Rush (1991): The True Cost of Undercover Policing

Join us in this exciting installment of our series on police movies and crime fiction, as we dive deep into both the 1990 book and the 1991 film 'Rush'. With us is the remarkable Frank Scalise—crime fiction author, 20-year police veteran, and expert on all things gritty and nuanced. We explore why Frank was captivated by this story, the phenomenal acting, and the realistic sense of place. Learn how the movie delves into the complexities of deep undercover police work, the moral ambiguities, and the tragic endgame for the characters. We also touch on broader issues like the war on drugs and its impacts. All this and more in an episode filled with reflections, critiques, and thoughtful conversation!
00:30 Frank's Attraction to 'Rush'
00:45 The Acting and Characters
02:10 Plot and Setting of 'Rush'
05:33 Character Analysis
32:49 Product Placement in Films
37:26 The Slippery Slope of Corruption
40:25 The Fallout of Corruption
43:02 The Greater Good Dilemma
58:33 A Gutsy Ending
01:07:09 Real-Life Inspirations and Artistic Liberties

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/v5IYe1G2oOT

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Beyond the Big Screen Podcast with your host
Steve Guerra. Thank you for listening to Beyond the Big
Screen podcast, where we talk about great movies and stories
so great they should be movies. Find show notes, links
to subscribe and leave Apple podcast reviews by going to

(00:23):
our website Beyond the Big Screen dot com. And now
let's go Beyond the Big Screen.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Beyond the
Big Screen. We are joined yet again by Frank Scalise,
crime fiction author extraordinaire twenty year police veteran, to continue
our little bit of a series we have going on
on police movies crime fiction. We've talked about Yiddish Policeman's Union,

(00:54):
we talked about La Confidential, and today's episode is on
the movie and the book Rush. The movie was from
nineteen ninety one, the book was from nineteen ninety and Frank,
you suggested this book movie and what draw drew you
to it.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
I always liked this movie. I saw it pretty shortly
after it came out, and I was drawn to it
for a lot of the reasons we're going to discuss.
The acting was phenomenal in the sense of place, was
really strong, but the thing that drew me to it
the most was, you know, as someone who has had

(01:36):
a law enforcement career and so I had that experience,
but then someone who writes crime fiction. In my crime fiction,
I'm always drawn to exploring nuance, you know. I mean,
there's a place for black and white characters, I suppose
in certain kinds of media, movies or books or whatever,

(01:58):
and people sometimes want that. But as a as a reader,
as a viewer, and certainly as a writer, I like
things to be a little more shaded. I like them
to be a little more nuanced and to explore you know, hey,
Steve's not a good guy, but he's not an entirely
bad guy either, and there's actually a reason behind why
he's doing it, and it doesn't excuse what he's doing,

(02:20):
but it does make you understand why he's doing it
a little bit, and you almost want him to succeed,
at least to a certain degree, you know. I Mean,
those are the kind of stories and characters that I'm
drawn to, and I felt like this movie was just
a sterling example of that. And so when we were
talking about, you know, police fiction that has a little

(02:40):
bit of a grounded element in reality for this series.
This is one that came to mind pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Yeah, I like this one because it's interesting. The movies
Rush called it's based on the book Rush by Kim Wosenkraft,
and the movie is a fictionalization of the novel, which
is a fictionalization of a real happenings in the late
nineteen seventies, there was an ovendercover drug scandal involving the Tyler,

(03:13):
Texas Police Department and then the surrounding Smith County Sheriff's Department.
That was a pretty nasty scandal for the time period.
So it's kind of semi aud biographical in that Wosencroft
was an officer who became a narcotics officer, an undercover

(03:34):
narcotics agent, and then a drug addict in the midst
of that.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
And so just to.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
Get into the acting in the movie because I think this,
I hadn't seen this movie and I'm nineteen ninety one.
It's going on nyon thirty five years old. It was
fantastic the intensity of the movie. It was intense the
whole time, and it was had you on the edge
of your seat just amazing acting, amazing acting, amazing cast.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Yeah, it was well cast. I mean they picked characters
that well. When you can say that the actor inhabited
the role, that's a huge compliment, right. But there wasn't
a character in the entire movie that I looked at
and said, oh, that that's an actor acting right now.

(04:28):
I mean even Greg Allman, who is not an actor,
he's a rock and roll star. I mean he inhabited
the role of Will Gaines. I totally believed that he
was Will Gaines. I didn't think of him as Greg Allman.
So I think you're bang on with how well cast

(04:49):
it was and how well those who were cast really
just slipped into the skin of the characters they were playing.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
I talked about this movie with offline with the friend
of mine and fellow podcaster Sean McIvor, and he's a
huge movie buff, and the first thing that he said
was Greg Allman was absolutely terrifying. He had what would
you say, maybe a paragraph of dialogue in the whole movie,
but every shot of him was just menacing, like they

(05:18):
would there would be something where he was just in
the background and he would just be back there menacing,
and that haircut of like that real seventies vibe, like
he just and he was always wearing a leather jacket.
He just owned that, just total he controlled the space

(05:38):
he was in.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, I'll bet he didn't say twenty words. Oh yeah,
that's probably a strength. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and you're
absolutely corracked. He was just he was frightening. He was
and he really put off that, you know, the the untouchable,
you know, unattainable target that these two undercover police officers

(06:02):
who are trying to work their way towards. He's the
he's the grand prize, he's the ultimate win. He's who
the chief of police wants them to make a case against,
and and and he's just he's too smart. He's too smart,
he's too insulated, he's too careful, and all men just

(06:23):
really embodies that in his portrayal.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Then you had Jason Patrick, he plays Jim Rayner, who
was the lead detective in this undercover deep undercover anti
narcotics what would you call it, set up sort of thing.
And he was incredible. And you know, it was one
thing that I noticed. I didn't intend to watch it

(06:48):
two times, but the movie reset on my player, so
it started again from the beginning. And there's a scene
in the beginning in the in the honky tonk and
they just hand the bar, and in the panning they
show Jason Patrick just playing pool and you don't even
know that he's the main character yet. But I thought

(07:10):
it was such a great panning of there, and you
get like the whole movie encapsulated and everybody just hanging
out in this honky tonk drinking, playing pool and the
menacing Greg Almon in the corner. But for me, Jason Patrick,
I'm owning this role doesn't even explain how well he

(07:30):
did this. He was the character of it. Everything was
just a charisma and gravity and then like he's even
though like you said earlier, he's not the main character
of the novel. It really is the female role, who
will get into in a second, but he was the
main character, especially in the way the kids used the

(07:52):
main character these days. That was Jason Patrick the whole way.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah, I think we were meant to to see the
movie somewhat through the eyes of of of Kristen of
Jennifer Jason Lee's character. She was our eyes into the
movie for the most part, and certainly a main character.
But I do think that she's overshadowed by by Rayner

