Observe and Report (2009)

great movie. Didn't like the ending. I 'got' it. but I felt it would have been a better movie if they had kept the realistic view and had Seths character arrested or committed or something. otherwise amazing movie

That's a safe, reassuring ending, though. The ending we got works because it's terrifying and utterly plausible at the same time.

Any ending that does not involve that gunshot is not an ending I want any parts of.

There's an argument that, given Ronnie's off his meds and taken a severe beating, that ending is all an elaborate fantasy anyway, in Ronnie's mind as he blasts away at the firing range.

Hence the use of "Where is my mind?" during the climactic chase.

Shill!

Still one of my favorites from last year. Great movie.

Would it have been better if he had killed him? I'm on the fence.

Nah, that was good enough.

The reason why "Where is my Mind" is playing is because of a couple of things. This is a movie-movie, so the use of Queen music from Flash Gordon works on a number of levels, the inherent ironic nature of Queen, but also that this is a fantasy soundtrack. To that extent "where is my Mind" cinematic recalls Fight Club, and - at least for me - using a famous cue from another film is the moment I step back as a viewer and recognize the movie-ness (which it also does by entering slow motion), and forces the viewer to acknowledge that what's happening is both enjoyable and terrible. But also, director Jody Hill is also saying to the audience "this is insane" by the very title of the song.

Yeah, that was my simplistic read on it, as well. Rogen is a guy with some serious mental problems who's off his meds. Using "Where's My Mind" is jokily referencing the fact that Rogen is cuckoo for cocoa puffs by the last reel.

I'm kind of wondering why we keep having the same debate about the Taxi Driver ending. The general arc of the character is the same in both films, Taxi Driver is even explicitly mentioned as an influence by the people behind the film. In both cases, the entire point of the ending is lost if the ending didn't actually happen in the film's world.

I like to call it the "American Psycho" effect.

I'm a huge fan of black comedy, but for whatever reason Observe and Report didn't do much for me. Just didn't find it particularly funny.

The Taxi Driver influence really couldn't be any more overt. Ronnie even has a "badass" voice-over that he screws up and starts over halfway through.

Not to derail, but that's kind of unfair. The point of American Psycho still stands if Bateman's violent deeds are all in his head. What kind of world he lives in/we live in as a result is the variable.

Applied to this film, however, it's completely true. Nothing is gained by that second half being complete fantasy. That said, I have no doubt that the Flash Gordon music during his fight with the cops is what's playing in Ronnie's head that entire time.

The other thing is that American Psycho makes that explicit. It is in the text. There's nothing in the text here that proves we've gone into a dreamworld.

Like Pan's Labyrinth or Taxi Driver, I think the only way to read those readings is that it's what viewers come up with to feel okay with the material. It's easier to think that this character is insane and therefore none of these actions have consequence, it's easier to see Travis Bickle as dead and the epilogue is simply his dying wishes, it's easier to believe there is no fantasy world in Pan's Labyrinth, and the reason why Minority Report becomes a Columbo episode in the final third is because it's all a dream. But there is no textual support to these readings, and in some cases there is textual support against these readings.

See, I'd say this exact thing about American Psycho, both as a novel and as a film. In fact, I'd argue that treating it as a complete fantasy does the story a big injustice.
I'm sorry, but makes what explicit? Are you saying there's something in Psycho that proves we're in a dreamworld? What is it?

Yeah, I think Mattioli is saying that American Psycho has primed the general audience to think that batshit crazy endings are endings told from the unreliable narrator POV. But that take on Taxi Driver has been around since Kael.

I haven't seen Psycho since release, but doesn't something happen that suggests that Bateman never killed anyone? I thought that was in the text, if not, then I agree that I am wrong.

My memory of that film is more about business cards than the ending, I thought it was as good an adaptation of the source material as could be expected, but not as biting as it should be (much like Wall Street).

I still remember taking my girlfriend to see it, and we howled with laughter throughout it. The sex scene made the lady in front of us get up and leave while muttering "That's fucked up" out loud, and we just laughed more.

