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Synopsis
SOULS OF THE DEAD A police detective is at the remants of a fire at a lake house that killed a mother and young child. He suspects the husband who was inexplicably away from the house, but nothing can be proven. A young Seattle woman, Aly Mason, out with friends from work for the first time since her fiancé died in a climbing accident, is approached by an odd woman tattoo artist named Lynny who persuades Aly to get a small rose tattoo on her abdomen to remember her fiancé. That night, Aly awakens with a pain on her stomach and is shocked to find that the rose has become an elaborate tableau of a house. As the tattoo continues to transform itself, Aly is led to Jack Christopher, the owner of the club where Aly met Lynny. Evenutally, she and Jack realize that Lynny was Jack’s wife who died along with their 8-year-old daughter, Megan, in a house fire five years earlier. As they investigate the mystery together, they begin to fall in love and Aly thinks maybe it was Lynny’s intention to bring them together so they could both heal from their wounds. But the tattoo continues to change and Aly goes to go to the lake community to investigate the fire that killed Lynny and Megan. She learns that Lynny was searching for a younger sister from whom she was separated when infants. Using DNA from possessions Jack still has, she learns that she was Lynny’s sister, the two separated when their mother died giving birth to Aly who grew up in foster and group homes. Shortly afterwards, Aly is nearly killed in an explosion at the rebuilt lake house where Lynny and Megan died. She learns from the local detective that Jack is a suspect in both the explosion and the deaths of his wife and daughter. But when Aly is attacked, Jack saves her life. Soon after, the detective dies in a mysterious car accident. Aly and Jack determine that he was murdered and clues lead them to a suspect named Orten Umbarger from the lake community. Investigating him, Aly and Jack find that the young daughter the Umbargers are raising is, in fact, Jack’s daughter Megan who didn’t die in the fire along with her mother. In rescuing her, they’re chased by Umbarger who is paralyzed in an accident while his wife flees. Police determine that the Umbargers kidnapped Megan and killed Lynny, setting the fire to cover their crimes. Their own daughter, Lucia, who was a friend of Megan’s, died from leukemia and the Umbargers wanted to replace their dead child with Megan. They also killed the detective. Aly and Jack and Megan begin living together, Aly slightly bothered that her niece is more distant emotionally than she would like. When Jack goes missing one night, she gets a call from the police that Orten Umbarger has been murdered in the hospital, his throat cut and blood taken. Aly is afraid Jack was involved until the police reveal they have security tapes that show Umbarger’s wife, Arleese, committed the crime. When Jack shows up, however, he breaks up with Aly who is distraught to lose the only family she’s ever known. She plans to move, but then the tattoo transforms again causing her to follow Jack and Megan as they drive from Seattle to the lake community. There, Aly is captured by the cult behind all the crimes. Headed by the elderly man who saved Aly’s life in the house explosion, she learns he has the ability to place the spirits of the dead in the bodies of the living. Megan is possessed by the spirit of the dead Lucia and Orten Umbarger’s spirit was placed in Jack’s body after he was kidnapped the night he went missing and Umbarger was found dead with his blood removed. And now they plan to place the spirit of Umbarger’s wife, Arleese, into Aly’s body. With the help of Lynny who manifests herself one last time, Aly breaks free, taking with her the mixed blood of the living and the dead that allows the possession. Throwing the blood into the lake frees the possessed from the spirits inhabiting them, destroying the cult and freeing Jack and Megan to return to their bodies. Aly and Jack marry and Aly is pregnant with their first child when Aly is visited by the elderly man whose body was possessed by the leader of the cult, freed by the authorities. In broken English, he thanks Aly for freeing him from the hell of his possession. But as he shuffles off into the darkness, his demeanor changes and it’s revealed that he never was one of those possessed: "He just had to see Aly one last time. He really did love her despite the havoc she caused, disrupting Drucca and scattering the souls he’d gathered. No matter. From his pocket he brought out the carved box and rubbed it lovingly in his fingers. He could gather a new congregation at his leisure. Drucca would rise from the ashes. And maybe some day in one place or another, he’d find the lovely Aly once again." |
Synopsis
