The Shipment(2001)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

In their pursuit of reclaiming the illegal shipment of Vigoroso (a Mexican form of Viagra), Eddie (Nicholas Turturro) and Vincent (Joe Cortese) find out where Mitch’s (Matthew Modine) house is, since it was his truck that took the cows that Jose (Paul Rodriguez) was smuggling the Vigoroso inside the rectums of. Meanwhile, Mitch is paid a visit from Candy (Elizabeth Berkley), and they subsequently spend the night drinking and getting reacquainted, during which Candy tells Mitch that she plans on divorcing Eddie, having gotten sick and tired of him.

The next morning, Eddie and Vincent arrive at Mitch’s house and knock on his front door. When he answers it, Eddie orders him to tell them where their stuff is, but Mitch replies that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Vincent soon points his gun in Mitch’s face, but as they start to argue, Candy suddenly appears. Furious with her for being with Mitch and thinking that they got up to some sexual stuff last night, Eddie grabs her and forces her to come outside with him, and he orders Vincent to keep an eye on Mitch. Candy soon yells at Eddie that she is ending their marriage, and Mitch starts to get defiant with Vincent, resulting in physical fights between the two pairs. However, Candy soon drives her knee into Eddie’s gonads and drives off in her car to get help, and Mitch manages to defeat Vincent. Eddie then comes back inside and once again demands for Mitch to tell him where the drugs are at, but Mitch again replies that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Eddie thus brings up how Lester (G. Michael Gray) – Mitch’s ranch hand who found the Vigoroso while he was inspecting the cows and hid them inside some feed bags in Mitch’s pickup truck – told him that Mitch had the stuff (before Vincent accidentally killed him), so he again orders him to tell him where the Vigoroso is. After Mitch once again states that he doesn’t know where the drugs are at, Eddie orders Vincent to shoot Mitch in the foot, but Mitch halts him and says that they ought to take a look in Lester’s shack on the ranch, explaining that, if Lester was going to hide something, he would hide it in there. After Eddie warns Mitch that he will kill him if he finds out that he is jerking him around, Eddie and Vincent force Mitch out to their car so they can all drive over to the ranch. They are stopped when Mitch’s deputy, Dale (Garry Chalk), arrives with Jose, having caught him the night before while he was checking the rectums of the cows for the drugs himself, but Vincent pistol-whips Dale and sends him to the ground dazed. He then forces Jose to get into the trunk of his and Eddie’s car, where Lester’s body is being kept.

Candy returns a short time later with Jack (Philip Granger), the town’s auto mechanic who has occasionally assisted Mitch with catching criminals during the film, and Dale fills her in on what has happened to him and Mitch. Candy informs him and Jack that Eddie is a member of the mafia, and she brings up how Eddie claimed that he and Mitch have some “business” together, but she doesn’t know what that means. They all decide to go look for Mitch, but when Jack goes to leave in Mitch’s pickup truck, he finds the bags of Vigoroso in the back of it. After Dale takes a look at it and identifies it as Vigoroso, he tells Candy to stay here with Jack while he goes out to find Mitch. Meanwhile, Eddie’s uncle, Frank (Robert Loggia), gets a telephone call from their boss, Sal (whom Eddie is supposed to retrieve the drugs for), and their brief conversation gives off a clear indication that Sal has ordered him to kill Eddie for screwing up the whole scheme (and for planning to sell the drugs and keep all the money for himself before he found out that the drugs belonged to Sal).

Eddie, Vincent, and Mitch arrive at the ranch, and after a search of Lester’s shack turns up nothing, Eddie threatens Mitch with castration if he doesn’t tell him where the drugs are located right now. However, Mitch gets an opening to fight them both off, then escapes outside and runs into the barn, where he gets on a horse and gallops away. Eddie and Vincent give chase in their car, and during the pursuit, Dale drives past them, so he hastily turns his cruiser around and goes after them. The chase soon goes out into the open fields, and Eddie and Vincent manage to incapacitate Dale’s cruiser before Vincent shoots Mitch in his left shoulder and sends him falling off his horse. They get out of the car and walk right up to Mitch, but just as Eddie is about to put him away, Candy calls him on his cell phone. She tells him that she found what he has been looking for and that Mitch doesn’t know anything about it, and she warns him that, if he hurts Mitch, she will destroy the drugs. Eddie agrees to meet her back at Mitch’s place, so he and Vincent put Mitch back in their car and drive back over there. Along the way, Eddie tells Mitch that he is going to kill him after he gets the drugs, but he also plans to kill Candy as well and making it look like a family tragedy so he will look real good in the polls and increase his chances of becoming senator.

Upon their arrival, Candy tells Eddie and Vincent where the drugs are located, and Jose screams from the trunk that Lester is miraculously alive, for apparently Vigoroso does more than help a man get an erection (Lester took one of the pills after he first found it in one of the cow’s butts when he was about to have sex with it). After getting confirmation from Vincent that the drugs are in the back of the pickup, Eddie tells Candy that Mitch must now die, but then Jack appears with his shotgun and orders the mobsters to drop their weapons and put their hands in the air. When Jose starts yelling again, Eddie has Vincent try to kill him by shooting a few bullets into the trunk, and this gives Mitch an opportunity to deck Eddie and Jack to start shooting at Vincent. Mitch runs over to Candy and Jack, and after they all get inside his house, Mitch gets a hold of his revolver and joins Jack in a gunfight with the mobsters. Meanwhile, Jose emerges from the trunk unharmed and runs off (presumably back to Mexico because we never see him again for the rest of the film). Vincent gets shot and rendered unconscious, creating a pause in the battle, and then Frank suddenly arrives with his top henchman, Danny (Rob deLeeuw), having presumably been notified by Eddie off-screen that he was going to be here to reclaim the Vigoroso. However, the gunfight resumes seconds later, and Danny quickly gets non-fatally hit with a ricocheting bullet. Frank asks Eddie if he has the drugs, and after Eddie tells him where they are, Frank gets into the pickup and starts to hurriedly back it down the driveway. Unwilling to be left behind and be possibly shot and killed, Eddie abandons Vincent and Danny and hops into the truck through the passenger side window.

As they speed off down the highway, Frank pulls a gun on Eddie and informs him that Sal told him to kill him in exchange for being allowed to come back to New York City. However, Eddie draws out his gun and tells Frank that Sal had ordered him to kill him. As they argue about this, they fail to see Dale standing in the middle of the road just ahead of them, and moments after they finally take notice of him, he shoots out one of the truck’s tires with his revolver. This causes the vehicle to go down an embankment and into a lake, and the entire shipment of Vigoroso goes flying out of the back and into the water, where it quickly dissolves. Meanwhile, Mitch and Jack cuff Vincent and Danny and stick them in the back of Frank’s car, and Mitch praises Jack for the fine job he did before telling him that he might just have to make him a deputy. Lester then emerges from the trunk of Eddie’s car, and after Mitch and Jack help him get out, Candy appears and tells Mitch to come inside so she can treat his shoulder wound. They then share a passionate kiss before he picks her up and carries her back into the house.

As Dale arrests Frank and Eddie, the camera pulls back to show that the “lake” is actually the reservoir for Paradise’s drinking water….