# Hazard Pay, Pt. 2 — The Weight

An episode of [Filmspotting](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/73330112), 1 Oct 2026, 1 h 17 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/d28227f8-56d8-46d9-b2c5-b3d3012db5ab/aff39917-dc16-4c9f-a402-b4d400344add/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=83c52568-54c6-438a-8751-b3d3012db5c3

There’s a lot to enjoy about The Weight: the tactile 1930s Oregon setting, strong performances from Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, a premise that allows for multiple suspense sequences. But Padraic McKinley’s directorial debut is arguably lacking in thematic heft and visceral grit, particularly when compared to the other film in this pairing. So after considering how The Weight succeeds and struggles on its own terms, we bring William Friedkin’s 1977 cult classic Sorcerer back in to consider how these two films about desperate men given a deadly opportunity differ in their approach to flawed protagonists, bridge-based action scenes, and lone female characters of consequence, and the one plot hole they have in common. Then our returning guest, Vulture critic Roxana Hadadi, offers a Your Next Picture Show recommendation for another 2026 film involving the transportation of dangerous cargo, The Rivals of Amziah King. Please share your thoughts about Sorcerer, The Weight, or anything else in the world of film, by sending an email or voice memo to comments@nextpictureshow.net, or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Next Pairing: Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime and Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success This episode is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. Use code NEXTPIC26 for 15% off. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: The Next Picture Show is presented by Regal Unlimited, the
[0:03] Speaker 1: all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just
[0:06] Speaker 1: two visits. See any standard 2D movie, anytime, with no
[0:11] Speaker 1: blackout dates or restrictions. Sign up now in the Regal
[0:14] Speaker 1: app or at the link in this episode's description and
[0:17] Speaker 1: use the code NEXTPICK26 to receive 15% off. It's very difficult.
[0:24] Speaker 2: To keep the line between the past.
[0:26] Speaker 1: And the present.
[0:27] Speaker 3: You believe that someone out of the past.
[0:30] Speaker 1: and enter and take possession of a living being. We
[0:34] Speaker 1: may be through with the past, but the past is
[0:36] Speaker 1: not through with us. Welcome back to The Next Picture Show,
[0:43] Speaker 1: a Movie of the Week podcast devoted to a classic
[0:45] Speaker 1: film and the way it shaped our thoughts on a
[0:47] Speaker 1: recent release. I'm Scott Tobias, here again with.
[0:50] Speaker 2: Tasha Robinson.
[0:51] Speaker 1: Genevieve Kosky and Keith Phipps are still on the road
[0:53] Speaker 1: this week, but we still have Vulture's Roxanna Kemp. Hadati
[0:58] Speaker 1: riding shotgun with us for this pairing. Hello again.
[1:01] Speaker 4: Hello. I actually don't have a shotgun, but it's fine.
[1:04] Speaker 4: I think we'll make it through.
[1:06] Speaker 2: Are you willing to die? Because this way we can
[1:09] Speaker 2: at least say she's our ride or die, and it
[1:11] Speaker 2: doesn't matter whether you have a shotgun or not.
[1:12] Speaker 3: That's fine.
[1:12] Speaker 4: Yeah, let's do that.
[1:14] Speaker 2: Or whether you're sitting in the shotgun seat. Yeah.
[1:16] Speaker 4: Any of these readings are fine. I am going to
[1:18] Speaker 4: knock on wood, though, just to keep things moving.
[1:21] Speaker 2: Let's all do that. It'll be pretty funny if a
[1:24] Speaker 2: year from now, when you've physically recovered from this podcast,
[1:27] Speaker 2: somebody's like, Roxanna, what is the most dangerous thing anybody's
[1:31] Speaker 2: ever asked you to do for money? You're like, let
[1:32] Speaker 2: me tell you about this podcast.
[1:33] Speaker 4: Yes, that's going to be exactly what happens.
[1:36] Speaker 1: Well, in our last episode, we discussed Sorcerer, William Friedkin's
[1:40] Speaker 1: take on the same French novel that brought us the
[1:42] Speaker 1: classic thriller The Wages of Fear. Now we turn our
[1:44] Speaker 1: attention to Podrick McKinley's The Weight, which isn't drawn from
[1:48] Speaker 1: the same source material, but nonetheless feels deeply indebted to it.
[1:52] Speaker 1: Set in the economic despair of 1930s Oregon.
[1:55] Speaker 1: The film stars Ethan Hawke as Samuel Murphy, a widower
[1:59] Speaker 1: who's just been evicted from the apartment he shares with
[2:01] Speaker 1: his young daughter. As the two are out searching for
[2:04] Speaker 1: another place to live, Murphy runs afoul of the law
[2:07] Speaker 1: and gets thrown into prison, where he's to serve out
[2:10] Speaker 1: his sentence at a labor camp. Russell Crowe stars as
[2:13] Speaker 1: the warden who makes a tempting offer. He'll grant Murphy
[2:16] Speaker 1: an early release if he and a handful of other
[2:18] Speaker 1: inmates smuggle heavy packs full of gold bars across 50
[2:22] Speaker 1: miles of wilderness. On foot... The only catch is that
[2:26] Speaker 1: the deal is off if they lose a single bar,
[2:28] Speaker 1: which would be a problem in itself if Murphy also
[2:31] Speaker 1: did not have to worry about betrayal from his crew
[2:34] Speaker 1: and potential bandits in the forest. Julia Jones is among
[2:38] Speaker 1: the co-stars as an indigenous runaway who links up with
[2:41] Speaker 1: them along the way. Easy money or mission impossible? Please
[2:45] Speaker 1: stay with us to find out. Problem shared is a
[2:48] Speaker 1: burden half, so what's the problem, son? I'm in here.
[2:54] Speaker 1: That's my problem. Got a daughter. In one month, she'll
[3:02] Speaker 1: be awarded the state and up for adoption.
[3:05] Speaker 5: Even with good time, I'm in here six more months.
[3:07] Speaker 3: I have a friend who needs a little help.
[3:13] Speaker 1: I don't trust any of these boys, but I trust you.
[3:16] Speaker 1: You do this thing, your time is done. See this?
[3:22] Speaker 3: Come on.
[3:24] Speaker 1: This gold is trouble.
[3:26] Speaker 5: There are a lot of desperate folk who think this
[3:29] Speaker 5: gold ought to belong to them. That ain't happening on
[3:31] Speaker 5: my watch. You men are going to march it across
[3:35] Speaker 5: the wilderness before anybody even notices it's gone. But if
[3:40] Speaker 5: any of it goes missing, well, then you got trouble.
[3:45] Speaker 1: Okay, the weight. So I'm curious to know what you
[3:48] Speaker 1: thought of it because we did talk about, hey, did
[3:51] Speaker 1: you see the wages of fear first, the sorcerer first?
[3:54] Speaker 1: Then we saw the weight. So I'm kind of curious
[3:56] Speaker 1: about like, were we being hard on the weight by
[3:59] Speaker 1: pairing it with these movies? I'm curious to know what
[4:01] Speaker 1: you thought of this film on its own.
[4:03] Speaker 4: Look, if you pair anything with Sorcerer, for me, usually
[4:06] Speaker 4: Sorcerer is going to win. But I really enjoyed this.
[4:09] Speaker 4: I really liked the weight. I was very entertained. I
[4:13] Speaker 4: found the cinematography and the locations and the use of
[4:19] Speaker 4: like an organ sort of rainforest setting a sort of
[4:23] Speaker 4: an interesting twist on this formula again I'm very easy
[4:28] Speaker 4: if you give me like some men who have had
[4:31] Speaker 4: hard lives going up like against an evil mine owner
[4:34] Speaker 4: and an evil prison warden like my loyalties are gonna
[4:38] Speaker 4: go a certain way like I'm just that's my hard
[4:42] Speaker 4: coding so I think it is personally I think it's
[4:46] Speaker 4: a lot more morally simplistic than sorcerer so I think
[4:50] Speaker 4: it like It didn't worm its way into me in
[4:55] Speaker 4: the same way that Sorcerer has, because I think I
[4:59] Speaker 4: feel less connected to these characters overall. But I think
[5:04] Speaker 4: for what it is, it feels like a throwback of
[5:09] Speaker 4: the kind of movie that we don't necessarily get anymore.
[5:12] Speaker 4: And that to me, it felt very tactile and physical.
[5:17] Speaker 4: And like it was saying before, something broadly about how
[5:23] Speaker 4: we live that was relevant to nearly 100 years ago,
[5:28] Speaker 4: and is also relevant to like our structures of power today.
[5:33] Speaker 4: So I really liked this. And it might also be
[5:35] Speaker 4: because I recently also saw rivals of Amziah King, and
[5:39] Speaker 4: I feel like they are like, linked together a little bit.
[5:43] Speaker 4: And they're just sort of like, where my mind is
[5:45] Speaker 4: at right now. So I am pro.
[5:47] Speaker 1: Tasha, what'd you think?
[5:49] Speaker 2: I'm kind of a sucker for any movie that to
[5:51] Speaker 2: me rings the treasure of the Sierra Madre bell. Like
[5:55] Speaker 2: the feeling of I am engaged on an endeavor with
[6:00] Speaker 2: individuals that maybe I cannot trust, but I don't know
[6:05] Speaker 2: when exactly the hammer is going to fall or from who.
[6:08] Speaker 2: I personally, there's a part of my brain that just
[6:12] Speaker 2: never stops working that's trying to outthink films. So it's just, okay,
[6:17] Speaker 2: there's going to be a surprise here where this person
[6:19] Speaker 2: is going to betray them instead. Or, oh, we think
[6:23] Speaker 2: the threat is coming from this direction, but it's definitely
[6:26] Speaker 2: a double fake out. I like movies that activate that
[6:30] Speaker 2: part of my brain and then don't necessarily give me
[6:33] Speaker 2: the most obvious answer. So I like the texture of
[6:36] Speaker 2: this movie. I think the cinematography is great, especially once
[6:39] Speaker 2: they get to the woods, which is a great big
[6:41] Speaker 2: chunk of the film. There's a lot of firelight stuff
[6:45] Speaker 2: that happens where they're sitting around a fire at night
[6:49] Speaker 2: or sleeping at night in the forest after the fire
[6:53] Speaker 2: has mostly gone out. There's a scene lit entirely by
[6:56] Speaker 2: lightning that's very memorable. Just a lot of really, really
[7:01] Speaker 2: strong imagery. I like Ethan Hawke a lot as a performer.
[7:06] Speaker 2: I do have, you know, there are moments in this
[7:09] Speaker 2: film where I find myself asking, Why is this grizzled
[7:13] Speaker 2: elderly man taking care of like maybe five or six
[7:17] Speaker 2: year old daughter? Biologically possible, certainly. But it just it
[7:22] Speaker 2: feels like odd casting given that that casting has to
[7:25] Speaker 2: be a choice. So, you know, very minor hiccups here.
[7:29] Speaker 2: I am often dubious about Russell Crowe as a performer.
[7:34] Speaker 2: I'm looking at you, Les Miserables. But I think he's
[7:37] Speaker 2: perfectly suited here. So, yeah, strong ensemble cast, strong look.
[7:43] Speaker 2: I agree with Roxanna that it's not going on the
[7:46] Speaker 2: same shelf with Sorcerer and Wages of Fear, which is
[7:49] Speaker 2: not the biggest or most surprising knock against it. But
[7:54] Speaker 2: in the end, and we can get into this in
[7:56] Speaker 2: a bit once we've heard what Scott thought about it,
[7:59] Speaker 2: I think both one of the most interesting things about
[8:01] Speaker 2: this movie and Sorcerer simultaneously, one of the reasons it's
[8:05] Speaker 2: maybe not going to stick with me 10 years from
[8:07] Speaker 2: now is that it puts a lot of Chekhov's guns
[8:12] Speaker 2: on the wall that never get taken down or fired,
[8:16] Speaker 2: which winds up being pretty surprising, but in the end,
[8:19] Speaker 2: maybe a little narratively unsatisfying to me.
