MovieChat Forums > Spartan (2004) Discussion > Even Dumber Plot Hole

Even Dumber Plot Hole


I think this is important. Supposedly the president's daughter got kidnapped because the president pulled most of her SS detail to guard him while he was scheduling some meetup with a lady somewhere. That makes no sense on three levels.

1) If he was doing some covert meetup, he would want less, just a few trusted ones around, not a whole crowd of agents to attract attention and gossip about it later
2) The president has a huge contingent with him normally especially when he travels.
3) If it did come down to a case where they needed extras agents, why not call on the FBI or state and local help to watch a low priority case like his daughter?

I think the whole plot was totally silly anyways, once you got past the cynicism and cruelty of it. It just wasn't believable on any level. (Well at least the part where the administration "faked" her death made some sense so the kidnappers wouldn't guess just who they had.)


What are they doing? Why do they come here?
Some kind of instinct, memory, what they used to do.

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Ugh, I actually had to log in to answer this.

Not sure you will ever see this, or even remember your post, but you have seriously, SERIOUSLY missed the entire plot of the movie (as did many people).

The President didn't pull her guards just cause "he was tomcatting." He pulled her guards as part of an inner circle conspiracy to get rid of the daughter in order to win the election; "ever hear the one about the king who turned his daughter into gold?" The dialogue is always meaningful. She was threatening to go to the press and reveal how *beep* up her dad was, and so they arranged her kidnapping. The friend who told her to go to the bar and act as a prostitute was the one *beep* her Secret Service agent, who was suicided (read: killed but made to look like suicide).

The entire movie is a spy following a conspiracy. This was Mamet's Bourne.

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Woah Woah Woah stop the clock! You've just flipped my entire understanding of the movie on it's head. Are you saying that the president plotted this entire time for her death at the hands of these Arab slave traders? Or are you saying that he personally engineered it so that she would get kidnapped and rescued by Scott in order to get the election win?

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Wow, good question! I thought the first one, but now that you mention it, maybe the second one...? Dunno. Don't care enough to find out though -> 5/10

People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefsī²

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This is some brilliant insight. I've watched this movie so many times, but never even thought of these things. Good job and thanks for posting!

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I don't buy this explanation.

If this were the case, why did they have Scott investigating in the first place? They just allowed him to track her to the beach house? Later *Scott* killed the Lebanese national because the op went sideways (due to the greenhorn).

The simpler explanation is the one that's presented: She was unwittingly taken. The captors did not recognize her because her hair had been cut; they wanted her because she appeared blonde, and in this movie, the swarthy Arabs obsess over blondes.

The Deep State opportunistically capitalized on the coincidental death of the professor (or they engineered). The cabal put Kilmer and others under surveillance, which is weird because he was one of their proven loyalists. Then they needed to enlist other assets to assassinate the people who learned too much (never mind that such ops involve still more people than they eliminate).

I'm more forgiving of contrivances than incoherence. This story features both, but especially the latter.

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So many people don't get what a 'plot hole' is. You simply misunderstood the movie.

The President didn't have any real relationship with his daughter, beyond exploiting her for the cameras. He didn't want to be bothered with spending time with her, but he also didn't purposely allow her to be kidnapped. It is clearly established that the kidnappers didn't know who the girl was, they just sought American blondes.

The president removed her protection detail to watch out for himself, not to attract a crowd, but to cover him while he is with his g/f. The President is not going to some woman's home without a cadre of agents, handpicked and loyal to him. He can't have locals or FBI watch his daughter. Why? She gets Secret Service protection and bringing in 'extra' help raises even more questions, all of which he's trying to avoid in the first place.

Once she was taken, they (the gov't handlers) felt the best thing for the Pres's career was to let her go, and faking her death would ensure that nobody would continue to look for her.

There is irony is the mention of how fortunate it was that they could exploit the boating accident. In reality, because the girl had threatened to expose the Pres to the media, the timing was perfect for her to disappear, so that 'tragic' situation could be exploited for sympathy heading into the election. It was the kidnapping that was fortuitous to the Pres's career.


=========
wait for iiiiit...

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I agree with your explanation. OP, have you ever watched SCANDAL? LMAO!
*NEVERMIND*

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I understand intense, driven and he was Mission Oriented! Yet, he seemed like he had Aspergers? I am not insulting anyone with Aspergers or Emotional Numbness!

