-Philing
We love to think and rap about our love of cinema. We are ideaphiles, storyphiles, and cinephiles. Our aim is to share those loves, and understand their value and importance in our lives, with each other, and everyone who listens.
-Philing
011 Rush (1991)
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In this episode we discuss the 1991 movie Rush starring Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Welcome to Filing, where we love to think and rap about what we love. I'm Sean Patrick, and I will be joined by Brandon Mitchell. We are rapping and denoting fondness about our love of cinema. We are ideophiles, storyphiles, and cinophiles. Our aim is to share those loves and understand their value and importance in our lives with each other and everyone who listens. Our discussion might be a broad and detailed spoiler, so if you haven't seen this episode's movie, stop listening to us right now. Go watch it, and then return to filing to hear our thoughts and feelings. One of us says the vocalized pause or filler word uh 23 times in this uh episode. So if you make this episode a themed reaction game, every time one of us says uh slap yourself in the face and take a shot of espresso. This is the tenth episode of the After the Life inspiration series, which is a collection of movie reviews intended to inspire the production of an original movie titled The After the Life. The After the Life is currently being produced and will screen at an event called The Fest 2026 on July 18th. Go to thefest2026.com for details about the event. The lead character in Rush is a female police academy recruit named Kristen. When we first meet Kristen, she's being recruited to be an undercover narcotics agent. Her police captain, Larry Dodd, asks her, What would you ever want to do this for, anyway? She responds, It seems like a chance to make a difference. Dodd responds, I'll tell you what's going to be different. You. Toward the end, Kristen expresses regret to her partner, Jim Rayner, and he says, You pick a side, because you have to. It ain't supposed to be the right one. The difference being, our intentions were good. But Kristen cuts him off. She says, the difference being there isn't any difference. The main characters are wrestling within themselves and to each other in order to justify their actions of lying, cheating, manipulating, and planting evidence on a suspected drug dealer in the name of waging war on the substances people want to put into their bodies. The moral ambiguity of the characters is understandable, and that's the point. The theme of Rush is the everlasting battles of the illegal narcotics trade. The plot theme or central conflict is an undercover narcotics agent and her desire to make a difference versus the moral fog of the drug war. Before Dennis Villanuev's 2015 movie Sicario, and before Steven Soderbergh's 2000 movie Traffic, Kim Woosencraft wrote a novel titled Rush in 1990. All of these works are openly critical of the so-called war on drugs, and that appears to be the thematic value of Rush. I may be wrong, but Rush may be the first Hollywood movie to openly ponder the drug policies of the United States. During a press conference in 1971, Richard Nixon declared drug abuse as public enemy number one. He never used the term war, nor did he propose an explicit declaration of war. Nixon's exact words identified drug abuse as the enemy and stated, quote, in order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive. I've asked the Congress to provide the legislative authority and the funds to fuel this kind of an offensive. End quote. Congress passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, which included the Controlled Substances Act and the Drug Abuse Office and Treatment Act of 1972. The movie Rush was produced 20 years later, 35 years ago today. It wonders aloud and befuddles like a drug. Or like an all-encompassing and ill-conceived government policy that fundamentally violates the rights of human beings to choose how to live their lives.
SPEAKER_01This is broader than pies. We're rapping about guys in the movies we lie, talking about the odd meaning of spin number things, the filing cast is finally in between your ears. Filing stories, movies, sounds.
SPEAKER_04How do you want to tackle this thing?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, the the soundtrack is definitely important with the movie. I mean, the soundtrack alone for the time is pretty good soundtrack. It's a time period where movie soundtracks were you know pushed as like a big part of the movie. Like you could make a lot of money by selling soundtracks at this point. So if you could get the rights to a bunch of good songs and put them all together as a collective piece, you can make a a ton of money from that.
SPEAKER_04I think you're absolutely correct. And I think that that's a bit of a problem with this movie.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and I I you know it's like it makes sense what their what the idea is behind the soundtrack because it fits the setting of the the bar. You know, so but it's it's kind of weird though, because it's essentially the soundtrack to the villain of the movie. It doesn't necess there's nothing with the characters uh the two main characters that is shown to be like these two people are into music or like this kind of blues rock or any of that stuff. So that's one of the things that could be a problem is the the music actually fits the villain and the other side characters, like the um one um what's that dude's name? Walt uh Walker, like their friend that becomes like a snitch.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Umps and all kinds of stuff like that in his house. So he's a musician, and the bar is always playing that same type of music. So it makes sense that that music's in this world, however.
SPEAKER_04We don't know if he's a musician. We do know he's a thief. He could have just stole those amps and and stuff to sell to buy drugs or something.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, because I mean, really, nobody in this movie gets a lot of backstory or character development. Except Jim Reader.
SPEAKER_04Well, he gets, I mean, he he's all backstory. Right. I mean he doesn't really develop. I mean, a little bit, but yeah, that's that's an interesting note on him anyway. Proceed.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so it it's I mean, that's another one of the problems with this movie. I find that it's just everything that happens is in service of the plot. Or the soundtrack. And there or the soundtrack, yeah. That's kind of all you get here, you know. I mean, we don't learn yeah, yeah, it this is a tough movie to talk about because it I don't want to jump into everything I don't like about this movie right off the bat, you know. So, I mean, we can go through kind of go through it like normal and maybe tease out what what's what's going on with it. Because I mean it's you're right, it's it's a fine movie, and but it's literally just a movie. You know, I mean like the theme.
SPEAKER_04I think I think I think it's it is it is a movie, but it also is an advertisement for a soundtrack. And it's a social commentary as well. It's a cultural commentary piece because it talks about the nature of the war on drugs.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's kind of manipulative though, because if this movie really represents a true version of how cops handle the drug war, it's so clearly proving its point I'm just not sure if it represents any reality whatsoever. I mean it's fairly um nonsensical. The whole game plan is essentially from the get-go hey, we're cops, so the plan is we buy a bunch of drugs, do them, and like hopefully we win, or something like that. I don't know. That's the game, it's funny. And they seem, and that sounds so stupid, but it's how they act from the opening of the movie.
SPEAKER_04Well, I think Jim Rayner actually says that. Yeah, and I think he's lying in bed and he's like, that's the game, baby, or something. Oh yeah, I think that's great. I mean, I think Jason Patrick's performance is so fun because it's pretty one-dimensional and it's pretty funny. And it doesn't come across as sad. I don't feel any pity for this character. I don't feel bad for anybody in this movie.
SPEAKER_08No, because we don't know anything really about any of these people.
SPEAKER_04We know what we know, and what I occasionally experience in terms of emotion is laughter. And I like to laugh. And I think the movie does try to come off as very serious, and I think it pulls that off. I think you understand that I think I understand that it's trying to be serious and entertaining, but it doesn't elicit any emotional response from me. And that might be in part due to uh the performances, but not for lack of trying. I think Jason Patrick is going for it, but not quite hitting the mark. And I don't know if that's the writing or the direction or him, it's probably a combination of all three. I think Jennifer Jason Lee does a pretty good job.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04Not not that not to say that she elicits any sort of emotional response from me, but I her performance comes across as less of an act, at least in my viewing.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, there's still some moments. They they they have together, they you know, they both have their scenes that are just over the top.
