Does anyone out there know exactly what happened to Annabella Sciorra's character? Are we supposed to believe that
A.) Natalie just left Jack and never came back or
B.) Natalie was murdered by Mona
Does anyone out there have a fairly definite answer?
Wrong! At the airport he asks her if she'll meet him at the diner. She says she left him something in their bureau that would give him his answer. What she left him was a scrapbook full of pictures of ALL HIS GIRLFRIENDS! How she knew he was with Mona is a bit of a plot hole, but her message is clear: he messed around too many times so she won't meet him at the diner.
shareehh i donno...i thought she said she was giving him something to let him know that she knew...she made it sound as though she'd be there...really sad though
i live in a world of my own imagination...i call it earth
I've seen this movie a couple of times and at first I thought she was alive and just took the money and never showed up but...in the back of the photo album, I think there's a picture of Mona there. I think she might be dead. I mean, if she got close enough to Mona to photograph her and given that Mona is so deadly, it possible that Mona did kill her after all, since she seemed to be way ahead of everyone else in the movie.
shareThe pictures of Mona were missing, does this not suggest that Mona got to her and took them? If so we can safely assume Nat is dead.
Then again I agree that she never intended to show up at the diner and left him the scrap book as proof of her knowledge of his infidelities. The book is a symbol of her leaving that life behind, and starting a new life with the money. She told Jack during their talk about happiness that she thought money could bring her the happiness that their marriage had failed to provide. She had given up on Jack and was letting him know it.
Hey that's right! I'm going to have to watch the movie again to see the ending again. I think you're right--the pictures are missing of Mona. But, there is that part where Mona claims to have killed Nat...
shareshe doesnt claim to have killed her. she says she intends to.
"your a wifes a deadman jack just like you"
thats more of a threat than a confession.
also i think natalie just decided to take off. firstly when jack asks her will she meet him if she was going to then she would have just came out with it and said YES. however by giving him an indirect answer she avoids having to say NO to his face. secondly she doesnt kiss him or even hug him before getting out of the car. the last thing she says is "see ya when i see ya" - to me thats similar to what some1 would say after a breakup.
I agree. Natalie had no intention of ever contacting him again. The photo album was her way of saying why. I hate to say it, but, ending up alone in that diner out in the middle of bumfrick, he got what was coming to him. It was still sad, though! But I also am glad they didn't sugarcoat the ending by having Natalie return.
shareShe said "I love you anyway, Jackie". Maybe she wanted him to know that she knew about his infidelities, but she had already told him she knew when they were sitting on the porch that night. She asked him "Was it my sister you screwed Jack? Or just my niece?" So he already knew that she was onto him about his women.
I still think Mona either had her killed or was going to have her killed. She managed to find Sheri after she left, so she must have known where Natalie was as well.
The picture album was still in the drawer where Natalie left it, minus Mona's pictures. Mona was probably the one who searched the house looking for the money and took her pictures out of the album herself.
There is lots to speculate about with this movie, and I guess that's the way it was intended. I liked the movie a lot, especially Gary's portrayal of Jack. Gary Oldman is the sexiest man alive. The scenes where he is sitting on the end of the bed in that hotel room and looking at Mona are KILLER!!!
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Damn it! I had it in my head that Natalie left him (especially after watching just the end last night for the first time in years), but now some of you have given me doubts.
Jack in his monologue had spoken about what being in hell was like. I can’t remember it verbatim but he had said something about Hell being the moment you realized you should’ve walked but didn’t. I think I had assumed Jack wrote that in one his letter to Natalie, and she took that to heart. She had been unhappy with her life lately and Jack obviously had a lot to do with that. I thought maybe she felt if she returned to Jack, he would just put her through the same grief and she would regret it.
I also thought the book was her way of telling him her answer. The fact that there were no pictures of Mona there only meant to me that this was Natalie’s way of saying, “Yeah, I know about all your ladies. Here’s a spot for your latest conquest.”
But now…shyt, maybe Mona did kill her.
When the hurly-burly's done. When the battle's lost and won.
I thought the missing pictures of Mona indicated that Natalie knew about Mona, but maybe had never seen her or had the opportunity to take a picture of her.
In my mind, I was thinking that as screwed up as Jack was throughout the last half of the movie, it was certainly not out of the realm of possibility that he would let Mona's name slip while he was sleeping or something similar. (If a man had a woman like Mona in his life, I think it would be nearly impossible not to dream about her or mention her name.)
