Speaker 1: Meaning a light Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing big down in a forest. Man, it gonna
Speaker 1: cause the tree fall, letting five thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: Man, nobody seen, nobody else.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: You don't need no.
Speaker 3: Man like you followed another story and you got back
Speaker 3: to flect that win.
Speaker 2: Man, go back to dag on the panela.
Speaker 4: Man, you don't matter, man, I don't anyway? All right,
Speaker 4: Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burden Show. How
Speaker 4: you doing, man?
Speaker 2: Good, Good to be with you again, sir.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Man, I'm really excited to have this conversation because
Speaker 4: through our last couple movie reviews and then also some
Speaker 4: things I've seen on the sign and just enjoyed, right,
Speaker 4: didn't have to make them into a podcast. I've been
Speaker 4: going through a list of maybe twelve or fifteen movies
Speaker 4: you sent me a couple months ago, and most of
Speaker 4: them i'd heard of, maybe you've seen them, maybe had
Speaker 4: heard them mentioned before. There's one title in that list
Speaker 4: that I had never heard of at all. It's a
Speaker 4: movie that we're going to talk about, Red Rock West,
Speaker 4: and I enjoyed this film immensely. I've seen very few
Speaker 4: things like it. It's honestly, surprisingly obscure. It didn't do
Speaker 4: particularly well. I think it lost money. And despite that fact,
Speaker 4: it's a very good movie with a honestly amazing cast.
Speaker 4: And so before we started recording, you mentioned how you
Speaker 4: came across it. Obviously I got it from your recommendation.
Speaker 4: But before we get into it, I just want to say,
Speaker 4: this is a great movie. This is a movie where
Speaker 4: I won't say it having it spoiled ruins it, but
Speaker 4: you should go into this movie blind. You can find
Speaker 4: it on Amazon. It's like three bucks to rent it.
Speaker 4: I have recommended it to personal friends, people not on
Speaker 4: the internet and gotten universally positive reviews. Most people say
Speaker 4: the exact same thing. How have I never heard of
Speaker 4: this before? And that was awesome? So all I will say,
Speaker 4: if you don't want to have it spoiled, go watch it.
Speaker 4: It's like ninety minutes, not hard to find, so Red
Speaker 4: Rock Quest good movie. But Andrew, I'm curious, right, how
Speaker 4: how do you find out about this flick?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So ninety three right is when it comes out. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that I saw it, probably rented it based
Speaker 1: on the cast, and then forgot about it until many
Speaker 1: many I don't know, probably ten years later it showed
Speaker 1: up in when I did finally go back to college,
Speaker 1: I took a minor in film and I took this
Speaker 1: probably one of the best classes I ever took. Was
Speaker 1: it's just called film noir. So it was you know,
Speaker 1: orson Wells, Chinatown. It was the whole run through from
Speaker 1: a quasi academic level. And then Red Rock West was
Speaker 1: in there. And that professor, you know, every once in
Speaker 1: a while, even in college, you get like a professor
Speaker 1: that you you can take from who's actually useful or.
Speaker 2: Maybe even worthy of respect. At least in my.
Speaker 1: Day, they would occasionally show up. And he pointed, he
Speaker 1: he kind of went through the movie within the you know,
Speaker 1: the context we were studying. And and again I should
Speaker 1: say like this was not a class that was all DEI.
Speaker 1: It was pretty much about narrative, it was about history,
Speaker 1: and it was about the actual genre of noir. And
Speaker 1: so for our audience, I mean that's maybe the first
Speaker 1: thing to understand.
Speaker 2: Is it.
Speaker 1: In all possible technical ways, it's a noir film, but
Speaker 1: it is set in a rural environment. It's set what
Speaker 1: in like small town Wyoming, right, They never I'm not well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's Red Rock. Maybe that's like a fictional
Speaker 1: a little town out there by Thermopolis or Dubois or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's how I heard of it. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you anybody who likes film, you watch this movie and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, five for me anyway, it's like five
Speaker 1: out of five. So I've never forgotten it. And then
Speaker 1: when you asked, you know, for some recommendations, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure why, because there's thousands of these recommendations floating around
Speaker 1: in my mind, but yeah, it just popped out, and
Speaker 1: I'm gratified to hear that you've recommended it. And you know,
Speaker 1: we're not alone that this is. This is a great
Speaker 1: little movie. Fantastic cast and it it's great in a
Speaker 1: couple different ways that I'll kick it back to you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll get into them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really The cast is one of the movie's
Speaker 4: strongest parts. The soundtrack is quite good. It's a relatively
Speaker 4: sparse soundtrack. Most of the music except for really what
Speaker 4: you hear at the end is all through basically car
Speaker 4: stereos or in bars or in a bar. I guess
Speaker 4: you know, it's sort of naturalistically done. And the cast
Speaker 4: in this is Look, when I say some of these actors,
Speaker 4: you will have preconceived notions. So obviously leading man is
Speaker 4: Nick Cage. This is still when Nick Cage was a
Speaker 4: real actor. He's a working actor. Now he kind of
Speaker 4: just apparently signs up for anything. But this is a
Speaker 4: very restrained Nick Cage performance. There's exactly one line where
Speaker 4: you get the Nick Cage freak out. This is around
Speaker 4: the time that he was in Raising Arizona, I believe,
Speaker 4: slightly before. I can't remember off the top of my head,
Speaker 4: but like he is an Academy Award winning actor at
Speaker 4: this stage, and he does quite well in it. So
Speaker 4: Nick Cage plays a marine, former marine Michael Williams, discharged
Speaker 4: from the Marine Corps because he has an injury.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: We don't really understand how he got this, but he's
Speaker 4: in dire straits, right. He needs a job, and in fact,
Speaker 4: the opening is him driving out in this awesome late
Speaker 4: sixties Cadillac out to an oil drilling site and we
Speaker 4: find out one of his buddies is working there, sort
Speaker 4: of trying to get him a job, right, So he
Speaker 4: fills out his application and the next thing we see
Speaker 4: is Nick Cage standing upside this trailer and the boss
Speaker 4: is yelling at Michael. Williams's friend comes out the door
Speaker 4: and says, why do you tell him about your life?
Speaker 4: And Williams says they would have found out anyway. I
Speaker 4: don't like to lie. And we find out that characteristic
Speaker 4: of him, right, that he has a certain amount of character,
Speaker 4: a certain amount of honesty, And this is something that
Speaker 4: becomes important later in the film. His friend basically says, well,
Speaker 4: at the very least, can I spot you some money?