SPEAKER_04But is it their fault or is it with the movie? Because it's like I think the one scene with Jennifer Jason Lee when she's having that emotional meltdown, sitting in the laundromat on top of the laundry and just crying her eyes off, eyes out, and the camera is just moving past her. Right. For whatever reason, they decided to turn the soundtrack up to 11. And Eric Lapton decided that doing a shred fest of a guitar solo was appropriate to represent sonically or musically the emotional overload that the character was experiencing. And it's hilarious. Yeah. Because it's not appropriate, it's kind of ridiculous.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And you know, the ridiculous is funny.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean that's that's definitely the thing. I actually, you know, separately, I think the performances are maybe fine, like fine to good. With there's you know, it's hard to know with with the soundtrack on there, but I also think the soundtrack is good by itself and could work. I mean, it's very similar to soundtracks of that era, like I think of like Lethal Weapon also has produced by Eric Clapton. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that and it's similar, that has David Sanborn, I think, or um I feel like it's David Sanborn. So it has some saxophone stuff in there, and both of those things are just really barely used in movie soundtracks anymore, and I kind of could see them coming back like a night, like a cool saxophone soundtrack or a cool guitar soundtrack for a comedy. I mean, for anything, it's just it doesn't blend here, and I think in Lethal Weapons, so if I think back to that, there's in the first one, you know, there's actually kind of all of them, there's always these little moments where you know Mel Gibson's dealing with some sad thing with his wife, or Danny Glover's dealing with some sad thing with one of his kids or something. And this that type of soundtrack comes in, yeah, and it gets the point across, but it's brief. And it's not the whole, I don't think it's like the whole way through. It's just these little licks that melodic motifs, yeah, and you just cut that in. But to have it kind of be constant throughout the whole thing, it just starts becoming super melodramatic. And all when the characters are also being melodramatic, then it's a double dose of that and it goes over the edge.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's great. So funny. Yeah. There's one scene where I thought the music worked really, really well, and that was the scene where Jim Rayner and Kristen are meeting the drug dealer Willie Red. And Willie Red uh insists at the point of a gun that they prove to him that they're not the man by injecting the heroin he's prepared for them. And the music in the background, it's in the background. And it's uh very airy and ethereal sounding, and it's bluesy, but it's it just I think it matches the scene well and accompanies the scene and supports the scene as opposed to overwhelms the scene. So Eric Clapton won an Oscar for the song Tears in Heaven or Tears from Heaven, which they inject into this movie as well with a helicopter tracking shot as the lead character Kristen is jogging along a coastline. Like you don't really hear anything in that shot other than the soundtrack. And so great example of just promoting the song, which is fine. I mean, it's uh it's a pretty sounding song, and that's another thing that I think doesn't match is some of the sonic qualities. I don't know how to describe it, because I'm not a musician, but a lot of the guitar solos, they have an obvious to me bluesy sound that also sounds kind of pretty. It's it's there's soloing in the higher frequency range, and it just sounds too pretty for a movie that's really trying to be serious and ugly. Because I think that's kind of what they're trying to push a little bit, and that's another problem because the lead characters are way too good looking for this. To the point where if I was a drug dealer, I wouldn't believe that guy is a fucking actual drugie. Way too good looking, or her, way too good looking. Your hair looks way too nice, you know, and I mean that I get it, it's the movies. They're still trying to present sex appeal for the audience, but it just comes across as a gimmick. And so there's a prettiness to the whole movie and both the music and even the uh the actors that I don't think will well represents the trajectory that these characters have to succumb to the dark side of the drug war. I think they represent that a little bit with Jennifer Jason Lee's character, because they do change the way she looks throughout the movie as she deteriorates. But anyway, I digress. It's a problem with the music, another problem with the music.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's not quite. I mean, they do have a scene where she one at one point looks at herself in the mirror, and the performance is as if I don't even recognize myself anymore. But her hair is just a little bit more oily, yeah, her skin's a little like uh more pale, and that's about it. She still looks fine, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, she looks pretty good.
SPEAKER_08Just take a shower. Yeah, right. Yeah, it just looks like maybe she hadn't showered in like two and a half days. That's about me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But what do you what do you think about the quality in the music that I described? The prettiness of like the high frequency range guitar soloing and how it just doesn't match the mood and ugliness that would be more appropriate.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I I agree definitely. I I I think it does have a you know, it almost has a feeling of just a slight bit of sadness, but not tragic sadness. It's uh maybe just it has a it like the music sounds almost like oh the person that I love is leaving for the weekend. I'm gonna miss them. But they'll be back, you know. So it's it's just yeah, they're gone and I'm thinking about them. You know, it's not as as tragic as you know, bawling your eyes out, wondering where this guy is. So yeah, I don't know. It just and and it also just kind of sounds like hey Clapton, play some bluesy stuff, and then whatever he made, I guess we just throw them in here. You know, it doesn't come across that it's really thought through to like I understand this scene and I'm gonna write some music that really amplifies and projects what this scene's all about.
SPEAKER_04It sounds just like music that was made and they sounds like music that was it sounds like m music that was borrowed, you know, because it's like, oh, the blues that that represents sadness. Let me just play some blues music and that'll evoke the appropriate emotion.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_04I mean, and arguably the best music in the whole movie is not even on the soundtrack and not even produced by Eric Clapton. Um there's a scene when Kristen leaves a drug dealer's den. The drug dealer's name is Monroe, where she's buying blue ringers, and she leaves, and Jimi Hendrix song comes on, and she's driving under the influence and trying to get to get to some place where she can make a phone call. She starts hallucinating, and then they start to manipulate the classic Jimi Hendrix song in the sound design to kind of match her state of mind. And anyway, I thought that scene was really cool. And what they did with the sound design to complement the actual events that were happening to the character. Um, but again, I digress. Um, Tambre. That's the concept I was looking for. Tambre. The unique quality or sound that a musical instrument makes. Now, obviously, Eric Clapton's guitar is modulated in a variety of different ways depending upon the song, but that just contributes to the overall sound, which is, I think, the timbre. So maybe that's what I'm trying to refer to. But I agree with you. This song, this um, pardon me, movie is difficult to talk about because it misses the mark so many times. And I don't really want to be too critical of the movie like you. I tend to think of movies as successes just because they were made. It is a successfully produced movie. Um, and I say that not to be trite or anything, but to respect filmmaking and the filmmaking process and the commitment that is required from dozens, if not hundreds, of professionals. And the writer, the director, the producers, the actors spend months, if not years, of their life dedicated to a particular project. And I respect that. You know, it's an it's an enormous risk. Whether the movie ultimately is good is dependent upon so many individual choices that it feels disrespectful to be overly critical of any movie. But I think it's important to note that the purpose of being critical is ultimately to help good movies to get made because people spend so much of their life and resources to making it.
SPEAKER_03So I think there's a respectful way to do it, and I will always aim to do that, but I the purpose of the criticism is you know to help guide filmmaking for you know forever. And you gotta point these things out.
SPEAKER_04Um and this is obviously just my perspective and your perspective and we're bringing in our own minds and emotional state to any particular movie, and that certainly contributes to the opinions and the criticism, so people can take it for what it's worth. Um, that said, I've never been a big Eric Clapton fan. And so it could be that I'm not particular to his style of music. Uh, it could be that I'm not a big blues music fan. Um I don't know. It's something that's probably a conversation for a different podcast entirely. Um, but you know, music and sound is such a critical component of movies. Uh I remember when I was in film school, they said two-thirds of your movie is gonna be audio. And they're talking about the sound design, they're talking about the soundtrack, and then the other third is the cinematography. And I think good soundtracks complement and tend to be more subtle, bad or to your point earlier, integrates into the characterization. Or if it's bad, it can it can be overwhelming. I think it's bad in this movie. So um, but we won't beat this horse to death anymore unless you have anything else to say about um this particular soundtrack or musical soundtracks in general.
SPEAKER_08No, no, no. But yeah, to your point about criticism and all that, I I pretty much agree with you in totality on everything that you're saying. Um, and it and in this movie too, it's not like they completely didn't go for difficult things, you know. So, like the acting, obviously, it's they're they're going for a super seriousness in in that stuff. So, I mean, they're going for it. And filmmaking wise, I mean, they try, they take some swings. I mean, as shown, like just the opening shot of the movie, it starts with a pretty long single-take steady cam shot that goes down steps and around a bar with tons of extras, goes outside and then lifts up on a crane shot. So, I mean, it's like that opening shot. While it's not what I would consider like top tier in those types of shots, still pretty pretty tricky shot that they pulled off. Right. Kind of got the movie started in a pretty decent way.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. It introduces the Jason Patrick character in this bizarre white pirate shirt.
