‘Law Abiding Citizen’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Craig Horlbeck

After 10 years of intense preparation and strategizing, Bill, Van, and Craig are ready to revisit Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx in the 2009 crime thriller ‘Law Abiding Citizen.’ Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Matt Pevic 2026 Mazda CX-50. Designed for Safety. MazdaUSA.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We can find Higher Learning with Van Lathan.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 0:11Bill Simmons?

  You can also find the Midnight Boys.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Boo boo.

• 0:12Bill Simmons?

  And you can find Ringer Tailgate. Craig, our producer, is joining us because we lost the camera. We'll explain later, but you can find him on the very popular Ringer fantasy football show. He's mad that he's on camera.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  No, I'm gonna go A.J. Hawk today, like I'm on McAfee.

• 0:27Bill Simmons?

  That's great. Pull a full A.J. Hawk. We're down on camera. It didn't stop us. Law Abiding Citizen is next. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by Mazda. One reason why Mazda was named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand? Confidence isn't an upgrade. It's a given. Take the Mazda CX 50 Hybrid. It comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features. Mazda. Move and be moved. Visit MazdaUSA.com and discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be

• 1:10Bill Simmons?

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• 1:55Bill Simmons?

  Get free shipping on your order, 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show.

• 2:21Bill Simmons?

  All right, this is great. We had the Craig cam for like four minutes, and now it's already broken, but we have, uh, we have three left, and we're gonna talk about a movie that came out in 2009 that Van Lathan loves.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Loves.

• 2:33Bill Simmons?

  I threw it at him, and I said, "Dan, just curious, do you like Law Abiding Citizen?" You made it seem like this is one of your favorite movies.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  It's one of my favorite theater-going experiences I've ever had.

• 2:44Bill Simmons?

  What happened?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Because, so, go to the Arg Light, so many memories at the Arg Light, and you're expecting a movie that's, what was the movie with Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson? Do you guys remember?

• 2:55Bill Simmons?

  Changing Lanes.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Changing Lanes.

• 2:56Bill Simmons?

  I like that movie.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  So you're expecting something like that, right? Although you see explosions and stuff in the trailer, you're expecting something that's a little bit more grounded. And then you go to the movie, and right off the bat, people in the theater are like, "What the fuck is happening?" Brutal, surprising, absurd in the best way. Everyone in the theater, "Oh, my God, what?" Dude's like, "What the hell, bro?" And since then, I've had a love affair with the movie where I watch it every time it comes on TV.

• 3:25Bill Simmons?

  The vigilante movie, a 1970s tradition. Craig's least favorite rewatchable we ever did was Death Wish.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  That's a tough one.

• 3:33Bill Simmons?

  Really genuinely hated it.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Because the sexual assault scene in Death Wish is about as grim as it gets.

• 3:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, you thought it was about as grim, but you never saw Death Wish 2, which was as grim as it gets. That's, that's the nadir of all of these. But we had in the 70s Walking Tall, we had Death Wish, Foxy Brown, that was a good one. We had a lot of, yeah, we had a lot of good ones in the 70s, and then they kept kind of making them and trying to figure it out, but it kind of died. Um, and then-

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Well, it feels like the revenge stuff got more sanitized. It turned into like Taken and things like that.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  And Law Abiding Citizen goes back to the old days of, this is kind of like peak 2000s revenge porn, I feel like. Bangkok Craig did enjoy this because-

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Oh, Bangkok Craig.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I don't know if you're an American gangster, I was upset the way Denzel killed Idris Elba. It wasn't enough.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  This movie gives you everything you want and more in terms of getting revenge and going the full nine yards.

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because the revenge thing kind of shifted toward like John Wick territory or Taken, where these, this group of people did something to me.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:33Bill Simmons?

  We rarely have the, "I am gonna actually make a real statement about our legal system" and take out the entire city of Philadelphia, basically.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  So I, I have a list coming up of, that kind of explores this, but like, the vigilante movies of the 70s and the 80s seem to be directly against like street crime. Like, they're going against street crime.

• 4:53Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, kind of racist.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you can kind of feel it.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Well, whoever the criminals of the day were, that's what they're gonna-

• 4:59Speaker 02

  It's like independent actors, essentially, of crime.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Not a system.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Then, that's what happens. Later on, people start to rage at like a whole system, and those are the revenge movies that you get. Even like, a movie like Falling Down, which isn't necessarily a vigilante movie, but it's a, "I fucking had enough of this culture" movie, like, "I snapped and now I'm going." They kind of became a little bit more elevated. You had to do more in them.

• 5:22Bill Simmons?

  Gran Torino is another one like that.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Gran Torino's another one, yeah.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  They've tried to make versions of this movie. Like Jennifer Garner made Peppermint.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  I never saw that.

• 5:29Bill Simmons?

  It's bad.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 5:31Bill Simmons?

  But it was one of those, like, I think her daughter got killed, and she was mad that the legal system did her wrong, so she started taking stuff out.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  What's the best one with the lady? What's the best lady, because Jodie Foster made one, right? That was essentially Death Wish, like-

• 5:46Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't good.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, what's the best one with the lady where Jennifer Lopez, Enough, that's against one guy. It's more like Sleeping with the Enemy, though.

• 5:54Bill Simmons?

  I had Enough, where it was like Sleeping with the Enemy ripoff.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:59Bill Simmons?

  But basically, her trying to figure out, okay, if this guy comes at me again. I kind of like Enough.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Well, I like Enough.

• 6:04Bill Simmons?

  I think it's solid.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  I like Enough because Sleeping with the Enemy, she uses all of her guile and wit, while in Enough, she becomes like an MMA fighter.

• 6:12Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  And then she-

• 6:13Bill Simmons?

  Sleeping with the Enemy, she's in danger the entire movie. Enough's like, "I'm actually gonna train to beat this guy when he comes at me."