Speaker 4: Despite the fact that we've established that Williams is down
Speaker 4: to very little money, he's pretty much almost out five
Speaker 4: dollars in his wallet. He says, you know what, No,
Speaker 4: I don't need it. So he's driving back into this town,
Speaker 4: red Rock. And as far as I understand that, there
Speaker 4: is no town of Red Rock, there is a like
Speaker 4: a national park or something or a site there named
Speaker 4: Red Rock, but it's it's a fictionalized kind of two
Speaker 4: street town right in the middle of nowhere. And as
Speaker 4: he's driving in, it's a little scene, but he stops
Speaker 4: at this gas station, and this is an important moment
Speaker 4: of characterization because he walks in to a seemingly unattended
Speaker 4: gas station and he's calling around, you know, looking for
Speaker 4: you the attention. And when he goes behind the counter,
Speaker 4: he notices the cash strawers open, nobody here, a lot
Speaker 4: of money sitting there, and you know, a revolver next
Speaker 4: to it, and he looks at it for a moment decides,
Speaker 4: you know what, I'm not gonna steal, and then, you know,
Speaker 4: half a beat later, the guy walks out and basically says,
Speaker 4: if you're looking for work, in the nearest town is
Speaker 4: red Rock. So Williams heads into Red Rock, and this
Speaker 4: is where our plot kicks off. So he drives in,
Speaker 4: starts up at this bar, and the bartender, who is
Speaker 4: played by JT. Walsh, who you may know from Sling
Speaker 4: Blade that he was in Nixon and then maybe a
Speaker 4: few good men. I think that sounds right, so kind
Speaker 4: of a character actor. He's the bartender. And while he's there,
Speaker 4: he looks outside and he notices that Nick cage car
Speaker 4: has a tech his license plate on it, and he says,
Speaker 4: you know, well, are you Lyle from Dallas? And Nick
Speaker 4: Cage sort of looks around. He says, well, I have
Speaker 4: a job for you, and so Nick Cage realizes, I
Speaker 4: guess he's playing Lyle from Dallas. When he gets into
Speaker 4: the back room and they shut down the bar, it's
Speaker 4: revealed that this bartender it's expecting a hitman, right, someone
Speaker 4: to kill his wife, and he's offering five thousand dollars
Speaker 4: and then another five thousand when it's completed. So obviously
Speaker 4: Nick Cage is in sort of a predicament. His money
Speaker 4: problems seemingly solved, but he's been involved in this plot,
Speaker 4: so he sort of agrees to do it, and he
Speaker 4: heads out to see JT. Walsh's wife, who's played by
Speaker 4: Laura Flynn Boyle, who's probably best known for I think
Speaker 4: she was in She's In Twin Peaks and then also
Speaker 4: the classic comedy Wan's World and then let's be honest,
Speaker 4: not much else after that. So as he's observing her,
Speaker 4: he sees this man's wife riding a horse round in
Speaker 4: the middle of nowhere, and she goes up to this
Speaker 4: horse trailer where or this is sorry, this trailer where
Speaker 4: one of the ranch hands is. They go in together,
Speaker 4: the assumption obviously being they're having an affair. This is
Speaker 4: why you know he wants to kill his wife. So
Speaker 4: he confronts her, right he sneaks into her house, and
Speaker 4: he basically says, look, your husband wants me to kill you.
Speaker 4: I'm not actually a hit man, so what are we
Speaker 4: gonna do? And she says, you know what, fine, I'll
Speaker 4: double your money get out of town. So at this point,
Speaker 4: Mike Williams Nickcage, it's like, awesome, this is great. You know,
Speaker 4: I stole technically fifteen thousand dollars from two horrible people whatever.
Speaker 4: So he takes his money and he decided he's going
Speaker 4: to get out of town and I'll kick it back
Speaker 4: to you Andy. Once we get through this kind of
Speaker 4: inciting plot, because this is really when it sort of
Speaker 4: picks up. Sure, but as he's driving out of town,
Speaker 4: we have this great scene where he can finally go
Speaker 4: to the gas station, you know, fill up on gas,
Speaker 4: has a bunch of wonderbread, a bunch of beers in
Speaker 4: the and the guy's like, oh, really, you're gonna spend
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty dollars on all this and he's like,
Speaker 4: oh whatever, who cares because he's got fifteen grand in
Speaker 4: cash right for defrauding these people. But as he's headed
Speaker 4: out of town, we see a car stopped on the
Speaker 4: side of the road and Nick Cage sort of moves
Speaker 4: to get around him, but the guy who's by this
Speaker 4: car stopped in the middle road basically jumps out in
Speaker 4: front of the car and Nick Cage hits him and
Speaker 4: he goes up over the whole car, obviously injured. And
Speaker 4: we see another love with these kind of moments where
Speaker 4: Cage basically looks in the mirror and you can sort
Speaker 4: of see him going through the like there's nobody around.
Speaker 4: I can just leave, leave with my money and I'll
Speaker 4: be fine, you know what. He can't do it. So
Speaker 4: he takes this guy back to the hospital and goes
Speaker 4: in brings him into the doctor. We see this sort
Speaker 4: of comedic moment, and this movie is not a comedy,
Speaker 4: but it is quite funny something we will mention multiple
Speaker 4: times between him and the secretary at the front, you know,
Speaker 4: who's trying to ask him all of these very specific
Speaker 4: questions while he is just worried about the man that
Speaker 4: he may or may not have killed.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So point is this is where this is sort of
Speaker 4: the inciting incident. This is what sets the plot in motion,
Speaker 4: and so Andy, I'll kick it back to you before
Speaker 4: we get into the kind of plot from there on.
Speaker 1: Yes, a few things to note even up to there
Speaker 1: with respect to this, like rural noir, which I don't
Speaker 1: think had been done great deal. There are a few
Speaker 1: other examples that, you know, come to mind my mind,
Speaker 1: like Blood Simple, which was the Cohen Brothers first movie
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty rural and actually shares some of the
Speaker 1: kind of like narrative DNA with this movie, insofar as
Speaker 1: there's there's this kind of there's a bar and there's
Speaker 1: an affair, and you know, there's cowboy boots. But this
Speaker 1: is distinctly like noir sorts of plot elements and behavior
Speaker 1: what I wanted to or what what what I thought
Speaker 1: of as we're kind of going through this inciting scene.
Speaker 1: From the technical level, it's we're switching into like this
Speaker 1: classic nor thing of going from what you know into
Speaker 1: what you don't know you know, and this is often
Speaker 1: done symbolically or visually with you know, you have your
Speaker 1: your blinds over there next to you, Jay, it's like
Speaker 1: that slot that slotted light this place where like light
Speaker 1: falls into shadow, which may seem like, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a frivolous thing, but I think that it's essential,
Speaker 1: you know, it's part of the medium, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: a visual medium and it works this way. So right
Speaker 1: when we get this, I mean it's very it's like
Speaker 1: you said, it's it's it's it's not specifically funny, but
Speaker 1: it is hilarious.
Speaker 2: See, And it's he's.
Speaker 1: Got he's got like three groceries, three bags of groceries,
Speaker 1: and it's all just this terrible junk food. And but
Speaker 1: you can you feel like totally, I feel bonded with
Speaker 1: that guy, like, yeah, I have fifteen grand I'm loading up,
Speaker 1: I'm getting my ass is out of town. This crazy
Speaker 1: thing that I just touched on, and man, it's not
Speaker 1: even like you know, twenty minutes down the road and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the storm comes and so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, rain falling. Visual conditions are obscured.
Speaker 1: And this is where for me that noir thing kicks in.
Speaker 1: Like you thought everything was going one way, but all
Speaker 1: of a sudden we should mention too. The director, I
Speaker 1: I what is his name, Dall, I think, right, So
Speaker 1: this guy writes the script with his brother. I think
Speaker 1: he had one other movie before this one, which was
Speaker 1: maybe not a big hit.
Speaker 2: He goes on to do a couple of.
Speaker 4: I think he did the last seduction, Right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, which is I have not seen
Speaker 1: but as apparently kind of a hit and he do
Speaker 1: he gets there's one called Kill Me Again, which was
Speaker 1: also like at the time, critically acclaimed, like understood, man,
Speaker 1: this doll guy is kind of going somewhere. He's got
Speaker 1: you know, he's a Val Kilmer's in that one. He's
Speaker 1: got Nick Cage here and he was sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: the man of the moment there for a split second.
