The Kid Detective (2020) w/ Andrew Edwards: Ep. 509

research at all, I pulled it up. The Kid Detective came out in twenty twenty to mixed reviews and very limited box office success. Failed to make even a tenth of its three million dollar budget back. And I never understood why it's a great film. It's a very profound film at once funny and heartbreaking, and explores many of the generational issues that my guests and I have been

speaking about. What is it to be a gifted kid, someone with promise, who followed the instructions of older, well meaning people, only to find your life in ruins, in shambles. You're an abject failure for following. Parents are looking at you ascants, asking you when you're going to get a real job and grow up. And this movie has a in it. It's very profound, but it's not wrote. The solutions and the dilemmas in this movie are real, they're complicated.

It isn't just the trite pull yourself up by your bootstraps or shut up dad, the future is now old man. It's a real conversation, a real back and forth, and to be honest, a pretty compelling mystery as well. It's a great film. I think you should see it. When Andy and I discuss it, we get about forty minutes through before we get into spoilers. So just watch it right, Maybe listen to the first forty minutes, then you stick around for us discovered or discussing the conclusion. But I

recommend it. It's ninety minutes something you can watch with the woman. She'll probably enjoy it, And yeah, I enjoyed it a ton, both when I watched it the first time and then going back through it earlier this week. I think you'd get a lot out of it. It's really interesting right to see things that are ahead of their time, and I view this movie as being ahead of its time, both in the generational discourse that we've been in for seemingly years now, but also in its structure.

This movie was a small project headed up by a single auteur, not a lot of money, and it might have been too early for that, but as we've seen with the success of both Obsession and The Back Rooms Movie, this is the direction the industry is going, and so it's sort of one of these great what ifs. If this movie came out now, I think it would be a huge success. People are ready for it on multiple levels, but it remains that a what if possibility. So I

highly recommend The Kid Detective. The premise is a little goofy. The main character is sort of a hearty boys Encyclopedia Brown. As the title says, Kid Detective now grown up in a depressed any town ussay, and he discovers a real mystery, a real murder connected to his own past in some way the Case that Got Away. And if that premise

sounds stupid, okay, fair enough. This movie is in some ways lighthearted, but it is a real heart to it, not just that the stakes raise dramatically becomes a real serious movie, but also it deals with very real problems. What is it to grow up? What is it to lose your innocence? And what if getting it? Making it? Becoming a success? What does that do to you? What does that do to you as a man? Like I said,

great film, I can't recommend it enough. So without further ado, here's the discussion with Andy Edwards before we get into it. Though I guess I shouldn't say without further ado and then distract from that. But if you want the episodes early and ad free, you can throw me a few bucks on Patreon, substack or gum road.

you might have to pay the toll. It's not a lot, right, It's about a cup of coffee, and I put out a lot of content, right you guys on the free feed, you aren't missing anything. I'm not holding out on you, but as sort of a sweetener, obviously, you get rid of the ads and you get the content a day or so early. Anyway, here's Andy Edwards. All right, Andrew Edwards, Welcome back to the Jay Burden Show. How you doing, man?

all day, ten, ten, whatever you're going to say. You know, it falls into this very interesting genre that I hope. I think we've actually talked about it before. I know I've talked about it on at other places. It's kind of this emergent subgenre of them. It's a little bit of a mashup right of like Fish out of Water with the noir detective character. But it's not entirely just tropy like that. It's it's more, it's deeper. And this is again if you want to touch on this, there's

quite a bit to examined there. But overall, like you know, general big big picture impressions, I don't remember a better movie like of this budget maybe ever I mean, this is this thing is hitting so far above its weight that it's to me anyway. I know that a lot of this is personal. All movies are personal, right you. You know Little Mermaid is going to hit a little

bit differently than Chinatown for a grown man maybe. But for whatever reason I was, I wasn't floored because I had so much flowing through my mind after I watched it, but I was ah highly, highly impressed, deeply moved. Yeah.