[8:21] Speaker 1: Interesting.
[8:22] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[8:22] Speaker 1: So I'm, I think, mostly with you all. I think
[8:26] Speaker 1: one of the things that I mean, it's satisfying. I'm
[8:29] Speaker 1: happy that it got made. It's one of those things
[8:32] Speaker 1: where I do see sentiments from more than us in
[8:36] Speaker 1: this pod that this is one of those, they don't
[8:38] Speaker 1: make them like they used to type of productions. And
[8:40] Speaker 1: I get that as well and appreciate that and wish
[8:44] Speaker 1: for just more just solid programmers, right? If that's what
[8:46] Speaker 1: we're going to call this. Just, you know, nothing that's
[8:48] Speaker 1: going to be, you know, not one of the greatest
[8:51] Speaker 1: films of all time. Maybe it's not shooting for that,
[8:54] Speaker 1: but it's certainly well done in almost every respect. I
[8:58] Speaker 1: think what kind of catches me here is that I
[9:00] Speaker 1: think there's a little bit of a thinness to it.
[9:02] Speaker 1: And it strikes me as one of those movies that
[9:04] Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm going to remember for very long.
[9:09] Speaker 1: You know, like, you know, this is something I think
[9:11] Speaker 1: about more and more as I get older and forget
[9:14] Speaker 1: the things I've seen. I have this running joke with Keith, like,
[9:18] Speaker 1: you know, when a movie title will come up and
[9:21] Speaker 1: I'll say, you know what? I've either never seen that
[9:23] Speaker 1: movie or I reviewed it. Then I'll Google it in
[9:30] Speaker 1: my name and half the time, yes, I have reviewed
[9:32] Speaker 1: it and no, I have not remembered the first thing
[9:34] Speaker 1: about it. And I feel like this movie may be
[9:36] Speaker 1: in that camp, even though it is a good movie.
[9:40] Speaker 1: I think I was hoping that it would have more
[9:43] Speaker 1: layers to it. I think it has a very pleasing
[9:46] Speaker 1: surface layer and it has very persuasive performances and Ethan Hawke, obviously,
[9:52] Speaker 1: chief among them, but I'm with you, Tasha. I really
[9:55] Speaker 1: like seeing Russell Crowe in this type of role. It
[9:58] Speaker 1: has been a while. I think he's fallen into it.
[10:00] Speaker 1: lot of campy roles. I think a lot of that
[10:04] Speaker 1: early power and edge that we got from him back
[10:08] Speaker 1: in his L.A. confidential days, a lot of that has
[10:12] Speaker 1: dissipated over the years. I almost wish we had more
[10:16] Speaker 1: time with him because I think he's quite effective in
[10:18] Speaker 1: the film. And, you know, I'm very happy that it
[10:20] Speaker 1: exists and would recommend it to people. But I do,
[10:22] Speaker 1: I do kind of think like, sheesh, I don't know what,
[10:25] Speaker 1: what's going to stick to the ribs here. And I'm
[10:26] Speaker 1: not really sure what that's going to be, but not,
[10:29] Speaker 1: not all of them have to be, you know, again,
[10:31] Speaker 1: you don't have, I'll take a base hit. Not everything
[10:33] Speaker 1: has to be.
[10:34] Speaker 4: Everyone needs a solid B plus movie. That's my feeling.
[10:38] Speaker 4: Like every so often you just need like a, Oh,
[10:41] Speaker 4: parts of that were like really slick. I liked that performance.
[10:45] Speaker 4: I had a good time.
[10:47] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[10:48] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[10:48] Speaker 2: I mean, it's always great to see a movie that
[10:51] Speaker 2: where your immediate thought is, I need to show this
[10:53] Speaker 2: to other people. I need to tell other people about this.
[10:56] Speaker 2: This movie is going to live with me. This movie
[10:58] Speaker 2: is going to be a point of comparison for the
[11:00] Speaker 2: next decade for me as a critic. you know, any
[11:03] Speaker 2: or all of these things. But I do think ultimately,
[11:07] Speaker 2: you know, art is in, in the moment of experiencing it.
[11:11] Speaker 2: And if a film is a good time while you're
[11:14] Speaker 2: watching it, that's, that's also, that's enough. It's great if
[11:17] Speaker 2: there's more, but you know, this is, this is a
[11:21] Speaker 2: good time at the theater. It's, it's a good experience
[11:23] Speaker 2: while it's happening and you're waiting pretty breathlessly at times
[11:27] Speaker 2: to see exactly what's going to happen.
[11:29] Speaker 4: And I want to say, too, like, I'm so glad
[11:31] Speaker 4: that Tasha brought up the shot by lightning scene, because
[11:34] Speaker 4: that is something I'm going to remember. Like, we're going
[11:37] Speaker 4: to talk about the bridge sequence, I'm sure. But like
[11:40] Speaker 4: that lengthy sequence just told through like the seconds of
[11:45] Speaker 4: darkness and light between lightning claps. I loved that. I'm
[11:50] Speaker 4: sure that many movies have done it before. But in
[11:52] Speaker 4: that current moment, I was like, this rules and it
[11:56] Speaker 4: is telling me so much about visually, rather than dialogue.
[12:00] Speaker 4: And when a movie can give me just a couple
[12:03] Speaker 4: of moments of creativity like that, I have to appreciate it.
[12:07] Speaker 1: I'm curious. I mean, one of the, in my view,
[12:11] Speaker 1: major pluses of this film is that lead performance by
[12:14] Speaker 1: Ethan Hawke, who just is, you know, again, I'm constantly
[12:19] Speaker 1: having to apologize for my thoughts about him from 1995
[12:22] Speaker 1: or something, because he's become someone I really Look forward
[12:28] Speaker 1: to seeing on screen. And I think there's just that,
[12:32] Speaker 1: you know, he's been a leading man for so long
[12:34] Speaker 1: and he has that gravity to him and that confidence
[12:38] Speaker 1: in that, you know, and he can carry a film
[12:40] Speaker 1: like this in a way that is, you know, soulful
[12:43] Speaker 1: and persuasive and strong, but not really. you know, needing
[12:48] Speaker 1: to even be flashy in the way he was in
[12:51] Speaker 1: a film like Blue Moon. Like he kind of understands
[12:54] Speaker 1: what this role is, what's needed from him. And he
[12:56] Speaker 1: kind of delivers exactly what the movie needs from him.
[13:00] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[13:00] Speaker 4: I mean, I think I agree with you that sometimes
[13:03] Speaker 4: I feel like Ethan Hawke is playing Ethan Hawke or
[13:06] Speaker 4: like our perception of who Ethan Hawke is. I think
[13:10] Speaker 4: a lot about that interview where He talked about how
[13:13] Speaker 4: much he enjoys eating in bed. And it was like,
[13:15] Speaker 4: I get it, Ethan Hawke. Like, I understand your whole deal.
[13:18] Speaker 1: I get it.
[13:20] Speaker 4: But this performance and what he's been doing recently in
[13:23] Speaker 4: Sterling Harjo's show, The Lowdown, I think there is a
[13:26] Speaker 4: level of like earthiness that has come with like the
[13:31] Speaker 4: age that he is at that I find compelling and interesting. Tasha,
[13:36] Speaker 4: I love that you brought up the like age discrepancy
[13:39] Speaker 4: because I didn't think about it, but now I can't
[13:42] Speaker 4: not think about it. And that might be the only
[13:45] Speaker 4: thing that's like a little little squibbly for me.
[13:49] Speaker 2: Honestly, if you had asked, I would have said that
[13:52] Speaker 2: he's in his 60s, like maybe even mid-60s. I looked
[13:55] Speaker 2: it up. He's 55 years old.
[13:58] Speaker 1: No, he's my age.
[14:01] Speaker 2: How many six-year-olds do you have, Scott?
[14:04] Speaker 1: I think that we both, we're not going to name
[14:06] Speaker 1: him on this podcast, but I think we have an
[14:09] Speaker 1: old colleague in common who is going to be an
[14:12] Speaker 1: older father than even Ethan Hawke in this film, Tasha Robinson.
[14:16] Speaker 2: How grizzled does he look? I think, kind of to
[14:19] Speaker 2: speak to Roxanna's point, Ethan Hawke now, the Ethan Hawke
[14:22] Speaker 2: of 2026, has a a face made for westerns made
[14:28] Speaker 2: for period films made for specifically this kind of you
[14:33] Speaker 2: know poverty era everybody is is weary and exhausted and
[14:38] Speaker 2: a little like glazy eyed nobody is drinking enough water
[14:41] Speaker 2: they're all riding around in the desert all the time
[14:43] Speaker 2: like like that kind of look he's perfect for it
[14:46] Speaker 2: and i could just see him you know based on
[14:48] Speaker 2: this uh performance and Starring in a long string of
[14:52] Speaker 2: like retro westerns. I think he's very good at this
[14:56] Speaker 2: specific kind of role and he just, not every actor
[15:01] Speaker 2: these days is made to play this kind of role
[15:04] Speaker 2: the way he is.
[15:05] Speaker 1: I love that you're thinking about hydration.
[15:07] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[15:09] Speaker 2: I'm sitting here drinking water right now.
[15:10] Speaker 3: I know.
[15:11] Speaker 1: This is very funny. I'm just thinking of this period,
[15:15] Speaker 1: non-specific thing of them having those water bottles that tell
[15:18] Speaker 1: you what– that encourage you to drink throughout the day.
[15:21] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[15:22] Speaker 2: I mean, Murph is not listening to his app that
[15:25] Speaker 2: tells him to drink regularly, which is kind of funny because,
[15:27] Speaker 2: you know, filling up water bottles to make sure you've
[15:30] Speaker 2: got enough to drink– is actually kind of a central
[15:34] Speaker 2: piece of action in this movie more than once.
[15:37] Speaker 1: Guys like that looked like that in their 20s anyway,
[15:39] Speaker 1: in this era, Tasha.
[15:40] Speaker 2: That's because they didn't have hydration apps.
[15:43] Speaker 4: That's actually fascinating. What if Murph is supposed to be 40,
[15:46] Speaker 4: but it's just that it's the Great Depression?
[15:49] Speaker 1: Exactly.
[15:50] Speaker 4: Maybe, yeah.
[15:51] Speaker 1: Persuasive, in my opinion.
[15:52] Speaker 2: What if it's supposed to be 30 and he just
[15:54] Speaker 2: hasn't had water in like six years?
[15:56] Speaker 1: What?
[15:59] Speaker 4: Ethan Hawke, we do like you, I promise.
[16:02] Speaker 1: Natasha taking a nice swig of water as she's saying this.
[16:07] Speaker 2: I like Ethan Hawke and I like him a lot
[16:08] Speaker 2: in this movie. I don't want to look like him. No.
[16:13] Speaker 2: Life difficult enough for women who look like me without.
[16:16] Speaker 1: Being a woman who looks like Ethan Hawke. Something I
[16:17] Speaker 1: often say, I've said throughout my life, I don't want
[16:19] Speaker 1: to look like Ethan Hawke. Please, please save me from
[16:23] Speaker 1: that fate.
[16:23] Speaker 4: When Tasha was starting to say that he has a
[16:25] Speaker 4: face made for Westerns, I thought Tasha was going to say,
[16:28] Speaker 4: Ethan Hawke at this point in his career has a
[16:30] Speaker 4: face made for getting punched because he also does that
[16:33] Speaker 4: a lot. He also plays a lot of roles where
[16:36] Speaker 4: you're like, God, I hope this guy gets one in
[16:38] Speaker 4: the face. And there's a little bit of that here
[16:41] Speaker 4: as well.
[16:42] Speaker 1: So, yeah.
[16:42] Speaker 2: I mean, he's the one distributing face punching in this
[16:45] Speaker 2: movie and some very well-deserved face punching. Can we talk
[16:49] Speaker 2: a little bit about the ensemble and his fellow convicts?
[16:52] Speaker 4: Go ahead.
