The Devil's in the Writer's Block

[bcholmes]

When I sit down to write stuff, I'm always obsessed with the details that I'm likely to get wrong. I'm always wanting to jump on to the intertubes to verify some fact or another, and then, next thing you know, I've wasted hours of potential productive writing time.

Tonight, I watched The Next Three Days. And I'm willing to venture that the screenwriter for that film did not get as obsessed with details as I get. So, first you need to understand that this is an entirely cheese-tastic film. Russell Crowe's wife is jailed for a murder that she didn't commit, so he hatched a plan to spring her from jail. Wacky hijinks ensue. A key point has to do with the police discovering some papers in Crowe's garbage. He tore down the wall o' maps and photos that helped him organize the big plan on the eve of executing the heist. Among those papers are parts of a photo. I recognized the photo instantly as a picture of the (intact) Presidential Palace in Pòtoprens, Haiti. Eventually, someone says, "I wish I could identify this picture, here," and someone else says, "It's the Presidential Palace -- it was all over CNN after the earthquake." (Note that the building is flying the Haitian flag in the photo, so no credit to the cop for observation).

Meanwhile, our fugitives have made their way to Canada. We see them entering Pearson airport, here in Toronto. But our cops have had a clue, too, and they suspect that the duo might go to Ontario or Quebec, so they've sent word.

The fugitives make it through Canadian customs at the airport -- why they're going through Canadian customs as they're leaving the country is never explained. But the cops are checking all the flights to Haiti. There's a tense scene in which their flight to Haiti is being searched: they manage to avoid detection, but the ticket agent is in conversation with the head cop (played by Lennie James, who's starting to be a favourite of mine) and he says, "this is the last flight to Haiti this evening."

So. Hm. There are no direct flights to Haiti from Toronto. To get to Haiti from Toronto, you'd have to go through Montreal or through the States. Let's assume they're not going through the States (they're fugitives). So, really, they'd have to check every flight to Montreal. And there's lots of those. Secondly, nobody flies into Haiti at night. I think the last flight into the country lands around 3:00 in the afternoon. No evening flights.

Okay, so, not terribly germane to the overall story/plot. But those moments took me out of my "willing suspension of disbelief" state.

I want to be very clear: I'm not recommending this as a good film. It's cheese all the way down. On the other hand, I also watched L'immortel (a.k.a. 22 Bullets), and it was fantastic. I mean, the whole genre of "I will take my revenge on the people who betrayed me one-by-one" suspense film is pretty formulaic. But, man, this one was good.