great script ruined by shallow filmmaking

The film is about a fucked up American dream.

People are poor and can't get anywhere. You have to sell drugs, be a whore, etc to make a living unless you want to go to school forever, etc. If you notice, they don't make much money in the end, but to them it's like a billion dollars, because they get to go on vacation and live it up a bit.

If you work at Walmart, you never get a vacation, watching TV is your vacation. So, you dad dying, getting beaten, killing people, it's all worth it.

That's one reason I love the movie.

Yeah, but he still gets everything he wants. By the end, he's better off financially than he ever was after getting away with his crimes and gets to live happily ever after with his wife and son. If that doesn't condone crime, I don't know what does.

Thanks for the compliment, R_Kane.

If you would like to hear more about what I think the movie was originally about before Tony Scott hijacked it, check out my response to the post titled "the major flaw (besides Tarantino not directing it)". There, I lay out some of the subtexts and themes that the director missed out on in his pursuit of hyperkinetic visuals and overwrought, superficial emotions. You'll probably get a kick out of it.

Something tells me you didn't read what I said...

You don't pick up on subtext in movies very often, do you? The whole point of Clarence killing Drexl is about much more than just him wanting to save someone from a life of prostitution.

If you go back and watch the scene where he confronts Drexl, you'll see that Clarence is purposely trying to upset the man by giving him an empty envelope and telling him that's all that he's worth. Why else would he do something like that? Clarence was likely trying to pick a fight by being the non-physical aggressor in that scenario, with the intent of prompting Drexl to throw the first punch so what he does in return can be justified as self-defense.

More importantly, as I said earlier, there was no need for Clarence to do such a thing. Yes, Drexl was upset that his girl skipped out on her job and cut contact with him, but Alabama's head was not on a price. He could've simply skipped town with her or perhaps just settled things differently with Drexl in a way that wouldn't have resulted in violence. Instead, Clarence chose to purposely instigate a fight, and that all goes back to his desire of being cool. Remember what he said about Elvis at the start? How he was a good-looking cat who died young while being heralded as the epitome of cool? That's exactly what Clarence wants to be, cool. Tarantino was making a statement about movie-obsessed, pop culture geeks who see the world only through the distorted lens of what cinema and fiction has to offer. The same could be said for his later decision to drive to LA to sell coke to Hollywood producers.

The difference between this film and the movies you mentioned, is that those films had a point. This one doesn't. All that subtext I just described is pretty much rendered useless by how Tony Scott changed the ending. In doing so, he wound up with an empty, shallow movie that more or less condones criminal behavior.

You should try actually thinking about the movies you watch sometimes. You'll learn a lot that way.