sort of an Encyclopedia Brown esque character. You know, when he was a young teenager, he was the talk of the town, given to the key to the city for solving the sort of simple small town mysteries, right, who stole the money from the fundraiser inconsequential things like that. But when we meet him, he's a thirty two year old loser right living in a rundown apartment, still running the same business. His parents are constantly getting on him to you know, hey, man, when are you going to

get a real job. And what sort of incites this forward is he gets an actual case the murder, the horrific murder of a student at the local high school, and that's sort of what draws us into this film. One thing I noticed actually right off the beginning is that this movie has a real soundtrack to it, which is uncommon in especially very low budget films. But it actually has an orchestral score, which is rare in films period. And you'll hear very kind of traditional film orchestral music

throughout the whole thing. And of course there's you know, pop music of course kind of relevant to whichever era we're in, but it's something you don't see a lot. And this movie has a really unique kind of potent combo of humor and like really serious drama to it,

and having one does not cheapen the other. And especially for a movie that came out in twenty twenty, it's so rare to see a film that balances those well, because there are laugh out loud moments in this you know, there's moments where the dialogue is very switty and funny, and then the conclusion to it is I mean to say, it's a gut punch as an understatement, Andy.

want to touch the ending. I don't want to because, like I mean, it was Yeah, I mean, you said it pretty pretty succinctly, and I think, very well, Jay is there's this mixture of very serious action and and but this constant I want to I wanted to say as I was watching it, I kept sensing like the boomer versus guy, and I came up with this idea like it's a post boomer movie where gen X had this whole thing like, well, it's all ironic, and that

wasn't really true. And then they tried to put this on the millennials or whoever comes after gen X, and that's not really true. This movie somehow is very very special in this specific way and the way that it managed the seriousness of the topic, even in the title The Kid Detective, and even when you first started talking about it, like the first few things you say about it, it sounds like a some shit I'm not really into, you know, some sort of mash up little kid movie.

It isn't that at all. And it reminded me along the way of something a mutual friend of ours has said that guys in our generations probably mind being oldest, and on down the line, we're not really becoming men in the classical sense. It doesn't matter how how tightly your life has woven together, how much Nietzsche you read, how much you work out, how like dialed in and

focused you are. It's really a contextual issue. I think where the waters we're swimming in are are defining not just the possibilities, but but the ways that we can react. And so it's forcing something very much like the tone that like, the tonality of this film is what is so brilliant, I mean just brilliant. To me. I'm crushed by the way that this thing was a flop. Supposedly it was like three million bucks and they made less

than four hundred thousand dollars on it. The guy, I forget his name, Evan somebody, the director writer a tour. He hasn't been touched, you know, for since that's been six years. Apparently he spent a lot of time building his little, you know, debut masterpiece. But it's tough because this guy, whatever he is doing, and maybe a few of these other examples are hitting on the thing. It's it's as if that specific voice is the one that's being actively crushed. And it's sort of like our our thing,

if you know what I mean. You hear this a lot like Voice of a Generation or all this sort of kind of problem. But in this case, I have to say, man, there it's something again about the absolute seriousness of the topic which is handled at a dramatic level, at a writing level, like you were sort of suggesting about the ending, I mean, gobsmacked, like you're just not

ready for. I was not ready for the depth, not just to the action and the plot, which are all superlative, the character, the dialogue, and the reveal of what's happening in the relationship between basically the main two characters. They're you know again, I don't want to get too close to and give anything away, but the nemesis, let's say, and your hero is dude, deeply profound. In my opinion, I was just I loved it. I was like man, this is so good.

This is a real, very serious event. And when we go back and forth, it's sort of interesting that we see a stark difference in how his parents treat him.

ready for him to move on. And I think it's so poignant because you know, I think many of us were recognized for, you know, some sort of talent early in life and told like, oh, go pursue your dreams.

And I think it's interesting the characterization of the town in and of itself, right, this kind of small town willow Brook in Canada, because there's a really sort of a repeated motif of him walking down the city center and when he's a kid, you know, he's the hero of the town. You know, all the townspeople are waving to him and smiling and shaking his hand, and it looks like a clean, nice place. And then the first time we see him walking into his office, right, he's overslept.

