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mobocracy (891)
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Elsie and Sir William
[Spoilers] Merritt's situation
Dollar store Jack Reacher
Spade's tough-guy/killer reputation in this universe
Total smokeshow when she was young
Ruggedly Handsome and Charismatic — why not a bigger star?
What kind of ending was that?
Dollar store Ryan Reyonolds?
More entertaining than it had a right to be
A more ideal casting
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Arguably Parks could have entered without using the secret passage and gained his "sneak attack" advantage because Sir William was poisoned and already dead or at least incapacitated. Parks may have also wanted Sir William to know he was being killed for retribution by his own abandoned son and not cared about sneaking up on him.
I had the same question on my 4th(!) watching of this.
There was some scene where Isobel seems to be talking (very indirectly) something about "her consequences" relative to pregnancy. It was a brief exchange with others around, but I don't think that had added up to me in previous watchings.
What I'm surprised about is how Isobel was able to get an abortion (then quite illegal in the UK) without the aid of someone older/richer/more power/connected. I don't doubt that Isobel *could* get an abortion, but that it would cost a tidy sum and require a doctor with some level of moral flexibility and a certain loyalty or at least fear of the family's influence. Doctors generally were much more likely to be on a more level social playing field with aristocrats than almost any other profession (I'd wager it was a common profession for 2nd or 3rd sons who could at best expect an allowance and not an inheritance).
So how Isobel was able to get an abortion without her mom or dad finding out. It's probably a not unreasonable bet mom faced a similar situation given her willingness to risk the scandal of crossing the boundaries of class and marital status to shag a "servant". Dad is of course dialed into the servant gossip pipeline and it seems unlikely Isobel and Freddy would get away with a sexual affair without the servants chattering about it. Even missing a period in that era was something a maid might have spotted.
Totally unrealistic. You couldn’t beat the shit out of someone younger with a weapon and get away with it. Someone for sure would get hurt and if that person’s parents were rich, influential, vengeful, prone to violence or any combination of that there would be hell to pay.
But there’s a bunch of stuff in this movie that’s unrealistically exaggerated. The cars, the general lack of cops, the sheer volume of pot smoking and constant drinking.
IMHO there is a longer term trend of science fiction settings being used for emotionally driven and relationship focused narratives which are not directly related to the science fiction premise or setting.
I think it’s partially a grift so writers and directors who want to be “serious” can get a movie made in an era where audiences are less interested in artsy drama and more into starships and space aliens.
I think it’s also partly also people who make science fiction movies think they have auteur skills too and believe they’re making intelligent films about emotions and people.
I agree it’s kind of annoying because a lot of interesting premises get wasted on drama rather than the Air Force carpet bombing Queens.
Plus studios and streamers are in on it, pushing these kinds of titles even though they’re not really what they say they are.
It might explain in part why they didn't show the family immediately lawyering up. If the family had an attorney present the cops would have been stuck more or less proving it was some kind of accidental drowning.
But a moneyed family not lawyering up was almost so disconnected from reality that it was jarring.
If this had been Succession, I would have expected a lawyer to have shown up and explained to the cops that they had no evidence as the family climbed into helicopters.
Nah, Amelia's lust for Shooter is shown developing in the flashback sequence where Benji is delayed and they go to the Nantucket house ahead of him. Beach walks, underwear skinny dipping and eating canned canapes in front of the fire is what kicks off the lust. This explains the earlier "cold feet" conversation she has with Merritt and the abortive sex hookup with Benji not long after.
The kissing was the kind of catharsis of all that and probably further motivated by the revelation that her best friend was pregnant with her father-in-law's bastard child.
Plus she even admits that getting caught with Shooter by Benji reduces her moral standing to that of the rest of the Winbury family.
The confounding detail is in one of the "police interview" scenes where one of the characters says that all the Winbury money is tied up in a trust and that Greer is the one bankrolling their lifestyle. Yet Will, the youngest son, tells Merritt at the beach that he's about to come into his share of the Winbury money.
Most trusts have a clause restricting access to money based on age, though often with wealth the age for getting full control of it is like 30, with the trust handing out disbursements for living expenses, school, etc, as overseen by the executor of the trust. It strikes me as unlikely Will's getting into "support young socialite and her baby with someone not Will" levels of money at age 18. It's probably more like enough money to support a cushy, entry-level-tech-bro/luxe Harvard student existence, with the bulk of the funds held back.
But even then a lot of family trusts at high levels of wealth are structured first and foremost to preserve the nest egg and hand out periodic checks based on investment performance, and nobody gets control of the whole kit and caboodle or even the ability to loophole it through influencing investment decisions. Since they said the Winbury's have owned that property for like 6 generations, my guess is the family trust is oriented towards intergenerational wealth and not some big payoff.
The trust could have shrunk enough, though, that Tag and live a very sumptuary life and the Nantucket house expenses are covered, it's not fabulous, 5th Avenue Penthouse money, either. Thomas doesn't have the cash for whatever luxe apartment his wife wants and Tag is probably cash-poor enough that he won't front the money Thomas wants for it (under the guise of an options-play investment bailout).
TL;DR -- the Winbury money isn't Rockefeller-scale, but it supports a tailored-linen-shirt wardrobe and Nantucket summer house lifestyle. Greer has to crank out bestsellers in order to live the fantasy Winbury lifestyle.
I'd wager the plans are pretty broad and wrapped up in general civilian disaster response and disease mitigation. Even if there's no CBRN threat and its just a generic disaster, you still have real diseases like cholera and dysentery to worry about and contain.
But the specifics of the response to a CBRN event are going to be highly dependent on the specifics of the event. I could definitely see a highly infectious disease or toxin resulting in an enforced quarantine, though I think the military would do a lot more to mitigate civilian needs, even it was dropping off pallets of bottled water and MREs vs. just fencing people in, threatening to shoot them if they try to escape and hoping the threat burns itself out through attrition.
It was probably just a plot gimmick where they needed an insider to help them escape and it provides a "redemption" story for an insider willing to switch sides.
The only thing I could make sense was that it was a for-profit operation. They seized assets and cars for the money. They kept people locked up on bogus charges for the maximum time as a form of intimidation and inhibiting their ability to seek redress in the courts. I think the court clerk mentioned they had no public defender, too, which would definitely enable this as any defense attorney would demand they be arraigned and charged or let go.
I can't see it being too profitable, though, as your potential pool of victims has to exclude anyone with even the minimum resources to hire a defense attorney. It's not like there's a steady pool of homeless black people on bikes with $30k in cash coming through town.
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