frankenhood

Inferno (1999)

IMDB rating: 4.30

Plot: A truck roars down a dirt road in the middle of the Nevada desert. Leaving a plume of dust behind. Aboard are Matt, Jesse, and Petey Ryker, the sons of Ramsey Ryker, who is the patriarch of the violent Ryker family. Ramsey runs a counterfeit ring out of his high security compound in the desert town of Inferno, Nevada — a town terrorized by not only the Ryker family, but also by the Ravers, a group of drug runners led by a drug kingpin named Beserko. Something catches Petey’s eye from a distance, and then two gunshots ring out. They approach a man named Eddie Lomax, by his broken-down truck, under the scorching heat of the desert’s sun. Eddie has been drinking heavily and is trying to commit suicide with his .45 Automatic. The Ryker brothers insult, shoot, and brutally beat up Eddie. After robbing Eddie of his pearl-handled 45 automatic and his sleek Moto Guzzi VII Sport motorcycle that they find under a tarp on the back of the truck, they leave him to die. Eddie is found by an eccentric old timer named Jubal Early, who takes him to the abandoned mine shaft that he calls home, and nurses him back to health. Eddie, upon Jubal’s suggestions, decides to get out of town and not seek revenge. But on the day he walks into the Road Runner Diner to buy a bus ticket, Eddie changes his mind. When Eddie meets Rhonda Reynolds, the daughter of the diner’s owner Pop Reynolds, she realizes that Eddie has always blamed himself for things. Eddie’s reason for coming to Inferno is to deliver a letter to Rhonda — the letter that he promised her dead husband Josh he would bring to her. Helping Rhonda is, in Eddie’s mind, a way for him to make up for the loss that she has suffered on his account, and it represents one more cause in Eddie’s quest for justice in Inferno.