Bad Guys
Four people get out of a car and pile into a run-down warehouse. The leader and mastermind, certainly at least in her own opinion, is Zena (Kate Del Castillo), a street-smart defense lawyer; Detective…
Bad Guys
Four people get out of a car and pile into a run-down warehouse. The leader and mastermind, certainly at least in her own opinion, is Zena (Kate Del Castillo), a street-smart defense lawyer; Detective Shepard (Art LaFleur), a hard-nosed cop; Eddie (Sherman Augustus), a slick, fast-talking con man and drug dealer; and Ashley (Danny Strong), a wimpy but talented chemist and medical school dropout who prepares 'designer' drugs for distribution. The four of them spend the overwhelming majority of the movie harshly bickering and arguing. Ashley used his skills to prepare drugs for his dorm mates and was kicked out of medical school; Zena got both he and Eddie off. The four of them decided to make a big score in order to get a big payout that would let them live comfortably and thumb their noses at a society that they all feel, turned its collective back on them. Ashley prepared a large quantity of a pure drug and they were making a sale to Roland Jackson (Quinton Jackson), a big, burly, black gangster who Eddie knows. Roland had 'gone Japanese,' and embraced Japanese culture after a visit to the country, and named himself 'The Big, Black Jap,' and his gang, the Black Yakuza. The deal went sour when Eddie inexplicably opened fire, killing Roland. Eddie fast-talks around the point when confronted on this in the warehouse, never quite explaining his motive. He does point out having been suspicious of an extra briefcase Roland had-- Eddie grabbed it as the four of them fled. All told, from the busted deal, they're now sitting on one million in cash-- an amount Zena is severely dissatisfied with, especially since it would be divided four ways. Shep wants to kill Eddie in the belief that he's a backstabber and untrustworthy, and Ashley's constant nervous jabber makes Shep want to kill him too. But Zena sternly tells him that they need to stick together and go according 'to plan;' a plan that Eddie continually ridicules. Their first order of business is to lay low and let the heat over Roland's murder blow over. Roland has a twin brother, Leroy Johnson (also played by Quinton Jackson in a dual role). Leroy is just as big, and just as mean as his brother, and although they're sworn enemies over Roland 'turning Japanese,' something Leroy finds repulsive, the four of them fear that Leroy will still seek retribution against Roland's killers. Zena's clothes are covered in blood; it's revealed that after Eddie shot Roland, he was still alive, and leaped up and started to choke Zena. To save herself, she pulled her own gun and finished Roland off. The four of them had to take out all of Roland's men in a wild shootout from which they all escaped. They watch a news report that shows that the police have no leads on Roland's killers. However, the report shows something very disturbing: one of Roland's men was actually an undercover DEA agent. Complicating matters further is that Shepard was the one who killed this man during the shootout. With no heat on the four of them, the plan is to continue laying low while Shepard and Eddie will make some calls to make sure no suspicion is drawing close, while Ashley will get to work in a makeshift drug preparation lab in the warehouse and perfect a new batch of a really pure and refined designer drug. As Zena washes the blood off her blouse, Eddie quizzes her on something she doesn't want to talk about, and he makes it a sticking point throughout their share of the four-way bickering: Zena had had sex with Shepard. Eddie makes like he wants to have a go at Zena, who has an attractive body. Zena is rather disgusted by the idea. She later confides in Shep that she had sex with him because he was starting to come apart during the preparation of the deal with Roland, and it calmed him down and soothed his nerves. Ashley and Eddie are talking in the lab, where Eddie reveals he doesn't do drugs himself, ever since he'd been too stoned to make a delivery one day; Eddie's kid brother took it on himself to make the delivery, and was killed. Eddie visits a contact of his named Dutch (Michael Florie), who owns a strip joint. Word is that Leroy is heading to L.A. from his home turf in Detroit, after hearing of Roland's murder. Eddie plays dumb, acting like he hadn't heard about the 'hit' on Roland. They discuss a drug deal with Dutch being a sub-distributor. The four of them are back at the warehouse, and they all jump as there is a banging knock at the door. Zena, Shepard and Eddie all stand to either side of the door, guns ready, until Ashley goes to the door and opens it. He'd gotten hungry and called for a pizza delivery, who's now staring down the barrels of three guns. The pizza guy (Ray Sefo) acts comically unruffled as they pull him into the warehouse and discuss what to do with him. Zena says they're going to pay him and let him go, so nobody goes looking for him. She gives him $100 and sends him on his way. More backstory is revealed as during a routine round of bickering, Eddie reveals that he knows Shepard is the one who killed Eddie's brother. He'd caught Eddie's