No Way Out (1987)

Mr Deans. Represents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States. You have. No idea what. Men of God can. Do they needed a hero? I understand he has a background in intelligence. It's 2 tourists with naval intelligence. Get him here. He liked excitement take. Us somewhere. He wanted her. Their passion upset the balance of power. What's all this top secret business? I've been hearing about it with the Pentagon. You know, I work for Bryce. Then that makes two of us. This one can do things for me like no other woman I've ever met behind the cover up.

Trying to understand. The power, the important thing is to abort an investigation before whatever gets to you. You haven't told me everything. Who's running this thing at the Pentagon? The new boy. Ferrell. So we can take the fall in case anything goes wrong. The loyalty I love. You. I promise I'll work everything out.

How did you actually meet the Secretary of Defence? I need a car to emergency. These people have already tried to kill one person who knew bring. This one down? No, no, you can't think. That be hard your intention to bring down David Bryce and I have no choice but to make sure that you didn't get away with it. They mean to kill me, Sam, because of the truth. There's no way out. Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton. No way out. Hello and welcome to clear and present dudes. My name is Mike Dunbar and I'm joined here by Sonia Bixon and my good friend Rory O'Toole.

Please say hello. I picked I picked the first one, No way out in 1987 because it's like the the tour archetype for like this kind of movie. It's a it's a political thriller. It involves national security. It's a bit sexy and horny and a bit weird. It was a crazy plot twist. And also RIP Gene Hackman very sadly departed from us. Only a few weeks ago as a key player in this movie and we're going to see a tonne of him in the rest of the movies we're going to be doing here, which is a wide remit. The movie stars Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Patton and that was directed by Roger Donaldson and it came out in 1987, same year as The Untouchables and it is the beginning of Kevin Costner's absolute heater run of movies.

So he does from here. He does Bull Durham in 1988, then does Feel the Dreams in 1989, The Gun Runner and Revenge and then Dances with Wolves in 1990 where he stars, directs producers, wins 7 Oscars, including Best Picture. And then he's in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, made all of the United Kingdom. Listen to Brian Animals for 17 weeks solid. And then he's in GF K in 991 and the Bodyguard in 992, at which point he's a household name. He's unstoppable. He's one of the biggest players in Hollywood right up until Water build in 995.

But even that doesn't really stop him because look at him now. He's he's going strong with these with his Horizon movies in Yellowstone and like all that good jazz. But it all starts here with the Untouchables and No way out. So the way out is a second adaptation of a book called The Big Clock by Kenneth Faring, which I haven't read and I haven't seen the original movie. But Rory, I think you have, haven't you? Yes. So I've looked a little bit into the film films that were kind of spawned by the book The Big Clock.

There is the film The big Clock, the 1948 film noir. And there's also 357 police Python, which is actually a French film. So it's actually absolute cinema just by identifying French. I've I've flicked through the film The big Clock. Interesting love it opens, but a kind of kind of similar scene to the way out kind of cityscape scene, but shot from below rather than above. And I think that's, I think that's quite cool to see. I see that, yeah. So, so the Big Clock looks like a pretty cool film, to be honest.

There's even the there's even the plot line of a kind of ticking clock as an image is being created in. In the case of the big Clock, there's an artist who's taken on who's who's seen the guy and she's she's tasked with creating a sketch of them. However, in a truly bizarre current for any kind of a film noir, I think she's like this cubist modern artist. So after this, this long, quite tense period of, of waiting for this woman to finish this sketch, it's like it's just a bunch of shapes. It's brilliant so.

She sounds amazing. Yeah, man, that sounds dope. My my first impression of the film is it's like 1948. It's a noir film. It's in that kind of era when you've got the jetty age aesthetic starting to come in. So you've got like the buildings of upon more modernist because I mean in the film wall like the city's like character, right. So it's interesting to see to see the architecture in it. It's in order to see that as part of its storytelling, you know, And then looked into 357 Police Python. And yeah.

So this film is on the Internet Archive in its original French. It's on the Internet Archive in dubbed Spanish. But where can I find it with English subtitles? The trailer, what appears to either be a trailer or just a mishmash of some scenes, does have English subtitles. And it follows A follows a police officer who who is basically tasked to thank the guy who killed the mistress of his boss and of course his boss kill his mistress. So that's, that's, that's the same kind of setup really with a very French fashion on the age gap between the detective and the girl is like massive.

And he gets, gets incredibly French. He, he looks like he's in his late late 40s. Admittedly, it was made in the 70s. So like everyone smoked 2 packets of cigarettes a day. You saw 21 year olds who had skin like lava. But I, but I think this guy's easily in his late 40s, early 50s. He's about 21. It's also very French because in, in this story, the, the the boss, I guess the chief. So his wife knows about this. His his his wife knows about the affair because obviously it's French, you know, Oh, of course he's got a mistress.

It just takes, takes, takes a bit of the work off me, you know, I mean, there's one scene in the clip when she literally answers a phone call from from from the girl and passes the phone to her husband. And there's there's a scene at the end of the kind of little trailer rock clip show when when the chief comes home and his wifes like, Oh my God, did you break up? He's like, yeah, I've killed her. She's like, oh God, dear. Like if you kind of just contrast that with with the secretary of defences whole try to be low key about it.

This French guy is like, Oh yeah, hey wife, this sucks. You know, that mistress you've known about for a significant amount of time turns out was just killed out with an ashtray, you know? Oh. That's incredible, man, that's weird that there's some like weird little connections to to no way out in there as well. I mean, obviously it's the same story, but like the the the wife of of sentence of def SEC Bryce, like knowing about the the affair and not really she's just doesn't want to be there in public, but like there's kind of otherwise ambivalent to it.

Then there's a cool and there's a bit where TomTom Farrell is talking about wanting to go and buy some ashtrays as well. I wonder if that's meant to be an odd I. Wonder I, I wonder if it is something I've got mentioned about, about the big clock also is it also features some kind of things like it's like an operations room, but like a bunch of people moving in to like kind of solve the clues and stuff. But because this is like set in like a publishing company which has a crime magazine called Crime Ways, there's actually like a little board in the room that's got crime wares, Clue board written on it.

And I just think that's delightful. That's brilliant. That's like love of film that's got an operations centre in it, especially if it's one that's been cobbled together and looks a little bit crap, you know? We should do a power rankings of all the best OPS rooms in in various movies. I'm quite I'm quite partial. Should the, the bunker In Sync the Bismarck, which is just like, you know, your classic kind of World War? Like there's a big chart table and there's like Wrens there like pushing the ships around with little sticks.

And there's like a, there's like a, a neutral plane of, of smoke from everyone's cigarettes, like hanging in in the sort of middle height of the room, like that kind of stuff. And it and that, that kind of thing is actually just why, why I joined the Navy. And honestly I just wanted a plexiglass board and a grease pen. A good China graph pencil. Incredible. Incredible. So I suppose not to completely realistic composition, I guess, I guess we should probably have a quick talk about the movie that we've that we're starting up to do about like why what we thought of it.

So obviously I quite like it because I picked it, but I'd like to know what you guys thought of the movie having having, you know, what your experience was. Well, I just watched it yesterday, just just mainly in preparation for this, and it was throughout surprising. I mean it was unexpectedly horny, which in fairness could have been expected giving that it involves Navy things, but without killing the suspense or taking away too much from the podcast. VM just absolutely hit me like a hammer to be honest.

It's an all timer twist. It's up there with the 6th sense I think in terms of qualities of like world changing twist like usual suspects 1/6 sense, no way out like totally stands to to I think. We should probably at this point say as well that there are any spoilers in this in this podcast. So if if anyone yeah, so if anyone has has not yet made themselves fully you a fair with the horny 97 masterpiece that is no way out. But this podcast on pause will still be here when you return and just go watch it.

It's really good. But don't do what I did. Don't rent it on YouTube because the YouTube cut is only like an hour and a half, literally 30 minutes as as excised from this film for YouTube. So after watching it, I was like, there's a few bits I don't remember here, like me and there's, there's there's no, you know, sex scene in the limo and the whole, the whole the whole at sea sequence is gone. Like it's just not in at all. The Manila stuff completely gone apart from one very brief E uh, Tomtomtom drunk dials Susan, uh, that's it.

That's the entirely the Manila stuff. So aside from that, I thought the film's great. I've I've seen it before when I was quite young. I do have a bit of a core memory of, you know, Sean Young got to say, I bet I do I do. I think this was the kind of time when it was the these kind of thrillers from these were the kind of film that you'd end up watching like as a family. But they were then surprisingly horny. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, but yes, it's like it's the kind of thing. So it's kind of film when, you know, you could you could run into a lot of these in the 90s because they were coming on to like TV.

They were coming on like VHS rental and there were a film that you'd watch as a family and they were just very, very heard up. Yes. So straightway I was like shocked that they'd taken out one of the core elements of the film, which is just how how absolutely turbo horny it is. This film's like Diamond Cutter nonstop. You know, it really is this film has a cob on for like it's whole it's whole 2 hours. I thought it was an excellent piece of piece of new and war work. I thought I thought that it's probably some of Kevin Cox has best acting, which is kind of strange to say, but he is is is is really goodness.

I agree. And like he's yeah, like and he's and understated kind of good is very believable as action sequences, especially a really, really believable. I think that obviously the the twist fantastic. I love I love the I love the idea of someone as well-being told you've you've you've you've got to investigate yourself kind of thing. There's there's AI have 1/2 remembered recollection of some some novel that's about some police officer who was like trying to infiltrate. He's more to infiltrate the sell of anarchists.

I think it's like a 1920s and 80s novel. And the final payoff is when he when he infiltrates the sell of anarchists, It's all full of like cops trying to infiltrate this anarchist itself. I love this like paranoid idea of like having what haven't investigate yourself, you know, I love that it's it's it's a deeply paranoid film that looks if she was like power obsession, the attractiveness of power, what people will do it again and what people will do and maintain it, how people act when it's all the desire and what it does to people.

Yeah, man, absolutely valid point man. There's a scene in the there's a line in the final seats or who will pattern where he says a great quote, which I think totally hits that that exact thematic call that you just kind of alluded to there. Which which Which lines that? It's it's, you have no idea what men of power can do. That's what he says. Man of power. I love that man of power. That's brilliant. I thought it was going to be the man of power thing. It's it's man of power. It's amazing. I like that line.

I like that line because that's his obsession. His obsession is power and his obsession is just being being around it. He knows he's he knows he's never going to be president, but he knows what he can do is be a social climber through, through the American political apparatus, through Pentagon, by attaching himself to people who are powerful. He's a gross little expert of a man. Definitely the what? One of the worst people in this film, which has some bad fucking people in it. Yeah. You're absolutely Roman.

Hey, let's, let's so the movie starts with this extremely extra music by Maurice Shah, who is famous for Doctor Zhivago Lawrence of Arabia. And we and we do this big long helicopter shot over Washington, DC, and we start at the Capitol and we go over all the sights. We linger on the Pentagon for a bit. And then just behind the Pentagon, there's this little suburban street with a detached house. And we first meet our our main character, Kevin Costner, playing Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell. And he's in his trop whites, what we'd call Top Gun Rig.

And there's bits of blood all over it. And he's being interrogated by two massive dudes. And one of them is staring at him so intently that he manages to explode a coffee mug in his hands by gripping it too hard. And then they ask him, hey, how do you know the Secretary of Defence? And he says, look, a man I went to college with introduced them, a guy called Scott Pritchard. And then he gets up and he's angry. He's like really pissed off. And he walks in a two way mirror and he goes, when's he going to come out from behind there referring to some other guy who we haven't seen yet.

And then it goes six months earlier and we're off to the races. Next scene. This is the next scene is is superb. I love this right. So it's a it's a big function. Kevin Costner gets out of a car. He's been driven there. He's wearing his dress Blues #2's rig, so he's wearing a a cap, he's wearing white gloves, he's wearing the the dinner jacket, he's wearing a, a yellow cummerbund, which if we're, if we're tracking the clues as to the film's conclusion, which if you haven't seen the movie already and you and you haven't either the spoiler warning, I'm sorry, I'm going to say he's a spy, a Russian spy.

Clue clue 0 might be that he's wearing a yellow cummerbund because he's not afraid of coloured drinks getting spilled on it because they only drink vodka, right. So. They do. They do, Stoli straight up. Yes, right, OK, so that's clue one. But Thomas arriving at the function and we see our our female lead, Susan Atwell, and we can tell immediately that she's like this bored woman with extremely weird hair. It's just in some weird up to that is not aged well at all. They've really done a dirty and she's getting scammed by metal detector and she says we're really thank God it's not a bullshit detector or else none of us would get in.

And this tells us that she's bored and also she's over Washington and she's and she's sick of the vibes. And then we kind of like work the room a bit, but we meet Scott Pritchard, who's this like, as, as you said, like this horrible little wretched little sneevy man. And his vibes are way, way off the charts. And he meets Tom and he's like, oh, yeah, you want to work in my department? I saw that note you sent. And he's like, it's a Christmas card. And it's said Merry Christmas. Like, this guy's a lunatic.

And then we cut around and we see it's such weird vibes. And then we. And. Then we cut around. He says so many weird things in this movie, and he says in such a weird voice as well, like the voice work he's putting on, because he doesn't sound like that in real life. He's doing this kind of weird. Is it Southern? Is it Yankee? I do not know. He's like the dark version of Niles Korean. It's got the same hair. Yeah, he's got the same swimmers build. That's he has. Oh, my God, yeah, that's who he is.

That's exactly who he is. He's he's, he's, he's like Niles with all the safeties off. Yeah, this is it. And we see that like almost immediately. So we we cut around, we see Secretary Bryce. Secretary Bryce is white Life sees Pritchard and goes, oh, God's here and runs over. And then they introduce, he introduces Secretary Bryce to Tom. And Bryce doesn't give a flying fuck. He's just like, oh, OK, cool, you're in the Navy, are you right, Cool. And then and Pritchard's like, we were at college together.

And he's like, that's that's good. And just keep walking. And then and then Tom's. And then Tom says he's warm, isn't he? And then and then Pritchard goes, he's a genius. The normal rules don't apply. And then he goes like way high and right and goes like he's the most extraordinary man I've ever met in my life. Even if it came to it, I'd lay down my life for him. Sir, we are as a. Function. You're scaring you. You are scattering the women, the wives. Stop it. You're scaring the wives. You're ruining the vibes.

But I think exactly, but hey, I'm no screenwriter, but this is what we call in the business, I think foreshadowing. And then one of my favourite things happens. We hear Hail to the Chief play and then the president arrives and we don't see him, which I think is really smart because then we can just imagine it's Ronald Reagan. But also, it's because Tom is checking out Susan Notwell, so he's starting to do his like moves. She notices. I'm looking. They're both looking at you. This is the first real evidence of the movie being like off the scales horny because like the president has walked into the room and these guys are already decided they want to fuck.

So then almost immediately, Tom is like making a beeline towards her. She's whips up the cigarettes. She's trying to get it lit. She does something which I think is absolutely unhinged at this point. She like she stood a level higher than the people. She's like a guardrail. And then there are people in tables and it's a little tiny man who she asks for a light and he gets his cigarette lighter out, tries lighting it. And because he's his eye line is like directly level to her tits. She then goes, if you want to look down my top, maybe you should be a little bit taller or maybe you shouldn't stand on a platform that's like another 2 feet taller than he is.

But as soon as that happens, Tom is there like on fully outstretched flame already coming from the lighter ready to take over. Like fucking stand by shit mate. The neighbours here. And then he's straight in there and and then he's like, you're pretty impressed with me. And she's like, no, he's like, yes you are. And then he walks to the bar and then she's a bit like, fuck, he's right. I am impressed with him and I am going to just follow him to the bar like the pathetic little scoundrel that I am.

And then she goes straight there and then this is when clue one happens where he orders a Stoli straight up. And it's not the trend. And I don't know much about vodka from the 1980s, but apparently Smirnoff was a trendy vodka. So the fact that it's Stoli is like oh this guy is hardcore into his vodkas and only fucking Soviet spies and nobody else are into their vodkas. Yeah, yeah. I wonder as well if I want to think about what this is actually seeing pick up artist techniques work, which is a bit scary.

Yeah, they they work in the in the context of this fictional universe where. Absolutely. That's absolutely scary that you see them work in the film. Yeah. Yeah, but it's the world's most unhinged woman as well. Like, like she's she's a safeguard lunatic. And I don't think it's meant, I don't think she's meant to be a lunatic. It's it's just how Sean Young's playing it. I think her eyes. Yeah, absolutely. So they have their drink. They have a a really short chat about how they they don't want to be here.

I think what's happening is the band strikes up a really fucking weird cover of Do You Think I'm Sexy? Like like Rod Stewart? Which is weird because. From the YouTube cut. Yeah, all right, this is amazing. So before then they've just been playing shit like Little Brown Jug and stuff, and then and suddenly the band's like the guy, the band leader is like yelling out into the audience, like, do you think I'm sexy? I said, do you think I'm sexy? And then it starts like bow, bow, bow, bow, now brown.

And then there's like a woman stood on the stage who's like dancing next to him. And then Sean Young says, and what I think is probably the first occurrence of like that sort of Buffy the vampire speak like that. That was made popular like another sort of 10 years later. She's like, oh, I think there's a Nas situation developing here. And he's like, do you want to get out of here? And then they immediately leave, having spoken to for about 30 seconds. And then they go into the what is the famous?

I don't know if it is famous, but the famous limo sequence I'm going. To take a brief. Pause here. Yeah, I'm going to take a brief pause here and ask what your opinion of the of the limo sequence is. Did you even see the limo sequence on the YouTube cut, Rory? It's not on the YouTube cut. There's no swearing in the YouTube cut, the cut out Dolly, the cut out, the whole bit with the with the ambassador from New Zealand, I think, and the Maori dancers and stuff. My first clue that I wasn't going insane to do have a tenancy A gaslight myself.

