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daveyh's Replies
"So Ong gets killed, Oscar could have explained everything (the truth version) and been good. I'm assuming those money boxes are tracked and labeled. The insurance company and the security company records could have saved Oscar by showing that he never had access to that particular money box."
I've kinda mentioned this in my above answer anyway, but it wouldn't matter that Oscar wouldn't have accessed the box during his time there, because the company will think he's the one who performed the robbery 6 months earlier, and now arranged this second robbery in order to get to the key room, and was now concocting a crazy story after the 2nd robbery went wrong.
Furthermore, as other posts have said, Ong already seemed to be the prom king among his co-workers, and his hero status further elevated after being killed on the job - just a few days after this strange new guy starts working with him. Who are they going to believe?
In fact, handing over the stolen box or telling them it's in his apartment - the box could end up being evidence against him. What's he gonna say? "I've never seen that box before. The dead guy who now can't deny it told me he'd put it there" - how convenient!
And even without evidence, if the so much as suspected him, they could fire him without pay, which would be almost as catastrophic given Oscar's situation at the time
While I completely agree with most of the plot holes you've pointed out (especially the part about the encounter with the 2nd landlord, which I've mentioned on another thread), there are a couple of things that I think could be rationally explained
"The Key Room that nobody is ever in. So again I assume Ong knows that it's an unmanned station because he's walked by there a few times and overheard from other people that have walked by there that there's never anyone in there. As an Ex-COP and a security guard how did he not notice a camera."
I think it's more a case that Ong doesn't particularly care if there's a camera in there because if anything goes wrong, it will be Oscar's problem - he can deny all knowledge, and the consensus will be that after committing the first robbery and getting the job there in order to get the key for the box that was robbed (which Ong has already explained will be their hypothesis), Oscar then arranged the second robbery too in order to get into the area where the keys are kept, his partner Ong being in the briefing room being the perfect time to make his move.
Other things could have gone wrong, such as there being a guard or someone standing outside the briefing room with Driver A while Driver B is being interviewed. Or the door to the key room actually being locked at the time. Or, as eventually happened, the screwdriver being the wrong size.
But none of this would come back on Ong - worst case scenario, it doesn't come off, he's no worse off and at least he tried.
actually they only shoot him in what they think is self-defence. When he realises he's not going to be able to escape without having to harm anyone, his expression/reaction suggests he knows he's now got to die.
So when he comes out of the toilet, he points his gun in the general direction of Budda and the other guys but deliberately fires into the air (the scene earlier where Ong's helping him get used to firing the gun suggests that if he wanted to hit them here, he easily could have done), knowing that they'll then have to shoot back
i remember hearing about this test many years ago - probably around the time this film was out actually! - and possibly on a TV show so maybe it's inaccurate too.....
but they don't actually "taste" anything, as in they don't swallow or otherwise consume it. The put a small amount on their finger and rub it on their gums. If it causes a tingling sensation on their gums - while it doesn't mean it's definitely illegal drugs, it does mean it's something other than flour or sugar!
And, as other posters have said, doing this in front of Henry may have been a "we've got you" gesture.
As an aside, I love Ray Liotta's acting in this scene. Especially the bit when the cop interviewing him pats him and says "bye bye dickhead", you see him recoil like he wants to take a swing at him but knows that would only make things worse.
His reaction when they come in with Dina Meyer and all the incriminating evidence too is brilliant - all because she didn't want to break her nails or use the dishwasher!
I always thought it was strange that Kay hadn't moved on - it's understandable her holding out for a while but you'd think Tom refusing even to take the letter from her would have been the last straw.
I get the feeling he'd disappeared for more than the 2 years stated in the OP. Girl with those looks, family money etc, it's doubtful she'd have remained single.
Of course we're assuming she was completely single when Michael approached her - she could have been in an unserious or reluctant relationship with some waspy guy her parents had set her up with or something. But in 1940s/1950s American, a girl from that background, I'd imagine she was under huge societal and family pressure to marry as soon as she'd finished college.
they discuss it in 3 when he's taking Kay on a tour of Sicily but quite when it was first disclosed to her isn't clear. But she does know at some point (but it could be after their marriage had ended!)
It was as private a conversation as Moe was going to get with Michael - the dancers and musicians were being cleared out before he'd even entered the room, leaving only Corleone family members there. OK, Fredo and maybe Johnny Fontaine had a hand in the casino business too, but both had much deeper loyalty to the Corleones (or "should have had", Fredo!).
Tom was always going to be present as the family's legal rep, and Al Neri or whoever, even if they weren't sat at the table with them, would have to be close by and within earshot for Michael's protection.
My point is, it's not like Michael called him out on the casino's losses or his treatment of Fredo etc in the middle of the casino floor in front of other employees and their regular gamblers.