SEIZING LADY LIBERTY A group of hijackers seize the Hudson river commuter ferry Lady Liberty, sailing it into New York harbor. The hijackers consist of Colonel Vassily Kutznetsov and Sergeant Boris Meqtar, both Russian ex-military men; the colonel’s wife Veronique; and an American gunman, Arthur Haines. Among the various passengers are Maximillian Middleton, president of the American Diamond Bourse, and Countess Ariana Oppenheimer de Renzy, the target of the hijackers. The countess is the sister of the chairman of the De Beers diamond cartel, the hijackers using her to make the company provide a ransom of rough diamonds from their vaults in London and a second fortune in cut stones from the member companies of the Bourse, to be reimbursed by De Beers. The authorities set up a Response Command Center at the Coast Guard facility at the Battery in Manhattan. The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Port Authority, the NYPD, the Coast Guard and the State Department all have representatives arguing about the proper action to be taken. To the dismay of the authorities—except the commanding Inspector from the NYPD—the hijackers choose as their liaison Amos Brod, a former NYPD detective, now head of security for the Diamond Bourse, assisted by NYPD detective Colleen Londrigan (who’s also Amos’s lover--why he hasn’t proposed to her yet he doesn’t know). The action takes place in a single day and midway through the events it is revealed that Max Middleton is, in fact, one of the conspirators. He’s set up the crime and recruited the ex-pat Russians through his lover Nadya, the sergeant’s sister. When Russian Maffiya boss Bela Suka learns that Nadya is connected to Middleton in the middle of the hijack by supposed Chechens, he is suspicious. Trying to locate Middleton’s house, he’s stupid enough to ask his contact in the Italian Mafia, a capo named Giuseppe “Joe Gonzo” Gonzorelli, to use his sources to find Middleton’s home address in New Jersey, making Gonzo curious enough to follow the Russians accompanied by his henchman, Fritzi “Two Tone” Giovanni. Watching Middleton’s home, both groups follow Nadya as she drives Max’s Mercedes to a loft in Manhattan where she changes clothes and then drives off in a church van. The Ruskies and Joe Gonzo lose her when the Ruskies have an accident, both groups eventually staking out the loft . During the day Amos and Colleen collect the diamonds and deliver them by a zodiac boat to the hijackers in the harbor. The authorities make an attempt to disable the ferry and Haines kills one of the Coast Guard combat swimmers, and later shoots up a speedboat of kids who are playing chicken with the ferry. After making the authorities believe they are planning an escape by airplane, the hijackers sail up the East river into Long Island sound where they sink the ferry and escape underwater with scuba gear. As the passengers are rescued, Amos notes that his old friend Max has chosen not to wear the antique watch his deceased wife gave him, something he’s never seen Max without before, as if he knew he’d end up in the water that day, putting Amos on the trail of Max. The hijackers are met by Nadya and driven in the van to the colonel’s loft in Manhattan. The Ruskies and Joe Gonzo see them arrive and the Ruskies are about to bust in when Nadya comes out again and drives off in the Mercedes. They leave a lookout and follow her, Joe Gonzo electing to stay at the loft where he and Two Tone knock out and tie up the Ruskie lookout. While doing that, they don’t notice Haines leaving the loft where the hijackers are waiting for Max to show up. When Nadya picks up Max after he leaves his FBI interview, Amos and Colleen tumble to the Ruskies trailing her and Max, and they follow both groups back to the loft. Joe Gonzo, in turn, picks up on Amos and Colleen shadowing the others and follows them into the loft building. The Ruskies break in on the hijackers in the loft while Joe Gonzo takes Amos and Colleen hostage and surprises the Ruskies. Unfortunately for all of them, Haines, coming back from the bar, has seen the masked Joe Gonzo and Two Tone going in and, busting in, uses his combat shotgun to kill both the Italian and Russian mobsters inside the loft. As Haines is about to murder Amos and Colleen in cold blood, Veronika tries to stop him and is killed. The colonel and Amos fight with him, but he gets away with Colleen as a hostage. Amos lets the stricken colonel join him in chasing Haines, and when Amos’s car is disabled, the colonel hijacks a taxi and keeps up the chase, he and Haines crashing through a dome tennis complex on the East river, Haines forcing the taxi with the colonel in it over the edge into the river while Haines drives off. Amos catches up to Haines and forces him out onto the end of the South Street Seaport complex where Haines pulls Colleen into the river with him as cover, trying to escape by using the scuba equipment used to flee the ferry. Dragged underwater, Colleen is saved by the colonel who unexpectedly pops up to fight with Haines, the colonel mortally wounded when Haines tries to shoot Colleen. Amos finally kills Haines by blowing up the scuba tank on his back. Amos and Colleen pull the Colonel from the water and he dies in Colleen’s arms. In the coda, Amos and Colleen are married on a ferry in front of the Statue of Liberty. When Amos is informed that the other hijackers have been arrested in South America and are being extradited to face trial, he asks his new wife if she heard the good news and… “I certainly did,” she said. “Colleen Londrigan married the man she loves.” Then she kissed him. The ferry’s horn blasted in celebration and the sound echoed off the metal of the great lady next to them, skipped across the sparkling blue of the harbor and was distantly heard in the canyons of the vast city rising where the waters ended. |
