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Kinsayder's Replies
The IMDb list is a measure of popularity, not quality. It’s like when the public are polled on their favorite food. The top voted answer isn’t some elaborate meal prepared by a Michelin starred chef. It’s a burger served in cardboard.
Shawshank is the MacDonalds of movies. It’s old fashioned (in a good way), easily accessible, appeals to all ages, races and genders, and leaves you feeling satisfied with a warm feeling inside.
No-one with any experience of movies beyond the Hollywood mainstream is going to consider it one of the greatest ever made, but it is the most popular (with IMDb voters), so yes, it deserves its place at the top of their poll.
It wouldn't be a Mission Impossible movie without the frenzied publicity about Tom Cruise doing his own stunts and nearly dying.
I remember enjoying the movie when I first saw it many years ago, but watching it again recently with a more critical eye I was struck by the carelessness of the writing and direction. OP highlights a few of these defects but there are many others.
The problem is that writer director Henri Verneuil seems out of his depth with this sort of material. I love conspiracy thrillers but this one feels like hackwork. Perhaps in the hands of Costa-Gavras it could have been the masterpiece that some people are mistaking it for.
It's also ridiculous that he's trying to be inconspicuous by wearing a surgical mask in an elevator. Then two nurses get in and they don't even comment on it.
There was probably just that one cog with the maker's signature that was real. The movie plays with the idea that in every forgery there's a tiny part that's genuine.
The automaton is literally a plot device. It symbolizes and facilitates the intricate scheme of the plotters against Virgil, as well as moving forward the plot of the movie itself, tying together its themes of deception, manipulation, art, forgery and truth.
OK, so if the repair shop was "just a temporary setup, a fake", how was Robert able to gain Virgil's confidence so completely that the gang could be sure that Virgil would take the stolen automaton parts there and then ask Robert for relationship advice?
The whole automaton/Robert/repair shop aspect of the plot seemed both implausible and unnecessary (except to add intrigue to the movie). Billy, fake Claire and Fred (the caretaker) could have organised the seduction and scam on their own.
"Virgil is the male variant of Virgin"
No it isn't. The male variant of virgin is virgin. The name Virgil derives from the Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro (who wrote about a famous deception, the Trojan Horse).