Picking Nits
Why Jim shoots Claire first on the train; Jim and Claire's confounding relationship; Krieger's end game; what Kittredge's deal with Max amounts to; the helicopter in the train tunnel; what Max and Phelps are actually after
In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:55:47Read transcript
- Nobody understands why Jim had to shoot Claire first: she only asks whether they really have to kill Ethan and tells him not to, and he guns her down on the train, which makes no sense; maybe Emmanuel Bayard (as transcribed) did not want to return, or the film needed to underline that Phelps is deranged, but it remains confusing.
- Jim and Claire's relationship confounds the hosts: on reuniting with her, Phelps immediately disparages her to Ethan in crude terms and later tells Ethan to take her, which seems unnecessary when Ethan has been a gentleman apart from the handsy magic trick; the joke is that De Palma has a problem with sexual politics.
- Krieger's end game is unclear beyond living and dying by the black market and cutting out the middleman; and what really happens at the end when Kittredge offers Max a deal, implying she has information they can use, after which Ethan is simply back in the mix.
- The science of flying a helicopter into the train tunnel is very tough, even if Krieger's earlier boast about flying one into the lobby of Fort Knox sets it up, and where he would have learned that is unknown; when the other train comes the other way the film cuts to a hard close-up on Ethan's face because it is illogical.
- Flagged earlier during the Redgrave discussion as a flaw or a nitpick: every villain in the series has elusive aims, this film has Phelps and Max, and whether they are just shifting money around is unclear.