Billy will definitely need to sell the paintings to pay off his co-conspirators and pay all the debts from renting the villa etc.
First of all, who knows how much money Billy had to begin with? He's been scamming millions of dollars with Virgil
for years, and he easily has 250 thousand US dollars on hand to buy back the painting he let slip by. What's to say he didn't have well enough money to fund this whole plan before it started?
So when those paintings show up on the market, Virgil will know about it. You'd think he'd come sniffing around, even if Billy is being smart and selling them anonymously through another auction house.
He would not sell those paintings out in the open market. There's a black market for paintings and many art collectors would still pay millions for stolen artwork in order to have pieces in their private collections. It would be a pain in the ass, and it might take years, but eventually he'd be able to carefully sell the paintings off without them ever making an appearance on the open market. Besides, trying to sell stolen art anonymously doesn't work; the art will get confiscated immediately the moment it's recognized, and the auction house will lose their cut. Auction houses will not entertain anonymous customers - they might keep the owner's name from the public but they must know who they're dealing with themselves, so they don't get stuck with stolen art. Billy would not be that stupid, especially after years of practice scamming the art world.
Besides, I don't think Billy's true motivation was to make money. I think it was to get back at Virgil for not appreciating him, and for treating him like crap over the years. You can see what kind of snob Virgil is before he meets Claire and his personality sort of softens. It's easy to forget what kind of a-hole Virgil is portrayed as in the beginning of the movie.
Also, Virgil looks SO defeated and emotionally destroyed at the end of the movie, it made me wonder if he likely didn't just retire at that point and let the whole thing go. He doesn't look like he has it in him to seek revenge, and might not even care at that point about what Billy does with all the stolen paintings. He's a broken man.
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nlgarrett
9 years ago
Hi Kirby,
Your response is well thought-out but do you really think Donald Sutherland's character would go to all that trouble?
Was he smart enough, first of all? He played along with Mr. Rush's game, but I never got the gist that Sutherland was that smart. He was a minion. Well, clearly, I am wrong but that's how it seemed to me.
I do fully agree that Sutherland's motive might be the "nyah nyah nyah" factor in that Rush didn't appreciate Sutherland's artwork, but I still have trouble thinking he was THAT devious. It's almost like giving him a compliment that Sutherland's character didn't deserve.
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!!!deleted!!! (52800787)
9 years ago
He doesn't look like he has it in him to seek revenge
Correct. Virgil thinks of going to the police and makes it as far as the front door of the police station, but decides not to. For two reasons, I'd say - he still has feelings for "Claire" and still remembers what she said about loving him for real, and he also can't afford to go to the police because his paintings were obtained through scams of his own.
Now, the scenes in the retirement home are the last scenes in his life, from a timeline standpoint. Then we get some flashbacks of him snooping around, understanding the whole scam, checking out the places, and visiting Prague. I think after that he gets even more broken-hearted and ends up in the retirement home. He looks older there than in the Prague scene, so I think the last few scenes are flashbacks.
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ematerso
9 years ago
You forget that Billy legitimately owned these paintings. The paintings weren't stolen they were sold at auction after being appraised by the auctioneer. Billy was the buyer.
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garcianc2003
9 years ago
I thoroughly agree with this point. However, that is why I was expecting a plot-twist ending.
Yes, Billy was the rightful owner of the paintings, but the paintings were sold to him as known forgeries. So he was only the rightful owner of a forgery.
I thought that Mr Oldman, with his expert eye for deception, would have been anticipating Billy's plan to steal his paintings (but perhaps still fooled/blinded by Claire) and had been collecting the "real" forgeries to go along with his authentic paintings that Billy helped him buy, allowing Billy to steal the forgeries while keeping the authentic paintings for himself. When that happened, Mr Oldman would no longer have Billy hanging over his head as an accomplice and he would own the authentic paintings without Billy being none the wiser, proving Billy inferior at recognizing the value of paintings.
In that alternate plot, both Oldman and Billy would have been fooled and the tragic loss at the end would have been Oldman's broken heart over Claire.
An additional, happier ending to the above plot twist would be if Mr Oldman, after fooling Billy into stealing the forged paintings, sat at the clock cafe reading a newspaper with a headline about Billy's murder and robbery (which led Mr Oldman to the clock cafe), while Claire and Robert walk in together holding hands. They notice Mr Oldman at the table and try to turn around and leave as the police is awaiting outside in response to Mr. Oldman's anonymous tip.
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