I was thinking, well, well, maybe there wasn't that but heavy fucking in the film and I was just kind of imagining things. But then when I saw like the credits at the end of it and it's like, oh, read dancer one, Maori Dancer 2. It's like, hold on a minute. And then I'm like comparing the run times and stuff. So, yeah, yeah. So no, I am, I am. I am aware of the the that particular scene. But yes, so much the film's taken out. All of all of the swearing's gone. The bullshit, the fact that scene's gone, well, you're sick.

Fuck. But that's gone. It's yeah, crazy. It's crazy. That's Wells. OK, so here we go. I'm just, I'm just going to tackle it just to RIP off the Band-Aid. So they get into this limo and then a diabolically bad song by Paul Anka starts. It's this is from the golden age of writing a song for the movie and calling the song and having a lyric from the song be in the movie. So it works in Bond movies. I think it only works in Bond movies. This is not a book. It also it also works in black dynamite. Yeah, yeah, it works about dynamite, I'll give you that.

Yeah, I don't, but but in this so. So this is like a proper, like this is like one of those mushy's ballads that has, it leaves absolutely no impression on you. And all I know all I can remember from it and I've listened to it about four or five times and watching the movie over there to prepare for this. And it's just him going like no way out. That's all I can remember. You'll hear the song. It'll pass immediately out of your memory like you never heard it. The song itself gives you anterior grid amnesia, but it's important though, because the scene goes on forever and ever and ever.

And I'm assuming it's because Paul Anka demanded that the entire song is played like from start to end in the movie. So it's this goes on for about 4 minutes, but it's going to feel like about 15. So we start we start the scene. They're in the back of this limo. The the screen is down. So the drivers just there, and this could have gone either way. But in this particular instance, the driver's really enjoying it. And then Kevin is like stripping her down. And we don't like, we don't cut around this.

We see the whole thing. We seem like taking the top off to really build her bra. We see her like pulling her stockings off. It goes on for ages. And apparently during this bit, Kevin Costner and the limo driver improvised some dialogue with each other. So he's like, hey, man, what how you doing? What's your name? He's like, Bill, hey, how you doing? Bill? Do you mind shutting down the slide? And he's like, oh, yeah, sorry. And he brings us slide up and, and then Sean Young, again being a bit crazy, goes sorry, Dale.

And then and then as the, and this is my favourite bit, as the as the slide goes up, we cut to like a slash cut to to the Washington Monument, erect and lit by floodlights. And this obviously symbolises Kevin Cosner's erect penis. And you think that's the end of the scene? Cool. But no, it cuts back. And then we see, yeah, more of them making out and making out. And then it cuts to like another monument in Washington that I don't know as well. And then a couple more, which is implying that this is going on for a very, very long time.

So the limousine we have to assume by the time they've got to their destination is in an absolute state and stinks. That's important because I. Was going to say yeah. It smells crazy in there, man. Yeah, All right. So then then the limo arrives at Susan's friend's apartment. We don't know that initially. She just rocks into the apartment. So it's bashed on the door, and he's like, did you forget your key? And she's like, no, I have a key for my apartment. And then the door is answered, and it's answered by Iman, the supermodel who was married to David Bowie, because it's the 80s.

And Susan ejects her from the flat and says, hey, get in the limo, go back to my place. I've got food and I've got booze at home. I just need to fuck this guy in your flat. And if the phone rings, just ignore it. But no one, no one's going to call. Don't worry about it. But I need to fuck this guy here in this secondary location. And to make that plain to you, I'm going to take off my coat right now so you can see my naked breasts in the middle of your hallway.

Also enjoy the absolute stinking and stained limo on the way back. Well, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, it's absolutely, it's absolutely wretched. She's the worst friend. And this is another subtle clue that Susan might be not a totally compass mentis person. That's incredibly. Love them, I love her. Yeah. And then so that happens and then we kind of fades out and the next cut we go to is like an undisclosed amount of time has passed. They're in the back of a taxi. Tom is now dressed in full dress Blues number ones, and he's shipping up to to go on deployment.

So we don't know how long they've been together for, but they've kept it going. So you assume with that kind of energy that would be A1 nighter. But Nope, no, he stuck around. Yeah, that boom. Next shot is an Adam's class destroyer shot in day for night smashing through AC state. For nerd facts. Specifically this is USS Cochrane in real life. In the movie, you see them all wearing ball caps and the ball caps say USS Billings, right? Next thing we see, it's night. Tom is walking up to the bridge.

I'm going to assume this is somewhere in the middle watch, so between midnight and 4:00 in the morning. And the office of the watch goes a little early for you to be relieving me. Meaning that Tom holds obviously in the dogs morning watch, which is a bit weird because he's a left hand commander and you wouldn't expect them to be an officer of the watch on a on a ship of that size. Hey, whatever, I'm just a nerd. They'll discuss how the the state of the they're in some heavy weather. Sorry. Go ahead, Sonia.

Professional nerds. Yep. Well, thank you. Yeah. So they have a short exchange the the standing officer of the watch and and Tom about the state of the heavy weather because you could feel the ship, it started slamming into some heavy weather a bit. And they say, look, you're shipping to the folks or have you run? You got to look out close up there. And it's like, yeah, as best standing orders as a lookout closed up on the folks and Tom's like have you told the captain? And the officer watch says something absolutely demented.

He goes no, do you want to be the one that wakes him up? Yes, man, Yeah, you do Like like, like that's what he gets paid the big bucks for and he's going to want to know. So like super nerd fact. But ship seals normally have a set of night orders they give to the office of the watches for ship driving orders, instructions overnight and normally some standing ones that are normally always in there. And if it's sustained high winds and sea state, they're going to want to know about that so that they can, you know, plastered not on it the right thing.

Else what should have done here is stop being a fucking pussy called the captain. But before you even did that, you should have brought the lookout in and said, look, we don't need a lookout on the folks. All because this is 1987 and radar exists and it isn't reduced visibility, but the looks of things as well. It's like a clear, clear night as well. So it's like, what's this going on here anyway? It offers to watch. Next thing that happens, they talk about a Russian sub that's meant to be in the area and how they're going to catch up with it.

Let me just say right now that lookout was not going to see a Russian sub. And then Tom makes an offhand remark about how he's not bothered about doing so. He's like, Oh, yeah, OK, we find him, then you know, it'll be over for all of us. This is clue #2 that he's not interested in looking for the Russian sub and he's trying to subvert the ship in its mission for doing so. But then before that gets to develop forward anymore, the the boosters mate makes a big loud LVA that the forward lookout is down and he's fallen over.

And I've got opinions about this. So this scrambles a special rescue detail to retrieve the man while the journal alarm sounds. Hey, guess what? The captain's awake. And then Tom, sorry about she's got real zesty at this office of watch who doesn't exist. Yeah, I brought it up yesterday, so. Right. It's fucking bullshit. And then then Tom runs out onto the folks or to rescue the guy, OK. And it's painted like he's a hero. And I, and I know why they've done it. Like for plot reasons, they need to get a picture of him in the paper.

They need to be heroic. And they couldn't have enemy action taking place because he can't just leave the ship. Then after that, I guess. So they had to make it into this bizarre near miss situation. But let me just tell you right now, the forward lookout was wearing a rest of wire, which did its job. He didn't wash overboard, he washed over the guardrail, but he he put some effort. He probably got himself back again, but he was safe. In the meantime, while the party that were getting rigged to go out there and rescue him, Tom was not wearing the rest of wire, made himself a potential man of a board casualty.

And if he'd gone overboard, he would have died 100% would have died. Overall, this incident would not have left the ship. They might have put in a sort of near miss kind of report if that kind of culture even existed in the late 80s in the US Navy. I'm not convinced it probably did. But this would have been so embarrassing because they would have started peeling back the layers. They've been like, hang on a minute, hang on a minute. So let me get this straight. Like one of your pee was probably I got up in the middle of the night, went to the bridge.

You were in rough weather, but the officer watched, still had a lookout closed up and he didn't order for the lookout to come back in or get or past that. None of you called the captain. The guy got washed overboard and then you were out on your own without an arrest of Warren to bring him back in. Why didn't you call the captain and captain? Why haven't you got better control over officers? Just just just a load of fucking shit. So, so that was A to me like military like fucking naval wise looking diabolical situation.

Shouldn't let the ship a total embarrassment. Tom's a hero. He's a fucking idiot. Anyway, next scene then we cut to Thomas picture in the paper and Senator Bryce is really good right. So Gene Hackman, Senator Bryce, they're having a rooftop garden overlooking the capital and the Washington Monument, all that good stuff. And he's waiting for Scott Pritchard, his assistant to come and arrive. And then when he does, they're talking about their big deal they have going on at the Defence Department at the moment, which is the procurement of a new type of submarine called the Phantom Sub.

And it, it's this giant Sabrine that's supposed to be the size of an aircraft carrier. It's costing a tonne of money through the the lumbering behemoth that is the military industrial complex. It's going to find its way to fruition if it isn't killed dead by Secretary Bryce. And he wants to kill it. You know what? Say what you know about this guy. I mean, obviously he murdered his girlfriend and everything. That's pretty bad. But he's right about this. Like, you know, simple physics dictates you you can't hide an arc carrier underwater.

You can do things to reduce your acoustic emissions, but not that much should make and even pretty much says so in the movie. So that's pretty right anyway. I know all of this thing about the whole circus button sound, yes. Like the bit about the whole submarine mission creep thing. It's really interesting to me because I mean, the, the film tells us that there's this massive bloated defence procurement plan for this, this gigantic submarine based on the fact that they think that some, some mythical Russian submarine that they're going to, they're going to be combating with it.

And it's like, sounds about like Infracoba for a start, which is brilliant. But I, I, I just do love the idea that like it's, it's sort of was it, was it the F15 project was born out of the American paranoia that the Russians had some insanely super fast interceptor that they just didn't have. And ads, ads, ads, ads. Find that interesting? Yeah, man. So I, I, I don't want to talk out of school here about my own experiences with, with military procurement because I don't want to bring my service into distribute.

Not that I am, you know, equipped enough to be able to do that. I, I don't have all the inside track, but from the stuff that you've seen in open media about the procurement of the QE class carrier and the Type 45 destroyer, a lot of these projects, they're decided a long, long time ago. And there's a lot of effort that goes into getting a design together and a design freeze happens. And then like we're talking 1015 years later, we're finally cutting steel. So what you have is like these projects are handed over to people after people, after people and with like very little continuity.

There's the, the, the number of people who were at the very beginning, let's say of the QEC project who were still there at the final delivery of HMS Queen Elizabeth. Like it can't be that many, especially not the ones in military as well who are, are pretty much moving on after like 2 years pretty much in each job. You might have some mod civil servants who who saw the majority of it. But again, like it's such a long period, you know, it's unlikely that someone would have said the whole time. And that's pretty much what's going to be happening with this, this phantom sub here.

So they mentioned in the movie a handful of different, well, they mentioned one contractor, something called Gulf Marine. So that basically what happens with these things is you, you have a, you have a, the government facing procurement agency for the, for the, for the military, the HMR forces, it's the defence equipment and support agency DENS. And they are like essentially the project managers of a, of a, of an acquisitions project for, for the RN. We have the, the blue states side of things, which is NAVIAC as well.

So the other people who are responsible to give, they ask and DNS would be all responsible for putting together the project management of delivering in. And then on the other side of that, what you've got is all of the contractors and the various other companies and corporations that are involved as the delivery kind of thing, the OEM, the original equipment manufacturer. So what happened is Navy will say to DNS, we need an air carrier that needs to be able to do these things. They put together that proposal, send out a tender and all these other companies come along and and start working on it.

The problem that you get, and I think what's being alluded to in this movie, and I've absolutely no evidence for happening in in in the UKI should say is in thriller movies anyway, is that there's a shit tonne of corruption is like it's all glad handing. It's dropped to the boys and it's it's all that kind of stuff. And that's like totally a space we're operating in in this movie. It seems weird that this is like a little sort of it gets like it gets like 2 scenes in the movie where they talk about the Phantom sub.

But to me it is like the mood is operandi of the movie because like this is clearly the reason why Tom is being positioned where he is like as in as in by his handlers, whilst it isn't given much. And and I quite like this movie, feel like trust in the audience to like figure all that out. Like to figure out that, right, OK, there's a phantom sub that clearly America wants to build and this guy wants to kill it. Let's put a guy right next to him who's going to undermine him so that they definitely, definitely build this awful submarine so that we can easily find this terrible submarine.

Cool. That was a bit of an aside. Next we go to Manila. So man, I love this sequence. So it's so short, but it's so good. So Tom, surely in the Philippines, it hits within like 30 seconds. All the classics for being out in the Far East in a, in a movie like this. So the very first thing you see is a cultivation prostitutes straight away. Boom, here's your prostitutes. Then you get the next thing you get is this little kid who's like trying to scam them and it's really obvious. Can can I just I, I, if I've not paid all too much attention to to the phantom sub theme throughout the the film itself, unfortunately, but you've just brought it to my special attention again and and I've got giant bloody large bug on Cold War submarines in front of me right now.

And that that would actually, given the procurement times and the the construction idea times will actually add up with the US starting to develop the Wolf Pass, which is, well, it would have been of of particular interest from the Soviet Navy. Yeah, absolutely. They started building them in the 90s. So if if you're in the 80s and they're doing stuff in the 80s, throughout the 90s, they were still building the Ohio's and just start building them as well. So this is, this is a very niche, nerdy thing to do right now.

But submarine? This is a very niche nerdy podcast, Sonya. The Cold War has been rather much faster than than military procurement is today, I think. Yeah. Oh, because there's way more money in it. Yeah, it's it's totally different from from nowadays. I think the the timelines and also the complexity of the equipment, I think is, I think I don't know if it was faster back then because because it wasn't as advanced. I don't really know. But I think now the sheer amount of automation that they they they put into ships, it takes them quite a lot longer, I think to to to get those things figured out in the in the development stage.

But that's a really good point. And while we're on the subject of the of the submarine one was I'm like coming out pretty pretty shortly after this movie, as as you mentioned earlier on hunt for October and then Gene happen, of course, we go on to being Crimson Tide. So that guy loves submarines. So back-to-back to Manila, right. So what little kid running a scam clue #3 OK, this bag dropped with a little little St urgent. So he hands in the bag even though he knows it's going to be a scam at him and he's off to the watch pal go chase after the kids.

But he stops and he's like no, let him go, let him go. What's he got? He's got a bag with some some skimpies and a toothbrush. No big deal. And that's obviously mentioned in the final scene where he does say like the his handler does say to him you're you're Little Joe Camilla with the bag of underwear. Wasn't appreciated by the by the grown-ups, but ha ha ha ha ha. Always, always, always, always a sense of humour with you. And then it cuts. Well then he says to his his friend he's going to go and look to buy some ashtrays and then he's going to go and sample some of the local folk dancing.

Cut to a titty bar and and then and then this. And then this is amazing. So I don't really understand why he does this. He's in a titty bar in Manila, but it doesn't matter how many Filipino tits he sees. He really wants to talk to Susan. So he's trying to connect to call with her through a paid phone that's next to the bar. And he eventually gets the call to connect to take the ages. And then she she picks up the phone and she hears the sound of the titty bar. And I thought the first time I watched it, I was like, oh, she just like annoyed because it's the son of a titty bar and just hangs up.

But no, she hears Tom talking. Then she has to hang up because her super jealous Param or walks into the room. So he hangs with the phone and then Bryce walks in and it's horny olds defence secretary Bryce. So that's that's who's that's who she's with besides Tom. And then Tom in response to this and I, I think this is probably in the script, but I would love it to be an outfit. Tom just tears the phone off the wall and then he orders a beer. Yeah. Which of us hasn't done that? To be fair, I don't know if you know this, but payphones from the bar are free.

I keep several payphones in my office. You know this, but you can can totally hook up stolen payphones to secure lines as well. This. Would still let people use their landline to make a phone call. My God, Yeah, I don't remember that. I don't know why online phones still have a landline on them. Yeah. As we had. Good time. Yeah, yeah. Sorry though, that was just a total lamp. Mourning the death of the fax machine. Oh well, we're going to talk about media that prints. You've come to the right movie, man, So.

We'll get you that one late.

So so that was his deployment. So he basically sailed to Manila, got himself involved in a terrible health and safety incident, did some property damage, and now he's flown home. So the next thing we see is Farrell getting out of a car, arriving back at his his flat, his rig now is chop threes, which is what he's going to be wearing for pretty much the rest of the movie. And then he goes in, he sees his typically uncertain landlords because he doesn't have a very strong accent because I think that would give the game away too much.

So he's just got an accent from somewhere. And then he drops on Susan straight away and she calls him the Ancient Mariner, lol. Which is funny because Kevin Costner would then play the Mariner in Water World. And then, and then it's really apparent, and this is another, and this is another subtle clue that Susan might not be all there. So this is like the middle of the day, right? And she is blitzed. Like she's absolutely she's playing it like heavily drunk, right? And she's being, and I don't know if there's Sean weird, Sean Young being weird again.

And then what happens is he picks her up because the script I guess demands that he picks her up and takes her to bed. Although I would say that this is ethically not really on because she's so drunk. Anyway, she again does delivers some kind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer level dialogue. She's like, I wrote you, but I'm semi literate. So it was a wastebasket time. If you call gonorrhoea, I'll kill you. And I'm like, what the fuck was that?

And it's like blinking, you'll miss it, but but this woman has like no personality, like apart from just being really weird all the time. Wasted And now she announces I'm wasted When when he when he comes like like like like just be literally not just deer drinking. She's been breakfast drinking. She's like breakfast martinis with the girls and by the girls. I've been just me, and by breakfast martinis I've been half a bottle of Stoli. Bloody Mary, hold the tomato juice.

Eat. I think this might be the performance that Tommy Wiser was looking at when he thought, this is how I'm going to play Johnny Drunk in the room. I love you, darling. Just just like it's the same character. Yeah. So, so Tom's carrying out the bed, right? And he carries it into her bedroom. And this is good 'cause we got a nice geographical layout of the room she's gonna get killed in later. But we carries to the bedroom and she makes. Yeah, exactly. And then she makes some kind of oblique reference to how Tom's about to raw Dogger.

