"When two men get killed in the same gasworks explosion and fire, you can't tell afterward which one of them was white and which one was black."
cmvgor
"A man does what he has to do-if he can't get out of it. - Bret Maverick's Pappy
QUOTE:
"When two men get killed in the same gasworks explosion and fire, you can't tell afterward which one of them was white and which one was black."
There's nothing dumb about what you said.
I can also add that the film showed me how racism can fatally divide people who normally would be allies.
I felt that the Mutually Assured Destruction of a short-lived gun battle at a petroleum storage facility seemed to remind me of the justified fear of the atomic bomb, so prevalent in the years immediately after Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
yj270:
"I felt that the Mutually Assured Destruction of a short-lived gun battle at a petroleum storage facility seemed to remind me of the justified fear of the atomic bomb, so prevalent in the years immediately after Hiroshima & Nagasaki."
This film was made in 1959, 14 years after WWII ended.
The moral of the story is, If we could all just get along, people would make better criminals. Obviously, the caper fails because of the racism between the two leads. But is that a bad thing? Do we really want people who rob banks to be successful? Aren't we glad that the scheme is foiled? In fact, it is the racism that saves the day!
The fact that this is not the intended reading of the film just shows how poor a thinker was Robert Wise. But then, this is the guy who's on record claiming that The Sand Pebbles is an anti-war film.
I wouldn't consider Wise a lame thinker. He most likely carefully approved of every line in the finished script. The exchange between Burke and Earl in Burke's flat was pretty powerful. Even the line about the dog seemed highly believable. Earl and Johnny were tragic losers wanting a comfortable life without much hard work. It cost both of them.
shareEarl and Johnny's legacy left tragedy for many- Johnny's daughter -a dead cop's family grieving,
It was a powerful and compelling film peopled with mostly flawed characters. Was there a carefree and Burke felt he had been betrayed by his own, Slater was just plain tormented perhaps with a hideous upbringing and Johnny
was cursed with good looks and some musical expertise which meant he could always con the ladies.
The club owner was also a rueful tormented type-fronting a bar for the mob.
Earl - in my opinion- gets the best line that explains these fringe character's flawed ethos (looking for a break in the fence (to get over- actually going under- to get to the good life).
Yeah, the ending ruined the film. It was just cheesy. Unfortunate, as Ryan had a powerful performance going - and then the movie just died. Garbage.