About the ending


Do you think, even if Buscemi’s character had paid for half of the car, that Stormare would have killed him anyway?
This is probably my sixth or seventh rewatch, and I always just assumed that Stormare’s character was a simple and pure psychopath, and there was no reason behind killing Buscemi other than anger. But now I’m starting to think that he always planned on killing Buscemi and keeping the money for himself. I think mentioning splitting the car was just Stormare toying with Buscemi.

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I never thought Stormare's charachter (Grimsrud)was the planning type.

The weirdness of him looking in the medicine cabinet for a cut on his hand during a crucial time in the kidnapping shows the viewer that something is a little off with him.

The killing of Buscemi's character is kind of the same way, he annoyed him and Grimsrud fixed the problem.

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I agree with you buddy.

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It's hard to find any reasoning behind Stormare's character, but Buscemi was stupid for insisting on the car money. Considering that the real money was waiting for him, half of the car's money was not worth the risk given the psychotic and unpredictable nature of his partner in crime.

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The fun part is multiple interpretations work. Maybe Gaear had been planning to kill Carl all along and take the entire $80,000 and the whole thing about the car was BS.

Perhaps Gaear truly was mad Carl refused to pay him for the car and thought he was being screwed over.

Carl's greed brought him down. If Carl would have agreed to split the money $50,000 / $30,000 for half the car perhaps Gaear would have spared him. Even better, he could have split it $60,000 / $20,000 and said I'll "pay" for the entire car. "I just want to go get my face fixed screw the money."

Carl was armed (and reminded Gaear of that) so Gaear took a risk attacking Carl for the money. If he already had had most of it, there would have been less incentive to try and take it all.

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Although it's hard to determine fully, given the two parted ways with Stormare asking for the car to be split and Buscemi not agreeing to this and insulting him for good measure, it's best to assume it was this that triggered Stormare into killing him. It looks like the wife was also killed after not falling in line with what Stormare wanted (according to him). You can theorise that he was intending this all along or he was toying with Buscemi, but like what has already been said, he doesn't seem the type to make thought out plans. He simply seems a bit of a nut who's the type to adhere to the very basics to get a job done, who can't be trusted to make rational decisions for anything other than that.

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I think Gaere was intentionally making Carl angry so he could kill him and keep all the money for himself. He knew insisting on him paying for half the car would make Carl angry and that he's probably storm out after hearing that. So he then took him out when he wasn't expecting it. That makes more sense than him wanting part ownership of a car when $80,000 was way more than what it would cost to buy another car.

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Gaere was intentionally making Carl angry so he could kill him


Nah, I tend to agree with the posters above; to quote "Tin Cup," the words "intent" and "Gaere" don't often collide in the same sentence

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I think once the dude said pay for half, Buscemi really should have just taken his damn truck. The car was hot and had blood spatters all over it. He already knew how impulsive Stormare was. The criminals were all stupid in this movie. 10/10

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