The Crew(2000)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

SHORT VERSION:
After a series of events takes place that results in Tony, Pepper, Ferris, Olivia, and Steve being captured by Ventana’s henchmen and brought to his ship (though Steve is released when his status as a dirty cop on Ventana’s payroll is exposed in front of the others), Joey comes up with an idea on how to save them: Contact all of the retired mobsters Mike has been exchanging Christmas cards with over the years and summon the living ones to come to Miami and help them and Bobby frees their comrades and loved ones.

A bunch of them come and get supplied with guns from another fellow old mafioso, and they all get on board the ship, kill or subdue Ventana’s thugs, and rescue the four hostages. However, Olivia stops Bobby during the escape and asks him who he is, but before he can tell her that he is her long-lost father, Ventana emerges and holds Olivia hostage while demanding for his identity himself. Bobby ends up launching himself at him and sends all three of them over the railing and into the water, and Bobby punches out Ventana before yelling that he is Olivia’s dad.

By the time the cops show up, all the old mobsters are gone, and $40 million in cocaine gets found on the ship. Olivia gets all the credit for catching Ventana, and Ventana receives a long prison sentence. Olivia also later arrested Steve when he tried to skip town. The mafiosos took a few of Ventana’s trucks before they left, and in one of them was 5,000+ boxes of Cuban cigars. They sold them on the street, earning enough money for Bobby, Joey, Tony, and Mike to put a down payment on the Raj Mahal Hotel, which they turned into a retirement home for fellow elderly ex-mobsters. Ferris went to some psychologists to sort out her issues that led her to become a stripper, and she eventually quit that line of work and became a waitress. Tony and Pepper get married, and on the same day as the wedding, Olivia – who never told anyone about the old mobsters’ involvement in anything – welcomes Bobby as her father with open arms.

LONG VERSION:
While having a sexual tryst with Ferris (Jennifer Tilly), Tony (Seymour Cassel) blabs to her that he, Bobby (Richard Dreyfuss), Joey (Burt Reynolds), and Mike (Dan Hedaya) “killed” Ventana’s (Miguel Sandoval) father. A couple of days later, she summons all four men to meet her at the strip club where she works and lets them all know that Tony spilled the beans to her about what they did, then informs them that the word on the street is that Ventana is willing to pay a lot of money to find out who “murdered” his father. She then makes a deal with the quartet where, in exchange for her silence, they will assassinate her wealthy stepmother Pepper (Lainie Kazan) for her (she views Pepper as the archetypal “evil stepmother” and will stand to collect a lot of money on the insurance if she dies). After scouting out Pepper and her mansion from out in the harbor, the old-timers decide that they aren’t going to whack her, but they wonder what else they can do to get out of this mess. Moments later, Mike accidentally knocks Joey into the water and makes him drown, but thanks to the work of paramedics they call for help, Joey is brought back to life. After his revival, he tells the guys that he has an idea (he explained earlier that he comes up with ideas after being unconscious).

Mike goes to the morgue where he works and steals a fake skeleton, then he, Bobby, and Tony sneak onto the mansion’s grounds while Joey distracts the security guard. Bobby finds Pepper in her bedroom, binds and gags her, and takes her out of the house, then Mike puts the skeleton in her bed and puts some jewelry on it to make it look more authentic before Tony sends a rat into the walls of the house with a flaming piece of cloth tied to its tail. As the seniors take Pepper back to the Raj Mahal Hotel, the panicked rat runs all through the walls and sets the house ablaze, but it gets out and runs into Ventana’s mansion, located right next door, causing that place to go up in flames as well. The next morning, after Bobby finds out about the additional house fire in the newspaper, he and the others talk to Pepper and explain that Ferris hired them to kill her. Pepper turns out to be a caring person and is surprised and disappointed to learn from the men that Ferris works as a stripper since they haven’t communicated in five years. Joey and Mike then explain that they torched her house to make it look like she died in an accidental house fire, but they unintentionally destroyed Ventana’s mansion as well and inform her that he is a big-time drug lord, which she was also unaware of.

Suddenly, Olivia (Carrie-Anne Moss) – a police detective investigating Ventana’s father’s “murder” whom Bobby discovered is his long-lost daughter (though she doesn’t know it yet) – comes knocking at the door. Bobby goes into the hallway and talks to her, and she brings up the destruction of Ventana’s home before asking him if he truly doesn’t remember anything pertaining to the “murder” because he could be in a lot of danger, and she has a feeling that he is not telling her everything. Bobby manages to convince her that they need to chat another time, and he almost tells her that she is his child, but he can’t bring himself to say it. The guys wind up befriending Pepper (and she and Tony develop an instant mutual attraction), and Bobby gives her the full scoop on what they did with Ventana’s father’s body as well as how Olivia is his daughter and he is unsure about reaching out to her. She first thanks the guys for not killing her before telling Bobby that he should call Olivia.