• 6:19Speaker 01

  "I'm gonna kick the shit out of you, yeah."

• 6:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's good. She looks good in that movie, too. The four essentials for a vigilante movie. Our hero was driven to this. Our hero is broken. Our hero might have to cross a couple lines. By the end of the movie, not even sure if our hero's a good guy anymore. He might be just completely gone.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Went too far.

• 6:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. That's usually, when they really work, that's the best where you're like, "Oh, man, I was rooting for this guy. This guy dark."

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the moral ambiguity feels like a part of it. And this movie, I, I can't wait to talk about the end, because I think it's, it's the most fascinating part of the movie, is what they decided to do with the two characters at the end.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Also-

• 7:01Bill Simmons?

  See, Craig thought he wasn't gonna talk that much on the pod.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Look at Craig, I'm not prepared.

• 7:05Bill Simmons?

  Fucking, this guy's a seasoned pro.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Let's fucking start into the game and give some shots up. What's up with you?

• 7:08Bill Simmons?

  Mac, I gotta tell you about Craig Horlbeck. He just comes in, one minute, one minute notice, he's right in the third chair.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Shoots a high percentage, gets a shot off into his spots.

• 7:17Bill Simmons?

  Well, you should mention, I thought CR was gonna be in this Philadelphia movie. Never saw it.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:22Bill Simmons?

  What an unbelievable miss by CR.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Philadelphia movie.

• 7:26Bill Simmons?

  Action, Philly.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Like, also weird CIA government-type, trained killer-type dude, the kind of guys that he likes, Delta Force, Special Forces, Lioness-type shit.

• 7:36Bill Simmons?

  I was honestly devastated.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  One more thing about the vigilante movie.

• 7:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Our hero kind of becomes what he was fighting against.

• 7:45Bill Simmons?

  Becomes what he despised.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Killer of innocence.

• 7:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Becomes that.

• 7:48Bill Simmons?

  To catch a predator, you have to become a predator. That was the old Adam Croll joke, right? To catch a predator, you have to become a predator. Gerard Butler said, "There was one specific criminologist who had written a great paper on serial killers, and especially revenge killers," which I guess is its own phylum. He'd gone very much into the obsessive nature of this, but the rewards, and how somebody who gets into it can get really carried away in a really egotistical way, and enjoy hugely the power they get from it. It's cathartic.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you almost have to.

• 8:21Bill Simmons?

  You feel it the most in this movie.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  You'd almost have to, right?

• 8:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Because your belief in the system has to come from this fundamental belief in what should be right and wrong. And that almost always comes from you and the way that you look at the world. This particular guy has been out on ops for the government. By the way, man, vet the motherfucker. You don't want to learn that the guy that you're fucking with is a secret CIA murder killer.

• 8:49Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Like, two, two fucking acts into the film.

• 8:53Bill Simmons?

  He's, he's effectively Kaiser Soze.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:55Bill Simmons?

  And they just have no idea the entire time. So, to mention what you, to go into what you talked about earlier, I wrote down, yeah, I used to talk about Russell Westbrook all the time, and how he would bring all of these things to the table, but then take something off the table. And every basketball player does this, but Westbrook was the one you noticed it the most, where it was like, "Oh, he did all these good things, but, man, if he didn't do that." So I used to call him the 90/10 guy. 90% brought to the table, 10% took off the table, but you really felt his 10%. This movie, the ending is, is the 10%.

• 9:30Bill Simmons?

  I don't like it, but I kind of like watching it and getting mad how they fucked it up. I feel like they were so close to an awesome movie and then they kinda, they kinda copped out, Van. So why?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  They ran out of smart.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  They ran out of smart. A lot of scripts. They have a brilliant conceit, propulsive action, great, and then they just run out of smart. There, it gets to a point to where you don't have that next thing, that next turn that makes the movie brilliant.

• 10:01Bill Simmons?

  It's the closer.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:03Bill Simmons?

  You have forty-four minutes of the NBA game, but now it's crunch time. I need to run some plays for my best guy. They just couldn't do it.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  It just feels like it got Hollywooded to death a little bit. I think, I, cause I think the movie would have been better if they, if it was a Fight Club ending. If it just like, he, he kept going and everything, and he did blow up the town hall. But I, I, I would imagine that they test screened that or the studio making the movie was like, we, we just can't do that. We, we have to have a resolution.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  I did a ton of research on this. There was like a, a urban legend that Jamie Foxx made them Hollywood up the ending. And I don't think that's true. I, I think they really just wanted Foxx to be the good guy at the end. I think it was a huge mistake.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  But is he the good guy in the end?

• 10:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's the thing. I don't think they established enough that he was a good guy to make me feel happy at the recital at the end. It's like, oh, man, he made it. Cause I don't really like the character.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  He's one of the worst, most annoying characters I've ever watched in a movie this much. Hate him. Absolutely hate him.

• 11:02Bill Simmons?

  So how much is it is how it was written and how much of it was the Fox performance? Cause I don't think, it's weird that he's the weak link of a movie where we have two stars.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:11Bill Simmons?

  But I don't think he ever figured out what his char, if his character was a good guy or not.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  I think it's in the script though. Because I, I, I don't know that they ever give Jamie enough to do or enough of a point of view in this movie. He's so reactive to everything.

• 11:25Bill Simmons?

  Well, you know what they give him? They give him this face.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. The only thing that he knows is that he's the most important thing, which is a shitty way to do a character. Meanwhile, his foil is legitimately holding the system accountable for not avenging the murder of his wife and daughter. They don't stand, start off with the same moral stakes at all.

• 11:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Butler kills him in this movie. Like this is an incredible Butler performance, but with, uh, with Fox. So we rarely give this award out and it's a relative recent one, but the, the Clarence Worley should have died at the end award for biggest cop out of an ending. How should this movie have ended? Cause it's a real fun part of, about why it's rewatchable. Cause every time I watch it, my mind goes into like all, oh, they should have done this or they should have done that. My, my guess is Butler should have known the whole time that Fox was gonna know that he had the cell. And when Fox thought he had the, the way to one up him, Butler then had an extra move on top of that move. And like blew Fox up in the cell and got away.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  He, he's just like.