brother making the delivery, made him lie down on his belly with his hands over his head, divested the kid of all his stash, and then without any provocation, shot him in the head and murdered him. Yet another serious snag further unravels the 'plan' as Ashley's two hamsters, which have been test subjects for the drugs he's preparing, are found dead in their cage. The latest batch he's whipped up is 100% fatal, making it unsuitable for sale. Everyone's nerves frays further; Shepard wanting to kill Ashley and Eddie more than ever, and Zena wanting to do it too but holding her desire for blood firmly in check. A very frightened Ashley promises to work out the problems. The latest batch is ready, and Ashley has given some to a fluffy white rat named Winker. Winker has been busy on an exercise wheel for a couple of hours. They need a human test subject now as a final check before they're ready to sell and make their score. Eddie brings a homeless, lifetime drug using bum named Flappy (Antonio Fargas) back to the warehouse. Flappy is so named because he dances on the street for pocket change. He's spent his whole life using a whole variety of drugs. He's offered to shoot the drug up, smoke it or snort it. Going really hardcore, Flappy asks to sprinkle some on cereal; a request Ashley finds very amusing. Flappy wolfs down two bowls of Froot Loops cereal sprinkled with the drug. He likes it has a lot of energy. Feeling like they're finally on the verge of their big score, Zena, Eddie, Shepard and Ashley sit down to eat the pizza. A comic bickering breaks out over what to name the drug, and during a lull, more backstory is revealed: Zena has been disbarred and no longer able to practice law. She explains this only as 'circumstances' and 'complications,' which infuriates Eddie, who sees both Zena and Shepard as self-righteous; Shepard is a long time dirty cop who sells most of the drugs he confiscates from dealers he arrests, but still feels he's doing right by society. Zena defends her being removed from the bar and her law license being revoked, while the two still see Eddie as just a common criminal with a penchant for B-movies. Zena and Shepard finally turn the tables on Eddie's continuous habit of using movie references against him, and they and Ashley all laugh hilariously. The laughter stops very quickly as Flappy, who's been dancing in a corner while listening to music through headphones, suddenly collapses and falls dead. Desperate, Ashley tries to rationalize that Flappy is a lifetime user, he'd eaten the raw drug powder over two bowls of cereal, adding to which the warehouse isn't air conditioned and the standard hot weather of L.A. is making it sweltering; so it's a reasonable assumption that Flappy had a heart attack. He hurries to the lab to check on Winker. Winker is missing; Ashley accidentally left the door to his cage open. He states a need to find him, while Zena shouts that she needs to settle down and think. It takes Zena very little time to notice that she's unable to focus and concentrate, despite her strongest effort. She confronts Ashley on this, who, under duress, reveals that he, motivated by Flappy's consumption of the drug... sprinkled it all over the pizza they'd all eaten. Eddie immediately pulls his gun and kills Ashley. As Zena stands over the body, looking subdued and not upset over it, she happens to turn and sees Shepard is gone. Hurrying after him, she sees the briefcases with all the money gone. Shepard confronts them with his gun ready. He definitely wants to kill Eddie, and even Zena has to plead and use some of her feminine charm to make him think twice about killing her. One million split two ways isn't as much as one of them keeping it all, but Shepard has enough of a torch left to think about it. But his rage at Eddie is coming to a head. Eddie has no room nor time to raise his gun, but during a moment of distraction, he's able to slip a makeshift knife out of his sleeve and hurl it at Shepard. The knife hits him right in the throat, and Shepard slowly sags to the ground and dies in a pool of blood. Finally, it's Zena ready to turn on Eddie, although she's willing, if barely, to let Eddie go with all of the original opium while she takes the money. During the argument, Eddie tells Zena that he sees through her facade of acting sophisticated and 'uptown,' dressing in fancy clothes, talking with a big vocabulary, all of which clash from her inner-city upbringing. He doesn't believe that Zena lost her law license on a frame job. Zena finally admits she wasn't framed, but she was duped; as an intern in a large law firm, she tried to be a team player and always please her superiors, all her efforts going without acknowledgment... until finally they came to her for help with something. Zena immediately knew it was drug money, but against her instincts, she helped launder it for them in the hopes it would get her some recognition. She's very angry and bitter at her own foolishness and blindness in not seeing the firm's real reason for giving her this job: so they could dump it all in her lap and make her a patsy to take the fall if the DEA caught on to them; which, of course, they did, and the firm gleefully handed Zena over to fry for them. This is what got Zena started on the whole scheme to make a drug score. Zena gets a little emotional as she says she never wanted to hurt anyone, even Eddie. Eddie quietly says, "Don't..." but then out of simple contempt for her, he calls her a bitch; something he's done repeatedly throughout the movie just to rub it in her face after she made clear how much she hates being called that. Finally losing her temper, Zena pulls the trigger to kill Eddie, but finds the gun doesn't fire. Eddie had gummed up the gun's hammer and firing pin with chewing gum (he'd been seen taking a piece out of his mouth and putting it back in a wrapper at the beginning of the movie). Eddie gloats and makes fun of Zena, further rubbing it in with more B-movie references. At the end of her patience, Zena rips her skirt and challenges Eddie to a fist fight; intent on beating him to death with her bare hands. Eddie obliges her, and they fight it out in a brutal knockdown, dragout brawl. Although Eddie is stunned several times by Zena's ferocity, he gradually overpowers her, bloodying her nose and face with two vicious haymaker punches, before leaving her crumpled on the ground and gasping for air after a crippling punch to her stomach. Thinking Zena is at his mercy, Eddie starts to grandstand and gesticulate, giggling hysterically several times. Seeing Zena trying to worm her way over to Eddie's gun, which had been knocked to the floor during the fight, he kicks it away and delivers more histrionics, gloating and rubbing it in. But Zena has the last laugh when Eddie doesn't pay attention to her crawling over to Shepard's corpse. Grabbing Eddie's knife out of Shepard's throat, she throws it with all her remaining strength, burying it right in Eddie's heart. Eddie is now scolding himself, although the drug's taking effect makes him laugh it all off, and he literally dies laughing... at Zena, at himself, at everything and nothing. Seeing the TV still playing, Zena struggles to reach the remote, and turns the mute for the volume off so she can hear the newscast. The news reporters say that Leroy Johnson's men were involved in a shootout with police at L.A.'s airport, and Leroy is now the prime suspect in Roland's murder; the police knowing of the bad blood between the two brothers. Leroy has evaded arrest and capture but is now being hunted by police, the FBI, and the DEA, for the massacre that claimed the lives of Roland and his men, and the undercover DEA agent. Zena grins wide at the irony of the news update, before she finally collapses over Shepard's body and dies. The last shot is of Winker, Ashley's rat, sitting at the edge of a batch of the designer drug Ashley had prepared; licking itself clean.
Bad Guys
Action,Crime,Thriller
Film Details
Four people get out of a car and pile into a run-down warehouse. The leader and mastermind, certainly at least in her own opinion, is Zena (Kate Del Castillo), a street-smart defense lawyer; Detective Shepard (Art LaFleur), a hard-nosed cop; Eddie (Sherman Augustus), a slick, fast-talking con man and drug dealer; and Ashley (Danny Strong), a wimpy but talented chemist and medical school dropout who prepares 'designer' drugs for distribution. The four of them spend the overwhelming majority of the movie harshly bickering and arguing.
Ashley used his skills to prepare drugs for his dorm mates and was kicked out of medical school; Zena got both he and Eddie off. The four of them decided to make a big score in order to get a big payout that would let them live comfortably and thumb their noses at a society that they all feel, turned its collective back on them. Ashley prepared a large quantity of a pure drug and they were making a sale to Roland Jackson (Quinton Jackson), a big, burly, black gangster who Eddie knows.
Roland had 'gone Japanese,' and embraced Japanese culture after a visit to the country, and named himself 'The Big, Black Jap,' and his gang, the Black Yakuza. The deal went sour when Eddie inexplicably opened fire, killing Roland. Eddie fast-talks around the point when confronted on this in the warehouse, never quite explaining his motive.
He does point out having been suspicious of an extra briefcase Roland had-- Eddie grabbed it as the four of them fled. All told, from the busted deal, they're now sitting on one million in cash-- an amount Zena is severely dissatisfied with, especially since it would be divided four ways. Shep wants to kill Eddie in the belief that he's a backstabber and untrustworthy, and Ashley's constant nervous jabber makes Shep want to kill him too.
But Zena sternly tells him that they need to stick together and go according 'to plan;' a plan that Eddie continually ridicules. Their first order of business is to lay low and let the heat over Roland's murder blow over. Roland has a twin brother, Leroy Johnson (also played by Quinton Jackson in a dual role).
Leroy is just as big, and just as mean as his brother, and although they're sworn enemies over Roland 'turning Japanese,' something Leroy finds repulsive, the four of them fear that Leroy will still seek retribution against Roland's killers. Zena's clothes are covered in blood; it's revealed that after Eddie shot Roland, he was still alive, and leaped up and started to choke Zena. To save herself, she pulled her own gun and finished Roland off.