(08:19):
by by Jim Jim Rayner played by Jason Patrick. As
you point out, and yeah, he is just totally and
completely in this role. I had no problem buying him
as exactly what he was portraying, this uh true believer
who is being sucked into the world uh that that

(08:42):
he's you know, inhabiting and trying to do something about.
It's again nuanced right again the shades of gray. I mean,
he's there to do a particular task, and that is
to take drugs off the street, to put drug dealers
away so that they're not you know, out they're selling
drugs to everyday citizens. And yet to do that, what

(09:04):
he has to go through is well, it's totally Nietzschee right.
It's like, you know, when you stare into the abyss,
the abyss also stares back into you, and he faces that,
and then he's already there when the movie starts, like
he's teetering on the edge of the abyss, but you
can't really see the signs yet. And then he partners

(09:25):
up with Jennifer Jason Lee's character, and you know, with
her we get to see both of them go over
the edge.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Then Jennifer Jason Lee, she plays Kate's what was her
first name, agame Kristin. That was just Kristen Kates. She
is the classical person. She has no experience. I think
they dragged her in from In the book they say
she hadn't even gone through the academy yet, the police Academy,

(09:56):
and then the movie sort of alludes to that. But
she is young, doesn't seem seasoned to the world, really,
and she gets partnered with this completely somebody who, like
you said, he's probably got at least one foot in
the Abyss already, and she just falls entirely head over

(10:20):
heels for him. And what I think was great about
the way she played the role is she owned that
that she knew she was going head over heels for
Jim and following him into the Abyss, and she was
cool with it. I think that she had one hundred
percent agency in it. And the books or the movie

(10:43):
rather certainly shows that. It doesn't say that she's just
a damsel in distress who gets brought down by the patriarchy. Yeah,
maybe there is some patriarchal elements that we'll get to,
but she did this of her own free will, and
I would I would.

Speaker 3 (11:01):
Say that her falling in love with Jim Rayner is
really a byproduct of a byproduct of her falling in
love with the entire idea of what they're doing. I mean,
she's an idealistic young officer who you know, as you said,
was still in the academy in the book, and I

(11:21):
think the way they portrayed it her running a race
against some other guys, you know, I think that that
was at the academy, probably the latter part of the academy,
when they were scoring for physical fitness or something. And
so she's pretty wet behind the ears when it comes
to policing, and all she's had is a very formal,

(11:45):
very basic education, and yet so she's idealistic. And when
and when you're in that position, you know, it's usually
the things that you would fantasize about doing, you know,
like that you would be excited about doing, you know,
is not necessarily getting into a patrol car and uniform
and driving around and writing a ticket or going to

(12:06):
a disturbance call. Not that you don't want to do
those things, and not that those things aren't important, but
when you're thinking about what's exciting about the job and
what you'd like to eventually do you know, you think
about things more along the lines of, Oh, I want
to be on the SWAT team, or I want to
be a homicide detective, or I want to be an
undercover drug detective. And so I think she got swept
up in the idea of I'm going from being, you know,

(12:30):
a brand new recruit, not even hardly done with my
academy class, and now I'm you know, I'm skipping over A,
B and C straight to D, E, F G, maybe X,
y Z. You know, I'm getting in deep right away.
And and this is the you know, the big have
fantasy is kind of the wrong word because it has

(12:52):
a different connotation, but this is the you know, the
this is what you dream of when you know, and
she's getting right to it. And so I totally agree
with you. She fell in love with with Sergeant Jim
Rayner in this movie, but I think it was a
part and parcel to falling in love with the idea
of who she was as well and how in the

(13:14):
image of what she was going to accomplish, which lasted
probably half the movie before she became disillusioned.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, this was a little bit in the book, more
detailed and fleshed out in the book. The movie infers
to it that she was kind of in that late
stage of adolescents early adulthood when she signed up for
the police department, that she was in that spot of
like nowhere'sville. She was in college but not really doing anything.

(13:44):
It wasn't like she was going she was going to
college to do something, and working in ice cream store
and the mall and the police sounded like something cool
to do, a little bit of something to actually do
in life. And then, like you said, then all the
other cards fall on the table, like you can live

(14:04):
an absolute fantasy life here. You know, you're not going
to start off on the streets writing those tickets and
rousting drunks and just the boring, mundane stuff. But she
probably missed something hardening in a maturing process, absolutely that
she really needed.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah, there's a reason why they don't do that anymore,
when they don't go grab a fresh face, because the
only advantage to it was, you know, you know, you
haven't been working the street in uniform. Therefore none of
the criminals know that you're a cop. So then when
you go do the undercover work, nobody's going to recognize you.
That's the thinking behind grabbing somebody up out of the

(14:48):
academy because it's not like you're gonna, you know, well,
I'll teach them right, because they haven't had time to
be taught wrong, you know, I mean, no, the opposite
is true. If they've been out on the street, they've
they've gotten street wise and they've learned things, and and
so they would make a better undercover of undercover operative.

(15:08):
The problem is, of course, undercover is the key part, right.
You can't you can't get made, you can't have your
cover blown. And so that was the advantage. But everything
else is a disadvantage. And and they eventually figured out
that the disadvantages uh greatly outweigh that one advantage. So yeah,

(15:30):
I think she was in love with the entire concept
and and that was part of what made her become
enamored with with uh Jim. And you know, I think
there's another element too, and and uh, you know, Rayner
talks about it early on after they grab her from
the academy and you know, and kind of do the

(15:53):
job interview for two or three scenes, and that is,
you know, he makes it clear that you know or undercover,
it's you and me. We don't have a patrol car
thirty seconds away or five minutes away or whatever. We
don't have a police radio on our hip, we don't
have a sniper up on the rooftop cover and us.

(16:13):
I mean, it's you and me. We are it, and
we're each other's back up. And absolutely true in that scenario,
and he was right to really bring that up and
hammer it home with her. But you know, I don't
think we have to, you know, go too deep into
the psychological ramifications of that. I mean, if that's the case,

(16:34):
then clearly the two people in that situation are going
to be drawn close. And when they're in this case,
a man and a woman who are both drawn, you know,
they're heterosexual, so they're drawn to each other naturally, there's
some natural attraction that's possible there. You throw in that
psychological bonding and some of the intensity of the things

(16:57):
that happened to them, you know, it's it's not a
huge surprise that they become and you know that they
became romantically involved as well. It seems almost it would
almost be surprised if they didn't, given everything that occurred.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
That's one of the big reasons I think that he
picked her as well, is that he wanted some he
wanted a girl to appear to be his girlfriend. That's
why they probably didn't pick the There was the guy
who was like the poster boy recruit who you know,
he would have gotten called out in two seconds, Oh
this is my buddy. They would have seen through that instantaneously.

