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Yes, today I saw the trailers for this new films which really has me intrigued.  The plot for this film is both hypersuspenseful and implausible.  But despite its implausibility, I'm intrigued.  The film is called Crank.

In this film, the main character learns he will die in 24 hours.  So what does he do?  Does he make peace with his life and everyone he knew?  YEAH RIGHT!  This is Hollywood, dudes.  A guy who makes peace just before he dies doesn't sell tickets.  Instead of making peace, he decides to get retribution on those who have betrayed him.  "You're all going to Hell with me!"  Man that is full of so much intrigue, its unreal.

Now what is so implausible about this film?  Well, its what I mentioned in my last paragraph.  My question for the rest of you is if you had 24 hours left to your life, how would you spend it?  Would you waste time hunting down and killing the people who betrayed you?  I wouldn't and I don't know any normal person who would.  If my life were to end in 24 hours, I'd throw a party!  I'd invite everyone I knew (yes, you guys included)  At this party, I'd make all my wonderful dishes.  There would be a great buffet to serve everyone.  I'd invite my old bandmates from Deathwish to come and play.  I'd set off fireworks going into the night.  I would invite the greatest bartender in town to mix the cocktails for everyone.  Yes, I'd throw one real kickass party.  And when its all over with, I'd go to bed.  Before I go to sleep, I would say my last words:  "I win." Then I would surrender myself to my destiny.

That is the only implausibility I see with Crank.  But the story itself is worth viewing.  For those of you intrigued by Snakes on a Plane, check out Crank instead.

Plausiblity does not mean what you would do in your last 24 hours.    Perhaps the man always wanted to get revenge but lacked the balls due to forensic science and the consequences of revenge.  But if you are dying in 24 hours anyway...who freakin cares about anything?  

I don't know what I would do if I heard such news.  I can think of  few things but it definititly wouldn't be a dinner party.  An intriguing thought...and I do like revenge stories.  Probably because in real life it just isn't my gig and cathartic for a side of me that will never shine through.

A party like that sounds pretty cool;  a kind of 'pre-wake.'

I don't know what I'd do with a 24 hour warning.  I've been flat-line in the hospital, so I TRY to think more in terms of "it can happen any time - always have things as you would leave them."

I think I'd probably just spend the time with my family.  You know what they say: no one on their death bed says "I wish I had had more time to work."

And the greatest irony of all would be to discover that at the end of 24 hours, you weren't really dying.  It was all a big mistake.....

The trailer I saw for "Crank" mentioned that the custom made poison works on his adrenal system. The setup seems to be that the poison's effects can be held at bay for a time if he stays excited and tense, kind of the ultimate adrenaline junkie. At most he can last 24 hours, by actively working against it with thrills, danger, and stimulation. If he comes down off the high or winds down, then he falls apart or dies that much quicker. So he has the deadline (excuse the pun), he has the motives (revenge and saying goodbye to his woman), and he has the means (action, violence, stunts, fighting, loud music, defibulators, etc.); sounds like an action movie to me. Maybe they pitched it as "DOA meets XXX or the X Games and The Transporter". Jason Statham is good in these kind of films usually. I like the tweeking of the man on a mission of revenge/clock is ticking formulas. Could be really good or really bad as far as I'm concerned. Here's hoping for the best. Entertain me enough and you can keep your plausibility. Suspension of disbelief is always at the discression of the viewer.

I just hope the film doesn't take the cop-out route and save him at the last minute unless their are definite consequences for all the stuff he does through the course of the film. If he dies you could have a sequel with a different actor, if he doesn't you could have him trying to breakout or escape to avoid the death penalty or worse a life sentence. Entertain  

Ulthar, I'd like to see a comedy playing on the "I wished I'd spent more time at work" line. Maybe a pimp or highrolling gambler, there's got to be someone in the world whose job is so fun or friends and family are so horrible, shallow as it may be, that they'd rather spend their last days doing working instead.

Shadowphile Wrote:
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> And the greatest irony of all would be to discover
> that at the end of 24 hours, you weren't really
> dying.  It was all a big mistake.....

They had a movie like that 15 or so years ago.  I forget the name but Dabney Coleman played the lead role.  He played a retiring cop who was getting ready to enjoy a life of retirement when he learns he is dying of a terrible disease.  Thinking that his insurance would help his family, he learns that his life insurance is only good if he dies in the line of duty.  So seeing that he still has time as a cop left, he goes on various duties to try and get himself killed, all of which fail.  "Can't you idiots do anything right?"  After his failed attempts to die in the line of duty, he learns that he didn't have that disease.  He learns his test was mixed up with the test from another patient.  And he and his family later attend that patient's funeral.  The few times I saw that film, I never got the chance to pick it apart and scrutinize all its flaws and implausibilities.

However from what I remember of that film, I remember only 2 implausibilities.  

1.  The first one is how can a carefully controlled medical facility make such a screw-up?  Those medical facilities follow strict procedure and protocol designed to prevent such mistakes.

2.  Why would an insurance policy have such a strict criterium for paying benefits?  That's about as foolish as saying your life insurace policy will only pay benefits if "You are killed when a stampede of no more or less that 200 African Elephants trample your home between the hours of 6 pm and 6 am.
on the third week of August and the Elephants don't kill you, a resulting heart attack does."

There was a similar movie called THE END (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077504/) but it had Burt Reynolds instead of Dabney Coleman.  I don't recall if he was a cop; it's been many years since I have seen it.

WyreWizard Wrote:
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> They had a movie like that 15 or so years ago.  I
> forget the name but Dabney Coleman played the lead
> role.  He played a retiring cop who was getting
> ready to enjoy a life of retirement when he learns
> he is dying of a terrible disease.  Thinking that
> his insurance would help his family, he learns
> that his life insurance is only good if he dies in
> the line of duty.  So seeing that he still has
> time as a cop left, he goes on various duties to
> try and get himself killed, all of which fail.

The film you're thinking of is Short Time (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100604/)

Errors like that are quite frequent, actually.  There is a current lawsuit where a man was misdiagnosed as having AIDS.  During the fifteen years he was undergoing treatment, he was not retested to see if he was actually positive or not.  Cause of the diagnosis?  Switched samples.  They discovered this when they realized the blood types didn't match...

A father of my mother's friend had an operation and wasn't recovering well.  Come to find out they sewed him back up without accounting for everything they used.  Things like this do happen, yes it is rare....but humans are not perfect no matter how much the "procedure" is.

That is depressingly common.  Sewing up the patient without removing the clamp/forceps/scalpel...

Well, talking about films, there was a television movie made 35 years ago, which I saw and still remember, on a somewhat similiar theme. A woman who thinks she's dieing of cancer goes to San Francisco and hires an unknown to kill her, only to discover that she is not dieing of cancer, misdiagnosis, and now, with the help of the police, she has to find her own killer to stop her own murder.

It was called "The Face of Fear" and starred Ricardo Montalban, Jack Warden, Elizabeth Ashley, Dane Clark, Charles Dierkorp, and Burr DeBenning.

What I remember best about the film is the final shootout on the beach between cop, Montalban, and the man hired to kill Ashley. Supposedly, Montalban shoots the man in the head, and never before or since have I seen anybody who could roll his eyes so far back in his head. That actor, playing the hired killer, rolled his eyes so far back in his head, that the only thing you could see was the whites of the eyes.

What I did not know, or had forgotten about the film, was that it was based upon a novel called "Sally" by the well known author Howard Fast, who was responsible for the book upon which "Spartacus" was based. Maybe because, this time Fast was writing under the pseudonym of E. V. Cunningham.