Public Enemies

Michael Mann's meditation on the landscape of crime and the professions it creates (detectives and narcs, robbers and hitmen), continues with Public Enemies, albeit a look back in time to the criminal landscape of another era, inhabited by a different breed of criminals and enforcers. We spend a good deal of time looking at both sides of the conflict, and are witness to the birth of modern federal enforcement and the demise of one of the most intelligent and successful bankrobbers in US history. At the center of the struggle are two men, John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), the aforementioned bankrobber, and Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), the federal agent in charge of apprehending him. Other important characters are Billie (Marion Cotillard) as Dillinger's love interest, "Baby Face Nelson" (Stephen Graham), one of Dillenger's accomplices, and J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup), the future leader of the FBI who assigns Purvis with catching Dillinger.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question and desires further commentary or explanation. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

The movie opens with a jailbreak. It happens even as Dillinger is just being brought to prison. The whole thing proceeds smoothly until one of Dillinger's gang shoots a guard, alerting the other prison guards to their presence. What would've been a quiet getaway, turns into a shootout and a chase. When one of Dillinger's friends is killed during the escape, he furiously beats and then tosses the accomplice who shot the guard out of their getaway vehicle while it's still moving. From the beginning we are given a glimpse of just how hard this man is, and Purvis's "intro" will be much the same. In his opening scene we watch him chase and gun down "Pretty Boy Floyd", another robber, in an orchid with a squad of lawmen at his back.

J. Edgar Hoover is looking to expand the jurisdiction and importance of his bureau, which at this point in time is not on the federal level. He charges Purvis with tracking down and finding Dillinger who has since moved on to Chicago where the seats of organized crime there are giving him shelter. The movie makes no attempt to disguise the drudgery of such a task. Purvis charges his own men with making endless querries into a simple overcoat that Dillinger left at the scene of his last robbery as it is their only piece of evidence, and bureau work for the moment at least looks like the tedious process it mostly is.

We can see in the beginning that Purvis and his group are not yet prepared for the enormity of this task. When he and his men come upon a choice opportunity to catch their quarry, Dillenger, Nelson and the others in their gang slip through their fingers not only because they are willing to shoot first, but because Purvis's own men, lacking procedure, abandon their road block when they hear the gunshots to come to the scene and try to help.

Dillinger hooks up with Billie, a girl he meets and dances with at a club, and very shortly after, even tells her who he really is and what he does to make money. It's hard not to marvel at the directness of this character; when Billie objects to being with him, claiming she know almost nothing about him, he replies bluntly

"I was raised on a farm in Moooresville, Indiana. My mama ran out on us when I was three, my daddy beat the hell out of me cause he didn't know no better way to raise me. I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars, whiskey, and you... what else you need to know?"

He lacks almost any sense of humor, is almost always completely focused, and tends to say things in complete seriousness.

We see what a dangerous opponent he is early in the film when we watch one of his bank robberies. He and his men operate completely aware of how much time they're taking and how much attention they've attracted. They plan for contingencies like the police showing up by posting a man at the front door and marching a few bank patrons in front of them as human shields when they board their getaway vehicles. Dillinger himself knows how to go directly to find the bank manager and get him to take him to the big money.

Dillinger is ruthless, driven, very intelligent, and cool under pressure. He is also a bit cocky and perhaps a little too sure of himself for his own good. At one point Billie worries over him, saying she doesn't want to see him die. Dillinger candidly replies that he's too good for them, and that he can strike any bank he wants anytime, while they can't be at every bank waiting to stop him. While his logic appears to make sense from the standpoint of robbing banks, it's also plain enough to see that this overlooks the fact that there are other ways of catching a crook then staking out potential banks. Dillinger lives in the moment. He doesn't yet realize that the time of bank robbers like himself is coming to an end. "It ain't about we're I've been, it's about where I'm going" he tells Billie. In an important conversation later when an associate of his observes that "robbing banks is getting harder", he says "We're having such a good time today, we ain't even thinking bout tomorrow." "You oughta", the man advises, in essence saying he should take what he can and get out quick. We in the audience as well can see the way the winds of change are blowing when we look at Hoover's agency taking form and realize how the government is formulating their response to the threat of Dillinger and his like.

