Were the US Marshals at the end of the movie real or was that just more of the con? Also, they had Campbell Scott's character wearing a mic under his leather jacket at the end of the movie. Two questions; when did they put that mic there, and where did Campbell Scott get that jacket from? He was at the secretary's apartment and then they went right to the airport. I guess they could have stopped back at his apartment but wouldn't the police be there waiting for him.
shareYou can make it two ways:
1) It's another con, since there wasn't any way to cooperatively wire his jacket between Pidgeon's apartment and the boat. The Marshalls and everything else is just a ruse to get Martin, Pidgeon, and everyone else safely off the boat and out of an increasingly tight jam without involving the police.
2) It's not a con and they're really US Marshalls. Since they're presumably able to tail Martin close enough, they had the intel necessary to bug the clothes they believed would be put on Scott's character without Pidgeon knowing, and had the opportunity when she was in the NYC police interrogation room.
Plus the NYC police officer is there when the boat docks and he's definitely not in on the ruse and would presumably have been able to tell if the Marshalls were fake or not, although it DOES make you wonder what would happen if I got badges and outfits and a big van with a Marshall's logo on it; would anyone REALLY check to see if I was for real.
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Just saw it again tonight.
Regarding the question about the authenticity of the US Marshals at the end, I would refer to the ending of The Sting (and how you end the "big con").
"Ground control to Major Tom"
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That presupposes Martin wouldn't have given him up when he was arrested or that he didn't know who all was in on his own conspiracy. Wasn't the African American Marshal in one of the last scenes showing Steve Martin's arrest? I thought enough dialogue came thru the foghorn blast to be used as evidence. CSI guys could decifer the words thru that foghorn blast anyway.
share[deleted]
It's one thing to impersonate the FBI in the darkness and relative seclusion of a men's room - It's quite another impersonate US Marshalls, showing up in force at the dock, sirens a-blazin'. Would've been too risky. The Marshalls are real. And, correct me if I'm wrong - Wasn't Det. Jones with NYPD?
shareWhat was the whole point of the foghorn blast anyway? I'm sure it's significant, but it's the last thing I'm really perplexed about. Why did it matter?
share'The Process' is the ultimate MacGuffin - everyone wants it, it's extremely valuable, people will go to extraordinary lengths to gain it, but we never find out what 'it' really is.
The foghorn blast over the explanation of what they were planning to do with it is Mamet's way of saying, "You don't need to know - it's just a MacGuffin."
Ha....it is 2010 and they still do not have technology to do that effectively (as in, to produce evidence that would be damning in a trial).
Stop worshipping CSI.
ehhh... maybe... but i think ppl are making the mistake of interpreting this movie like it was the sting, or the usual suspects, or ocean's 11 or any of the movies where the main character is in control of everything and everyone else is being acted upon. the real twist of this movie is that there is no final reveal where joe has the upper hand and gets the last laugh. the twist is that he is the passive agent the whole movie. the bad guys are caught not b/c joe is clever or savvy but b/c the feds are looking over his shoulder all the time. no wonder the nypd were so adamant that jimmy dell did not exist--law enforcement needed joe to keep on as bait. plus, i think ppl can't accept joe wasn't the mastermind b/c as the audience we most value cleverness and being the ones in the know and we don't want to root for someone who really just is a clueless boy scout.
shareThis reminds me very much of the framework of the great author and screenwriter Eric Ambler's (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001907/) book Epitaph for a Spy (not necessarily the TV series, which I never saw).
If you liked this movie, search out Eric Ambler's books and read as many as you can. I discovered him in Ian Fleming's book From Russia with Love in which James Bond is on a train and Fleming describes him as reading an Ambler book.
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"In my own mind, I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing." ~Steve McQueen
Keep in mind that the whole con would have been pointless if at the end we saw Joe walk free. Why? Because if he was free and not discredited he could have simply recreated the whole process from scratch and sold it, thus completely devaluing the original notes. I suppose it might have been easier to simply kill Joe, but the cons needed a fall guy for things like Lang's murder (since he also knew the process he too had to be taken care of one way or another) and once Joe was in prison he couldn't legally sell the process anyway.
Thus at the end when we see Joe left alone we know the US Marshals and all the cops were really who they said they were.
In the real world, the whole premise of the movie is bunk. Only a legitimate company would have the resources to take advantage of the process. Any company buying the process from the cons would sooner or later have to establish their legal right to it in order to license it to others. For example, if they didn't file any patents or have a record of buying it from its rightful owner it would be highly suspicious. And by definition, any process for solving "the global warming" is worthless unless everybody uses it. Thus there was really no way for the cons to cash in the process once they had it.
Also, the premise that Mr. Klein initiated the con to get a bigger cut just doesn't jibe in the real world. Corporate CEOs always get big option grants and big salary increases, and never seem to be left out when their company strikes it big.
But let's face it, the "process" was just a MacGuffin to get the movie going...
My question:
Are real U.S. Marshals really concerned with industrial espionage or why would they go to such length as shadowing U.S. citizens on Caribbean islands? In order solve inner-company security issues?
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Last movie watched: The Spanish Prisoner (7/10)
You have to ask yourself: "If the US marshals were part of the con, what, exactly, was their purpose?"
The company would still be intent on prosecuting Joe for theft and the police would still be wanting Joe for murder and theft.
The only thing they would have achieved would be that Joe would say he'd seen the con artists arrested - which would make no difference to anything, if they hadn't.
The whole of the last 5-10 minutes of the film would have been utterly pointless and yielded no advantage to the con men whatsoever.