Matt O'Toole Movies
Six months after one of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, crime and corruption sink to new levels of depravity as a pair of New Orleans cops work to clean up the streets. New Orleans has been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, opening the floodgates for a sea of criminals seeking to assert their control over the city's seedy underworld. But when the stakes are this high, there's sure to be corruption within the ranks of the local police force, too. When a veteran detective with a violent history (Val Kilmer) is assigned a new partner with a dark secret (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson), the perceptive police psychiatrist (Sharon Stone) suspects that the officers may have become morally compromised by the chaos that threatens to consume the city that's already synonymous with vice and decadence. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Val Kilmer, Michael Biehn, (more)
When a group of missionary aid workers in Myanmar disappear into the vast green inferno, vigilante Vietnam War veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) leaves his job as a Salween River boatman behind to accompany a group of mercenaries on a daring rescue mission. It's been 20 years since Rambo helped mujahedeen rebels fend off Soviet invaders in Afghanistan, and these days the former soldier lives a simple life in northern Thailand. Meanwhile, the world's longest-running civil war rages into its 60th year on the nearby Thai-Burma border. One day, human rights missionaries Sarah Miller (Julie Benz) and Michael Burnett (Paul Schulze) show up asking Rambo to guide them up the Salween so they can get some much-needed food and medical supplies to the desperate Karen tribe. According to Sarah and Michael, the Burmese military has planted land mines all along the roads leading into the tribe's village, making it virtually impossible to reach the tribe via land. Two weeks after Rambo drops the group off in dangerous territory, pastor Arthur Marsh (Ken Howard) arrives with a chilling message: the aid workers never returned from their mission into the jungle, and the embassies refuse to help Marsh and his fellow missionaries find their missing friends. Now, despite the fact that Rambo has long since sworn off all forms of violence, the knowledge that innocent missionaries are being used as pawns in a brutal war leaves him with no other choice than to venture behind enemy lines on his most dangerous mission to date. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sylvester Stallone, Julie Benz, (more)
Peter Masterson's Lost Junction stars Billy Burke as Jimmy McGee, a hitchhiker who becomes involved with Missy Lofton (Neve Campbell) after she offers him a ride. He discovers that her husband's dead body is also along for the ride in the trunk. Jimmy has fallen for Missy and helps her get rid of any trace of the body. Her unstable boyfriend (Charles Powell) and Jimmy's handicapped friend (Jake Busey) round out the cast. Lost Junction was screened at the Santa Monica Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Neve Campbell, Billy Burke, (more)
- 2002
Paul Millander (Matt O'Toole), the serial killer who taunted the squad throughout the first season of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, is back in business. Claiming a third victim, Millander repeats his previous M.O., leaving behind a tape suggesting that the victim committed suicide. But Grissom (William L. Petersen) not only concludes that no suicide has occurred, but also ascertains that the victim's birth date was August 17, the same day in 1959 that Millander's own father was killed -- and, more chillingly, the same day in 1956 that Grissom himself was born. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2000
Once again, the CSI unit is challenged by a "signature killer" who stages murders to look like suicide, then deliberately leaves behind frustrating fragments of contrary evidence. All the unit knows is that the killer obviously has a working knowledge of forensic procedure. And on another front, a man who survived when his car went over a cliff still hovers between life and death. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2000
