The King of Comedy (1983)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DISCOVERS WHAT?)

[Now for a bust that resulted from trying to explain one of the many cultural references that the animated show Family Guy made in the episode Barely Legal.]

The King of Comedy (1983) is an American black comedy directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Diahnne Abbott and Sandra Bernhard.

In the end Robert De Niro discovers that the only way to break into television is from behind the barrel of a gun.

Middle-aged living-at-home-with-his-mother stage-door autograph hound, De Niro, plays an aspiring stand-up comic with obsessive ambition that far exceeds his actual talent.

A chance meeting with famous comedian and talk show host, Jerry Lewis, leads De Niro to believe that there is a place on Lewis's show for him if he really wants it.

However, De Niro's attempts to collect on Lewis's apparent offer are continually rebuffed by the show's production staff.

Along the way, the wanna-be star indulges in ever more elaborate and obsessive fantasies where he and Lewis are colleagues and friends, until finally, Lewis is forced to shatter De Niro's dreams, after De Niro invites himself and his would-be girlfriend, Diahnne Abbott, to stay at Lewis's weekend retreat.

Nevertheless, convinced that he is destined for greatness, one way or another, the humiliated and frustrated De Niro hatches a kidnap plot, with the help of obsessive Lewis-stalker, Sandra Bernhard.

The ransom is for De Niro to be given the opening spot on that evening's show (guest hosted by Tony Randall), and that, before Lewis is released, the show must be aired nationally, as usual, so that Abbott can see that De Diro wasn't just some crazy fantasist.

To the surprise of the show's producers and the police, De Niro's exaggerated autobiographical stand-up routine goes down well with the audience. Even his confession that he is only there because he has kidnapped Lewis gets a laugh.

In the meantime, between the show's recording and broadcast, left alone with her idol duct-taped to a chair in her parents' Manhattan townhouse, Bernhard attempts to seduce Lewis.

But the seduction only allows Lewis to escape, just in time to catch the end of De Niro's routine in which he explains that "Tomorrow you'll know I wasn't kidding and you'll all think I'm crazy. But I figure it this way: better to be king for a night, than schmuck for a lifetime."

And perhaps he had a point, because a news report covering his eventual release from prison, featuring shots of storefronts piled high with his "long awaited" autobiography, King For A Night, reveals that De Niro now has an agent with whom he is considering several "attractive offers" one of which turns out to be an apparent live TV special in which an excited announcer introduces him to an equally enthusiastic audience.


Scorsese has made a career out of depicting madness in it various forms. De Niro's celebrity obsessed fantasist is perhaps the least dangerous of his many creations. And the movie is a wonderful exploration of the dangers of the modern cult of celebrity, and a welcome break from the usual corruption and brutal violence that perfuse so much of his output.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_of_Comedy_(1983_film)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Guy

http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Barely_Legal

The Chumscrubber (2005)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER UNRESOLVED GRIEF LEADS TO FURTHER TRAGEDY)

[After a very extended busting hiatus, now for a bust that out Darko's Donnie. Possibly one of the smartest and most misunderstood-by-reviewers movies or recent years.]

The Chumscrubber (2005) is a darkly comic American film, aimed at a Resident Evil/Left 4 Dead audience, conceived and directed by Arie Posin, starring Jamie Bell, Camilla Belle, Justin Chatwin, Lou Taylor Pucci and a host of Hollywood a-listers, it explores the problem of youth disconnect in the Californian suburbs, where both teenagers and their parents rely on different forms of chemical medication to deal with life's problems.

In the end Jamie Bell comes to terms with the suicide of his best friend and class-mate neighbour without the crutch of prescription drugs.

When loaner, Bell becomes the first person to discover the suicide of his class-mate and supplier of happy pills to their high-school, not only does his celebrity psychiatrist father see it as an ideal opportunity to further publicly analyse his son, but the main high-school dealer and resident bully, Justin Chatwin, sees him as a means of acquiring the pill stash of his former supplier, the suicide victim.

To this end Chatwin initially recruits Camilla Belle, Bell's attractive and rebellious classmate, to sweet talk him into recovering the pills on their behalf.

However, when Bell refuses to cooperate, Chatwin and his drug dealing footsoldier, Lou Taylor Pucci, hatch a plot to kidnap Bell's younger brother as a bargaining chip. But their plans fail at the first hurdle when the hapless pair grab the wrong boy, the son of the local sheriff who is persecuting his ex-wife's new fiance ahead of her remarriage.

Despite not having Bell's brother, Chatwin figures he can still be persuaded to recover the drug stash to ensure the boys safety. Indeed among a sea of self-obsessed and self-absorbed adults, Bell is almost the only person apparently interested in the young lad's whereabouts or safety, although Belle, who was only reluctantly drawn into the plot to begin with, is increasingly protective of their young hostage.

It is her concern that eventually persuades Bell to recover the drugs hidden in the wall of the summer house, in his neighbour's back garden, where he originally discovered his class-mate's body. However, his efforts to exchange the haul for the young kidnap victim are sabotaged when his actual younger brother, secretly swaps the drugs for vitamin pills that their mother peddles as a new life system. The ensuing fight between Chatwin and Bell lands Bell in the sheriff's custody, where once again the adults totally fail to understand what is really going on.

Realising that the drugs are now lost to them, Chatwin and Pucci decide to bring their scheme to a murderous conclusion by stabbing the young boy to death. But in the ensuing struggle, Chatwin has one of his eyes slashed, and on staggering half blinded into the street is run down by the sherrif, at last desperately searching for his missing son, and momentarily distracted by the sight of his ex-wife in her wedding dress. Chatwin at last achieves his life's ambition of becoming a fly-boy as his body is flung high into the air by the impact, only to have his fall back to earth broken by the hood of the sheriff's patrol car.

In the aftermath of this near fatal tragedy, Bell at long last realises how much he misses his best friend, and regrets not recognising the signs of his impending suicide, while his friend's mother (brilliantly played by Glenn Close) finally accepts that her failure to get to know her son better may have been the real reason for his suicide.


The greatest hurdle to appreciating this movie is the inclusion of the Chumscrubber video game narrative device, which probably only appeals or makes sense to the gamer generation. The device does little more that provide a title and narrative bookends for the movie. The decision to include it may have simply been an attempt to differentiate it from other movies dealing in the same stock, like American Beauty (1999) and Donnie Darko (2001), the two movies against which it is most often measured.

Whereas Donnie Darko, with its time-travel theme, is a modern fairytale, Chumscrubber shares more in common with the real world based modern morality tale told from a middle age perspective, that is American Beauty.

In contrast Posin presents an archly distorted view of reality, where children behave like adults, and adults behave as children. Whether you prefer its approach to that of American Beauty largely depends on whether or not you buy into this distorted view, which in turn, no doubt, depends on whether you are closer in age to teenagers or middle aged adults.

That the movie succeeds at all in exploring the twin problems of teenagers being ignored by adults, and adults increasingly behaving like children, in a chemical fix dependent society, is down to the very imaginative script, some very well conceived conceits and performances from both young and old that are pitch perfect.

But there is no doubt that the movie suffers from having a conveniently pat ending, and from rather stumbling over probably the most dramatic scene in the whole movie; where Chatwin in accidentally blinded. Had these problems been addressed either before production started or later in the final edit, Chumscrubber might have garnered the plaudits it almost deserves.

Personally, I am very grateful to the person who brought this movie to my attention, because had I relied only on review hype, I might never have sampled its quirky pleasures. Which is exactly the point of these Movie Plot Busts.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chumscrubber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Darko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Beauty_(film)

Lord of War (2005)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO GETS CAUGHT)

[The following Bust was prompted by a question about whether the plot was based on real events. It wasn't, but the story was inspired by a pair of real (unrelated) arms traders.]

