MovieChat Forums > A Little Trip to Heaven (2005) Discussion > Please Explain The Plot. Thanks

Please Explain The Plot. Thanks


Hi! I saw this movie, half asleep at around 3 AM on TV. Half way through, I found it interesting but I had missed on the plot completely and could not understand the last segment, especially the parts where Forest Whitaker seems to manipulate the records, the climax car crash...

I would be thankful if someone could explain the movie to me. I am trying to get a DVD so I see it again but so far, I have been unsucessfull. Besides,I couldnt find any spoilers on the net so, please help. Anyway, the music, the sombre mood and the photography were amazing amd the 3 leads were great?

thanks

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If you didnt see it from the begining then yes it doesnt make much sense. I recommend watching it and the plot becomes very clear. I just found this movie at hollywood video and watched it for the first time tonight. So I would think that any chain movie rental place would carry it.

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An insurance investigator (Whitaker) smells a rat in a fatal car crash involving a million dollar life insurance policy. What he uncovers is a devious brother (Jeremy Renner) and sister (Styles) who have prepetrated various insurance frauds. This is the first one involving a death, as I recall, although I was unclear about how the sister's husband died. In the end, Whitaker personally makes sure the sister gets the money and the brother, a true reprobate and murderer, goes to the Big House in the Sky. Peter Coyote has a small role as Whitaker's supervisor. The film is foreign, but stars mostly Americans.

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She never had a husband. They used a dead man's name (the tombstone confirms) and forged the marriage license (Isold mentions near the end) in an earlier scam, which came in hand when he took the opportunity to run this insurance fraud scam.

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Um, I haven't seen this movie, but I thought Jeremy Renner played her husband? Or at least it said so on the Australian review of the film?!

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Two good old boys in a fire-apple red convertible. Stoned. Ripped. Twisted. Good people.

OK, TECHNICALLY, his character was that of her husband, but plot-wise, there was no husband. Watch the movie, it's not bad.

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Hehe I'm confused lol... I'm going to have to order it from overseas, but does Jeremy Renner's character die in it? Is there really any use if he dies? lol.

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Hehe, well I guess I can spoil it for you if you really want me to.

Basically Renner and Stiles are brother and sister, who are old hands at the con game. This is another of their cons involving the faking of Stiles' brother's death (Renner). When a claims adjuster shows up to investigate, he immediately gets the suspicion that Renner the husband, is actually Renner the brother, so he investigates the name Jeremy Renner is using (the husband's name). Later in the movie, he finds the grave of the supposed husband, who died earlier due to illness i think it was. So he knows that there was no husband, Stiles' husband is actually her brother, pretending to be her husband so they can share in the insurance money for faking his own death. :)


Something tells me I've confused you more!

lol Hope this helps

Two good old boys in a fire-apple red convertible. Stoned. Ripped. Twisted. Good people.

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Thanks for helping me out, lol!
Oh, right... So with the plot, they try to get you confused into thinking they are husband and wife, when they are actually brother and sister?!
Lol, it sounds very interesting, I will have to buy it then. :)

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Okay ... can someone explain where Thor came from, and why did they constantly have a "tug-o-war" over who got to keep him? Was Renner afraid Stiles would leave if she got Thor alone, or was Stiles afraid Renner would abuse Thor in some way, if she left him with Renner? I must admit, it was kinda hard to follow, sometimes, at 2:30 a.m., LoL!

" ... and charge him with what? ... possession of a condiment ?!?"

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Lol, well Thor is originally Renner's characters child, but she "ran off years ago". The tug-of-war thing between them is that I guess Stile's character wants Thor to be safe, and thinks that she has rightful ownership of him (which she does as Kelvin is "dead" according to his files) and she is next in kin to have him.

Hope that helps lol

I'm livin' for givin' the devil his due, and I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for you

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Yea, Thor is Kelvin's son and Isolde's nephew. I think Stiles (Isolde) was also afraid to leave Thor with Kelvin out of fear of what scams he might try to pull with the little dude. Kelvin knows Thor is what keeps Isolde in the game so uses him as a pawn. Isolde just wants Thor to be safe.

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Well I thought that they were brother and sister. Thor was Jeremy's kid with some woman who was long gone. They were from a town over or something so no one really knew them until they lived there as a husband wife and son. The original scheme they concocted to get money was when they drove off the road and landed in the water. They got out and she broke his leg on purpose. At some point in the movie Forest said something about how much a broken leg gets you.

So they got that money but I guess it wasn't enough. By running that scheme she "got" Thor because now she was officially his mother/Jeremy's wife. But it was only on paper. So when they crashed she got that scar. So the scar reminds her of how she "got" Thor. By that other con. Otherwise she was just Thor's aunt and she had no right to him. As long as Jeremy didn't want to tell the truth and get himself in trouble as well as her she had as much right to Thor as he did.

It's really confusing. I thought about it alot and that's all I could come up with. That had to be a really long con where absolutely everything went right.

TOTES MAGOTES!

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They never really expanded on where Thor came from in terms of who his father was. I believe that Thor represented a second chance for Stiles, in that she wanted to make sure he was safe and sound, unlike her own childhood. Her brother, Renner, knew he was the only thing keeping Stiles around, for his scams. She had long since decided that she no longer wanted to be a part of these things, yet Renner seemed to believe he needed her to successfully pull of this final scam. (That being his supposed death and the 1 million dollar payout). He knew if she left, he would be found out, and he uses Thor to keep her in line. She could not muster the strength to leave him, which relates to the fact that Stiles and Renner seemed like they had raised themselves from a young age.



