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A great movie worth seeing but a question near the end (SPOILER WARNING!


Why did the Man tell Wallach that he (Wallach) was dead for seeing it. He was in a situation where he was helpless with Wallach and instead tells Wallach he is dead. Why didn't he just accept Wallach's explanation and later order him killed?

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The man knows that the organization is bigger than any one man and will not hesitate to kill when it believes it's been crossed. No doubt he's seen it happen before, so he's naturally self-confident when he makes the threat.

More significantly, he doesn't really understand that Wallach's character is a psychopath. The audience understands this because it's been observing Dancer for the better part of 90 minutes, but the man in the chair doesn't have this perspective.

He also believes the fact that he's in a chair gives him a strange sort of invulnerability, that his physical disadvantage actually gives him the psychological advantage. Who'd kill a person in a wheel chair? On top of that he's in a public place, complete with nuns and school girls. But once again he's underestimated Dancer.

Of course if he lets Dancer go then the plot has to take a different turn. You have to introduce new characters who have the contract on Dancer and presumably on Julian as well. That would lead to a situation where the suspense would be double-edged. Would the police or the killers get to them first?

Perhaps that's how the script would have played out if it had been written today, but in the 50s only the police could kill Dancer.

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I agree with your analysis and would add that in my opinion, The Man is a sadist and enjoys telling Dancer he's doomed. If I'm remembering correctly, Vaughn Taylor has a tight little smile or smirk on his face as he delivers the news. The Man's nature leads to his death, just as the scorpion's does in the tale of his ride across a pond on a frog's back.


"Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

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Its a modern assumption that gangsters are smart. Or should I say its a modern movie cliche "the Michael Corlones or the Hannibal Lechters" Just think how stupid John Gotti was towards the end of his reign of the Gambino family.

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Illuminating points. Superb scene.

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The man had to do what he did otherwise where would the movie go from there? No squirming Wallach? No "the Man overboard"? The whole scene with the man just sitting there and staring then finally Wallach snapping was the best scene in the whole movie.

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I thought the same thing.

The smart thing to do would be to go along with Dancer's excuse and not put him on notice that he would be killed but, humans being humans, 'The Man" may have just let his anger speak for him in that he just lost a fortune in heroin.

And then we also wouldn't have had such a dramatic ending to the scene or the movie.

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[deleted]

The Man's beef was that Wallach saw him. Remember at the beginning Dancer was told he must be out of the museum by 4:05. It was repeated twice or three times.

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Never tell someone he's a dead man. Let it come as a surprise. Take the advice of another movie killer:

"When you have to shoot, shoot. Don't talk."

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