His disrespectful goth secretary is you know, telling him that he's late to work. And not only is this town like a complete wreck, and there's there's graffiti everywhere, all the towns are kind of or all the shopfronts are boarded up. But you see the people around him, even

in that look at him as a failure. Yeah, there's a great sort of recurring character which is the in the ice cream shop owner, right, And we learn that he is, you know, as a kid, was given free ice cream for life, and now he's a thirty two year old man still cashing in on that, you know, something that happened, you know, over fifteen years ago. And you could just see the disgust on the guy's face, like, come on, man, you've got to grow up.

which is hilarious. I hope that listeners. It's very difficult for Jay and I to translate this because this is such a brilliantly like built movie. It's it's it's got like those that that masterful, delicate touch of the Coen Brothers, but it's also its own thing. It's not really derivative. So in speaking about this relationship with his parents, you think, well, I don't know, that's kind of the stakes there are

sort of low and and right, I mean, but they're not. Again, there's some very heavy stuff going on at that topical like push pull action level of the movie. But the way that that is integrated with the mentality of our main character is brilliant, and it's it's more than brilliant. It's u It's one of these things we're like, man,

this is what movies were supposed to do. They were sort of supposed to make dudes like me and you maybe have a sense of some Catharsis, you know, like, Okay, so I'm not the only guy out here doing this because there are little moments of this movie. That that I said before we hit record, like hit quite deep, like I was surprised how how I was like man and and nothing more so than the issue with the parents.

But you also touched another on another bit, Jay that this ass so the world he's in has also decayed, and I it's not a political film, like it doesn't seem to be saying, oh, this is about nine to eleven or some jive like that. And it's also not just some solipsistic thing where this this hero of ours who's not been able to you know, bring his his

gifts to fruition. He's living in a in a decaying society, independent of whatever his accomplishments are, and that plays in I think deeply into into that revelation at the very end, which to me was a revelation, but you know, not the kind of climactic end, but the the denoment sort

of end. Dan new Maw, however that you know you want to say it, but I'll hand it back to you because I think I think the stuff with the with the the way the characters situated visa the his his environment, uh it is is part of the magic of this movie.

sense that the town has changed. When the park that he's been you know, walking through as an adult and flashing back to what it was when he was a child, well it's you know, police arm in arm looking through the water with flashlights, right, sirens and the whole thing. And yeah, yes, so we get that sense that he is out of his depth, and it's a source of honestly, a lot of the comedy in this film. And there

are no real jokes in this movie, per se. There are funny situations, but you know, there's never sort of

a wink at the camera. And there's one which is a really horrifically grim scene where he has you know, started to unravel the mystery, and he has gone to the parents of the murdered boy, and he's laying out what he thinks is happening at this kind of intermediate stage, and then the boy's father asks him a simple question like, oh, have you considered you know, he's not actually a drug dealer, He's not a bad kid. He was framed for it that the murdered boy. And you can see on his

face he clearly has not thought about that whatsoever. And he comes up with some line like, oh, you know, I'm keeping my mind open. But the kid's boy or the boy's dad knows. He says, what, you just believe the first thing that anyone tells you, You're an idiot. And it is funny because you realize at the same time he's actually did just believe whatever anyone told him. But it's also a complete gut punch because the kid's dad is obviously distraught. He storms upstairs and his child

has been murdered. And that's a sort of good for the kind of balance of like there is a part of this movie that's darkly funny. Another example is, you know, he is a massive loser, and so when we see him interacting with other people, they all kind of pity him, they'll kind of want him to get over it and

get a real job. But also just the fact that the way they get around in this whole movie is that the sixteen year old who hired him is driving them around and her grandma is like convertible the saber or something. She's his driver. And there's never a moment where it's really played for laughs, but it is just a funny situation, like this guy's a massive loser, and you know there he is able to redeem himself. And but it's a continually just amusing film.

hero forward. And he winds up in the cop shop talking to I guess he was black or this dark dark skin of some sort, the police chief who he has this ongoing relationship with going back to when he was a little kid, and he's talking about he has that like vulnerable moment where he he's saying, like, why didn't you why don't you call me back? You know, when I inquired about the case that I couldn't solve when I was a kid, which sort of sent me into this downward spiral that I'm still in now. I

think these are the same. I might be conflating things here, but the chief says, you know, a very like basic thing like you were a kid, dude, and there was a missing you know, a missing child, and I'm not we can't depend on a twelve year old boy to solve this case, like this was some serious shit, and the police chief knows that this is basically destroyed the guy's life. You know, he we may not. There's a