And Tom, even Tom finds this a bit much and he starts to blast and, and then a whole bunch of stuff happens in like 20 seconds. So like she receives a phone call. And because she's so paranoid about the phone call, she Yanks the phone out of the wall and puts it on the floor, which we don't even look at because the camera is panning away to to to Tom as he's about to hide behind a curtain for some reason at the same moment. It's really nuts. And then she gets up, runs across the camera, pans back, and she picks up a polar camera to take a picture of Tom because he's blushing.

And then Tom, this is clean #4 Tom says in a super serious, like not fucking her own way, no pictures. And then and then if eventually he starts laughing, but he obviously what intelligence operative once their photo taken, not this one. And then eventually he kind of chills out and relaxes. They do take a photo, but at the precise moment he takes the photo, he looks off to the left, which is not the goof. There's a little goof potential error by the by, by the filmmaker later on when you go into the the Polaroid.

But anyway, Tom, sorry, then Susan, sorry, then looks at Tom's penis like like he stood up. She's like on the edge of the bed and she's like, you probably haven't seen any of this, Rory. And then she's like caressing like his junk. And then she says a sentence which is so incredible that I'm going to leave you in suspense until we talk about our favourite quotes in the movie at the end. It's absolutely insane. And I'm convinced, I am convinced this wasn't in the screenplay and it has to be from Sean Young's mind.

It's so twisted. So that's that. And then finally the movie starts and we go to the Pentagon. So I think we've discussed already maybe that quite a lot of the movie was actually shot on the Pentagon, including in the actual defence secretary's office at some points. And you see like a lot of these really long hallways, like you see the NATO hallway, all the flags and stuff. But like, it is legitimately the Pentagon, which I think is kind of amazing access. Wild to me. Bear in mind the kind of of the film, yeah.

How much kept from kept from the Pentagon. I wonder how much the DoD actually knew about. Well, yeah. Ah, big sign. It's a subject on a film. What? I mean, it's like, yeah, we're just making a thriller. It's it's it's actually pretty periodic, guys. Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it's so. Guys, we're just done filming our boobs. Can we have the situation room for a minute? Yeah. It's like, right, OK, that's, that's it for titty shots. That's that's do the serious stuff. Let's get back What's the Pentagon?

Into it properly. Show me the big computers with the tapes. You know what? I really want to exist. I really want that to exist somehow. I really want that to somehow exist. Behind the scenes footage when Sean Young somehow got herself into the Pentagon and she was just wandering around like beer drunk, out of character, just beer drunk. It's just Sean Young, just like just like talking a random like like like like like like random fucking O sixes and stuff and be like hi, I'm Sean Young. I've got borderline personality disorder.

I'm drunk. I'm going to steal some stationary now, you know, like like it's like yeah, it's like Sean Young like walks in like the ladies toilets on on like the fifth floor next sets the toilet paper on fire just to Sean Young. It's like can't help me to Pisces. Oops, I'm a Capra son. Sorry guys but the vibes are wrong and I'm going to just do some awesome now. I think she's good. She's it's going to hold her boobs into the face of the chief of Naval Operations and then told him for being short or something.

I was like, look, look at this a little bad. All of your all, all of your war machine can't get this. That just works out. Amazing. I would like to say that actually Sean Young brings an important energies to this movie. She'd just been a bit less of an interesting character. I don't think this movie would have worked as well. I don't think it would have her character being alive for as long as she's alive in this movie considering she's the inciting incident. Wouldn't have worked, I don't think if she'd been like less interesting to watch the fact that she's like absolutely nuts and it's probably quite divisive, like some people probably hate her, but I think she's incredible.

She's just she's got like a manic expression on her face the whole time and it's just it's just so weird. And like if you go from like people our age, like we first see Sean Young and and for a lot of us only see Sean Young in Blade Runner, right? Just go from her performance as Rachel and Blade Runner to this like a few years later. Like, those five years were hard years for Sean Young because like some, you know, she must have been like, struggling. She probably thought she was going to get a big break When when when later on I did so well and she kind of did some of the big, bigger stuff.

But like, she was really struggling to get taken seriously and just get the big rules. And I think she was getting market corrected it by people like Michelle Pfeiffer and stuff. So yeah, hard time. But I think should bring this. Yeah, I I think she brings like a like a fantastic energy of the film. And I think it was probably hard to replace and that role as well. Yeah, I was trying to, like, rock my brain for like, who would work instead of Sean Young because the character's so unique. She's like she seems at once like really worldly but and bored like when she's like arriving to these, these these sort of soirees and stuff.

But she has like a real naivety when she's doing like the sexy stuff, like she's almost play acting what she thinks a sexy person is like. And it's just it's just it's just hits. It's like this is like maybe like the kind of mentality of like a teenage girl maybe, which I know it sounds like this. I'm not trying to be derogatory about her or women or anything. I'm just saying, like, her character just comes across as someone who's a lot more naive than she lets on when she's got her armour on, when she's suited and booted for these these sores and stuff.

Like when she's with Tom, she kind of like strips down to, to this kind of like really weird, vulnerable, but also like, manic state. It's so weird. Yeah. You can't tell if it's chemically induced or if she is just generally that happy. It's so weird. Yeah. So progressing with the movie, I guess. So Tom, we basically catch him arriving at the Pentagon and go straight to the deaf sex office and, and Bryce gives him a little brief about what his job is. He says he's going to be assistant and he's going to be a liaison between his office and the CIA.

Because what he wants is he wants the DoD to do a little bit of spying on the CIA to find out all the data that they've got on the phantom submarine. So what he believes what Bryce is is pretty paranoid about is that they're going to try and push through the phantom submarine by over again the numbers and how good it is. He wants the raw data so he can refute those claims and kill the project. Then as we discussed already about the the the submarine thing, then Tom is showing down to the room by one of my favourite characters in the movie, this weird little bitch ass of Lieutenant whose career path I can't possibly fathom.

Like, like why there's some lieutenants running around in the Pentagon, like who give them security clearance. Like these guys don't know the rash from their elbow. Like what's going on? Like, no, no. Well, hang on a minute. That might have come off from that's not what I meant saying yeah, but like, whatever. What I mean is you believe in your heart of hearts, you should be. As a proposed and somebody's cried out in pain and then were silenced. We've all been one before, man. We all know what it's like.

Oh, you know, you, you don't know your job yet. That's the whole thing. But I think maybe this guy might have some influential family and maybe that's why they're there. I don't know if they let sublifants into the Pentagon, into the situation of the Pentagon. If they are, you know, please write in, let me know. Cool. Tom busts his chops as he should, and then he sees his old pal. I mean, like they, they often joke like if you're in a piss in the Pentagon, like if you're even if you're a commander, you're probably still like the least senior person in the room.

And you're probably making the wets like a so lieutenant's got no chance.

So Tom sees his old friend Sam Hesselman again, who would presume must be from like, when he was at the Office of Naval Intelligence or something. And this is one of the cool things in the movie. This guy's a wheelchair user. And it's never mentioned once in the movie. It's like one of the only things that I think age as well. Yeah, definitely. I've. I've got a few opinions about Sam as well, a few things that have noted when I was watching the film. I like how he appears to be one of the first iterations of the kind of worky forensics guy, the kind of quirky, quirky forensics guy in the military slash law enforcement setting that eventually kind of builds up to like the kind of total, total quirk Lord characters would say like Abby and NCIS, who's like just like a hot topic shop exploded inside the the lab, you know, with his, with his, with his, with his stick arrows caught some drug drive.

And I'm not a I'm not a stuntman. I like that. Yeah, yeah. I've also got a theory about him because, and this is because, yeah, because this is me being noticing wardrobe kind of things. I noticed that he's he's got his watch turned round. Allah, John Wick in, you know, that military fashion that people that like and like John Wick, it's used to show when he's going into action, he turns his watch round the faces. Look at him, he has his, uh, still suit rigged that, that's that fashion with his, with his watch being all John Wickerfied and uh, you know, in, in, in what people think of as in terms of visual storytelling.

Azure what military dies too? I wonder if, I wonder if these he's actually ex forces and got himself injured and then with his GI, Billy went to college and became a computer science guy. And I like that for him. I love that for him. Hey, man, that's, that's a really good theory because like he's also cutting about in one of those like, umm, hunting like vest things with all the pockets on it. And I like to imagine probably like before, before the accident, before the IED or whatever it was. Yeah, he probably like used to do a lot of hunting and stuff.

That's why he still has it. And now he just carries those of pens and shit in it. Yeah, and now he's and and look, and now the hunting he's doing is forensically through computers and the Fournier sequence and generative AI. Fuck yeah. Easy to use, just computers. Everything is. Cool. So now here comes a scene that I don't think you would have seen. So the next thing is we're back at Susan's and just to wake us all up, after all that exposition, Kevin Costner not wearing a shirt and he's just wearing jeans and holy crap, he's like an incredibly hairy chested man.

I didn't I didn't have that on the cards for for Kozna. But then we see and then we see Susan pick up this jewellery box and we're going to see this in flashback layer as well, because it's a it's a, it's a, it's a plot relevant jukebox and she's put on some earrings and that and then she they have a bit of an argument because, because Tom is a bit jealous, because all the men are jealous in this movie. Like every man is jealous. I think of somebody else. And then Susan reveals that she's shagging Bryce and he's like, Hey, you know, I work for him, right?

You know, I work for Bryce And she's like, that makes two of us, which is that doesn't doesn't go that hard because she doesn't actually work for him, but she is paying his rent. Apparently. We we learn later on. Cool. And then Pritchard goes to pick her up for this function because obviously Bryce can't pick her up because Bryce is going to take his wife. What a drag. And then we see Tom and who is going to the same event, right, but wasn't getting ready. And then we see him in the house wearing his like dress trousers and his shirt unbuttoned, no tie and he's smoking as if he's contemplating whether or not he's going to go to this event.

And then he does go to the function. And I, I initially said he crashes the function, but he doesn't see hands over an invitation. So he was invited. So he's just tardy so that he goes. And then what happens is that you miss. So this whole function is a celebration of New Zealand's National day. It's worth pointing out right now that Roger Donaldson, the director included this because he wanted stuff from like around that part of the world, but actually he's Australian. But anyway, Rig, I'm going to point all the rig all the time.

It's white. So he's doing trop number twos now. So he's wearing white jacket, black trousers, yellow comma band again. And then we see this Mario dancing. So like there's a bunch of guys there and they do the hacking and they've got weapons and stuff. And I don't know why that was kind of your YouTube version because that's just culture. I don't know what the problem is I. Mean I'm I mean that's bullshit made-up. Sorry to be very blunt, but I don't get why that specifically was cut out. I mean, I can understand.

I mean, I don't agree with the removal of the sex scenes and all the swear words and all that cool things that you know yeah, agree to and you tell YouTube, yes, I am 18 yes, I am totally cool with seeing Sean Young, you know, getting done in the back of a limo. That was very eloquent there, Rory. But yeah, but yeah, and and and it baffled me why this scene was was taken out. Like what what man, people being cool. It's like, I mean, is is is is some like fucking anti Maori agenda going on here because that's bullshit.

If there is or or or did the but I mean, because the studio's got to be providing this to YouTube, right. YouTube probably don't have the rights to say we're going to cut this out, we're going to cut that out, We're going to your, you know, remove that and yeah. It strikes me as like one of those like aeroplane cuts you get where like they would cut out like all the all the fun stuff because you don't want like kids in the adjacent seats seeing you watch the fun stuff. I wonder. But yeah, weird.

There's an abrupt cut now to their dirty weekend. So basically the next thing that happens is Tom and Susan are playing a little chip away. You have you have another interaction with the ethnically uncertain landlords who says he's prying? He's asking. He's asking like what they're doing, basically. And he's like, oh, I'm sorry for prying. You enjoy your weekend. We got a driving montage with another cheesy a song also by Paul Anka called Say It. And I don't remember a single bit of this one. And then and then and then like in quick succession, a handful of demented things happens again.

This movie's so strange. So they're driving along in the car and then and then you see Tom like eating something and then Susan's like, are you eating bugs? Like that's gross. And he's like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to get another one. And he stands up in the car, reaches around the windshield. It's like, umm, it's like a drop top. And he reaches around the windshield, picks up a family off the off the windshield like a dead bug and shoves it in his mouth and starts eating it. And they're laughing about it.

And then she's like I. Love. Tom Farrell I do, I do, I do. And it's like same person would have got the ick there so hard. Like I would have stopped the car and be like mate, you need to get out. That's insane. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, I'm a boss, Kevin Costner, who does that amounts of risk. But still, it's like it's as Kevin Costner. He was just straight up eating insects at this point. There's a substantial here that that Tom Farrell, who's obviously on assignment here to sue this this woman because she's she's close to Senate Secretary Bryce is almost like he's chanting himself to see how much much you can get away with and still, still shagger.

It's almost like, right, OK, what, what can I possibly do to get this woman in the egg and then see if it works And I go, right, I'm going to eat some bugs off the windshield and then just see if that works and it doesn't work. I'm going to take this fucked up hotel where it clearly looks like AB and D and yet the bellhopper going to take us to the room is wearing some kind of weird French revolutionary garb. Like what the fuck? I love it. It's ridiculous. It's like someone from the cast of fucking Hamilton.

It's amazing. You can expect them to say little, like how does the custard of and Sons of a Whore and the Scotsman, etcetera. It's amazing. He's just just like, like we had like Revolutionary War kind of dandy. He was just like high. So that's yeah. So there's one more thing about the the bugs. I don't know if you are I'm assuming you you're weird survival training stuff that your army does is the same. But like having to eat bugs is like very I'm doing special forces Co-op hiding in the woods things.

So I'm pretty certain it's having to to survive somewhere without food and eating bugs has probably been been part of like weird Russian. Oh yeah, training their equivalent of of sea and and of eating like bugs and stuff. You. Know weird not to to. Such a weird collection. Yeah, the Soviet version of Sea Out was probably horrendous by the way in. In, in, in Soviet, in in Soviet Union, but no windshield in in Soviet Union you eat, but because you have not had food, he's like. Ah, delicacy, just like Papa used to catch.

He just, he just flashes back to what he's like 7 years old and he's like searching for cockroaches in the Moscow in that rule. But it's like Ratatouille. I mean, he eats one and it's like brings him right back to his childhood. Like, it's like it's the best buggy he's ever eaten. It's like, it's like the ones that mum used to make when I fell off my bike and skimmed by knee. Oh, my God. Yeah. What must have his SEER training been like? Because, like. All right. So as a glimpse into into like British armed forces SEER training, like at it's worse, like see a Charlie basically for regular personnel, you have to, you get dumped in the in the middle of nowhere for a bit.

You've got to survive for a period of like hours. What happens is they dump you off in the middle of nowhere and then they send people to find you with like dogs and stuff to sniff you out. And your idea is that you're going to survive off the land. You're not meant to go to people's houses and take stuff off them. You're going to survive off the land. And so eventually you're caught and you will get caught eventually. And then they punch into a back of a van, take you to another undisclosed location, put you on a chair and they do some like sort of stuff that's like sketching the, the edges of breaking the Geneva Convention.

So they might hug you for a little bit, they might tie to a chair. And then they interrogate you to check that you are given like the stock responses. So like your service number and like you might have say like by the Geneva Convention, you're not allowed to ask me that and that kind of stuff, which is ridiculous. And then the big day about CA training is that they're, they're only allowed to hit you twice or something in the, in the back of your mind, I presume. I haven't actually done this level of CA, you know, total nose bag talking about this.

You know, in the back of your mind you must be thinking like, well, he's only got like a couple of hits in him and then it'll be all over. So I'll just keep my gulp shot until that's finished. And this is the training that like fire pilots and stuff go through in case they're damned in like, you know, hostile territory and stuff. What I'm imagining Toms was like was probably like that bit in Casino Royale where where Daniel Craig stripped naked and put on a chair with the bottom taken out and then bit in the box with a with a rope.

So. What makes you think this was my first time? Currently, the Soviet military didn't have a formal, formal ICR training programme, but instead things like survival, escape and invasion. But just like kind of routinely rolled into their training. Apparently, according to some Google, and I've just done so, the ability training included this stuff, but it wasn't like a formally named programme. So I was really going to run a Google desk because I thought I wanted to see it was really bad. Like it was like fucking really brutal like 10 then leave and only 9 can come back.

You've got to eat one year course mates or something, you know? Just drive you out to a field and like right this is the Thunderdome 2 men enter one man and the guy and the guy who leaves we had to we had to auction all his kitten and and the guy who killed him gets to keep the boots. Does not leave the thing. It's a spare boots. You know, he's like the only boots are an issue for the next 25 years of service. You know what, while we're Googling random service related things, I might have found out what's what's just irritating me so much about about the rank slides on the UK.

So just context for this. Sonia is unhappy about the size of the stars on Tom's uniform. Not not not just the the stars, but the the general size of the entire rank slide. So I I I've looked it up. Theoretically they are supposed to be the same width that your ranks slides are, and are around 1 1/2 centimetres wider than the ones I get. What they do tend to be, however, is significantly shorter. So they are they are about two centimetres shorter than you this yours, or a lot more than mine. Probably this.

I'm aware this makes me probably sound severely unhinged and autistic, but they they do just look too giant because they're almost, well, square. It's weird. They have, they just have generally weird proportions. Well, that don't worry about looking intense autistic. You're on a podcast, mate. Yeah. I mean, we're all we, we all float down here. So the next thing we see is Tom goes to rent a yacht for Susan. So we got on a boat for a bit and there's only a shit little plastic ones. So he bribes the guy there so he can get the owners nice fancy proper yacht, like some sort of some sort of sailing contested type thing, which he does.