Dillinger is captured in Arizona and taken by plane back to Indiana. The publicity he receives upon arrival is tremendous; to judge from some of the questions he's asked when interviewed by the press, he's being treated like a near-celebrity. He meets Melvin Purvis face to face through the bars of a jail cell door, and even in this encounter he is aloof and confident. We see the ingenuity of the man as he escapes using a fake gun carved out of wood to threaten the guards, then passes through one secure door after another, obtains real weapons for himself, changes clothes, and then finally sneaks past everyone in the sheriff's own car.

All of this leads to Hoover and Purvis cracking down on all of Dillinger's known associates. Dillinger finds himself without aid from other criminals. In one scene, he is firmly rebuffed by one of them who directs his attention to the phones behind him saying "These phones make more money in a day than you do on one of your heists and they do it continuously every day unless they stop ringing cause the cops come." The creation of federal law enforcement, along with advancements to "modern" crime fighting techniques may not be able to stop crime, but what they aparently did do for a country like america is force it further underground, out of the limelight. While the truly big criminals might indeed be the ones running the phones in the background, Dillinger's exploits have created an atmosphere of sensationalism, and the public's need to feel safe pushes it up in priority. This is coupled with another factor as well. Stunts like using a sheriff's own car to break out of jail create a spectacle and embarrass the law, thus swelling their desire to catch him as well.

Dillinger now is forced to rely on less trustworthy men than those he would prefer to. Their next bank robbery is sloppy and rushed due to the triggerhappy nature of one of the men on his team. The methodical approach we've seen him use so successfully thus far instead turns into a bloodbath. Dillinger is hurt during the escape, but worse yet, one of his men is also wounded and caught. Purvis begins to show how far he is willing to go to catch Dillinger when he denies this captive treatment and inflicts more pain on him until the man divulges the location Dillinger was headed to. It's borderline torture, or perhaps it even crosses the line. Another gunfight ensues when Purvis comes for Dillinger who is hiding out in a cabin in the woods, but once more Dillinger shoots free and slips away under the cover of darkness.

The final robbery Dillinger plans with the same cautious associate who warned him to be careful before. Before this can happen, however, we learn that one of the women who is shielding Dillinger is selling him out for the chance to become a naturalized citizen of the US. Again we see Purvis's hardline as he refuses even to make a promise to the woman to get her what she wants (he'll only recommend she be allowed to stay in the country), instead coercing from her what he wants against the threat of being deported if she doesn't cooperate.

The movie both benefits from and suffers for its realism in its ending. There is no climactic shootout, only the agents staking out, following and ambushing Dillinger to shoot him dead in the street as he leaves a movie theater. It's realistic and true to history, and perhaps even holds some suspense for those in the audience as opposed to another gunfight, though real-life seldom ever is as dramatic as movies would like them to be. The movie closes with one of Purvis's men, telling Dillinger's final words to Billie, who is still in jail at the time. The words refer to a lyric in the song they danced to when they first met and provide someting of a closure to their time together.

* * *

It strikes me how men like Dillinger were ahead of their time when it came to their manner of commiting crimes. They forced the law to up its game and adapt to their new strategies. It really isn't until Dillinger becomes a media beacon that the police harass his associates, and this in turn triggers them to turn their back on him. In a way, it is Dillinger's loss of professionalism when bragging to the media that does him in, as things only proceed to get more difficult from there on out.

The era of bank robberies showcased in this film was a unique one. It sort of progressed out of the old west style of bank holdups, although updating technology like cars and machine guns made things dangerous in a completely different way, and the rise of cities, together with the shriveling of the uncharted west made way for a renewed strategy of hiding within the law's reach but beneath its sight.