sense like like he's a prodigy. I mean he's he's he does have skills, like he is smarter than most people around him. If you haven't has that line. But I used to think I was so far ahead of the game, and then I woke up one day and I realized, wow, I'm not even in the game. The game has just blown me by. So to me, this is like truly genius stuff of the like of the the most important bit. And it leads to this cop at saying like, at some point in your life, you're

going to have to decide, you know. The implication is to grow up or whatever. And this might be for you. He's saying this as the new case that you're on, this might be the moment where you need to do that. And the cop is not saying, hey, but you need to give up this bullshit about you know, you're some like detective, you're a kid still in you know, in

a man's body. The cop doesn't actually say that to him, whereas the nemesis later does allude to this, like maybe it's easier to just give up, you know, maybe it's easier to just give up. And I didn't catch it as it flowed by, but then right after the movie,

I realized these are little polar voices. This is the evil and this is the good, and the good is not saying to you this condescending sort of shit that he gets from his aunt, which is like, well, you know you're following your dreams and there's nothing more you can do, then that's just great. You know, eventually it'll all come together. No, it won't just come together just because you follow your dreams. You're going to make some sort of internal transformation born out of the pain that

you're going through and you're going to define yourself? Are you this dude, no matter what anybody he tells you, or are you not? And to me that was the crux of the whole movie because in the end, it isn't as if he has some rocky like you know, some rock like dig deep. He just simply will not let go. You know. That's to me when he kind of he's just hanging on to these bits, these clues.

And eventually, even though all of this stuff has come down the line, you know, he turns that corner and it isn't like spectacular, but it is again happening all within the plot of this very serious stuff, which does wind him back to where he ends up in the film. But I wanted to touch on that thing out the cop alone seemed the warrior sort of archetype presents to him in a very neutral like, sort of well detached,

a non invested way. He just simply says, maybe this is the thing that's going to determine for you whether you grow up or not. But what growing up is isn't quite what it what I think most people would imply.

planting that idea in your head earlier. There's a couple things in this that I want to mention because if you look at the end of the film and Andy and I are dancing around how this film has resolved, not because of it's a real, you know, m Night Shyamalan style head scratcher, like, oh, you won't like once you know the secret, the movie doesn't have any value. But this movie is genuinely, very very good and you

should watch it. And I don't want to rob you of that, you know, coming into everything dropping into place, because I have watched this film two or three times now and it holds up remarkably well. But I don't want to take that from you. So that's why we are, you know, sort of dancing around it. But there's one thing that I want to mention that is sort of a source of a lot of the levity in the movie, which is the sort of gap between his methods and

the situation he is involved in. You know, we've said he is a kid detective, and so one of the things he talks about, there's sort of monologue talking about his career. You know, he's like and then there's the moment where you know you're sneaking into the house. You realize you know they're coming in, so you hide in the closet, hold your breath, and then you sneak right the classic moment you've seen from any film. And what makes it so funny is that that moment happens twice

in the film. Yeah, and every time it goes about as horribly as you can imagine. There's never a moment

where it works. And there's this great contrast between you know, that this flashback where he's sneaking into some old lady's house as an impetuous twelve year old and she opens the door and she goes, oh, you rascal, and then the moment which ends him up, you know, which which leads to him in police custody, which is he's sneaking into one of the murder victim's friends hopes and so first he's in his closet and he realizes is a fat kid. He just sits on the computer all day.

So he spends like three hours watching this guy on the computer, tries to sneak out, ends up in his sister's room. Yeah, and then of course what he's discovered

in you know, a nine year old's bedroom. He gets arrested for you know, being a pedophile, and there's this hilarious moment where and he sort of hits rock bottom after this, you know, he goes on a bender and he's talking to his secretary, who is honestly a very funny character in this you know, this kind of like diner goth like very very to put it, wildly unsupportive. Secretary calls him and she goes, well, the good news is you're in the paper. So he goes, oh, like,

what did it say? And he says, it says you were found in the bedroom of a nine year old girl masturbating, And his response is probably the funniest line in the movie. He just goes, I wasn't masturbating, and then the scene changes again. It's incredibly funny, but there's like the character is not laughing with you. It's not presented as a joke. It's just the situation is absurd.

And it's such a tonal masterpiece to hold both of these at once, because this is the moment where he is closest to giving up, where he's embarrassed himself even more if possible. You know, we see him sort of you know, hit rock bottom. But to your point, he can't let himself give up. He can't let this sixteen

year old girl down. And one of the repeat things that happens is that people are asking him, oh, what case are you want because the implication is you just find missing cats and you know, you find out if someone's gay, which is another joke sort of repeated a couple times in the movie. That's very funny. That was it. But there's this there's this letdown where he says, you know, oh, you know, I've been tracked, I've been tapped to be

part of this murder investigation. And then when he's asked for more details, he admits that, oh, it isn't the police, it's you know, the sixteen year old girlfriend. And every time someone tells him, like, you know, you can't accept money for this right, you can't just take advantage of this you know teenager, right, who's put our faith in you? And again, I think that that's such a kind of master l one because even then he he's like, yeah,

I know, I can't. I can't do that. So he isn't interested in this financially, like it's part of this sort of event.

I think, I mean, he's an absolute loser in this in this movie, but the love of the game, that very thing that the adults and the boomers are saying, and his parents specifically are just like, you know, beside themselves, like, bro give it up. You're not this thing, this fantasy joke that we supported when you were a little kid. And he hit. To his credit, he's saying, yeah, I am, I am actually that thing, that's who I really am.

And to balance all of those things the interior of this character against such a delicate comedy, I guess that's part of the magic the way this movie works. But it's yeah, I just wanted to throw that in there before the sorry to derail you if I owed it up.

Red Shoe gang and the kids on the stoop. This sort of like Americana small town.

little pill bottle full of illicit drugs. And what it is revealed that basically the local biker gang is running drugs into schools through nerves that effectively this school is on lockdown. The principal has uh access to everyone's locker because of this drug problem, and so the idea was, well, we'll have the kids who are beyond reproach hand out the drugs, and so he goes to of course the kids who use drugs, goes up, asks what's in the bottle?

They tell him, and then he's like, all right, who's you know, who's your dealer? Right? Where'd you get this from? And they give him a false trail, so they go, you know, they ask for drugs. It's sort of an embarrassing situation because they were told to blow it off. And when he comes back and we've seen him being this sort of bumbling, ineffectual loser like one of the opening scenes of the film is one of the kids he got in trouble, who he got suspended from school

fifteen years ago, beats him up behind a bar. You know, he's still mad about it. Everyone just uws him as this kind of loser. But he goes back to this kid who's like fourteen, and he starts making one of him, and he just runs up in cold cox him, which is a surprise to everyone, including the girl with him.

nearly as cohesive. The kids who were getting up to mischief are now getting up to hard drugs, getting involved with hardened criminals. So it blends that tone as well with a payoff that's genuinely hilarious.

nether place. It's neither. It's it's totally recognizable in terms of the suburban layout and the predominantly kind of you know, American vibe to it. But the fact that it doesn't locate itself, if you will, like in Los Angeles or in Ohio or whatever, it ends up being really really useful because it's it stands in for I mean, all of North America, I guess where, Like it's we're in the k and we've been in de Kay at least

since two thousand and two thousand and one. Are like obvious decay, like very very undeniable decay.

that hung himself. Yeah, and he you know, he's sort of crestfalled, understandableeding, but was well. He also started the Potato Festival, you know. And it's this sort of idea of you know, this once vibrant anywhere USA or anywhere Canada community that feels like a you know, a two

street town anywhere. Yeah, over the twenty years has gone from being a sort of place where there's a vibrant civic life to a place where you know, the mayor hangs himself in his office and yeah, I mean it is it's sort of this kind of atmosphere through the whole thing that makes it incredibly, incredibly compelling, because you do have this feeling that like yet, sure it probably was filmed in you know, Ontario or whatever, but it feels like it feels like my town or oh, that

feels like your town. And again, it's what And I hate the term relatable because it's so often used to just excuse horrible characters. But part of what's so compelling about this film is I think we all kind of look at Am and you're like, yeah, that's yeah, that's me, you know, at least a little bit, and yeah, it's It's a film I genuinely love and I, like I said, I haven't seen it in a couple of years, and I was really pleased at how well it held up. You know, my memory of it was just as good.

One of the other things that I want to mention in this is the this sort of repeated kind of motif of sort of harsh reality crushing, the kind of childish interpretation, you know. So for instance, right, we see you know him as a child, you know, taking on these store taking on these cases with like a sense of wonderment. Right, I'm going to find out who did it.