Lord of War (2005) is a political crime thriller written and directed by Andrew Niccol, starring Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke.

In the end Nicolas Cage if freed to continue his shameful trade in illegal arms.

Witnessing a Russian mobster killing two would-be assassins in a Brighton Beach restaurant, Ukranian immigrant Cage is struck by a sudden and rather questionable flash of inspiration, that just as restaurants service a basic human need to eat, arms dealers service the need to wage war.

As none of his New York family are making much from their culinary skills, Cage sees his knack for creative reasoning as a way to make a success in trading arms.

Right from his very first sale of a single automatic weapon to a local hoodlum, Cage demonstrates the quick witted persuasiveness, that will time after time get him out of the tricky situations he finds himself in.

But realising that the profit margins of dealing guns to domestic criminals isn't going to get him where he wants to be, Cage sees the international conflict market as the road to success.

Indeed, international conflict also proves to be his first wholesale source of merchandise, as he begins redistributing the arms Uncle Sam considers too expensive to repatriate once its forces have left a theatre of operation.

Unfortunately for Cage, his brother has trouble coming to terms with the inevitable consequences of the murderous trade Cage from the start persuaded him to join.

So when one of their South American deals is settled in cocaine rather than cash, his brother acquires an addiction which renders him useless as a business partner.

Tragically, it is only much later, when Cage is desperate for his brother's help in completing a transaction that he would rather not have gotten involved with, that his brother is killed following an attack of conscience, having kicked his habit, that forces him to try to thwart the deal.

In the meantime, however, the fall of the Soviet Union allows Cage to go into business with another relative, his Ukranian General uncle. And business booms as Cage now has access to everything the mothballed Russian Army has to offer.

Unfortunately for his uncle though, on his rise to success, Cage has made a serious enemy of one old school and rather bigoted arms dealer. So, when Cage and his uncle insultingly reject an offer to work together with him, the dealer mistakenly blows up the uncle in Cage's place. Cage will eventually avenge his uncle's death, but only by having one of his Central African despot clients help him pull the trigger.

The authorities, at least in the shape of one zealous, straight-laced and persistent (and completely unrealistic) Interpol agent, played by Ethan Hawke, are well aware of Cage's activities, but are seemingly incapable of catching him in the act.

It is rather ironic then that it is the fabulously beautiful woman, another Brighton Beach immigrant made good, who Cage's wealth has allowed him to woo, marry and start a family with, that eventually leads Hawke to the evidence that aught to bring Cage to justice.

But, of course, all the evidence in the world is not going to convict Cage, who, by dint of the clandestine work he does for the US by arming the enemies of its enemies, is freed to carry on his dirty trade alone, now that all those still alive in his family have disowned him.


It is remarkable that a drama constructed from such worthy material as opposition to illegal arms trading, should be as entertaining as it is.

If some of the plot twists seem a little too convenient to ring true, and if Cage's rather stilted voice over seems to rather over rationalise his chosen profession, it is hard not get caught up in Hawke's pursuit of justice, and the innocent lives of those surrounding Cage.

The ending may be cynical in the extreme, but the impact of the movie's opening title sequence, that follows the life journey of a bullet from its shop-floor birth in a Ukranian arms factory to its eventual death in the brain of an African teenage boy fighter, is hard to ignore.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_War

Pulp Fiction (1994)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[Now for a classic Bust, previously alluded to, that restores a story to its natural narrative order.]

Pulp Fiction (1994) is an American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, for which he shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar with co-writer Roger Avary.

It stars John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette and Christopher Walken, the first three of whom all received Academy Award Nominations for their performances.

In the end Bruce Willis escapes with his ill gotten gains.

Early one morning, on their way to collect an overdue debt owed to their gangster boss, Ving Rhames, super-cool criminal strong-arms Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta discuss the minutiae of life and the fact that Travolta has been asked to escort Rhames's trophy wife Uma Thurman while her violently over protective husband is out of town.

In the process of recovering their boss's money, the pair take a hostage, but not before they survive a point-blank shootout with another of the group of young male drug dealers who owe Rhames money, all of whom Jackson and Travolta end up shooting.

However, their hostage doesn't survive long either, as Travolta accidentally blasts his head off in the back of the car that Jackson is driving all three of them to Rhames in.

The hapless, blood splattered pair land up at the home of Jackson's only friend in the vicinity, Quentin Tarantino who cannot get rid of them quick enough, as he is expecting his straight-laced wife home from her night shift at any moment.

Marital disaster is only averted when, after Jackson's pleading, Rhames arranges for a legendary underworld problem-solver played by Harvey Keitel to help clear up the mess.

The previously sharp-suited pair end up dressed like a couple of stoner beach bums discussing Jackson's sudden decision to retire over breakfast in a coffee shop following their miraculous survival earlier.

There they become involved in a Mexican standoff when a couple, played by Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, desperate for money, attempt to hold the diner up.

With cool determination to follow a new and peaceful path, Jackson manages to defuse the situation, allowing Roth and Plummer to make off with everything bar the case of money belonging to Jackson and Travolta's boss.

Delivering said case, the pair run into aging prize fighter, Willis accepting a large sum of money from Rhames in exchange for taking a dive in his next bout.

The next day, on his way to chaperone Thurman, Travolta drops by the home of his supplier, Eric Stoltz, to score and shoot up.

Thurman herself is no stranger to illegal substance abuse, and snorts her own chemical high in the washroom of the 1950s rock'n'roll themed, lookalike staffed restaurant that Travolta has taken her to for dinner.

Suitably stoked the pair are delighted when they manage to carry off the restaurant's twist dance contest trophy.

Back home, while Travolta is using her bathroom, the happy mood is shattered when Thurman decides to sample Travolta's stash that she finds in the pocket of his coat that she is wearing.

Panicked, Travolta rushes the comatose Thurman back to the source of the drugs, where he and Stoltz manage to administer a life saving adrenalin injection directly into Thurman's heart, much to the delight of Stoltz's wife played by Rosanna Arquette.

Not surprisingly, Travolta and Thurman decide not to share this aspect of their evening's entertainment with Thurman's husband.

At it turns out, Rhames, soon has bigger fish to fry, as come fight night, Willis manages to set himself up for life by double-crossing Rhames, using his payoff to bet on himself and win against the odds, by, as it turns out, fatally defeating his opponent.

Holed up in a motel room the next morning, Willis is enraged to discover that his girlfriend, Maria de Medeiros, has failed to bring the one thing of personal value from their home that he had asked her to, an irreplaceable watch of his dead father's, handed down through the men of his family over various conflicts, eventually coming to Willis as a boy by way of a dying request of his father's to a Vietnamese prison camp comrade played by Christopher Walken.

Reluctantly, Willis cautiously returns to his apartment to retrieve the watch, only to discover the automatic weapon of a now lone Travolta, carelessly left on the kitchen counter, which Willis uses to gun down the defenseless Travolta as he emerges from the toilet. (Pretty much everything that happens to Travolta's character in the film involves the toilet one way or another.)

Fleeing the scene, Willis thinks he has made a clean getaway in his girlfriend's compact car, only to, quite literally, run into Rhames at a set of traffic lights.

Both badly injured in the collision, Rhames chases Willis down on foot into a pawnshop devoid of customers, where they are captured at gunpoint by the shop's owner.