I think Moe reacted like that because he was caught off-guard by Michael's coldness towards him and his all-round ruthlessness - he probably only knew Michael from his civilian days and was under the impression that his visit was going to be more of a social call than anything, and was taken aback when it wasn't and shocked by the change in Michael and the demands he was making.
Especially since he'd already "talked to Barzini" !
it may also have been a symbolic way of showing how distant Michael was from the family at the beginning - and the feeling seemed to be mutual - Michael and Kay didn't exactly come across as apologetic over the fact that they'd missed the ceremony, and Connie (and presumably Vito) didn't feel it was worth pushing the wedding date back so that her brother would definitely be able to attend.
He's greeted warmly by Tom and Fredo, but there's only a very brief unspoken acknowledgement with Sonny. Not sure if we see him reuniting with Connie, but there's a deleted scene in which they go to pay their last respects to Genco that night, and Vito, seemingly speaking to Michael for the first time since he's been home, can only make some snarky comment about his medals. (sadly they forgot to delete Sonny's "pop had Genco, look what i got" line much later on in the movie, which doesn't make much sense without this scene!).
And for Michael's part, you get the impression he doesn't want to be there, is only putting in an appearance at the reception out of obligation and feels uneasy about having to introduce certain people and explain certain things to Kay.
You could also say it's symbolic that Michael's still wearing his military uniform, as it makes him stand out from the rest of the family, especially his brothers when the photos are taken.
While this doesn't answer your question, I may as well say this here while on the subject of Henry's dad - it's a bit disappointing that they don't show more of Henry's parents when he's an adult - they're only shown for a split second at the wedding, where they may as well be extras - and I'd be OK with this because I can fill in the blanks that the older he got and the more caught up in the mob life he got, the more estranged he'd become from his immediate family - but then they make such a big deal of him picking up his brother (Mikey) and having him at the house for dinner on the day he gets arrested, so he clearly still kept close ties with them and yet this is the first interaction we see with his brother since the childhood scenes.
I don't know, I'd like to have seen Karen meeting Henry's parents, and the in-laws meeting for the first time, or a few scenes with them as doting grandparents, and maybe more of Henry's brother as an adult too before that long day in 1980.
ironically Marv lost his shoes (and socks) and then broke balls in the form of christmas tree baubles with his bare feet
that's pretty much what he says, but I'm not sure he means them literally.
By "kid" he means someone significantly younger than himself who think they know everything or that they shouldn't respect him and don't know their place (by his reckoning) - still adult in age, otherwise they wouldn't have been sharing the facilities with him.
He may not literally mean "f**ked in the a**" either - it's sometimes an expression meaning he got the better of them or got the upper hand with them. Although if he did mean it literally - well, to use one of Frank Vincent's often quoted lines in another mob masterpiece , in prison, you have to compromise. The fact that he could have his way with "kids like that" simply shows he could dominate them and that they were nothing to a real gangster like him.
I see where you're going with this - also it's set in the 80s
I'd say All The Right Moves is more of a coming of age drama, whereas Billy Elliott is a child.
The biggest difference though is that playing football in the hope of getting a scholarship was encouraged to the point where the guys felt under constant pressure having the town's hopes riding on them - by contrast, in Billy Elliott, a boy doing ballet was frowned upon and he'd have met opposition and ridicule in his hometown in addition to the other problems (unemployment, poverty and the pressure to escape).
Finally the football scholarship, for Tom Cruise's character anyway, was simply a means to an end to get a college education so that he wouldn't be dependant on the town's mills/factories keeping him employed. If the didn't make it to the professional game (and in all likelihood he wouldn't), he'd be an engineer and could work anywhere.
In Billy Elliott, becoming a professional ballet dancer many years later was really the only endgame.
while I get them not wanting to risk any of their tried and trusted people on this dangerous deal, they were still risking the buy money - either through the Columbians murdering the new guys and taking it, or through the new guys trying to steal it themselves. So why do the deal with Hector in the first place if they were so concerned about him?
Unless it was, by their standards, a small time deal to start with, and therefore worth risking a few thousand in petty cash - if it went well and Hector turned out to be reliable, it would pave the way to much bigger deals and profits with Hector in the future. If it went badly, well, it's just a few thousand $$$ and no-one they cared about would have been lost.
I think it might have played better if they'd left the Barksdale story out of it completely and only picked it up again in 3.
When first watching, seeing a few minutes of them in each episode is just frustrating because it's giving you a taste of the story you wished they were carrying on with full-time.
One repeat viewings, it just distracts from and takes momentum out of the main story with the port. I'd like them to have spent this time showing more of, say, Ziggy's drug deals gone wrong, or Frog's antics, or Frank Sobotka's home life. Or Nick's for that matter.