I'm going to solve the issue. And then contrast that to the other small time cases we see him getting, you know, as an adult, and when a woman comes in, you know, looking for a cat, his first response is, you know, don't you think it's dead. So, at least before this case, we see that he has been kind of fully he's become fully cynical. You know, there's no part of him that believes the truth is actually out there.

It's simply the kind of most easy, simple to hand kind of explanation, which I think is what makes that scene with the murdered boy's father so interesting is that this man, who obviously is not particularly supportive, he doesn't like Abe, but he just asked him, like, oh, so you just believe the first thing you hear, You believe the kind of you know, most probable explanation. Okham's razor.

It's probably the least exciting, least interesting thing. Yeah, And I think that's an interesting moment because in this horrible condemnation of his character, we see that, wait, there's actually an insight there, and there's actually something that will prove pivotal to the plot another way in which right this film is just masterfully written.

dead kid, but I mean I was. I was able to empathize with the father enough. While the father too is also not a just outright dismissive of our total loser hero because I mean he's a he's in a the worst spot that you could probably be in as

as a living human being. I mean, your kid's gone, the cops aren't doing shit, and now there's this you know, once bright shine kid detective who showed up at your house and he's an out joke, and the father just poses these few utterly logical and basic questions that I mean, you and I would ask, anybody would ask, but have completely evaded our hero Abe. And then the father just quietly, like with this weird dignity, almost just stoic. I don't

know what it is. He just gets up and kind of walks up the stairs, and you see him walk up those stairs. I thought that was just incredibly well done. It was fun once again, it's funny, it's deep, it's confusing, it's all these things.

will probably like it. But we have this kind of slow build up realizing that there's much more to this murder, and in fact, it is connected to the disappearance of what's her name, Gracie Gullis right, the mayor's daughter, and we obviously find and here repeatedly these kind of origami roses. You know, we mentioned the joke that everyone thinks it's the Asian kid, who, to be fair, was dating Caroline, the kind of female lead in this and there's a

supporting character. I mentioned the kind of fat you know, gamer kid earlier. And what we find out after a breaks into his house and goes through his things ultimately to be found and important to the beliefs as a pedophile was that he had an unrecreited, unrequited love for Caroline, sort of a love triangle, right, And he mentioned in his first interview that he thought that the murdered kid was up to no good. Yeah, it's sort of funny.

There's this mix of you know, this kid trying to explain adult sexual situations to an adult in like the most clinical language possible. You know, he like, he leans in, he goes she put his hand on his penis, and it's, of course, it's a funny scene. But when he breaks in, he finds out of course that you know, this boy is in love with Carolyn. And he also finds that he's been going through her locker and taking things from him,

specifically taking some of the roses. And when he finds this rose, he realizes, wait a minute, this is connected to the disappearance of the girl from twenty years ago. Right, it's the same paper. He unravels it and realizes, wait a minute, I've seen this before, goes back to her mother's house, where it's been undisturbed since the disappearance of her child, and finds an identical rose, starting to realize,

wait a minute, there's a connection here. And there's an interesting moment earlier in the film where as he's hit rock bottom, we see him in a bar at like three pm, Right, there's light streaming through the window and the bartender you know, asks him, hey, you know what happened with you and that kid that were the grown man now And he says, well, you know, he took me out behind the bar and beat me up. And he basically says, he's like, well, you know, you never

apologize to him. He didn't do it, and we realize he was wrong, he didn't have that case correct. Well, when you combine that with, of course, the fact that the principle of the school has everyone's locker code, he starts to wait a minute, I have to check out the principle of the school. So he breaks into his

house again. A very funny scene because in every other instance we've seen him as part of his trade craft, you know, jimmy ing opening windows or leaving something cracked so he can come back later, and he just throws a rock through the glass window. Again kind of a comedic beat. But when he gets there, he goes through his effects and he finds the same roses, realizing of

course that these are all connected. I mentioned, of course, the Fat Kid, and one of the things the Fat Kid mentioned is that the the Chinese kid whose name I can't remember, it's not particularly important, had a photo of a nude girl at a tiger mask in his locker, saying, oh, this is some other girl he's cheating on you, and sill reinformation until well Abe tracks her down again. This sort of tragic case of this woman or this girl with a single mom. She's clearly degrading herself for money.