Speaker 1: But something in his career must have happened where he
Speaker 1: sort of goes under away from you know, the radar,
Speaker 1: and he but he pops up later evidently I hadn't
Speaker 1: actually tracked him until we decided to do this episode,
Speaker 1: and he's he's alive, and he's doing tons of work,
Speaker 1: I apparently in television, so that television may be very good.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know, but I just wanted to bring him
Speaker 1: up to say this is for what for whatever you
Speaker 1: know his other flops may be. I mean, he absolutely
Speaker 1: nails every aspect of and it's is it as good
Speaker 1: as the Cohens? I mean, this one I think is
Speaker 1: for sure. His management of all of the elements, from
Speaker 1: the acting to the visual and I wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: ask you. I think it pops out when people watch it.
Speaker 1: Like the plot is so good in terms of just
Speaker 1: it's delivering what you want, you know, it's holding back
Speaker 1: on the reveals like you don't necessarily I think if
Speaker 1: you're going to continue with them, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of timeline explication. We're about to find out who ah
Speaker 1: who the bartender really is, right, and that's like one
Speaker 1: of these reveals. So that's that point in the movie.
Speaker 1: Like you say, this inciting instant, it immediately just sort
Speaker 1: of begins to mount. He's he's got this money, we
Speaker 1: know people are hunting him. Now his moral conundrum has
Speaker 1: kicked in and he's he's done the right thing. Taken
Speaker 1: this this dude back to the hospital, and then I'll
Speaker 1: take it back to you, right, because that's when the
Speaker 1: cops show up.
Speaker 4: Well, and there's one thing I forgot and this becomes
Speaker 4: relevant later but also sort of shows us, you know,
Speaker 4: Nick Cage's moral code in this is that he does
Speaker 4: one more thing I forgot about before he skips town.
Speaker 4: He sends an anonymous letter right to the shriff. Yeah,
Speaker 4: basically says, you know, this guy is trying to kill
Speaker 4: his wife. The hitman hasn't shown up yet. Look into it.
Speaker 4: This is not a joke, right, So he feels that,
Speaker 4: you know what, I didn't do it. I've taken the money.
Speaker 4: At the very least, I want to let the authorities
Speaker 4: know so that this, you know, this woman isn't murdered.
Speaker 4: So this is the point where if you are interested
Speaker 4: in watching this film, leave and go watch it right where.
Speaker 4: There's no way to avoid spoiling it. Past this point.
Speaker 4: You should. This is a good movie. It's worth your time.
Speaker 4: So while he's there, of course, you know that the
Speaker 4: doctor is understandably you know, upset, you know. And as
Speaker 4: Nick Cage sort of looks in the back he hears
Speaker 4: that this man is alive. He goes to leave, right,
Speaker 4: He's basically like, all right, you know, I gotta I
Speaker 4: really got to skip town. I gotta get out of here, like,
Speaker 4: let's leave. And as he does it, sheriff and two
Speaker 4: deputies show up, and it is revealed the sheriff and
Speaker 4: the bartender are one and the same. Right, the guy
Speaker 4: who owns the bar who tried to kill his wife
Speaker 4: is also the sheriff. So he goes to take him
Speaker 4: to jail in a very cool Ford Bronco. This is
Speaker 4: actually a pretty great car movie. It's not like a
Speaker 4: focus of it per se, but if you're interested in,
Speaker 4: you know, cool old vehicles, there's a lot of them
Speaker 4: to be had. But point is and as they they
Speaker 4: drive out of the parking lot, Ryle basically says like,
Speaker 4: what are you doing? What happened? And he says, you
Speaker 4: know what, I'm so sorry, Mary, I'm not your guy.
Speaker 4: I'm not the hit man. The money's in my car,
Speaker 4: you just take it, leave me. And this all goes
Speaker 4: away and he's having none of it, and we have
Speaker 4: this moment where he sort of jerks off the road
Speaker 4: and we it's sort of up in the air and
Speaker 4: is he gonna let him run? And what happens is
Speaker 4: he throws in the keys to the handcuffs and so
Speaker 4: Nick Cage, you know, unclasps himself from the handcuffs. But
Speaker 4: what we see is basically the Sheriff's got a gun
Speaker 4: and he's sort of trying to fake an escape so
Speaker 4: that he can kill this guy present it as you know,
Speaker 4: stopping and escaped felon and wrap up loose ends that way,
Speaker 4: but Nick Cage gets away right, he smashes his hand
Speaker 4: in the door. They're running through the woods. Nick Cage
Speaker 4: has grabbed his revolver makes you know, shoots a few
Speaker 4: potshots back at him. The other guy's got a you know,
Speaker 4: an old Winchester seven model seven hundred, just shoting at
Speaker 4: him through the woods. You know, they're sort of stumbling.
Speaker 4: We see the reemergence of Cage's bad leg.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: He's desperately trying to run away as his leg is
Speaker 4: sort of giving out, and as the two of them are,
Speaker 4: you know, Cage is getting more distance, he sort of
Speaker 4: falls down this embankment back into the road and he's
Speaker 4: nearly hit.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: There's this again sort of comedic moment where we see
Speaker 4: the bumper of the car come up right to his
Speaker 4: face as he's sort of laying on the ground and
Speaker 4: out of the car steps easily the best character in
Speaker 4: this movie played by by Dennis Hopper. Right, And we
Speaker 4: don't know Dennis Hopper's name yet, right, but he's this
Speaker 4: sort of gregarious, you know, southern guy.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He's driving a cool I believe it a black Buick, Right,
Speaker 4: another really cool car. Listening to I think Johnny Cash
Speaker 4: at the time. You've got a black cowboy hat, and
Speaker 4: he sort of, you know, picks Cage up. You know,
Speaker 4: He's basically says, like, you're you're lucky I was paying
Speaker 4: attention or I would be picking your brains out of
Speaker 4: my radiator. And he has this like incredible kind of
Speaker 4: unhinged charisma, and he says, you know what, I got
Speaker 4: to drive you back. Cage is trying to get some
Speaker 4: sort of excuse why he doesn't want to go back
Speaker 4: into town, but this character by the Hopper, he insists, right.
Speaker 4: He basically says, now, I'll take you into town, and
Speaker 4: while they're driving in, it's revealed they're both former Marines,
Speaker 4: that this character is a former Force recon marine. Cage was,
Speaker 4: we find out in this conversation in Vietnam and a
Speaker 4: very prominent I believe this is a real event. I
Speaker 4: was not familiar with it. In case where an army
Speaker 4: building was hit by a large explosive. Two hundred and
Speaker 4: seventy people died. And so we have this sort of
Speaker 4: back and forth where, you know, Hopper says, oh, you know,
Speaker 4: you're really lucky, and Cage basically says like, yeah, it
Speaker 4: doesn't quite feel like it, you know, because he obviously
Speaker 4: has a severely compromised leg. So this new character won't
Speaker 4: let Cage go without buying him a drink, and they're
Speaker 4: right back at this same bar in Red Rock. This
Speaker 4: is part of what makes this movie kind of comedic
Speaker 4: is that no matter how desperately people are trying to
Speaker 4: get away from Red Rock, they end up basically back
Speaker 4: in this same bar, just due to increasingly absurd events.