(17:41):
But you have kind of a wet around the ears,
really young girl that would be a natural for the
older season Jim character, undercover character to have on his hip.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
It made perfect sense. Yeah, it really did. And and
you know for in naive and and and inexperienced, she
took to it really well, really quickly. She was a natural,
and she had a lot of intestinal fortitude. And I
think that was something else that he chose her for.

(18:16):
I mean, when him and Dodd, the captain that we'll
talk about in a second, I think probably, But when
they were there kind of checking out the group and
they were running the race, you know, he bet on
her and and I think he saw something and how
she carried herself that that he thought was important. You know,

(18:38):
it takes guts to do what they were doing, and uh,
maybe even a little bit of a pensiont for recklessness
and and that that character trade is something I think
he saw in her. So in addition to being able
to be less suspicious, two guys coming in, you know,
hanging out constantly, you know, yeah, their buddy, but you know,

(19:00):
at some point one of them's you know, why aren't
they chasing girls once in a while? You know, I
mean that would be the question that would come up.
But you know, a guy and a girl come in
there and they're together to you know, they don't doesn't
raise an eyebrow. People couples go to bars all the time,
so I think you're onto something there.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Then you have Sam Elliott, who he plays the grizzled
police captain who's running the operation. He nails it. I
think you said that he is. He played it extremely
well and he set the gold standard for the role.
I can't disagree with that the mustache was a little tame,

(19:40):
which gave it maybe a little more gravitas towards it
being a real and more realism. But I think that
he was the per He came in at the perfect
times to make the story go along in the way
that it needed to.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, I mean, Sam Eliot, it's a fabulous actor. He's
been in so many things, and and you know, he
plays a little bit of a cowboy here even though
he's a police captain. And yeah, the mustache is uh
is curtailed a little bit, it's not in full gunslinger mode.
But yeah, I mean he he plays the roles perfectly,
and you he's one hundred percent believable as well. And

(20:18):
and the way the story is told, you know, he
was a detective who did what what Jim and Kristen
are doing, and so he understands what they're going through.
And so while he is in a different role right
now and he has to be concerned about different things
than than necessarily what they're concerned about, that doesn't mean

(20:39):
he doesn't understand what they're going through and can't you know,
help them Later on in the movie, you know, Jim
expresses some distrust of him, you know, in one scene,
which is fair, But I think that Sam Elliott comes
across really well as Hey, yeah, I'm a police captain
and I got a to do and it's got to

(21:01):
be above board in the public or whatever. But I
also understand what you're doing, so you know, I know
where you're at. And and so yeah, I thought he
was great, and I really I think he's the model
for every uh, you know, grizzled, you know, sergeant, captain,

(21:21):
you know, boss whatever, who who's running a detective or
an operation that's not actually in the operation. I mean,
I don't think you'll find a better example of someone
who's played it better.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Steve here with a quick word from our sponsors. And
then the last one I think we should talk about.
The last character is Max perlk. That's how I perlech
he He was in like every movie. When I look
he looked so familiar and then I looked up as
IMDb and he was in so many movies. But I
would never poke that name to the face. And he's

(21:59):
the confidential and foremant for Rainer and Kate's and he's
another person. He's just completely over his heat, in over
his head, but he gets dragged into the gravity the
orbit of Rainer and Kate's and he's the one who
has the drug connections. He's just a regular guy works.
I think he builds houses or something construct he's in

(22:21):
this sort of yeah, he's in this scummy drug connection.
Like I'm sure people have known people like this who
they're just they just happen to be in those circles.
And I think he did this the again, like, even
though he's under Rainer and Kates, he really shines. And

(22:42):
I think again he was the He did this well,
this role in a gold standard fashion.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
And you know, talk about nuance and talk about you know,
not being black and white. Here's a guy who he's
he takes drugs, he sells drugs, He facilitates the flow
of drugs. He steals cars all the time. You know,
in Spokane we used to call him meth taxis when

(23:11):
people would steal cars just to get from one place
to the other. And that's what he's doing. This is
back in the early seventies. And yet you know, because
of the way the guy plays it and the way
he's written, he's a likable character for a good portion
of the move movie, and he becomes a sympathetic character,

(23:31):
like especially when we get to the end of the movie.
I mean, my wife watched part of the movie with
me and I won't get to the spoiler of it
just yet, we'll talk about it later. But when when
we got near the end of the movie, that was
the only time that she had a where she's like ah,
you know about what happens and to that character, in

(23:54):
particular his fate. You know, this is a guy, like
I said, stealing, stealing cars, dealing drugs, you know, all
this kind of stuff, and yet this actor is able
to make them sympathetic and likable for the majority of
the of the run of the movie. So great job
on on Max's part.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
I think you must everybody must know this sort of person,
and I'm sure you must have run into them in
your career where it's just a person who's not necessarily
a bad person, and they might even have some really
good qualities. They just they're not capable of making a
good choice.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Yeah, I knew a number of people who I would
you know, chasing a car, chase on foot, have to
fight with occasionally, arrest on warrants, arrest for possession or
for assault or whatever. And yet there will be other times,
I mean we would call them. You know a lot
of places use the term frequent flyer, you know, for

(24:57):
somebody that's a you know, habitual criminal or or a
career criminal, somebody that you come in contact with frequently.
But then there'd be other times where I'd show up
at uh, say another call or a party call, or
or or at a an apartment or something apartment complex
where you know, they're at the apartment next door to

(25:18):
whatever I'm getting called for, just sitting out there having
a cigarette on the porch or whatever, not doing anything.
And so you encounter them in that scenario, and it's
and they're personable, they're funny, they're not you know, they're
not snarky, they're they're just a decent person and and uh,

(25:40):
and so you have this completely different exchange and and
it's it's kind of weird if you think about it,
because you're you're having this nice conversation with somebody maybe
you know, they're they're talk about a movie or or
an event that has sporting event or something, you know,
and you're just a couple of guys, a couple of
people chatting, you know, well one of them is working

(26:03):
and one of them is hanging out, you know. And
then you know, two days later, you might be driving
sixty five miles an hour down a back road with
your lights on, chasing them in a stolen car, you know,
and you know, and then after you arrest them and
take them to jail, while you're standing in jail, waiting
to book them. It might be the same thing as
it was when they were sitting on the porch there.