The four of them had to take out all of Roland's men in a wild shootout from which they all escaped. They watch a news report that shows that the police have no leads on Roland's killers. However, the report shows something very disturbing: one of Roland's men was actually an undercover DEA agent.
Complicating matters further is that Shepard was the one who killed this man during the shootout. With no heat on the four of them, the plan is to continue laying low while Shepard and Eddie will make some calls to make sure no suspicion is drawing close, while Ashley will get to work in a makeshift drug preparation lab in the warehouse and perfect a new batch of a really pure and refined designer drug. As Zena washes the blood off her blouse, Eddie quizzes her on something she doesn't want to talk about, and he makes it a sticking point throughout their share of the four-way bickering: Zena had had sex with Shepard.
Eddie makes like he wants to have a go at Zena, who has an attractive body. Zena is rather disgusted by the idea. She later confides in Shep that she had sex with him because he was starting to come apart during the preparation of the deal with Roland, and it calmed him down and soothed his nerves.
Ashley and Eddie are talking in the lab, where Eddie reveals he doesn't do drugs himself, ever since he'd been too stoned to make a delivery one day; Eddie's kid brother took it on himself to make the delivery, and was killed. Eddie visits a contact of his named Dutch (Michael Florie), who owns a strip joint. Word is that Leroy is heading to L.A.
from his home turf in Detroit, after hearing of Roland's murder. Eddie plays dumb, acting like he hadn't heard about the 'hit' on Roland. They discuss a drug deal with Dutch being a sub-distributor.
The four of them are back at the warehouse, and they all jump as there is a banging knock at the door. Zena, Shepard and Eddie all stand to either side of the door, guns ready, until Ashley goes to the door and opens it. He'd gotten hungry and called for a pizza delivery, who's now staring down the barrels of three guns.
The pizza guy (Ray Sefo) acts comically unruffled as they pull him into the warehouse and discuss what to do with him. Zena says they're going to pay him and let him go, so nobody goes looking for him. She gives him $100 and sends him on his way.
More backstory is revealed as during a routine round of bickering, Eddie reveals that he knows Shepard is the one who killed Eddie's brother. He'd caught Eddie's brother making the delivery, made him lie down on his belly with his hands over his head, divested the kid of all his stash, and then without any provocation, shot him in the head and murdered him. Yet another serious snag further unravels the 'plan' as Ashley's two hamsters, which have been test subjects for the drugs he's preparing, are found dead in their cage.
The latest batch he's whipped up is 100% fatal, making it unsuitable for sale. Everyone's nerves frays further; Shepard wanting to kill Ashley and Eddie more than ever, and Zena wanting to do it too but holding her desire for blood firmly in check. A very frightened Ashley promises to work out the problems.
The latest batch is ready, and Ashley has given some to a fluffy white rat named Winker. Winker has been busy on an exercise wheel for a couple of hours. They need a human test subject now as a final check before they're ready to sell and make their score.
Eddie brings a homeless, lifetime drug using bum named Flappy (Antonio Fargas) back to the warehouse. Flappy is so named because he dances on the street for pocket change. He's spent his whole life using a whole variety of drugs.
He's offered to shoot the drug up, smoke it or snort it. Going really hardcore, Flappy asks to sprinkle some on cereal; a request Ashley finds very amusing. Flappy wolfs down two bowls of Froot Loops cereal sprinkled with the drug.
He likes it has a lot of energy. Feeling like they're finally on the verge of their big score, Zena, Eddie, Shepard and Ashley sit down to eat the pizza. A comic bickering breaks out over what to name the drug, and during a lull, more backstory is revealed: Zena has been disbarred and no longer able to practice law.
She explains this only as 'circumstances' and 'complications,' which infuriates Eddie, who sees both Zena and Shepard as self-righteous; Shepard is a long time dirty cop who sells most of the drugs he confiscates from dealers he arrests, but still feels he's doing right by society. Zena defends her being removed from the bar and her law license being revoked, while the two still see Eddie as just a common criminal with a penchant for B-movies. Zena and Shepard finally turn the tables on Eddie's continuous habit of using movie references against him, and they and Ashley all laugh hilariously.
The laughter stops very quickly as Flappy, who's been dancing in a corner while listening to music through headphones, suddenly collapses and falls dead. Desperate, Ashley tries to rationalize that Flappy is a lifetime user, he'd eaten the raw drug powder over two bowls of cereal, adding to which the warehouse isn't air conditioned and the standard hot weather of L.A. is making it sweltering; so it's a reasonable assumption that Flappy had a heart attack.
