MovieChat Forums > Extracted (2013) Discussion > The Father? (Spoilers)

The Father? (Spoilers)

posted 11 years ago by amkatz
8 replies | jump to latest

Overall I liked the movie; enjoyed what they did with a small budget. Also thought it worthwhile for them to stress that we can see things in our memories that never happened if we're sufficiently convinced of their truth.

Thought the father "setting up" his son so he'd do time & get clean was a bit of stretch, because if the son was incoherent & then amnesiac about what really happened, how could the father know the girl killed herself & that his son could be set up for it?

E.g., did the cops get to him in time to determine whether or not he'd even fired a weapon that night? Even if not, her hands would have shown plainly that she fired a weapon, thus making suicide the likely verdict.

I understand the desire to keep the cast numbers small--there is a small army of individuals in between an arrest, trial & conviction--but the writers might have clarified what the machine was supposed to do, & for whom. The authorities are represented as department of corrections, which doesn't investigate homicides. Might have made sense to call their leading an ADA, but then, again, why? The information they garner wouldn't be admissible in court; the defendant had no representation of his own present. Even if it was just for their own information, since they had rather cavalierly decided the death was a homicide, how could they just let him walk away should the test have shown it as it really happened, the first time.

Some of that's small potatoes against an otherwise entertaining & mildly thought-provoking effort.

[–] sioul_p 9 years ago

the father didnt need to know the details. all he did was send a tip so that the cops would have a suspicion

[–] emvan 9 years ago

Anthony told his Dad that he'd seen his girlfriend commit suicide, but then blacked that out as well as what happened. I buy that his Dad set him up take the fall and get clean in prison; it's implied that he himself had done that.

You're naive if you think that the criminal justice system wouldn't prosecute Anthony in those circumstances even if it looked like a suicide. So he wiped any gunshot residue from his hands, and he put the gun in her hand to make it look like a suicide. They're not going to spend an ounce of effort to consider a different scenario.

If the test had exonerated Anthony, nothing would have happened. Oops, sorry, kid, did we forget to say this wouldn't be remotely admissible in court? Guess we did.

It's impossible to be too cynical about the way the criminal justice system actually works. Many prosecutors have no actual interest in justice: they're just after convictions, period. That often means convincing themselves that everyone accused is guilty, regardless of what the evidence shows.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

[–] mel2000 9 years ago

I don't understand why Anthony would handle the gun after the girl killed herself. Seems like a plot contrivance to force his connection to a murder.

[–] emvan 9 years ago

You don't need plot contrivances in this country to convict innocent people.

Anthony didn't touch the gun. The only prints on the gun were the girl's. The prosecution says, of course, he wiped his own prints off the gun and then put it in the girl's hand to make it look like a suicide.

In our criminal justice system, the job of the prosecution is not to determine the truth. It is to convict the accused, regardless of what the evidence suggests.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

[–] mel2000 9 years ago

For some reason I overlooked the fingerprint wipe theory from your original post. Although I realize that innocents occasionally get convicted, I'm not so sure that the fingerprint wipe theory alone would work without the addition of more compelling evidence, especially if his lawyer were decent.

[–] emvan 9 years ago

Guys in his socioeconomic position essentially never have lawyers as good as the prosecutors. I've been involved (as the star defense witness) in a conviction that was overturned on appeal (because the judge had thrown out my testimony on a technicality that fell preposterously far short of the criteria for doing so), so I'm speaking here from some personal experience with the system. Including the cop who was testifying in another case who confided "nobody who has personal experience with this system believes it works."

I should mention that in that case, when the prosecution was confronted by evidence that completely contradicted the key assertion of the complaining witness's initial statement to police (in the defendant's favor, of course), they just rolled with it. She ended up contradicting almost everything in her initial statement. Even after my testimony was tossed, I don't think they would have gotten a conviction if the D.A. hadn't lied to the jury in his closing statement (gambling correctly that the inexperienced defense attorney would not object).

Note that in the film, because of his blackout, he couldn't testify that he knew he didn't kill her. That's actually a really easy case for the prosecution to win. Juries really don't understand reasonable doubt.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

[–] gothic_a666 9 years ago

Wait, wasn't the gun found with his prints on?

[–] mel2000 9 years ago

I haven't seen the video in a while and no longer have access to it. But why would his fingerprints be on the gun of someone who committed suicide with it?