We actually just revisited it 2 weeks ago via my Blu-ray copy. She really likes the flick. Probably the best comedy movie we saw last year.

There are a couple of things near the end that fit what you're talking about, but both have "real world" explanations that are also in the text.

The first is when Bateman returns to an apartment where he's been keeping corpses and causing mayhem, only to find that the apartment is empty and for sale. The conversation he has with the broker implies that, given the apartment's location and resale value, the bodies were discovered and destroyed without the knowledge of the police. I think it's one of the more chilling moments in the film, as it shows that while Bateman is a killer, there are people who might not be murderers, but will do absolutely anything for a buck.

The second is the "Paul Allen" conversation, where Bateman insists he killed Paul Allen (Jared Leto), only to be told that someone had lunch with Paul Allen/saw him in Rome. For a while, this scene was the concrete proof that Bateman was imagining things, until a friend pointed out that in the world of the film, all the characters look and dress the same, so whoever saw Paul Allen was mistaken. Bateman has previously impersonated other members of his firm throughout the film, so this explanation also holds up.

That leaves the big killing spree with feeding the cat to the ATM and shooting cops, which I've never been able to explain to a point that it satisfies me. But there's enough evidence in the film that Bateman could in fact be a killer, but his world has allowed him to get away with murder while simultaniously offering him no closure by confessing.

Thank you for the refresher.

Basically, AP makes ambiguity the point. Which is a narrative decision by its makers. I'm not above reading things in interesting ways, but I always feel if you're going to do that you have to identify what in the text makes it so. My problem with these readings are that it's a safer way to read the text.

As per TAXI DRIVER, I was thinking about this. The film leaves Travis's perspective for the scene between Sport and Iris, which can be argued to proved it's not a 1st person unreliable narrative, but then so can the camera not wanting to watch Bickle on the phone with Betsy after their bad date.

I think the more likely interpretation here is since it was Paul Allen's apartment, and Paul Allen had been missing long enough that his family is being proactive about finding him, that they eventually discovered the contents of the apartment and covered it up.

Hey, I didn't say that's my reading of the film, I said its A reading of the film. I much prefer the idea that it all happens and that Ronnie is loco. The obvious Taxi Driver homages support this.

But the use of "Where is my mind" referencing Fight Club can also be used as ammunition for the argument that Ronnie's personality has split in two at that point.

First one I've bought in a long while. Had to create a playlist with the Queen songs added in, though.

Nah, I agree with Rath. There's a weird aura of menace and threat given off by the realtor. And, if I recall correctly, it's more explicit in the novel.

For what it's worth, Bret Easton Ellis has said Bateman did not kill anyone. There was an interview with him when the awful sequel was released. Ellis said there shouldn't be a sequel because he did not kill anyone.

The director may have intended more ambiguity though.

Link? That absolutely shocks me. To me, there's no question that Bateman does everything described in the novel. But, yeah, the film injects more ambiguity into the proceedings.

Anyways, I'm sorry for derailing this thread with my "American Psycho" reference. "Observe and Report" rules. That is all.

That is one Mr. Charles Kelly from one of the funniest series ever, "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (specifically, the episode is "Hundred Dollar Baby). If you like to laugh, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Can’t find it, but it looks like the director intended ambiguity:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/faq

However, if this is the case, and if this sequence does represent pure fantasy, Harron ultimately felt that she had gone too far with the hallucinatory approach. In an interview with Charlie Rose, she stated that she felt she had failed with the end of the film because she led audiences to believe the murders were only in his imagination, which was not what she wanted. Instead, she wanted ambiguity; "One thing I think is a failure on my part is people keep coming out of the film thinking that its all a dream, and I never intended that. All I wanted was to be ambiguous in the way that the book was. I think it's a failure of mine in the final scene because I just got the emphasis wrong. I should have left it more open ended. It makes it look like it was all in his head, and as far as I'm concerned, it's not" (the complete interview can be found here).
Charlie Rose interview with Harron, Bale and Ellis:

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/200...merican-psycho

Ellis’ review:

http://homevideo.universalstudios.co...wtokiller.html

The thing that bugs me about the Observe and Report 'it's all a dream' reading - apart from the fact that I think it's not supported textually - it's that it's kind of reductive, and it takes a lot away from the film.

