Chris Penn

yeah, that confuses me too. just saw it again for the second time.

i guess he wants "real" love, which he doesn't get from his wife. He could get sex, but she doesn't give him the feeling to be wanted.
He is confused why her having phone sex isn't as erotic as their sex life.
And he stores a lot of unfulfilled sexual pressure, e.g. seeing naked woman in swimming pool, his friend telling him sexual fantasies on the phone. And when his sexual fantasy girl refuses him he just goes nuts...

Still seems implausible to me, that he would just kill her like that.

When she finally suggested that they have sex, she didn't talk sexy to him like she did on the phone to the other men. She spoke to him like a child. When I saw it the first time, I thought she was being sincere. When I watched the scene again she seemed patronizing. Penn's character had major issues.

My question is, when they announced on the news that one person died because of the quake, they were referring to that girl. So what happened to her friend, who witnessed the attack? She would not have went along with the story that her friend died from a rock slide. It would have been called a murder.

exactly.she didn t have sex with him at home.just on the phone.

you totally miss the point.
during the earthquake the fisherman is in the pool with her clown wife and friends at the party in which they cooked the fish he got that day..
so the moment of the earthquake is some day after the body in the river scene...

[deleted]

"I'm surprised most of you don't 'get it'. He's the killer who killed the young woman and threw her in the river. (the fishermen found her)
Penn's wife just triggered something that was already in him. Hearing her talk dirty to all those men all day, made him feel sexually inadequate. As when the black man confronts him at the bar, Penn does nothing. Like most serial killers, their shy on the surface, but sick inside."

Well, that is actually what I thought and it isn't a ''ridiculous idea'' like some of the members claim.

The fact is that Chris Penn could be the killer of the girl in the river; he may be a serial killer who takes out his pent up sexual frustration and disdain for his wife's job and lack of love life out on women, I see no reason why he cannot be the killer when he kills the woman in the end.

The good think about the film is that it just doesn't tell you so in your mind you can believe that he is or isn't but neither beliefs are ridiculous.

"Namu-myoho-renge-kyo"

I think we're assuming that the girl in the water was a premeditated serial killer type murder. For all we know, she could've also been killed in a crime of impulse just like what happened at the end. In that case it's very possible that Penn did it.

I also concluded at the end that Penn was the killer, but only because of the nature of the film. Think about it, every single character and subplot was interconnected in some way to something else. I felt that was what Altman was going for. But if none of the characters killed the lady in the water, that would be the one and only plot point that is TOTALLY random. Yeah it made for a small comedic moment with the pictures, but I don't think that would've sufficed by itself. Narratively there HAD to be a larger connection between the dead woman and another subplot. What I took away is that Penn was that connection. Again, the biggest opposition seems to be that serial killers wouldn't be impulsive like that in broad daylight, and I say we don't even know if the first murder wasn't impulsive as well.

Not just his wife - Downey Jr also seemed to have a habit of calling him from work to talk about sex and loose women.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan