Extremely Brief Movie Musings: Night of the Generals
So this morning, I watched Night of the Generals starring Peter O'Toole. Really long and jumbled film, so I'm not going to recap the whole thing. Briefly: Bunch of Nazi generals under suspicion for the murder of a prostitute. Couple of years later, cowardly young soldier gets assigned as a chauffeur for one of the generals for one night. That general picks up another prostitute, murders her and then sets up the cowardly young soldier to take the blame. The young soldier runs off. The murder is never solved.
The war ends. Blah de blah. The general is sentenced to twenty years in prison for war crimes. He is released and almost as soon as he is released, another prostitute turns up dead, bearing the hallmarks of the other murders. Police finally put two and two together but need to find the cowardly (no longer) young soldier. They do. He admits he witnessed the second murder. They go to arrest the general but then allow him to kill himself. The end.
It was a pretty cool movie. I have a disturbing fondness for movies where people shoot themselves. But I think it could have been much much cooler. I think the cowardly soldier, on learning that the general was being released from prison, ought to have killed the prostitute and then set it all up to lead police to the general. THAT would have been a terrific twist of an ending. But no, the cowardly soldier was a gentle and sensitive soul, blah blah.
So given all of that, no surprise that I'm having trouble understanding the people who hate Gale now because he's all violent and murderous. Thing is, you can't always count on people to shoot themselves and solve your problems for you that way.