Lethal Falcon

This story takes place in a Streets of Fire / Sin City type of 1950s modern times mish-mash where people wear fedoras and drive lots of old cars but there are too many continuity errors with fashion and social attitudes to call it anything other than an avant-garde alternaverse. The city is supposed to vaguely resemble Los Angeles, although this shit will probably end up being filmed in Vancouver and Montreal like everything else.

In the opening scene we meet Eddie Falconhead (played by Nicolas Cage with a falcon growing out of his hair). Eddie is a cop chasing down a punk who robbed a liquor store. They end up in a neighbourhood with tightly packed houses and high bushes and fences. The robber and Eddie play cat and mouse until the robber sees what he think is Eddie’s falconhair popping up over the top of a bush and shoots it but it turns out to be one of those wooden owls people use to scare away woodpeckers. Eddie jumps out of the shrubs from behind him and tackles him. The two roll around and the robber tries to shoot Eddie but his falcon uses its beak to turn the safety switch on the pistol. Eddie disarms the robber and cuffs him.

We cut to Ritchie Ajax (played by Keith David with no bird for hair, he is just a regular cop). He’s in a small squad of cops who all storm a warehouse at the docks busting up a drug for money exchange but the drug dealers have a sniper that Ajax didn’t count on and half his men get shot up and the whole thing turns messy. They get the collar, but the sniper gets away and his men get horribly injured.

We get intercut shots of Eddie going back to his neighbourhood which looks like a slum and does not contain houses, just giant nests; and shots of Ajax visiting his buddies in the hospital after they all got shot up on his watch. We see Eddie listening to a cheap radio while cooking up worms in his pan on a small open fire in his nest. We see Ajax taking a belt of Scotch in his apartment and making pissed-off faces.

Then we cut to the next day in Sergeant Bucks’s (Jeff Fahey with regular non-bird hair) office where Eddie and Ajax stand before him at attention. Bucks gives a somewhat regretful monologue about how times are changing and it’s a new force than when he first joined. Bucks says that it is a new integrated force and that Eddie is doing his people proud and that his presence is a big step forward for birdhaired people and you can’t fight the future. He tells Ajax and Falconhead that they are now going to be partners and Ajax responds with a brief outburst about how he doesn’t deserve this but Bucks says his hands are tied and that Ajax is in no position to make demands. Bucks tells him he’s going to need Eddie’s help because their first case in Nestgrove (the birdhair people’s slum).

The two walk through the station bickering all the way. Ajax just accuses Eddie and his people of causing all the crime in the city and other various prejudiced statements. Eddie tells Ajax he’s just a bigot and doesn’t know jack about his culture. Ajax points to a splatter of white birdshit on their cop car and says “That’s your culture.”

Their case is a narcotics case. There’s a new drug on the street called Swan Song and it’s especially popular among birdhairs. They’ve had an outbreak of Swan Song related crimes such as muggings to get money for Swan Song etc. Nobody knows who’s putting it on the streets and Eddie and Ajax have to get to the bottom of it.

They cruise through Nestgrove and see a dealer (Ludacris) standing on a street corner. He’s wearing a tattered trenchcoat and looks sickly with all sorts of sores on his face and his pigeonhair is sickly and mostly just coughs from atop his head. They watch him make a sale and then move in to bust him but he twigs to them approaching him and bolts off. They chase him across many rooftops and at one point he makes a really long leap. Eddie also makes the leap by jumping and having his falconhair flap its wings so that he can glide a bit and get some more distance. Ajax knows he can’t make it and dashes back to the car. Eddie catches up and tackles the dealer.

They take the dealer downtown and put him on the interrogation stool. Eddie tries to talk to the dealer but when he’s unresponsive Ajax beats some information out of him about a drug house. They go to the drug house (which is painted like a giant birdhouse) and raid it but only find a bunch of birdhaired junkies. Ajax is handcuffing them all while Eddie argues that these people are the victims but Eddie says they’re criminals. One of the birdhaired junkies lunges as a Eddie from behind with a hunting knife and Ajax quickdraws and blows him away saving Eddie’s life and quips “Still look like a victim to you?”

They follow the paddywagon as it drives all the junkies back to the station. They look at the junkies all passed out in the holding cell and agree they won’t be in any condition to talk until morning so they’ll go home and get some sleep. But then another cop, Flannigan (Michael Madsen) shows up and starts taunting Eddie saying that birds belong in a cage. Ajax stands up for Eddie and Eddie looks surprised. Flannigan goes into the cell with a bag of birdseed sprinkling it on the ground and complains about having to give these dirty criminals a free meal.

