MovieChat Forums > The Last Detail (1974) Discussion > why would military give 5 days for 1 day...

why would military give 5 days for 1 day trip?


and wouldn't he have been taken in an armored car?

and there is no way he's getting 8 years for attempted 40$ theft

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I dont know one way or another. But it seems to me that Prisoners have to begin their sentence on a certain day(ie, the 15th of the month). I am sure that there is leeway for weather and Holidays.

8 years is unusual. He could have deserted . My understanding is that deserters got about one year and one day.

There must have been something else that he did that they are not telling.

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He got the book thrown at him because the money he stole was from the base commander's wife favorite charity.


I just can't get enough minimalism.

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6 years for good behavior.

I think they didn't need him in any kind of armored car (and would allow that time) since it was probably procedure at the time for someone who committed an offense like that. He didn't kill anyone, it was just theft, but theft that especially got on the nerves of the higher ups (not the Polio contribution box! that's kind of the irony in the movie - polio was cured by then).



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No one is going to waste an armored car on a single prisoner. It is quite common to transport a prisoner on commercial transport, with an escort (chasers). The military isn't going to spring big bucks for this, so lower cost transport is often used, especially that era. Trains and buses were very common transportation methods for the military, with air travel being mostly used for overseas travel or across country. However, Norfolk to Portsmouth in a week seems a bit excessive. Probably a bit of dramatic license to allow time to tell the story and have events occur over a reasonable period. 1 week would seem reasonable for the round trip, not one way, though.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."-Groucho

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8 years is excessive, that's half the point: Meadows got screwed by the system. The base CO likely used his position to ensure that the worst spin possible was put on the charges, so for instance instead of charging him for petty theft (which it was) he probably saw to it he got charged with burglary/breaking and entering/etc... with the "breaking" being the destruction of the lock box containing the $40.

As for 5 days... Who knows. It takes longer than you would expect to travel by bus and train, especially if the trip isn't planned. They probably gave them 5 days to ensure they had enough time, especially considering they had a prisoner to contend with. Throw in weather delays and layovers between trains/buses and what could easily be done in 2 days with some planning may very well need longer. To illustrate my point, when driving by personally owned vehicle from Norfolk to NY or vice versa I'd say 10 hours is about right. However, flying from Baltimore, Maryland to Norfolk, Virginia with Navy arranged tickets took 12 hours. I could have driven there in less time. Why did it take so ridiculously long, even in this day and age? Because the air travel contract was written with a carrier that didn't have direct flights from Maryland to Norfolk, so I had to fly to New York first, wait several hours, have two flights canceled and the last one delayed and so what should have been a 1 hour flight direct from Maryland to Norfolk ended up taking all day. And these guys weren't even going by plane, they were going by bus/train and, again, had a prisoner who might have slowed them down to contend with on top of all that. And buses/trains don't travel as fast or as seamlessly as a car. And they had to go all the way to Maine. And it was winter.

In short, 5 days seems perfectly reasonable to me, to provide buffer room, considering the mode of transportation and the purpose for the trip.

And an armored car... Really? They treated him like a hardened criminal at court-martial to make a point and because they could at no added cost, that doesn't mean for a minute they thought he really was.

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Consider the anti-military theme.

Meadows getting eight years for stealing $40? OK, he stole from the favorite charity of the base commander's wife, so the old man was getting his revenge.

The five days? Just a foul up.

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Not addressed yet is that in the 70s, this wasn't a one day trip. Look at the modes of transport. Greyhounds used to stop in many small towns on most routes, for up to half an hour in some. There were no express trains in the northeast corridor then, to my knowledge. If there were, you can bet that Uncle wasn't going to pay the extra ticket price for these 3.

I took train from Los Angeles to Parkersburg, W.Va. in 1980 and that was 4 days. It included a 14 hour overnight delay in Chicago. That was just regular scheduling.

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