Called to many drug related incidents they notice an uptick in anomalous injuries and deaths. These seem to be related to the legal high "Synchronic", as they find opened packets at the scenes.
Steve takes it upon himself to remove Synchronic from circulation by buying up the stock from a local 'head shop' but is accosted by a man claiming to be its creator, who says it actually allows you to experience time differently.
No good will come of this.
Security is tight, but just as play is about to begin, an audience member shouts "Death to the Demoness Allegra Gellar" as he shoots her with a grotesque biomechanical pistol, wounding her. The guards shoot the assassin and Gellar flees with marketing intern Ted Pikul (Jude Law), who grabs the strange weapon.
Paranoid that this may have been an inside job, the reclusive Gellar makes Ted discard his phone and the pair go into hiding. Once safe she is concerned that the one and only copy of this multi-million dollar five year development project may have been damaged and persuades Ted the only way to tell is to play it with somebody friendly. However, Ted Pikul has never played one of the company's games before and to do so requires implanted hardware.
No good will come of this.
CW: Cronenberg delivers gruesome biomechanical/mutant visuals, often in a slaughterhouse style. Also eating repulsive stuff and things like pulling out your own teeth. Not in a horror movie torture way but a completely casual manner like it's just something that happens.
As things progress it becomes clear that the relationship is more prisoner and captor but that neither Doctor nor patient is conventionally human.
CW: lots of flashing/flickering images, not for anybody who is very photosensitive. I had to shade my eyes a bit.
Information technology has become ubiquitous with people inhabiting cyberspace but also infusing their bodies with technology. Corporate wars and infighting are everywhere and the line between organised crime and business is very grey. Some fight back against oppression in the real world others in cyberspace.
Living on the fringes of the corporate world is Johnny (Keanu Reeves) who transports data for money, uploaded into his mind through an implant. His latest job goes badly wrong after he overloads his mind with stolen data just as vengeful Yakuza turn up to take it, killing his customers in the process.
Escaping, he heads to the drop-off hoping to offload the data, pursued by the Yakuza who want to remove it from his head slightly more forcefully. When he arrives he falls in with local bodyguard for hire Jane (Dina Meyer) who says she knows a guy who can help.
Many do not take the defeat of the South and the changes it brings well and sometimes his reports are treated with hostility.
One day he stumbles across a wrecked wagon and lynched driver. Hiding in the brush is a striking blonde and blue eyed young girl. Papers in the wagon identify her as Johanna, an orphan who has been living with a group of Native Americans until recently "rescued". The driver was returning her to her only known living relatives some 400 miles away.
Johanna (Helena Zengel) speaks no English, only a Native American language, and is somewhat "feral". Nobody in the next town is interested in her welfare so Kidd resolves to deliver her himself.
To manage the tide of lawlessness there are the Judges. Militarised law enforcers responsible for the investigation, enforcement, judgement, and where decided upon, execution. It's a harsh regime where sentences are long and the death sentence not uncommon.
Rookie Judge Anderson is on the cusp of dropout and is given one last chance by the Chief Judge on account of their rare telepathic mutation, an assessment day with veteran Judge Dredd.
As the day begins they attend a triple murder in Peachtrees block, a routine thing for a Judge. However they inconvenience Peachtrees' druglord Ma-Ma who needs to make sure the suspect involved is never properly questioned.
One such group are the crew of the "Victory", Space Sweepers who collect junk and salvage that endangers habitats and ships in increasingly crowded orbit.
One day they snag a damaged shuttle and find a little girl on board. According to news bulletins she's a disguised android weapon of mass destruction, but this doesn't quite add up...
Stuck in a run down Glasgow flat with an ankle tag curfew, Rose-Lynn's an angry, foul mouthed, punchy drunk who argues with her mother and can't relate to two kids that have grown and changed in the meantime. She struggles to cope with basic everyday life.
The ONLY thing she's ever been any good at is singing Country music at Glasgow's one Country venue.
When she sings it's like she lights up inside.
Rose-Lynn picks up some cleaning work for affluent, refined Susannah (Sophie Okonedo) who lives in a huge aspirational home in the good part of the city, a massive contrast to Rose-Lynn's existence. One day Susannah's children hear Rose-Lynn singing while cleaning and enthuse about it to her.
It turns out Susannah might know somebody who knows somebody...