Plot Hole??? *Slight Spoiler*

luddite - gotta agree with you on several points.

Dehling's badge - VERY generic. I did a pause/zoom and it simply said "Metropolitan". Is this normal? my dad worked for one of the suburb/county city dept's and it had the city listed on the badge. I'm pretty sure even County and State have "St. Louis County" and "Missouri Highway Patrol" on them. St Louis isn't even mentioned until Carl is arguing with Charlie at end.


Geography - If you weren't watching the license plates (easy in theatre, hard on TV screen), and Carl hadn't mentioned suing "the entire St Louis police dept", then you would have never known this was set in MO. Collinsville reference I can let pass, as I'm sure there is more than just the two local cities, here in MO and right across the River in Illinois (which Randy would later have to explain how he got there withOUT the Metro! huh??)

I got the impression that Carl lived somewhere around Ladue (aka LAH-due) or Chesterfield. Not actually living in the county, myself, I did find a hard time believing that there was a Metro bus that went from either city to SoCo, where the REAL incident this movie was based on took place. Even Ladue/CF to downtown is a bit of a stretch (and probably a few transfers).


bar patrons - never really thought about that, as I'm not much for bars, but I would have to agree with you for a StL setting, esp since McCools is set in SoCo. I don't recall many women, either. Maybe it was a gay bar like JJs?


Shrink - Nothing against Reba, but who does Carl know that would get him an appointment in under a week? Did he declare it an "emergency"? or was it already scheduled as part of his promotion to see a shrink before being officially mad a partner? esp since the other candidate had died under strange circumstances.


IN MOVIE time frame - I got the impression that the time between Utah's death and Elmo's shootout was maybe two weeks apart, and that's only because of the extensive redecoration to Randy's house. Everything else suggests only a few days passing, at most ONE week. (great, now I have BNL in my head!)


Time setting - the actual events this movie was based on happened in the early 70's. They did a good job of updating the story 25-30 years EXCEPT for throwing in the pic of Mark McGwire (who was in the middle of his home run hot streak) and letting this movie sit on the shelf for a year, making the DVD subplot almost moot. When the movie was shot, DVD players were still a high-priced item that most couldn't afford, but people like Carl and Greg Spradlin could. UNfortunately, by the time McCool's saw release, they had dropped to a more affordable price and were becoming commonplace in many homes. Hell, even *I* had one by that time and I'm not a big techno-gotta-have-it-NOW! guy.


McGwire pic - I read somewhere that the ONLY reason they included they stupid pic was to help establish the St Louis setting and because he was in the middle of the so-called "Home Run Derby" with Sammy Sosa during the shoot. They did regret putting it in there, esp since those posters were fairly common and cheap around here.* there was really no reason Randy should have grabbed it unless he was a big fan, but there were NO other indications of ANY other Cards paraphenilia in the house, a common sight in any StL area home! I'm NOT a sports fan, but even I was cheering "Mighty Mac" on during this time.

*(I do have to wonder if John's family in StL sent it out to him in Cali, or he swung thru and grabbed it on a free day/weekend? or were these posters common in Cali at the time, too?)


I do want to give kudos to whoever was in charge of the license plates, as MO was in the middle of switching from the standard redplates to the current "modern" look (blue/green bottom fading up to white) when this movie was shot. I noticed BOTH during the movie.

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"I will show you the life of the mind!" Karl Mundt

I don't think that the surfboards strapped to the jeep have anything to do with a plot hole, if you recognize the jeep owner. The owner of the jeep is Kelly Slater, who is a very famous surfboarder, so i'm pretty sure that was the reason he had surfboards on his jeep not because he was supposed to be by the ocean or anything. Hope that clears up that point.