• 12:30Bill Simmons?

  Or got out of the cell. They thought he blew up in the cell, but he didn't.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Or like he makes Fox make a decision where he's like, I knew you would know the briefcase was there. So I added a second briefcase. So you can either kill the two of us or kill Town Hall.

• 12:42Bill Simmons?

  Right, right. Chest moves it.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  And then Fox kills himself and Butler and saves Town Hall. Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Okay. So I think Fox has to die too.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  He's the, outside of the two murderers who deserve to die, Fox is the other person who, I mean, Butler kills everyone else around Fox. But Fox is really the one who's most to blame outside of the two murderers.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  So here's the thing, the movie early on would have had to make a decision about what it was doing. You take the murderer off the table early. So anyone else that he holds accountable now is going to be like ancillary to that. Anyone else that he holds accountable are just gonna be people in the system. By that rationale, Fox has to die. What I would say is.

• 13:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, but this is seven though, where Gwyneth Paltrow, spoiler, has to be the seventh murderer. You can't be like, ah, we can't do that. That's, we'll just do six. Then the movie dies.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  It's a good point. Cause this movie does feel like a bad David Fincher film.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. But see, if, but in that movie though, John Doe comes from outside of our two main leads. So he just acts as a chaos agent. In this one, both guys stand for something. And if you kill Jamie Foxx, then you're almost validating the fact that this dude killed all of these people to get back at the system.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  Or he blows both of them up and that's how it ends.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  And they both die.

• 14:00Bill Simmons?

  I think Fox has to die. There's another way this could have gone though. And every time I watch it, I always wonder if they entertained this. So he's in the recital at the end. They throw in this scene that's like, hey, just do one more scene, just in case the audience doesn't think he's a good guy. Where he's emotional watching his daughter, but he's got the tie on. And I always wondered like, because we saw him do this earlier with the, with the bad guy with the phone. Where he's holding the phone, but it has like whatever, those poisons in it and they're in the system. And Fox has the tie and I always wondered if he touches the tie and then it zooms in on the tie. And there's all these poisons on the tie. Fucking kills him.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  Cause they teased the tie thing, right?

• 14:38Bill Simmons?

  They got, cause the guy says the tie.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  His colleague is like, oh, he invented this tie that strangled a man.

• 14:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This guy in the, the guy in the tunnel. And so they set that up and I, I almost wonder if they had decided that was how it was gonna end and they chickened out.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  It just felt like this whole movie was the Dan Campbell, hail Mary, fuck it, going forward on fourth down. And it feels like the movie went forward on fourth down, the entire movie, and then at the very end they kick a field goal.

• 15:01Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Good way to put it. Great way to put it.

• 15:04Bill Simmons?

  So how would you have ended it?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Well, for me, I think the ending has to be litigated like earlier in the script. The moment that he kills the cellmate, the moment that he kills the cellmate, you know Gerard Butler is out of there. Cause he's now leaving such a, a, a trail of carnage behind him.

• 15:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  But I think Gerard Butler at the end would have had to die for something. Or he would have had to make the altruistic decision to not do the terrible thing and give his life up. If he leaves and decides to blow himself up on his own, I think that's an ending that would have sufficed. But he went through with it and then Jamie, who was dumb as fucking rocks throughout the entire fucking movie.

• 15:49Bill Simmons?

  It's about gets promoted to DA.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  As rocks throughout the whole movie, ends up outsmarting the CIA badass. It kinda doesn't make any sense.

• 15:57Bill Simmons?

  Where do you stand on Gerard Butler? Just lukewarm?

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, kind of. He's, he's in the Jason Statham camp of like, he's the guy doing his own thing. It's like the two of them are in their own, doing their own thing lane and it's successful and people like it. But I feel like Gerard Butler is not kind of in the mainstream public consciousness.

• 16:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm not gonna say my take yet, but I, I'm higher on him than that. Where are you?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  So I, he's one of the guys to me that settled into something that I didn't think he was gonna settle into. Where after Three Hundred came out, I thought Gerard Butler was gonna be Bill Gibson. I thought he was going to be that.

• 16:31Bill Simmons?

  Or Russell Crowe.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Or Russell Crowe or whomever. I thought he was going to be.

• 16:34Bill Simmons?

  Completely agree.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  That level of guy. He comes back in a movie that like, wasn't well regarded, but I love Rock and Rolla, the Guy Ritchie movie. And he does a couple of things. It's like, this guy has something and then.

• 16:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna give you twenty plus years. Mid two thousands, Phantom of the Opera and Three Hundred. Now he's like, you're looking at him like a lottery pick. Like he's, I don't know, like Drake May right now or somebody. Oh, seven, oh nine, kinda get sucked into the rom coms.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  After that terrible fucking game he put together.

• 17:04Bill Simmons?

  That's week one, dude. Come on.

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  He does P S I Love You with Hilary Swank.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  He tried, yeah.

• 17:10Bill Simmons?

  Not on the rewatchables list. The Ugly Truth with Catherine Higle, also terrible. Oh, nine and ten, he does Law Abiding Citizen and The Bounty Hunter with Aniston. And they kinda tried to pretend they're maybe together, but who knows? Twelve and thirteen does Chasing Mavericks and Olympus Has Fallen. Chasing Mavericks is one of my wife's favorite movies of the last fifteen years.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, Colby loves it too.

• 17:33Bill Simmons?

  Absolutely loves it, watches it all the time. And Olympus Has Fallen ironically going against Jamie Foxx and White House Down. Two White House invasion movies, basically. Dead of Thieves, two thousand and eighteen.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:46Bill Simmons?

