MovieChat Forums > Witness (1985) Discussion > Blown away by how the main antoganist is...

Blown away by how the main antoganist is defeated at the end

posted 8 years ago by I_Created_U
11 replies | jump to latest

*Spoilers obviously*

I can't say that i have ever seen in all the movies and series i have watched in my life a bad guy going down this way - that i remember of anyway. Book shouting at Schaeffer:

"What are you gonna do, Paul? You're going to kill me? You're going to shoot me? You're gonna shoot him? Is that what you're going to do, Paul? Him, the woman, me? IT'S OVER! ENOUGH! ENOUGH!" *Grabs the gun away*

I mean, LOL and waaaaah at the same time. I think it's a ballsy move to end the main antagonist's arch that way and i like it. It firmly grounds the character in the real world and serves as a reminder so often absent in other movies, that there's no such thing as pure evil, or pure goodness.

So often in movies the bad guy is a diehard sociopath with molten led in its head who would gladly burn himself alive and the entire known universe if it means killing the good guy or even tousling his hair, which is why the good guy never has any other choice than blowing up the bad guy in a big fiery explosion. Here on the other hand, the bad guy is scolded like the naughty little kid he is, his toy is confiscated by the adult in charge and he is sent to the corner for the rest of his life wearing a donkey hat. I like it.

In another movie, when Book grabs the kid by the shoulders and shouts "You're going to shoot him, Paul?", the bad guy would have emptied the clip in the boys chest in the middle of Book's sentence and cracked a line like "Thanks for holding him for me", or something like that. I exaggerate obviously but you get the gist.

Anyway, nice little movie, Ford was in top form and McGillis had nice little boobies before time decide to interfere. 7/10.

People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

[–] strntz 8 years ago

So often in movies the bad guy is a diehard sociopath with molten led in its head who would gladly burn himself alive and the entire known universe if it means killing the good guy or even tousling his hair, which is why the good guy never has any other choice than blowing up the bad guy in a big fiery explosion. Here on the other hand, the bad guy is scolded like the naughty little kid he is, his toy is confiscated by the adult in charge and he is sent to the corner for the rest of his life wearing a donkey hat. I like it.

Yep.

Not every film's antagonist is a sociopath that needs to be killed exquisitely painfully (love The Virus' demise in Con Air though).

Paul Schaeffer wasn't a sociopath; he was a cop that caught up in a multi million dollar drug scheme and got too deep. If those barrels of PCP never had been confiscated on that drug raid, Schaeffer probably would have finished his career as a hero.

I notice a few comments here by today's youngsters complaining of an underwhelming ending because they simply don't understand the complexity of human beings (like Paul). Everything needs to be so binary to them. The bad guy MUST be a baaaaaaaaad guy.

Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad.

[–] redban02 8 years ago

I didn't think this scene was trying to portray a shade of gray in the main villain. Rather, I think it was purely trying to deliver a sense of irony or poetical justice, centered on the movie's title:

Schaefer and the other villains wanted Book and the little boy dead because Book and the little boy are the only witnesses to the murder. At the end, however, the entire village shows up, so the entire village has effectively become a witness to Schaefer's crookedness. Instead of one little boy and one policeman, he now has to kill 50 different witnesses, which he can't possibly do. Hence, as Book says, "Its over ... Enough."

In addition, the ending, building on the barn scene to some extent, also helped capture the cameraderie in the Amish.

[–] I_Created_U 8 years ago

Nice insight.

People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs

[–] infinity8 8 years ago

It's also pretty great how this scene exemplifies Eli's claim that there's always another way to solve problems besides violence. The men John killed earlier didn't get the benefit of that alternate solution. I don't think that anyone "English" can blame Book for killing two dirty cops who were out to kill him (and Samuel) first, but killing those men was a huge violation of Amish community norms, and in the end, the reason why Book can't stay with Rachel and Samuel: he failed to find a completely non-violent solution to his problem.