*NEVERMIND*

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You, sir, have eloquently illustrated and corrected the plot points for everyone. There is one point you were mistaken on though, and that is that the boat "accident" wasn't actually an accident. It's not explicitly stated within the film, but it's all-too-coincidental and heavily implied that they were assassinated to complete the cover up. You can see this in that the professor was known to be in a certain area before the exact whereabouts and circumstances of the president's daughter were known. Once they decided to "let her go", suddenly they "were in error" about what the professor was actually up to, and BAM he winds up dead with a girl purported to be the president's daughter - both doped out of their minds; case closed. So it wasn't the conspiracy cleverly taking advantage of a tragic accident so much as CREATING a tragic "accident" to close the case on the missing daughter. It would've worked too had it not been for the sign.

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Yeah, I also got the impression that the professor's boating accident was staged. It wasn't like he was some standup guy -- he was known to have frequent sexual relationships with his students -- so the president's "people" probably didn't really give a second thought to killing him in order to further their objectives.

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Yes, exactly!

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Noofy, you got the movie wrong.

At one point in the movie (the starting) you would be right. However, new information constantly comes to light and changes our understanding of the plot. Here are the basic stages of the plot as it develops:

1. This was a random kidnapping and the kidnappers didn't know who they had kidnapped.

2. The girl is dead, she was never kidnapped and instead drowned off Martha's Vineyard.

3. The president's "handlers" know that she was, in fact, kidnapped but staged her death because it was convenient for them.

4. The president was complicit in the plot to kidnap his daughter because her behavior endangers his reelection. It was not a random kidnapping. The plan was to let her live "in the desert," presumably for the rest of her life.

The 4th point is the most accurate. The others are obfuscations. We learn about this from Bell's character in her dialogue with Kilmer. It is further confirmed when Macy's character is monologuing in the hangar. The only thing that isn't clear is exactly how aware of all this the president is. The last 15 minutes strongly suggest that he is directly involved (again, Bell and Macy's dialogue) but we don't really know for sure.

The first time I watched this movie I didn't fully grasp all of these details.

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Just to respond again:

The president removed her protection detail to watch out for himself, not to attract a crowd, but to cover him while he is with his g/f. The President is not going to some woman's home without a cadre of agents, handpicked and loyal to him. He can't have locals or FBI watch his daughter. Why? She gets Secret Service protection and bringing in 'extra' help raises even more questions, all of which he's trying to avoid in the first place.

This is extremely backwards logic. The president and his daughter have different security details. There would be no reason to take away her detail. He doesn't need two details to have an affair. This whole plot point was extremely suspicious and by the end of the movie we learn that he actually took away her detail to allow her to be kidnapped.

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Noofy got this movie correct aside from the exception I pointed out above your posts.

The kidnappers had no clue whatsoever that they had the President's daughter. None. Zero. She wasn't a VIP sex slave but just a girl in the pipeline sent to the regular whorehouse before shopping off. "I don't understand... she's just some girl" the mistress says.

To assert that the entire kidnapping was a setup is to ignore the entire introduction to this plot.

1) She got her hair cut and dyed,
2) a fight occurred with her boyfriend who accurately (implied) accused her of being promiscuous - specifically with an older man (the college professor, who is shown to have a history of such relationships),
4) and in anger suggested she go to the Backlight if she wants to have sex with old men.
5) She (obviously) takes up his offer and gets roofied at the club by the guy who's arm gets broken by Val Kilmer (hence the pill bottle found on his person, and accounts of her being drugged later on).

This is all simple to follow up to this point if you re-watch the film.

If you are going to claim this was a setup from the beginning, NONE of this would make sense anymore. Not only the boyfriend would have to be complicit in setting up her kidnapping (the intro shows he regretted a simple letter), but the president's daughter would've been in on it too (she CHOSE to go to the Blacklight) and willingly gone along like a lamb to the slaughter (she didn't).

Onto your other point, they also make it very clear throughout the last half of the movie that the President is NOT aware of his daughter being alive after they assassinated the Professor and a young girl to cover up the true story.

"She was snatched while he was cheating on his wife. It comes out, they lose the election. So they said, 'Let her go.'"
Who?
"His handlers."
What does he know?
"What they tell him."
What did they tell him?
"That she was dead."
Why?
"So he'd stop LOOKING for her."

So you see... The film makes it very clear how informed the president was well before the build up to the climax.

If you're still not convinced of my explanation that the boyfriend and the daughter herself weren't in on it (there's no other way), and that it was a random kidnapping (they obviously didn't know who she was), then the movie spells it out for you in the finale:


"Do you know what we've had to do all these years... to keep her under wraps? You shortened her life, pal! We would have let her go to the desert, but you had to put on your thinking cap!"

