Lisa Eilbacher as Jenny Summers (disputed); Jenny's red Mercedes convertible; the title; Harold Faltermeyer's score and the soundtrack; the Mumford Phys Ed t-shirt and cropped sweatshirts; Taggart and Rosewood; Murphy's early run of good directors; the rival cop duo
One host is still in love with Jenny Summers, played by Lisa Eilbach (as transcribed); the objection is not to the actress but to Hollywood casting interchangeable blondes with the same Kate Capshaw haircut, and another did not recognize her at all; what one host wants from the token female character in an Eddie Murphy movie is to dress well, laugh at his jokes and look great.
She is not a love interest for either man, though she tried with Eddie, which is saved for later; she is serious about her career and it costs her nothing, and her damselification is believable because she insists on driving to the warehouse; 'great character' is countered with 'definitely not a great character' since nothing motivates her, she works at a coke lord's art gallery, and the Jenny, Tandino and Axel triangle of friendship makes no sense.
Jenny is called a TV actress annihilated by everyone else on screen who did nothing afterward because she cannot hold the screen; a joke pitch imagines a Jenny Summers sequel in Don Simpson's office; she may be the first female gallerist in a movie.
The defense of Jenny Summers is framed as a 15-year-old's crush recalled in the past tense. — Bill Simmons
Jenny Summers' red Mercedes-Benz convertible is a dope car you cannot see anymore and is hard to keep in shape; in Beverly Hills they just take whatever car is closest; the little back seat is the Mikey spot.
The title is great, as if they came up with it before they had a script; Harold Faltemeyer's run through Top Gun and Fletch is admired, the score fit an era of synth musicians like Howard Jones and Wang Chung.
Faltermeyer is credited alongside Hans Zimmer on Top Gun Maverick, presumably because they use his themes; the soundtrack with The Heat Is On, Neutron Dance, Stir It Up and Nasty Girl is strong.
Martin Brest draws 'the less said the better' from one host and a Midnight Run defense from another, who calls it a perfect movie and credits Brest with two of the best comedies of all time, alongside Gigi (as transcribed) and Son of a Woman (as transcribed); it is hard to know how much credit he gets here beyond being smart enough to let Eddie ad-lib, and Midnight Run also does not work without its two stars.
The Mumford Phys Ed t-shirts were really a thing in the mid 80s with no internet to buy them, and the high school was flooded with requests; the Lions jacket in Cop 2 was intentional merchandising; the cropped sweatshirts, like the Josh Brolin Goonies look, are almost as iconic, and the hosts tease one of them about adopting cropped sweats.
The 'not gonna fall for the banana in the tailpipe' guy is enjoyed for setting it up earlier with the first team insult for Taggart, and the hosts miss the mid-80s cop movie rivalry duo with sarcastic comments; Eilbacher is put back in by a second and declared a law, with 'Eilbacher Mountain' floated.
Meticulous Amy cannot hide her money and loses it at miniature golf; her suicide plan is not believable; the FBI never interrogates her or presses on the box cutter; Nick going down on Amy with her underwear on; the cat on the stool amid broken glass and left home alone; Tanner Bolt winning Nick over by finding Tommy O'Hara online; the Mets hat instead of a Cardinals hat; media training ten minutes before the interview; Amy still covered in blood during the FBI interview; nobody hears the whispered 'kiss me' exchanges; the trust-fund math leaves them far from poor
Amy spends three years framing Ben Affleck with diaries in different pens, a type-A maniac, yet absconds to a hotel and cannot figure out how to hide her money, unlike Josh Brolin (transcribed 'Josh Berlin') in No Country for Old Men pushing it through a vent; she just has a money belt.
A defense: this is the first time Amy has faced anything actually hard, a super-privileged person isolated in her fancy New York community and then in Missouri who has never slept in a place like that or dealt with scurrilous people, and never considered being robbed because she is always the one taking advantage; others disagree, noting she is ready to get out when they show up and that keeping the money on you is the right move.
Her mistake was getting excited about a hole in one at miniature golf; what kind of money belt falls off when you jump six inches in the air, and why play mini golf with those two fuckheads at all, except that she was getting comfortable in her new life; she slipped up, sloppy, right after making the long putt.
Her suicide plan is not believed: she loved herself too much and was too much a fan of Amy to ever kill herself, going through the charade while really wanting a twelve-year victory lap about how awesomely she framed him.
The FBI's incompetence: how is she not interrogated for seven hours instead of being let go because she seems tired, while covered in blood; the box cutter question is asked, but not by the agents, who fail to press on purpose; her look at Boney once she knows she has won is relished.
Nobody mentioned that on the night they meet, after the sugar storm, Nick goes down on Amy without removing her underwear, despite sugar handprints on the headboard showing they have been at it a while, the classic leg-blocking framing and the reverse angle of him lifting her underwear to look; she also keeps her underwear on with Desi, defended as being ready to escape or a known preference of hers, with men's-magazine advice blamed for Nick.
