Nick goes to the fair without a gun
really?
shareSo much to like in this movie...the Chicago Irish gangster angle, Lee Marvin VS Gene Hackman, the bucolic setting for action (shades of the crop duster sequence in North by Northwest) and...
...yes. There's nothing but a massive lack of logic in that moment.
Lee Marvin is a mob enforcer sent to collect money from fellow gangster Gene Hackman. He knows that the mob enforcers who came before him have been killed -- the last one was shipped to Chicago as string of hot dogs (Marvin to another gangster: Was he a good guy? Gangster: Yes. Marvin: Then bury him. )
And Marvin has shown up the day before at Hackman's "livestock sale" (nude, drugged up young women for sex slavery) and threatened Hackman big time if he doesn't have the money.
All that build-up and Marvin shows up to "collect" and -- doesn't have a GUN? So he runs away when Hackman's guys pull theirs. Its almost comical.
Honestly, I'm not sure if this was stupid writing or some sort of "let's make fun of the action movie formula" joke.
Either way...its ridiculous.
CONT
Returning to say that this "dumping of simple logic" is so egregious to me that it has rather permanently ruled Prime Cut out to me as a "good movie." All this build-up to Lee Marvin being able to defeat Hackman and his gang where previous mob bill collecters could not...and Marvin doesn't even bring a gun to this meeting?