[16:54] Speaker 2: So he's on this journey with three other convicts, you know,
[16:59] Speaker 2: which I don't know enough about to just sort of
[17:01] Speaker 2: like rattle off information about them. Rankin, played by Austin Emilio,
[17:06] Speaker 2: who is.
[17:08] Speaker 2: A weasel and has a face made for playing the
[17:10] Speaker 2: weasel in a Western. And in particular, he has just
[17:15] Speaker 2: the weaseliest mustache of all time. But they saddled him
[17:18] Speaker 2: pretty early on with being a borderline white supremacist and
[17:23] Speaker 2: just an unpleasant, galling presence to be around. It's him
[17:27] Speaker 2: and Olsen, who is a Scandinavian immigrant and farmer, who
[17:33] Speaker 2: his family lost their farm to a corrupt judge. And Singh,
[17:38] Speaker 2: played by Avi Nash, who is a socialist and was
[17:44] Speaker 2: basically arrested for being present during a socialist demonstration that
[17:48] Speaker 2: turned into a riot. Some of these things are not
[17:50] Speaker 2: like the others. And one of the things you were
[17:54] Speaker 2: talking about, the lack of moral complexity in this movie,
[17:58] Speaker 2: one of the things that maybe makes it less of
[18:00] Speaker 2: a deep experience is is that three of these people
[18:04] Speaker 2: were meant to empathize pretty strongly with in terms of
[18:09] Speaker 2: the things that got them sentenced to hard labor were
[18:13] Speaker 2: not necessarily their fault. Like three of them, Mersing and Olsen,
[18:17] Speaker 2: were all basically just present at something where the cops
[18:22] Speaker 2: rounded them up. Rankin, we don't really find out what
[18:25] Speaker 2: he did, I believe. And that seems very deliberate. But
[18:29] Speaker 2: that is one of the many, many, many unfired guns
[18:33] Speaker 2: or dogs that didn't bark in this movie. I passed
[18:36] Speaker 2: a certain point once we'd gotten everybody else's backstories. I
[18:38] Speaker 2: kept waiting for the shoe to fall about who Rankin
[18:43] Speaker 2: is and what he's done. And maybe that was in
[18:45] Speaker 2: a different edit of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised
[18:47] Speaker 2: because it just seems like such an egregious missing tooth here.
[18:51] Speaker 2: How many metaphors can I come up with for a
[18:54] Speaker 2: piece of information that we don't get? Regardless, what did
[18:57] Speaker 2: you guys think about this ensemble, this little group of
[19:03] Speaker 2: three very sympathetic convicts and a weasel?
[19:08] Speaker 4: Long, long sigh. Yeah, I think they're almost too easy
[19:14] Speaker 4: to sympathize with. I mean, I feel very... I feel
[19:17] Speaker 4: very divided about this because on the one hand, I
[19:19] Speaker 4: keep thinking like, yes, this is a movie made about
[19:22] Speaker 4: the 1930s. But I think really you can do a
[19:25] Speaker 4: reading where it is about the era that we are
[19:29] Speaker 4: currently in and living in a time of like ice
[19:33] Speaker 4: raids and protest arrests and. people being basically just like
[19:37] Speaker 4: railroaded for things that they did not do because we
[19:40] Speaker 4: live in a state that is allowed to do that.
[19:42] Speaker 4: So if I'm thinking about it as really like a
[19:45] Speaker 4: commentary on like the 2020 Trump era too, and then
[19:50] Speaker 4: I'm like, it's totally fine that they're incredibly sympathetic because
[19:54] Speaker 4: we've seen enough of that like in the news and
[19:57] Speaker 4: in real life that I can buy that. But in
[20:01] Speaker 4: terms of this time period and sort of what I
[20:06] Speaker 4: want a little bit more of from these characters, It
[20:10] Speaker 4: feels like the backstories are just functions to create dialogue
[20:17] Speaker 4: and to create like some bickering and some bantering between them.
[20:22] Speaker 4: Whereas in something like Sorcerer, I really, really respect the,
[20:27] Speaker 4: we're going to throw you into these dudes' lives and
[20:30] Speaker 4: we're going to show you the terrible things that they did.
[20:33] Speaker 4: And then it becomes your decision of, Is the transport
[20:38] Speaker 4: of this nitro and is putting their lives on the
[20:41] Speaker 4: line worthy of redemption? It's a harder ask in Sorcerer
[20:46] Speaker 4: and I respect it more. But I do agree with you,
[20:49] Speaker 4: like having Sing, who is very sympathetic and gets this
[20:53] Speaker 4: whole backstory about how people think that he is indigenous.
[20:57] Speaker 4: And so he has to navigate that sort of aspect.
[21:00] Speaker 4: Olsen who is just like a nice soft-spoken man pretty
[21:05] Speaker 4: much who lost it and if I'm remembering correctly like
[21:10] Speaker 4: helped kill the judge that took their land so he
[21:12] Speaker 4: has like one spontaneous action that got him here with
[21:16] Speaker 4: Rankin I think they allude to like a life grown
[21:21] Speaker 4: up in juvie and I think maybe like the white
[21:24] Speaker 4: supremacist stuff came from like being in prison and the
[21:28] Speaker 4: time period like It's just not as engaging for me
[21:34] Speaker 4: personally when I then have to think about the question
[21:37] Speaker 4: of like, do these men deserve this money? And do
[21:41] Speaker 4: they deserve it on their individual merits or just because
[21:44] Speaker 4: I think that a mine and a prison warden are evil?
[21:48] Speaker 4: And I come down on like the mine and the
[21:51] Speaker 4: prison warden are evil a little bit more than like
[21:55] Speaker 4: I'm so engaged with these men that I think they.
[21:59] Speaker 3: Should have it.
[22:00] Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll have more to say here about the
[22:03] Speaker 1: characters in The Wait and how they affect the tension,
[22:07] Speaker 1: I guess, in the film and the themes of the
[22:09] Speaker 1: film after this break. Yeah, so to kind of go
[22:20] Speaker 1: back on... the character dynamics here, you know, I kind
[22:24] Speaker 1: of think about them in relation to the mission and
[22:28] Speaker 1: what kind of, you know, and how our perceptions of
[22:32] Speaker 1: these characters and their perception of each other add tension
[22:34] Speaker 1: or take away tension from what they're there to do
[22:38] Speaker 1: and also that kind of potential for chicanery, skullduggery, betrayal.
[22:44] Speaker 1: And I wonder if, like, if the film and its sympathies,
[22:48] Speaker 1: I suppose, are kind of remove some of the danger
[22:52] Speaker 1: that might have, might have added tension to this mission.
[22:55] Speaker 1: I mean, there is kind of a thing where they,
[22:57] Speaker 1: they are reliant on each other just physically to move this, these, these,
[23:02] Speaker 1: I mean, just the task kind of keeps them in
[23:06] Speaker 1: line because in some of the other ways they'd be
[23:08] Speaker 1: motivated to betray each other and to try to run
[23:12] Speaker 1: off with the skull. So that doesn't really happen, but
[23:14] Speaker 1: I do kind of wonder whether a lot of this
[23:18] Speaker 1: backstory that gets put, into the dialogue and the nature
[23:22] Speaker 1: of these characters who are sympathetic, save for Rankin, as
[23:27] Speaker 1: we've talked about, whether that takes away from the film
[23:29] Speaker 1: in terms of it being a tense thriller.
[23:33] Speaker 2: I think the degree to which we're expected to sympathize
[23:37] Speaker 2: with three of the conflicts does kind of soften the tension.
[23:42] Speaker 2: But as much as with Sorcerer, there are enough other
[23:45] Speaker 2: sources of tension, I think. There's Rankin as, you know,
[23:49] Speaker 2: the obvious source of trouble. It's unclear whether the source
[23:53] Speaker 2: of trouble is going to be, you know, him being
[23:56] Speaker 2: a jerk to everybody and exacerbating tensions or him being
[24:01] Speaker 2: an outright murderer. Exactly where that is going to land
[24:04] Speaker 2: is unclear. But unlike in Wages of Fear or Sorcerer,
[24:11] Speaker 2: you have the people making this dangerous trip, but they're
[24:14] Speaker 2: accompanied by two guards from the mines who are carrying
[24:17] Speaker 2: guns and are continuing to treat them like they're prisoners
[24:21] Speaker 2: in a physical hard labor situation. They're human mules, but
[24:27] Speaker 2: not drug mules, because I would be very bad at that.
[24:30] Speaker 2: We've already established this. There's just the ongoing question of,
[24:35] Speaker 2: you know, are they going to kill everybody at the
[24:37] Speaker 2: end to wrap up the loose ends? Is Rankin going
[24:40] Speaker 2: to act out in some way that's going to cause
[24:43] Speaker 2: tension and then guns are going to be going off?
[24:47] Speaker 2: How is this Indigenous woman, Anna, who joins them on
[24:50] Speaker 2: what seems like a very fake pretext going to add
[24:54] Speaker 2: to the tension or, you know, cause something to fall apart?
[24:57] Speaker 2: What's her secret agenda? There are men in the woods
[25:02] Speaker 2: who very obviously have an agenda, and we've already been
[25:05] Speaker 2: informed that they probably think this gold should belong to
[25:09] Speaker 2: them and that there have been riots at other mines.
[25:14] Speaker 2: So there are plenty of ways for this to all
[25:16] Speaker 2: go wrong. In the end, I wasn't quite satisfied with
[25:21] Speaker 2: the answer to the question of which one of these
[25:26] Speaker 2: things is going to snap. To put it in sorcerer terms...
[25:30] Speaker 2: In the second bridge crossing, there's a point where Victor
[25:33] Speaker 2: and Kasem are trying to cross the bridge. And the
[25:37] Speaker 2: stump that they're using to winch the truck across the
[25:40] Speaker 2: bridge is starting to pull out of the mud. And
[25:41] Speaker 2: a rope is starting to unravel on the bridge. And
[25:44] Speaker 2: the structure of the bridge is starting to come undone.
[25:47] Speaker 2: And the boards of the bridge are starting to break.
[25:50] Speaker 2: And Kasem falls into the water. And there's a question
[25:53] Speaker 2: of whether he's drowned. And there's just... It gets to
[25:56] Speaker 2: be too much as far as I'm concerned. It passes
[25:59] Speaker 2: beyond the realm of threat into almost parody. It feels
[26:04] Speaker 2: a little like a weird Al Yankovic movie just in
[26:07] Speaker 2: terms of something's going to go wrong. But which of
[26:10] Speaker 2: these increasing number of things, that's a little bit what
[26:16] Speaker 2: the threat dynamic in the way it felt like to me.
[26:19] Speaker 2: It's just there are so many load-bearing points in this plan.
[26:23] Speaker 2: How many of them are going to break and when?
[26:25] Speaker 1: I mean, the most obvious one to me is this
[26:28] Speaker 1: early release deal. It's a little shady.
[26:31] Speaker 2: Why do you believe that? There's also the question of whether.
[26:35] Speaker 1: This official mechanism for him carrying out this pretty dubious act,
[26:43] Speaker 1: it just doesn't... And I think the film at least
[26:46] Speaker 1: kind of, or at least Murphy seems to anticipate this
[26:50] Speaker 1: as a problem and deals with it accordingly. But it
[26:54] Speaker 1: did strike me Like, you know, as a pretty immediate
[26:58] Speaker 1: red flag that it's like, I don't know if the
[27:00] Speaker 1: Wardens are really going to honor this deal. There's no
[27:02] Speaker 1: real motivation to do it. So there's that. There's that
[27:05] Speaker 1: as a fairly big motivation.
[27:06] Speaker 4: I don't think Russell Crowe, who purposefully is like, you
[27:10] Speaker 4: guys need to move this boulder without any blasting powder,
[27:13] Speaker 4: is going to be a man of his word. I
[27:15] Speaker 4: just don't see it. No, but I, Tasha, I think.
[27:18] Speaker 2: Are you troubled because we didn't get to see the
[27:20] Speaker 2: baseball that he promised them if they moved the boulder?