So, because she heard Jack talk about Mona at some point that we don't see, she included the name of his last lover in the photo album, but did not have the opportunity to get a picture to place there as well.
Just my random thoughts....
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wnickell - Exactly right. She never had the opportunity to get any pics of Mona. It would have been a very big leap to have the pictures there.
She took the money and started a new life somewhere. With no intention of ever seeing him again. Who could blame her? The guy was an ass. He deserves all the misery there is in the world for what he did. The least of it is what he did to her. He sold out informants to the mob, getting cops killed in the process. Total ass.
Still , the ending is so sad. You end up wishing along with him that she'd walk through that door.
Natalie doesnt know about Mona, how could she?? Mona was a mistress of the underworld, she wasnt any bimbo LOL
and mona was his last ON-THE-JOB fling...that seems like a plothole to me
I just assumed Oldman went crazy at the end...
thats why he kept waiting for her, knowing full well she ain't ever coming.
+ he's bored and horny.
I mean she had what 350, 000 and shes going to share it with that dumb, cheating Schmuck?
Girlfriend, PLEASE!
She's probably on a Thelma and Louis style trip...
I always assumed that the picutres of Mona were missing because Jack took them out, not wanting to be reminded of the woman who destroyed his life (or helped him destroy it at any rate).
Nobody cares about the man in the box
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I thought the pictures of Mona were missing because Natalie hadn't had time to get them. She had to leave suddenly remember? Mona doesn't seem like the type of character that would remove her pictures from the album she would definitely want to keep them there for Jack to see. She would want the last face for him to see was hers.
The scene at the courthouse leads to think Natalie's still alive and just left and never came back. Mona said "she's a dead woman," when referring to Natalie. I've always taken that expression to mean she will be killed, not she's dead already.
Also at the courthouse Jack puts the gun in his mouth and is about to kill himself but suddenly gets a vision of the Phoenix cafe where he told Nat to meet him. That's what kept him from killing himself the thought of seeing her again meaning he doesn't believe she's dead either.
The only thing that kept Jack from killing himself is that he didn't have any bullets left. He pulled the trigger 3 times after thinking of the Cafe.
shareYour right. How in the world did I miss that? Still Mona said to Jack that Natalie was a "dead woman just your a dead man." Meaning she was planning for them to be dead not that they were dead yet. Personally I think she was just *beep* with him like she did through the whole movie.
It's a shame how his lack of self control made him lose everything.
Also his inability to count bullets prolonged his suffering.
Ya, they answer this pretty clearly in the movie. At the airport, he asks if she's going to come to meet him. She replies: "I left something in the dresser that will tell you". What she left him was the photo album. At first the audience things this means she says yes -- because it has their wedding photos.
But at the end of the movie, we see the album has pics of him with all of his lover. Hence, her actual reply to the question was clearly no. She is not coming. And his infidelity is the reason.
They make sure to have a few earlier moments in the movie to reinforce this -- one where she asks if he slept with her sister, or just her cousin. One where he asks her why he buys her cameras but never sees the pictures.
He shows that he's a fool (or a romantic, depending on how you take it) by choosing to think she will return, when it's so clear she has told him no.
Or maybe the photos were her way of saying, "I've known about these women all along and I've still stood by you," which would assure him she'd still stand by him after all was said and done.
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Natalie left and went off and created her own fortune 500 company. Heard shes doing really well out there in NEW YORK.
shareShe said her farewell at the airport. Then, later probably realized he definitely wasn't worth returning to.
shareSo Mona says, "She's a dead woman, just like you're a dead man." This is a threat: Jack is not deceased when the line is spoken. And why would he be longing for Natalie's return, if he'd been told she was dead?
Natalie directed Jack to a desk in their home, saying that an item in the drawer will give Jack the answer to whether the couple will be reunited in Phoenix. There, he finds a photo album, with all the snaps Natalie has taken of her husband cheating. So no, Natalie won't be seeing Jack again: she started a new life with the money she was given. She didn't have time to take any photos of Mona, because Jack ushered her out of the state.
That's pretty much it, as far as I can tell.
Bit weird that she knew who Mona was at all - how many times had Jack slept with her before Natalie left forever? Maybe once? How did Natalie get her name?
The notion that Natalie spent much of her life stalking Jack and photographing him with other women with a polaroid cam, without getting noticed, is kinda nuts.