SPEAKER_09Yep.
SPEAKER_04I don't know what's going on with that, but I think Kristen is later wearing that same shirt.
SPEAKER_07Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And then she wears a purple version of it. I think. I don't know. Not 100% about that. I wasn't motivated enough to play back the movie to verify costume design choices. But if you watch the movie Rush, if you haven't yet, check out the shirts.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I just thought it was a bizarre, bizarre makeup and costume design of that Jim Rayner character. I thought he was designed to look very Jim Morrison.
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Circa 1970 or 1971 or 70, whenever they released the blues album LA Woman. He had a very particular blues look, and it seems like they're going for that a little bit. And it again, it comes off too clean. You know, they ran that white shirt through the washing machine 10 times with oxy white and just made it sparkle. And then they ironed it, and then they put it on this really good-looking actor and put that guy in this rough blues bar. It just it doesn't fit, you know. They need to dirty that shirt up and maybe go with something different, you know. Because especially people that are in the underground or in a particular scene, you can kind of check out and see people that are posers that are like look wearing things that they think need to be worn because they're cool, as opposed to just wearing who gives a fuck whatever. I just want to have a good time type of people. And you know, so interesting choice for a narcotics undercover agent to uh look that flamboyant and clean. But again, um maybe they didn't have a huge budget for a costume. Uh Will Gaines character, he's looking pretty good though, in those in that in that in that leather suit played by one of the Allman brothers.
SPEAKER_09Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Another interesting choice is like you got one of the Allman brothers in the movie.
SPEAKER_02Maybe ask him to sit in on one of the songs.
SPEAKER_08It's like it does add it adds questions to the movie that are unnecessary. It's like the soundtrack's obviously a huge deal with this, and then you got Greg Allman sitting there because kind of what he does in the movie, sits there. He doesn't do anything.
SPEAKER_04I don't I don't know why they're like messing with this guy so much. The only thing he does is he walks around and he occasionally does what appears to be accounting.
SPEAKER_08Right. Yeah, out he always sits at tables most of the time, out amongst everybody, and he's taking care of business. And then he walks around and then he makes sure that people that owe him money are gonna pay him at some point, and that's kind of his whole deal. Like they there's never a single scene, and I think this is probably on purpose, yeah um, that we never see a single scene of him doing any crime. Um so the movie is kind of this whole thing's a waste. Why are we getting these guys in turning these guys into junkies to get this one guy that we never see do anything wrong? Right. You know, and it's I don't know. I I think it is on purpose, but I don't think it's correct for the movie. I mean, you know, uh when you get to the end and he's on trial and does this little hand movement that suggests that maybe he was the guy that ended up killing Jim. Right. Oh, for sure. And almost almost killing, you know, that's the one thing that makes us okay with the events that happen after that, but that's still it's just a hand gesture, you know?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but it's pretty obvious what he's gesturing toward. It indicates that not only was he aware that somebody was doing it, it was him. It was him because he knew the exact gesture, you know, and so it was like it was him who killed Jim Rayner. And I'm cool with that. I'm cool with Jim Rayner dying. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08It's like that guy, that's what he wanted, I think. Yeah, you know, the the police department is crazy because when they bring when they bring in uh Kristen and Sam Elliott, who I think's really good in this movie. Um yeah, but they're walking down the hall together, it's kind of their first conversation, and you you in the intro, you said the line where he's like, I know it's gonna be different. You it's kind of a funny line, yeah. But it's basically him just admitting this is where this is gonna go. We all know the situation. You get at this job, then you're gonna become a junkie, and that's that's the deal. And it just seems like a weird strategy for the police department to just be everyone's aware that this is how it goes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's the component of the movie that is a social commentary.
SPEAKER_08Right.
SPEAKER_04It just yeah, it being it's not really explicit, it's all very implied and pretty purposeless. And again, that's that's the point. Because the implied social commentary is the war on drugs is purposeless.
SPEAKER_06Right.
SPEAKER_03And in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety-one, I don't think that was a popular perspective.
SPEAKER_04Which is why it was probably so ambiguous in the movie. I don't know. I was only ten years old in nineteen ninety, so I wasn't really that glued into cultural commentary on the United States of America's ongoing battle with illegal narcotics.
SPEAKER_03I was into probably playing baseball. So but 1990 that was what the height of crack in certain parts of the country.
SPEAKER_08I don't know. Yeah, I think so, and and and this is just kind of maybe saying another area that um crack was portrayed as an inner city an inner city problem. And then maybe cocaine was the outside the city, more rural, like um well in this movie it's kind of biker gangs are the the problem.
SPEAKER_04Right. Well they just talk about biker gangs being the problem. There's really no bikers.
SPEAKER_08Well, they're up in the at the background club. Yeah, their background. They're kind of there, but they don't interact at all. No, they're yeah, they're just extras, but they're um they're all over the place. Like when in the at the end of that opening long take, when Gaines leaves the place and gets in his car, there's bikers sitting outside smoking joints. And I think that also kind of shows that Gaines is cool with drug use because they're in the parking lot out in the open smoking weed, and he walks by them and doesn't say anything. Yeah. Then he gets in his car and does this situation where there's a guy sleeping in his back seat, which bookends the movie, which allows me to wonder what's up with Will Gaines always leaving his car open for multiple people to just jump in his back seat of his car? Because the way it does it at the bookend is he says something like, I thought I told you guys. So it implies that this situation happens all the time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, he's got an ongoing problem with the locks on his Mercedes and he parks the Mercedes like at the very front of the bar where everyone can see who's kind of coming and going. So you have to really be sneaky to slither your way into the back seat. And he never checks, and he walks past the back seat, but he never checks, even though it's an ongoing problem. Yeah, he's less on point when he's out on the world in his car, really on point when he's inside his bar because he's unbreakable, he's not gonna break his rules.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, he needs to just stay there. Don't sell your car, live in the club. And your your golden.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the one of the ways we could check this movie out is by analyzing the plot points.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And in order to do that, the first thing I think one would need to identify is who is the lead character? And I think when I started watching this movie, I thought to myself, well, obviously Jim Rayner is the lead, but I don't think he is from a plot perspective. I think from I think from a plot perspective, it's definitely Jennifer Jason Lee's character, Kristen, who is the new recruit. She's the one only one that really goes through any sort of changes. And he's really the only one who really makes any significant choices. Right. And so the Jim Mariner character, he's there just to provide some backstory and some prologue.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, extra.
SPEAKER_08Like he does make a crucial choice in the movie, which is choosing her to be his partner. And that's what makes it seem as the movie starts. Yeah, but that this is going to be the main character because he makes the first major choice. Right. But once she gets picked, all the choices pretty much become hers at that point.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I think they do that because they want to have a love story component.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And they achieve that, but never come really comes across as at least to me, as a genuine connection. Kind of maybe a little, but um.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's one of the other, I think, kind of big problems with the movie. Yeah. Is um, I mean, the love story develops pretty quickly and with no real discernible reasons um beside the fact that she's starting to do a bunch of drugs and he's just there. And so maybe that creates a connection between them. But other than that, it's like, does he ever do anything cool at all in the whole movie that would make anybody go, oh yeah, this guy's the man? You know, everything he does sucks.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. He does eventually go through a two-minute montage drug withdrawal sequence. You know, so that is probably the best thing that he did. But she fell in love with him well before that.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. And it kind of starts right away. I mean, there's yeah, he's he's we he makes a lot of questionable moves on his new partner, like real fast.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, with no explanation that hey, we need to be perceived as a couple in order to be believable. So we need to right. I need to be able to grab your hair in every scene or kiss you on the nose whenever I want. You know, it's just us, it's just us talking, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like right off the bat he gets he gets pretty grabby. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And um and he stays grabby. I mean, all the way to their uh love scene. Well, they have two love scenes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They have a genuine, kind of nice love scene, and then there's uh she's going through withdrawal, and he's like, Oh, you know what you need.