Outside the police station Ajax tells him he did good on the rooftop earlier and that maybe he is a real cop after all, but doesn’t seem completely convinced yet. They part ways and on his way home Eddie drives by the drug house, which is now all covered in police tape. He goes inside and starts poking around looking for more evidence. His birdhair twigs to something and starts flapping and panicking and causes Eddie to swing his head and just miss getting hit by a sniper shot. The sniper switches to automatic fire and starts gunning up the drug house. Eddie gets one shot on the shadowy sniper and hits him in left bicep. The sniper takes off. Eddie runs around but can’t figure out where he went. He gets back to his car and a raven haired woman (Salma Hayek with a raven for hair) is waiting there for him. He approaches with caution. She tells him its good to see birdhairs on the force and maybe they can expect more justice. She tells him she lives across the street from the drug house and occasionally saw a posh car pull up and well dressed bald man get out and poke around and that he didn’t look like the type who would get his drugs around here. She didn’t get the number on the license plates but she noticed a flyer that fell out of his car and it looked like he had a bunch. She gives him the flyer and it was an employee pension and benefits plan for employees of The Thorlaksen Corporation.

Eddie thanks her for her statement and drives back to his nest and a neighbourhood kid says that a car drove by his place earlier but they were all playing in the street so the car kept driving. Eddie pokes around for bombs but doesn’t find any.

Ajax gets back to his apartment and reaches into his liquor cabinet to find his whiskey bottle has been replaced with a long sniper bullet. His phone rings and a voice on the other end tells him that if he flies with the crows he’ll get shot with the crows.

The two get back to the police station the next morning and are discussing their various threatening incidents when they see paramedics coming through the hallways. They get down to the holding pen and find half the junkies are dead and a paramedic just telling them they all overdosed.

They grab one of the dead bodies being wheeled out and quickly go through his pockets and find a rolled up Thorlaksen Corporation business card in his pockets. They decide to go downtown to the Thorlaksen Tower, which is a giant skyscraper. Once inside, they find the lobby is full of scaffolding. They meet the CEO, Mr. Laksen (Clancy Brown) who apologizes for the lobby and explains the whole building is getting a facelift and says some self-absorbed corporate shit about how it takes sacrifice to build something that will last forever.

They ask him about any of his employees who might be frequenting crackhouses. They suggest it might be somebody who deals with the company’s pensions. Laksen gives them permission to go down to finance and look into anything they want. They thank him and go and check out the books and find there’s some suspicious shit going on with one accountant guy (Clint Howard) always signing out company cars and awarding bonuses to a bunch of staff who work the importer-exporter portion of the Thorlaksen Corporation down on the docks.

They get a warrant and rush to the docks. They find Clint Howard’s car parked and look in the boot to find a couple kilos of Swan Song and a dead duck-haired lady. Clint comes around the corner behind them and sees what they’ve found in his car and bolts off up to the little office in the docks. Eddie follows him up but Clint’s got a shotgun and is taking cover behind his desk. Ajax goes to control a crane but some meathead gets in his way and Ajax fistfights him until he knocks him out cold into the water, then controls the crane to swing the hook through Clint’s office wall, the hook catches on the desk Clint is hiding behind, and Ajax pulls it out the cavity in the wall pushing Clint backwards out where he falls one storey breaks a leg and dislocates his shoulder but is not dead. All the meatheads gather around to defend Clint and Eddie and Ajax have to fight a big crowd of guys.

Backup finally shows up and drags off Clint and the meatheads and finds all the drugs in various containers. They get back to the station. The Chief of Police, Sergeant Bucks and Mr. Thorlaksen are waiting and congratulate Eddie and Ajax. Thorlaksen says he’s ashamed that somebody in his corporation would be using his company’s resources to run their own sideline and pledges his complete cooperation in helping prosecute. Bucks calls Eddie a credit to his race again and Ajax stands up for him saying “He’s one of us now. Not a birdhaired cop. He’s just a cop.”

The two smile take showers at the police station, Ajax leaves saying he’s going home. Eddie stays to finish washing his birdhair. Flannigan comes into the shower room and starts making wisecracks about Eddie having a ‘little bird’ and dumb shit like that and when Eddie turns to tell him to fuck off, Eddie notices he’s got a wound right where Eddie shot the sniper the other night. The two lock eyes knowing what the other knows and then start fighting Eastern Promises style. The fight goes on attracting spectators until Eddie uses his falcon hair’s beak to bite on to a showerhead and use it to spin around and dropkick Flannigan just as Bucks enters.

Eddie pleads with Bucks that Flannigan was bent and working as protection and informant for Clint Howard in the drug trade. Bucks puts Flannigan in a holding cell and talks to Eddie about how Eddie is so sure of this. Ajax comes in and backs up Eddie’s accusations about Flannigan being a sniper for the drug lords and an information leak. Ajax recounts the opening scene where half his men got taken out by a sniper who knew exactly where they’d be.

We cut to a few hours later where Eddie and Ajax are tensely waiting around their desks for what’s going to happen next. All the other cops are giving them the stink eye. Then we hear Flannigan coming down the hall singing about his release and all the other cops high fiving him. Eddie goes to get in his face but Flannigan tosses some seed on the ground and it distracts Eddie’s hair long enough for Flannigan to get past him. Bucks asks to see Eddie and Ajax in his office.

