I saw about the last half hour of a movie recently that I'd seen a couple times before. The end of this movie never made sense to me. It is the movie "Man On Fire" with Denzel Washington. He plays the bodyguard for a child with a wealthy father in Mexico - so the child could be kidnapped for ransom.

The kidnapper in the movie known as THE VOICE (TV for short) evokes his feelings a few times in the movie about Family being the most important thing in life. By the way, the female adult lead was Rahda Mitchell & she would have earned a 10 on the hot looking adult female leads scale.

OK - I'll cut to the chase and I think you'd have had to see this movie to know what I'm talking about at the end. Denzel's character & TV are making a deal at the end of the movie. TV & Denzel are talking on cell phones, Denzel is at TV's woman's place & TV is somewhere around, but u don't know how far.

So TV says the deal is a life for a life. TV has Rahda Mitchell's daughter played by a young Dakota Fanning to bargain with. Denzel has TV's brother and his like 8 months pregnant woman & maybe another child of TV's to bargain with.

So TV says here's the deal - he will give the young girl back & Denzel has to give TV's brother back & turn himself over to TV (and he will be killed or tortured & killed). NOW - when they were making the deal on the phone Denzel had TV's brother, his 8 month pregnant woman, & maybe another of TV's children.

And remember that TV is always talking about the importance of family over all else. So why does Denzel make this horrible deal. The young girl had just showed him he could live again without his past saying in his mind that he doesn't deserve to.

The thing is - Denzel is holding all the cards. He could off TV's brother, pregnant woman, & maybe the other child of TV. So he has 4 cards & TV has just 1. Yet the deal he makes is terrible. Nothing happens to TV's family (well, his brother won't be a poker dealer) - Denzel is going to be wasted right after he learns he can be happy again. And the girl goes back to the mother.

Did anybody else who saw the movie agree that Denzel made a horrible deal for the guy who's holding all the cards?

Also - there is a line in this movie that "a bullet always tells the truth" that seemed sort of silly.

OK - I'm sure others have seen movies where the end didn't make sense to them. What were they?

I don't spend much time here these days, so I hope this topic hasn't come up before. If it has - maybe it could just be revisited.

it was an action movie where they needed to brute force in him sacrificing himself for personal redemption

as is often the case, it probably originally made sense but went through a number of revisions where they wanted to keep his personal sacrifice story arc but changed too much preceding that to make the conclusion of the arc really make sense, then after a few failed rewrites that also had to incorporate other things either already filmed or also earmarked as things that must be included until the studio just said screw it, this is good enough and we're running behind schedule - this is the reason for most inconsistencies in films

I wouldn't look too deeply into it

I hadn't planned on looking too deeply into it.......but I must say that your reply was pretty impressive

Any movie come to mind where the ending didn't make sense to you

My thought was TV talked a big game about "family" that he really didn't mean. The preggo woman wasn't even his wife. They were living in a dump instead of what was probably a mansion that TV, being head of a big crime syndicate, was living in. Denzel figured he got a good deal and was paying penance for a lifetime of misdeeds.

As far as TV goes, Lost is the biggest one out there. The creators had a 3 season story arc planned out and after going deep down that pathway, ABC demanded they lenghten the show. Then there was the writers strike. This is why the show got really weird really fast with rapid introduction and killing off of characters. Eventually, they'd revised the show so much but (due to the writers strike sabotaging season 4) they didn't have enough time to cover what they revised so they just kind of ended it the best way they could.

A reason why script changes are so common is that the studio buys a concept and usually wants to make changes and it's easier to find someone new to do that than to convince someone to alter their own work. So they hire another writer but that writer only gets a writing credit if they change at least 50% of the script. So if you want to earn those residuals from the film 10, 20, 30 years later, you have every incentive to make every change you possibly can, even if it cause the entire story line to cease making sense or requiring the film to then reshoot or discard much of what's already been done. Superman II is perhaps the most aggregious version of rewrites done not to improve the script but to gain access to writing credits and residuals.

I may be misremembering some things but I recall this giving a solid summary of the events

When it comes to movie endings that make zero sense, I immediately think of two highly anticipated films that totally underwhelmed.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Tim Burton’s version of Planet of the Apes. The latter obviously faced the challenge of not repeating the same twist as the original movie but there would have been ways that made significantly more sense. I still don’t really understand what was going on and have to assume that the ape went further back in time than Mark Wahlberg, but who knows?