Unfortunately for the pair, the owner and a law enforcement buddy he calls to the scene, are a pair of Deliverance (1972) style rapists. However, while Rhames is suffering at their hands in a separate room of the shop's basement, Willis is able to escape his bonds.

About to flee, Willis decides instead to save Rhames, by disabling his attackers with a Japanese sword that he finds amongst the various items in the shop.

In return for rescuing him, and promising to leave Los Angeles and never reveal the fact of his rape, Rhames agrees to overlook Willis's earlier betrayal.

So while Rhames sets about exacting revenge on his two injured abusers, Willis is free to leave with his girlfriend on the back of the soon-to-be-dead lawman's chopper bike.


It is interesting to consider why Tarantino decided to mix up the story's chronology?

Perhaps he felt that Jackson and Travolta surviving the Mexican standoff and safely "walking off into the sunset" in their shorts and t-shirts with their boss's briefcase was a marginally more upbeat ending than Willis and his girlfriend "riding off into the sunset" on a rapist's chopper bike, Willis by that time having murdered the Travolta character?

We may never know. But one thing is for sure, that Tarantino produced a wonderful movie, which never fails to entertain.


[Notice that although the timeline of the story was restored in the Bust, the Willis character's childhood experience was left as a flash back, because that's exactly what it was.

All the rest of Tarantino's mucking about with the narrative produced a circular storyline, which both made the audience think and added interest, of course.

Restoring the proper chronology of the plot explained, to at least one person, why Travolta was on his own when Willis encountered him in his apartment: Jackson having "seen the light" had already done his last job for Rhames, so Travolta was working alone by that time.

Plot Buster connoisseurs will no doubt have noticed that this is quite a bit longer than most Regular Busts. Its greater length reflects its different purpose.

When a Bust is used to reveal how a particular outcome came about, much of the irrelevant plot can be ignored.

However, the purpose of this Bust was to explain how the various plot elements fitted together, so more of the plot had to be included, leading to a longer Bust.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deliverance

Capricorn One (1977)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[And now a switch from a fictionalised account of a real conspiracy, to a fictional conspiracy that many people regard as being inspired by fact.]

Capricorn One (1977) Directed by Peter Hyams. With Elliott Gould, James Brolin.

Together Elliott Gould and James Brolin expose a conspiracy to fake the first manned Mars landings.

Moments before launch, officials evacuate the astronauts of NASA's eponymous mission, to a remote former military airbase.

Once there Brolin and his crew of two are reluctantly persuaded to take part in a charade to trick the American government and the rest of the world into believing that the mission was a success.

In fact, the mission was doomed to failure because cost cutting measures had resulted in an inadequate life support system.

Unfortunately for the conspiracy's organisers, one enterprising flight control center technician discovers, by running his own tests, that the crew communications don't appear to be coming from the flight vehicle.

Frustrated by his superiors' seeming indifference, the technician confides his discovery to Gould, an unreliable TV reporter with a track record for compiling reports that are more imagination than fact.

Not long after confessing his secret the technician disappears together with any evidence that he had ever existed.

Gould having been assigned, by his exasperated editor, to cover the mission, as it would supposedly provide no opportunity for his usual style of wildly imaginative reporting, has his sense for a great story further piqued by a stilted exchange between Brolin and his wife as the mission nears completion.

For the deception to succeed, Brolin and his crew have to be smuggled out to the re-entry vehicle before the naval recovery team reaches the splash down site.

However, partway through their flight the plane is diverted back to the desert base where the crew find themselves now held prisoner.

Realising that something must have gone fatally wrong during re-entry, and reasoning that NASA will therefore have to murder them in order to keep the conspiracy secret, the astronauts decide to break out and make their survival known.

The three manage to put some distance between themselves and their captors in the jet that they had flown in earlier.

But as the plane was never refueled, it isn't long before they are forced down in the desert surrounding the base, and must continue their escape on foot.

Realising that it will improve the chances of at least one of them reaching civilisation if they split up, the three head off in different directions.

However, soon the pair of gun toting black helicopters dispatched to hunt them down, catches up with Brolin's two colleagues, leaving him the only one left alive to expose the plot.

Meanwhile Gould's efforts to investigate his contact's disappearance lead him to approach Brolin's wife, and as a result finds his own life is now in danger.

With the help of a former girlfriend reporter, Gould manages to locate the now evacuated airbase, where he discovers an overlooked medallion of Brolin's that was dropped during his escape from captivity but which was missed during the cleanup operation.

In a leap of faith, Gould engages the help of an irascible crop duster with mercenary tendencies (show-stealingly portrayed by Telly Savalas) in order to hunt for evidence of the astronauts from the air.

Spotting the sinister pair of helicopters, Gould and the pilot are lead to Brolin's location, where they manage to touch down long enough to allow Brolin to climb on board the wing of the old bi-plane.

In the chase that follows, it takes all the crop duster's aerobatic skills and local knowledge to evade the 'copters and their blazing guns.

Timely deployment of a cloud of pesticide causes both pursuers to crash, leaving Gould and Brolin free to escape.

The conspiracy is finally exposed when the pair show up at Arlington National Cemetery just as the US President is delivering the eulogy on live TV at the memorial service to honour the supposedly dead Capricorn One crew.


It is an indication of the quality of acting and plausibility of the premise of this post-Watergate thriller, that, in a strange cart-before-the-horse reversal, many people now cite the movie as evidence that NASA did indeed fake the Moon landings.

The reality is, of course, that the movie was inspired by allegations that the Apollo Moon landings were faked, and the notion that NASA could ever keep a secret on such a scale is, of course, preposterous.

Conspiracy theorists might get more mileage from the fact that Barbra Streisand has been married twice, currently to James Brolin, and formerly to Elliot Gould.


Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/17/moon.landing.hoax/index.html
http://www.facts-about.org.uk/science-moon-landing-conspiracy-hoax-theory.htm
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/29/Floridian/Lunar_lunacy.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbra_Streisand#Personal_life

Fast Food Nation (2006)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO IS REALLY TO BLAME)

[The following Plot Buster started life as a question about who was really to blame for the problems in the fast food industry. However, it met with such little interest, that I have converted it into a Bust.]

Fast Food Nation (2006) directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Schlosser, loosely based on Schlosser's bestselling 2001 non-fiction book of the same name. Stars Greg Kinnear.

In the end Greg Kinnear learns that job security means more to him than the health of his company's customers.

Greg Kinnear plays a sports broadcasting marketing director recently recruited to the management of a nationwide chain of fast food restaurants.

Responsible for the company's most popular menu item, Kinnear is charged with discovering why independent research has found alarmingly high levels of faecal material in their meat.

Travelling to their supplier's processing plant in Colorado, Kinnear has trouble getting to the truth, until he is put in touch with veteran cattle rancher, Kris Kristofferson, whose Mexican housekeeper is able to confirm Kinnear's worst fears about the operation's hygiene standards.

Indeed poor hygiene is only a symptom of worse problems with their supplier that all stem from its ruthless exploitation of illegal Mexican migrant workers.

Armed with this information, Kinnear decides to corner his company's local representative, Bruce Willis, who brokered their cut price deal for the meat.

Willis, however, is unapologetic of the situation, and impresses upon Kinnear the precariousness of his new position should the truth ever come to light.

After a telephone conversation with his wife, in which she reminds him just how important success in his new job means to their family, Kinnear decides not to reveal what he has discovered to his boss.

Interwoven around Kinnear's quest are the stories of various other individuals caught up in the fast food business.

There is the franchise owner who is afraid to reveal what he knows about poor working practices to Kinnear.

And there are his low paid workers who are more interested in thinking up schemes to rob the franchise than they are in doing a better job.