important to the film. He did fail or even as a child. He was not smart enough to catch it. And what we find out is that the principal is abducted Grace, and this is really the gut punch of the movie, is that he's abducted her. It kept her in a shed behind his house, had his way with her. And Carolyne, the girl who's been pushing the story forward, is their daughter. She's not you know, the children of

two you know alpinists killed, you know, skiing. She's the product of this relationship between the principal and the teacher, or the principal and the student. And of course Abe is just absolutely gutted by this on multiple levels. It's revealed that the the Chinese kid was stabbed to death because the principal went through his locker, found the photo and assumed that he had done that to his daughter. You know, that this sexually provocative image was and so

he murdered him for it. And when Abe confronts him says, you know, I know what you did, and also that you you know, murdered this kid for no reason. It's actually an interesting moment because the principal seemingly recognizes that he's done something horrible, but what he says is he has this sort of perverse sense of karmic justice where he says, you know, I took something beautiful out of the world by abducting this girl, but I brought something good into it. You know, he sort of netted out.

You know, this is his daughter. And when Abe reveals to him that, no weight, you have a karmic debt, right you killed this you know this kid. It's an incredibly powerful moment and I'll just continue summarizing through this because it's important and then we can go back and talk about it Andy. But there's this moment of tension where Abe sort of looks across from the across the table at him and says, you know what, Now he

pulls out this giant buck knife. The film is sort of leading you to assume like he's going to go for him, and the principal stabs himself. Yeah, right in the hearts. It is really the only moment of violence in the movie.

through the whole thing. That he goes into his fridge to grab beer and he realizes, wait a minute, there's grape soda in there, the same grape soda that this girl who disappeared used to drink. And so there's this horrific moment where he goes out to the shed and he sees this woman who's been trapped. I've been there for twenty years and her mind is gone completely. She's basically feral, and you know, the police come. He solved the murder. But that's sort of the climax of the film.

I know we covered a lot of ground there, but Andy, I'm curious to get your thoughts on it.

But dude, I the ending of a film you know, is critical theoretically you can get away with other things these days, but the way that everything fits from like the logician, the the screenwriter, you know, this this point of view and then is in viewed with as you as you know you you suggest like these very poignant emotional moments and reveals, uh, just like one after another.

I mean you're in about a five minute like cauldron as the viewer, where so much is happening, and then boom another this this revelation that there's a shed out back where this this gets worse you know, for the for the overall story and the individuals involved, and more intense as you as you're watching it. To me, though, the real master stroke of the whole movie is at

the last, the very last scene. And that's since we've given it all the way, let's give this away too, because this is where that's when I said, I mean I didn't cry myself, but dude, I have been in that exact situation where my boomer parents, you know, they're not going to listen to this, thank god, but I mean he's he's undergone this, you know, very harrowing, transformative, you know, heroic journey and he's redeemed himself. Uh and and it's a big deal, you know, his national news

and so he's probably going to make some money. His parents come over and they have this discussion, and his parents are immediately like, well, well they're they're they're transformed themselves, where they're so proud of him. You know, everything is good. He's cleaned his room and all this sort but he's you can see that this didn't it didn't it changed him. But it's the love of the game that remained. And it was it wasn't you know, glory in the sense

of money or accolades that's doing it for him. It was the act that he never let go of that case, and thereby by never letting go, not only beats his nemesis and wins and solves the case, solves multiple massive cases. But he's done that very thing that the cop asked him. You know, situations like this. Again, I'm sort of bastard, you know, bastardizing the quote here, but it's like, this may be that situation where you as an individual are going to decide who you really are, and he does,

he doesn't really decide. It's not again, Rocky like, no I'm not going to let myself be beaten. It's just simply that he does not ever let go, and he just keeps doggedly after it, which you know, that's pretty realistic. That's actually so much more realistic than the rocky version of things that it's almost like subversive as for the viewer, because you're for guys like you and I and I think most of us, like that's how reality works if

you just never give up. Well, you know, you you may not get everything you want, but you will at least have that like dignity. But the Boomers, right, So his parents are sitting there, they have absolutely no idea, they have no capacity to have an understanding, and he begins to weep, and that's how the movie ends, almost like this graduate sort of ambiguity, but honestly better than the Graduate. Everyone says, oh, the Graduate is such a masterpiece,

like it's an okay movie. This is a better movie than the Graduate. This is a better movie than a boomer movie. I mean this. You know, we talked about the Boomer Killer in some of our recent talks. Dude, this movie is the Boomer Killer like I've never seen, and for me, that is why that's the where the character. You always hear this, oh, the platinue character development, all

this stuff. It's all just kind of jive to if you have some experience with it, until you realize that it's not like that character construction.

