MovieChat Forums > Talhotblond (2009) Discussion > The 'Pshychologist'

The 'Pshychologist'

posted 13 years ago by blackhands
4 replies | jump to latest

Ruined the film. It is easy to play psych doctor with hindsight - all that he was doing was narrating one-step ahead with poor analogies and metaphors and often getting himself mixed up and straight wrong.

for eg. Montgomery says after the killing 'I couldn't let an 18-year old get the better of me'. The psychologist analyses this as Montgomery taking up the personality of a young marine sniper and eliminating his 'competition' (*eye roll*) when it is obvious that by referring to the victim as being 'younger' he is referring to him as the older, real, Montgomery.

I thought about it afterwards, he is everything that is wrong about this film. Take him out of it and replace it with an inter-woven story narrated by family members, the victim, friends (why was nobody else from the factory interviewed?) and you have a great film.

[–] quirkyrecords 12 years ago

well said.

a great documentary takes an interesting story like this and finds a way to make an interesting narrative for a film or tells the story using the people involved or the lawyers in the case.

adding a 3rd party expert who isnt involved in the case for his opinion just makes it look like another american daily news piece. everything the psychologist says makes perfect sense, but his analysis is with hindsight - the bit about the young sniper coming through i could work that out.

what they do to make it look more useful is to put his comments before the viewer finds out what happened and then, hey presto!, the psychologist looks like he has predicted the behaviour and analysed everything perfectly.

it stank of bad documentary making - too much text on screen, cheesy talking heads and the whole final third was badly put together.

as for the sunset boulevard style voice over - it was pure desperation to find an interesting hook by a weak director/writer. it just doesnt make sense or work.

they made "brian" say how he was feeling, they made it look like he is still watching over the events, they made him comment on things that is pure speculation and things he didnt even tell his parents. they put words into the mouth of a dead kid. shameful.

[–] MissHoneybee 12 years ago

blackhands, i totally agree-the "psychologist" seemed like a hack even when you miss the very valid point you made of your analysis of Montgomery.

Hannah:"you are soo beautiful."
Max: "it's in the genes."

[–] zodiac12 12 years ago

I thought the exact same thing. Why is he telling us what we already know? You don't need a PHD to figure out the stuff he was explaining. He was just there to break up the story.

[–] prosodic 8 years ago

He was basically a misogynistic apologist for a murderer. He was making it seem like it was all the woman's fault that Thompson was stalking on a pretend 18 yr old and then killed her friend out of jealousy. Nope. She isn't responsible for it at all. She was wrong to impersonate someone else and use her daughter. Dead wrong. But he was no better, in fact he killed a human being. I think his crimes are far worse. So why was this pseudo psychologist trying to excuse his behaviour?!