[–] [deleted] 7 years ago

Yeah he was an honest cop who made the mistake of going crooked and in the end he realised the consequences of his actions.

[–] Boricanator (1447) 3 years ago

So often in movies the bad guy is a diehard sociopath with molten led in its head who would gladly burn himself alive and the entire known universe if it means killing the good guy or even tousling his hair, which is why the good guy never has any other choice than blowing up the bad guy in a big fiery explosion.

Lol, this made me laugh.

[–] avortac4 (3750) 3 years ago

It's a bit unrealistic and anti-climactic, though.

The movie has enough boredom already, the end could at least be more satisfying and interesting.

It's not that the villain has 'no choice' - he has plenty of choices. One logical one would be to blow his own brains out; he's NOT going to last in prison, there's no way he can look at his future and think it's endurable, or that it's a better choice to just go to prison for the remainder of his years than to just end his Earth-visitation right there.

Even just rationally speaking, if the choice is 'painless end of it all' or 'IMMENSE, scary suffering, pain, injury and horrors that are possibly unimaginable', why would anyone choose the latter?

His only logical choice would have been suicide. Why would an old man like that choose prison instead? He has NO hope of any kind of 'quality life' after that moment, so he might as well end it. He can't think that after the prison, he's going go start a good, new life - it's obvious he's going to die in prison, way before he would get out, so what's the point?

Illogical, unrealistic and unexplained, and completely weird.

The protagonist blowing his brains out would've been a BLESSING to him!

People never realize that 'killing the villain' actually RELEASES the villain from all misery and trouble (except his own karmic load). As one movie's villain said, 'death is a release, not a punishment'.

People on this planet cling too much to the physical side, stupidly thinking it's the only thing there is, so they don't realize just how much better it is to live in the non-physical side. Therefore, people consider death or killing some kind of ultimate punishment, but I say to you, torture is way worse than death.

Also, death is a natural part of our journey, we've all experienced it numerous times, no reason to make it such a boogie monster and a taboo; there are many cultures that deal with death openly and calmly, as if it is natural - which, it indeed is.

[–] Rinn13 (167) 2 years ago

It's not an action. It's a drama, and "neo-noir" story. Those tend to be slow burning, and "boring" by the standards of someone looking for a wham-bang ending. The ending was perfectly fitting, for the film's story and themes.

[–] Melton (4886) a year ago

I agree. Movie villains cause untold suffering with their slaughter of innocents, whose families are left ruined and bereft, yet all they get in return is a fairly quick death.

Let’s take Die Hard 2. The villain crashes a passenger jet, murdering 350 innocent men, women and children - that’s thousands of lives crushed by having their loved ones snuffed out before their time. His punishment? He gets blown up. Quick. Relatively painless.

That guy should have been thrown into an oubliette until he dies of malnutrition at the very least, or preferably chained up and tortured physically and psychologically over a period of decades until he resembles ‘reek’ from Game Of Thrones. A program of Ramsay-style torture with severed appendages and false hope through fake rescue attempts would be far more appropriate.

[–] GolfnGuitars (3006) a year ago

I think "we" (collectively, the audience/viewers) do get our "blood lust" satisfied with the way the henchmen are killed. One suffocates in a corn silo and Danny Glover's character takes a shotgun blast to the chest. What a way(s) to go!

I really loved the movie and the ending. One reason why I thought the ending worked so well was Josef Sommer...what a fantastic actor he was. He did a great job of conveying that his mind was "racing 90 miles per minute," so to speak. He wasn't thinking clearly at all...until Book's words just floor him. A fine end to a fine movie, IMO.

[–] Ismailov (165) 3 months ago

I also thought the ending was a good idea, especially since earlier in the film there's a scene where Ford's character is informing the boy about the need to check when a pistol has bullets, so I was like "gee I bet the kid is going to end up saving the day by shooting one of the bad guys," which of course doesn't happen.