MovieChat Forums > Mean Streets (1973) Discussion > hit (spoilers)

hit (spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by denham
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The hit at the end of the film is messy. The three occupants of Tony's car are all badly wounded, but maybe they'll all survive. But any one of them, or two, or all three, might easily have been killed. If the idea was to kill Johnny Boy, the job could have been finished when the car had stopped, but wasn't. What was Michael's idea? To kill Johnny Boy? To kill the others too? Did Teresa really piss him off that much on the staircase? What sense is there in what he does, or tells the gunman to do? It all seems, well, hit-or-miss. Whatever it was he intended, in the final shot of Michael he doesn't look entirely pleased by the outcome. But why exactly?

"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken."

[–] The_White_Hotel 11 years ago

Well Michael is hardly the most professional of operators (remember the german lenses/jap adapters fiasco?).

Michael is small-time. The hit at the end was messy, but that fits with the rest of what we see in the film.

Reality is the new fiction they say, truth is truer these days, truth is man-made

[–] denham 11 years ago

Michael is, as you say, not the most professional of operators. I just wonder what we should think he was thinking. For example, do we suppose he was (perhaps wrongly) confident that all this mayhem would leave him with no big problems with Charlie's Uncle Giovanni? Surely he would have considered this matter?

"I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken."