what happened to Chris Penn?
what was going on during the earthquake?
Did he go nuts and kill that girl with the beer can?
Why did that happen?
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Bad writing would imply mistakes... no ... I'm pretty sure they wrote it that way on purpose to piss us off (metaphorically speaking).
Choose your signature quotes carefully…. They could be misinterpreted (you moron).- drwho
Do you remember the Anger Management movie?? In that movie Jack Nicholson mentioned Adam Sandler a theory about a cashier and a customer. It was something like that; "There are two kinds of angry people - explosive and implosive. Explosive is the type of individual you see screaming at the cashier for not taking his coupon. Implosive is the cashier who remains quiet day after day and then finally shoots everyone in the store". This theory explains exactly what happened to Chris IMO.
shareChris Penn snaps and kills the girl because of his inability to understand women. Misogynistic attitudes are on display throughout the film, and you see his character soak those up until they come bursting out. I think it's quite important to understand that his action is being portrayed as the extreme end of a continuum.
As viewers, I think we understand that the act his wife was putting on for her customers was just that - the reason she doesn't talk like that with him because it's not real, it's just BS for the punters. Had Penn's character had the emotional intelligence to see that too, he wouldn't have become so wound up. On the other hand, she can't understand his feelings, hence her amused disbelief at the notion that she should talk dirty to him. Part of the theme of failure to communicate that also runs through the film.
I don't think there's any suggestion at all that Penn killed the girl in the river and as others have pointed out, that would entirely mess up his story arc and what happens to the character psychologically. From my recollection of the original Carver story we never find out who killed the girl and in any case it's irrelevant.
As for the girl killed with the rock, I think you have to make the assumption that her friend didn't see what happened. The way the scene was cut made it look as though she did, but the end doesn't make sense that way, so I'd say you have to take it as read that she was a few steps behind Downey, things got confused because of the earthquake and she didn't realise what had happened. And of course we only see an early news report, perhaps Penn does get nicked for the crime later on.
I used to want to change the world. Now I just want to leave the room with a little dignity.
You're all nuts. It's quite obvious that Chris Penn killed the girl because she crashed into his car with her bike. And as for the girl in the lake: hello! She's from Bakersfield? An obvious clue from the director that it was the baker!Plus the girl was found in water...? And what do baker's use to mix their ingredients?
I rest my case.
Nothing tells us that the girlfriend didn't report the murder to the police.
The news cast didn't have the correct information or she hadn't gone to the police yet.
About what Jon_Death said about bad writing:
I didn't take it as Julianne Moore's character was raped.
She confessed to cheating nothing else.