[27:23] Speaker 2: Would this whole movie be different if we took 20
[27:26] Speaker 2: minutes for an inter-convict league baseball game?
[27:29] Speaker 4: Suddenly it became the sequence in Hook where they're playing baseball.
[27:34] Speaker 4: I love that you brought up the men in the woods,
[27:37] Speaker 4: because I think a different version of this script could
[27:42] Speaker 4: have done something really compelling and like complicated and thought
[27:47] Speaker 4: provoking with maybe the miners who dug out this gold
[27:52] Speaker 4: actually should have it. But like the miners in the
[27:55] Speaker 4: woods are just presented as like one shadowy, threatening dude
[28:02] Speaker 4: who appears and like he seems weird and he like
[28:06] Speaker 4: threatens Anna or whatever, if I'm remembering correctly. And that's
[28:10] Speaker 4: not going to fly with our like three nice protagonists.
[28:14] Speaker 4: And so there isn't really this like interesting question, which is,
[28:18] Speaker 4: Who actually deserves the gold? Because like there is a
[28:22] Speaker 4: version of this movie where the men from the mine
[28:24] Speaker 4: do deserve the gold more. And then that becomes like
[28:29] Speaker 4: a like a prickly sort of moral question about like,
[28:33] Speaker 4: who should you be sympathizing with more? Who should you be,
[28:37] Speaker 4: quote unquote, rooting for? But to go back to that
[28:40] Speaker 4: sort of like things just feel a little thin and
[28:45] Speaker 4: for there just to be this amorphous group of minors
[28:51] Speaker 4: who shoot at our protagonists and don't really have more
[28:56] Speaker 4: backstory or more time or more of a presence in
[29:02] Speaker 4: this film. That also felt a little bit easy to
[29:07] Speaker 4: me as well. And Sorcerer does have the rebels who
[29:11] Speaker 4: ambush the truck And so, you know, there is a
[29:15] Speaker 4: little bit, I think, of a comparison there. But again,
[29:18] Speaker 4: in Sorcerer, like, these are dudes who we have seen
[29:21] Speaker 4: do their terrible things. So we already have established, like,
[29:27] Speaker 4: divided reactions to who they are. I just thought it was, like,
[29:31] Speaker 4: a little bit too easy for the script and for
[29:36] Speaker 4: the structure of it to be like, probably none of
[29:39] Speaker 4: these fours guys are going to betray each other, even
[29:42] Speaker 4: though Rankin is an asshole, because the minor guys are
[29:46] Speaker 4: here and the minor guys are also villains for us.
[29:49] Speaker 4: So don't worry, there won't be any backstabbing.
[29:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, I certainly think making those miners in the woods
[29:56] Speaker 2: be a fairly anonymous threat that isn't really tied to
[30:00] Speaker 2: the mine and is just sort of, you know, these
[30:03] Speaker 2: are just people who've staked their gold claims out in
[30:06] Speaker 2: the hills and apparently it hasn't paid off. Does feel
[30:09] Speaker 2: a bit like a disconnect. On the other hand, you
[30:11] Speaker 2: get some good, you know, deliverance sequences of these folks
[30:15] Speaker 2: know the land and you don't. These folks are banding together.
[30:18] Speaker 2: They know how to disappear into the woods and you don't.
[30:21] Speaker 2: And maybe most telling, at least for me, a lot
[30:24] Speaker 2: of the tension there came from Murph recognizing that they
[30:27] Speaker 2: were a threat and the two guards just refusing to
[30:30] Speaker 2: acknowledge it. Just like, nope, they're a bunch of hillbillies
[30:33] Speaker 2: in the woods. It's no big deal. And it's like,
[30:35] Speaker 2: we don't know how many of them there are. We
[30:37] Speaker 2: don't know how armed they are. We do know that
[30:40] Speaker 2: they're desperate, hungry men who know where we are and
[30:42] Speaker 2: who know the land. Nah, that's no big deal. You're
[30:46] Speaker 2: an idiot because you're a convict.
[30:48] Speaker 1: Right.
[30:48] Speaker 4: Yeah. No, I guess that's fair. There is like a
[30:51] Speaker 4: classism thing happening between them and the guards that I'm
[30:55] Speaker 4: sort of glossing over in this current moment.
[30:57] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I agree with you. I feel like
[31:00] Speaker 2: there are a lot of threads here that could have
[31:02] Speaker 2: been drawn a little deeper. You know, kind of like
[31:05] Speaker 2: that thread that gets wrapped around Murph's thumb at one
[31:08] Speaker 2: point in one of the movie's most excruciating sequences.
[31:11] Speaker 4: Yeah, that was disgusting.
[31:13] Speaker 1: Kudos. It was a relief for him.
[31:16] Speaker 2: Very effective, though.
[31:16] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[31:17] Speaker 1: Yeah. I'll have to keep that in mind if I...
[31:20] Speaker 1: You ever need my ring finger?
[31:21] Speaker 2: If you ever punch the ever-living heck out of somebody
[31:24] Speaker 2: who deserves it, then your hand swells up. If that happens,
[31:28] Speaker 2: and I hope I'm not the person, I will remind
[31:30] Speaker 2: you of this, Scott.
[31:31] Speaker 1: I'll be mad that you did not smuggle drugs properly
[31:35] Speaker 1: like I thought you would, Tasha. I'm really stuck on
[31:40] Speaker 1: your very sad self-assessment. Tasha, you'd be great smuggling drugs.
[31:44] Speaker 1: Come on. Don't let anybody tell you you can't do it.
[31:47] Speaker 3: You know what?
[31:47] Speaker 2: You're right. And I am looking for work. All right.
[31:49] Speaker 2: I am now open to people who want.
[31:52] Speaker 4: Me to smuggle drugs. Please send us some DMs, some offers,
[31:55] Speaker 4: how many gold bars you would trade.
[31:57] Speaker 2: Slide into my DMs with your promises of drugs and
[32:00] Speaker 2: gold bars. I will shoot a bunch of guards for
[32:03] Speaker 2: you as long as there are no claim jumpers present
[32:06] Speaker 2: in the woods.
[32:08] Speaker 1: All right. Well, so many of the thoughts and questions
[32:11] Speaker 1: that I have remaining for the wait really just kind
[32:14] Speaker 1: of tie back into... So I think it's probably good
[32:17] Speaker 1: to step away from the weight, come back and talk
[32:22] Speaker 1: about it in relation to Sorcerer. Now it's time for
[32:31] Speaker 1: connections when we bring these two films together and talk
[32:33] Speaker 1: about all the things they have in common. Tasha, you
[32:36] Speaker 1: got a bone to pick here, I understand. I do.
[32:39] Speaker 2: I put this on our list of potential connections to
[32:42] Speaker 2: discuss as the one gigantic plot hole beyond belief. And
[32:46] Speaker 2: it's the same one in both of these movies. And
[32:49] Speaker 2: it drove me nuts in both of these movies. In Sorcerer,
[32:53] Speaker 2: the oil company has its four drivers. And then Nilo
[32:56] Speaker 2: comes along and murders one of them. We don't know
[32:59] Speaker 2: why exactly. It's implied that he was a Nazi who
[33:05] Speaker 2: fled judgment to this South American country. So Nilo's possibly,
[33:09] Speaker 2: you know, murdering him for pay. And potentially for good reason.
[33:13] Speaker 2: But Jackie's response, like the response of the men in
[33:15] Speaker 2: general is you killed our driver. Now you got to
[33:17] Speaker 2: be the next driver. We are going to take this
[33:20] Speaker 2: completely unknown man who is a foreigner. We don't know
[33:24] Speaker 2: where he's from or anything about him. All we literally
[33:27] Speaker 2: all we know is that he's a murderer and murdered
[33:30] Speaker 2: somebody who was part of this group. And we're going
[33:32] Speaker 2: to force him to be to go on this dangerous
[33:34] Speaker 2: trek with us into the woods. Unreal. I have absolutely
[33:37] Speaker 2: no explanation whatsoever why they do this. In the wait,
[33:41] Speaker 2: the equivalent of that is bringing Rankin on the trip.
[33:44] Speaker 2: And the justification for it is Murph and Russell Crowe's
[33:50] Speaker 2: character have kind of made friends in a very organic
[33:53] Speaker 2: and believable kind of way. Murph has established himself as
[33:58] Speaker 2: resourceful and smart and skilled. So Russell Crowe's character says,
[34:03] Speaker 2: choose anybody you want to take on this mission. Choose
[34:05] Speaker 2: men that you trust. And he's like, I'm going to
[34:08] Speaker 2: choose these two smart, hardworking men who stepped up when
[34:13] Speaker 2: I needed a job done and physically got it done
[34:15] Speaker 2: while everybody else stood back. And I'm also going to
[34:18] Speaker 2: choose this rampant racist asshole who all I know about
[34:22] Speaker 2: is he is a rampant racist and he loves needling everybody.
[34:27] Speaker 2: And the justification he gives is you guys seem to
[34:29] Speaker 2: like him. And I was immediately like, did you ask
[34:33] Speaker 2: either of them?
[34:34] Speaker 1: Right.
[34:35] Speaker 2: It's beyond belief that they like him. Just because they
[34:38] Speaker 2: play poker with him doesn't mean they would trust him
[34:41] Speaker 2: with their lives. So in both of these movies, you're
[34:45] Speaker 2: bringing along an obvious problem with you under very weak
[34:50] Speaker 2: justification in a way that just makes no damn sense
[34:55] Speaker 2: whatsoever for me. Tell me I'm wrong.
[34:57] Speaker 4: Doesn't Nilo try out to be a driver in Sorcerer?
[35:00] Speaker 4: I think he does.
[35:01] Speaker 1: Does he?
[35:01] Speaker 4: I think he does, and he doesn't get chosen. But
[35:04] Speaker 4: I think he is at least like a known quantity
[35:07] Speaker 4: to them as a driver, I think. Scott, are you
[35:12] Speaker 4: remembering that too?
[35:13] Speaker 1: I don't remember that, but I do feel like he
[35:16] Speaker 1: has put himself in a position where they have to
[35:18] Speaker 1: make him the driver, whether they want to or not,
[35:22] Speaker 1: given the timing of it and given his presence in
[35:26] Speaker 1: that situation. It is time to go. And now they
[35:29] Speaker 1: have lost their fourth man and they need a fourth
[35:31] Speaker 1: man and he has put himself in a position to
[35:33] Speaker 1: be that guy. I never really thought about him as
[35:37] Speaker 1: coming to this country to assassinate this, what appears to
[35:42] Speaker 1: be a Nazi in hiding. This would make him more
[35:45] Speaker 1: sympathetic than.
[35:46] Speaker 4: Oh, I 100% thought that he was there to assassinate
[35:50] Speaker 4: the Nazi, but he was just... pretending to be there
[35:54] Speaker 4: and like ingratiating himself with the village for other reasons.
[35:58] Speaker 1: Sure sure it makes sense.
[36:00] Speaker 4: Yeah which is why i thought i remembered him trying
[36:02] Speaker 4: out to be a driver because i thought his cover
[36:04] Speaker 4: story Like everybody else was like, I just happened to
[36:07] Speaker 4: be here. But actually, he is there to assassinate said
[36:11] Speaker 4: Nazi Magneto style.
[36:13] Speaker 2: We did have a little bit of trouble telling Marquez,
[36:16] Speaker 2: the possible Nazi that's murdered from the older barman who
[36:20] Speaker 2: the camera cuts to when the story about being a
[36:22] Speaker 2: Nazi is being told. So I would have to go
[36:26] Speaker 2: back and see if I recognize Nilo as one of
[36:29] Speaker 2: the prospective drivers. But it does seem like if he
[36:32] Speaker 2: tried out, it was just to ingratiate himself as opposed
[36:35] Speaker 2: to he desperately wanted this job so much that he
[36:39] Speaker 2: was willing to murder one of the people that got
[36:41] Speaker 2: accepted for it. And even if that is what he wanted,
[36:46] Speaker 2: this guy wants this money so much that he murdered
[36:50] Speaker 2: one of the people who was going to get it
[36:51] Speaker 2: is a really, really extra bad reason to take him
[36:54] Speaker 2: with you on the journey that you're going to get
[36:56] Speaker 2: paid for.
