In the 2011 film Margin Call, the CEO of the firm asks his “guy” to bring Eric Dale back to the firm by 6:30am. Dale’s phone is off and no one at the firm knows where he is. How would his, presumably security, guy find him?
Similarly, how would Woody Harrelson’s character have found Josh Brolin’s character in No Country for Old Men?
It’s a film depicting a fictional story (though set during the 2008 financial crisis). Unless the method for finding Dale was interesting and integral to the plot, it probably wasn’t detailed. Possibly, it’s a plot hole that the writer or director didn’t think to, or didn’t care to, patch.
No Country is pretty easy to explain. He knows the was a shootout. If Llewellyn is injured, where might he go? Closest place that won’t call the US police is right across the border.
IIRC, in margin call, doesn’t paul bettamy find him at his house like 8 hours later?
Moderating
Moved from FQ to Cafe Society.
He has a very particular set of skills.
To be clear, the question isn’t “how was this done in the film?”, but rather “how would one do this in real life”, if possible?
The problem is find someone who isn’t where he normally is and whose phone is off in the middle of the night and get it done in about 3 hours.
In general, finders of missing persons talk to people who know the guy. Odds are that someone knows where he’s likely to be, or who the next person to ask is. Most people are people of habit.
And it seems like in the movie, Dale isn’t trying to hide - so he’s probably going to be in one of his usual places, or a place nearby.
Sure, but the premise is no one knows where he is and anyone who knows him is probably in bed.
With a question like this, I always suspect the OP has thought of a clever answer, and it setting up a place to reveal his brilliance.
So why don’t you just tell us what you think should be tried?
They might answer the phone. They might answer the door. Just because they are in bed does not make them entirely unreachable.
And, “does not know where he is” =/= “does not have an idea or two of where he might be, in the middle of the night, if he isn’t home.”
However, the three hour deadline, which it sounds like is in the movie, might simply be unrealistic or unlikely to be achievable IRL. It being the middle of the night probably would probably complicate things further, yes.
Nope, I have no clue how to do this. In the movie, the character Carmelo who is some sort of security guy/fixer simply says “it’s done.” when asked to do it, but I was wondering if this would even be possible in real life.
That’s not much of an issue. Let me just toss out a few ideas.
Dale is an employee of the company, so they know a lot about him. They know his address, his phone number and the name of his next of kin. They probably know his car’s license plate. If he’s carrying a company phone, they have access to his phone records, so if he called anyone before turning the phone off, they can call that person. If he’s got a company credit card, they know a lot of local places he likes to go to - and maybe the name of a place he was at, just tonight. And the head of security is not going to worry about waking up Dale’s supervisor, who knows who Dale’s work friends are, and maybe Dale’s favorite bar (or the name of Dale’s girlfriend).
My guess is that Dale was at his house, and the head of security got him by going there and banging on the door. But even if Dale wasn’t there, there are a bunch of ways to track him down. It’s not guaranteed that they’d get him in a few hours, but it doesn’t require superhuman efforts either.
And if he doesn’t have a company credit card, and he leaves his company phone at home, and said company doesn’t have the resources of the FBI and can;t check credit cards anyway, and if Dale’s supervisor is out, and his friends can’t be reached… well.
Finding people like this is a thing movies do, and in the real world…not that fast.
Though as a Brooklyn resident who works in Manhattan, he may not own a car at all.
Good point. If he chose to use a cab when leaving the office that evening, the security folks might be able to trace that.
Was I wrong in my previous post that it wasn’t possible in the movie?
And if the cab company tells them to pound sand…?
Then they try something else. But the cab company might be accomodating to a firm that throws business their way.
Another possibility- if Dale is an exec, he might have been driven somewhere by a company driver, in which case, finding him becomes much easier.
Maybe maybe maybe, Maybe he left breadcrumbs.
And the reality is, unless you get lucky, you’re not gonna find him in three hours. And that’s if he’s just doing…nothing. If he picked up a lady and is conjugating at her place, you’d never find him.
Or, more likely, he delegated the door-banging (as well as the door-banging at several other likely locations) to some subordinates. The security head himself can’t be everywhere at once, but with enough payroll, the people who work for him can be (and I gather, from the OP, that someone was willing to pay a lot of money to get him into the office in time).