And this is important because this guy, as is the weird Bellhopper, both going to come back later. Cool. And then they go to see some really kind of like sad dower 80s music plays a little bit serene on for some reason yells, God, I wish the Navy was still like this, Which, you know, I don't think ever was like that because, you know, you're just tooling about a yacht. But cool. Ultimately they do a little bit of semanship movers. I think they they get ready to attack and he talks her through how the attacking and she gets to the to shout Helmsley and all that stuff.

And it's really nice. And what I would say is this scene walks. So the sailing scene and topkick Maverick could run absolutely great. And then and then finally, at minute 45 into the movie, we return home and this is it, the murder. So firstly, can we just address how late into the movie that Susan has killed? Her death is like the inciting incident of the plot and it happens like 46 minutes into the movie. I think it's excellent. I think it's a very good choice in the film. Yeah, same. Because you're expecting her.

If she were, if you were, if you were thinking she was going to die, you'd expect it to be killed at like minute 25, like top of the first act, right? It has developed very slowly it. Doesn't fold in a way that I don't think. Despite the fact that movies are a lot longer now, generally speaking, than they were in this time, I don't think this kind of movie is being made as much. And I think if it were, I don't think they roll out these inciting incidents like whatever page on the screenplay this is at.

Yeah, I mean, if if anything was starting with the with the with the flashback still, but it's going to be a flashback to her getting killed rather than to Tom being being being interrogated. And then through the kind of like storytelling we've seen films that are coming out roughly in kind of current year would would sing her, her taking up some of the film, but not a whole 45 minutes out of. No, she's she's, she's dead. She's dead wife at the start. Isn't she kind of thing. She you see her like in videos that people look at on their mobile phones and stuff.

You don't you don't get to see very much of her at all. I don't think the other the other thing. Actually would like more on flashbacks and stuff but yeah. Oh, totally right. And then I think the other thing you miss as well, if you're making this film now, what they'd cut out was all that stuff at sea, all the other stuff. What would happen is you wouldn't have two functions. You'd have one function in the first act of the movie. And what would happen is you'd go to the function Pritchard was introducing to Senator Bryce.

And because Senator Bryce, this is my friend Tom Lewis had calls together. This is the guy I was telling you about. He's the hero from USS Billings who saved that guy's life. And then he's like, ah, I could use AI, could use a hero at my department, come to work for me tomorrow kind of thing. And then that's how you'd get him into the door of the Pentagon. And it was cut out about like 1520 minutes of the movie. Which sucks because and also yes, yes, the record, that's partially what the YouTube cut does because it gets rid of the second function, however you do so get obviously Bryce's.

We had actually like, oh, this is this is my friend. Yeah, OK, cool, whatever kind of thing. But yeah, yeah, you are totally right in that assessment, man. Yeah, right. Cool. So anyway, back to the murder. So, yeah. So Bryce, basically what happens is they they arrive back home straight away, and as soon as they arrive back, the phone's already ringing and it's Bryce, and he wants to go and see it. And then there's a bit of an argument between Susan and Tom, but Tom's like, what the fuck, man? I'm just going to leave like some kind of thief in the night of the back door.

Like, I'm shagging you. Everyone should know that I'm shagging you, not Bryce. And she's like, if you want me to say it, I'll say it. I'll leave them, Tom. I'll leave them. She won't leave him. And then he says he's coming over, and then she's like begging Tom to go out the back door. And he's like, no, when I leave it's going to be out the front anyway. Gilligan cut to him leaving out the back door. And he stood in an alleyway in the dark and shrouded in shadow. And he sees getting out of his car, Bryce.

So there's a moment there where Bryce observes a man looking in, but he doesn't know who it is. And Tom sees Bryce going into the apartment. As soon as Bryce gets into the apartment, he's under the idea. He's like, who's that guy? Who else you fucking, who you were with all weekend? Who is he? I don't know who he is. And he punches her in the face and then she runs upstairs. He follows her. They have a tussle on the bed. He slaps her again. I think he exclaims while he's kind of choking her that he pays her rent.

And then they fight in the hallway a little bit again. And then in a weird moment, he pushes her and she falls backwards over the balcony. And then this is cut and filmed really weirdly. So it goes into super slow motion. He's like, you can see Bryce trying to grab her to to save her because he already like his gut instinct is that this is the wrong thing to do to grab her. But then she falls and she kind of like they must have loaded her on a wire and then this slowed the footage down further. So they must have filmed at high speed, slowed because her arms are flailing like tonnes in what must have been like a split seconds fall.

Yeah. Like. A Yeah, it's a bit like it looks really awfully done. It looks like some you see in a Kate Bush video. And then she hits the glass table. The glass table completely shatters into pieces. And then she lies on top of it, kind of like dead like Ophelia on top of the on top of the river kind of thing in Hamlet. But there's no visible damage to her. But we knew later that she died of a broken neck. But it doesn't look broken when we see it. It looks really nicely composed. Anyway, Ice freaks out, goes to see Pritchard, and then he says to Pritchard, I think I killed Susan.

And Pritchard says, what happened? And then Bryce says, I killed her. Yeah, mate, you killed her. Good, that question. And then Pritchard goes to clean up Susans apartment to try and remove any evidence of Bryce being there. So he's he's pocketing stuff, he's looking around the place. He finds the negative from the Polaroids that Susan took of Tom earlier on very important. And then he nearly hears Tom on the phone. What happens is Tom calls the apartment when to talk to Susan and then he hears Susan's answer phone message and I presume must get the ick because Susan's answer phone message again is you get more evidence of her character being a bit crazy.

So her message is this. Susan can't come to the phone right now, but wait for the beep and tell me everything. And like, you've got to imagine like what that would have been like if she was just alone in her house recording that message for her own amusement. Like, I mean, God forbid to go hobbies and stuff, but that that is crazy. Like so told me hears that he's like, you know what, actually, I don't have the energies to talk to this person and then hangs up. And that probably saved his life. Next we get a really important bit of exposition between Pritchard and Bryce where they can cut the whole plan to pin it on another third person.

This this agent called Yuri, who didn't really exist. Code name Yuri, who all the other intelligence agencies believe is active in the DoD. So they're they're going to say we're doing a manhunt for this guy called Yuri who's connected to this killing. We're going to find him. None of you guys get involved, especially not the FBI. Please don't to get involved. FBI, definitely not the FBI. And then for reasons we learned in due course, this is to play ironic because the next scene, Tom is placed in charge of that investigation.

And then and then Thomas handed the dossier of all the details about who it was because he just thinks, oh, right, there's been a murderous woman. OK, cool. He doesn't know that Susan's dead. He picks up the file, looks at it, sees it's Susan and then he excuses himself into Bryce's personal toilet and then has a bit of a panic attack. Clue number 5 or 6 or whatever. He's panicking because he's just realised that he's the Yuri, he's being made to hunt, and he thinks that the Yuri hunt is actually legitimate and it isn't just a cover up.

Yeah, cool. Right. So the next scene is we're back down in the Situation Room, which we got introduced to earlier. We're going to see a tonne of this space now pretty much for the rest of the movie. So the first thing we see is the initial investigation, start their home down phone records. They're talking about doing credit card purchases, but they haven't started yet because back in the 80s would like a week for that data to come in anyway. And they're cataloguing physical evidence taken from the house.

So Pritchard, Evil Niles drops in, he comes in and he drops evidence back with a Polaroid negative in there because he's confirmed with Bryce that Bryce isn't in the photo. And then he and the Army major, there's an Army major plainclothes, he's also heading up the investigation alongside Tom. And they're talking about how that picture could still get, you could still draw a picture from that, that negative, even if you can't quite see it on the negative, because it could go in the photo lab. And there's a brilliant bit of accent from Kevin Costner because he walks up to them just as that happens and you hear Tom clock it and you see a little visual pit of dread passing for a split second and he's back in the room again.

So he's been like, that's the first bit of like, fuck, this could come back to get me. Cool. The next clue happens here. I think it's clue 6. So part of this part of his job is he's talking to the CIA about this phantom sub thing. And he managed to convince the guy from the CIA to take a meeting with him and deliver him a drop copy of the report that's due at the start of the month early. So this is like, so you can see he's already working his way in and he's doing his job for Bryce, but he's also doing his job for his handlers at the same time.

This guy comes in and wants to pick up what they're meeting. Pritchard's like, just cancel it. And he's like, and Paro's like, no, it'll look suspicious. So I want to take the meeting. And then during the meeting again, Pritchard orchestrates an escape by getting someone to call them and they're in there. So we can say, Oh, I've got this agent called before I leave. And then Pharaoh's like, no, you going ahead. I can I can manage this because he obviously wants to get that information because now the Nets closing around to me, he still needs to leave with a product for his handlers, right?

So that's that. That to me is a clue that that that that he's not always seems like the fact that he's distracted enough that to continue wanting to do this this, this stuff, even though he doesn't really care. Gradually wraps up his spycraft as the film goes on. Yeah, absolutely. And this is like, I think that's the first proper 1 of it actually that you see is the OK right. He's still on on mission. So the next thing we hear is the autopsy report. This is interesting for many reasons. So they, they, they get really fixated on the stomach contents of Susan at the time of death and they positive theory that they can use the chemical pollutants in the fuse that they can extract and analyse and then they can track down where she ate on her last day so as to pinpoint her movements.

And when I first saw this, I was like, is, is that a thing? It seems mega advanced for and really workforce intensive for them to do like now, nevermind 987. My, my, my gut feeling would be you'd have to have quite a sophisticated database of, of background data already to do the triangulation. And this would be like a continually ongoing like process. I mean, then we've got Roy. You said you'd find some stuff about this. So I did look into this briefly. I, I fired up a Google newspaper search because Reddit was, is this because they say it's up at Chesapeake Bay, right?

They say that they can narrow it down the up at Chesapeake Bay. So I pulled up like a bit of Google newspaper searches and a bit of Google and in general on Chesapeake Bay and turns out incredibly polluted. And at the time there was a well, it's still kind of going on. I think it's still a bit messed up. If you look at like contemporary newspapers from the 80s and stuff, there's loads and loads of articles about how how bad the water is in Chesapeake Bay. If if you Google it, you can see that there's, there was like a marine dead zone there at one point when there wasn't enough dissolved oxygen in the water for sea life to exist.

And the interesting thing is it's, it's mainly caused by agricultural runoff and urban runoff to a lesser extent, specifically manure from farmers fields. And there's this whole kind of big kind of controversy with like a lot of Amish farmers were were doing it as well. And it's didn't give a shit because that's what they do. They just raise bonds and just don't give a shit about technology really. What what what what they're saying is very matter of factly. Yeah, she's eaten like the poop fish, you know, she's she's eaten the fish that's full of shit.

And I just love the concept of of the shit fish because number one, it sounds like a Jim Leahy like metaphor from Trailer Park Boys. Like when I got so few whiskies and it was like Randers, they shit fish and swim in your way. Randers, there's a shit fish swimming awards. You're Randy Bo Bandy aside aside from something, as a matter of fact, he just said, yeah, these this, the seafood, it's full of shit. It's full of manure. It's full of urban. It's full of it's full of it's sort of runoff from farms.

It's shitfish, it's crab oysters. You know it's it's. She's. Yeah. Devoured the faculans. She has, she's like devoured the faculant. It's like so so it's like, yeah, it's it's the fucking hunt for Brown October, you know what I mean? Holy crap. Holy crap. And deep, man, I went deep on that one. It's that's yeah. We'll get ready to get deep again. So the next people we meet are the goons that are working for Pritchard. So we've got 2 two big tall drinks of water here who are introduced as having worked with special forces to which Thomas, like, what the fuck do you mean worked with special forces?

And it's really, really becomes really apparent that they were guys involved in the US training teams involved in training the the El Salvador paramilitaries who are supporting the the right wing government at the time in their long standing civil war against the far left Marxist groups, which was still technically ongoing when the movie came out. War star technically in 1979 didn't end until 1993. I think a bit of a, a bit of a topical thing in the movie was these, these two guys who'd been involved in, in, in training these death squads who, it's perpetrated these, uh, immense, uh, human rights violations and these two really big massacres as well.

Really interesting. And when we talk about how this movie had such access into the Pentagon, I'm assuming that, uh, the military advisers didn't read the scripts too closely. Were they with the death squads? They're assassins basically. I'll, I'll really love this piece as well because you see the visceral reaction, umm, you see a really visceral reaction from, from Tom against these guys. And this again, this kind of shows his, his ideologies. I mean, the fact that he is, he is still still served in the Soviet Union.

And these guys are, I mean, the part of the American defence separators, I guess, the part of American foreign policy and the pretty nasty part of America's kind of hard power. But also these guys fucking suck. And to him, these are the guys who there is nothing redeemable about these guys. These are the guys who were down in Guatemala or wherever the school of America's they're on student visas with relaxed groups, women and they're just teaching teaching. Like you said, they're teaching people how to kill communists throughout their driving through for Vilas on dirt bikes and shooting local labour organisers in the head throughout that killing leftist politicians throughout their arranging fucking Chilean helicopter rides.

And he's just very, very, very viscerally pissed off at these people. It's it's one of the few times, along with no pictures, if you will have that he that he almost lets it slip. He's a good spy, but there's a few things that make him kind of snap a little bit. And I think that's one of them. And I love these guys. I think these guys are fucking brilliant. Canon probably will talk at length about these once, once we dig in and the two sequences where they really shine. Oh yeah, these two guys, let's, let's, let's give them their due as well.

So we've got Let's get their names up. I think you've got Marco Bell. Yeah, by Fred Thompson and and Leon Russell playing Kevin O'Brien, I think. No, no. So the goons are Contra number one and Contra #2 that's Marshall Bells. And contract 2 is Chris D This This is possibly the best casting of a Chris single initial since Chris R in the room. You know, Christie's actually the singer of a punk band called The Flesh Eaters. I did not know that. That's incredible. Yes, Christie is, in fact, has been the same.

Yeah, yes, Yes, it is. It's also a punk band. It's been gone since like the 70s, I think. And Christie's been their front man for forever. Yeah. So the guy playing Conroe woman to Marshall Bell, who's a character actor who's done a bunch of roles, He's he's been in fucking everything. Oh, he's been in Total Recall. He's in. Stand by Me. Star Ship Troopers, would you like to know more? Oh, that's. Right in. Regard it also, and he's still very active now as well. Yeah, he was at Slide Us. He said what episode of Slide Us?

Yeah, I'm looking at IMDb at this point, but yeah. That's tremendous. He was, he was. He was in one of the best episodes of Millennium. Oh man, that's, oh, I've definitely seen that then. That's brilliant. So good man. Oh my God. Holy crap. He was, he was in, he was an Operation Dumbo Drop. He's he's been in everything. Dick Tracy, Air America. Holy crap, he was in. He was in tour of duty. What the fuck? This is a Oh my God, this is a this is a great movie for that guys. Absolutely fucking a nightmare on sheet 2.

Freddy's revenge. He's he's he's a guy who's been in every film regard, hardest of genre. It's brilliant. He he just works. He just gets work. It's fantastic. Christine's been in like a handful of films. He's been in a few shorts. He was in Lethal Weapon as well as as a mercenary, obviously the same year as No Way Out. So I guess that's kind of, I guess that's his mil year. Just like I'm a Paul Lanky, kind of sinister dude who's who's going to do horrible things to people for money. Amazing Wow.

We give it up for those guys like, well, you know, we need them on those wall. We want them on those wall, Right. Cool. Yeah. So it's got had a question about whether this movie was going to be pro or anti CIA or not, which I was going to come back to at the end, but I think we've pretty much answered it there. But the presence of these guys, despite the unprecedented access into the Pentagon, and despite the fact that our Petragnus turns out to be a bad guy, I don't think this movie presents itself as a pro CIA movie.

No, that's not. That's not. Cool. So then Tom is a bit shaken up. He hasn't been meeting with Pritchard. He learns and if it commas that Susan was Bryce's mistress, but obviously he already knew that and he's this is when he first posited the he he's pretty, I think in the back of his mind, he's pretty confident that Bryce did it. So he wants the FBI to investigate it like cleanly strictly by the book. And then he wants the legal framework to to do its job. Pritchard says that Bryce didn't do it and he wants to protect him.

And Tom calls his bluff and says, well, he didn't do it. Let's let's let the FBI investigate it and then he can take his chances. Pritchard threatens him is not to sorry. Pritchard threatens him that that's not going to happen and that he's going to protect Bryce. So we've kind of lined up who are are conflict of the movie now Susan's dead. There's a manhunt going on. It's a cover up. They're going to try and make Thomas fall guy and Bryce is getting protected even though Bryce did the murder. So that's kind of like we've set up our our chess board now kind of thing for the rest of the movie.

Meanwhile, we get that explained to us in detail by a a cup to Langley where the CIA are having a chat about it. And that's when they bring up for the first time that Pritchard is gay. And this is probably one of the bits of the movie that ages pretty pretty badly. So you're you're allowed to have obviously heroes and villains or whatever character be gay, but they kind of make his gayness a big part of why he's a bad guy in this movie. Like he's driven crazy by his jealousy because he's gay, which I don't think is aged well at all.

Yeah, yeah, great. I will say though, well, I think I think there is when you think about it, himself, Ice and Susan essentially love triangle because Bryce is is leading him on in a way of manipulating him in a way huge pivotal moment. It's obviously when Bryce goes to his apartment and he's like, I think I've killed her. Well, I have, I have killed her. I'd just be a chill before I go to the police. And he's that's massive emotional blackmail of this guy that he knows really, really is is is besotted by them, you know?

Well, yeah, big time. And like, he goes to his place, he's wearing his clothes, the bridge is there, and just he's like dressing down as well. This is like the the sort of the Smithers fantasy of Burns flying for the window kind of thing. Oh God, what he just totally is. But but but yeah, like there is that great kind of snappy line. Will, will, will, I'll be damned. Oh well, so will he. If you go by the Old Testament that it's like on. And brought that up. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. So now we've had that kind of explained to us.