When Nick sweeps up the broken glass, Bleeker the cat sits on the stool, so he let him walk through glass, and he leaves the cat home alone rather than taking him to Go's house; Nick is sold on $100,000-retainer lawyer Tanner Bolt because Tanner finds Tommy O'Hara, a registered sex offender anyone could find online, who says women see it when they search him.
The Mets hat should have been a Cardinals hat; how did the money belt fall off when she jumped; the gummy-bear media training with Tanner Bolt happens ten minutes before the interview and is very clearly a first run-through; Amy staying covered in blood through the FBI interrogation is disgusting and makes no sense, except as commitment to the bit that sets up the blood running off in the shower.
Nobody hears what Nick whispers when they reunite or Amy's 'kiss me on the cheek' at the welcome-home event, and nobody sees that he does not do it, which one host enjoys as revealing the falseness of the whole presentation: life is fakery.
When they fight about money she says her parents took almost all of the million-dollar trust fund, but the later figure of $870-something thousand leaves her at least $120,000, so they are not poor and should relax about the job depression; their whole life is a fake version of struggle in a beautiful McMansion with French doors in Missouri.
Raised earlier, during what has aged best: Affleck puts on a Mets hat in the airport while wearing a Cardinals shirt for half the movie, which makes no sense unless he bought it there.
Bell’s sudden dream ending moved from baffling on first viewing to the host’s clearest aged-best selection, especially his admission that he will not risk everything against what he cannot understand. — Bill Simmons
The 1980 border story operates as a timeless western about the end of the West and a lawman discovering he cannot protect people. — Chris Ryan
Chigurh’s first murders immediately establish an almost elemental sociopath, and the title perfectly names Bell’s realization.
The harsh Marfa landscape and old roadside businesses feel both specific and outside time; Ellis’s isolated shack embodies where Bell fears he is headed.
Sparse music, sound, patient images, and Tommy Lee Jones arriving after every major event let process and aftermath carry the story. — Bill Simmons
Josh Brolin’s long-delayed emergence as an A-list presence is praised as perfect casting for a capable man rather than visible star acting. — Bill Hader
The coin toss expresses fate without excusing Chigurh, while Bell’s feeling of being overmatched captures a universal fear of the world moving past you.
Deakins’s cinematography, editing, production design, lightning, desert scale, and minimal setups make the film a continuing visual reference for prestige crime work. — Bill Hader
What happened to the two Brazilian teammates in Monaco? Why not rob the first stash house and stop? What if the safe went over the bridge? Was failing to spin off Han and Giselle the biggest mistake in movie history? How do you score the Dom-Hobbs fight? How did they film Dom and The Rock as the same height? Why is a prison bus always alone on an empty highway?
What happened to the two Brazilian guys on the team who went to Monaco: it looks as if one won on roulette and gave the other his half back, but they were not invited back for Fast Six and only pop in briefly later, which is called bullshit and raises whether Dom treated them correctly.
Why not rob the first stash house and be done, since with ten or eleven houses holding around $10 million each they burned $10 million to reach the big money; Dom, Brian and one other person could have split $3 million apiece as a safer bet.
What would have happened if the safe went over the bridge and pulled the car down with it, though nothing was in that safe anyway; it could have been a twist with scuba divers sent for empty money; and was not spinning off Han and Giselle the biggest mistake in movie history, though Han may be a complementary Klay Thompson type who cannot carry a full season, so they could have been the Netflix show instead.
Scoring Dom versus Hobbs as a boxing round, it is at least 10-9 for Dom and maybe 10-8, since Hobbs is basically knocked out at the end, no longer trying to get up or pretending he wants to fight.
A 'copy box' (as transcribed) count of the fight is read: Dom 11 punches to five, four elbows to three, Hobbs five kicks to Dom's one since Vin is not athletic enough to kick, Dom seven takedowns to five, Dom two headbutts to one, Hobbs an arm bar and a sleeper hold that almost got Dom; that makes it closer than it looked, a 10-9, while the other cannot give nine points to a man who had a rear naked choke and an arm bar, failed to finish and nearly died; Craig the producer is enjoying it.
Statham versus The Rock is a 10-9 fight and Dom versus The Rock a 10-8; supposedly there was a lot of negotiation because The Rock did not want to get his ass kicked, part of why the shoot lasted a week, with the violence on each side spelled out evenly, yet he loses and then has to be saved by Dom, so he must have been angling for a different ending, since being unbeatable is his whole thing.
How did they film the Dom and Rock scenes to make them look nearly the same height when The Rock is far taller: you never see their full bodies facing each other, the camera looks up or something is in the way, with the moment in front of the car one of the few giveaways; the same thing happened with Josh Brolin, imagined as 6'6" until wide shots in Sicario 2 showed a 5'8" man with a gigantic head, listed at 5'10".
Earlier, during the prison bus scene: why prisoner transports are always on an empty highway with no police protection, how far away the prison is, and why Dom is on a bus in the middle of nowhere, to which there is never an explanation.