If there's a common thread to nearly all of Michael Mann's films it would have to be professionalism, although crime (and the roles it creates) plays a large part in many as well. Public Enemies contains both of these themes and in terms of similarity bears a bit of a resemblance to his 1995 film "Heat" which also shared its time looking over both cops and criminals. It's been said that Mann is the kind of person who has equal amounts of respect for both sides of the law and it shows in both Heat and Public Enemies. Juxtaposing these two films, we can see what a snapshot Public Enemies is, from the metaphor of an american history of crime. While Heat does have a similar story to tell -one of detectives on the trail of some very skilled robbers- its differences reflect the period it takes place in: modern techniques of suvailance, legal manuevres. The second of these two is especially important to note as the characters in Heat have addresses known to the police, are not wanted men but instead are merely suspected of the crimes they commit, and quite simply put, hide in plain view. In short, they are not "public" enemies in the way the characters in Dillinger's time are.

Renaissance: Paris 2054

Dark in look and feel, Renaissance is a film whose only grays are between the things we normally look at. The sharp angular lines of the city, structures, and characters' faces, conceal the fact that character-wise, they are anything but black and white, though in the end dark could be used to describe them all; dark pasts, dark acts, dark motives and methods and secrets.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

As an animated film which uses the same rotoscoping technology as "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly" (both by Richard Linklater), Renaissance boasts a distinct visual look. Unlike those two films, however, Renaissance takes things to another level, by reducing the palette to only black and white giving it a feel more reminiscent of the older film noirs it resembles thematically. Stylistically it's in the same ballpark as "Sin City", but whereas that film used color to bring important details to life, there are is virtually no color in Renaissance, and for that matter almost no grays either; everything seems fall within the catagory of being either light or shadow. At times we feel like what we're looking at is actually invisible and what we can "see" is merely the shadow or after-effect of the subjects we are trying to follow. It lends itself quite well to a story such as this, full of mystery, secrets, and clues hidden within the details. The saga is full of shifting alliances, culprits hiding in plain view, and plot twists which linger just around the corner and can felt before we actually see them.

The story itself is quite spare, and like many of the better film noirs it relies heavily on exposition, terse dialogue, and a slowly unfolding plot to maintain its air of secrecy. Think neo niors like Heat and L.A. Confidential though due to its futuristic elements works like Blade Runner (another sci-fi noir with sparse dialogue and a lot of atmosphere) and the anime Cowboy Bebop might be more on target. Even the romantic subplot of the film (probably its most heavily dramatic portion) is sparing when it comes to words: "I bet you meet a lot of flawless women in your line of work."

Karas and Bislane

The setting is a distopian Paris set in the not too distant future where the Eifel Tower can still be seen, and many new, tall and impressive buildings have been erected to tower over the slums and alleys where the parasites still live and continue to commit their petty crimes as they have since cities came into existance. An impressive opening shot pans down from the Eifel tower itself, lower and lower into the seemy underbelly of the metropolis. At a dingy techno-club a girl named Bislane dances on the floor. Unbenounced to her, her younger sister Ilona has come to the club to see the owner and bartender, Dimitri, with a dark purpose in mind. He's stolen something for her, a book the plot will later reveal, which contains the secret of immortality. Dimitri tells Ilona he had some trouble getting what she wanted, sleezily lets her know the price has gone up and then, after getting into a minor scuffle with her is confronted and told to leave by Bislane who finds the two where they are arguing on the balcony. Ilona will leave empty handed only to be abducted, setting in motion a plot that focuses on the search for her whereabouts, the hidden motives behind why she was taken, and what is at stake in her return.