We come back to the pen and that gets really interesting. So we are now on the subject of the Polaroid negative that was on the deck. And this is like the first time I think I can remember of seeing generative AI. Being talked about in a movie, especially like 1 is from the late 80s. It's not talking about it in the way that we think of AI now in terms of talking about it more in the sense that you would a really advanced version of like how in Photoshop you could erase stuff like remove it and then you could take a feature of a picture and it would paint in what the rest of the pixels behind it would be doing, judging by the pixels near next to it.

So that's exactly what they're talking about. So yeah, there's a brilliant bit here. There's actually a really good comedic bit here as well. So basically what happens is they go to the the the situation room and he's and he gets and that's when he tells him like, yeah, so we have this pillar negative. It's really bad. It's been, it's come back from the full lab and they they can't do anything with it. And then he just goes, damn, too much to hope for. Guess we'll just have to forget it. Yeah. Nice try, Tom.

I get it man. Just you know. Guess we'll never know. Guess one. No anyway. I guess we just, I guess we just have to solve this thing without any evidence. But there's two, there's two really cool things laid out in this scene. So 1 is that that work in progress of the generative AI photo that's gonna be running on a CRT monitor in the middle of the lab all day. So they say that they're gonna, we're gonna have to set this thing rendering and it's going to be rendering all day long on this screen that everyone can look at all day long.

Gradually the face of the man who spent the weekend with Susan is going to become apparent. And that's basically our killer. That's what they all think. So that's like a ticket time bomb. So that's like you're, you're, you're, you're like sort of countdown almost for the movie. So they say like it's going to say like 12 hours could be a week, could be 12 hours, but they're going to try and speed it along. So that's that's a great source of attention. And then secondly, the first hit on the phone numbers from the phone number cheques to Susan's house come in and it's a man, Susan's friend who rang it just before the murder.

So that sets of our next scene, which is Tom and Pritchard going to visit her. So they go to her apartment and and they they kind of start questioning A Pritchard kind of takes leading role. Tom just kind of stands at the back and then boom, clue number. I think we're at 8 now clues that that that Tom is a double agent. So it's there's a bit of ambiguity as to whether Aman, her name is, I think her character name is Nina is, is going to grass up Tom for being in her apartment. And I guess it must be like months ago at this point because he's been and done a deployment.

He's come back, he's taking a new job and stuff. But it's it's not clear whether or not she's going to go. Well, yeah, I do know a guy actually that that she was seeing. He stood right behind you. So Tom kind of just does some business in the back of the room. He's kind of wandering around, and then he picks up a vase and you just seem really carefully, like, take the flowers out of the vase and put them down on the sideboard. And he's like positioned as if he's about to smash Pritchett in the back of the head as soon as it starts to go South.

But then she doesn't do it, so he puts it back down again. That is obviously the clue that, like, there's something fishy with Tom and like how? Because he's going like, from nothing to like lethal force as soon as the idea that he knows Susan is brought up. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, like, I mean, it's not, I mean it's not a comedy. He's not going to like bop him on the back of the head with, with a vast, he's going to be OK 10 minutes later. He's using a heavy object as a force multiplier to start what's going to be a very brief, very fucking terminal struggle, you know, like, and it's escalated really quickly.

And the only logical explanation for that is because he believes there's a real manhunt going for an agent. Yeah. And he needs to maintain his cover. And for him, maintaining his cover is more important than establishing his innocence of murdering this guy because he's just going to get disappeared back-to-back to Russia if he has to. So anyway, that happens and we go back to the computer room and Tom is starting to do his first bit of obfuscation of the investigation by committing using loads of computer resources to hunt for credit card purchases that wouldn't have come through yet in the 1980s.

So this is like a couple of days in, you expect about a week or so for for credit card purchases to have gone into through the system and and be held at the banks that they go through because it takes ages for a check to clear or credit cards to to clear back in those days. So and he gets told that much by Sam and he's like, just do it anyway. But he's like, oh, we have computer resources we could be using elsewhere. And again, it's implied that he means the the rendering image, but it's not set out loud.

But yeah, so I mean, if they really want to sit on the AII, suppose what they could have done is said please and thank you to it. And that would have that would have caused it to. Topical. For the higher draw on its server, apparently topical zerk, the next thing we get is another look at the the food pollutant thing, But this time you see a biography depicting what the pollutants are and a cool little heat map of of where they are. So that that was pretty cool and and we've established another that actually is a bit more plausible than I initially thought it was.

So that's cool. Yeah. Yeah, and then Tom's in his office and a guy from CID comes and drops of a jewellery box that had been found in the apartment that they'd be hanging on to, that I guess Pritchard didn't have a clue about at all. So we handed to Tom. Tom's like I've seen this Drew box. And then it does a flashback to show us him asking about the jewellery box and how it was a gift from Bryce and how he'd received it from someone else. And then Tom goes and sketches his little sub Lieutenant and bitches them off to to to find out where it came from.

Just above. You win a 5 minutes late for the podcast. Delegation in the streets and bitching off at the sheets. Bitching off Establish. Right. And then the next scene is Rebecca Bryce's office now and a guy who we haven't even mentioned yet, a guy called Senator Duvall, who was the guy who's really keen to get the phantom sub through is kicking off. But he's kicking off not about the phantom sub. He's kicking off about how the, this, this mad investigation is taking place that none of the other intelligences are involved in because he's this guy, he's like in deep cahoots with the CIA.

So he's he's kicking off about that. Pritchard then goes, oh, hey, by the way, while you're here kicking off all this, we're not, we're not fully decided on the fountain sub thing. So, you know, we can have a talk about that and maybe there's some ground we can give. And that comes down when he fucks off. Price doesn't like this, doesn't like, doesn't like being out diplomatic by this guy. He hates this Duvall guy. So he repairs Pritchard's favour by lobbing a folder on the head and it's an amazing, it's amazing shot of, of of of Will Patton just taking this folder bang on the Dome and like better reacting.

It's amazing, very good, very good value. And then the reason the scene exists is because he relates to Bryce that in the interrogation of Iman Nina earlier on, Nina mentioned Bryce. So she's the only person connected with the murder so far that isn't Bryce. So Pritchard sends his two goonsword guys on together. And as soon as Tom realises this, he runs down. Comedy is a car and he gets to chase them down. He wants to get to Nina 1st and we have our first chase sequence. So oversee Roy to describe the chase sequence.

Oh my God. So first of all, out of both of the films major chase sequences, I mean like the odd perfect but the cinema, but the great pieces of action filmmaking. I think the characters of those involved are shown through the sequences. The decisions made by three parties from chases and then Contra One and Contra 2 and the nameless goons. So the car chase sequence where he's pursuing them by car, which then then sees like the hunter free imbalance reversed and finds himself running from them, which was part of his plan to distract them.

First of all, it's got what I would argue, what I argue is some great action driving. Costner is believable, I think. And Rick and this big American gas goes around the park and garage and when it gets down on the roads of DC, this overpass that our American listeners forget and he might be disappointed and we've not been able to name. And that's what I think a decision that's in line with this character, in line with the situation that is in. And it shows again, graspless firecraft and stuff. Now we know that he's already prepared to do acts of real violence.

We've just discussed the scene in Nina's apartment when he was was ready to fucking kill, you know, Richard, he was ready to absolutely kill him. But now he's out in public, he's he's got to try and remain 10 low key. So he sets up what to me it's like an excellent, it's like lower visibility car crash, if you will. It's aggressive combat of driving, but which crucially could be taken by passersby as just someone being a bad driver, just a loss of control. He he chases behind these guys. He pulls up against him.

He's like, oh, hi, you kind of think that he overtakes him. He just kind of puts his car a bit of a scared and the T bow in him at very not very low speed, but low speed enough for no one to get killed. So it's just it just looks like a loss of control and there's there's no pit manoeuvre. There's no pulling alongside them and pushing them through the concrete siding of the overpass. I mean, with the with the size of that vehicle, he probably could have he doesn't not deploy his sidearm. He stops the vehicle, he takes away the mobility and then he gets time to chase him.

And I think it's done in such a way that he's he's aware of the situation in which he's operating, right? Like he knows that you're not going to start a gunfight just in the middle of DC on this fly over. He knows that he's he's not going to kill these guys because that's going to get loads of heat on them. So he does this excellent bit of like I'm going to cause a little accident and essentially get a mobility killing these guys and distract them and it's great. We'll see the sober splint chase when he he runs off across traffic is people go your asshole giving him grief and stuff like that.

And then we'll see again is the spycraft and it's physicality don't fully gel because he gets in the tree and he can't make that a lot of branch, right? He can't make one of the branch. He knows he he's, he's he's got the plan. He's got the plan, but he can't quite make it physicality wise. But he's still moving. He's still booing along. You know, he runs out, he gets he gets hit by a car. Apparently his agent, I think was really pissed off about that because like, Oh my God, you let my actor get hit by a car and stuff because he does his own stunts.

And I don't think it's the agent like them doing his own stunts. So then by this point, he's already starting to run out of steam. He's already starting to gas a little bit. And he's, he's, he's being pursued by these inexorable fucking goons who, who do not appear to show any kind of, you know, slowing down any kind of weakness. I will say that Conrad #2 Chris D does run a bit weird. You guys both run. I don't I'm I'm a little fat goblin, but you guys run. That's a weird run. He's got right with his with his arms down there with his hands were a bit open.

Yeah, it's a strange gate, definitely. It's a very strange gate, but he's rapid. I mean, they're both rapid and they don't appear to show as much kind of exhaustion as we bought Thomas. And of course he's down in the metro station. He he does what you know, he he listens to the intrusive thoughts that I get at Haymarket metro station every time and he slides down the middle between the two escalators. What I love about this as well. So he he gets himself on the train as the goons go down first day goon 2 again, just fucking fully pushes someone off the escalator.

I love that. It's amazing. Isn't it One handed, single single handed, just pushes him and he goes. I think that's actually amazing. It's like like it's. The most seen, if I actually think about it, it's like, yeah, I could be running away from 2 goons and be totally out of breath the entire time and then fall off 3. I could do that. It's low. Key it's believable and of course then they get to the point when the rat the train he's he's inside the train at this point they're aware and we're going back like visibility and stuff and just kind of what you can do and what you get away with in certain situations.

They've missed chances where they could have got them in an alley, but now for the Lord witnesses. And at this point if quantum brought us a weapon and shoots through the window, which they can do. Oh my God that guy just shot a fucking Navy officer on cool blood in the middle of the metro station. Bloody hell, man. Yeah. And it's some of these guys could probably get away with down the line that could probably get covered for it. But it's a choice that they decide not to make because, you know, the foiled for now.

But they are part of America's inexorable killing machine. And if they want to get you, will get you and. Another good thing I like about this is that you see how puffed out Kevin Costner is Tom because the temptation in a lot of these movies because this is like a classic scene. The guy jumps onto the the train just is pulling away and the other guys are stuck behind it. Yeah, happened in Spender. It happens. It happens. Everything mentioned mentioned. Well, that's the data stop. Like topical joke, but.

Yeah, so you got that. But the temptation is it's for like some kind of like, back and forth to happen, some kind of communication. And all he can manage is like, he just, he's obviously hanging out. All he imagines is like he punches the side of the fist onto the window in a sort of physical act of like, fuck you. But he doesn't even, like, he doesn't even like flipping the bird or anything. He's just like, Oh yeah, fucks. Yeah, I like that. Like, like, it's brilliant. It's an excellent chase scene.

It's an all time bar. It's very, very good. Yeah, so there's and then the next bit we get is so out of the subway train. He then rocks up at the the mall and there's another little but a chase scene, isn't it? That's right, yeah. And again, it was sort of a good mould chase scene I think as well with, with with like, it seems a bit of like storytelling that is very peculiar to film set in America. Wonder what like is, is the like a national alternative to your mould chase scene? I think maybe it's railway station scenes for, for like European and stuff, you know what I mean?

It's like, yeah, there is, there is, there is pretty excellent ball chase scene. That's class as well, I must say. Yeah. Or it's like the marketplace or something, isn't it? Yes, yes, if it's anything like kind of like kind of like Eastern European or Middle Eastern kind of thing that that roof area from like Eastern Europe through the corners of the Balkans down like the MENA kind of area and it's always running through a bargain and and like you're like knocking, knocking fucking pubs of. Doesn't doesn't like.

Every James Bond. Yeah, no, Sonia, Sonia is absolutely right there, Like every James Bond ever. Yeah. Like, and if you go to the Middle East, it's it's a SOOK and yeah. Some someone totally needs to put cards and Poland stand or something. I can't remember much of it. So what my key take away from that scene is, So he gets, he runs up, he gets to the shop that that Nina Iman works at and I can't remember what it is. It's like a fashion boutique or, or jewellery store or something. And then he pulls her out there and he's like, he tells her, like, you are in grave danger.

These guys are coming, they're going to kill you, you need to disappear. And then they got those guys catch up pretty quickly. And then he fights them to to slow them down while she escapes. And then there's amazing bit where he Ruby tacks one of the guys, slips him up and he charges into the second guy, pushes him into like a big flower stall type of thing. And then the other guy gets up, pulls a weapon in the middle of the mall and puts it to his back and goes, I think we should get back to the Pentagon, Sir.

Just fucking wild. Yeah, is it? If anyone else heard that, they'd be like. Yeah. Exceeded your lunchtime by 15 minutes. I'm going to put a gun on you. So fucking. Yeah, yeah. It's like fuck it out, man. It's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I fucked in fight, but it's late, dude, you know? Come on man. So yeah.

So they so he gets so they're taking back to the fence again. Pritchard is is pretty unhappy with him and he's like, don't do anything that kind of shit again, that kind of stuff. And it's clean. Now they're on, they've marked the lines. Now they're on separate sides of how they're handling this, this thing. And Tom, this is quite cool. So Tom kicks off him and goes, I don't believe there is a Yuri is there, or that he has anything to do with that murdered girl. And like, if you watch it for the first time, you're like, Oh yeah, OK, he gets it.

He understands it's a cover up and he's figuring it out. Cool. And then you're watching a for the second time, you're like, Oh, this guy's doing a misdirect because he thinks he is the Yuri and he's just trying to clear his own yard arm. And and then he so he leaves the office, goes into another woman's office who's working and she's like, he just says, I need to use the phone. So and just things her out of her office and she's like, oh, I'll be careful what you say because big brother's listening.

And then and then he rings up his subby that he bitched off earlier on about the jewellery box and he tells them that it's Arabic, but it's a Moroccan dialect of Arabic. To which Tom responds, good boy. Just just just just a reminder that being a sub Lieutenant is a hard life. I think, I mean allegedly, I report everything, but if I think if my, my last commanding officer topped off his conversations with calling me a good boy, I probably would have just, I don't know. He yanked his face off.

Now that that's all happened, we are now entering the, the very long portion of the movie. Now it says it feels long, it's only the last half an hour or so, but it's uh, this is the process of Tom trying to get a print out from the Department of Protocols, which states that the jewellery box was gifted to Bryce from a Moroccan diplomat and therefore places Bryce as knowing Susan and therefore it'll be enough for Bryce to kill the investigation because he doesn't want his name coming out in the investigation.

So what's going to happen now for the rest of the movie is we're going to get scenes where Tom is visiting a big dot matrix printer over and over again. But before we do that, we go over to the generative AI screen again. And just a fun detail. I don't know if you guys noticed it, but there's a handful of screens. One is the picture, which is incredibly blurry and kind of orange. It doesn't look like anything. Yeah. There's another monitor next to it. And it's just a, it's just like a, a wireframe of a human head just spinning around on his X axis just like over and over again.

And they're like, what's that for? Is that is that, is that meant to signify that the computer is thinking about heads? The human head must examine the human head, maybe. Joke in there somewhere. The movie is terrible only most of the time. Beyond the realms so that so Tom goes to see Sam again at the techno wizard and he does a really irritating drip feed of information to Sam. So you could have just told Sam everything straight off, but he doesn't do that. So he says to Sam, look, I'm the guy in the picture, but I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Sorry, I did not kill that woman. So I need you to I need you. You had a lot of sexual relations with that woman. I need you to slow that picture down, which is wow. Because like what you could have asked for is that picture developing in the in the situation room is really distracting. Can you just turn the monitor off, You know, Anyway, then we take our first proper visit to the printer. So what he's doing now is he's waiting for the stock makers printer to to print off the list of all the items that have been gifted members of the US government from various diplomats and stuff.

Obviously they need to be recorded. Some of them are a bit spicy. They all have monetary value and it's brilliant. So we got a we got a rundown the list and it's fantastic. I'm going to give you a rundown of the list that we see right name first one, Edward V Amarillo is gifted a Sony Walkman by the ambassador from Pakistan. Orgp Bookburn is gifted a Cat's Eye ring stroke platinum band from the British ambassador. Fred K Blitzman is gifted patent leather shoes by the German council to the UN. Fred Bloomgaard is gifted a gold brooch and a diamond inlay by the Dutch ambassador.

And then some of these are partials. John Paris is gifted A Rolex by somebody. Glenn B Borden, A is gifted A bulletproof vest by somebody. That sounds like more of a threat than a gift though, it, doesn't it? That's like, hey buddy, just thinking about you, man. Here from the American you are going to need. To thank you for visiting my country to watch Be Awful of something What happened to you? It still smells faintly blood. It's like a battlefield to pick up. So we we, we get some more awesome things about lists, but that's the first hit of the list.

Don't worry, we're going to come back to this printer again and again and again. Let's say it for a second though, somebody is just seem vaguely nonsensical as gifts. I mean, the, the, the German dignitary given someone some other shoes doesn't sound in the slightest bit Germanic. Sonia, can we have a can we have a confirmation to giving the gift? Yes, please. We're going live for Germany for a query about shoes. I can do the accent if you like. Shoes is is a weird one, I think. Yeah, so, So what, what I've mostly had to do, I mean, in fairness, this this is in a rather standardised naval environment.