In the premiere episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Jim Brass (Paul Guilfoyle), head of the Las Vegas PD's forensic team, resents the presence of novice team member Holly Gribbs (Chandra West). Brass' efforts to scare Holly result in tragedy, but not before the unit investigates a disturbing variety of crimes: overnight-shift head man Grissom (William L. Petersen) looks into a suspicious suicide, number-two team member Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger) joins Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) in probing the death of a not-so-homeless drunk, and Warrick's friendly rival Nick Stokes (George Eads) searches for a woman who drugged and robbed a hapless tourist. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Jake Kasdan made his feature film directorial debut with this oblique thriller about eccentric private detective Daryl Zero (Bill Pullman) and his sardonic front man partner Steve Arlo (Ben Stiller). After the two are hired by blackmail victim Gregory Stark (Ryan O'Neal), Zero sets up a sting operation and soon focuses on his suspect, Gloria Sullivan (Kim Dickens), a woman he met at a health club. Thinking Zero is an accountant, she asks him to look over her tax return. Clues form a trail to hitman Kragan Vincent (Matt O'Toole), who could be Gloria's father. Amid the romance and revenge, Zero manages to write a few songs (actually written by Pullman and Kasdan). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Pullman, Ben Stiller, (more)
The traditions of the western and the gangster film meet head-on in this dark crime drama. Jericho is a small town in Texas that in the 1920s looks much like it did in the 1860s, except that two violent gangs of rival bootleggers have driven away nearly all of the citizens not involved in the booze racket. Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg) leads a gang of Italian rum-runners with the help of his right-hand-man Giorgio (Michael Imperioli), while Doyle (David Patrick Kelly) is the head of an Irish mob, with Hickey (Christopher Walken) serving as his enforcer; the town's sheriff, Ed Galt (Bruce Dern) is powerless to stop the crime in Jericho, and he mainly tries to stay out of the way and keep an uneasy peace between Strozzi and Doyle. John Smith (Bruce Willis) is a ruthless and amoral gunman on the run from the law who passes through Jericho on his way to Mexico. Sizing up the situation, Smith quickly hatches a scheme by which he'll sell his services first to one of the gangs, and then the other, eventually turning the two sides against each other while he stays in the middle and takes the profits generated by both sides. Writer and director Walter Hill based his screenplay on Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai picture Yojimbo, which also inspired Sergio Leone's ground-breaking spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, (more)
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, this epic version of the legendary western sheriff-gunslinger's life story stars Kevin Costner as Earp, who lived from 1848 to 1929. Growing up on a farm in Iowa, Earp tries to run away to join the Union Army in the Civil War, but he is turned away because of his youth. Instead, he studies law and marries Urilla Sutherland (Annabeth Gish). But Urilla dies of typhoid fever before they can have children. Earp grows despondent and descends into drinking and petty thievery, but his father Nicholas (Gene Hackman) finds him, sobers him up, and sets him straight. Earp becomes a buffalo hunter and a close companion of Bat Masterson (Tom Sizemore) and his brother Ed (Bill Pullman). With his brothers, Virgil (Michael Madsen) and Morgan (Linden Ashby), Earp sets out to clean up the violence-plagued towns of the old West -- by using his own guns to settle scores. Earp takes up with Mattie Blaylock (Mare Winningham), a drug addict and prostitute, then discards her for actress Josie Marcus (Joanna Going). In Tombstone, Arizona, the Earp brothers and their comrade Doc Holliday (Dennis Quaid), who is plagued by tuberculosis and a compulsion for gambling, meet their match in a ruthless gang led by Ike Clanton (Jeff Fahey). ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Costner, Dennis Quaid, (more)
In Rage and Honor, Cynthia Rothrock is featured as a full-time high-school teacher/part-time karate instructor who's out to protect one of her students who innocently witnesses and films a mob drug transaction. He's caught and beaten but keeps the film from the bad guys. Finding and helping him is an Australian foreign-exchange cop who also gets involved in the fracas when he's set up for a murder by some cop cohorts who've gone bad. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cynthia Rothrock, Richard Norton, (more)
In Marked for Death, Steven Seagal is told to "try to find the gentle person inside yourself." But he doesn't spend too much time looking, preferring instead to crack the spines of his victims. Seagal plays John Hatcher, a burned-out narcotics agent who resigns from the Drug Enforcement Administration after his partner is killed. He returns to his hometown and finds the city in the thrall of a vicious Jamaican drug gang, led by the nasty Screwface (Basil Wallace). He meets an old friend, now a high school football coach, who tells John about losing his best player and his 13-year-old nephew to drug overdoses. Soon John's family is threatened and his prize Mustang stolen, so John joins forces with his buddy to take on Screwface and the drug gang themselves. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Steven Seagal, Basil Wallace, (more)