  Greenland and Plane. Mostly settled into like action, rom com. I just felt like there was a lot more there for him.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Well, he settled into the mid level action movie.

• 17:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  He settled into being one of the, the guys who you, you see him in movies and the movies are better than you think that they are.

• 18:03Bill Simmons?

  Dead of Thieves is the perfect example.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:05Bill Simmons?

  He's completely overqualified to be Big Dick Nick and, and, uh, Dead of Thieves. And that's one of the reasons it's really good.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:13Bill Simmons?

  He's too good to be in it.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:15Bill Simmons?

  Thought there was more there. Always liked him. Scottish guy.

• 18:20Bill Simmons?

  I think he's aged in a way where it seems like he's had some hard days and hard nights.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:24Bill Simmons?

  He's had a few, had a few sakes.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Did you watch Greenland?

• 18:28Bill Simmons?

  I actually never saw Greenland. You like it?

• 18:30Speaker 02

  That movie.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 18:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Cause they made a sequel, so it must have done well.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Greenland, the sequel is very, very bad, but like.

• 18:36Bill Simmons?

  I gotta watch it. I'm gonna watch it this weekend.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  If you watch Greenland, it's not what you think it is. It's good.

• 18:40Bill Simmons?

  Fox had, uh, Collateral and Ray back to back. Wins the Oscar for Ray. Follows that up with Stealth and Jarhead and Miami Vice and Dreamgirls and The Kingdom. By the late 2000s, he's in the soloist, law-abiding citizen. He's in Valentine's Day, kinda never, never figured out how to leverage the Oscar into big ass movies. And this was one of the last stands for him, for Jamie's the lead of a movie and it's gonna make a hundred million dollars. And then I think it started to dip down. I don't think he ever really figured out what lane to go to.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  He, he never lost the Jamie Foxx-ness of it, which is whenever you see Jamie Foxx in a movie, you're like, oh, man, it's Jamie Foxx. Like, I was watching this movie and then I watched Horrible Bosses and-

• 19:27Bill Simmons?

  Another good one for him.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  He just adds so much to Horrible Bosses in the little bit that he's in the movie.

• 19:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  So, a lot of actors act themselves out of their celebrity. They act themselves out of you caring that they're in the movie. He never did that, but he never actually then became the guy that you build a whole movie franchise around or something like that.

• 19:46Bill Simmons?

  I always felt like he was better as the second guy. Like, he was kinda overqualified, you know, even in Miami Vice, which he barely says anything, but he's got so much charisma in that movie. Collateral, he's great playing off Cruise. And I always liked when he was in that thing, but I don't, I almost feel like he would've been better off doing like a True Detective season two or season three, or, you know, some sort of prestige TV thing.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  It's surprising how quiet the last 10 years of his career has been. I feel like he has everything. I feel like he's got looks, he's got charisma, he's a good actor, he can actually like become characters, and there hasn't been a ton.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And everybody loves him. The thing is that he does so much though.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  He's funny?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  He does so much that it's never really quiet, because when you don't see Jamie on screen, you see Jamie on stage. When you don't see Jamie on stage, you see him on television as a television host. He's one of those like five-tool people that's just like almost ubiquitous in culture. So, you don't think of the fact that, damn, it's been a while since I saw the Jamie Foxx movie. You, you don't think about it, because you're always seeing Jamie Foxx. You can get entertainment from him so many different places.

• 20:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think sometimes you can just have too many choices. Like, he was almost too good at too many different things. Like, he's also one of the great talk show, podcast guests ever. He could host anything.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  He's so charismatic, he's really funny.

• 21:02Bill Simmons?

  He could sing.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  He's great at impressions.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he also had, like, he had Foxhole Radio, which was a radio, like, that was hysterical. So, even if you are not getting your entertainment from Jamie in the movies, you gonna get it from somewhere, so you don't think about the any one thing that you're not, the way that you're not getting it.

• 21:20Bill Simmons?

  So, was it tough for you when you feuded with Diddy? Like, what side were you on? Did you feel like you were both sides?

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, were you on the side of Diddy or Jamie Foxx?

• 21:29Speaker 01

  When was the Jamie Foxx Diddy feud, I don't remember. Oh, you're talking about, like, after the thing, you know? Look at you, you're trying to get a little spicy at the beginning of the-

• 21:36Bill Simmons?

  Hey, why not?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Nah, fuck Jamie Foxx. At this point, it would be hard to be- At this part, at this point, it would be hard to be on Diddy's side with fucking anything, right?

• 21:43Bill Simmons?

  I know, must've been tough for you.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Shut the hell up, man. Okay, Bill, you wanna, you wanna go, start going like, I could throw some jokes?

• 21:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I couldn't make fun of you in the podcast.

• 21:55Bill Simmons?

  This movie was directed by F. Gary Gray.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Who, we just did another F. Gary Gray movie, what, how many weeks ago?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, what was it?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  It was Italian, Italian Job.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, F. Gary Gray, Italian Job. You, you know what I thought about?

• 22:09Bill Simmons?

  I like F. Gary Gray.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  You do?

• 22:10Bill Simmons?

  I like, I think his movies have like a splashy style to them. It's a little like Discount Michael Bay. Not over the top like Michael Bay is, but same kind of, just you feel him. Good explosions, good, good music in the right spots.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Good sense of skill and cool.

• 22:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  He's trying some stuff. It's not, it's not plain.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Good director.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Bill Simmons?

  Written by Kurt Wimmer. We have people like Bruce McGill and Callum Meehan. I think I said his name correctly. He's another Scottish guy. Leslie Bibb, Regina Hall is the wife with really no role at all in the movie, just a couple lines. Fifty-three million dollar budget made a hundred and twenty-seven point nine million dollars. It's pretty good.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good.

• 22:54Bill Simmons?

  I somehow didn't see this in the theater. I don't know what was going on with me.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was the ArcLight phase where I was just going to see, I was just like making excuses to go there.