Speaker 4: So now Cage is obviously freaking out because he's just
Speaker 4: escaped from the sheriff and now he's gone back to
Speaker 4: his bar. There's another guy working at it, so you know,
Speaker 4: his character buys him a drink and we find out
Speaker 4: that this is Lyle from Texas. He has met the
Speaker 4: same hit man he was previously impersonating, and so when
Speaker 4: Lyle comes up to the bar, he basic says, hey,
Speaker 4: can you call the owner? And at this point Cage
Speaker 4: is realizing like, oh no, this is not good. I
Speaker 4: got to get out. So he goes to the bathroom
Speaker 4: after taking a shot of whiskey and realizes like he's
Speaker 4: got a run. So he I say, there's only one
Speaker 4: Nick Cage freak out. There's a very minor one in
Speaker 4: the bathroom that if you're a ficionado of mister Cage's
Speaker 4: work like I am, you'll appreciate He kind of freaks out,
Speaker 4: smashes the glass, and then realize he has to go,
Speaker 4: gets out the window, and this is almost the exact
Speaker 4: same moment that the sheriff comes in quickly realizes what
Speaker 4: has happened. Lyle is here. The man who took the
Speaker 4: money is gone, so Lyle goes out to get him.
Speaker 4: There's some cool guns in this. It's not, you know,
Speaker 4: a center of the plot by any means, but we
Speaker 4: see Lyle with a very cool I think it's like
Speaker 4: a Commander length Yama nineteen eleven. The Spanish ones. They
Speaker 4: look cool, absolute pieces of junk. My grandfather has one.
Speaker 4: I have never seen it actually work screen. A full
Speaker 4: nickel plated short nineteen eleven from a man with a
Speaker 4: cowboy hat is just cool. Right, yeah, So we see
Speaker 4: them sort of give chase right. We don't exactly know
Speaker 4: where Cage is, and it's revealed that he is on
Speaker 4: the roof.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He basically realized he couldn't run away in the middle
Speaker 4: of Wyoming, so he's on the roof and he sees
Speaker 4: both the bar owner and now lyle chasing him. So
Speaker 4: he's in kind of a bad way. He's like, what
Speaker 4: am I gonna do? So he sees a pickup or sorry,
Speaker 4: a box truck getting ready to leave, grabs a board,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of uses it like a tight rope
Speaker 4: to get onto the roof of this box truck and
Speaker 4: he's headed out of town again. Midway through this ride,
Speaker 4: right as he's on top of this box truck, the
Speaker 4: driver realizes he's there, and we get one of my
Speaker 4: favorite scenes where he's talking to this driver. Right he's
Speaker 4: hidden away on the roof of this truck. Driver pulled over,
Speaker 4: pulls out a gun, sticks it in his face. The
Speaker 4: driver's played by Dwight Yoakum. I believe this was his
Speaker 4: cinematic debut, highly underrated actor, more famous obviously as a
Speaker 4: country singer. The closing to this is one Thousand Miles
Speaker 4: from Nowhere, which I believe debuted in this film before
Speaker 4: it hit the radio waves, and I think went to
Speaker 4: I think it was a top If it wasn't the
Speaker 4: top country song of the year, it was at least
Speaker 4: close to it. A very popular song. Huge, Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 4: kind of a good song. I'm uh, I'm good well,
Speaker 4: I won't say that that's probably docking my location too much,
Speaker 4: but point is.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: So they have a very funny interaction where he's got
Speaker 4: this giant revolver jammed and Nick Cage's face, you know, like,
Speaker 4: what are you doing on the top of my truck
Speaker 4: and he's like, uh, I was running away from my
Speaker 4: old lady, and by Yoakas having none of he's like, no,
Speaker 4: you're not, like what are you doing? This is absurd.
Speaker 4: They sort of go back and forth. It's like, sor ry, fine,
Speaker 4: you can hop in the car. You could have just
Speaker 4: asked me for a And there's this great interaction back
Speaker 4: and forth where Nick Cage is obviously, you know, lying,
Speaker 4: he's making up this story. And as they're headed out
Speaker 4: of town, they go past the bartender's house, right this
Speaker 4: beautiful ranch out in the middle of nowhere where he's living,
Speaker 4: and Nick Cage of course realizes, well, the hitman is
Speaker 4: in town, Like, it's actually here. I've got a warn
Speaker 4: this woman. So he basically says like, hey, can you
Speaker 4: pull off? And there's this moment where, you know, Yoakum's character,
Speaker 4: the truck driver sort of seeing through this, realizes what's
Speaker 4: going on and He's like, is she pretty right? Referring
Speaker 4: to he assumes that, you know, Nick Cage is trying
Speaker 4: to see this girl, which he is, maybe not in
Speaker 4: the same context that you know yoakum thought, and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: yeah she is. So he goes to meet her there.
Speaker 4: So we've gone through another couple scenes there, and he'll
Speaker 4: give you a chance to respond.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you brought up the guns. I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you. I will he Lyle has a backup.
Speaker 1: He's got to hide out tiny little pocket. I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to. It looks like maybe the Browning twenty five.
Speaker 1: It could be I think does at Browning make a
Speaker 1: thirty two as well? That that shows up?
Speaker 4: Yes, the uh oh it is a thanks to one
Speaker 4: of my favorite websites, the i am FDP Internet Movie
Speaker 4: Firearms Database. Yes, that is a Bretta nine to fifty
Speaker 4: jet Fire twenty five ACPO, which, by the way, Lyle
Speaker 4: is dressed to the nines in this. He's got his
Speaker 4: sort of like uh you know, like little like loop
Speaker 4: tie silver all in black red embroidery. And we haven't
Speaker 4: talked about him much because he hasn't had a ton
Speaker 4: of screen time yet. He steals the show such a
Speaker 4: fun character. So point is right now that the plot
Speaker 4: has moved on, and so he Cage right comes to
Speaker 4: basically warn what's her actual name in this, I'm keep
Speaker 4: going by the actor's name, Oh, Suzanne Brown. Suzanne is
Speaker 4: the name of that. And one of the things I
Speaker 4: haven't quite mentioned is that when he met Suzanne for
Speaker 4: the first time, she thinks, you know, he's standing there
Speaker 4: with a gun, basically before she reveals that he's not
Speaker 4: going to kill her, and she just just slugs like
Speaker 4: a triple for a vodka. Yeah, And this becomes an
Speaker 4: important part of her character. She is an alcoholist, yes,
Speaker 4: And so as Nick Cage breaks into her home for
Speaker 4: the second time to warn her again, hey look, Lyle's here,
Speaker 4: you've got to beat it, she is, I think drawing
Speaker 4: a bath, but again like three fingers of dark liquor.
Speaker 4: It just got bottles everywhere, And of course she's none
Speaker 4: too pleased to see him. She's like, look, like, what
Speaker 4: do you want more money? I don't have any more money.
Speaker 4: Get out of here. He's like, look, you gotta go.
Speaker 4: The guy I was pretending to be he's actually here.
Speaker 4: So they sort of go back and forth he's like,
Speaker 4: what's going on here? She says, which is what we
Speaker 4: think to be true. You know, she inherited a lot
Speaker 4: of money. Her husband's looking to kill her to basically
Speaker 4: inherit all of her money. That's why he wants her gone.
Speaker 4: And as they're having this back and forth, Lyle shows up.
