Just wondering, in the first convenience store scene where Les takes down the guy who pulled out a gun. Was there really a gun or was that part of Les' imagination?
Anyways, amazing movie, made me both laugh hysterically and cry, which is a rare feat.
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Even a blind squirrel gets a nut sometimes.
I come from a future that will no longer exist.
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I'm not so sure. Parts of the movie are shown from his point of view while on the medication, so he can fly, walk through walls, stop crime, make his nemesis turn invisible. Other parts are shown from the point of view of everyone else, like when he runs into the wall at the police station. It's hard to say what really happened and what didn't.
Remember that the reactions from others can be misinterpreted to support the notion that his powers are real. Like the doctor at the beginning, Les believes he's floating but the doctor just saw him slam down on the floor on his chest. Or his friends who watch him slam into a wall head-first. They all reacted like "Wow I have never seen anyone do THAT before!"
After the purse-snatching scene, you don't really see the two brothers acknowledge the lady, nor do they mention her specifically (I think, I'll have to re-watch it). One talks about how he could have hurt himself from jumping off that roof, but that's about it. There's no telling if that lady actually existed.
And the news reports all say that a strange man is running around tackling innocent people, what if the "gunman" was one of the first to get tackled? Les thought all of them were criminals, it's possible the gun wasn't there. The only one who can say for sure is the checkout girl, and we don't have time to wait for her to explain it.
In the end, it's all your interpretation. The doctor was real, the pills were real, and the suits were real. Everything that happened to Les in the middle is subject to debate.
I just saw it a few mins ago, and the brothers DO acknowledge the lady and her purse. When they're walking up the stairwell, the younger one says something like "C'mon, how else could he have done that?", implying he has powers and did save the ladies purse. But like you said, what was subjective vs objective in what we saw?
"Look, it's not that i'm lazy, it's that I just don't care..." - Peter Gibbons
way I see it is this
he crazy. But he was hanging around bad areas of town, in the dead of night, looking for trouble
is possible he might run into an actual crime every now and then. Which brings up the danger of it all. He not paying attention all the time to the real threats
Like the suits were dangerous, but not for the reason he think they were.
So he didnt know they WERENT invisible, so he could fight them
Basicly fantasy dangers, vs real world danger
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"Although, I just saw it a few mins ago, and the brothers DO acknowledge the lady and her purse. When they're walking up the stairwell, the younger one says something like "C'mon, how else could he have done that?", implying he has powers and did save the ladies purse. But like you said, what was subjective vs objective in what we saw?"
I don't think they actually acknowledged **that woman** and the purse incident; they could have just been talking about Les getting up on the roof so very quickly. I think it's left deliberately ambiguous.
wrong
Yes, he did.
The director was a guest at my campus' film series program, and during a Q and A he said that the guy did have a gun, though he can understand why people would think otherwise.
wow great answer snes4u. very helpful.
personally i dont think he did have a gun. When Les came back in there to talk to the clerk about what happened, I think her reaction was a combination of not being able to speak due to the speech impediment and her wondering what the hell is wrong with this guy?
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No, that's why the cop at the police station said that there was a crazy man jumping "innocent" people. I doubt he'd have said that if the dude really did have a gun.
shareWell, that only refers to the first of at LEAST 4 tackles by Les on "suspects". The way I see it, the initial guy was definitely acting erratically and probably didn't march up to the counter to ask for a pack of gum. Les saw it coming (who wouldn't, really?) and stops the robbery and flush with his success decides to pre-empt future robberies by taking down anyone looking remotely suspicious. The news only covered the innocent tackles since what makes for a better story: someone foiling a grocery store robbery or some wacko tackling people for no apparent reason?
sharekeep in mind, he wasn't in costume when he jumped the armed robber. He was convinced that his supper powers gave him an edge after tackling the robber, and that's why he made the suit and started looking for crime. All of the videos shown of him on the news had him in the white suit, and they describe him as wearing a white leather suit.
The part that confuses me is where he tackles the purse snatcher. In order to do what they show, he would have pretty much had to been able to teliport, and the younger brother acts as if he really did show real powers. On the other hand, the older brother acts like it's all in his mind.
I don't think there was an armed robber. He just jumped on the ground, like he did in the doctor's office. The cashier was really tripping when she saw him again, nobody called the police about an attempted robbery, other people in the store just stopped and stared. The robber grabbed the gun on the floor, and clearly was in control, yet chose to flee instead of shooting anyone or following through by taking the money. No evidence he was there, no tape. It was an odd moment, but nobody acted as if there had just been a dangerous and violent attempt pulling a gun up in the face of the cashier.
Also, the purse snatcher was the same guy as the armed robber. The woman took her purse back, didn't ask if he was all right, didn't call the police, just disappeared. Also, just in his mind, as you say.
Anyway, I was disappointed in this movie and didn't see any resolution at the end. He didn't seem any closer to meaning in his life, didn't have a job, didn't have a handle on his depression, certainly wouldn't be dating the cashier he was crushing on. Like they ran out of film or something. Oh well, there is always another movie up next.;-) Cheers.
I think I would have been more interested in the movie if I was either more "in doubt" about whether or not he had powers, or if I cared about Les at all. But since we basically know right off the guy's delusional (the second time he sees the doctor, he tries to show the doctor that he can fly, but we're shown that Les just did a faceplant on the ground), and we're given no reason to care about Les (c'mon, give us a pining for love, a lost daughter, ANYTHING, but no, they just have this guy who's not happy, but not unhappy, just blah-zay about everything). When Les was showing his stoned friends his ability to run through the wall, was there ANYBODY who had to wait for the scene in the cop shop to know that he really CAN'T walk through walls? To me this movie could have been made VERY interesting - the filmmakers certainly were NOT going for your run of the mill comedy, rom-com, superhero movie, or anything like that (despite all of the advertising claiming this was an "Uproarious comedy" and whatnot). It was definitly supposed to be a character study, a movie about one guy that has these problems, has a reaction to the pill, and go from there, but in my mind the movie went nowhere. I mean, can ANYBODY explain what the last scene meant (where the last "suit" is sitting in the car after hitting Les twice, decides not to hit him a third time, and Les just walks away)??
Maybe it's because I had such EXTREMELY high expectations for this film, but the final product really let me down.
"OK! Let's go make some LSD!" - Fringe
-ak