But what we tend to do is like with plaques and pictures and documents and and whatnot. But I, I think shoes would have been very odd and personal thing to do. Yeah. It's not like, I mean, I could, I could get like, I don't know, maybe the polo or, or something that, you know, something that's got a print on that's related to a certain event having taken place or something. But shoes is just. But we've got to know the size. What's the protocol? Yeah, asking this American politician about the shoe sizes a week ahead of time.

But hey, just random question man, what size are those grip as? I just really want to know that this is this is an issue for for this is the issue of diplomatic importance. What size of your feet? It's bizarre. I'm also not a fan of the gift from the British dignitary as well, because it's just like, yes, I will give you this ancient ring. Hand it down to be from the lilies of Merlin himself. It will give you a + 10% damage bonus when you fight with goblins where it turns green and when there are Russian spies in the area.

But who warned it is haunted by the ghosts of Borgana Le Fey? That's just weird. It would have been a bottle of fucking Scotch way, man. Yeah, it's not. It's not. Oh look, I'm giving this fucking random DND random fucking treasure table who are rolled at 27. There's your fucking ring, me, a cat's eye, whatever in it. Going going right back to the start as well, every Amarillo getting gifted A Sunni Walkman by the ambassador from Pakistan. It's a bit like you're you're American. Here's something that's Japanese, but you know, here's here's here's you can pick up pretty much anywhere.

Yeah, basically because the guy from Pakistan bought it. Max. It's Max to me of sorry. Go ahead. So basically the guy from Pakistan boarded the airport because he realised he'd like, like, he'd probably left some like incredibly beautiful piece of like artisanal craft in his office. He's like, fuck man. Oh, Americans like Walkmans I guess. Cool. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh my God. It smacks to me a little bit. Like, do you remember when Barack Obama went to Poland and they gifted him a copy of The Witcher 2?

That's incredible. That makes sense for them because they they obviously made it and it was a great big thing for them. But yeah, could you imagine being Barack Obama and being like, right. So normally when it comes to these things, someone gives me like, a bottle of Scotch or like a tapestry or painting or something for the White House, you give me a copy of The Witcher 2. Didn't even give them, you know, an Xbox to play it on. Maybe they just assumed the hard one. I mean, like, come on, he's the president, got whatever he wants.

Well, exactly, but that was present. So now we, we got the next bit of news for Tom's incredibly bad day. So, so like what you're saying about the, the chase sequences, I think, I think Tom in this entire movie is just a guy who's constantly living on the edge of his wits doing immediate like reactive decision making to get through the day. And never more does it happen than than here when we start bringing the witnesses into the Pentagon to try and find him. So they're convinced that the Yuri guys in the Pentagon and they've they've tracked down that the the guy who rented the boat and the bellhop from the hotel have seen the guy and have given a statement as to his appearance.

They've said he looks exceedingly average, meaning that all bets are off. It could be anybody. So they figure out the best way. The best way to find this guy they're looking for is to get these witnesses and March them around one of the biggest buildings in the world and go room by room, looking at all sorts of sensitive spaces that are probably way above any of their security classifications. Yeah, there's been no like, vetting already. But yeah, exactly in order to find evidently there's not been very much vetting because we've got a, we've got a, we've got a Soviet spy on the loose.

But the whole thing is work. But my favourite thing about this sequence that we need to pay attention to is that it keeps it nice and simple for us. Simple done movie viewer. Because both of these guys were wearing the same outfits they were wearing presumably months ago when they saw him in the first time. So the guy, the guy who the guy who had the boat, that is, is fine. He's just wearing denim. He could considerably be wearing that every single day of his working life. We'd never know any different.

But the freaking bellhop from the hotel is now walking around the Pentagon dressed like he's in a production of Hamilton. And it's like, dude, if I were that guy, like I wouldn't wear that uniform. Like on the walk between leaving the door of the hotel and getting to my car. I would have taken the neck thing off at least. It's amazing. That's incredible. He loves you. You wouldn't have caught me, not outside. It looks like he's about like just whip out the rapier and just like duel. You read the death.

But one thing that's important to think of here is it's a horny film, right? I mean this, this, this this film's God, it's dander up. It's it's not just, you know, like it doesn't need to just be horny for women. Now, my theory is that Prichard when he was said ringing up about us. So this is bellboy. Oh, bellboy, you say. What kind of uniform does he? Well, you say his trousers are how tight? Wow, this is a matter of national importance. Let's. Get him here, Certainly. I mean, they're certainly snug, you know, And I think it's been a case that Pritchard was like, it's very important to national security that he doesn't get changed out of his uniform.

I need this guy. Absolutely. Wandering, wandering the the the halls of power. Those fucking wiggly tight trousers. Because God damn it, Bryce doesn't give me anything I need. I need to see those preachers. Do his shoes have those little buckles on the front? Oh, tell me they do.

Yeah. So I think, I think like Richard definitely wanted to see him do a little turn in his in his little gear. That's great. You're absolutely right, they do. They fucking do. Unbelievable he's missing the goddamn. Tricon Hat There's a man who's not throwing away his shop. He looks like he's on his way to steal motor latest work to sell it off as his own. He's got other deist it. Will be really funny if like was the scene when he's going through the the metal attack as Pentagon and it just takes like a brace of flip locks out of his breeches and just puts them on the table and then like puts a few bags of like gunpowder and like musket balls and stuff.

Probably during that that scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. I mean that that Keira Knightley does, where she keeps taking pistols out of her clothes somehow. Oh. It's an absolute swashbuckle. I love it. Fucking tears in my eyes at this swashbuckling bellhop. Oh God bless her, but all these? Amazing. We we do see it again a little bit later, but in between Tom goes down through the nasal hallway and looks to a wedge of payphones. And then we get clue number. I think we're 9 now. Clue #9. But he's a dodgy, dodgy spy because he makes a phone call on the payphone.

We only hear his side and he's talking about trying to arrange a meet up with what sounds like his handler. Yeah. And he's explaining, explaining the precarious, the precariousness of his situation. Then we get more printer time. He's looking at the printer. The information he wants has not yet come up. The printer. We get a little bit more fruity bellhop time and then we get another cut back to the printer and then we cut to a bunch of reports out to the Pentagon. Yeah, because they've got a problem now that they need to do a shift change of, of, of personnel.

And it's not staggered. It's just one big wedge comes leaves shift at 5:00 and another, another wedge come on at the same time. And they're trying to figure out how they can get these people in and out of the Pentagon because you really might get out. So they they do a drip feed of people through the exit with the witnesses that they don't spot him. So they're thinking, well, he must have got away. I really like all the witnesses just straight up putting their hands on people, by the way, like they're standing there like the the the big boat hire guy puts his hand to sort of do it, pulls in water and manage have no, he's fine.

He's fine. It's like these, these these guys who have 0 fucking security clearance. They have zero reason. All right, They there, they're just putting the hands and people, people let them get away with that. It's brilliant. It's it's crazy. I love it. I mean, obviously Gopalo gets away with it because he's from the like, you know, like 17th century, you know, I mean, I mean he's he's got the right of pre monoptium from people and say, Oh, that what not the plug out. Unfortunately, by sight hasn't next man.

You are also not the plug in speak no more. You will find this man from the Dutchie of Muscovy if it kills us.

Do you think they picked him up by do you think he got on the tooth Pentagon strong carriage? God, that's fantastic. Yes, like the ring him and they're like, you've got to come to the party. Give me a SEC. I'll come in my own way. And he just said that's on a fucking stallion. He just like digs those spurs in. He's raking that horse down the Beltway, man It's crazy. It's like the horse scene from through lies, except except just a lot more effete, delicate. Also the power of raging 19th century swordsman.

We're creating some fucking head counting show for this guy you can't see. It's just like something leak to fill a bit this film, but it's meant. It made the hotel look distinctly untrustworthy when he first showed up. But but him just showing up to the Pentagon. The hotel looks like just like AB and B, like a standard B&B. He's got no reason to be wearing that outfit. Absolutely. I'm not even convinced that maybe, maybe he doesn't. Maybe it's not the fact that he's wearing. It's the Pentagon maybe indicates that it's not a uniform and he he actually they are his clues.

Yeah, it's like. Friend of the podcast. Friend of the podcast, he just makes us think of, you know, I don't know if it's a trend now, but at one point there was a time for people to tweet like photo of usually an actress like, like Gillian Anderson. She was she was insane for this one. And she was just standing there and and it's like, yeah, yeah, this guy's like that. She was insane for this one. But he's literally just like standing there dressed like he's just fucking successfully fled from the headless fucking horseman Jesus.

He's like, oh, good day to go to the witch trials, such as popping down to steal up to see some people get persecuted. Like wonder which Good Wife has danced with the devil in his woods this week. We've got into the weeds for this, this one. A lot of this is probably end up getting cooked. It's just a massive fucking. Right. Should I, should I move on to the next bit, please? OK, right. So, so our two witnesses unfortunately don't spot Yuri as as the shift change is happening at the Pentagon. But undeterred, the major reinstated search says he's still going to be in here somewhere.

We're going to go everywhere. We're going to start in the Situation Room where Tom is once again his favourite spot, the printer during this time, Tom then leaves the printer and goes and tells Sam what's really up. So he's already told him that he didn't kill Susan. Now he says Bryce did kill Susan. And Tom is he's so sick of waiting for the document, which he's been spooling for hours at this point, says can we just interface with the Department of Protocols computer and essentially start a new print job on the specific file he wants.

And then they kind of do something a bit like that. So the print job is still running. They go into the computer, enter all the detail of the item that they want and and then I guess they try and prioritise it to print. But then Sam says the reason it hasn't come up the printer yet is because the printer's finding the appropriate place to put it in the print file. It makes no sense, but I guess fine, whatever. But what it does give us is more printer time. And this time we just get the gift and it's a belly dancer.

Harine girl declined C department regulation. And then a number and the next one is 12 boxes Cuban cigars. And then we get for a split second, red kimono filigree. And then Tom is back at the printer like he's a like he's got CEOs monthly books tomorrow. These three gifts seem a lot more fun than like the the Walkman and the shoes and stuff. And it almost upsets me a bit like not not know which which country provided the the harem girl. I think it'd be funniest if it was like 1 you didn't expect like it was like Luxembourg or something like like, yeah, Luxembourg just turns up with with this harem girl and like it's like, oh, sorry, it's a re gift.

You know, someone from Saudi gave me this girl and it's a re gift you take out like can't take her. So now she's just, oh, stateless I guess she's abandoned. This reminds me of a Navy debt weirdly, of a the goat that got gifted to an orange ship out in theatre like in the Persian Gulf. They have to take it because it's obviously incredibly rude to deny the gift. Then they have to figure out what to do with this fucking goat once they got on board. And I think they ended up taking it to like some kind of goat sanctuary somewhere else.

But the, the whole thing of like gifting stuff that you don't want and then having to deal with it afterwards is like a huge thing. Like in the Middle East, there's a there's a there's a camel sanctuary in in Bahrain purely because the Saudi government gifted a major camels to Bahrain and they didn't know what the fuck to do with them. Sort of like sanctuary, I guess, yeah. Yeah, I guess we'll just keep them. I guess we'll just keep them alive and we'll and we'll let, we'll let people ride them, I guess.

Yeah. Thanks man. Cool. Awesome. You can imagine that you can hear like these are the ones you like, aren't they? This is the one you wanted. Yes. Yes. These are the camels, man. Yeah. Thank you. 2 humps. Bed and hump. 1 hump. Thank you so much. Cheers. Meanwhile, like the ambassador from Bahrain, it's not like a lot of Rolexes that he's going to give the guys from Saudi and he's like, sorry. So then the search party arrives and Tom once again, like thinking on his feet, spills a little coffee in himself so that he can angrily storm off to his office and get changed to where he has his second outfit change get back into more a trop threes in the same day because he's got he got changed after the foot chase.

I was getting changed after the coffee incident. Yeah, but he goes in there, hides in the ceiling and the and the tiles, and a bunch of guys come in and look for him. And there's that classic thing you see in movies all the time where you see the guy looking out of a really obvious opening in the ceiling, but nobody spots him. Yeah, that seemed a bit unbelievable. Ridiculous. The next thing that happens is Sam then calls Pritchard and grasses on Tom, which is a bit bad. Obviously snitches get stitches and Sam gets some pretty epic stitches.

So he gets, if I had to, a little secret meeting in the in a some sort of underground gymnasium in the Pentagon. Umm, which seems a bit unnecessary, but apparently there is one. And then he explains what he knows about Tom to Pritchard and Pritchard shoots them for it. I think what And obviously like it seemed like a bit of a crazy thing to do, but I guess this is to demonstrate the point that Pritchard's got a gun, right? And also speaks to how much Pritchard's losing as grip the situation. He's becoming increasingly unhinged as the film goes on.

He starts out being this very he kind of I mean he's he's dispassionate what he needs to be when he's when he's doing crime scene clean up the crime scene cleaned up and Susan's house, he's incredibly dispassionate and he's incredibly detached from it. This may well be the first time he's cleaned up a dead one's house while Amber had body is still there, but he's very dispassionate about what. However, by this point in the film, he's he's dripping with fucking flop sweat and he is just beyond the edge at this point and.

Yeah, you've got to imagine he's a civil servant essentially, like, like what he's doing now is is is sort of seeping into, like, organised crime and racketeering almost. Yeah. Listen, listen. Like his, this isn't his milieu. This is, like, way out of his bounds. He is the kind of guy who writes like a zesty memo and is like, whoa, oh, my God, man, that felt that felt good. I can't believe I said that. Yeah, I did it. And it was just like, didn't, didn't say. Hope you're well at the start of the e-mail, you know.

What I mean, yeah. Or like finishing an e-mail, but happy to discuss in person. Oh, yeah, absolutely. How I move. That's the kind of thing that he does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Happy to discuss. Yeah, absolutely. I bet he's happy to discuss. A few people, yeah, but but it's like, yeah, everything's broken down within him now. He can no longer kind of compartmentalise what's going on. He can no longer kind of tell himself everything's going to be OK, you know, He's lost on the source. He's lost on them.

He's lost the source, he's too online, he's lost the context. And now you've got, like, tom-tom and Richard and I like both at the same kind of point. They're both going a bit crazy. Yeah, like it's stick crazy. They're both kind of trapped in the Pentagon at this point, so it's weird. Then we go to we got another cut to the printer, Jesus Christ. And we get some more gifts. So it's partially obscures, but I think it's Melanie Rathsborne is is gifted a tweed coat and some slacks, which is the odds.

And then finally we get David Bryce jewellery box and he grabs the so he grabs that print out. This is it, This is a smoking gun and he's intending now to take it to Bryce and show Bryce the print out. Fucking got you. Just as that happens, the El Salvador des Squad Spooks arrive and then we have Foot chase #2 inside the Pentagon. Rory, our foot chase correspondent, what have you got to say? So basically with this with this scene, again, it's in a similar VN to the car chase scene and what follows it, you do see a little bit more of the the the personalities and wants of the freight of the goons again, and it's basically what they're when they get them into the stairwell.

And now now we've got them. You see, you see, you see, obviously this is like this is kind of you've got this like kind of like nice, quite sloppy ish scene on on the on the status when one of the goons falls over, but he's running. And then obviously you guess you got Tom Farrell takes out good number one with, you know, the the the fire extinguisher out of the face, which I mean, but definitely kill him, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's definitely killed him. I mean, I mean, you don't see the guy again.

So he's dead. He's been connected to God's Wi-Fi. He's done. But then the most telling thing that really, really, really just underlines the quality of people that these Contras are is that Contrat 2 gets his hands on Tom Farrell. And at this point he doesn't pull out a pistol to kill him. He doesn't pull out anything that's a purpose built weapon. He's straight in there with a click clack, the fucking straight razors coming out. He pulls out a fucking cut throat razor and immediately begins to just evil him with it.

And it's like, I love that this, this just shows the degeneracy of these guys. You know, it's like it acted as the writers room and the saying what kind of weapons this guy got. Someone says, oh, maybe he pulls on some brass knuckles and someone's like, no, this guy's a real sickle. He's a freak. And yeah, it works so well because he is a sickle. He is a freak. I mean, you say him fucking bodily push a man off a escalator. He's the driving force. He's the intimidating one who's fucking staring come with the eyes at the metro scene.

He's like kick in the film of just like sickle sadism as when just no hesitation. He's in the middle of one of the world's biggest buildings, in the middle of the beaten heart and thinking brain of America's defence apparatus. And he's kind of fucking killing man and with a cut throat razor because he doesn't give a shit because he spent the last couple of years, like I said in the global S, killing communists. You know, it's like you're a telecommunist for fun, you know, but for X amount of dollars we'll cut them up real nice.

Yeah man, I mean you got to think this guy has been trained people how to decapitate people in like fucking this massacre. So like, he's his moral centre. Is way up and he's like, yeah, I'm I'm just going to whip out this friggin yeah have to who's who's carrying a cut throat razor. It's not an efficient weapon to kill someone quickly, you know. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's it's for torture or it's for killing someone real real slow. Like real, real fucking slow. I mean, obviously it's not something that you can use to like quickly and efficiently strike an organ that's got a lot of vital blood vessels in it.

I mean, I guess you could make the argument you can use it a kind of cut someones through and you know, 'cause like catastrophically bleed out that way. But also it's like, I mean, it's, it's, it's a very sadistic thing I have and I think it's just brilliant. It's a brilliant choice for the film. It just really underlines the fact that this guy's the real sickle, you know? And I like that. Yeah, totally agree. So, so the chase comes to a pretty abrupt stop. They they get to the door of the I guess it's the I guess it's the outer office of the defence Secretary where the security there Tom like punches the guy in the chest wins him and he falls down and he orders the guards to arrest him, which they do he.

Kicks them. Which went remarkably smoothly for him because like if he's the one getting chased, you think they would arrest him and then he's just like I rank you arrest him and said this guy in plain clothes and that doesn't works and then he barges way. Hit some of the. Balls as well. You can't see. You can't see the confusion on our sergeant's face. Fucking officers gay what they're like. Yeah, all this 50 minutes before Andover sake. The fucking paperwork has been a gentle. Some of somebody got the evidence kit.