(26:23):
Everything's chill. It's just a weird thing for these relationships
that can sometimes happen. Don't get me wrong. There are
people out there that are just absolute jerk one hundred
percent of the time. And I'm sure there are cops
that are absolute heart asses one hundred percent of the time.
So not everybody has this sort of relationships, and you

(26:45):
don't have them with everybody out there either, But there
are a lot of the Walkers the name of the
character that Max played, There are a number of walkers
out there that I encountered, and it's just a strange dynamic.
Like you liked the guy, right, you don't want to
have to arrest him, but you know, you just stopped
him in a stolen car and he's got, you know,

(27:08):
an ounce of heroin on him, and he's got a
felony warn you know, it's not like you could just
give him a break or something, you know, so you
don't exactly feel bad for him, but you feel bad
that you had to do it. It's I don't know
if I'm explaining this very well or not, but it's
a very strange sort of situation. And that's how I
felt watching this movie way back in ninety one, ninety

(27:30):
two when I first saw it, and I still felt
that way when I watched it a few nights ago.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, I think that type of person, you can see
that they're not an absolute reprobate. They're they're not like
bad to the core where I'm sure you saw and
you know plenty too where somebody was just absolutely no good.
Where this guy again, he was, you know, not Jackling High.

(27:56):
He was just a goofball who wound up in the
wrong things, probably didn't have the greatest impulse control, and
you can kind of feel bad for that. And like
you said, as an officer, yeah, you have to arrest
him when he's got a pound full of heroin in
the car, and but maybe you, you know, cuff him

(28:18):
in the.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Back of the head. What do were you thinking? Walker?

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Like, you know, you're not going to play the hard
guy with him where I'm like you said, I'm sure
there probably were people who are very black and white,
but I think with someone like him, there's a whole
lot of gray in there.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
See in the movie, you know, Jennifer Jason Lee's character Kristin,
she she likes Walker, like legitimately likes him, and you know,
tries to help him on a couple of occasions. And
I think Rayner, I don't know how much he likes him.

(28:53):
It's not as a parent, but you know, but Kristin,
there's a couple of three different scenes I can think
of off top of my head where it's a parent
that she has affection for him, and not of the
romantic kind, but just of the you know, very basic
human affection. And so yeah, the guy plays the role
just so well. And and that is a kind of criminal,

(29:16):
you know. I mean, his values are what they are.
He grew up in a culture where you know, you
get a job and you work all day and then
you you take some of that money and you buy
booze and dope and have a good time on the weekend.
And that's life. That's what life is, and that's how
he grew up, and that's what everybody else around him
was doing. And so he's not evil, he's not even

(29:38):
maybe bad. He's just making bad decisions based on the
culture that he's a part of. And he's probably not
even thinking very hard about it, you know, and so
it's kind of hard to condemn that person past a
certain point. But you know, at the same time, he's
stealing cars and selling drugs, so you know, there is that.

(29:59):
I mean, there are other character that are are are
a little more scary. I mean, they buy heroin from
a guy that puts a gun on him and makes
them both shoot up to prove they're not cops. That
guy's pretty scary. There's a guy selling pills the Blue Ringers,
you know, that guy in the overalls that you know

(30:19):
kind of you know, he's pretty menacing and you think
he might actually sexually assault her and then he stops
short of it. But you know, I wouldn't feel bad
about either one of those people going to jail for
what they did. You know, no sympathy whatsoever. But Walker,
you know, hey, it's not a bad guy. He's just

(30:43):
making bad choices.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
And then to wrap up this whole thing about the
movie is they really do nail the setting perfectly. It's
that you really get the sense of the seventies. One
thing that I thought was interesting about the movie is
it really combined the three settings. The actual setting of Tyler, Texas,

(31:05):
which is more like what you would think of as
like traditional Texas. It's sort of and I think that
they kind of nailed that. To Texas is obviously a
big place, and there's a lot of different cultures of Texas.
The Tyler Texas is kind of a blend of the
what you would think of as the West Texas and

(31:26):
Eastern Texas, which is really more Southern culture. I think
the book takes place in Pasadena, which that's an interesting
and I would have been interested to see that setting
played out. Pasadena at that time was like a first
ring suburb of Houston. Now it's like completely built up Houston.

(31:48):
We're there. It was just starting to grow, and it
would have had that combination of the old ways and
then this new of suburbs and shop malls and that
sort of thing. And I thought that the movie blended
those kind of settings together very well, where you get
the sort of back woods of it, but it is

(32:09):
that this is clearly a place that's growing beyond just
the yokels and their yokally type crime. And then the
music was incredible, the settings, the cars, they really nailed
all of that, especially ninety one versus the late seventies.
I mean, I don't know if I was sitting in
ninety one how much I would have felt about the setting.

(32:33):
But I think looking back fifty years going on almost
I think that they seem to have gotten it pretty good.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
I think if you told somebody that the movie was
made contemporaneous to when it's set, I think if you
told them that, yeah, this is made in seventy five, like,
they wouldn't believe you because the camera, like the film
quality is obviously, you know, two decades beyond seventies films.

(33:02):
Seventies film has a certain look, but they wouldn't disbelieve
you based on the set design, costume design, you know,
the signs, the cars. I mean, they even like when
he gets a six pack of beer for her to
shoot at the cans early on in the movie where

(33:23):
he's trying to figure out if she's got what it takes.
You know, it's got the plastic ringlet thing that they
used to come on, you know, which you know, anybody
under maybe a ten years younger than me probably was
like what the hell is that? You know? They just
and yeah, I'm with you. On the music, I mean,

(33:46):
the southern rock hits that were contemporaneous to when it
was set. And then and then they mixed in country
music really well too, you know the just what is it?
Just I'll be there before the next tear drop falls?

(34:06):
That song and a couple other ones that were just
really used very well, which you know, music can really
put you in the moment and when when you're already
visually there. Because of the costumes and the and the
set design, it really completes the the the entire image,

(34:27):
the entire process. I thought it was great. I mean,
but again, the film quality made it very clear it
was a nineties movie, not a seventies movie. But that's
the only thing that that tips you off that it
wasn't made in the seventies.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Did you one thing that I noticed, and I wonder
if you noticed that to the product placement they did
a lot. It was really like really well done product placement.
Like when he set out the beers when they were
shooting at them, they were lone Star beer and like
the can was just set perfectly so that you would
see it. And then I think that coke. They were

(35:03):
constantly drinking coke, and the bottles were just like perfectly placed.
And then there was he was always drinking wild turkey whiskey,
and like the bottle would always be just off center
to him, and they did. But they did that very well.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
I wonder if they, I mean, if that was purposeful
for setting the tone of the time and place, or
if it was legitimately product placement, because that was ninety one,
that's when product placement started to really pick up, didn't it.
I mean started kind That's what I was thinking. Yeah,
I did not notice that from the product placement standpoint.