[36:57] Speaker 4: That's how I feel about wages of fear, though, because
[36:59] Speaker 4: in wages of fear, isn't it that he that Joe
[37:02] Speaker 4: like kills the other driver or like intimidates him into
[37:05] Speaker 4: backing out? And then Joe takes his spot in wages
[37:08] Speaker 4: of fear.
[37:09] Speaker 1: I don't remember that.
[37:10] Speaker 2: I definitely don't remember that detail.
[37:12] Speaker 1: Okay. All right.
[37:13] Speaker 4: I might be conflating all these movies together. All of
[37:16] Speaker 4: this is to say I completely agree about Rankin because
[37:19] Speaker 4: it is just this throwaway line of like, well, yeah, exactly.
[37:23] Speaker 4: Like you guys seem to be friends, but he and
[37:25] Speaker 4: Murphy have already had arguments and you've already seen Murphy
[37:29] Speaker 4: like be cowardly. And I just I don't get it.
[37:33] Speaker 4: I also think that I.
[37:35] Speaker 2: Didn't interpret that as cowardly. I interpreted him as being
[37:38] Speaker 2: smart enough to not rise to Rankin's bait.
[37:41] Speaker 3: Oh, no, no, no.
[37:41] Speaker 2: Rankin was.
[37:42] Speaker 4: I think Rankin does something. Isn't Rankin cowardly when they're
[37:45] Speaker 4: like trying to push the big boulder?
[37:46] Speaker 2: Oh, I thought he was just being lazy.
[37:48] Speaker 4: Oh, maybe.
[37:50] Speaker 2: Either way, he sucks. Yeah, well, he does spend that entire,
[37:55] Speaker 2: you know, the boulder moving sequence, which Murph moves this
[38:00] Speaker 2: giant boulder out of the way via cleverness and physics
[38:03] Speaker 2: as opposed to brute force. Ren Ren can spend the
[38:06] Speaker 2: entire time kind of catcalling him and is like visibly
[38:09] Speaker 2: unhappy when he successfully does the job that's going to
[38:13] Speaker 2: get them all a day off. So, yeah, no, he's
[38:15] Speaker 2: he's just a jerkwad. He's a big old like wet
[38:19] Speaker 2: blanket white supremacist, which is a weird conflation of different
[38:23] Speaker 2: things to be. But yeah, taking him on this trip.
[38:26] Speaker 2: Wasn't there literally anybody else who had like.
[38:29] Speaker 4: Two legs and two arms? There were so many other men.
[38:30] Speaker 4: You didn't talk to any other men in this prison
[38:34] Speaker 4: work gang.
[38:36] Speaker 2: Or the two that you actually picked because i i
[38:39] Speaker 2: really think if you asked either of them do you
[38:41] Speaker 2: want this guy to come on a dangerous trip where
[38:44] Speaker 2: we all have to trust each other to be like
[38:46] Speaker 2: literally anybody else yeah i spotted a particularly intelligent looking
[38:50] Speaker 2: like tree monkey back a little ways who would make
[38:52] Speaker 2: a better it would be better on this job than
[38:54] Speaker 2: he would there's a wet log over there that would
[38:57] Speaker 2: be better on this job than he.
[38:58] Speaker 4: Would the only thing that i can think about sorcerer
[39:00] Speaker 4: and this is like Partially something Scott said, so I'm
[39:03] Speaker 4: sorry if I'm repeating. But I also just wonder if
[39:05] Speaker 4: they're like, you assassinated this guy. We don't know what
[39:09] Speaker 4: your motivations are. Maybe it's easier if you just come
[39:13] Speaker 4: with us and we keep an eye on you. But
[39:15] Speaker 4: that also feels like a big stretch. Like, why would
[39:18] Speaker 4: they care?
[39:18] Speaker 2: They've got enough on their hands.
[39:20] Speaker 1: There is kind of a thing, too, a sentiment in
[39:23] Speaker 1: both movies. And it's certainly a deliberate idea in Sorcerer
[39:28] Speaker 1: of them having to... work together. There's just no choice.
[39:32] Speaker 1: But they cannot really fall back on other motivations, other
[39:39] Speaker 1: character traits, other than working together to survive this extremely dangerous, uh, mission.
[39:44] Speaker 1: And so that ends up being kind of the thing
[39:47] Speaker 1: that binds them together. And the fact that they have
[39:49] Speaker 1: these other qualities just gives you that additional tension in
[39:54] Speaker 1: moments when you, when you need it, you know, when, when, uh,
[39:58] Speaker 1: when they're called upon for a different kind of action
[40:00] Speaker 1: or different kind of beat that apart from the mission,
[40:03] Speaker 1: then some other aspects of their characters kind of come
[40:05] Speaker 1: through and, and, uh, And it makes sense because most
[40:08] Speaker 1: of the time they are, despite their differences, always motivated
[40:11] Speaker 1: to stay on task because that's what's important.
[40:14] Speaker 4: Is there any world in which Nilo is meant to
[40:17] Speaker 4: kill one of the three of them and he just
[40:19] Speaker 4: kills Marquez to get on the crew?
[40:22] Speaker 2: I think if that were the case that he wouldn't
[40:25] Speaker 2: be so seemingly shocked and resistant to, and now you're
[40:29] Speaker 2: coming with us. And he wouldn't then be so kind
[40:32] Speaker 2: of sullen and disengaged about being on the trip, which
[40:36] Speaker 2: he just really seems like. And that's another, I think,
[40:40] Speaker 2: interesting connection, if we want to pivot over to the
[40:43] Speaker 2: next one, between these two movies is just sort of
[40:46] Speaker 2: a sense that once they start down the road, there's
[40:50] Speaker 2: no going back. Like, particularly, I think, with Sorcerer, there's
[40:55] Speaker 2: literally physically no going back. You know, if they want
[40:58] Speaker 2: to take the trucks- they're kind of destroying the road
[41:02] Speaker 2: on their way to their destination. And they're not going
[41:05] Speaker 2: to be able to get those trucks back along the
[41:07] Speaker 2: same route, even if they empty out the volatile cargo
[41:11] Speaker 2: that they're carrying. Once the group of men set out
[41:14] Speaker 2: in the wait, if any of them, even if any
[41:17] Speaker 2: of them just decided to cut and run, oh brother,
[41:20] Speaker 2: where art thou style? Just like, I think that whatever's
[41:24] Speaker 2: waiting on us on the other end of this is
[41:25] Speaker 2: not good. I'm not going to seek the treasure. I'm
[41:29] Speaker 2: just going to dump my gold and go off to
[41:31] Speaker 2: the wilderness. There's just not really anywhere for them to go.
[41:36] Speaker 2: They don't know where they are. One of the guards
[41:38] Speaker 2: has a map and nobody else does. They're in the
[41:41] Speaker 2: middle of nowhere and there's no indication that they've got
[41:44] Speaker 2: wilderness survival skills. So both of these groups of men
[41:47] Speaker 2: are on one-way journeys that, for better or worse, they
[41:52] Speaker 2: have to see through in some way.
[41:55] Speaker 1: Tasha, that was incredible. quite credible tim blake nelson impersonation
[41:59] Speaker 1: that i'm very.
[42:00] Speaker 2: Impressed um this this came up for some reason last
[42:04] Speaker 2: night when we were watching these movies uh i had
[42:07] Speaker 2: a flashback to that and i asked uh i asked
[42:09] Speaker 2: bob what the line was and he told me and
[42:10] Speaker 2: then we just went back and forth with uh seek
[42:13] Speaker 2: not the treasure like over and over this is what
[42:16] Speaker 2: this is what home is like for us i.
[42:20] Speaker 1: Love that dynamic oh everybody's watching movies with their partners
[42:23] Speaker 1: it's the best um So I want to talk about
[42:26] Speaker 1: a specific sequence. The real money sequence, certainly, in Sorcerer,
[42:32] Speaker 1: and one of the big suspense sequences in The Wait
[42:36] Speaker 1: as well, which is the bridge. Bridges in both. So
[42:40] Speaker 1: in Sorcerer, we've talked about they have this very rickety
[42:46] Speaker 1: bridge held together by rope over this bridge. raging river,
[42:51] Speaker 1: barely can handle a single human, let alone a giant truck.
[42:56] Speaker 4: Somehow handles two giant.
[42:58] Speaker 1: Trucks full of nitroglycerin. Shout out to the engineer on
[43:03] Speaker 1: that one. And then you have a similar sequence in
[43:08] Speaker 1: the weight where there's not a truck that they have
[43:10] Speaker 1: to go over, but, but the weight of these backpacks
[43:14] Speaker 1: are enough to where they can't really trust that they
[43:17] Speaker 1: will not fall through, uh, the, this, uh, wooden bridge, uh,
[43:20] Speaker 1: to the chasm below. Um, and so, and so it's the,
[43:24] Speaker 1: so the solution ends up being, you know, hoisting, whipping, uh, uh,
[43:30] Speaker 1: one bar at a time, a mid bridge, and then,
[43:33] Speaker 1: and then having that same bar whipped to the end
[43:36] Speaker 1: of the bridge, uh, I guess that's the best solution.
[43:39] Speaker 1: What did everyone?
[43:40] Speaker 3: No.
[43:40] Speaker 2: Frickin' no. I broke down at that scene. I went
[43:44] Speaker 2: into full, like, what idiocy is this mode. I was
[43:49] Speaker 2: just immediately, I was taking back to the moving the
[43:52] Speaker 2: giant boulder thing. It's like, wait, Murph understands physics and
[43:58] Speaker 2: he's ingenious and he's good at rigging things. So our
[44:03] Speaker 2: solution is let's throw gold bars at each other over
[44:07] Speaker 2: a giant abyss. As somebody who has canonically dropped at
[44:11] Speaker 2: least 50% of every ball ever thrown at me, the
[44:15] Speaker 2: idea that the best solution here is to just have
[44:18] Speaker 2: somebody stand out in the middle of this bridge whipping
[44:21] Speaker 2: gold bars at each other. was almost dumber than taking
[44:25] Speaker 2: rank in uh on this this journey i just had
[44:28] Speaker 2: such a hard part i just had such a hard time.
[44:31] Speaker 1: I was also thinking of alternative solutions uh that were
[44:35] Speaker 1: preferable to yeah also you just you know the the
[44:38] Speaker 1: danger there's danger of course in doing it but also
[44:41] Speaker 1: you can't let one of those cold bars go right
[44:44] Speaker 1: yeah well it's part of the deal so i mean
[44:46] Speaker 1: again these are This is a movie and it adds
[44:50] Speaker 1: a lot of tension to do it that way. It
[44:52] Speaker 1: just doesn't.
[44:52] Speaker 4: But you're also like, what was really funny to me
[44:55] Speaker 4: is I was like, did you guys not bring like
[44:57] Speaker 4: your own rope? Because if you brought your own rope,
[45:01] Speaker 4: then you could just make.
[45:02] Speaker 1: They have rope.
[45:03] Speaker 2: We see the rope hanging off of their backpacks.
[45:06] Speaker 4: Just send two guys on each side and then set
[45:10] Speaker 4: up like a zip line connective rope and like send
[45:13] Speaker 4: your gold. Yeah, there are a lot of other ways
[45:15] Speaker 4: they could have done it. For me, I really enjoyed
[45:17] Speaker 4: it because it was so ridiculous. But I also think
[45:21] Speaker 4: that sequence is the one where I was most like,
[45:24] Speaker 4: we're not making them like we made them 50 years
[45:26] Speaker 4: ago because Friedkin would not have stood for this obvious CGI.
[45:30] Speaker 4: Friedkin would have been like, You go to that middle
[45:33] Speaker 4: of the rope bridge and you.