Speaker 4: He's here, so Lyle sort of goes around the house, right,
Speaker 4: we see him looking for him, and we hear the
Speaker 4: bat's still being drawn. And as he goes into this
Speaker 4: second bathroom, right, there's kind of a fake out with
Speaker 4: the first one. Niki is standing on the other side
Speaker 4: of it with like a telephone or something. Statue and
Speaker 4: just a statue, that's what it is. It just brains him,
Speaker 4: just absolutely golf cocks him, lays him out, you know.
Speaker 4: They they grab his gun, right this this nickel plated
Speaker 4: yama and they beat it. And as we see they're
Speaker 4: getting out, she's basically you know, he's like, hey, do
Speaker 4: you have a car. She's like, yeah, we got a
Speaker 4: jeep in the you know, in the barn.
Speaker 2: So they go out.
Speaker 4: He you know, goes out to Lyle's car, you know,
Speaker 4: rips out the distributor wires, just throws him right to
Speaker 4: try and get some distance, and yet again the slightly
Speaker 4: comedic moment. He goes up to the car and he's like,
Speaker 4: what do you mean it's almost out of gas, like
Speaker 4: you didn't fill up, and she's like, well, I didn't
Speaker 4: know I was going to be running for my life.
Speaker 4: So they have to go to a gas station. You know,
Speaker 4: they have I think between them twenty dollars, right, which
Speaker 4: she just takes from him. That's where she finds out
Speaker 4: his name, right, He she asked to see his wallet
Speaker 4: and fill up on gas and they're like at the
Speaker 4: next town over right, they have not gotten out of danger,
Speaker 4: and she basically says like, all right, I need a drink.
Speaker 4: So they go back to this bar and she drinks heavily.
Speaker 4: They basically go through a whole bottle at tequila, and
Speaker 4: she starts spinning him this line about you know what,
Speaker 4: this doesn't matter. We got to get out, you and
Speaker 4: me and just go to Mexico together, something that's sort
Speaker 4: of repeated, and he's not really having it at least
Speaker 4: at first till he gets some liquor in him. He's like, no,
Speaker 4: we gotta go, we gotta go, but she wins out.
Speaker 4: They end up spending the night together. Nick Cage is
Speaker 4: a good actor. I buy him in this role. I
Speaker 4: do not particularly enjoy seeing Nick Cage in a state
Speaker 4: of undress that is, in this movie relatively tastefully done,
Speaker 4: but that sense. So they sort of, you know, spend
Speaker 4: the night together, and we sort of start to see
Speaker 4: the wheels fall off the relationship between Hyle and his employer,
Speaker 4: because he comes to basically says, you know what, they
Speaker 4: flew the coop knocked me out. If you want me
Speaker 4: to find them, it's gonna cost you, because I came
Speaker 4: in to just you know, do a quick hit and
Speaker 4: get out of town. I'm not here to you know,
Speaker 4: basically chase down these futures.
Speaker 2: Partner's like, all right.
Speaker 4: Fine, you know what, come back to my bar. I'll
Speaker 4: get you some money. We'll go so the next morning
Speaker 4: and be sure to interrupt me. And if I'm missing anything.
Speaker 4: I think I've got this lined out. They wake up
Speaker 4: together in this in this hotel room and she's like, look,
Speaker 4: we're gonna go to Mexico. We we're gonna need more
Speaker 4: money than whatever, twenty dollars minus a bottle at tequila,
Speaker 4: right Like, we're gonna need some cash, and I know
Speaker 4: my husband he's got money hidden in the bar. So
Speaker 4: what we need to do is sneak back in, steal
Speaker 4: his money, and then we can get out and get
Speaker 4: out of dodge and go to Mexico. So Cage's character
Speaker 4: is obviously reluctant. He thinks this is a bad idea.
Speaker 4: He just wants to split, but she she wants the money.
Speaker 4: So they're gonna They're gonna break back in. So they
Speaker 4: go in to this bar, right, they go to the
Speaker 4: back room, they pull the uh, you know, the safe
Speaker 4: out and grab the money, and we see there are
Speaker 4: some other documents in there.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: We don't exactly know what these are as of yet.
Speaker 4: But as they've grabbed the money, classic kind of cinematic scene,
Speaker 4: they realize, oh wait, her husband and Lyle they're coming back.
Speaker 4: So they hide in the closet and as they come in,
Speaker 4: her husband realizes this has been disturbed because these papers
Speaker 4: aren't where they're supposed to be. The rugs messed up,
Speaker 4: the safe has been open, and I've said incorrectly that
Speaker 4: him and Lyle to gether. They're not. He is there
Speaker 4: to get the money for a while, right, But as
Speaker 4: he's right there I believe. Does Lyle show up after
Speaker 4: the police the other officers do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Can I jump in here? Is it's about
Speaker 1: to jump in?
Speaker 2: Course? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So to to remember where we want to come back
Speaker 1: to this is when his deputies show up, and you
Speaker 1: get this hilarious scene where his own deputies, who have
Speaker 1: been at various times you know, dispatched well while juh
Speaker 1: the sheriff J. T. Walsh, you know, continues to do
Speaker 1: his little machinations in the background, keeping everybody confused as
Speaker 1: to you know, what what he's really doing, hiring a
Speaker 1: hit man to have his wife killed. Meanwhile, his deputies
Speaker 1: have done a little digging on on the whole situation,
Speaker 1: right Like they they they found the cash in Nick
Speaker 1: Cage's car, and then I don't remember exactly how they
Speaker 1: piece it together, but.
Speaker 2: They've did.
Speaker 1: They've figured out that the sheriff has it. Well, one,
Speaker 1: they got the letter, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: They got the letter. And also what we forgot to
Speaker 4: mention is the whole reason that Nick Cage is even
Speaker 4: arrested in the first place is because the man that
Speaker 4: he hit was found with two bullets in it. Right, So,
Speaker 4: now this has been linked to an attempted murder. It
Speaker 4: seems like this situation is spinning out of control because
Speaker 4: of this letter, and so the deputies are highly suspicious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and so let's set it right there. I'll
Speaker 2: go back a little bit to say, for.
Speaker 1: My money, as a long time moviegoer, I think that
Speaker 1: this character played by Laura Flynn Boyle, and you point
Speaker 1: out like she's so obviously an alcoholic. Unfortunately Laura Flynn
Speaker 1: Boyle turns out in real life. One of the reasons,
Speaker 1: like we don't really know what happens to her after
Speaker 1: like twin Peaks in this movie and a handful of
Speaker 1: others is I think that she's a degenerate like alcoholic
Speaker 1: in real life, Like she's really got some problems side
Speaker 1: note there, but she does a pretty fair job. I
Speaker 1: thought of playing this classic and once again newir figure
Speaker 1: where Denganoux, who you know, she hatches this ridiculous idea
Speaker 1: of Mexico, you know, and sometimes in movies, this will
Speaker 1: be California, like we just got to get out of Oklahoma, Johnny,
Speaker 1: and we'll go out to California where everything is great.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 4: It's a great it's a great part of all the
Speaker 4: Kings met about exactly that there you get. California is
Speaker 4: where you go when the well runs dry.
Speaker 2: There you go. And I think it's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe not the time to go deeply into it,
Speaker 1: but at some point in American history, you know, this
Speaker 1: becomes like foreclosed to us, and it's like, now we're
Speaker 1: going to go to Mexico, and it's kind of like
Speaker 1: this when I think of going to Mexico. I have
Speaker 1: been to Mexico. I'm sure you could do it up
Speaker 1: with many millions. But if I had enough money to
Speaker 1: actually I don't know. I don't want to escape America.