If the last act is really just the delusions of a sociopath then the film isn't really saying much of interest.

If it's all real, then Jody Hill and Rogen are saying something much fiercer and much more challenging (and kind of amazingly cynical) about a specifically American attitude and milieu. It's the sheer ballsiness of Hill's stuff that makes me love it, after the laughs have gone.

Totally agree, Seamus.

That is quite simply the scene of the film for me, it works on so many levels, as an ironic score to the action, as a window into Ronnies head and as utterly fucking hilarious. I laughed so hard when Brian Mays guitar kicked in I had tears running down my cheeks and was making this weird high pitched giggle instead of my normal laugh.

Yeah no offense, but I'd really need to see a direct quote from the guy before I believed this. If true, then Ellis completely negates the books metacommenting on the evil vacuous shallowness of Reagans free market America in the eighties (which to me is the entire point of the book even existing) and the story just becomes about a crazy guy having fucked up hallucinations - which means the book is a complete waste of time if true.

Not that an IMDB faq is the most reliable source, but still.

Here's my thoughts on this movie from another thread, posted since I'm watching it with a friend right now who hasn't seen it.

A film as polarizing, incendiary, and just flat out hilarious as this doesn't deserve to be an after-thought even a year after its release. It deserved to be one of the decade's most controversial films. Audiences treated it a child molester and thought Kevin James as a goofy fat guy was funnier, but Jody Hill's sophomore effort is the Big Lebowski of the last decade, a psychotic, morally bankrupt and brilliantly defiant dark comedy that dares to be watched, a lost Scorsese/Schrader collaboration through the lens of the Coen Brothers with just the amount of mean-spirited humor and grisly situations you'd expect. Seth Rogen is cruelly hilarious and utterly magnetic as Ronnie Barnhardt, a Peckinpah-esque antihero only motivated by self-satisfaction. Anna Faris taints her image as a lovable ditz playing an object of desire whose beauty is truly only skin deep. Michael Pena is hilarious, and Ray Liotta ditches being genuinely funny by treating the ludicrous idea of a flasher on the loose at a mall as if he's his character in Cop Land or Narc.

Ronnie's assault against abusive food court manager Patton Oswalt might be one of the funniest screen moments in recent years. The cult needs to get huge on this one.

Does this movie play date rape for comedy?

Yes, yes it does.

I thought so. Huh.

You got something against date rape?

Sometimes films with very specific dark tones take a while for me to warm up to, especially if I have preconceived notions going into it. This one left me cold, but I'm not at a point in my film viewing career where I will dismiss a film so acclaimed by so many people I respect so much. In cases like this, I tend to assume I'm wrong and make a mental note to get back to it in a year or so. But in the meantime, looking back, the idea of playing date-rape for laughs is something that sort of rubs me the wrong way. Why THAT rubs me the wrong way and not the legion of other crimes (murder, assault, indecent exposure, etc) played for laughs don't, I don't know. I've never been a victim of date-rape, I've never date-raped anyone, and I don't know of any of my friends ever being date-raped, so I'm not sure why that one scene bothers me so much.

To answer your question, I am against date-rape as an act but, looking back over this post, I am clearly in favor of typing the phrase "date-rape" as many times as I can.

I think what may be rubbing you the wrong way about the date-rape scene is that, while all the other wrong things that Ronnie does are just presented straightforwardly, they try to make the rape scene "okay" by having Brandy literally ask him for it halfway through. The film sort of acknowledging the total wrongness of the situation and then awkwardly trying to soften the blow to our sympathy for the character is both kind of ball-less and creepy.

Yeah. I think it's also that, unlike assault and murder, there's a lot of misunderstanding about what date rape is. A lot of people think the definition is limited to slipping a girl a roofie. Playing murder for laughs doesn't put out the same kind of message as playing date rape for laughs.

Turning out to be not date rape actually makes that scene more fucked up.

Yeah, but okay, I laughed when the film went there. I guess I'm a terrible person.