I think it would've helped to heighten the tension and mystery.
sharei've revisited this page for precisely this reason... remembering how odd it was for Ezterhaus to have used such a sparse number of suspects... but overly complicating things wouldn't have been good either
shareI totally agree. Fundamentally I like this movie. I saw the ending before I actually saw the movie and I thought...huh, good. then i saw the whole thing and I was like...errr good. It was just too out there in the open that he was guilty or not...because your brain never really suspected anyone else.
"Cocaine is God's way of telling you you are making too much money."--Robin Williams
Oh man, this movie was SO predictable, even my girlfriend knew who the killer was after 30 minutes.. LAME!
But I heard there was an alternate version where the tennis pro was the killer.. that would've been more surprising, but not much. Now, if Robert Loggia was the killer, that would be awesome! Still love his last line, whatever the wording of it was, "That guy was a piece of *beep* or something like that :D
Secundus: Put your gun in my pocket!
Like you guys, I though it was fairly obvious from the start that Jack was the killer.
I think the audience were supposed to have been manipulated, along with Teddy, into not wanting to beleive that this seemingly romantic, caring guy could be a murderer. The nasty slimy tennis player was easy to hate and so the audience was supposed to want him to be the killer.
The ending was sort of a let down because I really wanted a twist, but maybe thats the point - the twist was, there was no twist.
SPOILERS FOLLOW!
Please do bear in mind that at the time of the film's initial release (1985), it was almost certainly considered that no extra narrative twist or red herring was necessary - it was already a huge twist when the leading man turned out to be guilty after all. It was not at all what audiences were expecting back then. I remember spectators actually gasping in shock as Jeff Bridges was unmasked at the end.
Of course, screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has recycled this formula (main character loves someone who may or may not be guilty of a heinous crime) so often since then (Betrayed, Music Box, Basic Instinct, Jade, Sliver etc) that it now seems terribly deja-vu and old hat. Also, we're now so accustomed to entire films (The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, Wild Things etc) being structured around earth-shattering revelations that we naturally expect a couple of extra plot reversals, even in older films, and tend to feel a little short-changed when they're not there.
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I think the male prostitute was introduced too late in the film to be an effective red herring.
"Oh, don't you look....smart"
I was assuming the tennis man was the killer, but under orders from Jack Forrester. The two working together. Yeah, yeah, I know. But hey it kept the movie interesting to me.
What blew me away at the end wasn't the fact that Forrester was the killer. I fell out of the movie because he had the typewriter still in his bedroom. What nonsense. What a cheap shot. A guy planning and operating to kill his wife for a timespan of two years, a manipulator, a actor, a sucessfull business man, would leave the typewriter in his house? Come on.
7/10. The end killed the fun a bit, but still: Good old school thriller. - The perfect ex-husband was a bit too much Hollywood tough.