Speaker 1: But personally, this is a funny element to me that
Speaker 1: you'd want to go to Mexico, like Mexico's no offense Mexicans.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty much a shiftole in my experience. If
Speaker 1: I had enough money, I would just go to Chile
Speaker 1: or I don't know, Norway or something and be a bumb.
Speaker 1: I would rather be a bum in Norway. I hear
Speaker 1: you breathing, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, And it's funny. It's funny because this is actually
Speaker 4: a plot point as well in another movie that we reviewed,
Speaker 4: Country for Old Men. Yeah, great, that is the escape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we we can't.
Speaker 1: We may be the only two dudes who have ever
Speaker 1: figured this out. But and we've made this mention like
Speaker 1: this film Red Rock West shares DNA with several other films.
Speaker 1: But I think even when when I took the class
Speaker 1: on this, you know, I think we probably associated blood,
Speaker 1: simple and stuff. But I've never heard or seen a
Speaker 1: mention of the DNA shared between No Country for Old
Speaker 1: Men and this film, which isn't just at the level
Speaker 1: of Okay, you have this main character who has some
Speaker 1: type of he's driven by this morality, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of a naive morality. It's not entirely naive, but but
Speaker 1: you're like, you know, at various points, I mean, how
Speaker 1: many people we go back all the time with No
Speaker 1: Country for Old Men saying just don't take him the water,
Speaker 1: Just don't take the water out to this who's obviously
Speaker 1: a bad guy, he's a drug dealer.
Speaker 2: Just let him die.
Speaker 1: And of course the entire plot pivots on this internal
Speaker 1: you know, conflict, and you have this same idea over
Speaker 1: and over and over where Nick Cage's conscience is pulling
Speaker 1: him back in to do the right thing, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, coming back to the ranch, to warn this
Speaker 1: woman twice that you know this guy's coming and you
Speaker 1: got to get out of here. He doesn't know her,
Speaker 1: he probably you know. But here again back to this
Speaker 1: angu character. We can we could probably say this to
Speaker 1: the audience and they may guess, like, this woman turns
Speaker 1: out to be not a nice person as well, not
Speaker 1: entirely telling the truth. In fact, has not even touched
Speaker 1: on the truth throughout the entire movie, you know, much
Speaker 1: at all, and winds up being a very nasty person.
Speaker 1: And this is this ingenoux And that's a French word,
Speaker 1: you know. I don't even know exactly what it means,
Speaker 1: but to me and to like film scholars or whatever,
Speaker 1: it is a figure, you know, I think it has
Speaker 1: to be female who is herself kind of she has agency,
Speaker 1: but she's also stuck in this weird world of men
Speaker 1: with power and guns and stuff, and she's always using
Speaker 1: her sexuality and oftentimes she's using alcohol. I would kind
Speaker 1: of like to see a film where maybe she uses
Speaker 1: something else besides alcohol, but for this film, it's super appropriate.
Speaker 1: And that was about all I wanted to add. But
Speaker 1: we could go back to this moment that we talked earlier.
Speaker 1: Is pretty darn funny where the deputies are now kind
Speaker 1: of hauling in the sheriff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it's I checked the chronology on this. Uh,
Speaker 4: what I'm pretty sure happens first is that Lyle busts in,
Speaker 4: finds them, knocks Nick Cage out, and looks into what
Speaker 4: the papers are, and what he basically finds out is
Speaker 4: that Suzanne and sheriff Sheriff Brown are not who they
Speaker 4: say they are. They're actually Kevin and Ann McCord, who
Speaker 4: are on the FBI's most wanted list for a massive
Speaker 4: embezzlement heist. So all of a sudden, he realizes, like,
Speaker 4: there's way more money in this than there is in
Speaker 4: you know, this hit, Right, this is how he's gonna
Speaker 4: get paid. So what he does is he basically kidnaps
Speaker 4: the two of them, right, He's like, all right, great,
Speaker 4: I'll work something out with these two.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: This is really where we started to see the character
Speaker 4: of Lyle kind of go over the top. He's sort
Speaker 4: of just brancing around, you know, holding these guys at gunpoint.
Speaker 4: It is incredibly amusing. So Sheriff Brown comes back in
Speaker 4: or you know, Kevin, I guess is his real name,
Speaker 4: and he realizes that the situations has gone bad. But
Speaker 4: as we've mentioned, his deputies come in behind him and
Speaker 4: have realized the situation. And one of the items that's
Speaker 4: found in here is a wanted poster for him and
Speaker 4: his wife, listing his real name, their crime, the reward
Speaker 4: for their capture. And so, as we mentioned earlier, this
Speaker 4: is kind of the final piece falling into place for
Speaker 4: these two sheriff deputies. So there's this again sort of
Speaker 4: funny moment where we see you know, Sheriff Brown sort
Speaker 4: of trying to you know, win these guys over with rhetoric.
Speaker 4: He's got this you know, huge high flying speech about like,
Speaker 4: oh are you gonna believe these crazy people? Are you
Speaker 4: gonna take me to jail? I can get a lawyer,
Speaker 4: And the sheriff deputy just looks at and goes, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're gonna take you to jail. Until the FBI starts
Speaker 4: this all out. It's again sort of a comedic, you
Speaker 4: know moment, But point is he has been taken to jail.
Speaker 4: Lyle has has kidnapped our leading man in this you know,
Speaker 4: fem fatal and so this is where the movie really
Speaker 4: starts to ramp up pacing wise, Right, we are moving
Speaker 4: towards the finish. So we get this sort of bizarre
Speaker 4: scene where they're driving in this buick. They're both in
Speaker 4: the back right bound up with chords, and we see
Speaker 4: that Nick Cage just smuggle a little pocket knife, right,
Speaker 4: so he hands it to this woman basically says, you
Speaker 4: know here, we can get out somewhere, and for seemingly
Speaker 4: no reason, h Lyle has been driving around with a
Speaker 4: bottle of whiskey, just taking swigs off of it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: They're they're talking again, very funny character the dialogue, and
Speaker 4: this is really good, and so actually he basically he
Speaker 4: pulls over next to this abandoned building and is kind
Speaker 4: of strutting around, and this is probably the part that
Speaker 4: feels the most like pulp fiction, as he's sort of
Speaker 4: strutting around with this empty, like basically crack house with
Speaker 4: graffiti all over it, takes a swig off the bottle,
Speaker 4: it kind of dumps the rest of it on the ground,
Speaker 4: tosses a lighter over his shoulder, and the house goes
Speaker 4: up in flames. He walks out, and Nick Cage just
Speaker 4: used this little pen knife to free himself, and we
Speaker 4: see another moment of him basically returning where he has
Speaker 4: the chance on his own to run. He's not directly involved.
Speaker 4: Lyle doesn't want him. He's just looking to get out.
Speaker 4: But he looks back and he's like, I can't leave
Speaker 4: her here. And so at that moment of indecision costs
Speaker 4: him his freedom, as Lyle walks out basically says like, nope,
Speaker 4: none of that. You're driving now. So he is next
Speaker 4: to nick Cage with a gun pointed at him. Right now,
Speaker 4: share TRF. Brown is at he is in jail. There
Speaker 4: are two deputies. The sort of main deputy gets a call, Hey,
Speaker 4: this old abandoned house is on fire. He decides to
Speaker 4: leave and go check it out. And this leaves one
Speaker 4: deputy all alone, and in a moment very reminiscent of
Speaker 4: a film we've already mentioned, No Country for Old Men.