Two exemplary images of noir

Above: Bislane in front of the Paris Skyline

Below: Reflection in the eye of Ilona's dead dog, the only witness to her abduction

A mega-company called Avalon looms above all else in the city of Paris in Renaissance. It employs the best and brightest (including the two sisters mentioned previously), and it maintains an iron grip on all. Our main character is Karas, a character like many we've seen in another film. He's tough and possesses a strong sense of justice, and is willing to bend the rules to do what he feels is right. In an early scene we watch him break protocol on a hostage situation to take out three kidnappers who have a young boy held at gunpoint. He seems to have as little regard for his own life as he does for operating procedure.

Over the course of the film, Karas will meet several important characters. Jonas Muller is a brilliant scientist and was a mentor to Ilona. Farfella is a shadowy gangster and childhood friend to Karas (the kind of friend who's useful when one wants to skirt the law, as Karas will have to later in this film). The slimy Dellenbach is the head of Avalon who bugs Karas's comm device, and later has Dimitri killed and attempts to abduct Muller with thugs who use a type of thermo-camouflage (the latter of which sets off a pretty interesting shootout in a greenhouse). Eventually Karas will get kicked off the force and have to rely upon Bislane to access information from Avalon which sets off a romantic subplot between the two. The final major character to be introduced is the elderly Nakata who was on the same team as Muller during a crucial project. He reveals the secret of their research that everyone seems to be dying to get their hands on: immortality. Muller, it turns out, had a younger brother with Progeria, a disease which causes hyper-rapid aging, and by trying to counteract it, it seems he's discovered the means to eternal youth.

Above: Another image reminiscent of classic noir, two silhouettes kissing in the rain

Below: Thermo-camouflaged soldiers

All of this leads to a confrontation as Karas and Dellenbach's men close in on Ilona's whereabouts at the same time and Karas is forced to choose between killing Ilona to keep Muller's secret or allowing her to live and reveal it to Avalon. On the one hand, Muller has died for the secret already and entrusted the choice to Karas. "Avalon cannot be allowed to obtain such limitless power. Without death life will become meaningless..." On the other hand, Karas has promised Bislane, now his current lover, that he will save Ilona, even though it has been decided beforehand that she will have to go into hiding and take on a new identity.

Things do not go as expected when Karas finally reaches Ilona. She has been held against her will by Muller (now dead) and his younger brother, who constitutes the one piece of evidence Muller couldn't destroy. When Karas arrives Ilona is trying to do just that, until Karas stops her from choking him to death. Ilona reveals herself to be completely selfish and willing to accomodate Avalon. She rejects the premise of taking a new identity and even tells Karas of her intention to take credit for Muller's work, saying "The world is waiting for MY discovery." After suffering a gunshot wound to his shoulder from one of Dellenbach's henchmen, Karas finds himself incapacitated and unable to physically restrain her and takes her life with his gun after she throws away the new identity he gives her and begins to defiantly march back to Dellenbach. When talking with Bislane afterward, Karas doesn't let on what happened with Ilona's death, choosing instead to let her sister retain a positive memory and the belief that she is still out there safe and alive.

* * *

Thematically, Renaissance is fairly ambiguous, even while the question of morallity when it comes to eternal life is a big one. "Without death, life is meaningless", utters the character of Muller right before he expires. And with the brisk pace the plot continues we viewers are given little time to contemplate this until the lights come back on and the question resurfaces in our minds.

I remember the first time I saw the movie with a friend we ended up having a long discussion about the ending. He was ticked off at the decision Karas had made, feeling immortality was something which should have been allowed into Avalon's hands. I've often wondered if there isn't something inherently corrupt in the very idea of eternal life. Few can deny the power it would confer on those who possess it, and power as we all know, corrupts.

What if eternal life were made into a product? Should it really? Who decides who lives and who dies, and in the end is all of it merely a matter of money or favors? In many ways we live in something of a similar system already where those with large amounts of money or influence survive much longer despite sometimes having far worse ailments. The poor who become sick or infirm or just plain old suffer as their bodies slowly break down, addicted to medicine or life saving treatment, but what if there were a source of immortality and we all knew we could live on forever and not just for a few more years if only we could afford to pay the price... Movies like this one reflect the real world in a real way, and businesses like the fictional Avalon are not a far cry from the dirty pharmaceutical companies that deny medicine to the dying if there isn't a profit in it for them to make.

