MovieChat Forums > The End of Violence (1997) Discussion > What an indescribable mess

What an indescribable mess

posted 14 years ago by mousalope
3 replies | jump to latest

Just finished watching this. The pathetic thing is with this fine cast and the nubs of several potentially interesting plots, they could have done a pretty good movie. They could have had the story of who wanted the movie producer murdered and why, they could have had the cheating wife with her rapper lover, they could have had the cleaning lady and the mysterious authorities for whom she covertly worked, the stunt woman trying to break into acting, and actually several more. Somebody needed to make some choices, and they didn't. (Given a choice I'd have wished for more focus on Andie McDowell's character.)

It's almost like somebody tossed around the loose pages of a dozen distinct scripts and them reassembled at random enough pages to shoot two hours of film. Incoherent and frustrating.

I did love the throwaway scene at the nightclub(?) with Sam Phillips singing. Her regular music is great but this was a comedic scene having nothing to do with the "plot". Quite a contrast with her earlier work as the beautiful German knife-wielding psycho-killer in the later Die Hard movie.

[–] jonchopwood 14 years ago

I stopped watching after the kidnapping scene followed by Sam Fuller (who could not act and added nothing to the picture). I fell asleep!

I turned it back on, watched the Sam Fuller scene again, and then the aftermath of the kidnapping scene and the two bodies.

How ridiculous, not to show what happened. I turned off right then.

I remembered trying to watch this over 10 year ago and not even getting that far! Pretentious twaddle.

[–] rooprect 14 years ago

Actually the movie handled each of those plots completely. It isn't Wim Wender's style to wrap everything up with a big speech & a pretty bow. You have to work to figure it out on your own.

All the answers are there: who put the hit on the producer & why, the significance of his wife's affair with the rapper & how it ties in with the central theme, and the reason why the cleaning lady was forced to conspire with the people who killed her lover. Watch it again for the answers, or you could always ask someone.

Don't take this the wrong way, but it's a common reaction when people don't understand a movie that they think it's a bad movie. Just stroll over to the 2001: A Space Odyssey board and listen to all the whiners.

[–] Takeshi-K 8 years ago

Wim Wenders quote:

"I will always produce my own films and avoid finding myself at the distributor's mercy. You must become a producer if you want any control over the fate of your work. Otherwise, it becomes another person's film and he does with it what he pleases. I only had one experience like that and I will never repeat it."

He may have been talking about this movie?