Notice how he says "we would have let her go", and not "we sent her to". This is very revealing plot-wise that this was purely by chance. They kept her under wraps all those years because that's their job. There's a billion better ways to get rid of someone if you control the government than hiring two bit thugs to ship her from shack to shack leaving a trail a mile wide. She could have ACTUALLY been the girl who "overdosed" with the professor (clearly a murder cover up, once they "let her go"). So it wouldn't make sense even if it wasn't spelled out for us all.

Onto your final point: it was stated in the film that the President had been sneaking into Boston for years to have an affair. For the President to "sneak" into a big city like Boston means he can't have his normal huge detail entourage from DC in the Escelades and Limousines with motorcycle escorts to his screw buddies place. So what does he do? He has trusted agents who are stationed in Boston ALREADY transfer to his detail for a couple hours in order to avoid attention. Whether you believe that is logical or not is irrelevant unless you have first hand accounts of secret service agents saying this could never happen - and then you can chalk it up to Hollywood fiction.

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John,

I think you're making two main errors in your explanation.

First, you are assuming far too much. We don't know what happened at the black light. We don't even know if she was ever there. The entire of chain of events that leads from her boyfriend to the house on Martha's Vineyard is murky. None of it is entirely clear. They go to the beach house because of a rumor that this professor was sleeping with his students. She might have been at the black light, or not. She probably was at the whorehouse (one of the women recognizes her picture) but we don't know for sure. We do know she was at the beach house because of the earring and the sign drawn in the window.

The second mistake is that you are taking dialogue from characters at different points in the film and treating it as fact. The problem with this is that none of the characters you quoted understand the entire plot. How could they? Of course the madam at the whorehouse thinks she was a random girl. Why would anyone inform her otherwise? Of course the secret service woman at the White House doesn't know the president was involved. How could she know? She believes that the girl was taken because the president needed her secret service detail to cover his affair. But her belief doesn't make that true.

Each character in the movie only has a limited understanding of the overall plot. We can't treat their statements as accurate. Even if you're right about the overall plot, those quotes don't prove a thing because those characters would be in the dark about larges parts of the plot.

Anyway, after looking at the script it does seem totally possible to me that she was taken by mistake. Scott certainly seems to think so when he says: "The whole world likes blondes. That's why you're here."

At the same time, some of the other lines suggest something else. Laura says to Scott: "He sent a man. 'Here's what you tell the press. Don't talk. Don't tell anybody.' I told him I was gonna tell." This is followed up by Stoddard saying to Scott: "You dumb son of a bitch! We needed you! It's World War lll out there! World War lll! Do you read the papers? And that little whore wanted to bring the man down. At this time!" To me, this suggests that Laura threatened to talk to the press (presumably about the affair) and so she was disposed of. She was kidnapped and sent overseas to keep her quiet.

Of course that's only one way to read it. You could read that exchange as "We faked her death after she was kidnapped because she threatened to expose the president but we didn't actually kidnap her ourselves."

So I guess I'm not really sure about what happened. I think there's evidence for both sides. One thing that I do find interesting is that they move her in the middle of the night in Dubai. To me this definitely signals a link between Stoddard and the people (Arabs) who are holding Laura. Why? Because Scott is being tracked through his knife. They know he's in Debai and it seems likely to me that they warned the kidnappers to move her. Why else is she being moved alone in the middle of the night?

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remembervhs,

I appreciate your response and I enjoy discussing movies with other fans. However, I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you either haven't seen the movie recently - or haven't seen it multiple times yet. Everything I have explained can be inferred directly from the plot of the film, or is explicitly stated by the characters.

Let's start from the beginning. We know she went to the Blacklight because of the crumb trail that eventually leads to locating her. Her reasons for doing so are illustrated through the boyfriend dialogue. We know she was drugged and sold by the scout at the bar who carries roofies and lots of cash. He sold her to the people who control to local bordello, where she was a stopover for being sent down the pipeline. The clues that she was there (picture being moved over) are later verified, just like the Blacklight club is verified, by later events.