• 23:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this was right in my wheelhouse. It's not like I didn't want to go see this in the theater.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  And it was interesting, because both of these guys were kinda still in their essences. We were still kinda in the Jamie essence. We were definitely in the Butler essence. So, it was like putting these guys together, I was like, what are they gonna cook up?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Well, because this was his, this was Gerard Butler's first movie after Three Hundred?

• 23:19Bill Simmons?

  No, he did a couple rom-coms, but it was like, he's gonna have a moment right now.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 23:24Bill Simmons?

  I don't know, who is Gerard Butler right now?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  You mean, Steve? You mean?

• 23:28Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm saying, right, like-

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Like, the younger version.

• 23:31Bill Simmons?

  Early 30s, mid 30s. People wanting it to happen.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  They really, they don't have any Gerard Butlers right now, because the guys, our guys right now, the grizzled white boy of that age is not around, like the Russell Crowe type. Everybody's a little prettier now.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Like, you can't say Glenn Powell, because Glenn Powell's not really the same vibe.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  He's going for the Tom Cruise thing.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:52Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, because I was thinking for recasting, if this movie was 2026, MBJ would clearly be the lawyer. And then I was trying to think who would be Butler, and I was trying to workshop like Glenn Powell as the guy, and I was like, I just think he's too likeable.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  But you didn't see-

• 24:09Bill Simmons?

  You need like, Butler has like a little bit of a dark side, where you feel like some bad shit's happened to him 20 years ago.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, like, Glenn almost went for that in Running Man. Didn't really work.

• 24:18Bill Simmons?

  It didn't work. It's, it's more, you just wanna hang with him. Very shocking.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  An interesting point, though, that like, we don't have a lot of like gruff, male, up and coming stars like that now.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  It's two, it's two buckets that are missing. Number one, the, uh, and this might sound stupid, but like, the 30, 35-year-old, 40-year-old, like, really Italian-American star that like does like the, like the De Niro, the guys-

• 24:45Bill Simmons?

  De Niro for now.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Like, those guys like that. And then you also don't have the man's man guy. I thought that Miles Teller, I always thought that Miles Teller would like kinda jump into that, that Miles Teller kinda brought that, but kinda-

• 24:56Bill Simmons?

  When he got jacked in Top Gun Maverick.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because basically you're saying, a guy who could play a cop in a buddy movie, a guy who could play this guy in Law Abiding Citizen, and a guy who could be in a rom-com.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Solving stuff for the rom-com.

• 25:09Bill Simmons?

  So, it's three, you have to be able to have those three moves.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, someone where when you see them in prison and they're ripped and they're beating the shit out of somebody, you believe it.

• 25:17Bill Simmons?

  Like, Brad Pitt would've been awesome in this movie.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:19Bill Simmons?

  Right? And there's that, we're not making like Brad Pitts in the same way.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Well, Brad Pitt also, he's so pretty, though, and his star brings so much.

• 25:28Bill Simmons?

  But he can do his ugly Brad Pitt.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  He can, but he would've elevated this movie to a point to where you'd have had to bring in Martin Scorsese to direct this bitch. Like, he would've, it, it's like Brad Pitt's version of this movie is way, way up the escalator.

• 25:42Bill Simmons?

  I like your idea that this was kind of a Discount Fincher movie.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Bill Simmons?

  Like, if he went bankrupt, if he'd been in the Birdie Madoff thing and he needed a job.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:52Bill Simmons?

  Be like, alright, I'll do love, I'll make Law Abiding Citizen cool.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Because there's a couple moments that are pretty smart in this movie, but overall, it's not as slick as it thinks it is. It's just like, I just think the script isn't as good as it could be to actually get to that point where you're like, wow, this is a Fincher-level kind of action mystery.

• 26:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, like, the game is like this, right? The game landed the ending.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yes. This is just not quite there. Like, the dialogue is just not quite there to be an elevated movie.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  The thing about the game, though-

• 26:17Bill Simmons?

  But it's there to be a rewatchable.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  The thing about the game, though, is that movie is a little too smart for some people. Like, some people that feel like that movie's a little-

• 26:25Speaker 02

  It's like a riddle.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, this film didn't wanna be too smart for people, but it also didn't wanna be too dumb for them. So, it eliminated everybody.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Is it Austin Butler? I know he's kind of, he can kinda play it both ways.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  A little bit, but like, not, still, we'll, we'll see, maybe, we'll see.

• 26:41Bill Simmons?

  I never know, because you never would've told me, I, I never would've believed Keanu could've been for John Wick's.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:47Bill Simmons?

  Never saw that at any point in his career, that, that, that arc could've happened. So, sometimes people can surprise you. This surprised me. Ebert, three stars.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Liked it.

• 26:58Bill Simmons?

  He wrote, "Law Abiding Citizen is one of those movies you like more at the time than in retrospect." I mean, come on, you're thinking, still, there's something to be said for a movie you like well enough at the time. So, I think he had a good time at the ArcLight.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  I think he probably did have a good time.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I respect that.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Now, did he write, write that then, or did you have it write him a couple of days ago? You knew I was gonna get you back.

• 27:22Bill Simmons?

  Are you a truther with this?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Oh, what, he can't make fun of you now?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Oh, I can't make fun of you now?

• 27:27Bill Simmons?

  You can't make fun of me now? My Roger Ebert character that I created?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  There's very few movies, or like, I, like, to Roger Ebert's point about in the moment, the second I finished this movie, I did just go into the bedroom and I was like, Liz, I gotta tell you about this movie for like 16 minutes. I just described the whole movie to her.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  That's the type of movie that it is. Like, and somebody actually said that in another review that I read, someone said, "It's the type of movie that like, right after you come out of it, you're gonna be like, I fucking loved it, but then you're gonna sit with it for a while, and you're gonna be like, wait a minute."

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:56Bill Simmons?

  I watched it with my wife and Ben, because Ben had never seen it. And Ben really liked it. My wife was like, "This is terrible. I can't believe how bad this is. What the hell is going on?" And then when Leslie Bibb's car blew up, she was like, "Wow!" I was like, "Oh, you're in, you got sucked in." We're gonna take a break, and then we're gonna do, uh, rewatchables. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minneh Sharon and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island.

• 28:39Bill Simmons?

  Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

• 29:48Bill Simmons?

  Most rewatchable scene, a surprising amount of them.

• 29:53Bill Simmons?

  Jamie Foxx's character meets Clyde.

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  Why didn't he want to try the case? I'd not put in the opening scene as a rewatchable scene. That's easy.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we can stay away from that.

• 30:02Bill Simmons?

  That's a brutal one. Fox didn't want to try the case, home invasion, murdered little girl, rape. Not interested, just wants to, wants to plea bargain this thing. What's going on? What happened to DNA evidence? Oh, it wasn't admissible, it wasn't? You have a witness? You have, you have, I'm sure, all kinds of fluids and blood.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  This is.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  What, what, how is this case not provable?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  There are some crazy picking this for this movie.

• 30:26Bill Simmons?

  This is beyond a picking net.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  But this, this is.

• 30:28Bill Simmons?

  He's explaining it, I'm like, what? You can't try the case?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  You, you have a eyewitness, you have DNA.

• 30:34Bill Simmons?

  He's like, you blacked out, you can't be an eyewitness.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  This is one of, and this is one of the most detestable scenes.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  In a movie that I love, because he is sitting down here telling this man who has been through hell and back.

• 30:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Why he can't get him justice.

• 30:49Bill Simmons?

  This guy watched his wife get raped and his daughter get killed. He's like, yeah, yeah, we're just gonna plea bargain this.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, this is a victory. What the fuck are you talking about? Get the fuck out of my face.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  And he shakes his hand, yeah, are there not fluids, DNA, fingernails, like hair? Wouldn't it be everywhere?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:04Bill Simmons?

  It's not what you know Clyde, it's what you can prove in court. Well, you have a witness and evidence, like what?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I was right there when they broke in, that's what happened.

• 31:12Bill Simmons?

  And he's two scumbags, and he said, that's, this is just how the justice system works. This is a victory for us. After this scene, you're like, I want this guy to kill literally everybody involved. Just kill all of them.

• 31:26Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I'm a dark person, but my next rewatchable scene is the lethal injection scene gone wrong.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  It's a good scene.

• 31:33Bill Simmons?

  It's a good scene, and in general, like lethal injection movie scenes, you always feel like it's never gonna go seem, something weird's always gonna happen, it feels like.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  I, I don't think I've ever seen a lethal injection scene. I was, I was kind of morbidly curious about how it went. I actually had no real sense of how it would go. Is it, do people, do like 10 people go watch it?

• 31:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Really?

• 31:54Bill Simmons?

  Some of the police people and then, uh, family of the victims.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Families and stuff like that, they'll go check it out.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Why did the police need to be there?

• 32:02Bill Simmons?

  I guess to make sure it happened.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I don't know, they worked the case, I don't know.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I just find it fascinating that like Jamie Foxx is like, hey, Leslie Bibb, let's go watch this. Like, why did she need to see that?

• 32:11Bill Simmons?

  It's even better, he missed his daughter's violin recital.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  He's like, I gotta go.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Bruh, this is the thing.

• 32:16Bill Simmons?

  This guy sucks.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  This guy sucks, bruh. This guy, this is the thing, we're going back and forth from a cello recital with his daughter to him choosing to go watch somebody get fucking executed for no reason. Don't have to be there for no reason whatsoever.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  He's like, sorry babe, I gotta go, you know I'm busy tonight.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  By the way, this is one of my favorite tropes in movies, when we get to the Floyd Award later.

• 32:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  When like, something traumatic has to happen for a guy to like be a father.

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

  To, to care about his wife and kids.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I didn't want to go to my kid's Little League game until after the terrorist attack.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  It took 25 innocent civilians getting murdered to go to his daughter's cello.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  At the end of the movie, you see him going. Good fix, Junior.

• 32:55Bill Simmons?

  I'm a human being now.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:59Bill Simmons?

  Darby finally goes down as our next rewatchable scene. Perfectly executed by Clyde. You have a feeling he's doing it? Especially when there's like, there's a cop who's passed out in a, whatever, but he plays this, uh, fantastically. Um, great cameo by Darby's, I guess, side piece.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Just slumped on the ground.

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  Get up.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Couldn't be grosser, in every respect.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Why is she illegal, by the way? He goes, you're fucked, dope on the table, bitch on the ground. I'm like, why is she illegal? You can't, he can't fuck?

• 33:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Is that one of the terms of his parole?

• 33:30Bill Simmons?

  Darby goes, and then, uh, the gun reveal. So good.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I've never seen that in a movie.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Now we in the shit.

• 33:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  The moment, because they don't do the thing where they try to hide that it's him, you can see that it's him.

• 33:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  So you know that the surprise is coming somewhere else, so it's gotta be a pretty good surprise. So when he shoots the gun and the barbs come out, now the movie has fucking started.

• 33:53Bill Simmons?

  Tetradetoxin. Found in pufferfish that block nerve signals by binding to voltage gated sodium channels.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Who figured that out?

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, when was the trial?

• 34:09Speaker 02

  How did it get there?

• 34:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm surprised Belichick didn't use it on the footballs with the Patriots in 2000.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  I looked it up, it's real. Like, it paralyzes you, but you still feel pain? I'm like, how the fuck did they figure that out?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  The pufferfish probably hit a couple people.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Or, or an animal, and they were like, some sick fuck went, we could take what the pufferfish does and then do it to a person.

• 34:29Bill Simmons?

  It's the only thing missing in downtown LA right now, are some pufferfish. Clyde pretending to confess to Jamie Foxx's character, what's his, Nick?

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Nick, yeah.

• 34:40Bill Simmons?

  Clyde pretending to confess to Nick, but doesn't actually confess, which weirdly, this movie is a totally rewatchable. When you're rewatching it and you watch how he does the dialogue, and he's nodding, but he's not confessing. So he's like, yeah, I did dream about potentially murdering, but he doesn't actually admit that he murdered. Foxx is so stupid, he falls for it.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  So here's the deal. I feel like a smarter movie lets that whole scene play out, then all of these things start happening.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  I totally agree.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  And then they come back to that, and he goes, well, did I actually confess?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, instead, he's like, he does this whole spiel, and then literally five seconds goodbye, he's like, you see what I did there, Nick? Like, alright.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Right away, like, right away, after he does the whole dance, he tells him that he didn't really mean it, and he doesn't have anything on him, it's just too straightforward.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  This is where it's like Discount Finchery, cause in Finchery, it'd be like an hour later.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  The confession would come back and they're.

• 35:37Bill Simmons?

  Where he's dropping a coffee cup.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  They're listening to the tape and they're like, oh, he actually never said.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Or, or somebody else tells him, he's like, I got the guy in confession. He goes, what'd you get, Nick? What the fuck did you get?

• 35:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  The guy never says anything, and then like that happens later on, and it spurs on a third.

• 35:51Bill Simmons?

  Well, then he go, that sets up talking to the judge, which I've seen, I love, cause he says the title of the movie. Your honor, I'm a law-abiding citizen, it's like, boom. But then he gets mad at her, he goes, you're about to let me go, are you fucking kidding me? And you're like, oh!

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:07Bill Simmons?

  Calls her a bitch, she gets, she starts banging the gavel.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  You probably take it in the ass.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  I, bro, that's fucking hysterical, dawg. I mean, that should not be funny. But he's like, you fucking bitch, you fuck, you probably take it up your ass. I'm like, what?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  You're like, what's wrong with that? She can do that if she wants.

• 36:28Bill Simmons?

  Why are you judging her?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Why are you judging her?

• 36:30Bill Simmons?

  Literally judging the judge.

• 36:33Bill Simmons?

  Next scene might be my, my pick.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Clyde.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  That's so funny, like, he's so mad, bruh. Fucking bitch, you probably take it up your ass.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Get the pod back on track, it's so fucked up.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, we're, now we're in the jail cell.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:52Bill Simmons?

  He's ordering from Del Frisco Steakhouse, and his new mattress with his, uh, big burly, uh, cellmate, and is just eating a steak as he's setting these dudes up.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:02Bill Simmons?

  He give him a spork.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:05Bill Simmons?

  Which then he proceeds to stab this dude 20 times, and Bangkok Craig loved this scene.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Well, it's not, he, he makes a shiv out of the bone in the steak, that's what he stabbed him with.

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I thought it was the spork.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  He orders the steak because he knows he can make a shiv out of the bone.

• 37:19Bill Simmons?

  How did I miss this, when I've seen this movie nine times? I'm the stupidest Jamie Foxx's character. I thought it was the spork.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, he, uh, he, he used the bone. That's part of like, how ingenious he is.

• 37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's why he orders the steak, so he can get the bone. He's like ripping off the meat to give to the guy, but he's keeping the bone.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, he stabs the guy 20 times, so that blood goes absolutely everywhere, and he's playing an iPad, and he's playing Eminence Front, and whatever else is going on.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  That, that is.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  I guess I should have known that that wasn't a spork.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Powerful spork.

• 37:54Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  But, but that is.

• 37:55Bill Simmons?

  I had it later in Picky Knits.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  That is the.

• 38:01Bill Simmons?

  Can you really stab somebody 20 times with a spork?

• 38:05Bill Simmons?

  Now I feel better, it was, it was a steak shank.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  In the movie, like, when, because this movie wants to keep you confused for a lot of time, it does, but like, when I was first watching it, that was the part to where I was most confused. Cause I was like, what kind of movie do we have if he kills that guy? That guy having, nothing to do with it.

• 38:22Bill Simmons?

  And what's the purpose of killing?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Why is he doing this? Does he just hate having a cellmate? What's going on? And then, and it's clever when he, he wants to be moved to solitary for a specific reason.

• 38:29Bill Simmons?

  What you didn't realize is that he spent the last eight years digging tunnels under the jail.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:34Bill Simmons?

  To every single cell perfectly, so that whatever cell he went into.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  I, I could have used a flashback of the 10 years of him preparing.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At some point, he's explaining it, and he's, and you're seeing it as it happened.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  I spent 10 years digging tunnels, making my plan, rigging cell phones, I would have been cool to see that.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  But, but at that point in the movie, though, you now know he doesn't care who he hurts. It's not just gonna be the people involved, it's gonna be a lot of collateral damage.

• 39:02Bill Simmons?

  Next scene is the cell phone blows the judge up. This is an all-timer.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  My favorite scene in the movie.

• 39:07Bill Simmons?

  Out of, out of fucking nowhere. And she's kinda, you know, she's kinda feeling it, she's talking about, uh.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Getting ready for the weekend.

• 39:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  They're not subtle with the messaging of the movie, where like, the line right before she blows, her head blows up is like, I'm the judge, I can do whatever the fuck I want. And then her head blows up.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  So, you know, the, the movie's trying to tell you like, justice department, thumbs down.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  That is horror movie level shock.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  I like jumped out of my seat, I almost texted you guys again, cause I texted you once after the first scene of the movie saying like, holy shit.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  And this one is the next huge jump scare.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  We're watching the movie, we're sitting down, and it happens, and Kalika just goes, uh-uh.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Like, you said it before, she's like, I can't do this on a Wednesday, I'm out.