Later on, Olivia and her partner (and unfaithful ex) Steve (Jeremy Piven) go to the morgue to inspect Pepper’s “remains” and discover that the coroner found a “Made in Taiwan” tag on the skeleton. This throws hers and Steve’s investigation of Ventana into more confusion, with Olivia remarking that the house fires and the disappearance of Pepper are somehow connected, and she has a feeling about Bobby that she can’t place. The next morning, Ventana tells his men that he suspects that the person he believes is after him knows about his impending drug shipment – coming in via ship – and wants to take it from him, so he is putting extra men on the dock to help unload it. Around this time, Olivia is at her desk looking into the pasts of the four ex-mobsters when a fellow officer approaches her and tells her that the files she wanted on Pepper have been reclassified as “sensitive” by Steve and he has also put the case under his dominion, so she asks the officer to find out where Steve currently is. We then see Steve visiting Ferris and telling her that the skeleton that was found was not Pepper’s, but when Ferris asks whose skeleton it is and where Pepper has gone to, he replies that he can’t give her the details right now. He leaves moments later, and later on, Ferris gets into her car intending to visit the old wiseguys to get some answers. However, she doesn’t know that Steve has been staking her out since he left, and he talks to someone on his phone and says he is going to be tailing Ferris since she might be connected with the house fires, plus he tells the person to check up on Bobby and company because they might know something, too. We then discover that Steve is speaking to Ventana, exposing him as a dirty cop on the take with him. Steve then starts to follow Ferris, but he isn’t aware that Olivia has found him and is now tailing him as well.

Back at the Raj Mahal, Bobby has finished leaving a message for Olivia at the police station, and Joey looks out the window and sees a parking officer dispensing tickets and getting near his car. After being unable to locate the keys, he has Mike come down to the car with him so they can hotwire it and move it. Tony and Pepper have a dance together, but the moment is soon spoiled when Ventana’s senior henchman Miguel (Carlos Gómez) and another goon burst in and hold them up at gunpoint. Ferris arrives and gets held up as well, then Steve shows up next with gun drawn and orders the goons to step away from Ferris, but they knock him out, not knowing that he is on their boss’ payroll. Olivia then appears and is captured also. Bobby – who was in the bathroom when all of this occurred – jumps out the window into the pool to avoid being caught. Shortly afterward, Joey and Mike spot the Colombians putting their five captives into their car and driving off, and then Bobby walks up to them and says that Ventana is behind this kidnapping, so they follow the Colombians. After seeing the captives getting forced aboard Ventana’s ship while also seeing what forces they would be up against if they attempted a rescue right then and there, Bobby, Joey, and Mike return to their apartment to formulate a plan.

As Ventana starts to question the captives on who is responsible for the attacks against him, he notices Steve and asks Miguel in Spanish why he is here because he works for them, causing the surprised Miguel to repeat this out loud in English. Steve is thus let go, but not before Olivia kicks him twice in the face over this revelation. When Ventana threatens to shoot Olivia to make someone start talking, Tony confesses that he is the culprit, but Pepper tells Ventana that he didn’t kill anyone and all he did was save her from Ferris, and a remorseful Ferris sincerely apologizes to Pepper for what she attempted to do and calls herself a worthless human being. Miguel and another of Ventana’s men then appear to tell him that the trucks are here for the shipment, so he leaves the room. Meanwhile, Bobby, Joey, and Mike are still discussing a rescue plan when Bobby suddenly knocks out Joey, drowns him in the toilet, and then revives him with CPR so he can come up with another idea. Once again, it works: Joey suggests that they contact every retired mafioso living in Miami and other nearby parts of Florida that Mike has been exchanging Christmas cards with and summon the aid of those who are still living. They all quickly come to the Raj Mahal to help, and they board Bobby’s Carnival Cruise Lines bus and drive over to the docks, where they arm themselves with guns brought by Marty (Frank Vincent), a small-time illegal arms dealer Joey knows.

The old-timers first hold up Miguel and two other guards posted at the ship’s entrance ramp before they start fires with Molotov cocktails and systematically kill or subdue Ventana’s thugs. Bobby leads a few of his fellow mafiosos on a search through the ship to find Tony, Pepper, Ferris, and Olivia, and they find the room they’re being kept in and free them. However, as they are trying to get off the ship, Olivia stops Bobby and asks him who he is. Suddenly, Ventana appears out of nowhere and holds Olivia hostage before asking the same question, and he forces Bobby to drop his gun before again demanding for his identity. However, after looking at Olivia and visualizing her as a little girl again, Bobby launches himself at Ventana. Ventana fires off a couple of shots at him, but the bullets only go into his right shoulder, and he collides with Ventana and sends all three of them over the railing and into the water. He then punches out Ventana before saying that he is Olivia’s father. Off-screen, the mobsters leave before the police show up, and they take a few of Ventana’s trucks as they go.

Bobby narrates that Ventana was sent to prison for a long time, and $40 million in cocaine was found on the freighter and Olivia got all the credit for find it and for catching Ventana. She also later arrested Steve while he was trying to skip town. Bobby then says that he and the other old mafiosos found more than 5,000 boxes of Cuban cigars in one of the trucks they took, and their street value was enough for him, Tony, Joey, and Mike to put a down payment on the Raj Mahal, which they subsequently turned into a retirement home for old mobsters who were down on their luck. Pepper paid for Ferris (whose real name is Maureen) to see some psychologists to work out her childhood issues that started her down the road to exotic dancing, and she eventually quit that job to become a waitress. Tony and Pepper also got married, and though Tony told Pepper that he had slept with Ferris in the past, she replied that she didn’t care about anything that happened before the day they met.

After he and his companions see Tony and Pepper off on their honeymoon, Joey gets Bobby to focus his attention on Olivia, who just appeared nearby. She turns and heads for the beach, and Bobby follows and finds her sitting on a chair thinking (Bobby narrates that Olivia never told anyone how he and his pals were involved in the whole issue with Ventana). Shortly after sitting next to her, he starts to say something to try to ease the pain of 30 years of separation, but she cuts him off and essentially tells him that she welcomes him with open arms. She rests her head on his shoulder and holds hands with him while they watch the sun set.