Wait ... Is THIS the real reason Dick was fired? **** SPOILER ****

I've loved this movie for 37 years, but I always had a problem with the boss character, Charlie Blanchard.

In the opening, yes, he's a whiskey-sotted jerk the way he fires Dick outright and then has a good laugh. But after he collapses on the couch with "blood on his hands", I felt empathetic. He's just the messenger, after all, paid to pass out bad news decided by unseen corporate heads upstairs. All responsibility, no authority. The classic corporate stress recipe.

By the third act, the script needed a villain -- and he got the job. To me, that felt contrived and served to destroy the reasonable earlier characterization.

But wait a sec. We learn he had a six-figure slush fund used to bribe congressmen. (Surely this wasn't his idea. Again, he's likely just the errand boy.) Are we to believe he laid off all those workers because of the bribe money? Was there any indication of this?

I didn't see any. But it sure would go a long way to justifying Blanchard's later portayal as the bad guy.