MovieChat Forums > Flawless (2008) Discussion > What happened here...?

What happened here...?

posted 15 years ago by rachelg1995
5 replies | jump to latest

I'm pretty Quinn and Hobbs could've been caught. When Finch took Quinn into the office to question Hobbs on his cleaning night, Finch pressed some machine that I thought to be a recording device. I also thought it being a lie-detecter, but I don't think they were invented in the 60's, and Finch would've constantly looked at it to check any activity. I'm pretty convinced it's a recorder.
When Finch is pulled out of his office, and Quinn tells Finch to stop the heist - isn't the recorder still recording? Did I miss something like Finch stopping the recorder? Wouldn't everything that Quinn and Jobbs exchanged between themselves be recorded on the active recorder?

:/
I was thinking about it during the movie, and was surprised that's not how they caught the two.

[–] 15 years ago

[deleted]

[–] drewbacca777 15 years ago

I just watched the movie last night and Finch did turn off the visible recorder on the table, but I thought that he had a hidden one somewhere in that office and it was a setup. Too bad, Finch was just too stupid to catch what was right under his nose.

BOYCOTT SHAMPOO! DEMAND REAL POO!

[–] mcgallagher_8 15 years ago

Yea I remember thinking how stupid they were to be talking about the heist when Finch stepped out of the room. He could have had a recorder hidden or even if he had walked back in the room and found them standing together having an intense discussion it would have been a give away.

The whole arrangement of meeting at dog races, pubs, movie theatres seemed odd. Once the initial contact had been made they could have met in a dark laneway away from anyone, surely not being associated with each other was going to be an essential key to success.

[–] sschind 14 years ago

They weren't seasoned criminals. Hobbs did seem to have it figured out and he did say something to the effect that it was dangerous to meet like this ( I think it was in the diner after the heist) Quinn on the other hand was reacting to something she never expected and I am sure it was never her intention to have ALL the diamonds stolen. Besides, criminals do stupid things all the time and sometimes they do get caught.

[–] jshoaf 14 years ago

I think we are meant to notice the contrast between the classy big yellow 1960 recorder, which is reel-to-reel and probably state of the art in terms of smallness, and the little iPod type recorder being used "now". Certainly there could have been a hidden recorder, but it would have had to be hidden in a drawer or cabinet. (Cf. the Prisoner episode "Chimes of Big Ben" in which the hero discovers a hidden reel-to-reel player--that's 7 or 8 years later and supposed to be futuristic, and the machine is quite large.) Since Hobbs was in the room before Finch entered it, Finch would have had to start the hidden player quite a while before he went to get Quinn. And he did not expect to be called away, leaving the two of them alone.

As for Quinn being oblivious to the risks of speaking to Hobbs in the room--yeah, she is ignoring the danger. But she is confused and the whole thing feels out of control to her. She expects that she and Hobbs will be discovered anyway--the key is for her to find out where the diamonds are so that she can use them to negotiate staying out of jail.

On the third hand, Finch ends up letting Quinn go even when she is close to confessing to him. Before the interview with Hobbs, Finch tells her he wants her opinion about whether Hobbs is lying. Obviously he is looking for signs of collusion or hoping her presence wills hake Hobbs, but he really doesn't want to know how deep she is in the whole thing. He likes her.