My problems with the 'twist'

My problem with this movie is: the twist doesn’t work.

I’m not a huge fan of Gus Van Sant, but I have seen the majority of his movies. Many of them are difficult to sit through, not that they aren’t good films. He doesn’t make many films that are assessable to all audiences, but this one seems one of his better ones.

Before I get into my problem with the film, I want to state that I really liked this film. I liked how most of the characters are drawn to be real and mostly sympathetic, even the “bad guys”. It left you to figure out who to root for, even though your conscious is telling you what the right decision is.

But the problem with the twist is John Krasinski’s character. He seems believable at first, but after you find out what he’s been up to, some of his earlier actions don’t make any sense. Why continue to egg on Matt Damon’s character when the townfolks aren’t in sight? Why plaster up his car and the doorway to his hotel room with flyers? What’s the point of that? The townfolks know which side he’s coming down on, but if the guy wanted to play it true and not let Matt Damon in on what he was doing, he could just politely tell Damon’s character that he has a difference of opinion on what’s he’s doing.

Why ask questions like “Do you like what you’re doing? Do you like your job?” What do those questions serve, knowing what we know, except as a message to the audience? The two characters make it into a winner take all competition, but then we discover they’re on the same side. THEN, why does Krasinski continue to berate Damon? “You didn’t really win, I gave you that info.” It’s like the character has some huge ego and can’t play along and let Damon “win” even though he knows what’s going on. If you ask me, Krasinski’s character is to blame for the deal falling through, and if I were his boss I would have fired him upon his return. Yes, he should have gotten in the truck and driven away.

And another thing, it the company wanted to play both sides, why did they hire a younger and assumedly less experienced guy to tackle to role of setting up the huge lying scheme? Wouldn’t you want one of your best “liars” to go to town and fill this role? This guy couldn’t keep a secret because his ego got in the way. And why the big surprise that Krasinski’s character would know where the pictures were taken? Wouldn’t he have known where he downloaded the images on-line from? And why in the hell would the company use pictures of one of the company’s REAL disasters? Why wouldn’t they use pics of cows killed in a tornado? It doesn’t matter where Krasinski lied about the pictures coming from Nebraska (or wherever it was), they were pictures of the company’s actual f- up!

The film was transparently a “message movie”. Everything said and done in the film served the message – the fact that they would hire someone to get “caught” in the lie, and the fact that audience gets to see the real damage done by this company even though no company in their right mind would use actual pictures of their real disaster. The questions they ask of Damon’s character, even though misplaced from the point of view of Krasinski’s character, serve to turn around Damon and “do the right thing”. I don’t mind the message, and I don’t think it was THAT heavy handed, I just wish the director and writers (Damon and Krasinski) had been smarter in putting it together.