Was I the only one who didn't get this?

How is it that anything is possible for Avi and friends?
Dont understand the question.



Why are they so concerned about Green? If by they, you mean Avi and Fat guy. They were the two cons in prison with him. They were the guys that taught him every trick he knew. They say at the end "We were always going to take you with us Jake, You had to be ready first"

Why are they trying to break Ray's character? They deemed Jake as family and Macha was the person that put Jake in prison.


Why did Green pass out near the stairs if he wasn't sick in the first place? Guy said it had something to do with him "falling from grace" or his "pride before the fall" symbolism. Jake was handed a card that said "Dont take the stairs" and he did it anyway.

Why didn't Green die during the hit? He had began to let go in a way. He wasnt the only one changing. Sorter spoke in the car after the hit about not understanding how he missed. And later with Macha, saying "something didnt feel right".

Why did Green trust Avi and friends? He didnt. His ego was talking to him about being conned the whole time. His "emotional investment" was too large for him to not do it. Remember the keys to a con.

I had to watch it a few times 'til I started to understand, and even after that, the British version had a slightly different storyline to grasp. I liked the British version more though. :)

The ending credits of the American version has interviews about the "ego" you should listen to, it helps.

"-Who is Mr Gold? Mr Gold isn't real. He represents greed and ego.

-If the three of them (Avi, Green, the other big guy), take the money from D's guys and the drugs from the asian guy, who keeps that money? Donated it to charity.
If it is the money they give as a donation, how di..."



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Well put.

I felt this one was totally open-ended, with much less conclusivity as to what actually happened and what was made up than Fight Club (for example).

In my mind, there were a few different possibilities.

#1 - the players were all real. The two cell mates helped out because they cared after having been 'together' for 5 years. They commiserated because they saw something of themselves in him and they helped him out because they saw that he was 'smart, but not as smart as he thought he was'. This would basically be 'face value'

#2 - partial reality. Avi and Zach (the fat guy) were not real, just parts of his personality. They were 'part of him', they even were the same person. Additionally, there is Mr Gold. This is the persona that Jake had built up at some point. Possibly before going to jail, where his organization picked up the slack and created an absentee menace. This may even have gone beyond his control. My belief is that Sorter was actually in the employ of Mr Gold. He missed because he was paid to miss. He was there to preserve the life of Macha so as to execute a perfect revenge that cut far deeper than a mere bullet. Note that he only steps in to protect Jake and Jake's family and to preserve Macha.

This is the violent part of Jake's personality. Macha was the enemy, but Jake's purpose was not to drive him insane, but to genuinely apologize and make amends... although rather than giving the money and drugs straight back to him, he donated it to a good cause instead. Jake was seeking resolution, possibly even absolution... to put away the old violent ways... peace.

In this case, Macha was basically representing what Jake viewed as his own future. Paranoid and corrupt. Craving fear in others, but really just plain afraid and wracked with guilt.

In essence, Jake wanted to be free of the prison he had created for himself, which was an unfulfilled life, built on the suffering of others. As Avi said, "You are still in prison." Indicating that Avi and Zach were trying to free him of the real prison - created by his illicit past.

This is likely the scenario that the average movie-goer is supposed to arrive at, but as seen above, it leaves lots of gaps and inconsistencies. This is where the story starts to show some cracks and a third layer peeks through.

#3 - none of it is real. Jake is still in prison. This is even stated once by Avi and could conceivably be taken literally.

Macha is a real figure, a casino owner and the problem of the 3 Eddies did happen. But the Macha of the movie is just a projection of that Macha in Jake's past. And Jake's time outside is completely fabricated as a schizophrenic layer on top of his white reality.

Consider that Jake's life in those two years mirrors almost exactly the character of Macha in the story. But Macha represents something he dislikes about himself. Greedy, violent, domineering...

The story begins with him leaving prison and starting a new life, which is actually a prison of a different form. That new life resembles the life that Macha had and Jake wished he had. The story ends as it does because Macha kills himself and Jake achieves peace.

The man inside his head that spurs him to violence is dying and coincidentally, Macha is falling apart. Macha represents the desires that Jake has for the lifestyle offered by the ego in his head. The entire universe fabricated at the beginning with him leaving prison dissolves because it never was. He's still in that white prison cell - and I would guess that the 7 yrs vs 14 yrs is a fabrication. That's not how prisons work. You don't get a room all to yourself simply because you choose to. Prisons couldn't afford to work that way. Hence, the choice he was given was to follow the path of his ego and be violent, thus ending up in Solitary, as a punishment. But not 7 years. That might simply be how long he has been in solitary before the 'early release' that is fabricated for this story.

#4 - There's a 4th variation which is that Jake Green himself doesn't exist at all, but all of this is happening inside Macha's head. Jake's dark side is the Ego, which attempts to achieve long-term benefits in a twisted and violent way. But the Jake of the story is actually a Super-Ego. The balance of a guilty conscience that just keeps getting stronger as Macha's grip on reality gets weaker. Ending with suicide.

This is the most unlikely of my ideas, but I still think it's a fun one to roll around in the brain... The first 3 are all equally legitimate possibilities to me though, and I like the idea of the movie being ambiguous.

*

You really get the sense that the idea of 'making you feel stupid' in an effort to trick you is coming through the 4th wall in the final chess scene. Jake is figuring out how he had been played in the chess game, but the perspective is unusual and feels much more immersive than other games. Everything up to that point could have been a deception, but Jake's struggle is determining which players are real. And his inability to do so is reflected upon us as viewers.

I liked it open-ended and I liked it overall.