Stick 1985

Ernest ‘Stick’ Stickley, a former car thief Burt Reynolds who has just served seven years for armed robbery, walks out of prison and reconnects with an old friend, Rainy José Pérez. Rainy drags him into a quick stop near the Florida Everglades that quickly reveals itself as an illegal drug deal orchestrated by his dealer, Chucky Charles Durning. The plan falls apart when Chucky’s albino enforcer, Moke Dar Robinson, guns Rainy down, and Stick narrowly escapes with his life.

With a target on his back, Stick lies low until a chance encounter pulls him into the orbit of Barry Braham, George Segal a wealthy eccentric who needs help getting into his locked car. In return for dependable driving and a path to a fresh start, Stick lands a steady job and a comfortable home, and he begins to rebuild a bond with his teenage daughter, Katie Tricia Leigh Fisher. On the business side, he also draws the interest of Kyle Candice Bergen, a sharp financial consultant who acts as Barry’s adviser and starts to see a future for herself in Stick’s new life.

Stick confronts Chucky to demand the money owed to Rainy, hoping to put a real plan in motion for a safer future. Chucky refuses, and under pressure from Nestor, a voodoo-obsessed cartel boss Castulo Guerra, Chucky dispatches Moke and other hitmen to eliminate Stick. Nestor escalates matters by having Stick’s daughter kidnapped, forcing the ex-con to step out of the shadows and into the line of fire.

What follows is a meticulous and escalating pursuit. Stick closes in on Chucky’s world, taking on henchman after henchman as he works his way through the high-rise maze surrounding Chucky. In a brutal balcony confrontation, Moke taunts Stick before Chucky unexpectedly shoves them both off the edge. Chucky survives a deadly fall, but Moke clings to a lower beam and, despite a desperate plea for help, falls to his death as Stick watches.

Undeterred, Stick tracks Nestor to his fortress of a home and systematically dismantles Nestor’s operation, clearing a path through his guards and confronting the cartel boss in a final showdown. When Nestor finally surrenders, he agrees to leave Stick and his daughter alone in exchange for his own life, a grim bargain that serves as a grim reminder of the cost of crossing that world. After freeing Katie, Stick reaches out to Kyle on a mobile phone and, with a quiet, determined resolve, arranges a rendezvous in the median of a highway where the two lovers finally embrace, choosing hope and a chance at a quieter life over the shadows of the past.