It’s hard out here for a pimp and even worse for a banker.
Spaulding Osborne (Duncan Regehr) is a successful banker at the height of the 80s but handling all that money can be stressful. Everyone needs a way to relax. Osborne unwinds by painting his face like a tiger and murdering prostitutes with a laser sighted crossbow. A worshipper of the ancient Gods, Osborne believes himself to be immortal and sees his murder spree as a way to collect souls. Two pimps (Leif Garrett and Jeff Conaway) keep Osborne supplied with victims. When Osborne suspects that one of the pimps has betrayed him, he demands that the pimp name all of the seven dwarves if he wants to live. It pays to know your Disney.
What Osborne didn’t count on was that the chief of police (Richard Roundtree) would assign one of his weariest detectives, Dan (Robert Forster), to the case or that the detective’s TV reporter ex-wife (Shanna Reed) would get promoted to the anchor desk and start a crusade to have him captured. Can Detective Dan capture Osborne before Osborne kills every prostitute in the city? Will Dan be able to protect his ex-wife from the banker?
A film about a greedy banker who kills poor people on the side? The Banker was released twenty years too early. If it had been released in 2009, it probably would have an Oscar. Instead, it was released straight-to-video in 1989 and exiled to late night Cinemax. Unfortunately, the idea behind The Banker is more interesting than the execution, with most of the kills happening offscreen and any social commentary being rushed through so that the movie can get to the next nude scene. Not surprisingly, the best thing about The Banker is Robert Forster, who is at his world-weary best. Forster went through some tough times before Quentin Tarantino resurrected his career with Jackie Brown but movies like The Banker show that Forster never stopped giving good performances.
The year is 1989 and the Cold War is coming to an end. Colonel Jack Knowles (Roy Scheider) was a hero in Vietnam but now, years later, his eagerness to fight has made him an outsider in the U.S. Army. Most people would rather that Knowles simply retire but, as long as there are wars to be fought, Knowles will be there. His only friend, General Hackworth (Harry Dean Stanton), arranges for Knowles to be assigned to an outpost on the West German-Czechoslovakia border. As soon as he arrives, Knowles starts to annoy his superior officer, Lt. Col. Clark (Tim Reid). When Knowles sees a Czech refugee gunned down by the Soviets while making a run for the border, he unleashes his frustration by throwing a snowball at his Russian counterpart. Like Knowles, Col. Valachev (Jurgen Prochnow) is a decorated veteran who feels lost without a war to fight. Knowles and Valachev are soon fighting their own personal war, even at the risk of starting a full-scale conflict between their two nations.
The year is 1962. Lights flash over California and the news on the radio is bad. What everyone feared has happened. Atomic war has broken out and the world is about to end. Refugees clog the highways as a mushroom cloud sprouts over Los Angeles. This is year zero, the year that humanity will either cease to exist or try to begin again.
Through the Shattered Lens 