MovieChat Forums > Control (2005) Discussion > Two things that bothered me (Spoilers)

Two things that bothered me (Spoilers)

posted 19 years ago by equalizer5150
17 replies | jump to latest

***SPOILERS***

Knowing a little about drug trials, it is hard to believe that the Dr. wouldn't know if he was in the control group since this was such a huge deal. They even said he was the first to take the drug and then we hear that several other humans took the drug and died? Were they all death row inmates? Why would he have been selected for the placebo? I liked the movie but I found all of that hard to swallow although it was the key to the movie's point.

The other problem I had was the ending. I thought it would have been nice if he got away at the end rather than shot dead. It would have kept us wondering, been less tragic and set it up for a sequel. It was almost as though the realization that he changed without drugs was supposed to be the real ending shocker and the last scene was simply a way to end the movie.

Other than those two points, I thought it was a great movie. I give it 7 out of 10 imdb stars.

[–] LindaGrant 19 years ago

Only one thing really bothered me-- The age difference between Ray Liotta and Michelle Rodriguez.

[–] xabsolut_heatherx 18 years ago

i'm twenty-one and i think he's still pretty attractive. not kidding, lol--he is!

[–] qweenkelli 18 years ago

I agree there wasn't enough character building on Michelle Rodriguez's behalf to justify a strange attraction to someone twice her age or more. I think Ray Liotta's a hottie too and I'm 27 but I see attractive older men all the time and don't think about starting a relationship with them. It seemed weird. Her behavior in the movie made her seem more like a teenager, but, that's just my opinion.

I didn't like how they shot him dead either. I don't think that added anything and the movie would have been more interesting had he gotten away. Then they could have followed up with Joe Monroe rather than Copeland's wife at her "youth center". Who cares about that? Her character was completely undeveloped in the plot so are we to care whether or not her and Dafoe are back together or if he helped her open the youth center or not. Whatever the story, it ended on a really sour note for me.

I also don't see how Copeland's character would have treated "Joe Monroe" differently had he known he was in the control group. I could see there being little differences but aren't we to believe that Copeland is experienced and intelligent enough to handle this situation. It also seemed like they rushed Joe Monroe's "treatment", especially being in the control group but there was not a very vivd timeline to follow so I could be wrong.

And as the movie starts, you get the impression that Ray Liotta is a total dirtbag. Yeah you get the background and everything but we still are led to believe he's a total sicko. Then we come to find out that he killed a couple of drug pushers and shot some innocent guy. I was expecting serial killer, Not street thug. I guess they had to "nicen him up" so we could feel affected when he was gunned down at the end.

I had a lot of gripes about this movie but still managed to enjoy it laying around on my day off. I love Willem Dafoe, even in a role that I would describe as, "not his best".

~Unscarred by trials...

[–] Burnsider 18 years ago

All scientists would agree that the most unbiased clinical trial is one which is double-blind where neither the patient nor the doctor know who is receiving the placebo and who is receiving the actual drug. That's the only way they can be certain that the effect is coming from the drug instead of the patient-doctor interaction (as the doctor notes in the movie). And what if the doctor hears that he's giving a placebo (which is not working) while the doctors giving the actual drug are successfully treating the disease. Wouldn't you, as the doctor, be tempted to do things differently (perhaps even stealing some of the actual drug - all of a sudden, there is no difference between placebo and actual drug (since what researchers think is placebo has been substituted with the real thing) - the drug trial is discontinued and the drug is never used again - patients die - the end).

[–] Charles-31 13 years ago

I could buy the idea that he was in the control group and that the doctor would not know, but no study manager would release a convicted murderer sociopath onto society who was only given a placebo that could not possibly have any more than a placebo effect. That was a glaring plot hole.

[–] ikarinokami 13 years ago

all studies are double blind. no one in the study knows who gets what. it is the only way to protect the intergety of the study.

[–] iloveb55555 18 years ago

What was up with the youth center thing at the end. I think it is fair to say RANDOM!

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 18 years ago

And god hates you as well. Idiot.

[–] albee07 18 years ago

anmdrew-boeck, ur an a**hole dude! she was just stating her opinion and you running your damn mouth calling somebody stupid. you the damn moron.