(35:39):
I kind of noticed it in the big picture way
that they were as part of the set design and
the costume design. It definitely stood out.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
And then so let's get into some of the issues
of the background of the story. I think with the
clear big issue in the issue that will tie us
back into the previous episode that we've done on this
was just the inherent realities of deep undercover police work
and how corruption I think in what they're doing is

(36:12):
almost boiled into deep cover.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Well, it certainly was in this film. I mean the
very beginning when he's prepping Kristen to before they even
go out in public together and he has her roll
a marijuana cigarette. She's rolling a joint and then he

(36:38):
has her smoke it and she kind of fakes it,
and he tells her, you do that on the street,
and we're screwed, you know. And she's like, well, it's
called a simulation. And he says, simulation is a word
for the courtroom. And so he really very quickly makes
it clear that we tell a version of the truth
when we go to court in order to secure, you know,

(37:01):
a conviction. We're going to tell a version of the
truth in order to serve the greater truth. I think
that's how they justify it. But you know, I mean,
clearly it's a form of corruption, right, I mean, and
it's a really interesting topic, Steve, because what does the
public want, Like they want their police officers to be

(37:22):
above board and to be noble and to be truthful,
and to be not superheroes, but certainly unassailable, you know.
I mean, one of the things they tell you early
on in your career is that you need to lead
a life that is not that you know, that's unimpeachable.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (37:39):
That's how you're held to a higher standard if you
go into this profession. And it's actually a bit of
an anchor to carry around because you know, in your
personal life, if you get into dispute, you have to
proceed knowing that you're being held to a higher standard.
You don't get to say, well, I'm off, dude, I
can pop this guy in the mouth for being a

(37:59):
jerk to me. You know, I mean, I had I
remember to give you a kind of a dumb example,
but it'll work. I had a I got married and
my wife had a house already, and so we turned

(38:21):
it into a rental. We kept it for a little
while because the housing market wasn't great, and so we're
renting this house. Had a great renter, went great for
a few years. They had to move out, move somebody
else in. Did a poor job of vetting them. That's
on me. But they were just total nightmare tenants, and
you know, stopped paying. And you know, if if I

(38:44):
was the butcher, baker, the candlestick maker, I would have
resolved that by going over there and putting all their
stuff out on the sidewalk. I'm changing the locks and
saying sue me, you know, because they wouldn't have. They
would have taken their stuff and left, you know, because
that's that's just what they would guarantee that that's what
would have happened. I didn't have the luxury of doing
that clearly, you know, because I was a police officer

(39:07):
at the time, and so I had to be very
you know, forthright about it. I mean, here's a novel idea.
I had to follow the law like every citizen should.
But the reality is is, you know, as people go
through this world, they don't always follow the letter of
the law, and a letter of the law sometimes unfair,
and people circum vented a little bit much like I

(39:29):
just described, right. I mean, guy hasn't paid his rent
for four months and he's trash in the place. You know,
how fair is that? You know? But I couldn't do that,
And so that's that's what we expect from our police officers.
At the same time, we want them to be effective.

(39:49):
And what does that mean. Well, in the case of
Kristin and Jim, that means arresting all these drug dealers
and who are selling drugs pretty prolifically. It sounds like
from the way it's depicted in the film, and it's
almost like reminiscent of the whole Training Day when we
talked about that movie as well, that whole if you

(40:11):
want to catch a wolf, you've got to be a wolf.
You know, thing that Denzel says in that movie. That's
a little bit true here for these two. You know,
they have to go undercover and be wolves while they're
under They don't get to pretend to be a wolf.
They have to be a wolf. And so are there
people who would say, yeah, I'm fine with that because

(40:33):
the ends justifies the means, And then there are other
people who maybe aren't. You know, it brings up an
interesting question, what do we as a society want from
our police officers. Do we want them to play by
the rules perfectly all the time, that's what we say,
But in our heart of hearts, do we want them
also to be effective? And you know, it's all a

(40:54):
matter of degrees, right, if we're talking about arresting and convicting,
you know, a a brutal child molester or a child murderer,
I think a large percentage of people are going to
be coming down on the side that says, you do
what you got to do to get this guy because
it's obvious that he's guilty and he's a scum and
he needs to go down for this, and he hurt

(41:16):
kids and this is horrible, and you know, people will
be like, ah, so you didn't read him his rights
before he confessed, I don't care send them to prison,
you know, and they're not, you know, And that's where
it starts, right, And then then this slippery slope begins,
and how far down that ladder do you go before
people start going that guy's not so bad that it

(41:37):
justifies what you did, you know. And so you know,
that's the question that comes up when you talk about corruption,
and usually of the noble cause variety, where it starts
out trying to do a good thing and ends up,
you know, not doing such a good thing. And that's
what happens in this movie, right. They start wanting to
clean up the streets, and that's their noble cause, and

(42:00):
they have the full way to the chief behind them
and the support of their their their captain, and and
they're doing a good job of it. But in order
to accomplish that, they're having to break the rules and
lie about it and poo, you know, and then lie
about lying. I mean, that's that gets pretty dark pretty fast.

(42:22):
And I'm not saying that didn't happen in the nineteen seventies.
I'm sure it did it very clearly something along those
lines happened in k in Kim Wrosencroft's experience because she
loosely based the book that this film was based on
her experiences. You know, we're a long way from that today,

(42:43):
but the question still persists, like what do we want
from our police officers and what's acceptable? And so you
don't have that background, So I'd be curious to hear
your thoughts on it.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Steve here with a quick word from our response. I
think that the movie really explores us well, and there
are a lot of other movies have done it, but
in particular this one where you have this greater good discussion.
The chief has a real thing out for Greg Alman's character,

(43:18):
and Greg Almans sort of the nexus of all this
drug and prostitution and all sorts of other things and
everything is to take this guy down, and you start
like plunking. Maybe an analogy might be like a meter.
You're filling your greater good meter, and then the bad
things you have to do to do it, and it's like,

(43:40):
at what point has the negative things that you've done
overwhelm the good of taking this guy out? And maybe
there's no bad that you can do to take out
this one guy. But you look at how many lives
got destroyed in the along the way and got destroyed,

(44:02):
and then they don't wind up getting the guy to
blow up the ending. They don't get him in the
end anyways.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, so a couple of things I
wanted to touch on that you brought up. If you remember,
in the beginning of the movie, Sam Elliott's character Captain Dodd,
is telling Jai for Jason Lee's character Kristen, you know,
you don't have to do this, and she's like, no,
I want to, and he's like, well why. She goes, well,

(44:29):
I want to make a difference, you know, and he
says to her, I'll tell you it'll be different when
this is all done you and he's right, I mean
that right there, that's some foreshadowing. I mean he calls
it and she is very different. And so I suppose
to get to the spoiler point, you know, after they

