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I have to give the screenwriter of this film a reluctant tip of the
cap for having more chutzpah than just about anyone else on the
planet. He wrote a script which has one fatal flaw, one enormous
gaping loophole in its logic. He was not only aware of the question
that needed to be asked, but he actually had one of the characters
dare to ask the correct question right within the film's dialogue -
and failed to answer it!
Now that takes one giant set of
cojones.
In a nutshell, the basic plot is
this. A con man takes out an insurance policy on his wife, talks his
neighbor into swapping wives one night, but does not go to the
neighbor's wife. He waits until the neighbor has slept with his own
wife, then murders her with a weapon which he has meticulously
linked to
the neighbor. The patsy goes to the slammer, the con man gets the
dough. The con man even moves in with the patsy's wife.
Given the other circumstances in the
film, which are too detailed to enumerate, it would have been a
perfect crime except for one thing. He actually hired a hooker to
impersonate his wife that night, then killed the hooker. The real
wife, who is not in on the murder, but is happy to take a pay-off,
has been shipped out of town and given a new start in a singing
career. Of course, that is a loose end which the killer must
eventually tie up. It is in the process of killing the real wife,
who represents living evidence of the patsy's innocence, that the
con man is betrayed.
Now the really big question that you
should be asking, and that an insurance investigator actually asks
in the movie, is this, "given his willingness to murder his wife
later, why didn't he just kill the real wife in the first place?
What was the point of the hooker?"
I guess the real answer is this: if
he had done it that way, he would have been successful, the patsy
would have gone to jail forever, and there would have been no movie.
And that might have been a good
thing, now that I think about it.
Leaving the wife alive as a
professional singer was an absolutely ludicrous plot twist. Her
records were on the radio, so the patsy recognized her voice, and
tracked her down. But even if that had not happened, how long can
someone who is supposed to be dead live on in such a public business
as the entertainment industry? (Cher, of course, being an
exception.) She wore a red wig - and that was supposed to keep
people from noticing? Come on. She was a singer, and she still had
the same voice, and sang the same songs! In addition, she was
portrayed in the script as a very nice person. How long would she
let the situation go without coming forward, once she realized that
her beloved neighbor was going to get the electric chair for her
murder?
In addition to that gigantic flaw in
the script, there were lots of others almost as irritating:
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The patsy was supposed to be in jail
for bludgeoning his beloved neighbor to death in a first degree
murder. Therefore, as an obvious homicidal maniac, he was released
on bail and allowed to go back to his house and his neighborhood.
Remind me to avoid South Carolina, the populace of which must be
teeming with bailed criminals who were originally arrested for
homicidal rage.
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The patsy was in such a desperate
financial situation that he thought his $25,000 debt was a hole so
deep that he could never climb out of it. Then, after he was
arrested, his wife asked for a divorce. Financial disaster, right?
Yet he was able to make bail on his murder rap and pay a private
attorney (tens of thousands of dollars in a case like this).
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The police never knew who the victim
really was. Again, here's a two word tip for you criminal youngsters
- South Carolina. Not only do they have easy bail in that State, but
the police really don't make any effort to find out the identity of
a victim in a homicide case. If you just say, "that's my wife", then
arrange to have her cremated, you're home free on the ol' life
insurance scam.
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One more matter on the bail. I don't
know the rules, but after the patsy was released on bail, he crossed
the state line between South Carolina and Georgia, and he flew out
of the state. Is that allowed? Can accused criminals awaiting trial
for a brutal murder just go wherever they want to?
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The patsy resorts to the ol' "the
police have closed my case, so I'll have to get out of prison and
solve the crime myself" trick.
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The patsy's wife was NOT in on the
scam, yet as soon as the neighbor's wife turned up dead, she
abandoned her husband of fourteen years, and took her daughter to go
live with the con man. Because of those facts, I assumed that she
must have been in on the scam. Wouldn't you? Yet the patsy never
made that assumption! He just accepted at face value that the wife
dumped him without knowing whether he was guilty. Furthermore, there
was no history which caused the wife to doubt her husband's word,
and he proclaimed his innocence. If she had even the slightest
inkling that he was telling the truth, she therefore moved in with only other
guy who might have committed the murder! Yet the patsy assumed that
illogical scenario was true rather than making the logical
assumption that she was in on the scam. How can this be explained?
Only one way that I know of. He read the script, and knew she was
innocent.
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Our final point involves Physics, but
it's easy. It comes in the form of an illustration. In the picture
below, Kevin Spacey (as the con man) has been hit from behind by a
baseball bat. He was standing, just about to shoot Kevin Kline. The
woman who hit him entered through the door (far left, near the
pillar), hit him, then dropped the bat, then walked back out the door with
Kline. Nothing has been moved. You can see where the bat is. Given
those facts, look at the photograph below and tell me how his body
got in that position. Show all your work in your blue book.
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