SPEAKER_04No, she makes the move on him with all due respect.
SPEAKER_03He doesn't go to let me let me, you know, flip you over and have my way. No, he she go, she starts to she seduces him, basically.
SPEAKER_04Maybe that's we can certainly debate let's let's debate it. Okay, so so the house is the start. Okay, so that's how the scene starts. So the scene. The scene he well, yeah, he gets home. After I think doing a bunch of drugs on some sort of drug deal, and she's on her hands and knees combing through this furry white carpet on the floor with her fingers, presumably looking for cocaine or some other drugs. And he sees her doing this, and then he goes up to her and she kind of lays in the fetal position, and she's saying, like, there's gotta be more around. And he picks her up and then lays her into bed, and then they start talking, and she asks for something to help her with the withdrawal symptoms, and then he goes, starts looking for it, and then comes back to the bed, and she kind of throws herself on him and then starts kissing him, not in the face, but kind of in the chest, neck, maybe in the face. I don't remember, but she starts kissing on him and then starts going down as if to proceed with oral sex on him. And then, and you can see it in his face. He's like, Oh, we don't shouldn't be doing this. This isn't right, or this isn't appropriate, and then he very quickly after that decides I'm just gonna have sex with her, and then he flips her over and um very roughly proceeds.
SPEAKER_03That's my uh testimony. Your turn, go.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I just would offer hey, you kind of helped this woman become a junkie, and now she's dealing with this crazy withdraw for maybe the first time in her entire life. Um, it's not crystal clear that she's making advances on him. She's kind of just in a ball.
SPEAKER_04And I mean, I can see I think you need to run this, I think you need to run this scene back.
SPEAKER_08Oh, I ran it back.
SPEAKER_04I'm sure you did.
SPEAKER_08I mean, I got a I got a lot of issues with with this guy because he's she's like, hey, I could use this stuff. He goes in the closet, looks in like a pocket of one jacket, and then goes off screen, presumably to one other area, and then decides there's nothing in the house.
SPEAKER_02Well, you gotta, yeah. He's he's on drugs though.
SPEAKER_04I know he's on extremely powerful street drugs, and he's probably on several drugs, you know, and he probably hasn't slept really well in like months, and you know, he's under a lot of stress, right?
SPEAKER_08Right, right. And so then say the movements that she's making are confusing at best. Like, and and just like you said, you see it on his face, he's like, Oh, we shouldn't be doing this, and then so you're saying to be the most stand-up guy, he just decides your words, not mine.
SPEAKER_04I'm not telling, I'm not saying he's doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_08But I could make the case, but before I do that, go ahead. So he's saying, All right, I know we shouldn't do this, however, it's obviously gonna happen. So I'm just gonna take care of business in the quickest way possible to get this over with, because that's how he's determining this is the best way to handle this. And then once he's finished, because I'm pretty sure she didn't quite get there, you know, plus he's also dealing with a lot of trauma at the same time. But then he has the sense to after he's done, he goes, Hey, listen to me. I'm sorry. That was really weird. He's like, Oh, okay, sweet. I don't think we should all good.
SPEAKER_04I don't think you're I don't think you're entirely remembering this movie super accurately, but we can always watch a scene back. Um I don't I do think that it is unambiguous that she tries to seduce him. And I do think that she's doing that probably because whatever was gonna give her relief was he couldn't find, even though he did not try very hard. I will I will concede that he gave like minimal effort, unless he is really well, he's not on point at all. And so he gives next to no effort and then kind of goes to her and he's like, You're correct, I don't know where the stuff is. And then she goes, Well, I need to find some sort of relief. We could have sex, and I'm not saying this is a thought process that she goes through, this is just her kind of go-to, where you know, sex is such a powerful experience that and pleasurable experience that it could temporarily serve as a painkiller. And I think that at least at a subconscious level, that is why she initiated that. And I will also concede to you that yeah, he is reluctant and he is very fast, and he does climax, and so you could very easily make the argument that he didn't have her in mind at all during this, although he did accommodate her briefly, and so at least perhaps within maybe a couple seconds, 10, 20 seconds, gave her some relief, although it didn't seem too pleasurable to her, although sex can walk a fine line between appearing to be pleasurable and not. It's kind of like laughing and crying can sometimes seem similar, where it's like you see somebody crying, and you're like, Are you laughing? And you're like, Oh no, you're crying because they have, you know, they're just a little similar in their appearance and sound. So anyway, I think he reluctantly accommodated her pursuit of a short-term opportun uh short-term relief from her uh discontinuation syndrome, which is fancy say fancy way of saying withdrawal. Right. Cool. So who wins? Nobody. No, I mean between you and me.
SPEAKER_08Oh, probably still nobody. Anyway, so let's move on. We gotta let we gotta let people decide. Okay. Let us know in the comments who won the put a poll up. Yeah. So let's go to what I would say is probably the best scene in the movie. Which you you brought up a little bit before. It was the was it Willie the Red?
SPEAKER_04Willie Red. Yeah. Played by Special Kay McRae.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I think personally I think that's the best scene in the movie. Okay. I think he's awesome. Yeah. That dude's awesome in that scene. I think the scene pretty pretty much does what it's setting out to do. Um it has some good shots in it. I think the acting in it, it's good. It it's the it's really one of the only scenes in the movie that it kind of pulls you in. You feel some tension there where I don't I don't find that in too much of the movie.
SPEAKER_04What do you think about the scene with Monroe? Uh it's okay. Um What do you think about it in terms of tension?
SPEAKER_08Because I think there was a little bit there's tension there, but it does sort of the the movie's to me starting to unravel at that point, and that's one last grasp of trying to do something. It's got William Sadler playing that character. He's a he's a good actor. He's probably I mean, I think about him in I think he's the bad guy in Die Hard 2. Yes. Yeah, or one of the bad guys. There's multiple bad guys in that, but he's the main one. Yeah. So he's good. I think the scene kind of is I I don't really understand the way it ends totally.
SPEAKER_04Um they maybe could have Are you talking about the Monroe scene or the Willie Red scene?
SPEAKER_08Okay, yeah, well, we jumped to Monroe. Yeah. Because you just asked me about that. I think there's there is tension at the beginning. Um but yeah, it seems just kind of like it could have been fleshed out to have more to it, you know, because he says, let's party. They eat the whatever that drug is. Blue ringer. And he tries to start kissing her, she's like, nah. And then he's like, Alright, peace. And she just rolls out of there. So I don't I I don't really know aside from just being like, let's do a scene, try to get some tension, um, but no real stakes in it. Kind of seems like a lost opportunity. And I mean which continues because the movie starts really just becoming these scenes one right after another. Um, because r right after that, she gets in her car and drives, goes to a gas station, gets on the phone, and is too messed up to even dial anybody. And then it just the scene's over. And there's it's just moves on to she gets back to her house the next day. So it's I don't know, there's she, you know, there's you don't have have to deal with anything that happens with her taking that drug and going off somewhere. Apparently, she just parks real cockeyed at a gas station and then passes out in a phone booth and sleeps there the whole night and nobody messes with her, and then she just wakes up and is like, oh, that was a crazy night.
SPEAKER_04Well, you don't know, because then the very next scene is a playground where she meets police captain Larry Dodd to exchange evidence envelopes. Yeah, yeah. And he says, You don't look too good. You want to go back to my place to get a beer? And she says, I don't really want to be around anyone right now, you know. Right.
SPEAKER_08So that was that's a weird cut between scenes because that's potentially a moment, a couple moments of high tension, and we just get out of those scenes nice and easy, right, and leave all the tension there to just disappear and solve itself off screen.