(44:50):
buy a ton of drugs from a lot of different people.
Two big things happen near the end of this film
before the climax. One is Bold Rayner played by by
Jason Patrick and Kristen played by Jennifer Jason Lee become addicts,

(45:10):
and I would say Rayner becomes a full blown like
he's worse. She has to rescue him, that's how, you know.
So he's clearly worse, and she does eventually pull him
back out of the abyss. And so they they at
least temporarily recover from their addiction or or or and

(45:31):
get clean. And then on the tail end of that,
the chief of police tells him make the case against
Will Gains and and make the case the way he
says it is essentially code for if you don't have
a legitimate buy, then manufacture one. And they do. They

(45:52):
they they lie, They say they bought cocaine from him,
and they and Rayner writes it up like he like
he did. That's a huge, you know, that hugely corrupt
thing to do, and yet it's a it has it's
an echo of La Confidential that we talked about a

(46:14):
while back, where Captain Dudley asks, actually, you know, would
you plant drugs or would you plan evidence on a
man you know to be guilty? You know, and this
is set in the nineteen fifties, a good twenty years
prior to this movie, and you know actually says no,
and Dudley looks at him kind of like disappointed, and
you know, like, well, then then don't become a homicide

(46:37):
or don't become a detective, because you know, the inference
being that that's eventually going to be something you'll have
to do if you want to enact justice, because some
people are just too smart or lucky, is I think
the idea. And so, yeah, the chief wants this guy
so bad he forces him into doing that, and then

(47:01):
they arrest everybody, and that's when the event happens that
I was referring to earlier, that Kristen tries to help Walker,
and it's clear that she cares about him, and he's
just you know, he got caught up in all of
this and he's devastated by it. He ends up hanging
himself at the worksite. Now, I've had some people I've

(47:23):
talked to about this movie who think that he might
have been murdered. That people were like, you know, he's
a snitch and we're going to murder him. And I
suppose that's possible, but I think that the way the
story is told, it's pretty clear that he killed himself.
It wasn't staged that he was just so distraught that
he that he killed himself. And you know, you actually

(47:45):
feel bad for the guy. I mean I did. I
felt bad for him. And that's where my wife was like, oh,
you know, you know, she's sympathizing with the character as well.
She didn't even see the whole movie. And so good
job on the writing and the acting to to cause that.
And so now all these people are going to trial,
and they skip over a bunch of the trials. I'm

(48:07):
going to assume that they did uh did them or
pled them in advance of Gains, because Gains is the
big one. And and they send uh, you know, they
find Kristen and Jim staying at a trailer where they're
hold up and there's a gunfight that occurs and and

(48:28):
you know, Jim Rainer gets gets uh a shot and
wounded and and then bleeds out before help can come.
So you want to talk about disillusionment, I mean, Kristin
walks into this, I'm going to change the world and
I'm going to be a superstar. I'm getting I'm getting
catapulted from the academy like across five or six steps
into this role as an undercover detective, undercover officer and

(48:51):
and and uh as she goes from that to seeing
what the life really is to becoming an addict and
becoming disillusioned, and then and then her partner and lover,
you know, dies in her arms literally. I mean, there's
some disillusionment that's taken place there, no doubt.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
That was the only scene that really bothered me is
that even in nineteen seventy five, in the seventies, that
at that point that they weren't going to be like,
hold up in a hotel someplace with a uniforms officers
outside and I don't know, maybe a telephone. That one
kind of stretched it that. No, they're out in a

(49:31):
trailer in the middle of the woods where she has
to go banging on windows to get a little bit
of Hell.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, I think they did a poor job of setting
that up. I think you could have justified it with
just a real short scene where maybe with DoD where
he's like, we're going to find you a couple of
places where you can hold up that nobody knows about,
you know, where you can hide out when you're not

(49:59):
test defying, and then you know, and then showing a
couple of those places, you know them in a couple
of those places. And but the no telephone thing, well
that was a pretty common thing in the seventies, and
they're lie, we didn't have a phone for a while
in the early eighties, you know, And so that part's
not so strange in general. But if this were the

(50:23):
situation where your people are holding up, you tell me
you wouldn't want them to have a phone. That's just
that's just crazy. I agree with you. But it was
a pretty intense scene and the fact that they didn't
see who their attacker was, and then later on it
comes comes out in court that it was it was Gains.
He makes a motion to Jennifer Jason Lee while she's

(50:46):
on the witness stand to let her know it was him,
and and that's the big climactic scene. I might as
well finish out the spoilers here is when they call
her to testify and they ask her if they bought
drugs from Will Gains, and you know, he kind of
traces a couple of fingers across his face, like the
shotgun that had traced across her face in the trailer,

(51:07):
and she realizes it was him, and she tells the truth.
She says, no, when we did not we did it.
We said we did because we were pressured by the
Chief of Police and the captain to do so. And
that just blows everything out of the water. And for
people that aren't in the profession, I don't think they

(51:28):
realize how how big a deal that really was. I'm
not saying she did the wrong thing by any means,
but it's not just the will Gaines trial that got
smoked there, Like every conviction from that entire operation is
going to get cost, every single one of them, because

(51:49):
they've completely impugned themselves. They've completely made themselves unreliable, and
so any defense attorney worth even the slightest damn is
going to be able to appeal any of the convictions
that took place and say, you know, this is a
person who committed perjury, you know, and lied on an

(52:13):
official report, and he can't defend himself. He's dead and
she's confessed to it. So that's pretty much two for
two as far as the defense staring is going to
be concerned. So essentially everything they went through and every
arrest that they made and every conviction that came out
of it is just trashed as a result of this. Again,

(52:34):
I'm not saying she was wrong for telling the truth.
I'm not subborning perjury here. I'm not saying that was
a good way to do things. I'm saying that from
an impact standpoint, I almost wish that they had found
a way to let the casual viewer know that that
was the case. I mean, you can kind of see
it in Sam Elliott's face, but that's just so lowball

(52:58):
for how bad it is. It would have been nice
to have a transitional scene between that and the final
scene of the movie, you know where, And it would
have been nice if it was between the two of them,
because they had some interesting interactions where you know that
that that is explained and that's understood because it changes

(53:18):
the complexion of things. I mean, you want to It
almost turns it into a noir movie if you think
about it. I mean, they spend one hundred and thirty
eight minutes of the movie trying, you know, getting dirty
to accomplish a greater goal, and they got so dirty
to accomplish that goal that they had to come clean,
and that completely washes away the goal that they you know,

(53:41):
I mean, that is that not noir? I mean that's
totally noir. Yeah, I would have liked to have seen that.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors
that ties into you can look up in the Texas
State Archives there's an interview with the actual police chief
of Tyler, Texas, and it's a pretty self serving interview,
and the guy never really gives any any apologies or

(54:11):
anything of how poorly Thiss was run, but he says
that in the aftermath of what she did, just hundreds
of cases got thrown out and for years afterwards it
was a total nightmare of trying to convict anybody of
anything because there was this dark cloud hanging over the department.

