We have some more news from AFM for you tonight.  First up, we have the first poster and full plot synopsis for The Cold Light of Day.  As we previously reported, the film will star Henry Cavill (The Tudors) as “a young American whose family is kidnapped while on a vacation to Spain.  He is left with only hours to find the connection between their disappearance and his father’s secrets.” The film will also star Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver.  The film’s plot may sound like a bland thriller, but what makes this project exciting to me is that it will be Mabrouk El-Mechn’s directorial follow-up to his surprisingly great directorial debut, JCVD.

Secondly, we also have a plot synopsis and poster for director Chris Weitz’s (About a Boy) upcoming drama, The Gardener.  The film stars Demian Bichir (Weeds) as a gardener trying to find an important pickup truck that was stolen from him with the help of his son.  The plot synopsis makes the film sound a lot like a modern adaptation of the classic Italian neorealist film, Bicycle Thieves, and it’ll be interesting to see if Weitz can make a film that is even ten percent as good as that one.  Hit the jump to check out the plot synopsis and poster for each film.

The Cold Light of Day synopsis

When Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) arrives in Spain for a weeklong sailing vacation with his family, the stressed young business man is not in a holiday mood. His startup company just went under and his tense relationship with his disciplinarian father Martin (Bruce Willis) only makes matters worse. But when the family is kidnapped by what turns out to be intelligence agents hell-bent on recovering a mysterious suitcase, Will suddenly finds himself on the run. His whole world turns upside down when Martin reappears, revealing he is an undercover agent tangled in an intergovernmental web of lies and secrets. During a clandestine rendezvous, Martin is killed by a sniper, and Will must find a way to get the rest of his family back alive.

With the kidnappers counting down the hours, the Spanish police breathing down his neck for a murder he didn’t commit and a cadre of U.S. assassins on his trail, Will flees through Madrid, racing to piece together a conspiracy as labyrinthine as the city’s ancient streets. Who can he trust? Who killed his father? And where is the mysterious suitcase that seems to the key to getting his family come safely? In his quest for answers, Will finds Lucia (Veronica Echegui) – a half-sister he never knew he had, who is determined to help him. Bound by their shared kiss, the siblings are a force to be reckoned with, but can they overcome the massive odds against them before it’s too late?

The Gardener synopsis

Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir), a simple, decent, 40-year-old Mexican man, doesn’t ask much from life - just to keep tending the yards of L.A.’s wealthy and to give his estranged son  Luis (Jose Julian) a better life than he had. But when a business opportunity that would have allowed him to take control of his destiny is stolen from under his nose, his life is thrown into chaos. Directed by Academy Award nominee Chris Weitz, The Gardener is an original, moving and, at times, heart-pounding drama that follows father and son as they scour L.A. in search of a stolen pickup truck that represents their only chance of a better life and of healing the growing riff between them.

When Galindo’s boss offers to sell him his pickup truck and gardening business, Galindo has no choice but to refuse – even though it will mean going back to begging for work on a street corner. He simply can’t afford it. But when his sister Anita (Dolores Heredia) comes through with a last-minute loan, Galindo suddenly finds himself with a shot at the American Dream,. Not for long, though. On the first day of his new life, while he is high in a palm tree pruning fronds, hew newly hired helper, Santiago (Carlos Linares), makes off with the pickup – and with it, Galindo’s shot at a better life for himself and Luis.

What follows is a colorful, often nail-biting odyssey as Galindo and Luis make their way across an urban landscape as full of surprises as it is diverse, piecing together clues as to the whereabouts of Santiago and the pickup. The stakes could not be higher: like the new green fronds on the palm trees Galindo prunes and so carefully leaves intact, Luis is extremely vulnerable – always in danger or falling into the gang-banger lifestyle that surrounds their East L.A. home. That’s something that Galindo, “The Gardener,” will do anything to prevent.

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