#1. at the end when masa showed up, how did masa know where the meeting was going to occur? i thought only the yakuza boss told nick...but good thing he showed up to save nick just in time
#2. when did nick get the plates? was it already on Sato? or back at the house
if back at the house, i can't imagine him going back to get it with Sato, and Masa not noticing
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My take on Masa being there was similar to what the last poster said. I think he started following Nick at some point after refusing to help him earlier at Masa's apartment. Masa clearly changed his mind and chose to help him in the end.
As for the plates during the final shootout, the location of the plates are never revealed. Sugai only says that it is in a safe place. We are to assume the plates were somewhere in the house. We are to also assume that during or maybe even before the shootout, Nick located the plates somewhere in the house and took them. Sugai's men were too occupied with protecting their boss as his hand just got stabbed with a knife by Sato. Sato was also too occupied with escaping from Sugai's men, and Nick. I'll check the scene of Masa again but i think he was outside the house during the shootout so he wouldnt have seen Nick. It was a case of Sugai and Sato forgetting the plates in all the commotion. That's my take on it.
The plates were on the table and i guess Sato grabbed them while fleeing from the meeting place.
shareThe biggest flaw is how could Michael Douglas come to Japan, be a prick, break every law the nation has under the sun, and get off free in the end just because he has a bad case of mullet hair?
Decent movie. Not one of Scott's best but had its moments.
Yeah, didn't he kill 2 people... while holding civilian status?
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He kills one or two yakuza out of the steel mill... and few seconds later he is taken by the police and sent away on the plane! Can you leave a country after killing two people (cop or not cop)?!?!
share They[Osaka Police] may not have known that he killed those two guys in the steel mill. Perhaps they found out later and Mas took the heat for it. Maybe this is one of the reasons that Mas is no longer assistant inspector.
It should also be noted that several scenes, as from what I've read, totalling an hour explain many plots more in depth and also give more light into the Nick and Joyce relationship. Some of this is touched upon in the commentary with Ridley Scott.
Total agreement. Both of the plot devices mentioned by the OP stood out to me as being completely ridiculous. Standard action movie deus ex machina stuff. Moments like these cheapened the film.
But it wasn't the lack of realism of the second plot hole which bothered me. It was the fact that Masa had been preaching the whole film about the disgrace of taking off the top, and now he suddenly becomes the benefactor of counterfeit money plates?? Are we supposed to accept that Masa will use these for his own gain?
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In the first "plot hole" I'm going to guess that Mas followed Nick at some point after his refusal to help him (which isn't hard to believe considering he wouldn't want him to get into any serious trouble).
As for the second one, you see an underling bring the second plate over to the table with the Oyabun shortly before the shootout takes place.
Lastly, the last scene with Nick giving Mas the plates was not meant to be seen as Mas suddenly turning into a bad cop. It was obviously Nick having a change of heart. He was probably planning on stealing the plates (or maybe he intended to give them back the whole time and was just having a laugh) and decided at the last minute to give them back to Mas after Mas mentioned the plates not being found. Mas is happy that Nick returned them as he suspected him to have taken them from his body language and tone of voice when he was asking him about them. He obviously feels bad about insinuating that Nick had taken them, ergo, he hits himself on the forehead with the cover of the box as a sort of self-punishment. He is going to return the plates as evidence, he's not going to use them to counterfeit money.
A bit long-winded, but that's my take on it.