Vern Porter Movies

LA Law's husband-and-wife costars Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry are top-billed in this TV movie tailored to their talents. Tucker is a minor league crook who can't seem to do anything right. Eikenberry is a bored housewife who is inadvertently kidnapped by Tucker during a bank robbery. Eventually kidnapper and kidnapee find that they are kindred spirits--two misfits in a world full of conformists. A true family affair, Secret Life of Archie's Wife also features Michael Tucker's real-life daughter Alison in a supporting role (Archie, incidentally, is played by Ray Wise). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This made-for-television drama is based on the true story of a harrowing country abduction. Tracy Pollan stars as Kari Swenson, an Olympic biathlon athlete-in-training who is kidnapped by some reclusive, backwoods mountain men looking for marriage. The movie follows her captivity, the massive search and her recovery from both her physical injuries and the trauma of the experience. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi

Released in the mid-1980s, this farm drama stars Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard as Jewell and Gil Ivy, who run a small farm in Iowa that has been in Jewell's family for several generations; her father Otis (Wilford Brimley) lives with them, along with their three children. While the work is hard and the earnings are slim, the Ivys have been able to get by, like most of their neighbors, until a one-two punch threatens to devastate the Iowa farming community. First, a tornado devastates the area, then the Farmers Home Administration calls in the loans on most of the farmers in the area, which they are in no position to repay. With thirty days to "voluntarily liquidate" their property, the Ivys, like most of their friends and neighbors, are desperate to find a way to hold on to their property, and when the stress causes Gil to buckle, Jewell must step in to keep the clan going. In addition to starring as Gil, Sam Shepard also contributed (without credit) to William D. Wittliff's screenplay; Wittliff was also slated to direct, but shortly after shooting began he was replaced by Richard Pearce. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based on a true story, Silkwood begins and ends with Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) driving along a lonely road in 1974, heading to a meeting with a New York Times reporter to deliver evidence of negligence at the Kerr-McGee Plant in Cimarron, Oklahoma. The balance of the film flashes back to Karen's ribald private life with her lover (Kurt Russell) and her loose-living friends (Cher and Diana Scarwid). This is in contrast to her humdrum job at Kerr-McGee--or it least it was humdrum until Karen and several other employees become contaminated by radiation. The higher-ups want to sweep this incident under the rug, but Karen thinks that something's fishy, and informs the union of that fact. X-rays of the faulty fuel rods and written proof of the inadequate safety measures that caused Karen's illness are tampered with, forcing Karen to conduct her own private investigation. As she gathers evidence, Karen becomes a pariah to her boyfriend because of her obsession. She finally organizes the evidence into a briefcase, and heads off to her meeting with the Times reporter. She never makes it; the "official" report on her fatal auto accident is that Ms. Silkwood had been drinking and was under the influence of tranquilizers. Kerr-McGee was eventually forced to pay the Silkwood family an enormous settlement because of her contamination, but the full facts behind her convenient accident have never been revealed (though the filmmakers clearly indictate whom they hold responsible). Director Mike Nichols and screenwriters Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen surround this true story with a lively, improvisational atmosphere that gets the best out of Streep, Russell, and Cher, while providing perhaps the fullest on-screen realization of Nichols' theater-based techniques of realistic, character-centered, dialogue-driven filmmaking, as well as one of the first movie screenplays from future director Ephron. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Elmore Leonard's script for Mr. Majestyk was, like his novel, supposed to have concentrated on the plight of Chicano migrant workers; but what emerged on screen was extensively reshaped into a standard Charles Bronson vehicle. Battle-weary Vietnam veteran Vince Majestyk (Bronson) settles down in rural Colorado, hoping to make a living as a watermelon farmer. Despite his new-found pacifism, Majestyk can't seem to stay out of trouble, and he lands in jail, where he foils a breakout engineered by Mob boss Frank Renda (Al Lettieri). Offering to bring in Renda in exchange for his own freedom, Majestyk finds himself the main target of the Mob, who is also extorting vast sums of money from Vince's fellow farmers. It is bad enough when the crooks begin roughing up Majestyk's field hands; but when they ruthlessly machine-gun his entire melon crop, they've gone too far. Teaming up with Chicano labor activist Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal) (any relation to Cesar?), Majestyk decides to track down the mobsters one by one and mete out retribution. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi