Save the Cat Goes to the Movies (26 page)

Midpoint:
The “stakes are raised” as Steve calls William and tells him about the murders. “Circumstances have changed,” he says. This is followed by a “time clock,” when William is given 24 hours to send proof for his loan. There’s a lot of eating in this movie, by people and on nature TV shows; while at another buffet, Frances is ordered to the Twin Cities on the case. Mike lives there — and now Frances’ “stakes are raised.”

Bad Guys Close In:
As Frances arrives in the Twin Cities, Harve refuses to let William handle the pay-off. Frances shows up at William’s work to interview Shep Proudfoot. At 1 Hour, Frances questions William for the first time. Then, making her “dark turn” — even if it’s the Minnesota housewife’s version — Frances dresses up and meets Mike for lunch. It’s an awkward moment as Mike has a tearful breakdown. The scene revisits the theme: If Frances is satisfied with her life, why hasn’t she told her husband she’s here? That night, Shep finds Steve and beats him. Their plan is falling apart fast.

All Is Lost:
Picking up the money, Steve’s surprised by Harve, who acts tough. Steve kills him but not before Harve shoots Steve in the face. William, with no money or wife, is “worse off than when this movie started.” Later, Steve opens the bag and sees the million dollars William got Harve to pay them. Steve buries the money; he has an idea how to keep it all.

Dark Night of the Soul:
Packing to leave the city, Frances learns Mike has psychiatric problems. Isolated on the road, she tries to find comfort in fast food and prepares to take a last stab at cracking the case.

Break into Three:
Frances returns to the car dealership and interviews William. She looks at a photo of William’s wife on his desk; the woman’s smiling face touches on the theme of “being happy with what we have” — Is Frances? Then she sees William fleeing the scene and knows he’s part of the kidnapping. Meanwhile, Steve comes back to the cabin and finds William’s wife dead; his cohort killed her. Attempting to escape, Steve is axed to death by his homicidal partner.

Finale:
Frances finds the tan Sierra and discovers the bad guy putting Steve’s body parts in a wood chipper. She shoots and arrests him. On the way home, she even lectures him and sums up the theme: “There’s more to life than a little money. Don’t you know that? And here you are and it’s a beautiful day. Well … I just don’t understand it.” This is a reminder for herself, as well.

Final Image:
William is arrested in a motel and Frances and her husband are back in bed. Frances’ flirtation with the dark side has made her homecoming and home life all the more rewarding.

In a great example of the “case within a case,” director Clint Eastwood explores how the past affects the present in his adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s best-selling novel. The incident at the heart of the story takes place 30 years earlier when the lives of three boys are changed when one is abducted by pedophiles — an event that seems buried. It will take a new crime — the murder of another man’s daughter — to rouse old ghosts and confront the sins of the past.

The “detective” here is actually several characters, for even though one, played by Kevin Bacon, is the cop on the case, the real mystery-solving is left to “civilians,” which is what makes this such a great example of the “Personal Whydunit.”

Sean Penn plays the father of the murdered girl, who now has to dredge up his criminal past to avenge her. Likewise, the man who was abducted as a boy, Tim Robbins, must battle his own demons in a separate event that coincides with this new crime in ways that force his guilt into the open. As we will see by the film’s ending, the rules are not the same for every community. The “dark turn” Sean makes to find the truth plays differently in this small town. A textbook adaptation by Brian Helgeland takes an unwieldy narrative and gives it a spine that shows the theme: Even the most innocent must face themselves and their sins.

W Type: Personal Whydunit

W Cousins:
The Third Man, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Conversation, Body Double, Final Analysis, Jagged Edge, Kiss the Girls, High Crimes, Disturbia

MYSTIC RIVER

Screenplay by
Brian Helgeland
Based on the novel by
Dennis Lehane

Opening Image:
1975. Three boys play ball in a working-class Massachusetts neighborhood. Pausing to etch their names in wet cement, one is stopped mid-task by two men posing as police. They take the boy with them in their car.

Theme Stated:
Days later, after being held and sexually abused, the boy escapes. Returned home, he is talked about by neighbors who refer to him as “damaged goods.” Does the “damage” of the past mark us for life? That’s what this movie will explore.

Set-Up:
Now in the present, the three boys have grown up, each affected by this past event. Dave Boyle (Tim Robbins), the one who was abducted, is now a quiet, overprotective father and husband. Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn) has a teen daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), a new wife, Annabeth (Laura Linney), and a criminal past. He too is overprotective, not liking that Katie is seeing Brendan (Tom Guiry), son of Just Ray, a man Sean once committed crimes with. We also meet a third man, Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon), now a cop. One night, while at a bar, Tim sees Katie, drunk.

Catalyst:
Tim comes home to his wife (Marcia Gay Harden) late. He is bloody, and cryptically tells her about being mugged and beating his attacker so hard he may have killed him. Next day, Katie’s car is found abandoned; she’s missing.

Debate:
What happened? Is Katie dead or just a runaway? Brendan and his deaf brother, Silent Ray (Spencer Treat Clark), come into the store Sean owns, and we see Sean dislikes both. As luck would have it, Kevin gets the case, and arrives in his old neighborhood. After church, Sean sees police cars roar by, sirens blaring.

Break into Two:
At Minute 23, Kevin works the crime scene, as Sean turns up with his old crew, the Savage Brothers, and yells to be let past the police barricade. Also involved now is Marcia Gay, who doesn’t know what to make of her husband’s wild story. Each “detective” will piece together the clues of the case as it relates to them, as past and present merge. At Minute 31, Katie’s body is found. She has been shot.

B Story:
Three B stories are in play in this film; the theme is discussed in each. Sean’s B story is his criminal past, as seen through his involvement with the local thugs, the two Savage Brothers. Tim’s B story concerns his trying to free himself from the pain of what happened to him. Is it enough to have made him kill Katie? Kevin’s B story involves his wife who left him; he is patiently waiting for her to return. But whenever she phones Kevin, she cannot speak.

Fun and Games:
As in most Whydunits, the cards in this case are now turned over. Brendan, the boyfriend, was taking Katie to Las Vegas; they were to be married. He loved her. Meanwhile Tim and Marcia Gay comfort Sean and Laura, but no story about Tim’s mugging is in the paper. Kevin, meanwhile, seems to be hitting dead ends and runs afoul of his cop partner, Sgt. Powers (Laurence Fishburne), who doesn’t get the rules of this burg.

Midpoint:
Kevin’s missing wife calls a second time and still isn’t speaking. The inability to speak, and being held in place by events, complements the overall theme. But the “stakes are raised” when Tim is identified as a suspect. His own wife is questioning him, and his response to her is so odd she begins to doubt his story. At 1 Hour, Brendan passes a polygraph and at 1 Hour 5 Minutes, Tim is detained as a suspect.

Bad Guys Close In:
Sean has been ruminating about Katie’s death while the Savage Brothers interrogate suspects — often ahead of the cops. Now Sean begins to rage: “I’m gonna find him and I’m gonna kill him!” Kevin learns the gun used to kill Katie was also
used to rob a liquor store years ago. The suspect: Sean’s pal “Just Ray,” father of the boys Sean hates. Is there a link between this second buried event and Katie?

All Is Lost:
Marcia Gay tells Sean she thinks Tim killed Katie, sealing his doom. Kevin questions Brendan about his father’s gun.

Dark Night of the Soul:
With no proof, Kevin lets Brendan go. Just like Marcia Gay, he hopes he did the right thing.

Break into Three:
The Savage Brothers pick up Tim, who gets in their car and drives away in a match shot of his 1975 abduction. Meanwhile, Brendan finds the hiding place of his father’s gun; someone took it and used it. Brendan waits at home.

Finale:
The Savage Brothers get Tim drunk at a local bar as Sean walks in. He now begins to question Tim. Staggering outside, Tim feels ill and realizes Sean thinks he killed Katie. At home, Brendan confronts his brother, Silent Ray. Ray didn’t want Brendan to leave him; what’s more, he’s not even really deaf, but using the ploy to bond with Brendan. At the river, Sean pressures Tim to admit he killed Katie and Tim finally does, hoping Sean will take pity. Au contraire. Sean knifes, then shoots Tim. Weak is weak here on Mystic River. Only the tough survive and the breaks are the breaks. Tim dies, just as Kevin arrests Silent Ray for the murder.

Final Image:
Turns out Tim was telling the truth: He killed a child molester that night. And Sean had killed Just Ray and has been sending his widow money all these years. Justice is also meted out for Kevin, whose wife comes back to him. By the end of the film, a parade in town shows only Marcia Gay is the loser. She ratted out her husband, and now she is a widow. Kevin and Sean nod to each other at the parade, knowing that justice has been served — maybe — but as we go out, we see the cement where the boys carved their names years ago. Only Tim’s is incomplete, as was his life.

The classic noir gets an update in ’tude when Philip Marlowe is reinvented for high school. Given the conceits of the form — the fast-talking gumshoe, the missing ingenue, the gimlet whore, and the DA bent on yanking our hero’s license, this story is the same … only different. Writer/director Rian Johnson adds to the form begun with
The Maltese Falcon
, and tweaked in
The Long Goodbye
and
Chinatown
, setting his tale in the hardcore underground of San Clemente, California.

And it’s a hoot.

Half-hilarious, half-ingenious, and written with mouthwatering dialogue that never disappoints, this is a story that inventively “steals” from its predecessors, with teens embodying the roles of noirs past. And it follows the rules of the Whydunit all the way — right down to the “dark turn” of the hero. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) not only has a personal stake in finding his ex-girlfriend’s murderer, he is drawn into her world for the same corrupt reasons that she was.

With the theme concerning whether or not we can possess another, every scene is about some form of control and ownership of someone else. Can our detective let go of his ex? Or did his inability to hang onto their relationship in the first place lead to her death? Brendan will discover he may be more responsible than he could ever imagine.

Who
dunit? In his own way … he did.

W Type: Noir Whydunit

W Cousins:
Chinatown; The Long Goodbye; Farewell, My Lovely; The Big Sleep; Body Heat; Devil in a Blue Dress; Blue Velvet; Mulholland Falls; Hollywoodland; The Black Dahlia

BRICK

Written by
Rian Johnson

Opening Image:
A dead girl lying in the spillway on the lip of a sewage pipe. A young man looks at the details of her body: her plastic bracelets, her blonde hair, and ponders … why?

Catalyst:
Two days earlier, prompted by a note left in his locker at high school, the young man, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), goes to a phone booth and fields a call from the girl we know will be dead soon. Emily (Emilie de Ravin) is his ex-girlfriend, now in trouble.

Set-Up:
Brendan’s world, and the reflection of every Sam Spade and film noir cliché, is San Clemente High School. Few parents or teachers appear in this world, and those that do are stand-ins for stock characters in detective stories. We learn Brendan dropped out of the social whirl for reasons having to do with Emily. We also see whom Emily got involved with post-Brendan. These are the “cool” kids that include drug-using jock Brad Bramish (Brian White) and his mysterious girlfriend Laura (Nora Zehetner). We also meet Brendan’s other ex, sexy high school theater geek Kara (Meagan Good), who has a string of freshman fans on bended knee.

Debate:
What’s going on with Emily? Not yet on the case, Brendan sneaks into a party and sees Laura talking with tough kid Tug (Noah Fleiss), who drives a Mustang just like the one Brendan saw when he last spoke to Emily. Next day at snackshack “Coffee and Pie,” Brendan rousts Dode (Noah Segan), Emily’s new boyfriend, to set up an appointment with her.

Theme Stated:
Finally, Brendan meets Emily and she asks him to let her go: “I don’t want to be put away and protected.” And later says: “You don’t love me, you just want to keep me.” Can one person possess another?

Break into Two:
At Minute 24, we are back at the sewage pipe where this movie began. Knowing he must hide Emily’s body to buy time until he can find the killer, Brendan decides to “take the case” wherever it leads.

Fun and Games:
Brendan meets his Watson, “Brain” (Matt O’Leary), who will help him solve the mystery. He reveals to Brain four clues Emily mentioned when he last spoke to her: “Brick,” “Tug,” “poor Frisco,” and “The Pin.” Brain figures out that The Pin means “The Kingpin,” the rumored town drug dealer. Into the fray, Brendan has a hard-boiled fight in the school parking lot with The Pin’s underling, Brad Bramish. This gets him a meeting with The Pin (Lukas Haas), who lives with his apple juice-serving Mom and does business out of their basement. We also see Brendan get called on the carpet by Gary Trueman (Richard Roundtree), Assistant Vice Principal and a parody of the DA in every detective movie. By turning in a student months earlier, Brendan became a snitch but refuses this time, telling the authority figure: “I’m not your boy!”