Speaker 4: He's here in this tiny, little, you know, one room jailhouse,
Speaker 4: you know, the cage in the back where they got
Speaker 4: the sheriff, and Lyle walks in. We don't know, you know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't know Lyle from anywhere. Lyle runs up and
Speaker 4: shoots him right So the deputy is dead, and so
Speaker 4: he goes to Sheriff Brown, who initially tries to sort
Speaker 4: of reason with him, tries to basically say like, oh,
Speaker 4: I'll double your money then, you know. Lyle basically says like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I know who you are. I know that you've got
Speaker 4: all this money that you stole. And at least initially
Speaker 4: he offers him a deal. He's like, well, you know what,
Speaker 4: if you take me there, I'll split it with you, right,
Speaker 4: will be good. Then obviously it's heavily implied that's not
Speaker 4: what's gonna happen. Right, So, now the three of them
Speaker 4: are are headed out of town. The deputy returns, sees
Speaker 4: that his you know that the captain is gone, and
Speaker 4: that you know that the your deputy has been shot,
Speaker 4: and he runs out in time to see this car
Speaker 4: sort of speeding away, and we get this great moment.
Speaker 4: And it's funny because Hopper plays a very similar character
Speaker 4: to the one he did in Speed. This is the
Speaker 4: scene that perhaps the most overlap, and I initially would
Speaker 4: have thought because Speed is such a bigger movie, it
Speaker 4: actually came out afterwards, so right, if anything, Speed is
Speaker 4: a rip off of Red Rock Rest is what I'm
Speaker 4: trying to say. But in all seriousness, there's this great
Speaker 4: action scene where they basically drag race a train to
Speaker 4: try and get you know, across the tracks and lose
Speaker 4: the cops behind him. And Nick Cage is playing this
Speaker 4: very straight. Well, Hopper's going nuts. He's like streaming, pounding
Speaker 4: the dash, waving a gun, waving another bottle whisky around,
Speaker 4: basically like shoving the gun in his face, saying, you
Speaker 4: know what, you better drive and they, you know, in
Speaker 4: classic fashion, just barely you know, kind of you know,
Speaker 4: scooch by. And now they're on the open road right
Speaker 4: driving out to this depositive of cash.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: There's a couple of scenes on the road that are
Speaker 4: relatively brief, but are are pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: At some moment, I believe, when Lyle's occupied with the sheriff,
Speaker 4: he basically leans into Susanne or you know an whatever
Speaker 4: her name is, and basically says, look like, now you
Speaker 4: have this knife. I palmed it off to you. Lyle
Speaker 4: doesn't know that you have it. So when I give
Speaker 4: you a signal, right, you get your husband and I'll
Speaker 4: get him. Right, we'll sort it out that way.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: The while they're driving down again, Lyle's sort of chewing
Speaker 4: the scenery. It's maybe my baby part of this film
Speaker 4: is when they're all in the car together right driving
Speaker 4: out into the desert, and he basically passes the bottle around,
Speaker 4: hands it to Nick Cage. Nick Cage won't take it.
Speaker 4: He's like, well, what do you think you're too You
Speaker 4: think you're too good for us, You know that's your problem,
Speaker 4: but you think you're too good for us? And Nick
Speaker 4: Cage's like, I'm not gonna take it, and Michael shoots
Speaker 4: his gun, shoots his own window out right right in
Speaker 4: front of Nick Cage's face to basically force him to
Speaker 4: take a drink out of this bottle. So they carry on.
Speaker 4: It's revealed that the this location of the end of
Speaker 4: this movie, right at the location of all this cash,
Speaker 4: is this this cemetery, right, He's buried in the cemetery,
Speaker 4: and they, you know, I have to have to cut
Speaker 4: the lights on the car to sort of sneak past
Speaker 4: the caretaker of the cemetery. They go out, they dig
Speaker 4: up this box right with all the money in it.
Speaker 4: And this is another part of this movie that's sort
Speaker 4: of comedic, is the amount of double and triple crossing
Speaker 4: that occurs already, but particularly in this scene, it's just
Speaker 4: sort of off the charts. So and you have been
Speaker 4: talking for a while. Do you want to take us
Speaker 4: through one just any reactions you have and and take
Speaker 4: us through the kind of final chapter of this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I will try. I wanted to point out this,
Speaker 1: go back to the moment where Lyle walks in and
Speaker 1: shoots the deputy. If people, you know, take our advice
Speaker 1: and check this out, pause it on that deputy before
Speaker 1: he gets shot, and then you know, get on your
Speaker 1: phone or whatever and go look at the character of
Speaker 1: the deputy in No Country for Old Men. I did
Speaker 1: this because it was so we hadn't even discussed it
Speaker 1: at this point, like what is this DNA? What's happening here?
Speaker 1: Between these various crossovers, the two actors are almost interchangeable.
Speaker 2: I wonder if the.
Speaker 1: Cohens almost are doing some of this intentionally. There's so
Speaker 1: much likeness here. And last a little bit on this,
Speaker 1: we find out that Lyle we found.
Speaker 2: Out early on.
Speaker 1: They're they're shared you know, Semper five Marine Corps thing,
Speaker 1: and Lyle makes it clear that he's a recon marine
Speaker 1: and he's this you know, you know, something special that's
Speaker 1: been special operations, which again is that's what Sugur is
Speaker 1: sort of we're sort of led to believe that maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to offer that up for for
Speaker 1: folks like us who watch way too many movies. But yeah,
Speaker 1: going forward, the climax is brilliant and uh, there's a
Speaker 1: number of reveals where you have this basically a chess
Speaker 1: game where there are one or two guns in play.
Speaker 1: There's the pocket knife, and the box is has a
Speaker 1: lock on it, and so the sheriff and Lyle are
Speaker 1: going through this this kind of like cat and mouse
Speaker 1: game or a chess game to try and figure out
Speaker 1: like how do we manage this? The guy who plays
Speaker 1: the sheriff, who's also we've learned, is this a pretty
Speaker 1: capable embezzler and and excise me bullshit artist along the way,
Speaker 1: kind of gets the drop on on Lyle. There's a
Speaker 1: gun in the box as well as a giant bag
Speaker 1: of cash, and it's a high point, right, I think, No, No.
Speaker 4: This is actually a pretty obscure HK. It's actually a
Speaker 4: BP seventy really, which is a really super weird design.
Speaker 4: I know Pete will get mad at vif I say this,
Speaker 4: but I don't think they're particularly good kind of a
Speaker 4: weird anyway, that's that's a that's something for another time.
Speaker 4: But you may have also seen it in I think
Speaker 4: it was in I'm Not Finding Anything Else. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: was really kind of obscure gun, not in a ton
Speaker 4: of movies.
Speaker 1: But anyway, well, I'm glad I asked, because I was
Speaker 1: I would have just like visually glossed it as as
Speaker 1: a high point. So once again, to your point, there
Speaker 1: are a number of just odd guns that show up
Speaker 1: in this uh in this movie.
Speaker 2: Then that someone cared.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know who that guy was, but someone
Speaker 4: put way more effort into the kind of wors casting
Speaker 4: of this, I think than you'd expect.
Speaker 1: So I'll go through this like pretty you know, not
Speaker 1: not with a lot of detail because it is the end.
Speaker 2: I don't want to ruin it for fewears too much.
