That's probably my biggest question about the movie.
It feels like a made-up happy ending.
Because it's Hollywood... I also felt that it was stretching things a bit, as was the entire shootout at the motel, where it began to look more like a Die Hard sequence - impressive to watch, but not entirely believable.
sharePeople have survived gunshots to the face and that were close range, it happens but not all the time.
Y'know, I could eat a peach for hours
Bud survives because he is one tough son of a bitch.
shareGo-Go-Eighties-Reaganaut got it right.
In the book, he's shot and stabbed. He's on the critical list, but he makes it. However Bud (in the book) ends up with a metal plate in his head, ripped arteries and shattered bones, survives shock, neurological trauma, and loses half the blood in his body. he can't talk (I don't know about permanently), his mouth is all wired up, and he's crippled (again, I don't know if it's permanent). Bottom line a lot of medical stuff had to be done to save Bud. So maybe the film should've elaborated on how badly Bud White gets injured. I don't know.
It is a miracle he lives, but I don't think it's a completely unbelievable thing. I'm sure there are real life stories of people who were injured worse but lived.
If you love Jesus, & are proud of it, copy this & make it your signature. I saw this & I did.
I love Jesus and am proud of it but I don't need to copy the sig. I agree with you about White though. Surviving the 2 body shots might be unusual but by no means impossible. The face shot was the most plausible for him to survive in my opinion. In one cheek and out the other.
shareIt is a miracle he lives, but I don't think it's a completely unbelievable thing. I'm sure there are real life stories of people who were injured worse but lived.
As Mr. Vaughan pulled into his driveway one evening, he said, a man in a van pulled in behind him and hopped out with a rifle in his hand. Mr. Vaughan recognized the man as a former neighbor. As Mr. Vaughan dashed for the side of his house, he was struck in the side of his right leg and fell to the ground.
Kenny Vaughan was shot about 20 times outside his home in 1995. “I asked the Lord not to hit me in my heart and head,” said Mr. Vaughan, who said he never lost consciousness. Credit Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times
Then, from about five feet away, the man fired shot after shot as Mr. Vaughan crept on his side, trying in vain to crawl under his minivan, to somehow find a reprieve from the indescribable sting he felt with each bullet that tore into his body.
“You’re thinking clearer than you ever thought in your life,” Mr. Vaughan said during a recent interview. “I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or just the will to live. You want to live more than anything in the world, and you know you have no control. I asked the Lord not to hit me in my heart and head.”
When the gunman stopped to reload, Mr. Vaughan said, he pulled himself to his feet and onto the hood of his minivan. But the man knocked him on his back with a shot to the abdomen, again from about five feet away, and continued shooting.
The final shot, Mr. Vaughan said, entered his groin area and exited through his rectum, leaving him lying in a pool of blood and feces. He never lost consciousness.
“I wouldn’t close my eyes,” he said. “I kept telling myself, ‘If you close your eyes, you’ll go into shock, and you’re dead.’ ”
Mr. Vaughan said that he had an out-of-body experience while he was being shot — he felt as though he was watching the shooting from 15 feet away — and that he had God to thank for his survival.
“It was a plan that was way bigger than I am,” Mr. Vaughan said. “And why he saw fit for me to live and other people not to live, I can’t begin to answer that question.”
Two doctors who operated on Mr. Vaughan said his survival was unlike anything they had ever seen. Bullets barely missed several vital organs. Two were less than an inch from his heart.
“How you can get that many bullets in the chest, the groin, the abdomen and extremities and not have a lethal injury is pretty remarkable,” said Dr. Phillip Shadduck, the general surgeon at Durham Regional Hospital who operated on Mr. Vaughan. “He was very fortunate.”
The gun used to shoot Mr. Vaughan was a .22-caliber rifle, a firearm that is much less lethal than, say, the 9-millimeter handguns that detectives in the Bell case used, Dr. DiMaio said.