Cam

the mystery of the missing models and the doppelgangers was never resolved. the movie ends with the protagonist going back to webcamming, ostensibly with a plan but we never see what it is because the movie just ends.

rumble in the bronx

the villain, white tiger, kills people and is the head of a major criminal organization. running him over with a hovercraft and revealing his bare buttocks humiliates him, sure, but i don't see how it defeated him or his plot to take over new york. also, instead of choosing between the traditional cantonese small business owner girlfriend or the americanized go-go dancer girlfriend, jackie chan just kind of ends up with both of them in that hovercraft and they're all happy having a good time and the movie just suddenly ends

Tony Stark died for nothing. He had all the stones. Thanos had a force of a few thousand troops or something. Six Avengers held their own against a similar size force in New York, and now they have like forty Avengers plus the Wakandan army. Thanos himself is a pretty big threat but the power of just one of the stones could turn him into ribbons or transport him into the middle of space or something. From there it's easy mop up duty. Tony using the Power of the Snap to kill so few beings was complete overkill.

I bet Dr. Strange just wanted Tony to kill himself because he's a douchebag.

memento - it's not necessarily supposed to make sense in the first place...but the final scene when leonard ponders if the world still exists when he closes his eyes, we see a quick shot of him lying in bed with his wife with the "i've done it" tattoo on his chest.

the tattoo is in the same spot he is pointing to in the picture that teddy used to show him he killed john g a year ago (spot is blank, a placeholder for the "i've done it") and we never see leonard with that particular tattoo at any other point in the movie.

more of an unreliable narrator thing, but still doesn't "make sense"

I think Memento is still my #1 movie that I've seen in a cinema (and also one of my favorites overall, I guess) - I went to see Training Day and ended up watching Memento too for a double feature. So anyway, it's been like 20 years but I can recall pondering about that final scene cause it didn't add up really. Good one. Maybe about time to watch it again.

Goodwill Hunting

If he was so smart, why doesn’t he just upgrade his girlfriend?

He either had the tattoo removed, or decided against getting it in the first place. It points to the fact that he has likely come to this same culminating realization multiple times-- that by having no memory, he can continually shape his own reality (without guilt). Leonard is ultimately a dark character, who can live without conscience if he so chooses.

My take is that Denzel knew he was already on the brink of death from bleeding out and stuff. When he goes to pick up Dakota Fanning and make the trade Tony Scott focused in on his chest and his hand over the dripping blood. I viewed that as a way to imply that he was dying and he knew it and his last act was to make sure he saved the girl before it was too late. No way he just got in the car and died that unexpectedly and luckily. Yes horrible trade otherwise. Great movie!

MAN ON FIRE

I thought it was stupid at first and maybe it is but here is where I stand on it now.

The ONLY thing he wants is to get the girl back so as far as holding cards this was the Ace of Spades for the Voice.

Denzel has a bad wound and figures he is about to die anyway so the
way to insure that girl is safe is to make that deal.

The Voice was never going to let Denzel live anyway after getting his brother back and Denzel was in no position to outrun or outgun them by the time they got to meetup point without putting Peta or Mother (who he banged,it was cut out of movie) at risk.

So much this.

Also another Matt Damon movie:

Rounders.

Why doesn't KGB just decline playing the heads up match vs. Mike McD at the end, so Mike is $5k short, and Gramma can break his legs, etc.?

I always looked forward to Rounders 2 where Damon busts his roll in the main and ends up giving handjobs in the bathroom to pay for his 1/2 limit buyins

Eh, don't agree here, why is breaking Matt Damons legs the goal? It's about the money, KGB thinks he's +EV and if Damon loses, he's confident in his ability to collect the money.

KGB doesn't care about money. He just enjoys humiliating people and will never turn down a chance to prove his superiority.

Why does Matt Damon give up his tell on KGB right at the start of the match?

He's an idiot, that's why.

This is a good one, it took me multiple viewings to figure out wtf was going on.

The actual answer is that McD thinks he has more EV in tilting Teddy than in knowing his tell, but this is of course really stupid.

I’m surprised Mike McD paid his way through law school playing poker

But I guess the games were butter soft back then.

Also tuition was way lower

This is very true!

As was rake