[45:35] Speaker 2: Catch each individual bar. We lost 18 actors doing this stunt.
[45:40] Speaker 1: And 400 prop gold bricks. He would not let Ethan
[45:42] Speaker 1: Hawke get away with a stunt double on it. He
[45:44] Speaker 1: had to personally be hanging over that abyss.
[45:49] Speaker 4: So Sorcerer wins that one.
[45:50] Speaker 2: It wasn't the CG that bugged me at all. It
[45:53] Speaker 2: was the sheer illogic of it. It's a really, really
[45:56] Speaker 2: dumb solution. If you've got a physical problem in a
[46:00] Speaker 2: movie that I can come up with a better solution for,
[46:03] Speaker 2: you're in trouble.
[46:03] Speaker 4: Hundreds of gold bars, right? Hundreds of bars they're doing
[46:08] Speaker 4: this for.
[46:08] Speaker 2: It's not hundreds of bars, but it seems like it's
[46:12] Speaker 2: hundreds of pounds.
[46:13] Speaker 1: It's a lot. Yeah, heavy. Heavy bars. I didn't think
[46:15] Speaker 1: they had that many bars. That would have been absurd
[46:17] Speaker 1: if it were that many bars.
[46:18] Speaker 4: It's at least like dozens, is it not?
[46:21] Speaker 2: Yes, it's absolutely dozens. But it seems like when we
[46:24] Speaker 2: see them get loaded up, it seems like it might
[46:26] Speaker 2: be as many as like Or as few as like
[46:28] Speaker 2: 10 bricks per backpack.
[46:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot to hoist one at a time.
[46:33] Speaker 1: There's no way you're not dropping it. I don't care
[46:36] Speaker 1: if you're like, you know, Travis Kelsey. You were going
[46:40] Speaker 1: with football.
[46:41] Speaker 4: Instead of basketball. That's interesting.
[46:44] Speaker 2: Famously, neither of those sports really big into like hooking really,
[46:47] Speaker 2: really heavy bricks.
[46:49] Speaker 1: At each other. Oh, not if you're the... Philadelphia 76,
[46:53] Speaker 1: I'm trying to make a basketball joke about people, teams
[46:56] Speaker 1: that can't shoot well. Yeah, but this is critical, though,
[46:59] Speaker 1: if you're talking about the success of a film like
[47:01] Speaker 1: The Wait and the success of a film like Sorcerer,
[47:03] Speaker 1: because that sequence in Sorcerer is sort of the money
[47:08] Speaker 1: sequence of the movie, probably the best suspense sequence in
[47:12] Speaker 1: either it or Wages of Fear, really. It's just an
[47:15] Speaker 1: awesome piece of filmmaking, incredibly tense, and you get it twice,
[47:21] Speaker 1: so there's that. as well, you know, it's supposed to
[47:24] Speaker 1: have that kind of power in the way. And I
[47:29] Speaker 1: think we're kind of agreeing that it doesn't in the
[47:32] Speaker 1: film survives in any way. I guess the log sequence
[47:36] Speaker 1: work for you better in terms of the suspense.
[47:39] Speaker 4: For me personally.
[47:40] Speaker 3: Yes.
[47:40] Speaker 4: I mean, I think the bridge sequence is like, I
[47:43] Speaker 4: don't know, it's, it's tense, but it's still like goofy
[47:46] Speaker 4: because as we talked about, we can figure out a
[47:48] Speaker 4: million other ways to do it. I don't think there
[47:50] Speaker 4: is another way to do the log sequence, right? It's
[47:53] Speaker 4: like you're in the river and they're doing a log,
[47:57] Speaker 4: whatever it's called. I don't remember what it's called.
[47:58] Speaker 2: Log drive.
[47:59] Speaker 4: Thank you. They're like sending the logs down the water.
[48:01] Speaker 4: I don't know any other way to like avoid that.
[48:04] Speaker 4: So I appreciated that because it felt like a real like...
[48:08] Speaker 4: we're backed into a corner and we have to figure
[48:11] Speaker 4: this out rather than we're backed into a corner. And
[48:14] Speaker 4: the only way to figure it out is to individually
[48:17] Speaker 4: throw bars at one another.
[48:21] Speaker 2: I liked the log sequence because it reminded me very
[48:24] Speaker 2: strongly of the equivalent sequence in Sometimes a Great Notion.
[48:27] Speaker 2: And that sequence ends very poorly for one of the
[48:30] Speaker 2: characters for a particularly tragic reason. And so I kind
[48:35] Speaker 2: of had that hanging over my head, uh, throughout this,
[48:38] Speaker 2: this sequence. But, you know, we talked a lot about
[48:42] Speaker 2: fate and can you avoid your fate, talking about sorcerer.
[48:45] Speaker 2: And I think here, just like looking at, you know,
[48:51] Speaker 2: giant logs aren't malevolent. The people in the woods with
[48:53] Speaker 2: guns who want to kill you and steal everything you
[48:56] Speaker 2: own and feel that they deserve it, like those are malevolent.
[49:00] Speaker 2: The people who are with you who have bad agendas
[49:04] Speaker 2: they're hiding are malevolent. The logs are just going to
[49:07] Speaker 2: kill you in a very impersonal way. And I found
[49:10] Speaker 2: that threat pretty, pretty intimidating, especially since, you know, they
[49:15] Speaker 2: see the bridge and they think about what is this
[49:18] Speaker 2: going to take? How are we going to deal it?
[49:19] Speaker 2: They make the decision to go across it. They don't
[49:22] Speaker 2: anticipate the logs because they don't see them coming. It's
[49:24] Speaker 2: just something they have to deal with in a hurry
[49:27] Speaker 2: in the moment. And that made that sequence land pretty
[49:31] Speaker 2: well for me, I would say.
[49:32] Speaker 1: Yep. Log over bridge. The next picture show is presented
[49:38] Speaker 1: by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays
[49:42] Speaker 1: for itself in just two visits. By the time this
[49:45] Speaker 1: episode drops, major fall festivals like Toronto, Telluride, and Venice
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[50:13] Speaker 1: your expertise to this year's Movie Fantasy League on Vulture.
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[51:09] Speaker 1: to receive your discount. That code is N-E-X-T-P-I-C-26. I kind
[51:15] Speaker 1: of want to turn to Roxanna here because she has
[51:22] Speaker 1: an interesting one about fate versus free will in these
[51:27] Speaker 1: movies and how that kind of dictates what happens to
[51:30] Speaker 1: these characters and what it all means, I guess. What
[51:33] Speaker 1: are you thinking on this, Roxanna?
[51:35] Speaker 4: What I was thinking on is it's really tied to
[51:37] Speaker 4: what we had talked about in terms of the character
[51:41] Speaker 4: backstories and that I think the weight is just somewhat
[51:47] Speaker 4: more superficial and less willing to like push our buttons
[51:52] Speaker 4: in terms of who these men are. And so I
[51:56] Speaker 4: feel like the moment for me where it became clear
[51:59] Speaker 4: that like most of these men were going to live
[52:03] Speaker 4: and there was like a free will sort of situation
[52:05] Speaker 4: happening is after the log drive Rankin, the weight of
[52:11] Speaker 4: the gold basically has him sort of like stuck in
[52:14] Speaker 4: the water. He can't swim. He's going to drown. And
[52:18] Speaker 4: Murphy goes to save him, like cut the rope. They'll
[52:22] Speaker 4: retrieve the gold later. Rankin will be free. And there
[52:26] Speaker 4: is this altercation where, like, Murphy gets stuck. Rankin gets free.
[52:33] Speaker 4: Rankin tries to, like, trap Murphy in the water. They
[52:38] Speaker 4: have this fight, finally. But then, like, everything is sort
[52:42] Speaker 4: of fine. They just sort of, like, keep working together because, like,
[52:47] Speaker 4: the guards are a bigger threat and the miners are
[52:50] Speaker 4: a bigger threat. And I sort of thought, like, if
[52:53] Speaker 4: this movie... isn't necessarily willing to build a lot of
[52:59] Speaker 4: internal tension between this group, even when Rankin is such
[53:06] Speaker 4: an asshole, then when it got to this point where
[53:09] Speaker 4: most of them lived, I sort of felt like, well,
[53:11] Speaker 4: we were never really going to take a chance on
[53:14] Speaker 4: most of these characters' lives. So that, for me, felt
[53:17] Speaker 4: like a free will thing. It didn't feel like these
[53:22] Speaker 4: characters had, because of the script, the burden of like
[53:26] Speaker 4: history and their past actions and the burden of fate
[53:30] Speaker 4: upon them. It didn't feel to me like the movie
[53:32] Speaker 4: was trying to make like a larger statement about how
[53:38] Speaker 4: your past and your history follow you. I just didn't
[53:41] Speaker 4: think it had like that large scale scope. Thank you, Tasha.
[53:48] Speaker 4: It didn't feel like you know, all of the stuff
[53:51] Speaker 4: that you've done in your life is like the weight
[53:53] Speaker 4: on your back. It sort of felt like it was
[53:55] Speaker 4: saying like, well, you can just like start again and
[53:58] Speaker 4: that's fine. And I don't think that's what sorcerer is saying.
[54:02] Speaker 4: I think sorcerer is saying like, you can't let go
[54:05] Speaker 4: of that stuff. Even if you do something quote unquote good,
[54:10] Speaker 4: you can't outrun everything that's come before. And I think
[54:14] Speaker 4: I just vibe with that message a little bit more.
[54:19] Speaker 4: than the waits although i am entertained and i enjoy
[54:22] Speaker 4: it the sorcerer sort of theory about life is gonna
[54:26] Speaker 4: stick with me a little bit.
[54:28] Speaker 1: More it's also a massive commercial gamble i mean just
[54:31] Speaker 1: to end a film as bleakly as yes sorcerer is
[54:37] Speaker 1: really i mean that's the 70s as much as as much.
[54:40] Speaker 4: As i respect it so much man me too yeah it's.
[54:43] Speaker 1: A great ending yeah but it is one where it's
[54:45] Speaker 1: like wow you're leaving in total despair and you've been
[54:48] Speaker 1: through this journey and somehow this one character has survived
[54:51] Speaker 1: and got his $ 40, 000 paycheck and nope, not going to
[54:57] Speaker 1: be there. But first, he does get to have a dance,
[55:02] Speaker 1: which is a good reminder that there are women in Sorcerer,
[55:07] Speaker 1: that they exist in the world. And there's also a
[55:10] Speaker 1: reminder that in the way that women exist in that
[55:13] Speaker 1: world as well in the form of an indigenous woman
[55:16] Speaker 1: named Anna who, you know, kind of gets caught up
[55:20] Speaker 1: in this group. I'm curious, I mean, you know, that's
[55:24] Speaker 1: an interesting point of comparison that we have here. What's
[55:28] Speaker 1: the deal with both of these films having this very
[55:33] Speaker 1: slight acknowledgement? I guess the weight has a more significant
[55:36] Speaker 1: acknowledgement in terms of making Anna a major supporting figure character,
[55:41] Speaker 1: but adding a woman to sort of, you know, a
[55:44] Speaker 1: men's picture, what does that bring to the dynamic in
[55:48] Speaker 1: these films?
[55:49] Speaker 2: I mean, on the one hand, I feel like it
[55:52] Speaker 2: answers Roxanna's question about the weight of the backstories a little,
[55:55] Speaker 2: because I feel like the story that Anna tells about
[55:58] Speaker 2: where she comes from and what her earlier life was like,
[56:03] Speaker 2: and then the one-liner she snaps back at Murph about
[56:08] Speaker 2: what what bearing it had on her how it affected
[56:11] Speaker 2: her is the most emotionally evocative thing in the in
[56:15] Speaker 2: the movie it's it's not the tensest but it's it's
[56:18] Speaker 2: the equivalent of the the watch in wages of fear
[56:22] Speaker 2: it's a moment where a character you know not not
[56:27] Speaker 2: the first of these characters to reveal their backstory but
[56:31] Speaker 2: Maybe the first one that actually does seem like it's
[56:36] Speaker 2: put a mark on her, her experience in one of
[56:40] Speaker 2: those schools where white folks kidnapped Native children and tried to,
[56:46] Speaker 2: I believe the line is in the film, is kill
[56:49] Speaker 2: the Indian, save the man.
