Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...clothes--and not all the commerce flows through legitimate channels. In California last week federal agents swept up seven suspects, including a representative of a state-owned Chinese arms company, in a sting operation that involved smuggling 2,000 fully automatic AK-47 assault rifles into the U.S. A plot that would have earned $4 million and contributed to the illegal firepower already menacing American streets is, as Justice Department officials said, a very serious matter. But the diplomatic questions hovering over it may be still more important: What did the Chinese government know about this criminal operation...
...officers never carried out the plot, believing Yeltsin's bodyguards would mow them down even before they could get close. But their attitude reflects the disaffection that top- and middle-level officers harbor toward the President. Many of them were once among his strongest backers, but the disastrous war in Chechnya, the general poverty of the officer corps, the delays in salary payments and an overall sense that Russia has been humbled have created powerful anti-Yeltsin sentiments. "Six years ago, I was ready to genuflect before Yeltsin," said the colonel. "Now I would just love to lock...
...wily hermit (Sean Connery), the only prisoner to escape Alcatraz and live, is to help Cage navigate the Rock1s maze of passageways. It all works very smartly. The Simpson-Bruckheimer production duo run clever variations on their macho obsessions (missiles, car chases, gay-baiting, the Crimson Tide mutiny plot). This ain1t art, exactly. But if you1re at the plex and need to choose between The Rock and a Cruise place, it1s no choice...
Back on the movie screen, some of the big names besides Bertolucci were disappointing their fans. Robert Altman's Kansas City, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Miranda Richardson, shrouds the aimless bustle of its plot--kidnapping, murder and political maneuvering set against a 1934 jazz milieu--in an opium haze of dramatic anomie. Stephen Frears' The Van, third in the series that includes The Commitments and The Snapper, is a noisy mess, with shouting in lieu of wit and brawls stunt-doubling for character conflict. But this pub/pug violence was mild next to the atrocities in David Cronenberg's Crash...
That pretty much narrows it down, in terms of Grisham's latest set of villains. The new novel's plot involves a high-stakes civil suit against Big Tobacco, brought by the forces of what might be called Big Health, in the name of a widow whose poor slob of a husband smoked himself to death. The tobacco cartel has won every such suit up to this one, but now the odds are beginning to tip. This is why the novel's companies have set up an eight-figure war chest with a private cia of thugs and slinkers...