Action! - Recap

Cinnamon goes to a beauty salon and exchanges sign and countersign with the receptionist. Opening a desk drawer, she gets her tape briefing is informed that Miklos Klaar is head of Cinefot Studios behind the Iron Curtain. Klaar plans to reedit footage of American soldiers to show fake atrocities and use it to discredit the U.S. The IMF must stop him and prevent him from doing so again.

The team is assembled minus Dan and including cameraman David Day. They then review a film of Cinnamon performing a scene from <i>The Doll House</i>. Rollin goes over the plans of the studio and Barney has a plumbers snake to measure the distance from the water pipe in, while Cinnamon has a skirt designed to give precise measurements when she walks. Rollin displays a device that can be hooked to a projector to destroy the film as it goes through.

At Klaar’s studio, David makes a delivery of a director’s crane while Willy unloads a file cabinet. Rollin is disguised as a Ministry of Propaganda officer and has the guard let Willy in. He then drives in to see Klaar while Barney slips out of the fake file cabinet and sneaks into Klaar’s building through the basement. Cinnamon is outside as one of several actresses waiting to audition.

The real Ministry of Propaganda officer arrives and Willy gets in the elevator with him, then knocks him out so Rollin can take his place. Rollin meets with Klaar who boasts of how they have footage taken from a now-dead American cameraman and plan to splice in their own scenes. Barney hides his equipment in the basement while Klaar reviews the newsreel footage with Rollin and shows how he has spliced in his own material. As he replays it again, Rollin “accidentally” crushes his glasses so they have to wait until the next day to review the film.

Outside, David uses the director’s crane to raise Cinnamon up to the third floor near Klaar’s office. She then knocks on some pipes, signaling Barney in the basement, and measures off the horizontal distance to the vault from the pipes. Klaar hears the noise and goes to investigate, and Cinnamon claims that she was dropping off her audition reel. He accepts her story and she goes into his office, measuring off the final distance to the vault. She then taps out the distance on the radiator pipes and attaches the razor device to the film viewer. Meanwhile, Barney carefully slips the plumber’s snake with a heating element on it up a specific distance so it is above the sprinkler head in the negative vault. The heating element sets off the sprinkler system and Barney turns the water back on, ruining the negatives.

The next morning Rollin reviews the only print with Klaar and the hidden razor destroys it as it plays. Klaar realizes it then discovers the negative has been destroyed as well and determines he has to reshoot the new footage. Willy brings in dummy corpses… including a disguised David. Klaar briefly inspects the dummies but doesn’t notice David, who Willy wheels off to the side. David then slips off the cart and into the overhead catwalks when Rollin sets off a fire in a paint can as a distraction. David lowers a microphone, barely avoiding detection by a worker, then records Klaar filming the fake atrocities. He then drops his film reel to Rollin, who gets it to Barney in the basement, who develops it with a suitcase of photographic development equipment.

As they wait for the new footage to be developed in his office, Klaar has a drink and complaints to Rollin that there’s a plot against him. They’re interrupted when the guards bring in the newly-discovered Barney. Klaar figures he’s a saboteur working for a rival studio. Barney secretly signals to Rollin who accuses Barney of sabotage and offers to take him down to headquarters for interrogation. The new footage comes in and Klaar insists on holding on to it himself to take it to the Swiss legation where it will be displayed, with Rollin accompanying him. The guards take Barney away and Willy follows.

Klaar and Rollin take the film to the guarded projector room, where David is there disguised as a projectionist. Rollin and Klaar then go down to see the press and the show starts. A guard discovers the man David replaces and a fight breaks out. Another guard comes in, but Willy arrives and helps knock them both out. The film ends and the lights go up… but then the film starts again showing David’s footage of Klaar filming the fake atrocities. Klaar is made a laughing stock and Rollin slips away to join the rest of the team as they make their escape.

Share this article with your friends