[56:50] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
[56:51] Speaker 2: Which, you know, her insistence that she survived and they
[56:56] Speaker 2: killed nothing in her is as evocative of a statement
[57:01] Speaker 2: in that movie as anything. And you could go on
[57:04] Speaker 2: to apply it to the other characters and some of
[57:08] Speaker 2: the things that they have been through. But I think
[57:10] Speaker 2: that would be selling it short as like the specificity
[57:14] Speaker 2: of what she's been through and what it meant to her.
[57:18] Speaker 2: So I really liked that. But Anna's story, when I
[57:22] Speaker 2: talked about Chekhov's guns on the walls that don't fire,
[57:24] Speaker 2: Anna's entire presence for me is a gun that never fires,
[57:29] Speaker 2: a dog that never barks, a missing tooth, to cover
[57:32] Speaker 2: the three different metaphors I threw at the wall that
[57:35] Speaker 2: have not been fired until now. Her whole excuse for
[57:39] Speaker 2: joining the men doesn't make sense unless she has a
[57:42] Speaker 2: hidden agenda.
[57:43] Speaker 4: Guess what?
[57:43] Speaker 2: She didn't have a hidden agenda. She's just there. It
[57:46] Speaker 2: just kind of feels like somebody forgot to finish writing
[57:48] Speaker 2: her story. She's just a kind of supportive character who's
[57:52] Speaker 2: there to be racismed at a little bit and to
[57:57] Speaker 2: help our hero through various things in a supportive way,
[58:00] Speaker 2: which she does at least call out the fact that
[58:04] Speaker 2: he's very lucky she was there because she's saved him
[58:07] Speaker 2: multiple times. But in terms of her own agenda, we
[58:11] Speaker 2: never really find out. what her intentions were, why she,
[58:16] Speaker 2: put it this way, everybody else in the movie has
[58:19] Speaker 2: a big reason for wanting to do something as risky
[58:22] Speaker 2: as try to walk hundreds of pounds of gold through
[58:27] Speaker 2: a forest full of hostels toward a very, very uncertain
[58:32] Speaker 2: future with very untrustworthy men. She takes an even bigger
[58:35] Speaker 2: risk by doing this uninvited and being the only woman
[58:40] Speaker 2: among this group of men. And in moments where you
[58:43] Speaker 2: turn to your partner and say something, the moment where
[58:47] Speaker 2: the guards don't just murder her up front when she
[58:50] Speaker 2: joins them, to me was, okay, this is important to know.
[58:55] Speaker 2: These are not complete sleazebags, or at least they're not
[58:59] Speaker 2: willing to show their true colors just yet. The fact
[59:03] Speaker 2: that they allowed her to travel with them is telling. Now, granted,
[59:07] Speaker 2: they immediately start calling her girl and treating her like
[59:09] Speaker 2: a servant and her to cook and clean for them
[59:12] Speaker 2: it's 1933 what you gonna do but i do feel
[59:16] Speaker 2: like anna is both the the source of the movie's
[59:20] Speaker 2: biggest emotional moment and just one of the most incomplete
[59:23] Speaker 2: characters and kind of a roster of them i have.
[59:26] Speaker 4: Very mixed feelings on this because the The read that
[59:29] Speaker 4: I had is that she is in some sort of
[59:34] Speaker 4: like indentured servitude situation at the mine and she probably
[59:40] Speaker 4: is being like really sexually abused. That was like sort
[59:44] Speaker 4: of the read that I got as to why she
[59:47] Speaker 4: would want to flee. But part of me wishes the,
[59:52] Speaker 4: I don't want to say I wish the film had
[59:55] Speaker 4: said that because I don't, I don't want to be like,
[59:58] Speaker 4: The only reasoning that this female character could have had
[1:00:00] Speaker 4: for fleeing where she was was the threat of sexual assault.
[1:00:04] Speaker 4: But the film doesn't say so much that I felt like,
[1:00:08] Speaker 4: are you trying to imply this without outright saying it?
[1:00:13] Speaker 4: And if that's what you're trying to imply without outright
[1:00:15] Speaker 4: saying it, how is this group of random men any
[1:00:19] Speaker 4: less dangerous than the group of men you're fleeing from?
[1:00:24] Speaker 4: So yeah, there was something there that I didn't quite grasp.
[1:00:29] Speaker 4: And I didn't go as far as to think like,
[1:00:32] Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know if I thought like
[1:00:34] Speaker 4: maybe she's like secretly in cahoots with the guards or
[1:00:37] Speaker 4: maybe there's something else going on. I don't think I
[1:00:39] Speaker 4: like thought that far in advance. But I sort of
[1:00:41] Speaker 4: thought like, oh, this movie just doesn't want to say
[1:00:45] Speaker 4: that she was probably being raped. And I didn't know
[1:00:48] Speaker 4: how I felt about that.
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: It didn't occur to me that she might be in
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: an indentured servitude situation. That certainly is a good insight
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: given what she says the school was designed to train
[1:01:00] Speaker 2: people like her for. I suppose I didn't get a
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: whiff of sexual abuse, but honestly, being an indentured servant
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: would be bad enough and certainly a circumstance you'd want
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: to leave. I guess I too just wish the movie
[1:01:17] Speaker 2: had spelled that out a little more clearly, exactly what
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: it is. Like if she's, she, she does have the
[1:01:24] Speaker 2: moment where she kind of lets her guard down enough
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: to tell Murph at least a little about her history
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: and what's going through her life. That would have been
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: the time. if she has any agenda, whatever her intentions were,
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: why she thought she could trust these men, you know,
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: with her body and her life, any of these things,
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: if there'd just been a hint of why. And frankly,
[1:01:46] Speaker 2: the huck and the gold across the bridge thing just
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: makes me not trust the movie to make connections that
[1:01:55] Speaker 2: it needs to make, to have the characters act in
[1:01:58] Speaker 2: ways that make rational sense in the world. And I'm
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: just not sure that the filmmakers thought about how weird
[1:02:05] Speaker 2: it is that she's willing to put herself in the
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: hands of six unknown men who are heading into the
[1:02:11] Speaker 2: wilderness in a place where if she was to disappear,
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: no one would ever know.
[1:02:15] Speaker 4: Including two from the mine that she is fleeing.
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: Yeah. And the other four of them convicts.
[1:02:22] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[1:02:23] Speaker 2: Who's, you know, much nicer than expected backstory and secret
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: being sympathetic. She does not know about.
[1:02:30] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: It's almost a case of a film giving us enough
[1:02:36] Speaker 1: of a character to get itself into trouble. It's a
[1:02:40] Speaker 1: really good description. It's not quite getting enough of us
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: there to make it work. Because if we're talking about
[1:02:47] Speaker 1: comparing it. To Sorcerer, we have this native woman who
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: we don't know at all, other than being representative of
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: the place in which she lives and being meaningful to
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: Jackie and to other characters at certain points in the movie.
[1:03:02] Speaker 1: And in a way, that simplicity ends up being more
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: effective because there's a limited... She's got this extremely, I guess, distinctive, evocative...
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: you know, face and image. And, you know, she's representative
[1:03:17] Speaker 1: of this place in a way that feels authentic. And
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: she's more elegantly, I guess, folded into the narrative in
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: a way that doesn't stick out for us too much
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: to pick out as much, I guess.
[1:03:30] Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think something that's interesting about
[1:03:32] Speaker 4: that is that like this village, like every foreigner who's
[1:03:38] Speaker 4: there is a piece of shit. It's like really interesting,
[1:03:42] Speaker 4: I think. And every villager, I think, between Agrippa giving Victor, like,
[1:03:49] Speaker 4: I think she gives him a cross, right? She gives
[1:03:50] Speaker 4: him some sort of, like, religious totem, I think, to
[1:03:54] Speaker 4: take with him. And then the villager uprising against the
[1:03:59] Speaker 4: oil company, like, I think a sorcerer does, like, a...
[1:04:03] Speaker 4: better job in terms of helping you understand how these
[1:04:08] Speaker 4: people view these intruders in their midst and i think
[1:04:13] Speaker 4: agrippa being somebody who recognizes victor's humanity because he recognizes
[1:04:20] Speaker 4: hers is really interesting and then to have jackie also
[1:04:24] Speaker 4: pick up on the fact that like she is a
[1:04:28] Speaker 4: person and then taking him to his doom. Like, I
[1:04:33] Speaker 4: don't know. I just like that there are different ways
[1:04:35] Speaker 4: that different characters relate to Agrippa, whereas I think with
[1:04:42] Speaker 4: Anna I just think like pairing her primarily with Murph
[1:04:48] Speaker 4: feels a little bit to continue on Tasha's point like
[1:04:52] Speaker 4: the filmmakers didn't exactly think through like how would the
[1:04:55] Speaker 4: rest of these people be reacting to these women until
[1:04:59] Speaker 4: we get that final like confrontation with the evil mind
[1:05:04] Speaker 4: guard and like the implication of the sexual violence becomes
[1:05:08] Speaker 4: real and all that sort of thing but Again, just
[1:05:11] Speaker 4: a little thing where I'm like, maybe Sorcerer did this
[1:05:13] Speaker 4: better in a way that I didn't anticipate.
[1:05:17] Speaker 2: While barely letting the character speak at all.
[1:05:19] Speaker 3: 100%.
[1:05:19] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she has like one line.
[1:05:21] Speaker 2: Because it doesn't give us enough of a character there
[1:05:24] Speaker 2: to get itself in trouble. You know, she's set dressing,
[1:05:28] Speaker 2: but William Friedkin knows she's set dressing and doesn't. You know,
[1:05:32] Speaker 2: just a handful of sentences about who she is and
[1:05:35] Speaker 2: where she came from. might have gotten the movie in trouble,
[1:05:37] Speaker 2: might have been enough to make us curious about why
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: we aren't getting her story or why she isn't getting involved.
[1:05:43] Speaker 2: And instead, she's just a piece of the background. I
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: think it's relevant that both of these movies are about
[1:05:51] Speaker 2: places of just immense and pretty much universal poverty. There
[1:05:57] Speaker 2: is not a lot of sign that even the foreigners
[1:06:01] Speaker 2: working there are like living in luxury compared to the
[1:06:05] Speaker 2: natives they're looking down on. There's just, there's very little
[1:06:09] Speaker 2: kindness or connection to be had in either of these
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: movies because there's just nothing to spare. Everybody is hungry
[1:06:15] Speaker 2: and filthy and just kind of like living in the
[1:06:18] Speaker 2: same circumstances. And given our, you know, uh, constant and
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: growing wave right now of movies about economic disparity and
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: the rich living in hyper luxury and complete ignorance of
[1:06:33] Speaker 2: what their decisions are doing to other people who are
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: poor and suffering. Seeing two different movies where literally everybody
[1:06:40] Speaker 2: is poor and suffering, there's certainly a sense that the
[1:06:43] Speaker 2: American oil company folks can and will eventually go home
[1:06:47] Speaker 2: But they're just not much better off than anybody else
[1:06:52] Speaker 2: who's trapped in this mysterious, anonymous country. And in the
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: Great Depression, everybody is scrambling to get something for themselves.
[1:07:02] Speaker 2: So it's interesting to me, I guess, how similar poverty
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: is in both of these movies. Even if poverty in America...
[1:07:13] Speaker 2: in the Great Depression does look pretty different from a
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: Central American or South American country in the 70s.
[1:07:19] Speaker 1: It also raises kind of an interesting question in terms
[1:07:23] Speaker 1: of how people end up relating to each other in
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: a situation where poverty is sort of defining the landscape.
[1:07:30] Speaker 1: It does that Does poverty trigger solidarity, people coming together
[1:07:36] Speaker 1: on a mission to lift each other up, to succeed?