He hurries to the lab to check on Winker. Winker is missing; Ashley accidentally left the door to his cage open. He states a need to find him, while Zena shouts that she needs to settle down and think.
It takes Zena very little time to notice that she's unable to focus and concentrate, despite her strongest effort. She confronts Ashley on this, who, under duress, reveals that he, motivated by Flappy's consumption of the drug... sprinkled it all over the pizza they'd all eaten.
Eddie immediately pulls his gun and kills Ashley. As Zena stands over the body, looking subdued and not upset over it, she happens to turn and sees Shepard is gone. Hurrying after him, she sees the briefcases with all the money gone.
Shepard confronts them with his gun ready. He definitely wants to kill Eddie, and even Zena has to plead and use some of her feminine charm to make him think twice about killing her. One million split two ways isn't as much as one of them keeping it all, but Shepard has enough of a torch left to think about it.
But his rage at Eddie is coming to a head. Eddie has no room nor time to raise his gun, but during a moment of distraction, he's able to slip a makeshift knife out of his sleeve and hurl it at Shepard. The knife hits him right in the throat, and Shepard slowly sags to the ground and dies in a pool of blood.
Finally, it's Zena ready to turn on Eddie, although she's willing, if barely, to let Eddie go with all of the original opium while she takes the money. During the argument, Eddie tells Zena that he sees through her facade of acting sophisticated and 'uptown,' dressing in fancy clothes, talking with a big vocabulary, all of which clash from her inner-city upbringing. He doesn't believe that Zena lost her law license on a frame job.
Zena finally admits she wasn't framed, but she was duped; as an intern in a large law firm, she tried to be a team player and always please her superiors, all her efforts going without acknowledgment... until finally they came to her for help with something. Zena immediately knew it was drug money, but against her instincts, she helped launder it for them in the hopes it would get her some recognition.
She's very angry and bitter at her own foolishness and blindness in not seeing the firm's real reason for giving her this job: so they could dump it all in her lap and make her a patsy to take the fall if the DEA caught on to them; which, of course, they did, and the firm gleefully handed Zena over to fry for them. This is what got Zena started on the whole scheme to make a drug score. Zena gets a little emotional as she says she never wanted to hurt anyone, even Eddie.
Eddie quietly says, "Don't..." but then out of simple contempt for her, he calls her a bitch; something he's done repeatedly throughout the movie just to rub it in her face after she made clear how much she hates being called that. Finally losing her temper, Zena pulls the trigger to kill Eddie, but finds the gun doesn't fire. Eddie had gummed up the gun's hammer and firing pin with chewing gum (he'd been seen taking a piece out of his mouth and putting it back in a wrapper at the beginning of the movie).
Eddie gloats and makes fun of Zena, further rubbing it in with more B-movie references. At the end of her patience, Zena rips her skirt and challenges Eddie to a fist fight; intent on beating him to death with her bare hands. Eddie obliges her, and they fight it out in a brutal knockdown, dragout brawl.
Although Eddie is stunned several times by Zena's ferocity, he gradually overpowers her, bloodying her nose and face with two vicious haymaker punches, before leaving her crumpled on the ground and gasping for air after a crippling punch to her stomach. Thinking Zena is at his mercy, Eddie starts to grandstand and gesticulate, giggling hysterically several times. Seeing Zena trying to worm her way over to Eddie's gun, which had been knocked to the floor during the fight, he kicks it away and delivers more histrionics, gloating and rubbing it in.
But Zena has the last laugh when Eddie doesn't pay attention to her crawling over to Shepard's corpse. Grabbing Eddie's knife out of Shepard's throat, she throws it with all her remaining strength, burying it right in Eddie's heart. Eddie is now scolding himself, although the drug's taking effect makes him laugh it all off, and he literally dies laughing...
at Zena, at himself, at everything and nothing. Seeing the TV still playing, Zena struggles to reach the remote, and turns the mute for the volume off so she can hear the newscast. The news reporters say that Leroy Johnson's men were involved in a shootout with police at L.A.'s airport, and Leroy is now the prime suspect in Roland's murder; the police knowing of the bad blood between the two brothers.
Leroy has evaded arrest and capture but is now being hunted by police, the FBI, and the DEA, for the massacre that claimed the lives of Roland and his men, and the undercover DEA agent. Zena grins wide at the irony of the news update, before she finally collapses over Shepard's body and dies. The last shot is of Winker, Ashley's rat, sitting at the edge of a batch of the designer drug Ashley had prepared; licking itself clean..