Speaker 2: But I really loved the number of payoffs.
Speaker 1: That moment where throughout the movie Lyle has been digging
Speaker 1: at the Nick Cage character like you won't drink with me?
Speaker 1: What I'm you're you're too good for people, you know,
Speaker 1: And there's that moment where Lyle says something like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why you're here with.
Speaker 2: All of us, because you are a loser.
Speaker 1: Too you're a thief, which is well, it's kind of true,
Speaker 1: but I won't even give it away because the payoff
Speaker 1: for me where you know, Nick Cage does get the
Speaker 1: upper hand and then basically kills Lyle and turns around
Speaker 1: and says, you know what, I am better than you? Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know that. That was my favorite moment probably
Speaker 1: in the whole movie. It's classic Nick Cage. It pays
Speaker 1: off this you know, this long like simmering weird tension
Speaker 1: be dead Lyle. Then Dennis Dennis Hopper, you're right, I
Speaker 1: mean he really he. I don't know if you could
Speaker 1: get an award, but it's a brilliant performance where everything pays.
Speaker 2: Off in the end. Yeah. I just thought that it
Speaker 2: all pays off too. It's not just like.
Speaker 1: You know, pyrotechnics for for the you know, the great
Speaker 1: actor Dennis Hopper. It really pays off for the film,
Speaker 1: but kind of glossing over you know, the the like
Speaker 1: scene by scene, beat by beat climax, which is very good.
Speaker 1: It's really that last final moment, right there's this train
Speaker 1: that had the cops are coming by. Now if you
Speaker 1: know it's been sorted out, who's going to get the
Speaker 1: money to and the Angenoux character, the woman has a choice.
Speaker 1: Nick Cage finally figures it out like I'm gone, like
Speaker 1: I'm leaving the money, the girl, the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: I'm running for this passing train in the night, and
Speaker 1: he does. The cops are the only thing you know
Speaker 1: that propel Laura Flynn Boyle forward. He once again helps
Speaker 1: her into the train and you know, she tries to
Speaker 1: double cross them one last time. But I'll hand it
Speaker 1: back to you, right, what did you think of there's
Speaker 1: I thought it was a great ending.
Speaker 4: I did too, because we we sort of see in
Speaker 4: this situation where he is still acting in good faith
Speaker 4: to with this woman. He's like all right, like you know,
Speaker 4: I I saved you. We've got the money, like we're
Speaker 4: good now. And what we see is that she's grabbed
Speaker 4: Lyle's gun, which in this kind of complicated multi dimensional
Speaker 4: Mexican standoff which we don't have the time to get into,
Speaker 4: it's it's good enough. You should watch it has been.
Speaker 4: He's dropped the magazine. We saw that happen, but we
Speaker 4: don't know, right is there still one in the chamber
Speaker 4: or not? And so she pulls a gun on him.
Speaker 4: He's basically like why why would why would you do this? Like,
Speaker 4: after all this we've gone together, would you really you know,
Speaker 4: kill me just for this money? And click, she pulls
Speaker 4: the trigger. Nothing in the gun, and he's at this
Speaker 4: point had it, So he takes the bag of money
Speaker 4: out the side of the train and just dumps it,
Speaker 4: basically like we're done, and she jumps out. She goes
Speaker 4: to grab the money. So now he's you know, she
Speaker 4: gets arrested. We see the you know, the cherries behind her.
Speaker 4: She's brought to justice and Nick Cage, as you know
Speaker 4: A thousand Miles from Nowhere by Dwight Yoakum, starts playing
Speaker 4: you know, the camera pans up to this beautiful mountain
Speaker 4: as the train you know, goes out into the sunrise,
Speaker 4: and he sits down and we see that he he
Speaker 4: looks into his jacket and one bundle of cash, right
Speaker 4: a thousand dollars has gotten wedged in his jacket, and
Speaker 4: we see him just look at the money and kind
Speaker 4: of shrug. And that's where the movie ends, right, Nick
Speaker 4: Cage at least got something for his trouble. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I genuinely love this film. Uh, it was a in
Speaker 4: my mind, a sort of you know, Undiscovered jem h
Speaker 4: really not one you here mentioned, but a fun movie
Speaker 4: like it propels. There's very little downtime in it. It's
Speaker 4: competently shot, the acting is great, and it's you know,
Speaker 4: not a super bombastic, over the top film, but very
Speaker 4: very good, highly entertaining, and really kind of a great
Speaker 4: example of that, you know, sort of early nineties neo
Speaker 4: noir in a non traditional setting. I don't think it
Speaker 4: did particularly well, largely because of how genre bending it is.
Speaker 4: You know, it's this sort of half comedy crime drama
Speaker 4: noir set in the West. You know, it's a little
Speaker 4: hard to explain, and doing some research on it, the
Speaker 4: studio had a really hard time figuring out what to
Speaker 4: do with it, right. They sent it to film festivals, where,
Speaker 4: of course it didn't do well at you know, high
Speaker 4: society film festivals. They couldn't really advertise it, so it flopped, right,
Speaker 4: It didn't even make a quarter of its budget back.
Speaker 4: But it's a great film. I highly recommend it, honestly,
Speaker 4: Andy not to say it is not as good of
Speaker 4: a film as No Country for Old Men. Objectively speaking,
Speaker 4: there's not as much depth to it, but as far
Speaker 4: as a film that I had no expectations and really
Speaker 4: no familiarity with how surprised I was at the results.
Speaker 4: One of the best sort of cult classics I think
Speaker 4: I've ever been recommended.
Speaker 2: I'm glad to hear it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad because that means you have great taste, which
Speaker 1: we already knew. But you know, last thing is you
Speaker 1: mentioned that propulsive there. It's really kind of a masterpiece
Speaker 1: in terms of writing and pacing and all that, like
Speaker 1: you're just off to the races and to the last beat.
Speaker 1: It delivers. So once again, yeah, great movie.
Speaker 2: Check it out.
Speaker 4: Yeah again, really enjoyed it a lot, easy to find,
Speaker 4: so everyone should check it out. Andy, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: I really enjoy our media analysis. It's one of those
Speaker 4: things where it's like it's just fun to talk about
Speaker 4: good movies. It's enjoyable, and so much of the like
Speaker 4: film analysis discourse, it's just so horrible and rotten that
Speaker 4: it makes you hate it until you sit down with
Speaker 4: the friend and you're like, oh, this is a ton
Speaker 4: of fun, and they do well. People like it. It's funny.
Speaker 4: I get emails if I haven't done a movie review
Speaker 4: in three weeks, people get mad. But that said, man,
Speaker 4: where can people find you?
Speaker 1: You know, same places. I'm on X and substack. If
Speaker 1: you go to X and do the link tree, all
Speaker 1: my stuff is in there. Thanks for mentioning that, you
Speaker 1: know you can grab the books.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love doing this too, Jays, So anytime if the
Speaker 1: audience appreciates it, let me know.
Speaker 2: I love to come back.
Speaker 4: Definitely. Well, I have you on again soon to do
Speaker 4: another review of one of your books, book that I
Speaker 4: read a while ago, and I'll be honest thought I
Speaker 4: had already reviewed. We'll get that set up soon. Far
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Speaker 4: thank you guys for that. It's not a huge cost.
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Speaker 2: Do everyone know home?
Speaker 4: Keep your head up well, I can't last forever.
Speaker 3: Good night, But what's what's? It's Gary, Gary,