(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHO DID WHAT)
[And now for balance and fans of the art of Extreme Plot Busting, an undeniably better movie busted down to a single sentence.]
Psychiatrist realises he was murdered by patient after analysing boy who can communicate with ghosts.
The Sixth Sense (1999) is the American psychological thriller written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment that put Shyamalan on the map. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and quite rightly so.
[Pedantic busters should note that although not stated as a rule, it is acceptable, in the fashion of newspaper headlines, to omit both the indefinite and definite articles (i.e. a and the) from a bust as long as the meaning of the sentence is still clear.]
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Sense
Showing posts with label Willis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Willis. Show all posts
Monday, 21 March 2011
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
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
[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
Sunday, 11 April 2010
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 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
Thursday, 18 March 2010
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
[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
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