Another question I'd have to consider is what even if immortality were granted to the common man would be his future? Imagine being a slave for all eternity, with no release ever to be seen. It's been often said that there are fates worse than death, and with death no longer a master to us, who would be left? That human beings can be far crueler than death is something I have little doubt of, and characters like the villain Dellenbach make it quite believable that immortality might not just be the end of death's great menace, but also the beginning of an endless living hell as humans without scruple acquire what damn near amounts to godhod. Richard Dawkins once argued that death coupled with reproduction could actually be seen as a very big advantage to immortality, largely due to the ability to start over, brand new from scratch, and potentially fix the problems within a previous version of any creature.

Like the Watchmen movie which was adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, Renaissance doesn't give its viewers answers to these questions per se. Instead it merely shows us the decisions of its characters, leaving us to ponder them and whether or not we agree or disagree.

Reviews

I love reading online about the movies and books I've gone through, but have found something that leaves me really unsatisfied a lot of the time. I've found that sometimes the reviews I've read seem to stop short of giving me everything I wanted to hear about. While I certainly respect the ability of those writing online to do such a good job of providing eloquent commentary without spoiling the movie, it's left me with absolutely in the dark at times when it comes to exploring some of the deeper themes of the movies and other media I've seen, simply because these themes happen to coincide with the surprises in the plot. Oftentimes the endings in particular of any given film are the most maddening part, because they leave us with so much confusion, so many questions, so much desire to discuss what we've seen, to delve deeper into it and make sense of it all. If we're fortunate enough to have a friend who's seen the film in question, this isn't such a bad thing, we can always turn to them, but in the other cases... It can be a disappointing. Many of the best films leaves us with more questions than answers, full of thoughts we want explained or even just acknowledged. Sometimes I find myself having an original thought, and wanting to explore it further, scour the net looking to see if anyone out there has thought the same thing, or at least has bothered to write it down if ever they had, only to come up empty handed.

I want to write more reviews, but have come to the conclusion that avoiding plot spoilers is just not for me. I hate spoilers more than anyone I know, and yet the irony of all is that because of this, I generally avoid reading any reviews or opinions on a film or book I've yet to experience. I like going in to it all not knowing what to expect, fresh and free of preconceptions, not sure what to look for. Like most everyone else I like the surprises to be surprises, but where I differ, I suspect is that while I avoid information like the sickness before checking out something new, when it's all done, I can't seem to stop looking for it. I read reviews for opinion, for perspective, for added meaning, not to whet my appetite. Maybe I'm just reading it all backwards, but so what? There's something to be said about doing it this way too, where at least I know some of the conclusions I've come to are my own and not the critic whose review I read beforehand as so many others do. It is so difficult to find commentary by people willing to write in a way that reveals plot points about the movie for the sake of further examination, and yet, I find that's what I truly crave sometimes. Sometimes I want read more between the lines, between the lines of the lines between which I'm already reading. I want to examine the hypotheticals no matter how unlikely, bizarre, and out there they are.

Well, I think it's time to stop griping and do something about it all, damn it. Why I am whining about no one writing about this when I could do it myself? I've occasionally encountered some excellent reviews written by non-professionals on works that don't always get the serious attention that others do (things like well written, full bodied reviews on manga can be very difficult to find, especially if the following for it is small). It gets me sometimes that a user review from Amazon.com or IMDB can finally give a work the credit it's due. This is what the internet is here for. When we have an original thought, we have the option of putting it out there for others to see so they don't have to dwell in the darkness the way that is driving me so crazy right now.

The reviews I write are gonna be done with the idea that the reader has already experienced the work in question and wants more answers or reflection. I'm gonna drink the language of film in with eyes and bleed my thoughts straight onto the page in word form. Who knows? Maybe what I believed were original thoughts have been had by others but no one just bothered to put it out there until now.