I'd like to know what Vaughan did to piss that neighbor off!
shareIf nothing vital gets hit the chance of survival is high especially as pistols are low velocity and there fore tend to not shatter bones.
shareand you never asked why would bud be jealous when his lover is a prostitute, and she's supposed to be very attractive, this movie has holes like a swiss cheese, your question is the least of them.
i mostly will not be able to answer your reply, since marissa mayer hacked my email, no notification
Bud would not usually be jealous (he knows what she does), but he hates Exley. Alot. Notice he barely bats an eye when she's with the John (the Councilman).
You just have to be resigned-
You're crashing by design
Yeah I thought that was pretty obvious. She even makes it clear that Bud has told her how much he hates Exley, so it's the ultimate slap in the face.
shareMissed major organs I guess. The shot to the head went through his mouth, in one cheek and out the other; probably blew out most of his teeth. He'll be wearing dentures for sure.
That or he was just too tough to die.
People can survive gunshot wounds.Reagan was shot at point blank range and made it.If I remember correctly,Bud was shot on the left shoulder,the right chest and after stabbing Smith was shot through the jaw.He is shown afterwards to be in very bad shape and it is implied that he was medically discharged from the LAPD
shareI'm at the range quite often and I see guys standing still, taking their time and not stressed missing big targets so I could see it.
The validity of my answers is highly dependent on the intelligence of the question..or lack thereof.
There are other incredible stories like that. Back in 1986, for example, a group of FBI agents bungled an arrest of two bank robbers named William Matix and Michael Platt. They both died, but they had to be shot about ten to twenty times each before the deed was done. One was shot in the head and was only knocked out momentarily. They killed two FBI agents and wounded several more. There are plenty of stories out there that make Bud's look pretty tame!
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NBC made a surprisingly good -- and very surprisingly graphic -- TV movie of that story back in the 80s. They included that long drawn out shoot out for minutes, start to finish. They posited Matix and Platt as two stone cold killers who went out trying to kill or wound as many FBI men as possible. Very intriguingly, they cast David Soul(of Starsky and Hutch) and Michael Gross("dad" on Family Ties) as the killers!
SPOILERS
That's probably my biggest question about the movie.
It feels like a made-up happy ending.
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As its many Oscar nominations (and key screenplay WIN) proved, LA Confidential was considered a very intelligent, well-crafted, and meaningful cop drama in 1997.
But as a MOVIE, it was also quite an emotional ride, with two great big surprises that -- in my theater -- drew audible reactions.
The first was the outta-nowhere sudden death murder of the film's star name(Kevin Spacey) by Chief Dudley Smith(James Cromwell). It was unexpected, but in some way, in accord with the tough storyline.
The second big surprise was that great moment -- the camera move on him, and a surge of powerful music , the "reveal" that Bud White was alive. THIS moment got applause.
I still remember a jolt of happiness ("It a only a movie," but it was GREAT to see Bud White alive), a sense of sadness(would this guy EVER be the physical same) and...yes...some questioning: "Could he have survived those shots?"
The posts above mine make the case that sure, yes, it has happened and it could have happened. Its interesting that Dudley Smith's FIRST shooting(of Spacey's Jack Vincennes) DOES kill the victim , but his second shooting(of Bud White) does not kill the victim. but the second shooting is in the dark, at longer range and -- after the knife stab -- while i great pain.
I bought it.
There is a whole lot of other great material in LA Confidential -- the dialogue (from James Ellroy), the atmosphere, the acting, the sweeping overview of the political, entertainment and racial worlds of 1953 -- but, in the end, it also had some powerhouse emotional storytelling moments. The death of Jack Vicennes and the survival of Bud White are two great surprises...and the movie ends up with a well earned happy ending that other movies (like Chinatown) refused to ever give us.
PS. In a "prestige drama," LA Confidential also gives us one of the most exciting gunbattle climaxes ever.