Also shown are the futile efforts of a group of young idealists to protest against the environmental damage that the company's exploitation of cattle causes.

And, of course, there are the illegal migrants who are not only exploited by the meat supplier managers, but also by their supervisor, fellow Mexican Bobby Cannavale, and by the ruthless people traffickers who smuggle them into the US.


Linklater's fictionalised account of Schlosser's revealing investigation into the fast food industry makes pretty unpalatable viewing, and not just because of the contents of the burgers!

Nobody emerges guilt free, except maybe for the migrants themselves and Kristofferson's ranch owner who rails against the effect that corporate free market culture has had on food production.

So, perhaps it's not surprising that the film met with more critical than commercial success, as audiences were understandably reluctant to face the awkward question of just how their fast food could be so cheap?

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation_%28film%29

The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003) (Advanced Plot Buster)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[And now for an example of an Advanced Bust - not my own work, but that of the actor, comedian and writer Robert Webb, presenting a recent BBC Three program broadcast on UK television devoted to exposing a whole raft of continuity blunders that litter some of our favourite movie blockbusters. The Bust was used to introduce a collection of gaffes from the series.]

The Matrix series primarily consists of a trilogy of science-fiction-action films written and directed by the brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski, produced by Joel Silver, and starring Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne.

The premise of The Matrix [trilogy] is so simple it's hard to see how [its producers would] ever make a movie mistake.

Keanu Reeves is contacted by [Laurence Fishburne] a terrorist wanted by the government.

[Fishburne] explains that the real world is a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity have been captured by a race of machines which live off their body heat and imprison their minds with an artificial reality known as The Matrix.

[Reeves] must enter The Matrix and defeat the super powerful computer programs devoted to snuffing out the rebellion.

It pretty much writes itself.

Brilliant:)

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_%28franchise%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Webb_%28actor%29
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s454n

The Commitments (1991)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DOES OR DOESN'T SUCCEED)

[And now for a Bust of a movie that is unashamedly feel good.]

The Commitments (1991) Alan Parker's film adaptation of Roddy Doyle's novel of the same name. Stars Colm Meaney, Johnny Murphy, Robert Arkins and Andrew Strong.

In the end Robert Arkins fails to become the manager of the world's greatest (Irish, soul) band.

Son of Elvis loving Dubliner Colm Meaney, Arkins plays an ambitious young man, who will stop at nothing in order to realise his dreams of success in the music industry.

To this end he manages to bring together and equip a group of variously talented teenagers who gradually come to share his aspirations.

However, it is only the late addition of charismatic, middle-aged, veteran trumpet player, Johnny Murphy, to the group that not only lights a fire underneath the disparate bunch of wannabes, but which also ultimately leads to the band's demise.

Chief among the teenage talents Arkins recruits is bus conductor Andrew Strong, whose ill manners and boorish self belief is only just tolerated by the other band members because he possesses the singing voice of soul god.

Despite sexual jealousies, the mounting tension that Strong's presence generates, and a sometimes less than whole-hearted commitment to their cause, the group seems to be on the brink of success in clinching a record deal.

But after a promised guest appearance of one of Murphy's famous former jamming partners (the unseen Wilson Pickett) fails to materialise, Arkins decides, in frustration, to abandon his creation.

Only when he is stopped in the street by a chauffeur-driven limousine seeking directions, does Arkins realise how close he and the band came to hitting the big time.


Fifteen years after Bugsy Malone (1976) Alan Parker hit musical pay dirt for a second time with this modern take on the Garland-Rooney "let's put on a show" formula.

It's not hard to like a movie so completely infused with the soul classics of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown and Wilson Pickett.

What raises this story head and shoulders above its antecedents, though, is the absolute authenticity of both the characters' voices and the lives of crushing poverty from which these would-be stars aspire to escape.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Commitments_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugsy_Malone
http://www.musicals101.com/who7c.htm#Rooney
http://www.musicals101.com/who3b.htm#Garland

Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) (2006)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER THE GIRL SURVIVES)

(SUPPLEMENTARY WARNING: THE BRIEF COMMENTARY THAT FOLLOWS THIS BUST CONTAINS STRONG OPINIONS THAT ARE GRAPHICALLY EXPRESSED AND THAT MAY CAUSE OFFENCE TO THOSE OF A DELICATE DISPOSITION.)

[And now for a Bust that tries to establish whether or not the fantasy portrayed is real or just imagined.]

Pan's Labyrinth (Spanish: El Laberinto del Fauno, "The Faun's Labyrinth" literally, "The Labyrinth of the Faun") (2006) is a Spanish language fantasy film, written and directed by Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro, starring Sergi López i Ayats and Ivana Baquero.

The young girl played by Ivana Baquero is callously murdered by her sadistically brutal army captain stepfather played by Sergi López i Ayats.

In the midst of the Franquist repression following the Spanish Civil War, Banquero and her heavily pregnant and sick mother are relocated to an isolated farmstead from which her stepfather, the father of the unborn baby, intends to hunt down guerrillas fighting in the surrounding forested hills.

A lover of books and fairytales, Bamquero finds respite from her unhappy situation in the companionship of her stepfather's housekeeper and in the company of fantastic creatures that only she can see and that dwell in the underground grotto of some nearby labyrinthine ruins.

While the captain goes about his business of torture and murder, all the time more worried for the health of his unborn child than for that of his wife, Bamquero is set three tasks by the giant faun creature she first met in the grotto, which are to prove whether she is the long lost daughter of the king of the faun's underground home.

Life for Bamquero in the real world becomes unbearable when her mother dies in childbirth, and her friend the housekeeper is discovered by the captain to have been collaborating with the guerrilla fighters.

However, before the captain can begin his torture of her, the housekeeper is able to escape to join the guerrillas, disfiguring his face with the knife that she always carries tucked in her apron.

The final task that Bamquero must complete, is to secretly bring the newborn child to the faun. The fact that she is able to magically get through locked doors and impenetrable walls to accomplish this suggests that the fantastic world of the faun may not be just in Bamquero's imagination.

Nevertheless, ultimately Bamquero cannot bring herself to give up her innocent brother to the faun in order to enter the secret realm.

Unfortunately, when the captain eventually catches up with her, he shoots his stepdaughter dead after recovering the infant, although he himself is shot dead moments later when the massing guerrillas, led by the housekeeper, catch up with him.

As Bamquero lies dying, in her imagination she is reunited with her dead mother and her royal father in their underground kingdom, where she once again becomes the princess that the faun had recognised her to be.


So, what are we to make of such a universally praised (especially by one Mark Kermode writing for the Guardian newspaper, whose high opinion of the movie is only surpassed by his high opinion of his own opinions) and prize garnering creation?

Well, this is a fantasy film like no other, with absolutely no ambition to be a feel-good movie.

Without doubt the film represents the pinnacle of writer-director del Toro's small but mostly excellent body of work to date. It demonstrates a combination of film making skill and imagination that is perhaps second only to that of the great Terry Gilliam.

However, in exactly the same way that del Toro's youthful heroine is only able to cope with the brutal reality of her life by escaping into fantasy, the film's bloody and unremitting bleak setting in the brutality of the Spanish conflict is only made palatable by the distractingly fantastic, although similarly dark, flights of del Toro's imagination.

Perhaps that was exactly the director's intention.

Whether or not it was deliberate though, it is hard not to feel (and it is at this point that readers of a sensitive nature should turn back) that one has unwittingly consumed something the leaves such a bad taste in the mouth, that it might as well have been a candy covered turd.

