MovieChat Forums > The Cooler (2004) Discussion > The Cop

The Cop

posted 11 years ago by Rosabel
3 replies | jump to latest

The cop who stops Bernie and Natalie as they're trying to leave town with all their money: is it ever made clear just WHO ordered the hit? Honestly, I was never sure.

It could have been Shelly, Nicky or Larry.

I kinda doubt it was Shelly. He had his own problems, especially getting killed himself at almost the same moment. But he didn't seem to have the inclination to stop Bernie. He told Larry that "Lootz is OK", which I took to mean "He's not cheating", and Shelly had a kind of code of honour: cheating was unforgivable, but a player just getting lucky and winning was always a risk the house had to live with. So if Bernie won cleanly, there would be no proper reason to kill him.

Nicky had the authority to call a hit, but he wasn't actually present when Bernie won the money, so it would seem rather clumsy to involve him at this point. However, he's been in Vegas a long time, so he'd definitely know who to call and which cops were dirty in order to get the job done.

I believe it was Larry. He was watching as Bernie won big, and he was very upset. He clearly thought Bernie was cheating, and that perhaps Shelly was in on the con too. He was the new guy, coming to take over. In his last scene, he basically takes Shelly's place at the table, holding a drink. Just as Shelly decided to kill Mikey for his cheating, now Larry is making the decision to kill Bernie for the same reason (or so he believes). It's a bit ironic, because he sells his plan for the transformation of the Shangri La as doing away with the old ways and catching up with the rest of Vegas, and yet here he is using the same old methods Shelly used when he was in charge.

Actually, the more I think about it, I think it must have been Larry and Nicky working together. Larry probably told Nicky that both Shelly and Bernie had to go. Nicky agreed, arranged the hit on Bernie, and then told Larry that he would take care of Shelly personally. He had to have volunteered to do that; Larry couldn't possibly have ordered Nicky to kill Shelly. Myself, I think it was an act of kindness, a parallel to the way Shelly puts Buddy out of his misery at the beginning, once all is lost.

Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!

[–] lorddeseiz 10 years ago

Larry of course, Nicky is just a muscle, a tool.
Shelly let Bernie win a ton of cash and never interfered. "if you dont stop him i will" he says to Shelly, then Shelly goes berserk, smacks the harvard schmuck around and broke his arm.
So he ordered the hit on Shelly by Nicky, while some nameless hitman is taking care of Bernie. reason to take out Bernie: friend of Shelly, might wanna come back looking for revenge, and he ran off with a shipload of cash.

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[–] Rosabel 10 years ago

Didn't Nicky "outrank" Larry and Shelly? I got the impression that Nicky was the mob boss, with probably several casinos that he ran. He brought Larry to the Shangri La, the way a boss would introduce a new "efficiency expert" to spruce up the place and update the business methods. The only reason that Shelly put up with Larry at all was because his boss was forcing him to. That's why I don't think that Larry could have ordered Nicky to kill Shelly; Nicky would have volunteered to do the job.

Flat, drab passion meanders across the screen!

[–] TexasJack (12515) 6 years ago

That was my impression. Larry wet his pants when they kneecapped Bernie’s son, so I doubt he moved up to ordering hits that quickly. But he was angry about and scared by the beatdown he got from Shelly, so he probably ran to Nicky right away. My impression of Nicky is that he was either the mob boss himself or, more likely, a high-ranking associate who answered to one or more of them.