This is the point of the film where you got lost. They did not go to the beach house subsequent to the bordello "because of a rumor that this professor was sleeping with his students." They went to the beach house after forcing the madam to spill information that leads to them doing a revolving tail on a suspect. They figured out where the suspect was heading (beach house), and had local PD arrest him on the highway exit while they sped on ahead. HERE is why we KNOW she was at the Blacklight club, drugged and sold by the scout, stopped over at the bordello, and sent to the beach house by the thugs who shipped her overseas. The earring and her window sign are at the beach house which was a direct link from the previous locations and intel. She is only there because of being at the bordello, and she was only at the bordello because of being at the club. She was also only at the club because of her fight with her boyfriend.

I hope that clears up your first misunderstanding.

For your second misunderstanding, you're forgetting that one of the main source of quotes comes from Stoddard played by WIlliam H. Macy, the primary handler for the President. When he is spilling the beans to Val Kilmer's Scott, he is under the belief that Mr. Scott will never be leaving that hanger alive. He had no reason to tell lies at that point in the film. It would also make no sense to utilize that to deceive the audience. When he told Mr. Scott that they decided to "let her go" after her kidnapping ordeal, he actually was speaking from a position of in-the-know and of authority. The secret service woman telling us hints about this prior to it was just a means of slowly unraveling the mystery for the viewers (via Mr. Scott) by giving us clues about how everything happened and how they operate. She was telling the truth from direct experience, and not from misinformation.

When the secret service woman says that her father routinely snags a few secret servicemen from her detail on a routine basis - you should believe her. When she says that it finally burned him by doing that, and that if it came out it would damage his reputation and position - you should believe her. When she says that his handlers keep him in the dark, and use him like a puppet - you should believe her. When she says they decided to let her go, this is later confirmed by the HANDLER himself - so you should believe them.

I hope that clears up the second issue.

Onto the third issue... The dialogue about Laura stating she threatened to tell on her father in order to get attention from him was providing additional back-story on why they ultimately decided to just "let her go", the President of the United States' daughter, left to a life of slavery. That's a serious move for people. When they decided to let her go, it's heavily implied that they murdered the professor (who was definitely guilty of having sex with students, as they had proof to "show his loving wife", and not just rumors as you stated) and a young female, and dumped them both off his boat. That's what the government does to people they want to silence; they silence them. Just like the secret service agent who was caught up having to cover for the President while his daughter was taken - the man was silenced, permanently. You don't take a high profile person, like a member of the First Family of the most powerful country in the world, and send her overseas to God knows where with God knows who for the rest of her life to be recognized - just when she's holding valuable information that could ruin an administration. That's not the way to cover up or silence someone, and given their track record throughout the film we have no reason to assume they did that intentionally. In fact, all the evidence as stated previously proves just the opposite. So when Stoddard says "that little whore wanted to bring the man down", he's providing the additional reasons to justify their decision to Mr. Scott.

Let's sum up what we know:

Laura got into a fight with her boyfriend, where he told her to go to the Blacklight.
Laura went to the Blacklight and was drugged and sold by the scout.
The scout talked after "persuasion", and they went to the whorehouse.
Laura was at the whorehouse and later moved.
The whorehouse madam talked after "persuasion", and they tracked down a number that gave them the people who moved Laura to follow.
They followed them toward a beach house, arrested some, killed others, and found clues of her being there.
They "liberated" a death row inmate who gave details on the pipeline and dubai operation.
Professor and alleged first daughter turn up coked, naked, and dead in the water.

That's the facts. Now on to the characters from this point onward:

Curtis finds evidence she didn't drown, and believes the secret service agent was assassinated to cover up a conspiracy.
Mr. Scott finds out that the President regularly has affairs and takes her secret service agents away from time to time.
Mr. Scott finds out it was during his affair that she was taken.
Mr. Scott finds out that the President genuinely believes she is the victim in the water and so he won't continue the operation (so he must do it alone).
Stoddard confesses he set up the fake death so that she wouldn't be rescued.
Stoddard confesses that she was a threat to the President, and shouldn't be rescued.

Following that, we understand what really happened and the motives behind the actions. Setting up a kidnapping during the President's affair would be the dumbest move in history for a coverup to silence his daughter. He took her secret service agents away to cheat on his wife - the very fact that the daughter threatened to release. She gets in a fight with her boyfriend over sleeping with her professor, goes to a bad place and gets taken. If this was intentional by the "handlers" then they now have TWO messes to clean up instead of one.

The first mess is keeping her from talking about his infidelity.

The second mess is keeping the entire world from figuring out her protectors weren't protecting her because of infidelity.

That's like covering up his cheating by telling the world that he's cheating. Not to mention they never killed her; the obvious solution. Killing her WHILE he isn't taking her protection to cheat on his wife.

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