Where's the evidence kit? Oh God, I can't remember the safe combo for the evidence kit. Oh man, ridiculous. Tom barges through the other offices like you can't go in there, I'll go in there. He barges in. She follows him in like what what what she going to do? But he whips up the print out and he and he says to pricing. I know he connected with Susan. Look at this, the jewellery box with this jewellery box. He's like, I don't know jewellery box. Well, the Department of protocols have got it here.

As I added, declared to the Department of protocols, which means what we actually saw earlier on was him inputting the data into the database and then asking you to get printed. And then he demands of the search to be called off. And then the major comes in who earlier on in the movie, by the way, the major refers to to Tom as Sir and takes an order from him. They are both the same rank. A major isn't away free elephant come out isn't away free. So he shouldn't have been calling him Sir anyway, that aside, he comes in and tells him that Sam has been murdered and then Pritchard comes in and then he thins out the major in a really obviously shady way.

He's like, that's great, that's great. Well, you just keep up the search. You just get back to your search. Thanks for that. You've done a real good job. You've done a real backup job off you fuck. And then and then he says, look, Tom is the man that saw you at miss out Wells. He was at miss out wells. Therefore Tom must have killed at miss out well. And therefore we know that miss out Wells Yuri. Therefore Tom is Yuri quad errat demonstrandum. And then in response to that, Tom banged him out.

Reasonable thing to do then then pitch pills, get out and then declares you have no idea what men of power can do, which which I think is opposite in the current political climate. And then and then actually they have a bit of a tussle. And then Bryce steps in and this is the only time in the movie he shows any kind of contrition for his just general demeanour. And he says that he admits that his actions were inexcusable. But then it becomes really clear during this that he's going to sell Pritch it out and knocked on because he knows that Pritchard's killed Sam.

There'll be evidence that leads back to Sam, probably. So he thought, well, I'll just, I'll just, you know, two birds, one stone. I'll just have him be Yuri as well. But then he starts to poll Jiggly saying like, I'll get you the very best lawyers. It'll be done all properly, you know, I'll get you the best lawyers. And then Bryce is selling it to Tom at the same time. He's like he was facing jealous of Susan. A man like that, you understand, Obviously. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then another thing that doesn't age well during this this is that it becomes a bit of a clamouring kind of sort of tussle going on.

And at one point, Pritchard very tenderly tries to put both his hands on Bryce's cheeks and please David. And then Bryce is batting away. He's like, get your hands off me. And it's all, it's all a very homophobic. And then David reaches for his gun while while Tom and sorry, David, a Pritchard sorry, reaches for a gun while Tom and Tom and Bryce are having his big argument. And then he's like David and everyone tends to look at him. And then he just domes himself, which which is which is obviously like a call back to how he would lay down his life to save Bryce's life earlier on.

But it's fucking nuts. And then just at that moment, Cid, who probably standing outside the door this entire time, burst in. And then they see Pritchard dead. And then they immediately pin it on him. He's Yuri. That's it, I'm done. And then another little great bit is so Tom's like, why the fucking had enough of this, even though clearly what's meant to happen now is like hours of debriefing. He just storms out. He gets the print out and for the final time, he bitches off his little study and tells him to deliver it to Marshall at the CIA.

And then he storms off. We finally got a bit of conclusion on the generator of the eye and we see the complete photo. And yeah, it is Tom, but it actually doesn't match from when we saw the photo we got taken in the scene where the photo was taken. So in the picture here is where his hands up by the sides of his face. If you listen for the shutter in the scene earlier, he's like looking off to the left. So it doesn't make any sense. And then finally we see Tom and he's gone off to sit and seclude a little patch of wood on his own.

And then two big burly men who we assume are U.S. intelligence operatives of some kind come and fetch him. And then we go back to the scene that we had at the beginning in this house and he's being interrogated. And then we get back to the part where he's pretty much picks up from where he left off. He's up against the two way mirror and he's like, right, when's this guy going to come out then? And then he does and it's ethnically ambiguous landlord. And then he starts speaking Russia. And then so does Tom start speaking Russian.

And then they talk about Dostile and Tolstoy and he talks about Saucin it's and and then and he wants him to come back to Russia and you must miss Russia. And he's like, actually shit, man, I don't miss Russia. Russia's shit. I really like hamburgers. I have a corn fed Iowa boy. I'm staying here in the US even though my name is Evgeny. And then he goes to store at the house and the two big burly guys are like go to pull a gun on him and kill him. But ethnically ambiguous landlord goes, oh, let him go.

Besides, Ellis has he to go And then he drives his little drives his car away and that's the fucking end of the movie. Like the end. He just drove away. He was a Russian all along. Which I mean, isn't a surprise to listen to this podcast because we've been talking about it for like 4 hours. But but like at the time, it's like it's like when he starts, when he starts talking Russian and it's like in big chunky subtitles, like on the film, it's an amazing. It's like, Oh my God, what the hell? And he's like, he's pretty, pretty convincing accent.

I obviously don't speak Russian, but like a nuts. So that was the end of the movie. I mean like, what do you think? Excellent absolute cinema. Absolute keno. You know, it's sexy, it's horny, it's got thrills, it's got spills, it's got some really weird technology stuff in there. It's got some really weird messaging about, about the CIA, about military procurement, about the, you know, the military industrial complex more broadly, about the intelligence apparatus of the country. It's just what the fuck?

And it's Reagan. It's pure Reagan. It's a big 80s movie, you know, Yeah, it's tremendous. Umm, cool. Any any any final thoughts on the movie before we take a break and then go into our categories? Right. So I don't know if it's that crazy actually, but as Yuri as a Russian spy within the US military, arms actions sort of speak would scam me out here mixed kind of allegiances or anything about it. Because as a spy within the US military, the smartest thing he could have done would be to allow the secretary, the secretary of defence to get away with, with killing quote unquote Yuri.

You know, allowing Pritchard to be identified as Yuri, which then means Yuri is destroyed, which means the real Yuri can, can work without any kind of impingement. He can work a lot easier. You know, However, he has said that he wants to remain in America. You know, he's, he's, he's not that fucking into being for the Russians anymore. I guess. He's also acting to essentially remove the secretary of the secretary of Defence from power by passing on the evidence that he did in fact kill Susan. So this will then lead to the sector being removed, which will then lead to probably this ridiculous monster sub project not being killed and the US wasting a significant amount of money, resources, manpower, and possibly becoming weaker on the world stage when pitted against the Soviet Union.

I think that it's just interesting to me, like nothing perfectly adds up with the outcomes from this, you know? Yeah, man. So the fact that they got rid of the Uri for me is a bit of a green light to crack on and do what they were doing. But the handler at the end is like, Oh my God, they're on to Yuri. It's too hot. It's going to put you out. They've got an excellent, an excellent kind of way through this. You know, he's dead, ladies and gentlemen. We got him with, with the kind of, with the kind of political climate at the time.

You just know they'd be pinning like extra stuff on, on Pritchard as well. Like a significant amount of Iran Contra would be picked on Pritchard. You know, the, the, the, the whole bungling of the rescue of Iranian hostages. Richard, he was involved. Richard Pritchard did everything, man, you know, Yeah. His fingers at all the pies. I heard that actually. But yeah, so I think that I I'd know like the ending, it's like it's kind of oddly ambiguous, as you say, because the final problem back. But then but it's the best position.

He's just the big American hero, you know, he's he's he's now closer to the secretary of defence than ever before. If he just leans into it and says, well, certainly got rid of Yuri. Didn't have a wink wink, you know? That's weird and in his hand though says he's a hero of the Soviet Union at the end as well, so it's not like he's fallen out of fader back home. They just want to pull him back home for some reason. It doesn't make any sense. That's baffling me why they want to pull him home. And I mean, I'm sure there's yeah, I'm, I mean, there's surely you could do an insanely deep dive for the reasons of why they want to pull them.

Or maybe, maybe maybe they think he's acted somehow incorrectly. Maybe the felt that he fell in love with Susan and I shouldn't do that. You know, you meant you meant you meant the honeypot. This woman you're not might have fall in love that maybe that was what it was, you know, or maybe he was maybe he was getting too good. Maybe they wanted to take him home for hero the Soviet Union medal and then a nice cup of polonium blast tea. You know. Yeah. I mean, he's done his job. He's been useful. And the saw meeting bugs off a window.

The for man, if you bring this down, do this. No see. Yeah. That was that was my little like kind of weird. We had just kind of take on it that like not everything aligns perfectly with one one side's end game. But I don't know. That's me. Sonia, have you got any reflections on your your final takes of the film? This, this is obviously hindsight, but I have been very oblivious to the old Dury subplot. So really still, even at the final end, the the whole Tom is really Eagle from central Russia thing still took me somewhat by surprise.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like the first, the first, the first time I saw it, I didn't, I didn't catch like any of the clues apart from when he's in the pay phone and he's having that one way, well, one way call. I remember thinking like, who's he calling? Like who's he friends with? I suppose we're meant to think maybe he's talking to Marshall at the CIA and maybe that's why he also gives the scene where he bitches off the sub Lieutenant to take that that print out to him as well. So where that backs that up a little bit.

It's evident, I think, I think, I think I think it's evident at the end. It's the, it's the, it's the landlord guy who's he's handling. Yeah, it it, it just just all, all the weird. Panicking he does in between still works if if you just see it as him trying not to get pinned for him. It's like Doctor, it's like proper Richard Kimball and the Fugitive, kind of like constant, constant head on a swivel, constantly trying to like, you know, evade detection. He pay for one scene. I think it's really good because the film doesn't do a lot of at that point storytelling to make you assume who he's calling and just present to you with really the evidence that he's making this phone call.

I remember because I did like, watch, watch, watch that particular part of the film twice because because I was making a few notes on it. And yeah, the film doesn't implicitly say, oh, he's calling Marshall, he's calling someone else. He doesn't have that many people in his life at this point. He's going to call. Especially not from the fucking people. Yeah, we don't see, we don't see any, any, uh, any broader life. And now that we know that everything that happened in the movie was him doing work, we don't see any, any of his inner life.

We don't see anything at all like everyone's on a is part of the job. Yeah, I think it's AI think it's a pretty pretty well put together screenplay to build that much ambiguity into it without it feeling like it's hiding information from you. Like it's not. Obviously he's on the foot of somebody. We don't hear the other side of the conversation. Yeah, but like throughout the rest of the movie, his motivations read equally well for being an innocent man, which he is in some respects. He didn't kill Susan, but an innocent man just trying to get to the bottom of this, this cover up or on the on the flip side, you watch it a second time and yeah, it's a spy trying to avoid cover getting blown and they both read exactly the same.

Cool, right. Should we should we take a break there? And then we'll come back and do categories. Let's do it right. Cool. Let's start with the categories. Then the first category I've got. And these might change as we go forward, man. But casting, don't get me wrong, there's there's there's a much more famous movie podcast that does these and we are definitely and we are definitely copying their format. So so the first one here is is casting. I've written I've written stars and that guys, and here it is what ifs.

So the only one I've got for this having looked at did some some Internet research was Patrick Swayze and Mel Gibson both turned down the role for Tom Farrell. And I think in even those situations they would have been really different movies. I would have killed to have seen the. I would. Have especially loved to have seen the Patrick Swayze cut, but only if Fred Chad could have delivered the I used to fuck guys like you in prison line from from. Broadhouse Oh my God that would be epic. I don't think Mel Gibson would have been able to pull off the he seems fucking mean to do that.

I think Kevin Costner shows the right amount of vulnerability in this film. Like, you see him getting a bit shirty, a bit Moody, a bit like upset at his relationship with with Susan. He gets a bit immature with it as well when he's taking a bit of a hoof, you know what I mean? I think it's a good bit of new one starting by. Don't think Mel Gibson can pull that off. Yeah. I mean, I think if, if, if there was like about five times as many Dublin kicks and stuff, which he could have, could have nailed it.

We don't get as wrong. Yeah, yeah. But don't get as wrong. He's a good actor as well. He's on some really good roles. But he's he's he's he's not my guy for this, unless Tom Pritchard can say, I used to fuck guys like you in prison. The whole, the whole, the, the whole end scene, instead of shooting himself, he just goes I used to fuck guys like you in prison. And then Patrick Swayze just tears his throat out, just like in Roadhouse. Sure, Yeah. And then and then the COD rush in and then Gene Hackman immediately says.

He was saying some crazy stuff about he didn't want to go back to prison, that he tore his own throat house. That's amazing. The other one I have is that Michelle Pfeiffer turned turned down the role for Susan Notwell as well, which that would have been a very different, different part, I think, if if she'd taken it. That's right. There's something, I mean, right, So Sean Young is, is a beautiful woman, but there's there's something about her where you can believably see the naivety that she kind of displays later in the movie through the the fact that she seems like she's kind of lied in this position where she's she's with this powerful man and she's got this of a a hot Navy guy that she actually loves.

And she's like a little giddy schoolgirl. Like it's almost like she doesn't she's not used to the attention. Whereas I think Michelle Pfeiffer wouldn't be able to pull it off. It would just be a bit like, why if you don't have that attention before, is there something wrong with you or what's going on? I think definitely right there will be a completely different film with with Michelle Pfeiffer. I'm struggling to find anyone really mentally now who I am struggling to think of someone who could who could have had that we had.

She's she's got weird energy like like she's got kind of like she was an absolute pistol. She's got this strange who energetic energy. She's like she's got a lot going on. It's a kind of 1 moment. If you weren't on a date with that, it'd be like a 60% chance of the night being thoughtfully destroyed somehow, somehow. But she was decent with it. She was definitely a bit damaged and she in herself is as as a person ultimately doomed for her. There really is no way out because she's playing the fire.

She's going to get burned. She's got involved with these men of power who don't want to share the women. And the sad thing is just she's she's a doomed character really from from the start. She's she's going to get eroded and torn apart by this world that just put herself in. And it's fucking sad man. And. That's exactly what happens to her. Uh, there's a version of this movie where we see a lot more of her character and it's told from maybe a bit more from her perspective. I mean, it probably would have worked, but but you get the middles like 1 scene missing where she talks about her past with with with Tom and like the guards down.

You know, maybe like during The Dirty weekend, she's like she has like 1 kind of weird ethereal kind of pillow talk moment where she talks about how she doesn't believe this is all real and she's got to go back to DC tomorrow and it's all going to be back to the how it was kind of thing. There's like a scene like that missing, I think to really round her out. But but yeah, that's it. That's casting, right. OK, best quote of the movie. Have you guys got any any any quotes that you particularly like for the movie?

I have all right okay so mines amazing. So you might not have seen it in the YouTube cut, but there's a moment just before it's during the chaotic phone and Polaroid picture scene where where Susan is like lining up to to give fellatio to Tom. And you see her like caressing his his sort of crotch area. And then the camera pans up to to Tom. And then you just hear her talking and she says it looks like a baboon trapped in the closet at midnight.

I love that. No, I have not seen that part of the incredibly odlerized adapted sliced up YouTube cut. Yeah, it's incredible. It's the best, it's her best line by by a country mile, but she's got some great lines and then fun little facts that goes with that as well. Is that the generative AI picture when they're? Showing you the training. Tape when they're introducing the concept that that that is and. This is actually one of my favourite quotes, which is computers don't think if we programme this to come out the car instead of the monkey, you'd be looking at a hairy Buick.

Brilliant. And like I said, it plays the sound is a bit of a kind of quick Lord, funny, interesting, kind of worky forensics guy. You know, it's like probably one of the one of the beginnings of that trope of character. But I love us computers. Don't think if he programmed this to come out the car inside of a monkey, he'd be looking at a hairy Buick and say yes, no notes, 0 notes 100%. And just and, and just the sight gag as well because of course the cameras looking at the, the, the very boldly coloured fucking.

It's not a Gibbon, is it? The voice broke down. It's not a Gibbon, is it? It's, it's, it's like this, like fucking baboon and baboons just make scenes 10 names funnier. And yeah, it's the, it's, it's, it's the Harry Buick for me. I love it. Sonia, have you got a favourite quote at all? This is horribly underwhelming, but but just the whole absurdity of the the second foot chase culminating in that absolutely confused marine guard and that kick in the crotch and then the I. Love it if it was, I love it.

Brilliant. It's just so, so weird because it's just gone from from. Being the fugitive to oh look, I've got a rank slide on and it's bigger than you and suddenly he's back in charge and he uses that to just bring out that one so. That is, you're actually right that that is a a text because appointment of rocket. Is so good. That is just a little kind of comic timing that he pauses for a beat and he said shoot him, you know, like if there's A and it's and it's and it's a great comic scene. And of course, he's picking them in the balls as well, which is brilliant and and injects some comedy into the film, which then obviously then goes into a scene when when an apparently angry, scorned gay man blows his own brains out inside a Pentagon office.

So you need a bit of light before the darkness. Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. So my next next category was the Needle Drops. There weren't really any of the movie. All we had was the really awkward cover of If You Think I'm Sexy. And there's two Paul Anka songs that that I'm sure we'll all hear when we go to hell. About the opening theme is, you know, it's just when Sean Young's name appears on screen, this is like big, like synth like kind of thing that it's like, it's almost as if the composer said, yeah, remember her?

She was, she was, she was, she was the robot girl in that film. Yeah, yeah. You know, Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah. You know, you know. Yeah, you know, too bad she won't live. Yeah, I, I, I felt that was too, too perfect and not being put in there when I say blam, remember Blade run out from a few years ago, guys. Too bad she won't live. Hey, I think there's there's, there's, there's, there's way to that as well. Because Jesus, what's the name again? Michelle Jar. It's like, oh, no, it's not right. It's 2 seconds is.

Maurice Char, Yeah. Maurice Char. Sorry, Maurice Char, he he also did the score for witness and the witness soundtrack sounds quite a lot like the Vangelis score from Blade Runner. I I, I I to check while I was watching it, I thought this is Vangelis and it's not it's, it's more his job. So singer composer. Cool, right. So I've got some IMDb trivia. So it's quite a lot for this movie. I've I've narrowed it down to the ones that I think are broadly interesting and that we haven't really talked about.

