Totally ridiculous but somehow.....watchable ***SPOILERS!!!***

I think what kept me going to the end of the movie was waiting for the ridiculous disconnected stuff to start making sense.

I couldn't figure out Quaid's character's motivation at all (his sudden interest to help the defense seemed completely arbitrary). The fact that he was personally involved with the political system/murderer went far beyond "deus ex machina". The homeless psycho with the tattoo was totally pointless. I kept waiting for something to come along a sew it all together.

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I think sometimes we get too caught up in continuity, "real life" factors, etc. Sometimes it's good to just let that stuff go and be entertained.

Not that I haven't been guilty of that (sweating the 'reality' stuff) myself. And I'm really not sure why, in some movies I can just brush it off, and in others it bugs me so much, it can even ruin the whole movie for me. One factor for me is the *necessity* of the playing with reality. If it seems unnecessary and ignorant, I find it impossible to ignore. Example: in "Road to Perdition," there are scenes set at Lake Michigan where you can see very small waves barely lapping at the sand . . . accompanied by the sound of roaring ocean surf. C'mon! How can anyone be so stupid? It's distracting and completely unnecessary.

But if portraying things 'realistically' means they couldn't actually make a movie of it . . . well, what are they supposed to do? If this movie (and many others about crimes and trials) tried to show the process realistically, it would be completely unwatchable. A real case like this would drag on for months if not years, and real trials are monotonous and dull and slow-moving--who would watch such a movie?

If you have the DVD and go to the extras, you could turn on the director's commentary. There he specifically mentions the tape. The scriptwriter described the tape player in the car as a radio. So, it had to appear like a radio and that's the reason why no one thought of looking into it for a tape. And Cher's character was supposed to look for more clues and just push the button without expecting a tape to come out.