MovieChat Forums > The Frozen Ground (2013) Discussion > Luck-based Sloppy Police Works + Crime-f...

Luck-based Sloppy Police Works + Crime-friendly System (not the movie)

posted 11 years ago by sadsayeed
6 replies | jump to latest

[possible spoilers]

I was looking around the board, thought I'd find someone talking about how idiotic the story was, but couldn't find any. Most were talking about cage-cusack duo, shaky cam, acting performances, close-up shoots, etc. What about the events happened (according to the movie)?
If the police works are that sloppy & the system is so bluntly in favor of criminals, no wonder they luckily might just (or might not) catch any mass/serial killer after each killer killed several dozens already! there were many such foolishness; to state few for instance:
-- Cage was so confident about hensen's crimes, they didn't care to put anyone for carefully following him; after quite many days, cage & norris were in the watch-out directly beside the clear vicinity of hensen's house.
-- When cage & norris realized that hensen had seen them & hurried to his plane, (they even said that he's gonna dump all the evidences); after that incidence cage goes for arresting him based on fbi profiling & send all-out house-search to find evidence. cage was lucky that hensen was too fool to still keep his murder weapons & murder-marked map at his house, even after dumping all evidences.
-- Even after all these luck, police/system asked cage to get a must confession from hensen to proceed with trial; even there they had to get too lucky to get cold-blooded hensen going so tensed, paranoid (just by seeing that twin bracelet) that hensen screamed out his confession loud in front of judge, wow!!

There were many such foolish events throughout... so the story here is, ultimately the police's luck-work could catch a very stupid serial killer after several dozens of his kills, all because those police were a little less stupid than that murderer.... none to give credit for other than stupidity & luck.
I wonder, is it only me in this board, who's thinking these things...??!!

[–] boxster8 11 years ago

Yeah, it's true but most of the time that's what it's like. A big part of detective work is probably indeed gut feelings, hunches, gambles, etc. Which is probably why , as you point out, there's so many unsolved murders, missing people, etc. Sad, but true.. That's reality. Until something like "pre-crime" is invented, this is the best were gonna get. :-(

[–] sadsayeed 11 years ago

partly agreed. but post-crime intelligence is much better than this, even in real life. some luck is required, but not entirely... may be lack of 'right people in the right jobs'!

[–] the_headspace 11 years ago

Yes, I watched with my wife and we were both saying the same things:

Why not follow Hensen?
Why not use Cindy to lure him out?
Why watch him so obviously, almost on his doorstep, during the stake-out?
Why not keep a closer watch on Cindy, at least after her first "escape"?
Why go in for an arrest when they thought he'd dumped all the evidence?

Also, how could Hensen be just in front of Nic Cage when being followed to the airport, then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, have his plane loaded, fired up, and on the runway almost before Nic Cage got out of his car?

Our conclusion was that, yeah, it's based on a true story, so perhaps all these things really happened. But it still brought down the movie, in our opinion.

[–] shawneuser 11 years ago

Based on a true story? Yeah, so were JAWS and THE EXORCIST.

It was dramatized to hell to try to make it more suspenseful.

In typical Hollywood style, they went overboard with it. Would have been a better movie if they didn't try so hard.

[–] mpdc_jonathan 11 years ago

I think you missed a couple of points which need clarifying.

Robert Hansen (Cusack) didn't make his guilty admission in front of the judge, he did it in front of the DA (Kurt Fuller). All along Cage was pushing the DA for a search warrant of Hansen's house but the DA didn't believe there was enough Probable Cause to grant the warrant. Cindy (Hudgens) had described a series of mounted animals in his basement which Hansen had reported stolen and collected the insurance on. Even that was not enough for the DA to sign the warrant. [A search warrant is based upon probable cause and usually requires a prosecutor to first sign off and then a judge or magistrate.]

The problem facing Cage was that the only evidence against Hansen was the testimony of Cindy. Cindy is a prostitute, a drifter, drug user and probably also has a criminal record. Hansen is a business owner in the community who has two witnesses who say he was with them when the crime occured. Thus the DA will not sign a search warrant to obtain further evidence.

The weapon(s) which they did find were used in earlier killings and it appears that he dumped the weapon used in later killings after the plane ride.

The problem later facing Cage needing a confession when Hansen blurts out what he did was that they have a weapon found in Hansens house which was used in at least one murder but that is all that they have tieing Hansen to the murder. No one can say that they saw Hansen kill the victim so how do you know Hansen is the killer (in trial). They have Cindy you can tell of being held (kidnapped) by Hansen but that isn't evidence that he killed the other victim(s).

As for watching Hansen, I think they went over it kind of fast but Cage says that they do not have the resources from the state at one point. That was most likely a point to move the story along so as to not get hung up on following him day after day which doesn't move the story along.

[–] tunejohn 10 years ago

I too felt the same watching the movie, but instead my thoughts were just a bit different. Instead of following up on Hansen I would have let Cindy back on to the street and shadowed her very closely by having another cop playing a hooker, that way even if it wasn't Hansen the real person would be caught. Just sloppy police work but then again maybe restricted by law.