SPEAKER_04Right. No, I I totally agree with you, and I totally agree with you that the scene with really Willie Red is potentially the best scene in the movie. I think the performance by Special K McRae, who plays Willie Red, is so good. It comes across as so genuine and so interesting.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That I mean, if it weren't for that actor, that scene could very easily have been just another lost opportunity.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And it's uh interesting to note that uh the main plot point of the whole movie occurred just a couple scenes before that Willie Red scene. Because it's the second scene where she decides to do whatever it takes, where she actually does whatever it takes, according to what Jim Rayner thinks is appropriate, which is you gotta do drugs to be believable in order to buy drugs from drug dealers. And a couple scenes prior to that, she does cocaine with Walker for the first time. And at least in terms of thinking about the movie in terms of plot structure, which is to say, what choices are the characters making, or what actions are the characters doing that is propelling or driving all the other actions in the movie or plot. And it seems to me that that first action is her actually doing cocaine at Walker's home with Jim Rayner and Walker. Would you agree with that? Um because I think everything up to that point is all backstory with her kind of getting recruited, and then we go through all these scenes of Jim Rayner evaluating her to determine if she he wants her to be his partner.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_04And but she's just she's kind of making choices, she kind of seems reluctant, but she doesn't actually do anything until that scene.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_04And that's 26 minutes into the movie, which I can't help but wonder like what if that happened within five minutes of the movie? How much more opportunity they could have had to expand on some of these scenes or maybe add better scenes, add more characters. Because one of the more interesting things in the movie are the secondary characters that are the drug dealers.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_04You know, you have the William Sadler actor playing Monroe, you have Willie Red.
SPEAKER_03Who knows?
SPEAKER_04Maybe you could actually have a scene with the main bad guy that actually conveys some information about him or some dynamics about him that is interesting. Or at least emotionally compelling. But I try that's the main thing I think about this movie is all the backstory with the Jim Rayner character being really unnecessary. Because I really am a firm believer that that first action, that inciting incident, the earlier that happens in a movie, the better. Because mainly because you know what you're investing in as an audience member. It's like you know what the conflict is. And I'm not saying you gotta do it within five minutes or ten minutes, but as early as possible.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_03And they kind of just drag the prologue to that point. And I don't know why. It could be just trying to I think be guided by something other than plot. Maybe that's the soundtrack. I don't know. I mean it is based on it is based on an on an autobiography. So maybe they're just relying on the uh realness of the story.
SPEAKER_08Well, it could also be at that time there's way less movies where the woman would be the protagonist.
SPEAKER_04And that and I agree with you about that too, and that is kind of informing my judgment about the whole thing. It's almost as if they they didn't make that decision because it was about a woman. And because that was less marketable.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Which I think is a bad decision. It's a surprising decision, too, because the writer is a woman, the director is a woman, and the producer is the husband of the director. So it's bizarre that this decision was made, but it may have been something that wasn't really thought about because, as you said, it was just the way things were done.
SPEAKER_08Right. Because you you move a couple, maybe a year or two later, Silence of the Lambs comes out. Jodie Foster is the lead character of that, and it's a very clear um idea of a woman as the protagonist of the movie and what that means. So, like every scene in that movie has details that are showing what it's like for her to be at a trying to do a case and be surrounded by men and the way that men think and all that stuff, and it's like very well thought out, and it even starts, I think, kind of similar where with Jody Foster's running with the other recruits and all that stuff, and how Jennifer Jason Lee starts this movie running against people, but it's the way it'd be interesting to look at these two movies side by side as like a depiction of like a lead female cop character. That's a really good idea, you know, because I think this one the way the way we're viewing her at the beginning is from these two cop ideas, are like, hey, we gotta pick a new new blood or whatever, he says, and they're looking at her from afar, you know, just making judgments about her, making bets about her.
SPEAKER_04And the captain is and the captain isn't even considering her. He's right, he places a small little bet with Rayner on one of two guys.
SPEAKER_08Right. And that's what makes it weird with all of Jim's actions because he's the one that looks at all these dudes and is like, how that this girl, and then immediately he's like takes her back to his place or her place or what wherever they go.
SPEAKER_04Well, immediately, immediately, Captain Larry Dodd's reaction is, Well, I know what the police chief will think. He'll think you're just trying to bang her, which ultimately is exactly what happens.
SPEAKER_07Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04And he's let's talk about Jim Rayner. I mean, we we can continue talking about these plot points, but that's really about the Kristen character. The other plot points are seem simple enough, but they may not be spot on. So we can talk about those later, but let's talk about Jim Rayner.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um, because he's he's a he's an asshole. When he immediately gets introduced to Kristen, she is perky, she's nice, and she says hello, nice to meet you. He doesn't even give her that respect. He looks at her and he's like, get in. Like, because he's sitting in his car. And he's like, just get in the car, you know? And you're just like, What the fuck? And then the scene of them driving from the police station in the car to a restaurant is interesting because they don't say a word to each other, they're quiet, he's just looking straight ahead, she's kind of looking down, and then at some point she kind of looks up at him and she looks kind of scared and kind of weirded out. And then the cuts to them pull into a restaurant and they sit down, they start eating, and they start getting to know each other, and she finds out he was from Montana and a narcotics undercover agent there. And then he he laughs and makes some sort of comment about it. And then she laughs in response. And then he turns to her and he and says, Yeah, maybe that wasn't a joke. You're like, I was like, well, then why were you laughing, dude? You're the one who initiated the laughter, you know. You indicated to her that it was a joke. And so this is, I think, all fine if you take into account that, oh, he is on drugs. And so he's volatile and not nice and unkind and not really that self-aware. And so that's appropriate, but you know, the character progresses and kind of justifies everything and fast forward to the very end. And I said this in the summary before when the episode started, he's trying to justify everything. And he has no idea what he's talking about. Granted, at this point, he's clean. He went through, as I said before, a two-minute drug withdrawal montage. Supposedly got clean, and now he's clear-headed and trying to make sense out of everything that they've done, which included planting evidence on the main bad quote unquote bad guy who we never see do anything wrong.
SPEAKER_03And everything he says is really stupid. And even Kristen thinks it's stupid. But she doesn't have much more to say.
SPEAKER_04And I'll repeat what he said. In an effort to justify what they've done, he says, you pick a side because you have to. The difference being our intentions were good. It's like, what are you talking about? It's not supposed to be the right one, meaning it's not supposed to be the good one, but you're good. And so you just blindly jump into a situation with good intentions, and that's a difference between being a lying cop and a drug dealer. I mean, and there, and that's where all the moral ambiguity and fog comes in. Because then her response is no, there is a difference. It's that there's no difference. And you're like, that's not, what are you even saying? It's like, so there it's like it's like it's it's the she's like, the thing is that it's no thing, and you're like, what that's kind of what she's saying, and it makes no sense, and so the only thing that he does of any uh supposed value is get clean from doing drugs, which he's not supposed to do because he's a cop and they're supposed to fight drug dealers, and so he gets clean and that makes him good. And I don't think the movie's necessarily trying to say that, but that's all he does. There's not much more to say about the Jim Rayner character, other than Jason Patrick presents him in this bizarrely clean and overly cool and melodramatic way that is surprising that that gets past a director. But the director of this movie, this is the first movie they ever directed, and the only movie they ever directed.
SPEAKER_08Right. So based on that, I mean it's pretty good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I mean, there are scenes where Jason Patrick's performance it comes across as good in that sense of him just trying to navigate this underworld as a character. You know, like, okay, yeah, I can see how he's trying to justify it, but there's no arc, and when it starts to meander in any direction, it just doesn't hit. So um, do you have anything to say about the Jim Rayner character? There's not much to say.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean, I even though it's ridiculous, I love watching the uh withdraw scene.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where he's sitting in the kitchen and then with a bowl of fruit or something on random stool that just happens to be next to him or something.
SPEAKER_08I don't know.
