MovieChat Forums > Magnum Force (1973) Discussion > bag in pool

bag in pool

posted 12 years ago by denham
13 replies | jump to latest

A cop throws a bag into a swimming pool before shooting everyone. As he throws it, it's smoking. But it doesn't seem to explode. Is it not supposed to, or is it a dud, or did I miss something?

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[–] youmustvotenato 12 years ago

I think it did explode. I remember it splashing up the pool.

[–] BrianRaess_Is_FinallyGone 11 years ago

You missed something. Obviously.

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

I think it's just supposed to be a distraction.

[–] urgeking 11 years ago

It did eventually explode in the pool, though not in a terribly impressive way. Probably the cop was thinking, "It'll start as a smoke bomb. That will get everyone's attention, and they'll all be looking in this direction at the same time. If this were a movie, that's what the director would probably want them to do!"

[–] ryan-anderson 11 years ago

It blew up….but I never quite followed the purpose there. It’s not like it was going to do much damage (going off in water). I think (like another poster said) it was mainly for a distraction.

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[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] urgeking 11 years ago

What seems bizarre to me is that, after all of the noise of the explosion and the machine-gunning, the cop slowly... casually... makes his way down the hill to his bike and casually rides away, as if not caring whether anyone in the neighborhood sees him... almost as if these vigilante cops are actually ghosts or something. (Oops, do I hear a new thread being born?)

And we see nobody in the neighborhood coming out to ask, "What in the world just happened out here? It sounded like a war was going on!"

[–] stones78 11 years ago

the whole scene is silly, and so unrealistic.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] liambean 10 years ago

And we see nobody in the neighborhood coming out to ask, "What in the world just happened out here? It sounded like a war was going on!"

I grew up in this time. The seventies were my "formative years." A lot of couples worked. The husband and wife had different jobs and the kids were in school. Likely the neighborhood was lightly peopled at that hour if not entirely deserted.

[–] urgeking 10 years ago

True as that may be, how would the killer cop know that nobody from the neighborhood will happen to be around at this particular time to see him casually drive away? The way the scene is set up, it suggests that the cop simply doesn't care whether anyone is looking...

...and what is such indifference supposed to be telling us about him? That he thinks he's omnipotent? That the "nobody wants to get involved" syndrome is so pervasive that it lets cops feel confident about blowing people away in public with no repercussions? Or that these cops are actually some kind of supernatural beings that cannot be seen by mere mortals? (That last one might be stretching it a bit.)

[–] VanillaLimeCoke 10 years ago

I think it was just a smoke bomb just to....
1) make them panic and get off guard
2) blind their LOS so the cop could shot them easier.

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[–] liambean 10 years ago

The way the scene is set up, it suggests that the cop simply doesn't care whether anyone is looking.

THAT is a really good point too.

That he thinks he's omnipotent?

Didn't you kind of get that feeling about the four officers too? They were so convinced of their "rightness" that no amount of social conditioning was going to stop them. They HAD to get the scum off of the streets, they certainly weren't going to let the system stop them.