Creatorof2002,
If Bone and Kimbo were in the outside world, I would agree. However, they were in prison and prison operates by different rules.
Kimbo had every reason to feel confident that Bone would not go after him. Aside from the fact that he knew that Bone did not want to risk lengthening his prison term by rumbling with other prisoners, Kimbo also knew this very important fact:
Bone was not affiliated with a gang and the only way he could exact revenge against the gang leader would be to take out the whole gang. Another thing to consider is that, in prison, gangs are affiliated with other gangs and if you take action against one gang member you earn the ill will not only of that gang member's gang, but whatever other gangs where associated with that gang member's gang.
Bone demonstrated that he was willing to fight to keep his manhood...thus they left him alone. If Bone stayed out of the gang's business, the gang(s) would leave him alone...which they did, because the cost of "messing" with him was too high. Criminals in prison, like criminals in the outside world, pick easy targets.
If Bone had went after Kimbo and killed him, Bone would have eventually been killed in retribution. Bone was certainly able to fight off a few gang members, but no fighter, no matter how skilled, can fight off 10 or 15 other strong, armed men. Who could survive being completely surrounded and rushed at the same time by 15 guys armed with shanks?
Futhermore, as I said before, killing Kimbo would not have been actual revenge because Kimbo was only the weapon that James used to kill Danny. If someone uses a knife to kill your friend, you don't take revenge against the knife, you take revenge against the person who wielded the knife...or in the case of a contract hit, you take revenge on the person who ordered the hit.
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15 years ago
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darqueknight
15 years ago
On the outside world, when someone wants a criminal act committed for them (murder, arson, robbery, etc.) and they are smart about it, they do it through an intermediary who also has some level of anonymity. The person or persons doing the crime don't know who actually contracted them or why, and the person contracting the crime doesn't know the person or persons who will do the "work". This way, if anything goes wrong, the criminal agents won't be able to lead the police to whoever was responsible for hiring them. It is really not necessary for the contractor and the contractee to know each other. All the contractor requires is proof that the work was done and all the contractee requires is payment.
Prison contract murders work the same way. James obviously ordered the hit on Danny through one or more intermediaries. That way, Danny's murder could never be traced back to him. Kimbo's gang never really knew who was ultimately responsible for ordering and paying for the hit on Danny and James didn't know who actually carried out the hit.
The last scene was a bit of irony in that the same "weapon" that James used against Danny was now being turned against him! Over the course of time, and after he had been raped repeatedly by the gang, James would eventually find out that the thugs who were indirectly paid by him to kill Danny were the same thugs who had been screwing him since he landed in prison! Now that's JUSTICE!
Another thing I thought about was Bone might have actually contracted, through an intermediary of course, for the sexual assault on James. Immediately after Danny was killed, Bone might have planned to use the same thugs against James that James used against Danny. This would have been another reason for Bone not to take any action against the gang, because they would be used as part of his ultimate revenge against James.
Remember, when Bone was playing chess with the old man, he said he was always thinking 5 steps ahead.
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15 years ago
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darqueknight
15 years ago
You are correct.
I re-watched the scene where Kimbo's gang is attacking James and Kimbo clearly says "This is for messing with Franklin McVeigh". I never paid attention to it before because I was so caught up in the enjoyment of seeing the dispicable James get his well deserved introduction into prison life.
After rewatching that scene, I also rewatched the conversation between James and McVeigh at McVeigh's house. McVeigh warned James that if he embarassed him in front of his consortium associates, "things would get very lonely for him out on the streets". I took that to mean that McVeigh wouldn't have him killed, but he would make it impossible for James to operate and thus ruin him financially.
Also, it seemed that McVeigh was disturbed by the brutal manner in which James killed the guy with the golf club in front of his girlfriend. Not because he didn't want the guy dead, but because he didn't like the loud, brutish, and barbaric manner in which it was done. He told James that he could have "used a bit more subtlety". I expect that McVeigh increasingly saw James as a liability due to the fact that James conducted his business and personal affairs in a manner that was likely to attract too much attention from the police and other authorities.
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15 years ago
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darqueknight
15 years ago
I think McVeigh wanted James to suffer in every possible way for the rest of his life. James was responsible for the consortium retreat that McVeigh was hosting being turned into an embarrassing fiasco complete with cops showing up. Recall that McVeigh told James that if he embarrassed him in front of his consortium colleagues, every decision McVeigh made going forward would be “second guessed” and that being second guessed in his line of work was “suicide”. Since McVeigh obviously wasn’t killed as punishment for the consortium retreat fiasco, I inferred that “suicide” could mean career suicide as well as physical suicide. McVeigh was understandably bitter and vindictive about losing some, and maybe a substantial, amount of his power, status and criminal empire.
James said that he first met McVeigh when he and McVeigh were both street level criminals. McVeigh must have been a very evil, smart and cunning man to rise from being a street level criminal to being a member of a powerful international crime consortium in a short period of time...while James was just one step above the street hustler level. I say that McVeigh ascended in a short period of time because he appeared to be much younger than the other consortium members.
I was disappointed by the final scene alongside the end credits as well. I thought it trivialized a very powerful scene. I wonder if they ran it with the credits so as to not add to the length of the film. It seems that most of the current “straight to DVD” movies are 90 minutes or less.
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