If you haven’t seen the movie yet you’re lucky, because you get to see it.
Anyway,
At the end of the movie, as Joe Pesci says, it’s clipping’ time. My question is on Sharon Stone’s character.
Yes, she was a hot mess, and her dying of a drug overdose with a biker gang has some sort of emotional satisfaction, weirdly.
The Rothstein narration says “she was given a hot dose.” I always thought that was just-the-way-it-goes when you end up like her (plot wise), but I resaw it and figured Remo and they guys, who took care of everything, even clipping the stand-up Marine, would be sure to take care of her.
I think it was implied that it was deliberate but left ambiguous on purpose. The character is based on Geri McGee who died of a drug overdose. It was ruled accidental but her family thinks she was murdered because of what she knew.
If she was indeed “given a hot dose,” that’s pretty clearly saying she was clipped rather than dying of an accidental overdose. A hot dose is a dose of heroin mixed with some other substance that is intended to kill the victim. Thissays that Sam was quoting the autopsy doctor, who would know.
Geez, two mods post in the thread but don’t move it to the correct forum?
Anyway, Sam paid for a private doctor to do another autopsy, and he told Sam “they gave her a hot dose”. Her death is part of the “murdering everyone who could connect the bosses to the casinos” sequence, and the line right before her death scene is Nicky’s voiceover “Before you knew it, anybody who knew anything wound up getting whacked.” So it’s pretty clear she was murdered.
The real question is whether or not they whacked Scorsese’s mother.
We usually leave these things to the forum mods to do. I’ll take care of it since it looks like Rickjay stepped away for a bit.
As to your post, you have jogged my memory. I take back my answer that it was implied. It was more than implied, she was murdered.
She’d stolen all his cash and kept it, as was her right as was enforceable at that point in time by the courts. So she’s what – 500K, 1 million richer?
Then she went to live with some junkies and bikers, in a roadside motel doing drugs and buying takeout lunches for all her new friends, presumably. The coroner said she died of a simple overdose. The paid review said it was a hot dose – her heroin was deliberately contaminated with a toxin – traditionally hydrochloric acid – a “hot dose” that burned her tissues even while the heroin made her high so she didn’t notice.
I assumed some junkies decided to rob her of the last of her wealth, she had only a few thousand left, in the Rothstein voice over, as I recall.
So why the duplicity? How is this not more of a mob cleanup of all witnesses? For me, it was the resigned tone in the Rothstein voice over. Why doesn’t he say, in his own head, “Mob had to cover all the possible angles – no matter how obscure.”
It was more of – another junkie died, just sign off on it.
“She was pretty tho’” – no, she wasn’t.
“She was somebody’s momma” – don’t care
“She was rich, maybe it was a hot does, we should check …” – no we don’t
“She had style, charisma, street smarts, grace, she was somebody dammit” – No. Actress Sharon Stone is those things. Her early characterization of Karla is those things. The woman in the last scene is a dried up slag. Utterly forgettable to everyone except Rothstein.
Did he try to make a hooker into a housewife? Was it the challenge? Was it a thing men in the 50’s did and thought would work? Are people smarter now? I think that’s what the film wants to leave us with.
That’s how I (OP) first and 2nd time I read it/watched it. But remember how surprised Ace was narrating when she was pulled over leaving the bank she didn’t tell the FBI anything? And her constant threats of going to the FBI when she was crazed at his doorstep at the beginning of this whole sequence? No way the Mob wasn’t going to wait to be surprised or leave it at that.