Of course, there are plenty of other such cinematic confections on offer, but none that are as worthy of your consideration as this.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan%27s_Labyrinth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Gilliam

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO GETS THE GIRL)

[Now for a Bust that doesn't really do its target justice, but does demonstrate that it is not always necessary to begin with the first scene of a movie when Plot Busting.]

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) is an adventure film directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.

In the end Orlando Bloom wins Keira Knightley's heart, and Johnny Depp lives to pirate another day.

In an amazing feat of seamanship, lone captain Depp just manages to sail his sinking skiff into Port Royal, Jamaica where he plans to commandeer a more suitable vessel for his pirate needs.

While attempting to bamboozle a couple of British marines charged with protecting the harbour's contents, Depp witnesses the local governor's fainting daughter, Knightley plunge into the sea nearby.

Despite diving in and rescuing Knightley, Depp is locked up to await a pirate's fate at the end of a rope.

However, before Depp can suffer his short drop and sudden stop, the port is attacked by the cursed crew of the infamous Black Pearl who are searching for a golden medallion that Knightley had round her neck when she fell in the harbour earlier.

Knightley is eventually captured and taken prisoner after she gives the captain of the Pearl, Geoffrey Rush, the surname of the young man, Bloom, from whom she stole the gold without his knowing many years earlier, as her own.

When the governor fails to immediately pursue her kidnappers, Bloom who has secretly been in love with Knightley since they first met, frees Depp, who he believes can help him track down the Pearl and Knighley.

With another brilliant piece of piratical trickery, Depp and Bloom single handedly manage to make off with the fastest vessel in port.

Picking up his friend and first mate, on their way, together with a motley crew, Depp manages to catch up with Rush as he attempts to lift the curse afflicting him and his crew of undead, by returning the last remaining piece of a horde of stolen Aztec gold, and spilling some of Knightley's blood, believing that she is the daughter of a former crew member, partly responsible for the curse.

Of course, it is really Bloom's blood that Rush needs in order to lift the curse.

In the process of discovering this there is much adventure, double-cross scheming and general pirate fun to be had, not only involving Depp and Rush and their respective pirate crews, but also the commodore that Knightley's governor father eventually dispatches for her rescue, who incidentally also has feelings for her, and who the governor wants as his daughter's suitor.

Eventually Depp and Bloom save the day by choosing the most opportune moment to lift the curse on the damned pirates, so that Depp is able to plug Rush with his pistol, and the commodore is able to capture Rush's once again mortal crew.

Unfortunately, Depp's part in saving Knightley is not enough to excuse his long list of former pirate crimes, and he again finds himself facing the hangman's noose.

So, for a second time Bloom has to come to Depp's rescue helping him to take flight and rejoin his jolly band of buccaneers.

But in the process Bloom manages to declare his love for Knightley, who now reciprocates, an outcome that both the governor and even the commodore, before deciding to pursue the fleeing Depp, seem (strangely) resigned to.


Such a brief description hardly does justice to such a well plotted, smart and action packed adventure, that is both funny and exciting, and at times even a bit moving.

Without exception the parts, even minor roles, are well written and played to perfection, with none of the clumsy cliche ridden dialogue that is so typical of the genre.

But it is the mesmerising performances of both Rush and the Keith Richards inspired Depp that really make this movie sore above the usual rum and cutlass adventures of the past.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean:_The_Curse_of_the_Black_Pearl

28 Days Later (2002)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER OR NOT ANYONE SURVIVES)

[Now for the movie that started the whole virus infected speed zombie controversy.]

28 Days Later (2002) Directed by Danny Boyle. Staring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston.

In the end Cillian Murphy and his two female companions survive to make contact with the outside world.

Following the animal rights activist release of an alarmingly violent chimpanzee from a medical research facility, cycle courier Murphy comes round from a road traffic accident induced coma to find himself completely alone in an abandoned major London hospital.

Dressing himself in green medical scrubs, Murphy sets off through a deserted city rife with signs of some chaotic catastrophe looking for help and answers.

Unfortunately for Murphy, the first person he encounters is a maniacal, blood splattered priest obviously intent on extracting more than just a confession from him.

Murphy's flight attracts an increasing number of similarly rabid individuals until he is rescued by a young pair who lead him to their refuge in a London Underground station snack kiosk.

Although unaware of the exact source of infection, Naomie Harris and her companion explain the rapid contagion that has spread uncontrollably through the population turning everyone affected into blood-crazed monsters.

The full horror of the situation is revealed to Murphy, first, when the pair help him to reach his parents' home, where he finds that they have committed suicide, and then, when Harris slaughters her companion without hesitation, as soon as she sees that he has accidentally come into contact with one of the infected.

Murphy and Haris's prospects seem bleak until they discover another pair of survivors, Brendan Gleeson and his teenage daughter, who plan to abandon their fortified tower block apartment in order to track down the origin of a prerecorded radio transmission promising a solution to infection.

Travelling north in Gleeson's black taxi cab, the group eventually reach a corpse strewn blockade that turns out to be the source of the broadcast.

When Gleeson is accidentally infected by one of the corpses, the group is only saved by the sudden appearance of a squad of soldiers, who subsequently take Murphy and the women to a nearby mansion that they have made into a base.

There they meet the soldiers' commanding officer, Christopher Eccleston, who explains that the promised solution is to wait for the infected to starve to death, while his men get busy repopulating society with the willing, or otherwise, help of the women that have been lured to their camp.

Realising their mistake, Murphy has to escape the now murderous squaddies and somehow free the trapped women, which he does with the help of an infected soldier who he lets loose in the mansion.

As the crazed soldier works his way through his former comrades, Murphy and the women take flight in Gleeson's cab, but not before Murphy is shot in the chest by a soon to be consumed Eccleston.

Harris is obviously no stranger to the emergency room, though, as she succeeds in saving Murphy's life.

The movie closes with the trio signalling their survival with a huge homemade banner spread out on the ground for a low flying jet fighter that buzzes the isolated cottage that they have made their home to see.


George A. Romero purists may have balked at Boyle's reinvention of the zombie horror movie. But there's no denying that his creation sustained a genre that became hard to take seriously after its superb spoofing by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) which actually made an oblique reference to Boyle's contested premise that zombies could result from a virus infection and would die unless sustained by consuming others.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead

28 Weeks Later (2007)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER OR NOT ANYONE WILL EVER SURVIVE)

[Now the first of a two part Bust covering a movie and its sequel, that unusually was more than just a money making exercise.]

28 Weeks Later (2007)
Directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. With Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Renner, Mackintosh Muggleton.

In the end a "rage" infected Robert Carlyle is shot to death by his teenage daughter as she witnesses his attack on her younger brother, Mackintosh Muggleton.

Carlyle only barely manages to survive an outbreak of a highly contagious virus that causes its victims to become crazed flesh eating monsters, by leaving his wife for dead in an isolated house overrun by the infected.

Haunted by his cowardly flight, he eventually reaches the safety of London's Isle of Dogs, which has been transformed into a military controlled disinfected area from which it is hoped to rebuild British society.

While there, Carlyle is re-united with his two teenage children who by chance had been abroad on a school trip during the initial catastrophic outbreak.

However, it's not long before Carlyle discovers that the pair have sneaked out of the protected zone to visit their old family home, where to everyones' amazement the children find their mother alive despite Carlyle having told them that she was dead.

Once recovered by a military infection control team both children and mother are quarantined separately within the military controlled area while their possible exposure to the virus is assessed.

The discovery that the mother has miraculously survived obvious contact with the virus and so become its first known unaffected carrier, is made just too late to save Carlyle, though, who manages to infect himself by secretly penetrating his wife's quarantine and kissing her.

Things rapidly spiral out of control, as the infected Carlyle goes through the population of the controlled zone in a chain reaction of infection. So much so, that the military decide that the only way to deal with the situation is to annihilate everyone within the area whether or not they are infected.

Luckily for the children, the possibility that their genetic makeup might hold a clue to fighting the virus is recognised by one of the military medics, who together with a rooftop sniper, Jeremy Renner, disillusioned by his superiors' kill-all order, helps the children and several other survivors to escape immediate death within the zone.

However, it is not just the children and their protectors who manage to escape into the surrounding city. So they end up having to evade not only the chasing infection control teams but also a brand new wave of flesh hungry maniacs.

Eventually the children manage to rendezvous with a helicopter pilot friend of Renner's, but not until everyone else of their companions has been killed, Carlyle eventually having been dispatched by his daughter.

The pilot agrees to airlift the pair to the safety of nearby France, but whether or not Muggleton inherited his mother's immunity to the virus is thrown into questions by the closing movie's shots of virus infected lunatics storming towards the iconic Eiffel Tower.


The sequel is a worthy successor to Executive Producer Danny Boyle's low-budget zombie hit 28 Days Later (2002) the emphasis having shifted from whether anyone can survive to whether the spread of infection can ever be contained. And, of course, the way has been paved for a further sequel, 28 Months Later.

Flesh crazed zombies have never been so animated;)

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later

Star Wars (1977) (Extreme Plot Buster)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[Now for an example of an Extreme Plot Buster that causes much argument amongst players.]

Space mercenary helps farmboy destroy weapon of mass destruction.

Star Wars (1977) (later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) An epic space opera written and directed by George Lucas, starring Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill.

[Notice a few things about this Extreme Plot Buster (EPB) example.

Firstly, that acronyms must be spelled out. So WMD counts as four words: weapon(s) of mass destruction.

Secondly, it is acceptable to miss out the preposition "to" as long as the meaning of the sentence is not compromised.

Lastly, it is not necessary to qualify the description (for example "space mercenary and yeti help") to distinguish it from Joss Whedon's Serenity (2005) because they are not the same story as some people would like to suggest. You know who you are!

A suitable EPB for Serenity (2005) might be

Space mercenary helps medic save weapon of mass destruction sister.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_IV:_A_New_Hope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_%28film%29

Alfie (2004)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO LEARNS WHAT)

[This next Plot Buster is for a Hollywood remake of a classic bit of British cinema from the 1960s, which didn't turn out to be half as bad as many people would have thought:)]

Alfie (2004)
Written, directed and produced by Charles Shyer. With Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, and Susan Sarandon.

In the end Jude Law learns that you only get out of a relationship what you are prepared to put into it, maybe?

Law plays the eponymous Vespa riding, limo driving, womanising, ambitious cockney about Manhattan.

With good looks and charm to spare, he is able to play the field without commitment. Leading him to wrongly imagine that he is smarter than everyone else, when it comes to matters of love.

However, through a succession of failed relationships, Law's credo of sex without consequences, while searching for the best deal available, is thrown into question.

He is first seen smoothly extricating himself from an extended involvement with a married woman who is beginning to show signs of wanting more than just the slap and tickle he has to offer.

However, in the aftermath of this skillful manoeuvre he inadvertently manages to ruin his best prospect to date for commitment, with single mum, Marisa Tomei, and her young son, whom Law has reluctantly grown to adore.

Law's several subsequent attempts to rekindle the relationship never succeed.

Initially, his disappointment barely registers, though, as, without even breaking stride, Law succeeds in bedding his intended business partner, Omar Epps's recent ex-girlfriend, Nia Long.

Surprisingly for Law, this one night stand actually re-unites the couple, who also happen to be his closest friends in the city.

However, all future plans that the interracial group have are ruined after the restored couple without warning decides to move up-state, after Law secretly helps Long attend an abortion clinic following her encounter with him.

Only much later does Law discover that there was no termination but that Epps still chose to commit to Long despite knowing that her baby was not his, but Law's.

Almost by accident, Law then begins what turns out to be a short-lived but intensely passionate affair with a stunningly beautiful though psychologically unstable young woman.

The impossibility of their long term happiness is brought home to Law, when he gets involved with a fabulously preserved, financially successful, freewheeling man-eater of an older woman played by Susan Sarandon, whose bedroom exploits eclipse even those of Law's. (Sarandon must have sold her soul for the part!)

At last Law thinks he has met his ideal partner and is ready for commitment.

It is ironic then, that it should be from Sarandon that Law learns most about the consequences of his self-indulgent take on life, when she casually rejects him for a younger man.

A rare display of bitter anger reveals just how much Law is affected by the realisation.


If there is a problem with Shyer's re-working of Bill Naughton's original 1966 screenplay adaption of his own novel and play, it is due to the updating of the story for a Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) generation.

Alfie was originally conceived as a brash, unsympathetic and irredeemable character, whose seemingly invulnerable exploits were only made tolerable by the brilliantly beguiling acting of Michael Caine.

In contrast, we pity, rather than despise, the poor life choices Law's, no less brilliantly portrayed, Alfie makes.

Taken on it's own terms the re-make is just as entertaining as the original, and even has something interesting to say about aspects of modern relationships.

It's just that its significance as social commentary could in no way match that of its predecessor, as life has inevitably moved on.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_%282004_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfie_%281966_film%29


[Keen witted readers of this Bust who are familiar with the re-make will no doubt be wondering what happened to the episode where Jude Law has a heart-to-heart conversation with a middle-aged man, played by Dick Latessa, whom he meets in the washroom of a cancer clinic.

Although Latessa gets to ask the immortal question "What's it all about, Alfie?" and later has a second encounter with Law during the film's final third, the part is not integral to the story.

So it has, so to speak, hit the Busting-room floor. Remember the Way of the Plot Buster: if it's not essential to the plot, don't include it.

So, this example highlights an important aspect of Plot Busting: reading a Plot Bust is not the same thing as seeing the movie.

But a Bust should represent the essence of a plot even if some of the detail is missing.]

The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ALL ENDS)

[Now for another example of a mini Plot Buster created to help confirm a particular movie's title from a series of plot points.]

The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995) Written and directed by Philip Ridley, starring Brendan Fraser, Ashley Judd and Viggo Mortensen.

It all ends with Brendan Fraser being shot to death.

Fraser, in the title role, plays a rather simple youth with a passion for flagellation, recently expelled from the religious cult in which he grew up.

He is taken in by a slightly strange group of three friends, one of whom, played by Ashley Judd, he becomes infatuated with after overseeing her sunbathing topless, despite the fact that she already has a boyfriend in Viggo Mortensen.

Unfortunately, Judd's crazed mother, who disapproves of her daughter's choice of Mortensen, plays on Fraser's naivety and former cult beliefs in order to convince him to attack the couple.

During the ensuing fight Judd is barely able to make Fraser see sense, before the third member of the group bursts on the scene to save the couple from Fraser's attack by shotgunning him to death.


It's all a bit tragic, really.


Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_Darkly_Noon

WarGames (1983) (Extreme Plot Busting example)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

[And now for an example suggested to me that perfectly illustrates the art of Extreme Plot Busting. Obviously, the additional rule for such competitive Busting is not to use the stars' actual names.]

Teenage hacker saves world from nuclear oblivion.

WarGames (1983) Directed by John Badham. Stars Matthew Broderick as a young man who mistakes reality for game-playing when he gains access to a military central computer, almost triggering World War III as a result.

[EDIT: There are some other aspects to competitive Plot Busting that I have just been reminded of.

