-- bother to wear a mask when murdering his own wife?
He wasn't going to leave any witnesses.
Not the maid (she was already dead!)
And certainly not the wife (that was the whole friggin' point, to kill the wife)
So why bother wearing a mask??
Yes, it helped make the film more suspenseful and surprising -- but was it remotely logical?
Agree, but it was the point of the whole movie. So WE wouldn't know.
shareWell, yeah. "We." The audience. Of course it was done for the audience's benefit. I get that.
But as far as Jeff Bridge's character is concerned, his choice to be wearing a mask while murdering his wife makes zero sense.
You'd have thought that he'd have got rid of the typewriter as well...
The whole film was clunky - it was only the superb performances of the four main leads (Close, Bridges, Loggia, Coyote) that stopped this film from being laugh-out-loud bad.
Though I'm sure the mask was for the audience's sake, I can also see someone wearing a mask when murdering a loved one or family member. It might lessen the guilt that the victim did not know who killed them.
shareActually the wearing of the mask makes perfect sense to me. Obviously Forrester the nice guy could not do those crimes, so he had an alter-ego that wearing the mask made easier to take over. But as another poster said, keeping the typewriter at all, much less in a place that can be easily found by Teddy is what made less sense to me, unless he WANTED it to be found, which is a scenario with many possible reason behind it. And that itself unravels a whole can of worms. E.g. the prosecutor explains the whole scenario in chambers, but she's just in denial. Who ELSE would have given her those anonymous notes.
I guess the stereotypical tennis instructor was the inevitable possible 2nd suspect, so you don't know for sure until the end. But also why would he try to kill her; was he scared she'd turn him in even considering double jeopardy rule? Or maybe he was scared she'd hold it over him and end up like OJ (imprisoned for an alternate crime as payback). Or maybe he just likes killing...but how then would he worm his way out of that one, had he succeeded? I guess he had such hubris, he thought he was homefree and could pin it on the tennis guy easily. Of course I'm going much further into it than the writers did. But all this was prior to DNA evidence, which would have nailed him easily.
Furthermore, isn't it just a little too coincidental that Forrester's locker was #122 and the other guy with a similar knife was #222 nearby, thereby confusing the witness? But going back to the mask issue, of course another reason is just in case someone saw him, but then why kill the housekeeper? Again, bottom line is obviously he just liked killing.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of Hollywood... (;-p)
If the mask was just a crutch to help Forrester commit the murders, he wouldn't have been able to pass the polygraph that they administered later on. But he did pass it. Forrester turned out to be "An ice cube even the machine can't melt."
The more I think about it, the more I think the real reason for the mask is obvious: The screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas, wanted a scary opening sequence where we, the audience, could see the murder being committed but couldn't see the face of the man wielding the knife. He knew that this would make for a frightening first sequence and also add a "guessing game" quality to the rest of the film.
He was right, of course, but any attempt to rationalize or logically justify the villain's decision to wear a mask during a murder in a secluded house in the middle of the night where he knew he'd be leaving no witnesses is embarking on a fool's errand.
The mask was purely at the service of the story, and had nothing whatsoever to do with logic.
I didn't even particularly mind this, by the way. It's a minor plot hole in an otherwise fun movie. (Almost every thriller has at least one.)
The typewriter-in-the-closet thing is a much bigger problem.
One other reason comes to mind: he didn't want his victims to know who was killing them.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of Hollywood... (;-p)
One other reason comes to mind: he didn't want his victims to know who was killing them.]