In Bucks’s office Bucks seems under pressure and regretful and tells them they can’t open a can of worms this big and prosecute one of their own on the testimony of one birdhair’s hunch. Even worse, Bucks is under pressure from the chief of police to suspend Eddie for beating Flannigan so brutally. Ajax gets temperamental and Bucks says he’s also suspended and apologizes and says his hands are tied.

Outside a bunch of reporters have gathered and Flannigan is egging them on with cocky taunting about “birdsbrains” on the force and when somebody asks about Eddie he mentions that he knows Eddie is currently being suspended and the crowd turns on him. Flannigan pulls his gun and heads back into the police station to avoid all the angry reporters, but he sees Ajax and Eddie heading down the corridor towards him and he ducks down a stairwell that leads to the parking levels. They chase after him but Flannigan comes at them driving the paddywagon and since Ajax and Eddie turned in their guns they’ve got nothing. They both duck and dive as Flannigan blows past them and out the gate.

Riots over Eddie’s suspension break out in the birdhair neighbourhoods and the whole place is nothing but flaming nests and shattered eggs and birdhairs tussling with cops. Flannigan pulls up and says he’ll help take some handcuffed birdhairs back to the station and the cops load up his paddywagon and he heads off. Eddie and Ajax follow him from a distance as he goes to the Thorlakson Corporation Headquarters and unloads the handcuffed and beaten birdhairs there.

Eddie and Ajax sneak in and discover that the scaffolding in the main lobby of the Thorlaksen building was actually some sort of giant rack and it has 100 birdhaired people all chained up to it. Mr. Laksen and the board of directors all enter wearing monk robes and sit at a round table. Flannigan asks where his seat is. They tell him he doesn’t get one. He gets all pissed off saying he got them 100 sacrifices that won’t be missed on the arrangement that he get to share in the payoff. Mr. Laksen tells him that he in fact, only got them 99 because one of the junkies died and then two big goons grab Flannigan and lock him into the rack while he hollers and screams.

Mr. Laksen starts rambling some chant about eternal life and asking some Norse God for immortality. Eddie and Ajax come forward from the shadows and tell him to stop and Mr. Laksen tells them it’s too late and they aren’t even cops anymore. He says the final words of the chant and hits a peddle that causes the giant rack to release spring-loaded blades which slit the throats of all the captives and all the blood hits the floor and a big fireball appears in mid-air in the lobby. The fireball starts feeding all the the board of directors through the mouth causing them to levitate and glow out their eyes ‘n shit. Ajax and Eddie pry some of the blades loose from the rack and start using them to attack the directors causing them to break free from the fire that was turning them immortal. But they don’t make it to Laksen in time. He lands and laughs.

The two of them starts stabbing at him and he winces but just pulls the blades out and kicks them to the ground and has his foot on Ajax’s chest with one of the blades raised to slash him when a giant shotgun blast hits him in the chest and knocks him back. It’s Sergeant Bucks standing there with a shotgun. He throws a couple of pistols to Ajax and Eddie who immediately start perforating Laksen with bullets but he just keeps laughing and getting up. They run out of bullets and he just keeps healing and starts coming at them. The three all team up beating and stabbing at him and cutting off his limbs only to have them quickly grow back. Eddie uses his flaconhair to pluck out Lacksen’s eyes but they grow right back.

Laksen kicks a key joint in the rack causing it to rain bodies and knives on them and uses the diversion to escape to the parking level where he hops in his Ferrari and drives off. A blade lands right in Bucks’s thigh, he tells Eddie and Ajax to go on without him. Eddie and Ajax thank Bucks for backing them and quickly hotwire cars and chase after Laksen. They get into a big chase on the Golden Gate Bridge and ultimately sandwich Laksen’s car between their cars so that he can’t steer, but he keeps laughing and screaming “I’ll live through any crash you want to put me through! I’ll live forever!”

They ram him into the back of a cement mixer causing it to pour cement all over him. Ajax and Eddie slam on the breaks and get out of their cars and run back and keeping beating Laksen over the head with debris so that he stays in the cement until it hardens and he is just a head sticking out of cement that is in a car. They are both exhausted and then they hear rumbling. Eddie looks down one way on the bridge and sees the birdhair people’s riot marching towards them in the distance. Ajax sees the riot cops all marching slowly banging their shields with their knightsticks advancing from the other side. Laksen taunts them saying they’ll have to explain this to their superiors. Eddie and Ajax look at each other and then quickly push the car off the edge of the bridge into the sea. Eddie says “Enjoy eternity, asshole.”

The cops and the birdhair people both stop about twenty feet apart and stare at Eddie and Ajax both bloody and exhausted sitting in between the two factions. The birdhaired people just help Eddie and Ajax get up they all walk off together. The riot cops try to bait them into fighting by beating their shields harder but the birdhairs have no part in it. The last shot will just be Eddie and Ajax smiling at each other at the front of a long march of the birdhaired people.

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