(54:35):
So I think that when you start to get into
that road, that's why you all you almost can't just
plant evidence or lie. Of course, once it does come out,
you can, yeah, you can get the arrest, but then
if it ever comes out, it's like a nuclear bomb drop.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yes, yeah, yeah. And then that's a really good analogy actually,
because it's not just the initial blast like the Will
Gains case, right, it's the radio active fallout that you
described from that interview. And that's one of the things
that's frustrating for officers even today, is that all it

(55:16):
takes is for one cop to do something stupid or
even to act with malice, which is far more rare
than people think. But certainly to do something stupid or
to make a mistake anywhere in the country and it's
on video or whatever, and all the other hundreds of

(55:36):
thousands of cops who would never do that and never
made that mistake, certainly would not act with malice like that.
The fallout from that one act it affects them. It
could happen in Florida, and we feel it in Washington State,
could happen in California, and people in Maine are dealing
with it. You know, I came on in ninety three
and for the first few years of my career anytime,

(55:59):
not anytime, but frequently dealing with suspects, they threw out
their hands and you know, don't Rodney king me. Don't
Rodney king me. And you know, I mean that was
in Los Angeles, two years before I ever came on
the job, or more than that. And yet you know,
the fallout from that event affected affected me two states

(56:22):
away and years later. And that's even more true now.
And so what you know in this quasi fictional event
where Kristen comes clean. The fallout from that is huge,
but I would say people have to be careful not
to think about it in terms of, well, she she decided,

(56:43):
she made a decision, and that's what caused this fallout.
Them putting her in the position to have to have
done those things, or to have condoned those things, or
to have done a wink and a nudge to allow
it to happen or look the other way. That's what

(57:04):
caused the problem. It wasn't that she finally decided to
tell the truth that caused the problem, even though that's
what appears to be the catalyst, it's not that at all.
And and you talk about real life a little bit.
I did a little research on the author and she
actually went to prison as a result of of of

(57:25):
what happened in that case. She did like eighteen months
and uh, that's you know, that's no small thing to have,
you know, been a drug addict and to have gone
to prison and have been a cop. I mean, that's
that's an interesting combination of experiences. But as a result
of that, she's kind of, you know, become a little

(57:47):
bit of a of an activist for a change in
drug laws. And and that's an interesting conversation that maybe
we'll have some other time, maybe on organized crime and
punishment or something. But certainly there has been a move
towards decriminalization of drugs, and she's very much in favor

(58:08):
of that, and it's an interesting conversation. Certainly, there are
people who would argue that the two biggest mistakes law
enforcement has made since the nineteen seventies has been the
war on drugs and the militarization of the police. And
I think there's some as somebody who is in the profession,
I think there's some validity to both of those arguments. Certainly,

(58:31):
anytime you trot an argument out to the extreme, it
becomes ridiculous. But there are elements to both of those
arguments that I think have valid points that we can
learn from as we go forward and try to make
law enforcement more representative of what the people want and
need in this country. And if you look at marijuana laws,

(58:53):
I mean, I don't know what the status is in Texas,
but it's been legal here in Oregon for years now,
and it hasn't the the stoner apocalypse hasn't happened, you know.
I mean, it's you know, and I'm not talking about
heroin and meth amphetamine and cocaine here. I mean, that's

(59:14):
maybe a different ball of axe, but certainly that's what
I mean when I say there's something too considering, maybe
a change in our approach, because the approach that we
see in this movie clearly doesn't work and didn't work,
and it just became almost a Greek tragedy, you know.

(59:34):
While this is I said, this is a noir film,
but you could also kind of call it a Greek
It's very Greek and it's tragic nature.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
From what I had read too, that the author Wosencraft
was really trying to frame it in the War on drugs.
It was a little slightly before the Reagan War on drugs,
but previous pre residence like Nixon, had really started this
idea of a militarization and we're going to interdict to

(01:00:06):
drugs and we're going to treat it like a war.
We're going to take out captains in generals of these people.
And I've argued a lot of it the drugs is
a demand issue. As long as there's a demand, there's
always going to be suppliers of it. And we see
that if Will Gaines had been taken out the demand

(01:00:28):
was still there. That demand didn't suddenly disappear. So maybe
there'd be a low point for a while, but somebody
else is going to fill that out. And if we're
going to continuously I'm still I'll get off my high
horse in a second. But if we're going to continuously
talk about solving this drug issue, we can ignore demand.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
Yeah, I mean the problem with you know, focusing on
demand is is people would argue that you are then
victimizing the victims to a degree. Uh and and there's
some validity to that argument as well, But you know,
you're talking about human nature, and and you know, that's

(01:01:14):
why I was in favor of the legalization of marijuana.
I'm in favor of the legalization of prostitution, not because
I want a brothel on every corner, you know, or whatever.
But I think, like you said, where there's a human
demand for something, a law prohibiting it creates crime. It

(01:01:36):
criminalizes it. And and so there are things obviously that
that we are never going to decriminalize. I don't think
we're going to make murder legal. You know, there are
things we should never consider making legal, and and and
and yet there are some things that maybe we should
talk about a different approach, and and I believe that
that's something that the author, Kim Mosencraft, has embraced as

(01:01:58):
she's continued. I mean, she's in another half dozen books
or so from a variety of different topics, but they
all kind of are in the same broad genre, and
certainly there's some reform elements to her writings. But you know,
the other thing I wanted to point out about this
movie is it's kind of a got a gutsy ending,

(01:02:22):
you know. I mean we think about it ending with
the court scene with Kristen Kate's who's no longer on
the job, telling the truth, but they don't show her
going to prison, which she eventually did, at least the
author did. It ends with her presumably her getting revenge
for the death of Jim by killing Will Gaines. And

(01:02:47):
I mean it literally ends with a shotgun going off
from the backseat of his Mercedes and then it goes
to black. That's a pretty gutsy ending for a mainstream movie,
don't you think?

Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Oh yeah, absolutely, And I think it was the perfect ending.
It wasn't the ending that I expected. I think it
could have ended at the court scene and there's a
lot of things that people can leave comments and their thoughts,
and here I think that it tied things up in
a nice neat bow. At the end, we get our
come up and against the will gains this guy who's

(01:03:20):
just been hulking and menacing over this movie the whole
time without really saying a word, and he causes the
fall of everyone. You couldn't just have him walk away? Well,
but yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Mean, and there are movies where he would have walked
away and that would have been the ending that the
storyteller chows. But it's interesting though, if you think about
it here for a second. You know, Kristin, she's our
point of view character even you know for sure, right, So,
idealistic young police officer looking for a challenge, gets brought

(01:03:55):
into this undercover work, becomes an addict, becomes disillusioned, she
doesn't want to do the thing some of the things
that they're that they end up doing, but she does
and then at the end she comes clean, right, But
then she gets in the back of that car and
commits a murder for revenge. And so it's it's an

(01:04:17):
interesting story. I mean, it's an interesting character arc where
you know, I mean, the real clean character arc is
you know, do Gooder gets uh, you know, who's naive,
becomes exposed to reality, becomes cynical, and then finds a

(01:04:38):
way back to the ideals that they used to have
just no longer in a naive way. That's kind of
an arc that you see in a lot of movies.
And and that's the arc all the way up up
to the courtroom scene and then that very last scene.
Now she's you know, shotgunning this guy in the head
from the back of the car. So, uh, you know,

(01:05:01):
not as clean of an arc as as as you
would probably teach it in an MFA class.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Yeah, that's not a natural progression that somebody just they
go through life and then oh, I'm going to go
lay and wait and ambush and then shotgun somebody. That
is that's definitely not natural. I mean, I'm sure even
in your job where you carry a gun, a lot
of cops go through their whole career and they never
pulled their gun out of their whole stock and anger.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
Well that's well, okay, I mean anger, I guess, I mean,
you pull your gun out of your whole store a lot,
but most cops never fire their gun. Anywhere other than
the firing in the in the shooting range.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
And you've gone one step beyond what most people would
ever do of pointing a gun in an unsafe direction,
where she really never did that at all. And then
she's laying in the heck of her car shotgunning the guy. Yeah,
she did in the she did when they came to
the trailer. She she fired at the window.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
Yeah, but that have been the first time, I think,
And yeah, I mean it is. It's an interesting character
arc because it isn't clean, and it's not very traditional
in in in the storytelling sense. I mean, how do
you put yourself in her psychology for a second. You know,
you're so torn up about what you've done and and

(01:06:23):
what what it's turned you into, that you confess to
criminal behavior on the stand, a confession that will ultimately
lead to you going to prison, whether you thought about
that or not at the time. And then yet you
know you're still willing to lay in wait and and

(01:06:44):
commit murder as revenge for your partner and lover. I mean,
obviously I'd have to go do the research to be
one hundred percent sure, but this is clearly Hollywood not
not not what really occurred, and I'd be curious to
know at what point, Like was that in the original script.
Was that something that they came up with later, because

(01:07:07):
I would have been just as happy with this movie
if it would have ended with her getting handcuffed, you know,
and that and you know, that still would have been
a great noir film and it would have been an
interesting character arc. But this was kind of a left
turn at the end. There. It's like pretty I liked it,

(01:07:27):
Don't get me wrong, I liked it, like you. It
was a good surprise, but not very typical and pretty gutsy,
pretty gutsy move.

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
It was all her internal development too. It's not like
Jim Totter all these lessons like oh you don't let
us like go on challenged or while he's bleeding out
from getting shotgunned by Dames Avenge me. It really does it.
Like you said, it comes out of left field, and
it's developed through her that she feels that this is

(01:07:57):
what she has to do.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
There is a scene earlier on it's really actually pretty
good writing because earlier on in the film they have
a conversation where she's getting a little bit squarely about
what's happening and things are getting a little bit scary,
and she asked, what am I supposed to do if
that happens? And he says, well, if I'm dead, and

(01:08:19):
she says yeah, and he says something to the effect
of what, I appreciate it if you shoot the bastard
or something like that. But that's like an hour or
forty minutes earlier. I mean, it's not something that it's
subtler filmmaking in a way. I mean, it's not a
lot of times in movies these days to sound like
an old fogy here, but there's a lot of pounding

(01:08:42):
the viewer over the head with things. It's almost like
I expect that you're probably scrolling on your phone while
you're watching this on Netflix. So he said that if
this happens to him, you gotta They don't do that.
The filmmaker, Lily Zanak, doesn't do that, the screenwriter doesn't
do that. They put it in and thirty five minutes

(01:09:04):
later she acts on it, and they don't show her like,
you know, staring daggers at him. I mean, realistically, in
the courtroom scene, she looks frightened. She almost looks. The
way they play it and the way that Jennifer Jason
Lee acts in that scene. She you could argue that

(01:09:25):
she's scared that he's going to come back and finish
the job with her, and so that's why she tells
the truth. I mean, you could argue that and you
wouldn't necessarily be on you be on fairly solid ground.
Certainly her her, you know, the moral difficulties that she's
having contributed to it. But you know he's basically telling

(01:09:46):
her right there through sign language, I'm the one that
had a shotgun to your face, and I'm the one
who killed your partner, and you're next. If you you know,
depend on what you're about to say. And then she
spills the truth, and if so, I think it's really
good because you don't expect her to be in the

(01:10:06):
backseat because you think maybe she told the truth because
she was scared partially. So it's I can't remember how
surprised I was when I first saw it, but I
think there's some potential there for the for the viewer
to be surprised.

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
Well, guys, we've touched on some controversial issues. We've touched
on a movie that's full of controversial issues. So if
you have anything to say in response or your comments,
we would love to hear them. Leave them below, send
us an email to Steve at a two zhistorypage, dot com, Facebook,
all those places, Instagram, and we could even get because

(01:10:46):
I have a feeling mustache. Chris would have very different
thoughts on this. We might want to get him on
to discuss this film because I think he might be
one who would see it from a very different perspective
than we did. So yeah, if you would like to
hear that sort of content, definitely reach out.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):
Yeah. I think one thing before we close out here
that that bears mentioning is, you know, part of the
reason that we pick this film is because it's very
loosely based on real events and and it's it's an
interesting approach to making art, to making fiction, whether it's

(01:11:26):
written or or film or television, when you when you
base it or or it's inspired by real events, because
you know, what, what's what's paramount? Is it remaining true
to the source material or is it the artistic expression

(01:11:47):
or is it the entertainment value? And you know, I
think where I land on that is it's the art
and hopefully if you do the art right, the entertainment
value is there. But clearly they deviated from from what
really occurred and what she really experienced quite a bit

(01:12:07):
in this movie to make a very artistic film. But
it's dangerous because you know, if it says inspired by
true events or based on a real story, or you know,
the viewing public sometimes that don't differentiate between that and
a docudrama and a documentary. It's all, it all lands

(01:12:27):
the same forum, and so there's a danger there. I
think you have to be careful. That's why in my
own work, I've always been very careful to very very
very seldom base anything on a real event. And even
if it is inspired by a real event, it's I

(01:12:48):
make sure it deviates so far from it that probably
even the people that experienced it wouldn't recognize it, just
for that reason,