SPEAKER_04Worth the price of admission, but for sure. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_08For some reason, it kind of sucks to laugh at it, but it's just the staging of it of that shot is so weird.
SPEAKER_04It's not just the staging. They may have been able to edit around the performance or the direction or whatever that was. I don't really know.
SPEAKER_08But it's I mean, it's only one one angle, so they they they set this up, they probably did one take, or maybe they did a bunch, and this is the best one. And they were like, let's just move on from this scene and save the rest of the day, not do any other angles.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah. I don't know what I don't know what they're entertaining to watch that. It's very funny. I don't know what they were going for if we were to approach it from a serious perspective, um, other than the fact that we know he's going to withdraw from drugs and he's uncomfortable and in out of not in control of his body, and so he tries to grab onto a table that is easily shakeable, and it's got a bowl of fruit on top of it, and he shakes it so hard that the fruit bounces out of the bowl and hits the floor, and I mean, I've never gone through cocaine or heroin withdrawal. Maybe that's exactly what it's like. You just grab things and shake things until they break and fall.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and then you then you cut that to another shot because it's a montage. And then the next shot is them laying by the fireplace. Oh yeah, it's funny. That's like with the blues music going.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, no, the blues music actually fades down because it's kind of it's shredding, I think, in the fruit bowl scene. And then it dies down and then it cuts to them on the couch. He's lying down, she's like got a rag, and she's I don't know, running it, running it across his forehead, whatever, because he's it's probably a cold rag because he's got a fever or whatever. And there's for a few seconds no music. And I remember having the sense that oh, this withdrawal sequence is almost over, and then the music kind of roars back in and very quickly climaxes again. You're like, whoa, we're still in this. Yeah, they're like, no, it's not over, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And it's not even heroin's advantage, it keeps going.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's up and down, and and uh it's weird because there's really nothing dramatic happening in the shot, they're just lying down, but the music is so dramatic. And again, another another example of the music not quite complimenting what's going on the screen. Um I think after that it cuts to him then in a bathtub.
SPEAKER_08And he's well, it does them by the fireplace. Oh, yeah. And then then it's them on the couch, and she's watching All in the Family, and you can tell he's starting to get better because she's getting a little chuckle out of the show that she's watching. So it's like, oh, he must be making a little recovery because she's like, I still gotta lay with him, and he's gone through all this. But RG Bunker is pretty funny, dude. And then it's a bathtub. Okay, yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04So if you ever have to go through serious heroin withdrawal, make sure you have All in the Family on DVD.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. They watch good shows in their in their little place there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, they watch Saturday Night Live, All in the Family, and anything else?
SPEAKER_08Um I feel like there's something else, but those are the two that I remember. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Alright. So that's that. Yep. Um moving on, back to um Kristen's uh character development.
SPEAKER_06It would appear as though she discovers.
SPEAKER_03I don't know if this is a discovery or just more of the complication, when she discovers that the police are or can be just as bad as the drug dealers, which is when police chief Nettles encourages them to plant evidence on William Gaines, the primary target of their investigation.
SPEAKER_04But that happens pretty much in the middle of the movie. So I don't know if we would call that a discovery. I think it just is what do you think? What I'm trying to identify is the second plot point where the lead character makes some sort of discovery, or their trajectory changes by some sort of action that and it ushers in the resolution of the movie.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_04When do you think that happened for the Kristen character? Do you think she made a discovery? Do you think there was some sort of reversal of fortune that that changed her purpose?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I mean, I could see that being it because she does give some pushback and that's where that acting chief uh says all I'm saying is sometimes good things happen in mysterious ways or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And essentially that's his answer to her saying, Should we plant evidence? Um which they'd go ahead and do. Right. You know. So then her other big choice would be being on the stand and deciding to tell the truth. Right. You know.
SPEAKER_04So But that's her last scene. There's no resolution for her after she decides to tell the truth. Because the only other scene after that court scene where she tells the truth on the stand is William Gaines getting in his car again and getting killed.
SPEAKER_03Right. Which could be her.
SPEAKER_08Could be anybody, though. Because like everyone goes in that back seat at some point in that town.
SPEAKER_04Well, we only know of one. A Mexican homeless man named Poncho. I don't know if that's his actual name. It may be just what William Gaines is calling him.
SPEAKER_07Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. But in that last scene, he's definitely like, I thought I told you guys. And that that other one that we saw at the beginning of the movie was seven months prior. So you wouldn't think if those were the only two incidents that that ever happened. He would think seven months later. Oh, Pancho's back. You know, the way he says it is almost like, you guys do this all the time. I thought I told you. So yeah, it's really weird. That's why my theory is everyone in that town always decides to hide out in Gaines' back seat. And it's just he just thinks of it as like a way because every time he pulls off the road, it's at the exact same spot using the same shot. Lily does it twice.
SPEAKER_04It's like, I don't know if it's every time. We don't see it.
SPEAKER_08I'm pretty sure every time we see it, I'm pretty sure it's the exact same shot, just ran back another time. Yeah, you're probably right.
SPEAKER_04The uh the the second time he looks back into his back seat after he discovers somebody back there. He turns and he looks and he sees something, and then just very slowly shakes his head before some shotgun shoots him. It's really weird. It's yeah, it's almost as if he is shaking his head in slow motion. It looks like they made the decision to not only direct him to look into the backseat and see somebody with a shotgun. But his reaction to that is to shake his head no. And then they made the decision to also, we're gonna shoot that reaction to this killer in the backseat in slow motion to slow it down even more, and I have no idea why they would decide to do that, other than thinking it had some sort of effect on our reaction. I I it boggles my mind those decisions that were made in the final scene. It's like I get redoing a scene, like basically bookending the whole movie with the same scene. Right. I get that, makes sense. Your expectation is one thing. Actually, I don't get it from even I don't get it at all. It's like you're trying to we're so from a filmmaker's perspective, they have an opening scene that plays out in a particular way, it's harmless, and so they plant the expectation in the audience member's mind that this is something that happens and it's a harmless thing, and then they show it at the very end of the movie after all of this conflict transpired. It's obviously the exact same scene that you saw at the beginning, and we're supposed to, as sophisticated audience members, expect that it's not gonna transpire in the same way as before, it's gonna be bad.
SPEAKER_03And it is bad.
SPEAKER_06And the end.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's tough.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's tough. There's no res I mean, the resolution. See, that's why it's like they were trying to make it more of a love story because when Jim Raynor is killed, which again, full support of that decision, they cut to Kristen being at the police station, she's crying and she's getting interviewed by the cops, right? And they're like, is I understand you quit the police and is there's you know, is are you sticking around town? Where are you gonna be in case we need to reach out to you? And she doesn't really respond to that, she just cries, and then immediately cuts to a that helicopter tracking shot with tears from heaven or tears in heaven by Eric Clapton playing. Where there seem there's way more resolution to this love connection than there is to the moral conflict of the whole movie. There's no resolution to the moral conflict of the story, which is remarkable, which is remarkable. Yeah. Because it basically says what? So William Gaines is sitting in the courtroom at the end of the movie. She's already planted evidence on him, she's already talked to the grand jury about this. Now she's on the stand and testifying in front of a jury in an effort to convict this guy on false information. And she changes her mind. So she makes a choice to tell the truth, which is supposed to be the reversal of fortune.
SPEAKER_03Right? But there's nothing after that. It's supposed that's supposed to usher in the resolution.
SPEAKER_04But it doesn't. Unless you were to assume the resolution is the resolution is William Gaines getting killed, which as you said, could have been her.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_08So if it is her, then the the resolution is she can't take him down through regular police work. She can only take him down through like vigilanteism. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04She's like, or I'm not gonna lie because that's wrong, but I will blow your head off with a shotgun.
