Ford is driven and needs to EXPERIENCE…

(Spoilers, naturally.)






Ford is driven and needs to experience… killing.

All about the money? Hell no. This movie is well written and it is about experiences. There are many scenes that give away that the doctor is driven herself (+ her name).

What a more dramatic game than ending somebody else's game all together. Though the game she needs to end is long gone and locked, stuck in her past.

*

Ford has this lirg-girl-patient that brings Ford's bad memories too much to the surface. So much that she basically wants to experience a bad man again and this time do something to him.

There would not be this lirg-girl and this conversation for nothing:
Lirg: And I said that we all try to run from experience. From experience. Do you understand me? But that it will seek us out. You think that you are exempt? I'm talking to you. Do you think that you are exempt?
Ford: Do I think that I'm exempt? That I'm exempt from what?
Lirg: The experience.
Ford: No, I don't think that I'm exempt.
Lirg: Well, you better be assured you are not.

And there are some metaphor scenes:

- Ford is leaving the hospital after the lirg-girl told about the man who made her a whore. Ford is upset in the hallway. A guard tries to open the final locked door but it really seems to take a lot of time and keys to do that.

- Like IMDb trivia tells, 187 is the police code for murder. The opened locker for baggage is 187. What is important is that she leaves the baggage after killing Mike. She is free from her baggage (of past).

*

A man has hurt the lirg-girl. The man that hurt Ford herself was her father. Ford has freudian slips:

1.
- It's so beautiful (a lighter). It's old and it's heavy. It looks like someone gave it to you. Sometimes I think the only pressures of my life...
- The only what?
- I'm sorry?
- You said the only pressures...
- Pleasures. I said pleasures.

Key words old, heavy, pressure.

2.
- Oh, you have been talking to your murderess
- I know why she is in the hospital. She's sick. The question is what am I doing in there? It's a sham, it's a con game. Nothing that I say will help her. And there's nothing I can learn from her to help others avoid her mistakes. That poor girl! All her life my father tells her she's a whore so all her life she seeks out...
- Your father?
- I'm sorry?
- You said your father says that she's a whore...?
- I said my father?
- Yes.

Key words my father, whore, poor girl.

*

Ford is not too stupid a character. She feels empty inside and wants experiences. More precisely she wants to end the sham game she has had going on with her past. I think Crouse plays the bitch (with all due respect) perfectly. Ford-not-a-total-moron arguments:

- She does not react normally when the compulsive gambler pulls out his gun.

- But she reacts plenty with the bad men. Ever heard of playing the bate?

- She reacts oddly when the "cop" is killed, too. Stares at the body a bit like if she was staring to her memories at the same time. Though I know this is an over-interpretation.

- Maybe she believes she has killed a cop, and maybe she is just over with taking lives, whether a con man or a cop. Maybe she is so confused with the experience that she wants to go back to "being a stupid whore": she gives money away.

- Obvious playing too stupid and wanting to be the victim again: "What does it mean?" many times, the empty stares while "What happens now?" in the cab for the last time with Mike... eagerly staring into nothingness as a victim again. (She must understand/feel that a con man is empty for anybody else but himself. She treats compulsive gamblers. Likely that kind of a doctor sees that he's a compulsice conner. And maybe it is calming to stare at the same emptyness that she has had inside of her for years.)

- The scene where she gets rid of stuff in her office (mind the one on the wall) can also be seen this way: after a long time of playing psychological games she has finally done the thing that has driven her and she hates herself for that.

- But she wonders why a kid that gave her a gun is in the gang too... "I didn't kill a man?" (Not a real quote.)

- "Took her money and screwed her, too." "A small price to pay." ... "You put that bitch in the panic bag" Hearing the men talk makes her cry for her past, the mess she has gotten herself into etc.

*

"I can't help it, I'm out of control (said with a way that I think reveals a nice sarcasm towards herself). Beg me for your life."

Mike is quite a winner anyway: "I'm not gonna give you sh*t!"
(Yep, editing. The sh*t is sooo important...)

But she seems to be able to leave her baggage still. I think the baggage scene reveals a lot. The big baggage on the floor and quite in the center of the screen is just plain obvious.