Such games usually require the players to stick to a specific movie genre.

Usually the descriptions are expected to be proper sentences, but that makes one word Busts impossible, which can limit the fun, so is rarely enforced.

Players can Bust the same movie plot as someone else, if they want to. But Busts themselves must be unambiguous. There's no point in coming up with a shorter description if it could be applied to more than one movie.

The winner is the person who comes up with the shortest description, that at least one other player can recognise. (This aspect of Extreme Plot Busting can lead to much argument. I have been in situations where competitors pretended never to have heard of The Wizard of Oz (1939)! Team playing is the only effective way of avoiding such gamesmanship tactics. Players are split into teams, and must describe a movie for their team members to recognise.)

To summarise, the supplementary rules for combat Busting are:

Rule #6 Use character descriptions only. In other words no names (character or actor), no words from the movie's title, and no quotations (that's another game.)

Rule #7 The description must be unambiguous. If anyone else in the game can identify another movie that fits the Busted description, then the description is disqualified.

Rule #8 Someone must recognise the movie from its Busted description.

Rule #9 The shortest description wins.]


Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

Hannibal Rising (2007)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHY HE DOES IT)

[And now an example that demonstrates why there is no such thing as a rule in Plot Busting.

When a character or characters of a plot are more famous than the actors portraying them, it makes more sense to ignore Rule #2, and describe the plot in terms of the characters rather than in terms of the players. This would also be appropriate if a character was played by more than one performer in situations, for instance, where they age significantly during the course of the movie.

However, in such situations, don't mix character and player names. Stick to one or other for the whole description. And if a character name is not easily identifiable, use a character description instead.

Rather unusually this Plot Buster was produced for someone who was desperate for an explanation of a character's motivation, but who couldn't face the prospect of seeing the actual movie, for obvious reasons.]

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Directed by Peter Webber. With Aaran Thomas, Gaspard Ulliel, Li Gong. A prequel to the thriller film series featuring the notoriously violent Hannibal Lecter character created by the author Thomas Harris.

Hannibal Lecter is a homicidal maniac because as a young boy he was forced to eat part of his own little sister.

Hiding from Nazi persecution near the end of the second world war, the young Lecter, played by Thomas, and his infant sister witness the deaths of their parents in the midst of a battle on the Eastern Front between German occupiers and Soviet liberators.

Worse is to come for the pair though as they are discovered by a starving band of looting former local collaborators, who in desperation kill Lecter's sister and then share her remains with him as food.

The rest of the movie follows Lecter as he grows into a young man exacting bloody revenge against his sister's killers, in the process becoming a cold blooded cannibalistic murderer himself.

The young Lecter spends most of the remainder of the war in a Soviet run hostel for displaced boys, where, played by Ulliel, he makes life very hard form himself by punishing rudeness and fighting bullying on his path to adulthood.

Fleeing the threatening environment of the hostel, he travels west across war ravaged Europe into France where he manages to trace his recently widowed aunt, an ancestor worshiping Japanese former noble, played by Gong, for whom he develops an ultimately unrequited infatuation.

It is while staying in his aunt's household that Lecter's obsession with fine food is kindled and it is from her that he (somewhat improbably) learns "the way of the warrior." Indeed, it is as a result of Lecter's defending of his aunt's honour, that his activities as a killer are first brought to the attention of the authorities.

Fortunately for Lecter, though, the French war crimes investigator, who had been on the trail of Lector's first victim, fails to find enough evidence on which to charge him. So Lecter is free to move to Paris to take up a working scholarship at medical school, which proves to be the ideal opportunity for him to hone his skills as an anatomist.

Lecter is somehow able to fit his quest for revenge around both his studies and job in the dissecting school, and in a series of increasingly gruesome dining related murders manages to work his way through the gang responsible for his sister's death.

Neither the authorities nor his aunt are in any doubt about Lecter's murderous activities, though. Nevertheless he is eventually able to evade justice and conceal his flight in an explosion aboard the barge owned by his penultimate victim.

Forced out of France, Lecter washes up on the shores of Canada where he is both able to complete his bloody quest and begin a whole new career of murder in the Americas.


If there is a problem with this explanation of Hannibal Lecter's rise to infamy, it is in the way that aspects of his character and subsequent history are shoehorned (sometimes ridiculously) into the plot, most notably in the link that is made between the iconic face mask that prison guards later force him to wear and the Japanese warrior face mask that his aunt owns and he chooses to try on for no other, apparent, reason than to provide an image for the movie's publicity poster to use.

However, the real problem with the film is the lack of Anthony Hopkins, without whom this macabre character study is reduced to mere pantomime horror.


Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Rising_%28film%29

The Way of the Plot Buster

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)

Does anyone know the way? / Did we hear someone say?
We just haven't got a clue what to do
Does anyone know the way? / There's got to be a way
To Plot Buster!

No doubt, if you've been following the examples of Plot Busting up until now, you're beginning to detect a pattern.

Indeed, many people would recognise the process of Plot Busting either as the well known party game where players have to describe the plot of a movie in as few words as possible without using any words from its title, the absolute classic example of which is "police chief kills big fish," or even from their time at school, "summarise the following movie in one hundred words or less."

So, clearly there can be different degrees of Busterisation, where the school assignment represents what would be considered as Regular Plot Busting, and the party game would be referred to as Extreme Plot Busting.

As a rule, Extreme Plot Busting is only useful in competitive situations, like party games, or quiz nights.

The sort of Plot Busting that this blog is concerned with is either Regular or Advanced. And perhaps it would be useful to anyone interested in trying out a bit of Busting for themselves, if some rules were established to guide them. A kind of Plot Buster Training Program, if you will.

All the Plot Busters that feature here start with a brief introduction, stating the name of the film, the year it was released, who the director was, and who the stars are that will feature in the description. These introductions are not an essential part of the Plot Busting process, though.

So, the first rule of Buster Club is...

Rule #1 State the outcome of the plot first. There is nothing more important.

Rule #2 Never use character names from the plot, always refer to the performers by name. This is because the names of performers are generally more recognisable than those of the characters they play. For example, everyone will recognise Johnny Depp, but they might not be able to put a face to Gilbert Grape.

Rule #3 Ignore details that don't affect the eventual outcome of the plot. It is essentially the degree to which you do this that determines whether you are performing Regular, Advanced or Extreme Plot Busting.

Rule #4 Ignore the order in which the plot is played out in the movie. In particular, if the director has been monkeying about with the chronology of events in the movie (examples include Memento (2000) and Pulp Fiction (1994) ) don't be afraid to restore them to real-time. And only introduce a detail as it is necessary to the explanation. So don't mention something first just because it happened at the start of the movie, if its relevance only becomes apparent at the end.

Rule #5 There are no rules, except for Rule #1, of course. There are only guidelines.

So, now that you've just learned Plot Busting, "show me!"

Donnie Darko (2001)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DIES IN THE END)

[And now for a classic mini Plot Buster. If I had a penny for every time someone's said that they didn't understand the subject of this movie, well I wouldn't exactly be a millionaire, but I'd certainly be on my way.

The problem with some movies is that they practically defy being Busted, because you pare away so much of the irrelevant plot, that you suddenly find yourself with an empty pair of hands. Under those circumstances everyone has the right to say that they didn't understand what was going on;)]

Donnie Darko (2001) is an American science fiction film written and directed by Richard Kelly, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Jake Gyllenhaal dies in the end.

Jake Gyllenhaal is a troubled high school student, whose habit of sleepwalking miraculously saves him from being killed when a jet engine falls through a time-warp and then through his bedroom ceiling.