SPEAKER_08Right. Yeah. So it's either that or it's just showing us that, well, eventually these things take care of themselves. So if it wasn't her, if she just moved somewhere and was like, yeah, that that didn't quite work out, trying to be an undercover cop. I'm gonna try to get my life back together, I'm going somewhere else. If if that's the case, cool. But then they still show us that Gaines gets gets killed. And so if it wasn't her, then it's just basically, hey, the the the crime elements, just let them play out. Everybody'll get their due someday.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't know if that's what the movie presents, or if that's I'm not saying that. I'm saying I think that's what we're bringing to it. If we've seen 35 years of movies since then.
SPEAKER_08Right. I'm just saying you can make a decision. Do you think she's in the backseat? I would say most people would think that. I would say no. Um so if if it wasn't her in the backseat, yeah, then what what reason or what can you take from that as making a movie where some random person just is in the backseat and eventually kills this guy?
SPEAKER_04I would say he has an intricate network of criminals that he's connected to, and he's been recently brought up on some sort of drug charge.
SPEAKER_03And I think any one of them may be inclined to um end his life in order to protect themselves. One interesting detail is.
SPEAKER_04Is in both the scene where Jim Rayner is killed and the scene where William Gaines is killed, they're killed with a shotgun. I don't know if it's the exact same shotgun. It looks similar.
SPEAKER_07Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_04Which would indicate to me that like a double barrel. It's yeah, it's somebody else. It's not Kristen because she's in the scene where Jim Rayner is killed, where the double barrel shotgun is introduced.
SPEAKER_08So that's gun still. It's just in the car. And she's like, or whoever gets in the car. And they're like, oh, sweet.
SPEAKER_04Rain or uh what's his name? Okay, so not only not only does William Gaines leave his Mercedes unlocked, he leaves his shotgun, double-barreled shotgun that he murders police officers with just sitting in the backseat. This guy is not a good criminal.
SPEAKER_08All right, so let's go to my biggest pet peeve, which relates because it's also about the double barrel shotgun. All right. The scene where uh your boy Jim gets killed. Yeah, my favorite character of all time. Um that scene doesn't make any sense to me because she's lying on this couch. Yeah. This, I mean, I guess I understand what they are saying happened. I just don't understand it spatially where this gun comes from. Yeah. They're saying it's from outside, but yet it's coming up to her face. So based on how it looks from the angles, he would be really leaning in far in this window with the double barrel shotgun. It's like such a weird positioning of the whole thing. And you know, it's just I the way that shotgun comes up to her face and slides across her face or whatever, it would seem that he's in the room. But she knocks the shotgun out of the way, which if he's leaning in the window, yeah, that knocking the shotgun out of the way would probably knock it out of his hands because he's not holding it with two hands, because he's leaning it in a window, and so she knocks it out of his hand, it slips, he pulls the trigger, blows Jim's leg off, and then they immediately both just start firing at this window, and then she gets out of the you know, she's like, I'm gonna go get you help.
SPEAKER_04One little detail about the window is when they're firing at the window, it's shattering, which means it's closed.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, it's so weird. I don't understand how this whole scene goes down, and then she goes, Hey, you're in a bunch of trouble. I'm gonna go get you help. So she runs out of the trailer where Gaines and probably his boys would be there because I don't think Gaines is just gonna go there by himself. In actuality, I don't even know if Gaines would do that type of thing. I feel like Gaines would have a crew of dudes and he would say, Go take these people out. He's so careful.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but everybody got arrested in Catterly, so maybe he doesn't have anybody that he can trust. Do you remember that jail scene where every in the jail everybody everybody in the entire movie is in there? Rainer and Kristen didn't just walk right through.
SPEAKER_08I mean, and they put themselves, they put homeboy, almond brothers dude in his own cell, and everyone else in the entire movie in this other cell. I don't really get that whole deal, but yeah, it's like, but also the whole issue for Jim is it's too hard. We gotta be junkies for so long because you have to get them all to get any of them. Yet they got a hundred people, and it that's not good enough. They still have to get the one guy who apparently isn't connected at all. Right. I mean, they got Willie Red and all these other dudes, and but that's not good enough. They gotta keep getting H'd to pull down the Alman Brothers guy. And he's squeaky clean, he's so good, nobody knows, because even their guy Walker. I mean, he I guess he says, yeah, what's what's Almond Brother guy's name? I I keep forgotten.
SPEAKER_04Greg Greg Allman.
SPEAKER_08Well, no, what's his character name?
SPEAKER_04Will Gaines.
SPEAKER_08Gaines. Yeah, so I mean, he says Gaines is a tough character or something like that, or some somebody you should be scared of. That's all we get is one guy saying that. You know, we don't see any evidence that he's doing anything.
SPEAKER_04And I mean, he does he does the very first shot, he does pull a gun out of a safe and then goes to a desk drawer and pulls a bunch of money out. So we do get shown that. Does that scare you?
SPEAKER_08I don't know. I mean, a guy that uh operates a bar like that, I would say maybe that makes him smart in the opening to be like, oh, this guy runs this bar where people are, you know, may put uh you don't have to explain it. I don't agree with you. You know, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I agree with you.
SPEAKER_08There's nothing I just think it's I think it's funny that like he doesn't they say he doesn't deal with anybody that he doesn't know from Houston. Yeah. Yet this town is flooded with drugs. They get a hundred people in this little town that are all dealing drugs, but yeah, they still have to get this one guy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a hotbed. It's Catterly, Texas. It's like I've never heard of Catterly, Texas, but there's obviously thousands of drug dealers that need to be corraled.
SPEAKER_08And you know I think they know pretty much from the time our girl Jennifer Jason Lee gets in there. Yeah, I think most of them know that Jim is an undercover and they make fun of him behind his back all the time. Oh man, I wish we could have watched that movie. Like, look, he's still out here buying all of our drugs. They think like he thinks we don't know. He's a junkie, we're just gonna keep getting paid. He's never gonna arrest us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, it's the fog of the drug war.
SPEAKER_08That is it. The fog of the rush. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Good work. So, do you have any final thoughts on this 1991 classic?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, an interesting one to try to do. I'm glad we did it. I'm not a rush file. Sorry, Jason Patrick, Jennifer, Jason Lee, you guys gave it your all.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I don't blame them.
SPEAKER_08Nah. I know, it's just is one of the things that making a movie's hard. Yeah. They they tried their best. Maybe take a couple whacks, more whacks at the script. I don't think the script's terrible. It's just missing cool details and character development and things like that. I mean, like, having more more tension around a like blooming relationship would be nice. Um more tension around. I mean, I'm conflicted a little bit because I think the movie does move along in the first hour at least, pretty quickly, even though you're saying the first inciting incident happens 28 minutes in, which I agree with, and I think that's a problem with not picking who the main character is. It's it's sort of trying to be a a double main character movie, but Jim just doesn't do anything. He starts the movie as kind of a junkie and he just like stays one. Yeah, he just works.
SPEAKER_04He just deteriorates further and then makes a very fast recovery and then dies.
SPEAKER_08Right. So he's not he's not deep enough to be a main character, so he t kind of takes up too much time in the movie.
SPEAKER_04I completely agree with you. I think they could have started the movie with her and focused more on her and her experience from her perspective.
