Opening Argument: If your story makes no sense, lean into it
One of my most beloved genres for couch viewing is what I think of as the Trenchcoat Thriller -- one of those movies like The Firm where everybody is always being confronted by secret bad guys and contacted on the sly by the FBI. There's a relationship between these movies and the paranoid thrillers of the '70s, but the ones in the '90s (with some spillage into both the '80s and the aughts) had a different undertone of something bordering on wackiness in among their genuine tension. For instance, in The Firm, Tom Cruise beats Wilfred Brimley unconscious with a briefcase. You can't tell me that's your first thought when you think "Tom Cruise and Wilfred Brimley in a movie together."
Invariably, when I'm watching Trenchcoat Thrillers, they bleed (heh) over to Courtroom Thrillers (like The Rainmaker), Pursuit Thrillers (like The Fugitive), Domestic Thrillers (like Sleeping With The Enemy) and Crusader Thrillers (like Erin Brockovich, which is maybe not a thriller but contains many conversations with untrustworthy suits). I recently watched all four of the movies I just mentioned in a binge weekend that also included one of the greatest films of this kind that you can ever see: Double Jeopardy.
Double Jeopardy is based -- as in, its entire story rests -- on a totally wrong interpretation of "double jeopardy." Without getting into the specifics, because to call them convoluted is an understatement, Libby (Ashley Judd) is convicted of the murder of her husband, but it turns out he set her up and he's alive. (Apologies if I am spoiling this 1999 film for you; believe me, it won't hurt it at all.) While she's in prison (which she only is for six years), after she learns he's alive, her Wise Savvy Friend explains to her how double jeopardy works. WSF says that if she gets out of prison, she can track him down and really kill him, and they can't prosecute her because of double jeopardy.
(I am not offering you legal advice, but here is one take supporting what is undoubtedly your overwhelming sense that that cannot be right.)
And so Libby, buoyed by the idea that she can freely kill her husband upon her release, works out and gets out of prison and goes about trying to find him and collect on what's sort of a buy-one-get-one-free murder concept. She's pursued by her parole officer (Tommy Lee Jones, playing essentially his character from The Fugitive, redressed and renamed), who somehow doesn't seem to think she should commit crimes while on parole.
Rather than detail every plot point, I will simply say that this movie is zany. The free murder, the way a child always blurts out the one thing they're not supposed to while talking to Mommy on the phone, the wicked husband, the fact that somebody is buried alive at one point and shoots her way out by firing a pistol directly next to her own head? It is zany.
It made me think... maybe that's the key. Maybe if you have a story like this, the key is to commit. Don't look down and you'll keep going, like Wile E. Coyote. Yes, we have invented this legal concept, yes, people pass up the option of killing each other simply in favor of killing each other in baroque ways that introduce all kinds of potential mishaps, yes, this woman is only imprisoned for six years after being convicted of murdering her husband for the insurance money, yes, her husband who faked his own death is living a high-profile life as a New Orleans hotel owner and man about town.
Thrillers are often full of big gambles. Sleeping With The Enemy inserts a silly montage of trying on hats -- set to "Brown Eyed Girl"! -- right in the middle of a tense thriller about escaping a violent and controlling husband. Said husband has a mustache so profoundly villainous it very nearly twirls itself. The Fugitive supposes a convicted murderer on the run after escaping from a prison bus could stroll into a hotel ballroom during a speech and most of the people in the room would do little more than murmur and, in some cases, go so far as to stand up. The Pelican Brief brings you Stanley Tucci with hair. (And also without hair. He wears disguises, because he is an assassin.)
Perhaps this is the right approach to a story with nothing to lose. To paraphrase the skating coach in The Cutting Edge (which itself, while not a thriller, suspends the laws of physics), you must commit, because if you go halfway, you get hurt. Where would Double Jeopardy be if it mucked about with realism? Not having a confrontation in a mausoleum, that's for sure. Not escaping a car after it is driven off a ferry. Not going away for a weekend sail on a beautiful boat that is very clearly a future crime scene. The worst thing you can do to a marvelously zany thriller is try to ground it in reality. If we wanted reality, we could watch the news.
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What We Did This Week
Suzanne Tenner/FX
I wrote about the new Hulu (via FX) series The Patient, starring Steve Carell. I really liked it, even though it is very very tense.
Glen recapped the second episode of House of the Dragon, and I'm betting a dragon is involved. Also a house.
All Four Hosts Alert! Aisha, Glen, Stephen and I all got together to talk about some of the pieces of physical media that we still treasure, even as we stream our hearts out.
Stephen and Aisha covered a topic that's very near to some of your hearts: three great karaoke songs.
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