Mexican Jerkoffs, or, the Fine Art of Giving Up When You Shouldn’t
Last night I watched an interesting little Italian thriller called The Backwoods. (Well, actually, it’s called Bosque de Sombras, but it stars Gary Oldman and Paddy Considine along with actors of various other nationalities, so I’m going to stick with the English title.) Anyway, it’s not bad, though it also has some pretty serious flaws, but one scene in the latter half of the story got me thinking about a common problem in movies: Mexican standoffs in which one character just arbitrarily gives up.
Without spoiling anything significant about the movie (which isn’t good enough to recommend, but also isn’t bad enough to recommend against) there’s a scene in which a character, we’ll call him Arygay Oldmanay, has a gun drawn on another character. He’s got the other guy dead to rights, no question about it, but then a third guy sneaks up behind Arygay and points a gun at him. Now, in the broader sense of the term, this is a Mexican standoff, because neither side has an advantage, so the situation is deadlocked. Yes, the third guy can shoot Arygay, but only if he doesn’t mind Arygagy shooting and killing his friend. (OK, screw this “Arygagy” stuff; he’s just Gary from now on.) So you’d figure that Gary would realize that the gun in his hand, which he has pointed right at the third guy’s friend, is his only piece of leverage, the one thing keeping him alive, right?
If so, you’d be wrong. As in a really startling number of other movies, Gary lays down his weapon and gives up. Why? I can only guess that he’d seen too many movies, and he just thought that this was what he was supposed to do in situations like this, because it sure doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me. Now, if I were in Gary’s position and some kind of expert marksman had a high-powered sniper rifle with a laser sight trained right on my skull and the marksman assured me that he could turn out my lights the instant he saw me even think about pulling the trigger and long before I actually did it, meaning that the deterrence value of my weapon was genuinely neutralized, then maybe I would lay down my gun. Otherwise, not on your life. I’d threaten, I’d bluster, I’d bluff, I’d bargain — I’d do whatever I could to stay alive, but the one thing I wouldn’t ever do is conclude that surrender is the only option. So when Gary gave up, it yanked me right out of the movie, which up to that point had at least created a pretty effectively creepy atmosphere.
I realize it’s hard to come up with a creative solution to a problem that’s already been put up on screen a million and a half times, but at least don’t just punk out on the problem — do something that makes sense, both narratively speaking and for the characters in the situation you’ve created. Otherwise poor saps like me will continue to waste valuable rental dollars on disappointing movies, and then we won’t watch anything else you do in the future!
Tags: Arbitrary, Despair, Gary Oldman, Koldo Serra, Mexican Standoffs, Paddy Considine, Passive, Stakes, Suspension of Disbelief, The Backwoods