Stand By Me: A Review

"Were the golden years ever really golden?" I wonder sometimes. When we think of the 50's in America, often an idyllic portrait akin to an episode of Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best comes to mind. When we watch the more realistically done movies portraying that time, like L.A. Confidential, The Majestic, Shawshank Redemption, and the Green Mile, the view we get is a good deal grayer. Stand By Me falls a bit more into this latter catagory although there is still a certain poignancy to it all that seems to find its way to a lot of the movies about that era.

Please note: Entries about media reviewed in this blog are written from the framepoint that the reader has already seen the work in question. Plot twists and endings will sometimes be examined.

The movie depicts a group of young boys on their summer vacation, who are about to enter junior high, and make a discovery that launches them on a journey of sorts. It's a "boys-who-are-up-to-no-good" sort of trip that has many of the best elements of such a traveling/adventure story: the laughing and joking around, the occasional danger or harrowing situation, arguing, bonding, self-discovery.

The narrator of the story is a young boy named Gordon (played by actor Wil Wheaton, who is called "Gordie" by his friends in the film) who lost his older brother, Denny, a short while ago. His parents are quiet, distant, and have yet to recover the loss of this son who clearly was more well liked than young Gordy is. Early in the film, his father chastizes him, asking why he doesn't have better friends the way his brother Denny used to. Gordie's best friend is Chris (played by River Phoenix), a boy whose family includes drunks and criminals. Chris acts tough because of the negative reputation his family brings him. Teddy (Corey Feldman) is another similar such kid; he acts tough because his father, a war veteran, seems to have snapped and at one point even punished the boy by holding his ear to the grill of a stove. Everyone in town seems to know this as well, and the discredit which follows him around has made him defensive when it comes to his father, and weary as a result of that. Rounding out their group is Vern, a pudgy boy, who is most often the butt of their jokes. He seems to follow them around because he might have been rejected from other groups before them. These four form something of a unit, and one gets the sense that they formed it as a means of survival by banding together in the face of the ostracization that is rained down on them.

The story starts with Gordie, Chris, and Teddy sitting in a treehouse playing cards. It's a scene worthy of a Rockwell picture, though the details give us a slightly courser view of things. The boys are smoking, talk in a very smart-alecky way, and curse a lot. "Thinking up new, and cruder ways to describe someone else's mother was always looked upon with high regard." Gordie recalls in his narration. Vern arrives, out of breath, and asks the boys if they want to see a dead body. And so the journey begins.

We all have experiences like this when we're young, I think. Times when we decide to go farther than we allowed by our parents, times when it's just us and friends with no supervision, and times when it feels like we might have gotten in a bit over our heads. One thing that seperates this journey from what one the average viewer might've had is that this one has something that's a little bit extraordinary at its end (a dead body that's as of yet undiscovered).

Around the same time that the boys are questing out, a second group is getting ready to do so. This one is led by the thuggish Ace (played by a younger Kiefer Sutherland). It is revealed from the beginning that Vern learned of the location of the body when he overheard two of Ace's cronies talking about it. The boys' plan to travel out to see the body developed when they thought that said cronies were just going to remain hush about the whole thing because of a crime they had committed at the time. Ace and his crew are a bit bigger and older than the young heroes of our story, and Ace himself, is clearly bad news; early in the story he steals a ballcap from Gordie (one given to him by his brother Denny when he was still alive); he bullies his underlings into going along to get the body despite thier apprehension from guilt; he causes a truck carrying a load of wood to crash onto the side of the road so he can win a race with his friends in their cars. This setsup a confrontation of sorts when the two groups converge on their goal.

