Even if you’re arguing that she didn’t know at the store (which she did) how could she not have known when she opened the box clearly labeled “blanks” with letters so big that we, the audience, could see them from 18 million miles away later and put them into the gun?
She knew she loaded that gun with blanks.
Contrived, silly, pointless, had Sandra Bollocks in it (thats enough for the hatred right there) and seemed to be written by a committee of sixth-graders.
Or maybe they just swept the cutting room floor after editing out all the lame scenes from Magnolia and pieced together that crap. Too bad they couldn’t get Aimee Mann for the soundtrack.
“Hey! Instead of snow, let’s have frogs!”
“Great Idea Biff! Call the cutting room!”
:rolleyes:
Wise and insightful? Nah. Just been drinking beer.
We rented it last weekend and Magnolia sprang to mind. My wife’s comment: “Ya know, everyone in Los Angeles just needs to take a tranquilizer.” We both found it boring. The message seems to be (other than, yes, everyone probably has some prejudices of one sort or another) that it’s okay to hate people, because some of them probably hate you.
The daughter’s shock after her father tried to shoot someone didn’t need to be fear that her dad killed someone, but that he tried to.
What I don’t remember, did Ryan Phillipe see the shoes dissappear over the fence as he began his chase with the producer? There’s a cut to the shoes, with Phillipe looking down at them, just before the shooting.
But they’ve already set up that that is his character - he gets privately amused at things and doesn’t like to explain. Near the beginning of the movie when his partner in crime goes off about bad service, but then falls in with the stereotype by failing to leave a tip, he laughs at him but refuses to explain why.
Well, that certainly addresses the earlier claim that “the doctor absolutely knew that she was buying blanks.”
Wow, I can’t believe so many people are confused by this.
She did not know that she was getting blanks. She had not a clue. She freaked out for a moment when she came into the store and found it was vandalized because she was afraid that the gun (presumably loaded) had been stolen, and was quite relieved to find that it hadn’t been.
I have seen this movie several times and you can easily tell that she didn’t know by her reaction then and her reaction to her father telling her that he shot someone. She didn’t know. When he was telling her about shooting a little girl, her eyes showed a mixture of panic that perhaps he was telling the truth, and that another possibility was that he was simply losing his mind after the traumatic event of having his store vandalized. Even after she checked the gun after the conversation with her father, she still didn’t know they were blanks. The only people that know that they had blanks in the gun are the firearms dealer and the audience.
Aside from this, what kind of a person would intentionally put blanks in a gun purchased to protect her father from a potential robbery? Anyone doing this would have to consider that if a shootout occurred, her father would be extremely vulnerable with nothing more than a cap gun.
She had no idea.
“What kind of ammunition do you want?”
“Whatever fits.” (Here it is established that she doesn’t care. He could simply throw a box on the counter at this point and she would have grabbed them up and walked out with them. If she were actively looking for blanks, she would have asked him for them at that moment, as her father is out of the store.)
"Oh, We got a lot of kinds. We got long colts, short colts, bull heads, flat nose, hollow points, wadcutters, and a dozen more that’ll fit any size hole. It just depends upon how much bang, you can handle. (His voice is sexually charged, comparing the different types of bullets in a sexual way, attempting to unnerve her. It works because…)
“I’ll take the ones in the red box.” (The red box is a plot device that indicates she just picked a box that stands out from the crowd of boxes. She is just making a decision so she can get the hell out of there.)
“You know what those are?” (He wants to continue to press her about her lack of knowledge about ammunition–and guns in general–but she’ll have none of it as…)
“Can I have them?” (She doesn’t care as long as it fits and fires a round. ‘Just give me the box so I can get the hell out of here!’)
He does, thinking, ‘fuck her’.
I initially agreed with the above two posts, except on reflection I can’t explain how she loaded the gun with such panache but failed to notice either the word BLANKS on the box or that the rounds had no lead in them.
To the uninitiated, blanks (dummy cartridges) can look almost exactly like regular rounds. It’s not gaping hole on the end of the shell.
You can injure someone even firing blanks, you know, provided you’re at a close enough range (which I think you probably would be during, say, a robbery or mugging). A gun loaded with “only blanks” is still a dangerous weapon, and she’d know that as a doctor. Even more, a gun loaded with blanks can still be reloaded with live rounds if it’s stolen, hence her relief at finding it still in the store.
She knows they’re blanks. She specifically bought them as blanks, knowing full well what she was doing. She doesn’t say “gimme the blanks” directly because of the storytelling device.
Look, I can’t believe this thread has gone on this long and everyone keeps repeating the canard that it’s a storytelling device.
She knows they’re blanks all right, it’s clear from the story.
But she asks for the “red box”, and she cuts off the gun shop owner’s lecture, because she deos NOT want to SAY that they’re blanks.
Because her father is with her.
He’s right there in the room! You can see him.