[–] PhantomsDisciple 18 years ago

Goddamn ppl! A little hostile there!!

[–] GaelinW 18 years ago

What was up with the youth center thing at the end. I think it is fair to say RANDOM!

Actually, I don't think it was random at all. A plot point that probably should have been strengthened, yes. But not so random.

I think part of the point of the plot was to show that Liotta's character (sorry, I don't remember the names) could have/would have been helped by a better childhood. He may not have ended up a killer on death row if he had gotten some sort of therapy as a kid after the murder of his mother instead of being moved from one abusive situation to another.

Maybe part of the placebo effect was that he finally had a chance to relive his mother's murder and talk about it some. Since it was probably the greatest source of his "rage."

And the idea of the youth center was both related to the ex wife wanting to open it and the idea of helping kids with problems.

Google is your friend.

[–] PhantomsDisciple 18 years ago

To me, endings that leave me uneasy or upset, such as the death of the two lovers in Romeo and Juliet, the sinking of the Titanic, the death of Donnie Darko, The southern Belle losing her gentleman in Gone With the Wind, the death of Wilbur's friend in CHarlotte's Web, make the best movies. They leave me with that sense of "it could ave been like this... what if this would have happened instead?" and therefore keeps me thinking an talking about the movie, which in essence, is what the cast and crew want!
I find it also strangely satisfying in the fact that life isnt a walk in the rosepark and movies that end "happily ever after," as Pretty Woman, or The Butcher's Wife, or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, are truly unrealistic and leave me saying "that would never happen, that's so dumb!" And while sometimes a nice romance or fantasy where everything is peachy keen is a nice escape from the world, I can't help but still think in the back of my mind "How unrealistic... so what's for dinner?"

Summary: "unhappy" endings are realistic and leave us thinking and debating about the movie instead of readily forgetting it with a happy sigh.

[–] Phroggy 18 years ago

Well, too rosy endings have a tendency to depress me more than anything. Because there scarcely is something we experience in real life, right ? i'd rather go for something along the line of "life goes on".
Decent movie, but apart from a few plot points, I thought the direction was kinda pedestrian…

[–] youaresquishy 13 years ago

equalizer5150 writes:

***SPOILERS***

Knowing a little about drug trials, it is hard to believe that the Dr. wouldn't know if he was in the control group since this was such a huge deal. They even said he was the first to take the drug and then we hear that several other humans took the drug and died? Were they all death row inmates? Why would he have been selected for the placebo? I liked the movie but I found all of that hard to swallow although it was the key to the movie's point.

In part, this point is not a good one. There is nothing slightly odd about the doctor in this situation not knowing that Ray Liotta's character got the placebo. In fact, there would actually be something odd about it if he did know. The double-blind study is very common and is very widely considered the best way to do studies in which placebos are involved. It's called "double blind" because not only are the subjects of the experiment in the dark as to which of them have taken the placebo and which have taken the drug, but the people interacting with the subjects, giving them the drugs, etc., are also in the dark. This way, there is no chance that the people interacting with the subjects can in any way give any kind of conscious or unconscious hints to the subjects as to which of them are getting the placebos.

Also, in such studies, generally speaking the groups are sorted randomly, so there is no real answer to the question of why Ray Liotta's character would be selected to be in the group that got the placebos--it would have just been random.

The director and/or writer may have set it up "wrong," though. In other words, maybe it counts as a flaw that they didn't explain that this was a small part of a double-blind study with placebos from the beginning. I'm not sure. I guess they wanted to not do that so that there'd be a big twist in the end, but it's arguably an example of what I would call an unfair manipulation.

[–] hardwood53 13 years ago

Double blind studies have been explained in quite a bit of media over the last couple of decades. So it may have something to do with what percentage of the audience they believe would already know something. There are a lot of viewers who resent having too much explained to them.

[–] Mehki_Girl 12 years ago

It may have be a "double-blind" experiment in which the researcher doesn't know who is getting the placebo and the doctor is right, whether he wants to or not, he would have treated him differently (for example, I don't think he would have trusted him so much and believed in him and think that was very important for the change that took place.

Someone say the only thing that bothered them was the age difference and that bothered me, too.