Just one question.
Don't get me wrong. I loved this film. But I kept wondering where all the servants were. Would they not have heard Walter fall down the stairs?
maggimae83
( I don't like spoiling films for anyone please do not read if you have not seen it yet)
Throughout the beginning of the film I see Sam as a fairly benign all - American type. Sure he has a mildly shady past and unexplained dollars in his pocket but nothing too dramatic. I mean he gives lifts and all.
Likewise I didn't get the impression he was the blackmailing kind at all.
So the bit were he says he ' wants half' jars with me. It seems completely out of the character depicted so far, moreover, to request half of what looks like an immense fortune would seem to require something major to blackmail with, and it seems he had nothing.
So I may be told 'he is a gambler and that it what gamblers do' but I'm not sure. As I said requesting 100k in cash out of the blue on a hunch is one thing, requesting half of a 30'000 worker business empire is another! I think a gambler would want immediate cash, not illiquid assets like a factory.
So that why so far I'm a little unconvinced about this film.
Likewise I didn't get the impression he was the blackmailing kind at all.
Neither did I. If you rewatch that scene, you'll be more confident that Sam said that only because of how Walter and Martha treated him. He "threw it out," so to speak, but he meant it only half-seriously. However, as he drifted further from Toni, the blackmailing *did* take a more serious tone--even though he still didn't really mean it, and it was vague.
Only when he, Walter, and Martha are finally all alone together does Sam realize the danger he ran of falling back into the envious outsider he was as a boy. He barely escapes with his life, and this explains his admonition to Toni about Lot's ("Sam's) wife. share