She’s not buying blanks to fool robbers or to enrich the gun store owner – she’s buying blanks because she doesn’t want her father to have real bullets.
If she TELLS him they’re blanks, he’ll get other bullets.
It’s not a ploy by the director – well, not any more than any other surprise in the plot. It’s completely and remorselessly logical within the confines of what we observe on the screen.
Her father insists on being along and insists on having the gun, but is too agitated to handle the details. She steps in and disarms him in the only way she can think of.
Sailboat
I was gonna just let this die a natural death, but now I that I’m thinking about it, if it’s true(and I believe it is) that she knew they were blanks, the whole thing with her saying “whatever kind fits” and the store owner naming all the different kinds is a dirty trick on the director’s part. I can see where she’d ask for “the red box” instead of “the blanks” because of her father, but she would have done it a lot sooner. Except, of course, we wouldn’t get that nifty surprise later. Damn, now that I’m picking everything apart, I’m ruining the movie for myself.
Bad WOOK.
He was previously removed from the store by the owner’s associate. He may have still been in earshot, as was previously suggested in this thread.
Not if she hadn’t decided to buy blanks yet. It struck me as something she decided to do at the last minute.
Another reason why I think she knew–her comment to her father when she handed him the loaded gun: “There. Now you can shoot anyone you want.” A seemingly innocuous comment, but there is more snideness and resignation in her voice than worry.
Aside: I watched this movie twice without realizing that the shop owner’s wife was Deanna Troi.
I just watched this a couple of days ago, and am fixated on Matt Dillon’s story line.
How likely is it that an L.A. cop is going to sexually assault an upper class black woman?
I realize that sexual assaults are under-reported. I realize that some (maybe many) cops abuse their authority and get away with it. I know that black movie stars (Blair Underwood, Wesley Snipes) and even Johnnie Cochran have been hassled by L.A. police.
But I’m having a hard time believing that a cop would do this, today, in L.A., where the police department has (supposedly) been under intense scrutiny since Darryl Gates and Rodney King, etc.
How believable was that to you?
Finally saw this on Showtime On Demand today and I find myself a little confused as to what message it is that the filmmakers were trying to convey. I can’t make up my mind if they were trying to say “RACISM IS BAD” or if they were trying to say “RACISM IS * REALLY* BAD.” Seriously, I’ve been in fistfights that were more subtle. I hope they paid royalties toe the Samuel Mores estate for all the telegraphing. How anyone could have legitimately believed this ham-fisted morailty play was the best movie of last year is beyond me. It’s like someone stiched together a film school class’s “racism short film project” films and called it a feature.
I was a little spoiled on the store owner shooting so I’m not sure if my knowing the gun had blanks has colored my perception of that scene. But it looks to me like she started off not knowing which bullets to get but, while the store owner was popping off, she scanned the shelves and saw the red box with BLANKS printed on it.
The Cheadle/DA subplot was I thought pretty straightforward blackmail plus whitewash. Didn’t matter if the white cop was dirty or if the black cop was dirty. The DA needed a little white-on-black crime and the white cop got himself served up on a platter. Whether Cheadle’s charatcer had been white or black, if he had the chance to take the heat off his brother he was goign to do it.
As for the cop/carjacker scene, trying to read anything as deep as “Phillipe’s character was trying to prove to himself he was a good man” or whatever is over-analyzing. He picked the guy up for whatever reason, probably not even noticing the color of his skin. The scene is very dark. The only overtly racist aspects of the scene are the assumption that Phillpe’s character makes about black peoples’ taste in music and their level of interest in ice skating and hockey as leisure activities. I do wonder what about the carjacker’s shoes and left side pocket (the pocket opposite the statue) caught the cop’s attention.
Here’s a question: do human traffickers generally accept checks? That was the damn dumbest thing ever.
For me, the really unbelievable part was his character’s blind faith that a white man would hold every job in America if it weren’t for affirmative action, and that the white man would do the job better than anybody else. I have a real hard time believing anybody thinks that way, let alone someone who has lived in LA for a while.
No, the front of the shell is pinched in as shown here or here, and there is no lead bullet sticking out. I simply cannot believe that the veriest novice could load a gun with blanks and not notice, let alone someone who is portrayed as knowing something about them.
Okay, why would she have bought blanks?
Why would she undermine her dad’s ability to defend himself from attack?
As far as I can recall, that’s the only reason he was trying to buy a gun.
Maybe I’m forgetting something, though.
As I watched the movie, it seemed clear she didn’t know what kind of bullets she was buying, that she didn’t feel like letting the store owner give her a hard time, and so simply insisted on her first choice and left. It didn’t even occur to her that she might accidentally be buying blanks, just as it didn’t even occur to me that she might be doing so.
If she were trying to buy blanks, she would have said, “Give me the blanks.” Not “give me the red box.”
-FrL-