I get that they ran it that way to give closure on DeAngelo and WeeBay (and Bird!), bring Prop Joe and the East Side in a bit more and so set up S3 and Wood Harris, Idris Elba and Larry Gillard are such great actors that it would be a waste not to use them when they're at your disposal. So I can understand it.
The only other thing that spoils it was the fact that they had to "undo" the end of the first season - I appreciate that they had to get McNulty off the boat and back to real police work somehow, and find some way of having a new detail, but the whole getting-the-band-back-together just seemed quite contrived and overdone at times.
The Wire specialises in showing people in an environment they're not suited to, usually through the family or circumstances they were born in to, but sometimes through societal pressure too.
In Season 1 we had DeAngelo and Prezbo, both in roles they're not cut out for through very different reasons.
Season 2 gives us Ziggy.
He's not "manly" enough for the legit side of the docks and not streetwise enough for the other side.
Some characters are eventually able to find their niche - Prezbo for example eventually does with teaching - but with Ziggy, although he does show some smarts at times, his working class background and the fact the he's such a hellraiser/goof would make it difficult for him to fit in or get on at college or in another job. He basically doesn't fit in anywhere, which only makes him act out more because it augments, as evets_lives has already brilliantly stated, the pressure and expectation of being Frank Sobotka's son.
You could possibly draw comparisons with AJ Soprano but I think the difference is that AJ is just aware enough to know that he's not cut out for the mob life or the legit world, hence he has his own issues. Again evets_lives sums it up that Nick quite effortlessly doing a better job with the drugs brings it home to Ziggy how inept and unsuitable he is, until then he's deluding himself.
To some extent I agree with the OP though that he was a little overdone. Although he's inspired by a real person, I would imagine the guy he's based on did or experienced everything that happens with Ziggy over the course of several years or decades on the docks, rather than in the space of a few weeks. That's the problem when things are based on real events - trying to shoehorn all these real events into one story covering a short space of time and involving only a few people - ironically it makes it more unrealistic than if it had been fiction.
excellent replies, thank you. You're right, all Avon's caution in S1 was directed by Stringer, so after he still ended up going to jail anyway, he possibly figured it would be better to take a more hands on approach when released.
It also shows the deteriorating relationship throughout S3 between Stringer and Avon that Avon's behaving so recklessly and isn't taking Stringer's advice anymore - if anything Stringer gets usurped by Slim Charles.
And you're right about the "small time" thing - probably summed the whole situation up when Avon says
"just a gangster I suppose (and I want my corners)"
Sorry to the OP, this has gone completely off-topic now!
I never did get why they still used the same venue after everything that happened at the end of S2. Perhaps they figured they just had to disappear for a short while and then the police would either give up surveilling the place, or, upon learning that they were 'in the wind' for a while, the same venue would be the last place the police would expect them to start operating from again - either way, they were proved right!
I also find it funny that in S1, Avon is this untouchable, 3 steps removed kingpin and it takes half the series and a moment of brilliance from Lester for the unit to even find out what he looks like. Then in S3 he's a gang-banging action fiend going along on murder attempts and hanging out at their illegal armoury. Did a couple of years in prison really change him that much?
I didn't realise until this year that the same actress plays the mum in Magic Stocking, from a year or two earlier. She looks completely different, and even more like a vampire with her hair dyed black.
I'm also struggling to believe it's the same person though because she's carrying herself completely differently in each movie, so fair play to her, she's good at her job, and it makes a nice change from most the Hallmark usuals who just play the same person in everything
having just watched again for the first time in years, I've got to say I'm with the OP on this one. It is a ridiculous moment, and only makes the female lead come across as unhinged.
She'd literally only been at the cabin for a few minutes and left the door unlocked - like the OP says, this guy could have been an employee. Booting someone in the kneecap could also cause lasting damage, especially a guy that age who could have had a previous injury there. No way would he be walking fine a few minutes later, if they really wanted to play it for laughs they should have had him limping for the rest of the movie as a reminder.
In fact there was no need for the moment at all, it would have been just as 'meet-cute' if they'd gotten into a big argument and then she could have threatened to use martial arts on him - actually this is the only part of their first encounter that gets mentioned again, so perhaps the film's writers realised the assault was too much and figured they'd re-shoot that scene again but then forgot to do so or ran out of time.
TLDR - please disregard my earlier reply - this moment was enough to ruin an otherwise cute movie and I can only imagine the backlash if it had happened the other way around
excellent answer. Furthermore, if the bosses could monitor Peter's activity, it would prove that he was still "working" until 15 minutes from time , and also made it less likely Lumberg would come over to him to ask about overtime if he thought he was on a call.
So Peter's only mistake was ringing Milton (who could be a problem to end the call with when the time came) and not Michael or Samir, but maybe the IT staff were in a meeting of their own.