, Somerset and Mills investigate an obese man who was forced to eat until his stomach burst, killing him. The detectives find the word " gluttony " written on a wall. Somerset, considering the case too extreme for his last investigation, asks to be reassigned, but his request is denied. The following day, another victim, who had been forced to cut one pound (0.45 kg) of flesh from his body, is found; the crime scene is marked " greed ." Clues at the scene lead Somerset and Mills to the sloth victim, a drug-dealing pederast whom they find emaciated and restrained to a bed. Photographs reveal the victim was restrained for precisely one year. Somers...

Movie - The Gray Man (2022)

My views Plot In 2003, senior CIA official Donald Fitzroy visits a prisoner named Courtland Gentry in Florida. Eight years earlier, Courtland was a minor convicted of killing his abusive father to protect his brother. Fitzroy offers him his freedom in exchange for working as an assassin in the CIA's Sierra program, an elite black ops unit, which will allow him to exist in the gray. In 2021, Courtland, now known as Sierra Six , is working with fellow CIA agent Dani Miranda to assassinate a target named Dining Car suspected of selling off national security secrets in Bangkok during the national Songkran festival. Unable to do so stealthily without harming civilians, he attacks Dining Car directly, mortally wounding him. Before dying, he reveals he was also in the Sierra program as Sierra Four. He hands Six an encrypted drive detailing the corruption of CIA official Denny Carmichael, the lead agent on the assassinatio...

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