Right after watching this movie, I rather liked it, and the only gripe I had was some particular visuals’ symbolic overload and the at times right-in-your-face score to go with it. Solid popcorn action movie, and let’s move on. But then I got second thoughts. Some people voiced the implausibility that Talley (Willis’s character) manages to down four pros in the final shootout. I watched the scene again, and I figured it was plausible: all four are taken completely by surprise, and after the leader’s been shot point blank by the accountant, a moment of disorientation adds to it. Now here’s the scene: not a single gun is leveled at Talley, and everything looks absolutely solid that they’ll honor the deal and release his family and leave him alone. Moreover, besides taking Talley’s wife and daughter hostage, the bad guys hadn’t even killed anyone so far; on the contrary, it was they who got wiped out in numbers by Mars in the accountant’s mansion, and so far they even showed impeccable professional manners.
Then Talley breaks the deal and kills them all.
Which bothered me a lot, until it dawned on me that the ending cleverly reduplicates the predicament premise as the movie’s central motif. Let me explain.
If Talley’d got his family back and the bad guys’d left with the accountant, what would have happened? Of course they would have had to kill him after extracting the vital information; not just because the accountant’s “face has been seen” but because the (real) feds would have tried to extract from him precisely the same information. Which is something at least the accountant must have been aware of, of course. So whatever happens—regardless whether the accountant makes a deal with Tally or is forced by Talley at gunpoint to the exchange—leads to a situation where Talley is faced with another predicament: renege on his “deal” with the bad guys or renege on his “deal” with the accountant. He can’t get out of this situation without getting someone killed, and he has to make a decision. The decision he makes is the logical one, of course, no doubt about that. But for me the important thing is that the movie doesn’t end on the ethically somewhat dubious note that the cop kills all the bad guys while they have their weapons down because they took his family hostage, but for more dramatically complex reasons.
Which raised my rating to seven.
Then Talley breaks the deal and kills them all.
Which bothered me a lot, until it dawned on me that the ending cleverly reduplicates the predicament premise as the movie’s central motif. Let me explain.
If Talley’d got his family back and the bad guys’d left with the accountant, what would have happened? Of course they would have had to kill him after extracting the vital information; not just because the accountant’s “face has been seen” but because the (real) feds would have tried to extract from him precisely the same information. Which is something at least the accountant must have been aware of, of course. So whatever happens—regardless whether the accountant makes a deal with Tally or is forced by Talley at gunpoint to the exchange—leads to a situation where Talley is faced with another predicament: renege on his “deal” with the bad guys or renege on his “deal” with the accountant. He can’t get out of this situation without getting someone killed, and he has to make a decision. The decision he makes is the logical one, of course, no doubt about that. But for me the important thing is that the movie doesn’t end on the ethically somewhat dubious note that the cop kills all the bad guys while they have their weapons down because they took his family hostage, but for more dramatically complex reasons.
Which raised my rating to seven.