South. Sean Young said in an interview that she was fine being naked in certain scenes, but Kevin Costner, who was dressed, was very nervous about her being nude, which I totally get. And then Sean Young also said interviews that director Roger Donaldson made her lift her shirt in an audition to shoot her tits. Yeah, that fucked up. That's like, yeah. I mean, it's like what would do kind of joke about Sean Young being a bit crazy and like, you know, a bit of like a real life. I mean, Sean Young does.

From what I've read, Sean Young has got at least a few kind of suits and S qualities IRL. She's obviously had a shit run of her. I'm I'm, I'm, I mean, if you're being told things like, you know, get your tits out, that's, that's shitty. That's, that's absolute bullshit. And I'm, and I'm not here for it being done to people, you know? Indeed. Next, next little fact. We've already talked about that. Hang on. Next little fact. A lot of people say that this is Brad Pitt's first movie role as an extra because of the guy in the opening, in the opening function is a guy in the background who looks a lot like Brad Pitt.

But it can't be Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt was way too young at this side. He was like, he plays, I think he did a movie The same. Yeah. And he played like a convincing teenager. And the guy we see is like, you know, 30 year old looking Brad Pitt. And he's barely in focus as well. Another cool fact. The movie's original title was going to be finished with engines, which is a nibble term, which essentially means that what it means, what it says, you get alongside, you shut everything down and you order finish from an engines and you that which permits the engineers to bring them offline and then you give them a notice period.

So like finish a minute engines take all men in machinery to 12 hours notice. We'll see something like that. It's a shit name for a film and it makes no sense in in in this movie whatsoever. But it just made me wonder like if you got any ideas what would be a better name for this movie? One of the ones I thought of was when the yelling about you have no idea what man of power can do. Man of power. I can't think of another one. I feel like there might have been 1:00 somewhere in there. It's like the kind of movie where they say the name of the movie.

You will get the Phantom submarine. So Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman were both considered for the leading roles in The Fugitive, Obviously. What's the Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones and No Way Out. This is a good one. No Way Out is one of two movies in which Gene Hackman plays AUS politician who kills his mistress in a fit of rage. The other is Absolute Power, the Clint Eastwood movie where he's the president and he killed. Yeah, that's a pretty funky one. I would have liked to be. Specific.

Yeah, I should go imagine what the what the situation would be if if The Fugitive did star Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman and we had the cast of The Fugitive but into but in there and no way out. Do you think that would you believe Tommy Lee Jones in the Secretary of Defence role and Harrison Ford in the role of Tom Slash Yuri? I would believe Harrison Ford, I think. I think, I'm not sure I believe Tommy Lee Jones just because I like Tommy Lee Jones too much and I don't see him being he. Seems. Like too much of A He seems like too much of a straight shooter to be.

He's he's an absolute straight shooter. I agree with you. He's got he's got too much of the Wild West lawman about him to to be kind of believable as an incredibly slavey politician. I think. I think that's always going to be with him. Jude was just just his essence, you know, like he's like he's very much a good guy, you know, I couldn't buy him as like a slain ball politician who kills his mistress, you know, but I could definitely imagine. I could definitely Harrison Ford as as as as Yuri slash Tom.

And of course, Harrison Ford did go on to play another guy involved in in espionage who has a good Irish American name, because of course.

Jack. Ryan, of course, because, because of course Top, because you've got Jack Ryan, Tom Farrell, who good Irish American names that aren't too Irish American, you know what I mean? They haven't gotten oh at the start of them, but there's still a good solid Irish American name. Yeah, man, right. Should we do should we do some some notes from the peanut gallery, which is where we we look through Letterbox and see and see some of the funny reviews from Letterbox? I'm not going to be calling up people's names and stuff.

So on the kind of look at this person, 1 user says 3 1/2 stars and just the word horny in all capitals a great 1 here. They're not wrong. Tapping my hand on this movie like the trunk of a car. Look how many Cold War anxieties we can fit in this bad boy. They don't make them like this anymore. Three stars. We have screamed at the final twist. It has no bearing on the rest of the movie. Incredible stuff. Also, Kevin Costner charms his way into Sean Young's heart by pretending to eat bugs off their car windshield.

I don't think he's pretending, man I. Don't think he's pretending. Yeah, he's not pretending like like he's he's he's he's not joking, he's serious. But eating those fucking bugs, man, Kevin Costner eats bugs or capitals out of a moving cause windshield for no good reason. Capital last four words Did cinema peak in 1987 Question mark four stars. It absolutely did a very very to the .1 which is a pretty holy review of a horny film. Still good, hot, now slim and sexy. Gene Hackman in scumbag mode will patent out of control at every scene.

He really is out of control in every scene. Need more movies like this. I agree with his review, Definitely scumbag mode. Gene Hackman's brilliant and patent is out of control in every. Scene. That's the greatest. And and scum scumbag Gene Hackman is a character we're going to see loads and loads of times and loads and loads of movies. He's he's an absolute master at playing a scumbag. You know, you see it you see it in runaway jury, you see it in the firm, you see it in God name a Gene Hackman movie.

Yeah, for the connection. I watched I watched night moves recently and he's amazing in that and he's not he's not even that much of a scumbag in that, but he's got scumbag tendencies. I've. Got real? Yeah, I need a friend I can kick out of their own apartment to have sex on their bed with a complete. I guess I'll start by actually having sex 1st and then work by way up Four stars. Excellent. There's Yeah, there's kind of long one here that would read a few, read all of it, but it's opening beat is good.

We need more protagonists kicking other dudes in the Dick where it's not played for laughs, it's not played for laughs. It's funny, but it's like kind of funny. Funny unintentionally. It's the first move of the dramatic climax of the film. It's like, it's like it's cues you in that shit's about to go down. This man's been kicked in the penis things about to get. Right, I have. I have a 2 1/2 star. That's quite scary. Yeah, sure. I don't know if it's scared, the goal kind of damning with faint prayers or praising with faint damnation.

Evan Costner fucks and drinks and runs a lot. Heed Hackman. Come on, Rory, dude from America. Gee action looks like a thumb that got sucked in a cock. The man's dead. Can't do it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's like thought that God's stuck in a cut doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. He has no thumb like qualities. He doesn't have any thumb like qualities in my opinion. Is he not just? He might just you see a little bit red in some of the movie, I don't know, that's all. Right. Yes, I I am sorry.

God, you got one more. And do have a really good one. Again, this ones kind of horny. I like watching Kevin Cost and I run around and his little white uniform. Sorry, I'm losing my voice because they're laughing so much. I like watching Kevin Costner run around in his little Whitey U3 stars. That's one. Of my favourite genres of movie is is men running out in their little white uniforms. Good grief. Noise. I did not think the notes from the peanut gallery would have been that destructive, but that was great stuff.

That's awesome. Should we do the next one? Yeah, OK, Right. So next next category is A1 I cope with which is most likely course of action stroke, most dangerous course of action, which is a military terminology. Military terminology for what you think you're opposing force is most likely to do And what is the worst case scenario what they could do applied to this movie? What what what, what's Lieutenant Commander Farrell's MLQA sorry and MDQA. So I think I think is my personal opinion is his most likely course of action is he goes back to work, but he he's always he's obviously finished spying for the Soviet Union.

So he puts in his newest, he leaves, and then he just bums around Iowa, and then he eventually hears a voice and then builds a baseball diamond in the back of his farm. And then, and then, and then, and then he goes and travels around the country befriending various people who are tangentially related to the sport of baseball, including the JD Salinger of that particular fictional universe. The Most Dangerous Course of Action, on the other hand, is Lieutenant Commander Farrell returns to work, but he remains A Soviet asset until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, at which point he's approached by the burgeoning FSB and asked to remain as a sleeper agent where he which he does for the next sort of 20 years.

And then finally, he strikes from a senior position within the US Naval Intelligence construct, probably at an U F5 level, to derail the war in Iraq following 911. At which point Captain Tom Farrell USN preempts the GCHQ whistleblower at leaks stunning intelligence reports of falsifying reports on weapons of mass most egregious oversell of the military industrial. Complex. This category is about. Which part of the movie implies A significantly higher level of capability than any current armed forces?

Possesses good examples of this. In the movie Executive Decision there's a stealth fighter that can link to the bottom of a of a 747 jet, and part of the heads up display in the stealth fighter is a perfect wireframe of the plane that's approaching. How the fuck does it do that? Arc technology I don't think exists. Well it does now, but it's optically in the movie. It's meant to be radar. OK cool. In this case I think it's actually pretty honest about the state of military procurement and suitably nihilistic about the Phantom sub.

So there isn't really any egregious of a cell. I think it's a pretty accurate cell one. It's projecting the false idea that we have the the ability to keep up with forward lookout in in Gale force. Oh yeah. So the most the most egregious of a cell is actually is the office of the watch is poor decision making. The egregious of a cell is that is that. U.S. Navy can navigate, yes. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, there's no like we love ourselves. Here, but it doesn't go under the kind of the kind of almost speculate.

Affection that you see. Some techno, well I was going to when it said all of a sudden there's one, there's one piece of equipment, there's one McGovern, there's one component on on a ship or part of a vehicle. So you said had a display or something or one particular weapon that said. Just not fucking video or not believable. It's very grounded. It's not really a film that relies on it to do Bush for storytelling apart from the investigative things and the operation centre. So, yeah, it doesn't really, it doesn't really oversell anything apart from, I mean, were they really able to use generative AI at that point?

Probably were if that we talk about it. I mean, it's not like they're making up the concept of generative AI in that it's speed and discovered years later, right. I mean, yeah, maybe it's presenters in a slightly more efficient way than than it is. Yeah, that's a that's a fair one. I mean, I'm not even sure that it is because I'm being. Is even then that they do present it in a kind of? This is going to take a long fucking time. You know it's not like zoom in and ants if I 5000 times my God yeah, that's true and pictures have been doctors but so yeah, it's there isn't any really agreed to silver cell.

But I can identify that you guys haven't. Tackled. So yeah, my next category is, would this movie be better? If it had Doctor Jack Ryan. Doctor Richard Kimball or President James? Marshall brackets go off my plane. Close brackets in the movie. All three, all three, all three. Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it would be better in all case of Yeah, I feel that hope to see the president in this film. Right, Right. Yeah. So the this is so this is my point, right. So I was going to say yeah, when we hear. Here's the chief.

We should get a quick shot. Just like one shot of Harrison Ford for like a split second and then we see him do a double take as Sean Young, right? And then we just crack on like nothing happened on like nothing happened at all. And on the sailing boat scene, the overtaken by another sailing boat. That's got that, Ryan. And Kathy Ryan have a nice chilled out weekend stealing on by and with a little with a little for a Birch and then doctor Richard Kimble. I've really struggled, Dr Like put that sarcastic.

Doctor at the start of. It like like like in the fusion of when Tom Jones was like, you're a fusionist Doctor Richard Kimble, fucking nerds. This fucking this fucking stupid qualification Dr, this bitch, that kind of thing. It's like so so like so like Doctor Richard Kimble is just checking out of the the big in big because he's because at this point he's actually on the run and he's and he's yeah, and he's hidden at the baby because nobody else is going to fucking go that luck from because they're all freaked out by like just the fact that like the shellfish is just full of human faeces, man and manure.

This is and he's leaving the the BND. But he's dressed he's he's dressed like he's about to just join join. I've almost said George. Bush, thanks. I'm so tired. He's about ready. To join, join George Watson, the fucking Valley Forge. He's dressed in his colonial gear. He's he's just looking so, so goddamn extra. Yeah. Cool. Next on to the last two categories here. Would this movie have benefited from Lieutenant Commander Samuel L Jackson, the United States Navy, from Patriot Games? Yes, my personal opinion.

Do you write it words? Absolutely. What what what should have happened is he should have been exiting the outer office of the defence secretary at the same moment that they were running towards it, at which point he would have turned and shot Tom in the head. It would have been a brutal end to the film, but it would certainly be a be a gritty 1 and. Certainly in keeping with the film's kind of doomed, doomed vibe. What do you think about it being truly for Tom? There would be no way out for Tom, doomed and doomed.

Or on a serious note, he could have been the so see I did that he would have been classed. Yeah, OK. I think we've already answered the question of this movie as pro. Anti CIA. So I think it's pretty, pretty clear it's anti CIA, but I want. To I want to make a category and keep score as we go through these because it's I think it's going to vary wildly. And then right, next category, OK, I'm going to call this the the Ding Chavez award for missed opportunity in the movie, referring to how Ding Chavez of Rainbow 6 is barely used in clear and present danger, but clearly should have his own series of movies by now.

So I've got a few first of all, bring the limo sequence at the beginning right, right when it does a smash cut to the Washington Monument, which is which is Kevin Costner Rex penis. We next then get a shot of the fountain of the World War 2 memorial as it as it blasts off. So to simulate Kevin Costner's ejaculating penis. That's that's miss opportunity one miss opportunity to Tom does not respond to the baboon and a closet comment. And I feel like he should have said something to that. Yes, he should have.

Because if my wife referred to my my penis as a baboon trapped in a closet, I'd like to know what the fuck she was talking about. And then and then. This is. And then and then. This is my serious. One, OK, so I think, right, we're having the same confrontation at the end of the movie, right? So we're in the they're in the defence sex office. OK. Umm, Tom and Bryce are fighting against the wall. Pritchard is about to pick up the gun and instead of shooting himself in the head, right, he's going to point the gun at Tom and then who kicks in the door and then shoots Pritchard in the head?

The sub Lieutenant, Yes, fantastic. Vindication. Vindication for being pitched off the entire film finally comes in. He zaps him. Fucking two in the chest, one in the head. He goes down and and Tom's like Tom's like good boy. Where where did you get a gun from? Who gave you a gun? Jesus Christ. He goes in, does that and that's his Oh jar written. But. Unfortunately, he's not eligible for promotion yet because he's not in his own. But never mind, it's good. It's good for the pack anyway. BB. Plus we're also OK.

So work me on this one, work me, work with me right here. He shoots him, but not with a gun. He walks in but that. Ridiculously fucking ring that the British ambassador gave someone and he just uses that pathside Geminis to just send a serious beam of fucking light that just turns up the ash and you say yeah, go fuck the silver dance, man.

You know what? What? Yeah, also might have benefited. From the bellhop, making off with all the. Like he arrives arrives in the clinical guard, but he's leaving in the patent leather shoes and the the tweeds jacket. And he's rescued the harem girl from the evidence room that should be put in. And he's and he's like listening to that Walkman. And like he said. Yeah, and he's and he's, you know, he's Oh my God, he's got the bulletproof vest. You know, it's been only used once. Battlefield pickup. He's got the cigars he's smoking 1 the harem girl smoking one.

She's wearing the red kimono with the with the silver filigree. She or or they could have just showed us a storage room shortly that. Just has a bunch of boxes and the Harry, yeah. The last, the very last shot of the movie is a is a is a custodian pushing, pushing a big car and you see it zooms. Out from the the little gold jewellery box and then it pushes it into like a big room vast hanger full of crates and then just rounds a corner. And then this film was made like right now current. Yeah, that we, we, we, we could very well have had to get ghost credits seen along those.

Lines with a bit of a side guide with all the with with all the all the ambassadorial gifts. Yeah, there's worse opportunity there to have to have a bit more world building with these gifts. Was seen at the place. But yeah, amazing final. My final category is Command and signals where I like to try and give call signs to the characters in the movie. I've come with a few. We'll start with Bryce keeping it real basic Horn dog. No advances on horn dog No, but lady killer. That makes me want to to to give Susan.

Yeah yes, yes, yeah. So we've got fucking there, Bryce Call saying Lady Killer, right? My biggest. That's better than mine. I I was going to call. Her a crazy eye but but yeah, I think I think form blue is better and then and then. And then Tom, I wrote these immediately after I watched the film. So for me, the last half an hour had been pretty intense. And my one for Tom was just inkjet bug man. Oh, yeah, that. I can see that. He loves a printer. Yeah, bug man, clearly. She seems to be willing to jam his fingers deeper.

Into that printer than even into. Shoes and. So pink man shit, yeah, we should do something. I think, I think, I think do quite like sunroof. Because that big fucking hole in his head.

Oh my God, cool. Well, on that note. I think that's brought us to the end of our first episode where we've we've. We've watched No Way Outs from 1980. Seven incredible movie. Sorry, Kevin Costner. I think that all that remains to say is where you can find us. We've got a Instagram page which is clear and present dudes and search for us and Instagram will find us there and we'll be putting. Up invites to our discord so you can throw some suggestions of what films you want us to watch next, send us some abuse, tell us that we look like a thumb that's been shot in a car door.

Well, that sort of stuff. Always fun, always, always some engagement. And I'm on threads and I'm on Blue Sky Social. As Mike D, I'm on Twitter as Rory O'Toole. That's Rory spelled RUARI. It's. Another good Irish name, but the surname starts with a no, so it's a bit too Irish to be star player for the CIA in film land. He's fucking bastards. Cool Roy, what's the next movie we're doing? The next movie we're doing is a very silly one. It is a sci-fi thriller disaster. Movie called Meteor starring. Sean Connery, It has an absolutely atrocious rotten tomorrow's rating.

It is going to be fun to watch and fun to talk about. And it also features some scenes for the sailing boat. So it's so it's kind of among the same. No, I can't even finish that sentence. It's not in the same league as as no Way Out in the slightest. But it's going to be a good laugh and it's got a fun amount of Cold War paranoia. And it's just going to be a bit of a riot, I'm sure. And I'm sure we're going to find some excellent peanut gallery reviews of this. Hopefully people are lacing into us on Letterbox because that's always funny.

Shout out Letterbox for making like user generated reviews entertainment by them. Awesome. Well, thanks very much everyone. We'll catch you on the next one, hopefully next time. See you.

No Way Out (1987)

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