[1:07:41] Speaker 1: Or are you kind of scrapping for a greater share
[1:07:44] Speaker 1: of the money? And how does that affect the kind
[1:07:48] Speaker 1: of group dynamics here? How much do you rely on
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: each other versus how much do you have to look
[1:07:55] Speaker 1: out for number one, really, in the end?
[1:07:57] Speaker 2: I feel like the blowing the tree up scene in
[1:08:01] Speaker 2: Sorcerer is just a real turning point. It's a point
[1:08:04] Speaker 2: where they're all stopped at the same time, stymied by
[1:08:06] Speaker 2: the same thing. And even though Kasim's knowledge is key
[1:08:11] Speaker 2: and they're all following his lead, they are all working
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: together towards the same goal. And the dynamic changes after that.
[1:08:18] Speaker 2: There's a turning point in The Wait as well that
[1:08:22] Speaker 2: is late enough in the movie that I wouldn't want
[1:08:24] Speaker 2: to spoil it. But there certainly is I think a
[1:08:28] Speaker 2: lot of the movie is, it's not us versus them.
[1:08:33] Speaker 2: It's me versus everybody until the moment that it can
[1:08:36] Speaker 2: become us versus them because them has finally been clearly
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: defined for the first time.
[1:08:42] Speaker 4: Yeah, I think about in Sorcerer when Victor is running
[1:08:47] Speaker 4: forward to see if Qasim has survived and that really
[1:08:51] Speaker 4: gets me. And I think that is so beautifully done. Again, also,
[1:08:56] Speaker 4: just another absolutely bonkers sequence. Just another absolutely freaking you
[1:09:02] Speaker 4: bad man sequence.
[1:09:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's good stuff. Well, Sorcerer is available on the
[1:09:09] Speaker 1: usual streaming platform. It's also on Criterion 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD.
[1:09:14] Speaker 1: Certainly at a better resolution than Tasha seems to have
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: watched it at Tsk Tsk. The wait is currently in
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: theaters everywhere, though it seems likely to find its way
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: to streaming before the end of the year. We'll be
[1:09:27] Speaker 1: right back with your next picture show. Finally, it's time
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: to recommend a film or film related item that complements
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: this set of episodes. We call it your next picture show.
[1:09:42] Speaker 1: Hopes it'll put some interesting choices on your radar. Roxanna,
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: you had an idea for this.
[1:09:48] Speaker 4: Yes, I did. And I mentioned this film earlier. It
[1:09:50] Speaker 4: came out earlier this summer. It also had like a
[1:09:54] Speaker 4: wide release like The Weight, but I do think it
[1:09:59] Speaker 4: could get more eyes on it. It is The Rivals
[1:10:02] Speaker 4: of Amziah King. And it is Andrew Patterson's follow up.
[1:10:07] Speaker 4: Andrew Patterson did Vast of Night, which was like huge
[1:10:10] Speaker 4: on Prime a number of years ago. And he got
[1:10:13] Speaker 4: the rights back. if I understand correctly, and he said
[1:10:16] Speaker 4: that it should be coming out on physical media sometime soon.
[1:10:19] Speaker 4: I think somebody said that somewhere. But Rivals of Amziah
[1:10:22] Speaker 4: King is a, I don't even know how to describe it.
[1:10:26] Speaker 4: It's like eight different genres at once, but it's like
[1:10:29] Speaker 4: a neo-western and a musical and a heist movie. And
[1:10:34] Speaker 4: the general gist is that Matthew McConaughey is playing this man,
[1:10:39] Speaker 4: Amziah King. He is a beekeeper and a musician, and
[1:10:44] Speaker 4: he reconnects with his former foster daughter, this woman named Kateri,
[1:10:50] Speaker 4: who is played by Angelina Lookingglass. And they bond and
[1:10:54] Speaker 4: he's teaching her how to keep bees. And then all
[1:10:57] Speaker 4: of a sudden his bee boxes are stolen. And that
[1:11:01] Speaker 4: sets off like a series of events involving Kateri's attempt
[1:11:06] Speaker 4: to find who stole them. Her realization that there is
[1:11:10] Speaker 4: this like very shady agribusiness man played by Kurt Russell,
[1:11:16] Speaker 4: who is basically like running companies into bankruptcy and forcing
[1:11:21] Speaker 4: them to use his products and generally just being like
[1:11:23] Speaker 4: an asshole. And so she is trying to understand where
[1:11:27] Speaker 4: the bees went. What's the role of this man? How
[1:11:30] Speaker 4: can she sort of honor her foster father? And the
[1:11:34] Speaker 4: reason that I pick it as like a connective tissue
[1:11:36] Speaker 4: here is that there is this lengthy heist sequence involving
[1:11:41] Speaker 4: bee boxes. So living beehives that they are moving down
[1:11:48] Speaker 4: a river and it is very elaborate within the film.
[1:11:53] Speaker 4: It takes place over the course of like an entire day,
[1:11:57] Speaker 4: night and the next day. And it is so, practical.
[1:12:02] Speaker 4: They are like shooting in a forest. They're actually crossing
[1:12:06] Speaker 4: this river. They used, the movie is entirely real bees.
[1:12:11] Speaker 4: There are no CG bees, but they used like a
[1:12:14] Speaker 4: less aggressive bee that they like fed honey water to
[1:12:17] Speaker 4: before they were filming. But it is literally like thousands
[1:12:21] Speaker 4: of bees in these bee boxes being moved down this river.
[1:12:24] Speaker 4: So I just think that the like very physical nature
[1:12:28] Speaker 4: of Sorcerer, the physical nature of the way it I
[1:12:31] Speaker 4: liked the physical aspect of this heist. And I think
[1:12:35] Speaker 4: that it has a similar sort of like going from,
[1:12:39] Speaker 4: as Tasha put it so well, like me versus everybody
[1:12:44] Speaker 4: to us versus them. That hinges on that B box heist.
[1:12:51] Speaker 2: I have never even heard of this movie, but you
[1:12:53] Speaker 2: had me at Andrew Patterson. And I am so excited.
[1:12:57] Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Because it's like Vast of Night is
[1:12:59] Speaker 1: one of those debut films where it's like, I cannot
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: wait to see what this person does next. Which is
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: not to say that Vast of Night in itself doesn't
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: have its own rewards, but there is kind of a
[1:13:10] Speaker 1: calling card, let me show you what I can do
[1:13:12] Speaker 1: aspect to Vast of Night that's quite audacious and makes
[1:13:15] Speaker 1: you think like this guy with the resources is going
[1:13:20] Speaker 1: to do something amazing. And it sounds like he really
[1:13:23] Speaker 1: had a nice follow up here with this film.
[1:13:25] Speaker 4: Agreed. If you can find it, you should. I do
[1:13:28] Speaker 4: think it should hopefully be, it might already be on digital.
[1:13:32] Speaker 4: It should be soon.
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: I looked it up. As of this recording, at least,
[1:13:36] Speaker 2: it's currently on PVOD.
[1:13:38] Speaker 1: Nice.
[1:13:38] Speaker 2: So, you know, rentable.
[1:13:40] Speaker 1: Nice. Rentable. For a cost.
[1:13:42] Speaker 2: Probably not streaming on your favorite thing you already subscribed
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: to just yet, but we'll keep an eye out.
[1:13:49] Speaker 1: Nice. So that's it for this edition of The Next
[1:13:56] Speaker 1: Picture Show. Tasha, can you tell us about our next pairing?
[1:14:00] Speaker 2: From 2004 to 2007, Dateline NBC aired a popular show
[1:14:04] Speaker 2: called To Catch a Predator, in which potential child sex
[1:14:07] Speaker 2: offenders were identified online and invited to what they thought
[1:14:11] Speaker 2: was a sexual encounter with a teenager that turned out
[1:14:14] Speaker 2: to be a televised sting operation. The show's host was
[1:14:17] Speaker 2: Chris Hansen, a dashing TV journalist who would confront these
[1:14:20] Speaker 2: men and attempt to interview them. Then the local police
[1:14:23] Speaker 2: would arrest them on the spot. The new movie Primetime
[1:14:26] Speaker 2: is about this dark and controversial production, but it focuses
[1:14:29] Speaker 2: heavily on Robert Pattinson's performance as Hansen, which suggests the
[1:14:33] Speaker 2: pathology of a journalist who craves attention and puts himself
[1:14:36] Speaker 2: at the center of the story. His sleazy ambition, along
[1:14:39] Speaker 2: with the film's noir-influenced style, calls to mind the 1957
[1:14:43] Speaker 2: classic Sweet Smell of Success, starring Burt Lancaster as J.J.
[1:14:47] Speaker 4: Hunsecker.
[1:14:48] Speaker 2: A Broadway gossip columnist who leverages his power to nefarious ends.
[1:14:53] Speaker 2: On our next set of episodes, we'll peer into the
[1:14:55] Speaker 2: tabloid souls of Hunsecker and Hansen and explore the dark
[1:14:58] Speaker 2: side of American journalism.
[1:15:00] Speaker 1: For now, we welcome your feedback on Sorcerer, The Wait,
[1:15:03] Speaker 1: and anything else film-related you'd like to talk about. Email
[1:15:06] Speaker 1: us at comments at nextpictureshow.net or leave us a voicemail
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: at 773-234-9730. Before we close out this week's episode, where
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: can we find everyone these days, Tasha Robinson?
[1:15:18] Speaker 2: You know, the usual places. You can find me at
[1:15:20] Speaker 2: Vulture and Polygon and hanging out on Blue Sky at
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: Tasha Robinson. Roxanna, what about you?
[1:15:27] Speaker 4: You can find me at Vulture. You can find me
[1:15:29] Speaker 4: on Blue Sky and you can still find me on
[1:15:32] Speaker 4: X at Roxanna underscore Dottie.
[1:15:36] Speaker 2: Scott, what about you?
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: Yeah, you can find me on Blue Sky at Scott
[1:15:39] Speaker 1: Tobias and my main Outlet, of course, is The Reveal,
[1:15:44] Speaker 1: the newsletter that I write with Keith Phipps, and that
[1:15:48] Speaker 1: is thereveal.film. You can also find my work in The
[1:15:52] Speaker 1: New York Times, Vulture, Guardian, and other fine publications. As
[1:15:56] Speaker 1: for our absent co-hosts, Keith, I've already mentioned, he's part
[1:16:00] Speaker 1: of The Reveal. He also writes for Vulture, but has
[1:16:05] Speaker 1: done work elsewhere at TV Guide and at The Ringer
[1:16:11] Speaker 1: and other outlets. He's on Blue Sky at KFIPS3000. Genevieve
[1:16:17] Speaker 1: Kosky is the senior TV editor at Vulture. And she's
[1:16:22] Speaker 1: on social media, but come on now. She doesn't do
[1:16:24] Speaker 1: a whole lot. No offense to Genevieve, though you will
[1:16:27] Speaker 1: find her putting up some fun stuff on Instagram. She's
[1:16:31] Speaker 1: got some stories up there, and occasionally she'll pop up
[1:16:35] Speaker 1: on Blue Sky at Genevieve Kosky. You can stay updated
[1:16:39] Speaker 1: on The Next Picture Show at nextpictureshow.net. and on Blue
[1:16:42] Speaker 1: Sky at The Next Picture Show. Get bonus content and
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: open discussion at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. And as always, we
[1:16:50] Speaker 1: appreciate your ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
[1:16:53] Speaker 1: Smash that subscribe button wherever you listen to the show. Roxanna,
[1:16:58] Speaker 1: thank you again so much for joining us.
[1:17:00] Speaker 4: Thank you, guys.
[1:17:02] Speaker 1: And thanks also to Dan the Big Jakes for his
[1:17:05] Speaker 1: assistance producing this podcast. The Next Picture Show is proud
[1:17:08] Speaker 1: to be part of the FilmSpotting family of podcasts. Please
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: tune in next time.
[1:17:12] Speaker 3: That was a good movie.
[1:17:25] Speaker 1: Yeah, seen here before once.

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