Tonight as I was flipping through Bad Boys II was on. I caught the opening scene. The two heroes are undercover (literally) at a Klan rally where a drug shipment is coming in. Of course things go violently wrong. At the end the task force commander is pissed. “Two lousy bags of ecstasy. What happened to the largest shipment in history?” “Don’t worry about it I’ll take care of my snitch.” Or something like that. Then they walk away. There are about 20 dead bodies on the ground with bullet holes in them. Not one word about that. Apparently that’s not a big deal.
That’s pretty sad. The war was almost over by then so he probably would not have seen combat yet he still lost a leg.
That sadly happens all the time in wars. A great-uncle of mine was killed in Flanders at the day of the WW I armistice, 11 November 1918, while trying to blow up a bridge. The fuse seems to have been too short, literally.
I do have a friend who did this after she got a boob job. Although to clarify, she showed them to my wife.
Pendants and similar items with significance given as tokens of esteem or affection, especially when they’re central to the turn of events on which a film is based, and even especially-er when the item is given, it’s given back at some point and, by the end of the film, it’s accepted anew (this time fer-ever).
Yeah, such items exist in real life and sometimes they go back and forth, and no, I’m not referring to any such item in any film.
Lord of the Rings is a good example. The ring they’re all after doesn’t bother me, as I think it is (was) a clever storytelling device. I’m referring to the amulet that Liv Tyler’s character gave to Viggo Mortensen’s character and the latter wore around his neck.
Or the compass that Jodie Foster’s character wore in Contact.
There are many more examples, but I’d rather not remember them, to tell you the truth. So hokey.
Just casually continuing doing whatever it was you were doing when the cops come to question you about a crime.
I suspect and hope that jumping over draw bridges as they’re opening doesn’t happen a lot in real life.
Although, actually, someone did exactly that a couple of months ago in Florida. (YouTube video here, though perhaps not as dramatic as in the movies.)
Here’s an older one I was recently reminded of while watching an old-time TV show recently: a main character on the show has a serious accident which causes them to be unable to walk. There’s a lot of drama, strife and false starts for a short time but soon, usually by the end of the episode, feeling comes back to their legs and they’re eventually able to walk like normal again. It’s a miracle!
Every Western TV show seemed to have this plot at one time or another. One episode of ‘The Rifleman’ had Mark fall off his horse and he couldn’t walk; Lucas did everything he could, even taking Mark to a ‘healing spring’, but nothing was working. Lucas was even kind of getting mad at Mark at one point, as if he just didn’t want it enough. But sure enough, toward the end of the ep…he wiggled his foot! He can walk again! Praise the Lord.
This particular trope seemed to be unintentionally cruel to me. since I believe the vast majority of people who can’t walk due to a spinal injury do not ever regain the ability, or at least, not fully. But these episodes seemed to say if you just want it enough or try hard enough, you’ll be able to walk again, dammit! Fortunately this trope seems to have been retired, because I don’t recall seeing it on anything not decades old.
Yeah, if I’m a cop and someone is blase about me showing up to question them, I’m going to raise my level of suspicion about their guilt.
Otherwise known as “that one John Mulaney Law and Order bit”
Slightly off topic, but my favorite Law and Order characters are the ones who get one scene with the police to provide a bit of evidence - and the actors, sensing that this is their big break, fill their three lines of dialogue with all the quirks and bits of business that the director will tolerate.
I did read an account years ago of an abused wife who managed to contact the local mob to hire a hitman to kill her husband. So naturally the outfit hands the job to a 17-year-old who blows Hubby away in a parking lot in broad daylight. Strangely enough, the cops are suspicious enough to put a tap on the wife’s phone. Wonder of wonders, they record her saying, “I should get an Oscar for my performance at the funeral.”
Copied from Twitter:
Someone let me write a deep-dive essay on the history of those scenes where someone in a car screams and smacks their steering wheel a bunch, a thing I am not sure really happens, and if it does it’s because they’ve seen it in movies.
Every actor performs this scene exactly the same way and I think that’s supporting evidence to no one really doing this, they’ve just all watched older performances and done the same thing.
How about London’s tower bridge, with a bus?
There was a similar case on one show (maybe Forensic Files) where the wife who wanted her husband whacked was recorded as saying “He’s dead, that’s fantastic!” (or words to that effect) when the hitman reported in. You could tell she was just over the Moon!
To continue down the Law & Order meme trail - people who are wandering around the night streets of NYC after their meal or show, hear gunshots, and go running to see what’s happened. Hey, maybe the killer is still there and he’ll sign our program!
That is actually not so ridiculous. I was in a store once, near my office in a rough neighborhood. There were gunshots outside - as the store employees were rushing to lock the doors to keep the shooter outside ( it pretty obviously wasn’t the first time this happened) , customers were trying to beat them to the door to get out and see what was going on.
Someone saying “Just follow my lead” with no discussion of an actual plan.
Back in West Texas, I knew a cop who claimed he could tell every time if a perp was guilty or innocent of murder. Said the guilty ones were always cool as a cucumber, drawling, “Murder? Me? No, no way, man.” Whereas the innocent ones would freak out completely. This is what he claimed, and from what I saw, he was a pretty good cop.