Taglines: Adults play the most dangerous games.
Ruby Cairo movie storyline. When Bessie Faro’s (Andie MacDowell) husband Johnny (Viggo Mortensen) dies in a plane crash in Veracruz, Mexico, she finds that his air cargo business is deeply in the red. When she visits the airline’s terminal in Veracruz, she finds a packet of baseball cards that have been marked up by Johnny.
Recognizing his system for marking betting slips at race tracks, she decodes the cards and realizes that they indicate a bank account. When she tries to withdraw money from the account, she is denied. She realizes that the account is in the name of the player on the card, Onix Concepción.
Back home, Bessie uses an International bank directory at the local library to decode Manny Sanguillén’s Pittsburgh Pirates’ card to find another bank account in Panama. She obtains durable power of attorney and begins a whirlwind trek to recover her husband’s money. After Panama, she visits the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands, recovering tens of thousands of dollars from each account. In Germany, she closes Don Mueller’s account from Berliner Bank, but the cashier only hands her only 750 DM. He explains that 74,000DM worth of cashier’s checks have been paid out to a company called EDK Technik in the former East Berlin. At EDK Technik, a manager informs Bessie that they make ink for ball point pens.
Bessie leaves the office confused as to why Johnny would be buying so much ink. The manager waits for her to leave and then ushers in some men who have been following Bessie on her journey. Her next stop is Athens, where she finds out that Johnny’s account has already been closed. The teller takes Bessie to a safe deposit box which only contains a Bill Mazeroski card. Bessie’s growing suspicion that Johnny is alive is confirmed by the sight of the card. When the teller sees how distraught Bessie is, she confides in her that a local shipping company cashed out some of Johnny’s money and that the rest was wired to Cairo.
She visits Kolatos Shipping Company and finds that one of their boats is headed to Cairo with grain for a food aid effort. She rides with the cargo to Egypt, and notices that one of the dock workers is being stained green by a bag of grain. She sneaks onto the truck where he loaded the bag, opens it, and finds, hidden beneath the grain, containers of thionyl chloride manufactured by EDK Technik.
Bessie soon befriends the coordinator of the relief effort, Fergus Lamb (Liam Neeson). She explains what she found in the bag, and Fergus confronts his Operations Manager, who reveals that he allowed the smuggling to finance the grain shipments. Fergus is irate because he knows that the thionyl chloride is being used to manufacture chemical weapons.
Ruby Cairo is a 1992 film directed by Graeme Clifford. It stars Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson, Viggo Mortensen, Jack Thompson, Amy Van Nostrand, Monica Mikala, Kaelynn Craddick, Sara Craddick and Lucy Rodriguez. One scene features Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law.
Ruby Cairo (1993)
Directed by: Graeme Clifford
Starring: Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson, Viggo Mortensen, Jack Thompson, Amy Van Nostrand, Monica Mikala, Kaelynn Craddick, Sara Craddick, Lucy Rodriguez
Screenplay by: Robert Dillon, Michael Thomas
Production Design by: Richard Sylbert
Cinematography by: László Kovács
Film Editing by: Caroline Biggerstaff, Paul Rubell, Mark Winitsky
Costume Design by: Rudy Dillon
Set Decoration by: Jim Erickson, Enrique Estevez, Lisa Fischer
Art Direction by: John King, Peter Landsdown Smith
Music by: John Barry
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a shooting and brief language.
Distributed by: Miramax Films
Release Date: October 29, 1993
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