SPEAKER_07Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I would have liked to have seen the conversation she had in Dod's office to make the choice to be a undercover agent. It seems like she made that choice because they leave the office and he's still asking her questions that it seems like he would ask those questions in the office behind a closed door, not on the way to introduce her to her new partner. That seems weird now in retrospect.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and just the way that they're immediately right out the gate, you know this is gonna fuck all your shit up.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. And yeah, and if Dodd is because here's how it rolls you become a heroin addict. You know, it's almost that direct how they're setting all this stuff up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and I mean, the Dodd character, he comes across as like real supportive and a little conflicted, but he's one of the worst characters because he knows everything that's going down. He tells him and doesn't he just goes with the flow, even when the police chief is telling him to plant evidence, he doesn't say anything. He doesn't talk to him and be like, Don't plant evidence, that's not cool. Right, right, right. And he's even he's even in the court sitting right next to nettles as Kristen is testifying, just waiting for her to perjure herself. Right. And he's a side character, so it's easy to not really think about him. And it's easy to think about things that people don't do. Or it's yeah, it's easy to not think about things that people don't do because they don't do them, they don't come to mind. But his and all of his other actions are really supportive. He comes across as somebody who's trying to be helpful, trying to be cool, who's made his own recovery, and is just trying to do a good job, but he's the worst. He's one of the worst. He might be worse than Jim Rayner, you know. I mean, could be.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and so with that said, well, I got I'm not to make this episode any longer, but I just want to bring up two two more things. First one, super quick, and it's kind of related to that. Um, I just I like this one detail that they put in in that scene where Jim's recovered, still it's he's still tender, but he's in with the police chief, and they're the scene where the chief tell kind of tells him to plant evidence. The the wife of the police chief comes out with all these iced teas, and then and then she's like, Well, I'm just gonna let you guys have your meeting, and then which is funny, like I don't know why that's necessary. Yeah, that's that's probably like some friend of theirs that they're like, hey, you can be like in this movie, but um, but I like this detail where uh Dodd grabs iced tea and offers it to Jennifer Jason Lee, and she doesn't take it. I just like it takes me back to something that they say earlier about getting in these rooms with these people and they bring stuff out, and it's like you want to take it first, right? That's what they say with the heroin or or the drug, you want to take it first before the dealer to show that you're cool. And it's kind of a con, it's like, I don't know, I thought of it as a little con contrast because okay, these are the cops, and they're offering something pretty harmless, and she's like, nah. I just kind of laughed at that detail because none of that is necessary in the scene whatsoever. So I'm like, why would they put that? And it's like, you know, when she goes into an H den, she's like, Well, gotta be cool, so gotta do this H. But in with the cops and they give iced tea, he's like, Nah, not touching that. So, anyway, interesting. I don't know if you have anything to say about that. It's not really necessary. I just kind of want to point that out.
SPEAKER_04I do I don't have anything to say about that, but I did have the realization that all of the male characters in this movie are pretty bad. And the movie was written and directed by a woman, and so I don't know if that affected the writing and the direction and ultimate f ultimately the final product, but it seems it may have. Um there was a co-writer and it was a man. I think his name was Peter Baxter. Um or Peter Barker or something. Let me see, let me get this right. I don't wanna it's Peter Dexter. He was a co-writer of the screenplay. And so um but the the writer of the novel Rush, the actual woman who actually experienced this supposedly in real life as an undercover agent in Texas, uh wrote the screenplay with Peter Dexter, and then it was directed by Lily Feeney Zanek. Um I don't know. I think that's kind of remarkable considering how the male characters in the movie are so un in they're just not good people. None of them. I don't try to think of any that are like maybe um Pancho.
SPEAKER_08Well, Walker is kind of portrayed. I think if you're gone off if you're going off of the male characters are so bad, I think they could have been portrayed way worse. It's almost too sympathetic to a lot of them, but um uh the Walker character.
SPEAKER_04Well, it's my main thing is that they're kind of one-dimensional, they're not very complex. And and even the Walker character, not very complex, but certainly one could be sympathetic to the Walker character. Um, there's a sympathy, I think, to uh the people involved in the drug trade in the illegal drug trade, more so than certainly the police. I mean the three main police characters Rayner, Nettles, and Dodd are not good people.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, I almost think Gaines is like the best because they go to a bunch of other people to get drugs that are under gains, and every time we see those sequences, they're like, can't do that. Gaines is here. So like he's actively keeping people from selling drugs, from what we see. Yeah, they go to waitresses and stuff, like, can I get some shit? And they're like, you know, he's in here, so can't be doing that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so I think they do try I think the creators do try to create this ambiguity with that character as to whether or not he is involved in trading drugs. But that all gets confirmed in the court sequence when he does that hand gesture that's supposed to resemble the double-barreled shotgun dragging across Kristen's face. I mean, it's pretty it's pretty obvious. So he's involved in some respect. Right. As we all thought, but we can't prove.
SPEAKER_08Right. So wouldn't it be awesome if that was just a coincidence? Yeah, he was tired and he put his two fingers up to hold his head up a little bit, and then it sort of slipped, and he's like, I'm just so bored here in court.
SPEAKER_04That would have been bet that would have been better direction. And then and then she and then they did like some sort of like cross-dissolve flashback of her seeing the shotgun drag across her face or something, just to tie those in. Just to make it obvious. That that's what she was thinking. That would have been funny. That would have been good. They should have done that, and they they yeah, that would have made it more confusing. Um, it's probably not the only change they should have made, but if they were gonna make that change, if they were gonna think that deeply about this movie and make that change, then they probably would have done a made a lot of other different choices. You know, I think they could have made the movie more interesting if they met they had more sequences where they were buying drugs with a variety of different drug dealer characters and then kind of dragged those scenes out a little bit more. And to your point played on the tension more. I think if they never slept with each other, that would have been cool and just played on the sexual tension between them. I think that would have been cool. Um you know, maybe consummate their attraction way later in the movie.
SPEAKER_03After maybe at like the peak of the complication and the drama. Um definitely should have focused more on Jennifer Jason Lee's character.
SPEAKER_04Like, I would like to know. I would definitely like to see your conversation in that office with Dodd. That's pretty important. Um probably cut out like at least the first 15 minutes of the movie. Or maybe have like more scenes with William Gaines in it at the beginning. And think it's like the lead character is a bad guy and then switch it to the other side.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I think that might have been if they're trying to do a two-person lead movie, maybe make Gaines and her the co-leads running different paths and have the gym character be one of the side guys. Just like he's sort of a guy showing her the ropes and he goes off the deep end and she deals with all her own stuff. That's just one of the little things that she deals with that romantically linked because then creating sort of a romantic relationship doesn't make any sense because he doesn't do anything that really warrants her to fall in love with him.
SPEAKER_04He's just attractive and kinda cool.
SPEAKER_03Which is a pretty immature type of love.
SPEAKER_06Okay.
SPEAKER_03I'm definitely not a rush file. But as I said earlier, I respect I respect the work and I respect them trying to to produce something.
SPEAKER_04Well they did produce something.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04I respect them trying to produce something that has emotional impact. Didn't work for me. I get the sense that it didn't work for you. But I did watch it with my 72-year-old and 71-year-old uncle and aunt. Okay. And they really and they really liked it.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_04They thought it was a they thought it was a good story.
SPEAKER_03Um with good characters.
SPEAKER_04So it's possible that somebody else can too. It's just not gonna be me.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_08That's all you need. Some people to like what you do.
SPEAKER_04That's it.
SPEAKER_08Yep.
SPEAKER_04Trying to cue up this song, but I can't for some reason.
SPEAKER_06Son of a bitch.
SPEAKER_03Do you have anything else you want to add?
SPEAKER_04No, it's kind of a this is kind of a deflated episode. We like I never expected to talk about the movie Rush for two hours.
SPEAKER_08No. I mean, we really did it. Yeah, I'm proud of us. We really achieved some new heights with this movie.
SPEAKER_04I think we may have achieved new heights in the major motion picture podcasting industry.
SPEAKER_03That's cool.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. This might be a who would have thought anyone would ever try to go for rush? And we jumped right in there and said, hey, let us let us add it.
SPEAKER_04Give us a chance. Well, I don't love this movie, but I do love talking about movies. And if you love listening to movies, then maybe you'll love listening to us talk about a bad movie. Because sometimes the best way to learn is to learn about other people's mistakes.
SPEAKER_09True that.
SPEAKER_04So if that is you, if you're that type of person, go file rush. Go file this episode. Go file this or that.
SPEAKER_00Don't call it a pod. We uh mean in the cinema thing at finally 200 movies.