Along the way, the boys break into a junkyard (and subsequently escape the owner's angry dog), swim across a swamp, camp alone in the woods, and outrun a train when they decide to use a long, high bridge over a gorge despite the fact that it affords them no place to allow the train to safely pass them until they reach the other side. The last two events in particular offer some importan moments. The boys not only talk and tell stories around their campfire during the camping scene, but also take turns staying awake to defend each other when they hear wolves howling in the forest (Chris reveals to Gordie earlier that he has hidden one of his father's guns in his pack). The train scene as well offers a little more than just a quick moment of excitement; Gordie more or less saves Vern's life when he helps him up from a stumble and forces the cowering kid to get moving when they see the train coming. He also pulls Vern out of the train's way at the last possible second when they reach the other side of the gorge.

All in all, however, it is the quiet conversations that stay with us the most in this journey of a movie. We learn that Chris is innocent of something everyone in town has blamed him for, but that he can't escape the accusations because of his and his family's reputation alone. Gordie confides that he knows his parents loved his brother more than him, and feels they wish he'd been the one to die instead. Chris and Gordie in particular form a special sort of bond during the course of the trip, if in fact there wasn't already one there to begin with. Despite the preconceptions about him, Chris understands that Gordie has a gift compared to the others in their group and at one point lets on that he feels it's all coming to an end soon: "You're smart, and you'll probably start hanging out with other, smarter kids soon when we start junior high. Me, Teddy, and Vern are idiots who'll just get relegated to shop class", he says to Gordie who responds, "No way, I'll take that class with you guys to be around you", "Then you're idiot who's throwing away a gift." It's an important conversation, and one that ends with Gordie doing his best to encourage Chris and reaffirm their friendship.

The climax to the story comes when the boys finally reach the corpse they'd been seeking. The best thing about the scene is that there aren't any cheap surprises put in to try and shock the audience. Gordie tells us simply that it wasn't a monster, wasn't anything gruesome, it was just what it was, a body that had ceased to live. Then comes Ace and his crew who threaten the boys to get out and let them have have the body (they want it because they believe it will make them look like heroes to the townsfolk). The boys stand up to their assailants despite being smaller and outnumbered by Ace and his gang. When Ace pulls a switchblade on Chris things look to get violent until Gordie fires off the gun Chris had hidden earlier and then points it at Ace. Ace tries to threaten, bluff, and even out-reason Gordie: "You gonna shoot us all kid?" he asks him, "No, Ace, just you." Gordie responds cooly. The look in his eyes is all else that's needed to make Ace see he's serious. Ace and his crew leave, and the boys decide to let an annonymous phone reveal the location of the body rather than try to take credit.

Walking back into town, the narration tells us that things felt different for them, and indeed we in the audience know that things have changed. The boys have certainly undergone some realizations about each other, and also about themselves. And two of them in particular have grown much closer and stronger in friendship. It is revealed that Vern and Teddy both ended up just as expected, doing somewhat simple jobs after graduation: Vern as a forklift operator after getting married, Teddy only after being rejected by the military and then serving jail time for some crimes. Chris on the other hand, went on to confound the exceed the low expectations for him, perservering with school and eventually becoming a lawyer. It's at this point I recall the conversation he has with Gordie about being left behind while the latter goes on to do bigger and better things. I can't help but think that it was because of the bond made by the two of them on their trip that the two were able to pull together and Chris was able to find the strength to become more. In many ways Gordie has saved him because of their talk. Then a much older Gordie reveals in revelation that Chris died many years in a stabbing shortly before the telling of the story, and we realize suddenly our narrator's reason to tell the whole story, as an ending for one of the characters has come.

The final words of the story are: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" I'm reminded of another quote, this one from All The King's Men. It went something like: "You go to your childhood friend because he sees your face as it was when it was young. Before it became what it was, before you became clever and wise..." The friends we make as children we can never quite have again, and it isn't just because of the years of shared history it takes to make, for even those we meet later in life and stay friends with for longer periods of time aren't quite the same. It has a lot to do with the quote I mentioned, with them seeing us when we're still young. They see us when we act silly, bold, flambouyant and childish as, of course, all kids are. But more importantly, they see us as vulnerable and scared and insecure in a way only a child can be.