he had his teeth brushed. He's got you know, media, which you know is something mentioned multiple times, but you know the media is asking his parents for comment. And yet right, he did at one on one hand, he did it. He got this sort of monkey off his back, He solved a case, he established it. He was the

real deal adult detective. But the realization that you know, his one of his childhood friends had been you know, a mile away in a shed somewhere in this you know, kind of horrific life that you know, he himself had failed at even at an early age, but hadn't been able to rise to the occasion. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was, Like it's to say, weighing on him as an understatement. And there's a scene sandwich

between these two where we see him in the office. Right, he's back in, his secretary is being slightly nicer to him, right, you know, graded on a curve. Of course, the office is full of people, and Carolyn's come back, and so he's asking her, you know, how are you doing. She remarks that, you know, all of his old trophies, you know, all of the old photos and newspaper clippings are off the wall. And he says something that I think is interesting where he says, you know what, it just didn't

seem serious. And it's clear that like he has fully become a serious person. And some part of that is positive, right, he's no longer living in the past, he's no longer a failure. But also the serious realization was horrific.

wearing all blacks. She's growing up. She's sort of become a part of this depressed world. You know, that innocence is well and truly gone. She knows the history of her parentage. It's not that she is the product, you know, as she said in Pardon the Sacrilege of you know, Jesus giving me to my grandparents, it was a you know, a murderous pedophile, which she says very flatly, and it is, you know, there's a certain amount which is funny, but

it's also another gut punch. Right, We're seeing both of these characters, even at different ages, sort of have to make peace with the depravity of the world a really powerful.

that you already make it. But it's just so masterfully handled at every at every moment, whether it's like how the characters are dressed and how the setting is kind of reflecting or you know, inner realities and what all of that stuff is in hand, like pretty very high level cinema is in hand. And and he's the director

I forget his name again, Evan. Something is just constantly resisting the urge to like take an easy way out, you know, to to manage and resolve these these various conflicts, and you just end up with something very true, which is and again it's universal in the sense that, yeah, it's a hero's journey. The hero's journey always has this dark experience and then comes out on the other side with something like painfully earned treasure or wisdom or what

have you. But the way that he breaks down and that very last bit as his parents are just utterly clueless, is is some I think I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there, you know, in biblical times. But I feel like that that sort of detected that's alienation didn't really happen. And that is why I think this is a very gen X millennial I guess Z and whoever

comes after that. Hopefully by that time, you know, we've taken the reins and can kind of because that's where my wife and I went when we were we were done, Like we had our big conversation about it, and it was like that abandonment for nothing, for lack of a better word, of the child into this world that they sorry to shit on the Boomer so much, but I mean, dude, it's it hasn't I don't think it's happened before, and I don't want it to happen in the next generations.

But it's quick essentially Boomer therefore, And so that that was a very moving scene for me when I saw him cry at the realization like not only did I

make it through all this shit? And yeah, it's bitter and it's dark and it's light, and that was he knows that, you know, he has all these like little pretentious sorts of adages up his sleeve, just like I do, you know, and then reality really comes and you get what you thought you needed and it's like holy fuck, like you know, and the ironic distance between me and you and God is like now removed. Yeah, man, brilliant, brilliant pick Jay, I got to hand it to you.

I was like, dude, the pressure's on now. How am I going to top this? How am I going to even come close to I'm gonna have to dig deep into the into the bag to find something good, you know. On par well, I.

because this is one of those movies. I feel like I'm sort of the lone voice in the wilderness on you know, like no one has seen or talks about it, and it's it's such a great film. But Andy, this has been a ton of fun.

I enjoyed this a lot, And yeah, thanks for the recommendation. Man, I'm gonna be thinking about this this movie for quite a while.