Two good old boys in a fire-apple red convertible. Stoned. Ripped. Twisted. Good people.

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Aww, but he was cutting the little boy a sandwich, how nice can you get? I don't think he'd have hurt him...

I'm livin' for givin' the devil his due, and I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning for you

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Thanks to all who answered my question! I think Stiles was trying to redeem herself, somewhat, by making sure he was okay, also! It WAS a screwed up family dynamic, tho'!

" ... and charge him with what? ... possession of a condiment ?!?"

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Look at Thor again. She had him with her brother(incest).You can see he is not normal and looks inbred. She says to the insurance inspector at one place that she loves thor but does not like the way she had him.

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I think you're right.

I was one of the people who caught this movie at 2 something in the morning a few weeks back. I set my DVR to record it so I could watch it from the beginning. When you mentioned what Stiles said to the inspector, I thought "hmm I don't remember that part." I'm watching the movie and now and that scene came on a minute later.

I think it was incest.

And there was a scene where Stiles was in the tub. Renner is banging on the door. When she emerges in her bathroom, he stands eerily close to her, barely letting her pass. Threating yes, but some strong sexual overtones.

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Actually she says that she was "ashamed by how she GOT him". 'Had him' and 'got him' actually makes a pretty big difference when it comes to this situation.

I'm not ruling it out, but I'm more of the belief that she is not Thor's mother.

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She's talking about the scars by her eye when she's talking about being ashamed of how she "got them"

In the 1st place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards.
-Mark Twain

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Isolde said she was ashamed of the waY she got THE SCARS! She was talking about the scar next to her eyebrow, not THOR! Jesus Christ!

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Isolde said she was ashamed of the waY she got THE SCARS! She was talking about the scar next to her eyebrow, not THOR! Jesus Christ!


^ This. Seriously, some of you ppl need to listen to the damn conversation closer or put it on closed captioning!

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Now that is bull.... Kelvin (Jeremy Renner) is his father and Isold is his aunt. But since Kelvin pretends to be Fred McBride, and Kelvin is actually dead (as they faked his death in the car accident), Isold has the right to keep him as she's the only family left. There's no incest. They don't have the child together.

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I think they expanded quite clearly on who the father was. Just finished watching it, credits scrolling as I write. Near the end, in the motel room, they make it clear that Thor is HIS son, which makes him the aunt (not some incest mother, otherwise she'd say "he's mine too").

He said "where are you taking my son?"
She said "your son? you mean Kelvin's son, he's dead and I'm his sister, next of kin"

She just wants Thor because she knows she can provide a better life for the boy than his con-artist dad.

But, one question I'm not clear about. The picture she put in the safety deposit box had a small boy and girl in it. I guess it must be Isold and her brother, but originally it made me think that it was Thor and perhaps her dead daughter or something. Guess it must be my first guess.

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6/10 for Julia Stiles alone. Hehe.

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Having just watched it without any prior knowledge, I wanted to look up a few things to help me out with the plot and the characters. hile I'm still confused about some aspects (Frederick's death), I suppose Renner's character is more afraid of Isolde (spelling?) leaving him with the boy Thor, hence his attempts to block their way pretty early into the movie. She is worried about leaving the boy with Renner, but whether that's because of suspected abuse, I'm not sure. At the beginning of the film I thought Thor had a black eye,which seems to be gone next day, but then everybody has some injury - is there a natural cause to Stiles bleeding at the beginning or was she somehow abused by her brother/husband???

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I was actually wondering about the abuse thing myself...i did notice Thor's eyes at one point and how Fred/Kelvin threatens Isolde with a knife, like hes dont it before...and even the way he looks at her when she comes out of the bathroom when he bangs on the door...


You dont see many brothers abusing sisters in movies especially when they're older like that...im still not sure...



"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means".

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I think Isolde thought that if Renner was capable of murder, he was certainly also capable of killing his own son for insurance proceeds. That's what I'd be worried about - I'd take the kid and run/hide.

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Through most of the film, I thought Thor was Stiles' child (possibly from an incestuous relationship with her brother, Renner). At one point Whitaker tells Stiles something like, "You don't have to be embarrassed", and she replies with something like, "I'm not - I'm just (?)ashamed of how I got him (Thor)".

Then, near the end of the film, Renner and Whitaker have a discussion where Renner states Stiles isn't really Thor's mother, that the real mother (?)left long ago, and Whitaker says, "I know - but she's his mother".

So, I left the movie thinking that maybe Thor was Renner's son from some previous relationship that Stiles "adopted" after that woman got the heck out of Dodge.

As for the tug of war motive, I think you got it right - he knew Stiles would leave if she could get Thor alone, and she knew Renner had such a terrible character that it would be disastrous to leave a child alone with him.

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I wouldn't buy it, they've started showing it on TV.

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thanks guys your explanations helped me a lot! :)

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Well, almost 2 years after I started this thread, I did recently get to see the movie again and this time, from the beginning. The plot is actually very basic but hats off to the team behind for making it so interesting. And for folks, who are still confused, twitter me and I'll spoil it for you!

cheers

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