Following this near miss he falls in love with the new girl in school, while suffering a series of increasingly surreal hallucinations that lead him to discover the secret of time travel.

When his new girl is accidentally killed by a swerving car, Jake Gyllenhaal uses this knowledge to wind back time to save her, but in the process is himself killed by the same aircraft engine that had fallen on his previously empty bed.

I've left out various sub-plots. But that's basically what the film's about:)

[Notice that although it would be usual to abbreviate Jake Gyllenhaal to just Gyllenhaal in a Plot Buster, in this case his name is used in full, to disambiguate it from that of his sister's, Maggie, who also stars in the movie, although that fact is not included in the Bust.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Darko

Perfect Stranger (2007)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID IT)

[Now for the first mini Plot Buster, where only enough of the plot is described in order to understand the ending. Not surprisingly this resulted from a query from someone who missed a vital moment near the end of the movie, and therefore couldn't understant how things had managed to work out just the way they did.]

Perfect Stranger (2007) is a psychological thriller film directed by James Foley, starring Halle Berry and Bruce Willis.

The Halle Berry character is the murderer.

She killed her "friend" played by Nicki Aycox, because she was being blackmailed by her, after Aycox witnessed Berry and her mother killing her abusive father as a child.

Because of his broken-off affair with Aycox, Berry was able to frame the Bruce Willis character and so hide her own guilt.

But Berry ends up killing Willis in order to maintain the secret, later claiming to the police that she was acting in self-defence, as Willis must have indeed been the true murderer.

Unfortunately for Berry, her cold-blooded murder of the innocent Willis is also witnessed. Time for a sequel!

I hope that this has unraveled the somewhat tortuous plot twists for you.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_Stranger_%28film%29

Seconds (1966)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO ROCK)

[This Plot Buster resulted from a request to identify a film title, not because the plot was difficult to understand. The asker wanted the name of a black&white movie concerning some man who worked for either the CIA or the FBI, and who had plastic surgery in order to go deep undercover. The only other facts that the poster could recall were that there was a scene which showed various charts and diagrams of the agent's new face, and that there was a shocking ending when the agent revealed his new face in the mirror.

The question languished for several days without receiving any attention, until I wondered if the asker might have mis-remembered some aspects of the movie. I thought I recognised it. So the purpose of the Plot Buster was to give just enough information for the asker to recognise whether or not I had found the right title.]

Seconds (1966) is an American black & white film thriller directed by John Frankenheimer with a screenplay by Lewis John Carlino, based on a novel by David Ely. It was released by Paramount Pictures and starred Rock Hudson.

At the end of the movie Rock Husdon discovers that he is about to be murdered because of a deal he unwittingly signed up to.

Because he is suffering a mid-life crisis, Rock Hudson engages the services of a secret organisation that promises its customers the chance of a new life.

The way that the deal works is that both Hudson and an employee of the organisation undergo plastic surgery. Hudson is given a new face, while the employee is given Hudson's.

Hudson is then setup in his new life by the organisation, while the unfortunate employee is killed in what is made to look like a terrible accident, thus freeing Hudson from all the responsibilities of his old life.

Despite all the considerable trouble that the organisation goes to in order to provide Hudson with a fresh start, he soon realises that things aren't really working out the way he had hoped.

So he decides to take the organisation up on their offer of a second free transformation, if he wasn't entirely satisfied with the first one.

The terrible consequences of this deal only become apparent to Hudson at the very end of the movie, after he reveals his second new face in front of the mirror.

As he removes the bandages, he realises that he recognises the face in the mirror as that of the organisation's latest customer, a man he met only in passing as he arrived for his second round of surgery. The implications of this new face for his immediate future are instantly apparent to him.


The anonymous headquarters and secretive nature of the Seconds organisation would be easy to associate with some government agency. And their actions in setting Hudson up in a new life could easily be mistaken for some sort of undercover operation. So I think that there's a good chance that the movie that you're trying to recall is the one described.

It was an uncharacteristically serious role for Hudson, and was regarded as his best performance in movies, although his only ever Oscar nomination was for his earlier appearance in Giant (1956).

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconds_%28film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Hudson

A Perfect Getaway (2009)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO THE KILLERS ARE)

[This is the posting that prompted me to create Plot Busters. Someone posted that they nodded off during the performace, and didn't understand the movie. The advice that they received was to look it up on Wikipedia. They deleted their question before I had time to post a Plot Buster.]

A Perfect Getaway (2009) is an American psychological thriller film written and directed by David Twohy, starring Chris Hemsworth, Milla Jovovich, Kiele Sanchez, Timothy Olyphant, Steve Zahn and Marley Shelton. The film was shot in Puerto Rico and Hawaii, and its plot contain so many twists, turns and blind alleys, that it would defeat even the cleverest of champion maze solving lab rats.

(The plot summary available on Wikipedia is of very little help in unraveling the story, as it appears to have been written by somebody who themselves fell asleep at some point during the performance.)

The Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich characters are the killers.

Although the movie begins by portraying them as a mild-mannered and happy newlywed couple enjoying a hiking honeymoon in the wilds of Hawaii, they are eventually revealed to be a pair of psychopaths who are trying to make a career for themselves by murdering other couples whose identities they assume.

On their way by jeep to a particularly remote and beautiful beach the couple run into another pair of, seemingly less clean cut, hikers, played by Hemsworth and Shelton, who Zahn and Jovovich don't offer a lift to, despite the fact that they are on their way to the same beach.

Further along the trail Zahn and Jovovich meet a second couple of more experienced hikers, played by Olyphant and Sanchez, who they decide to team up with on their journey.

However, the widom of this decision soon comes into question when the group discovers a distressed young woman who has heard frightening news of a brutal slaying of yet another honeymooning couple on a nearby island, their teeth having been removed as part of the murder, ...

because Olyphant has been recounting his time as a member of the special forces involved in the invasion of Iraq, and Sanchez has demonstrated considerable skill with a knife by butchering a goat that Olyphant killed for everyones' supper.

Calm is temporarily restored within the group as the local police arrest the apparently sinister pair, whom Zahn and Jovovich had failed to give a lift in their jeep to earlier, after a collection of teeth is found in Hemsworth possession.

However, the truth of the situation is revealed, and blind panic restored, when the Sanchez character accidentally discovers camcorder footage of Zahn and Jovovich rehearing their new identities, those of their most recent victims.

All of Olyphant's military training, and Sanchez's butchering skills come into play in their ensuing battle for survival with Zahn and Jovovich, in which Olyphant only manages (somewhat improbably) to escape death from a bullet to the head by virtue of the metal plate that was put there following a previous encounter with a granade during his time in service.

In the end Olyphant and Sanchez prevail, but only after she pulls him out of the line of fire of a sniper, one of a number of police who have gotten involved in the chase, who luckily ends up killing Zahn insteed.

The movie closes with Olyphant proposing marriage to Sanchez, as they are airlifted from the scene. Perhaps not surprisingly, they both agree to forgo the pleasures of a honeymoon.

It is a testament to the skill of Twohy as a writer and a director that he manages to pull off this slight of hand, without leaving the audience feeling cheated by unforeseeable plot twists.

The clues are all there it you can manage to spot them. It's just that they've been so cleverly mashed up that he is able to play on an audience's expectations, so that the plot twists, when they do occur, are genuinely surprising.

But, as you found out, take your eyes off the action for even a moment, and you'll be lost.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Getaway
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/movies/07perfect.html
http://outlawvern.com/2010/01/13/a-perfect-getaway/
http://www.cinemademerde.com/Perfect_Getaway.shtml

And that's how we Plot Bust.