• 39:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, so she missed the next scene, which is when he blows up everyone in the parking lot, including poor Leslie Bibb.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Another jump scare.

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  Who's 35, who's given up her career and probably will never have kids to, to, uh, serve Jamie Foxx.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Why did?

• 40:07Bill Simmons?

  And now gets to blow up in a car.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Why did Jamie Foxx make everybody go to the office at 6:00 AM to wait and see if they might die?

• 40:15Bill Simmons?

  Great question.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Like, it was, cause.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're, yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  You know, he was like, 6:00 AM, it's gonna happen, and they're all just in the office, why aren't they home? Why aren't they like in a park? Why aren't they as far apart as possible?

• 40:25Bill Simmons?

  I would have been in like Mexico.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:28Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, my dad, my dad's having a procedure, I gotta fly to Boston, I'll see you guys in two weeks.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Why is the DA, like, on the beat of the case like this in the first place? Why is the DA in a chopper going all of this place? Why is all of this happening? Is, is that, like?

• 40:45Bill Simmons?

  Are there any other crimes in Philadelphia?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, why is the DA the one, he's like the grizzled detective on this?

• 40:52Speaker 02

  I felt really bad for Leslie Bibb. Her, that scene where she opens both doors and she realizes she can't get out, and she kinda gives Nick a look, pretty brutal. Yeah. I didn't expect it.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  I have something to say later on about it, yeah.

• 41:04Bill Simmons?

  Maybe find a husband, so that you don't blow up alone? Was that what you were gonna say?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Let's see.

• 41:11Bill Simmons?

  The funeral scene. Really great. The drone gun. And you don't know who's, at that point, the movie makes you think he's getting help from the outside. There's a second person.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:23Bill Simmons?

  Right? Cause nobody would ever think he could just be sneaking in and out of whatever. But that guy Jonas gets shot like nine times and then blown up by a grenade launcher.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  I like the finishing touch of the rocket at the end.

• 41:37Bill Simmons?

  Second, are we sure he's dead? Blows him up. I wrote down the first 80 minutes of this movie is just elite.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  This is the 80 minute mark. This is like, basically like they've taken us almost to the finish line. Now just run a good play, score your touchdown and go home. But now we find out, we, we find out that he tunnelled into prison. That's the next scene. And then the last one is Nick confronts Clyde. I don't make deals with murderers, Clyde. You taught me that.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  They both should have blown up.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  And but they give themselves 25 seconds to leave. I like the almost operatic beauty of watching the fire slowly rise around him.

• 42:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  While he looks at his daughters. Yeah, while he looks at the bracelet that his daughter made for him.

• 42:25Bill Simmons?

  So what's your most rewatchable? Cell phone?

• 42:27Speaker 01

  My most rewatchable is the cell phone easily, but also Nick and Clyde's first interrogation scene is one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

• 42:34Bill Simmons?

  Would you have?

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Butler's cooking.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Cell phone, but honorable mention, we didn't even mention the torture scene. Bangkok Craig loved the torture scene.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  I bet you do.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  When he's explaining everything he's doing to Darby, when he, when he unveils.

• 42:45Bill Simmons?

  The ceiling mirror?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  When the mirror comes down, he's fucking great. He's like, I'm gonna cut your eyelids off so you can't close your eyes.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  It's so hard to watch.

• 42:51Bill Simmons?

  My wife and kids want to watch.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Is he recording it? I'm like, why is he recording it? He sends the tape to Nick's house.

• 42:58Bill Simmons?

  Really tough. Mine is, I like the cellmate, I like the cell phone, and I like the parking lot. That whole stretch is fantastic. That's where it's like, we're past Dan, Dan Campbell's like going for it on 4th and 38 at this point. You don't even know where it's going. What's the most 2009 thing about this movie? It's gotta be a crucial iPod scene.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Bill Simmons?

  Two years later, that, no way this happens, right?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Because everything comes out on the phone. Yeah, yeah.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:28Bill Simmons?

  This is kind of the end of the iPod and it's like one of those big fat ones.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  And you had to plug it into the big speakers.

• 43:35Bill Simmons?

  I also had no social media in place to be outraged by the plea bargain for the two killers. Like that would have been a big thing on Twitter.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Right. Can you fucking believe it? Can you fucking believe this guy's fucking trash?

• 43:45Bill Simmons?

  Turn the new Karen Reed case. This guy, why wouldn't he try the case? They definitely did it.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Well, that's what I have. The existence of true crime would have completely changed this movie.

• 43:55Bill Simmons?

  Right. They would have done documentary about this. By the way, the documentary about Clyde after he did all the stuff he did, that's 10 parts on Netflix.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  They should have done that.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  He fucking.

• 44:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  After Clyde did all of this, Clyde's gonna be a fucking hero. There's gonna be a Clyde side of Twitter, the Clyde Proud Boys faction. Like Clyde gonna be the fucking man.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  What's the name of the guy who killed the United CEO? There'd be a little bit of that to Clyde.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  The whole fucking shit, Clyde gonna be the man in, in the world we live in today.

• 44:24Bill Simmons?

  They should just make a true crime documentary about Clyde like he was a real person.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  I agree. That's a good idea.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  Interview people.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Making fake documentaries about fictional crime characters is kind of awesome.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Fantastic idea.

• 44:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like Clyde. People.

• 44:38Speaker 02

  We should cut this.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  We should, I'm about to say, we should take this out of the podcast.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  That's pretty good.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  And we should do a Ringer movies thing where we do fake true crime docs about characters and we should actually do that.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  True crime doc about John Doe from Seven is kind of sweet.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Well, like, you could even, you could do like, how many, the, the victims of Vito Corleone. Like how many people over the course of his life did Vito Corleone kill?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Problem is, is you'd have to get some of the actors to come back and reprise their roles for the interviews.

• 45:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they tried this. They did a fake 30 for 30 that I was not involved with about Drago, I think. Didn't work.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Oh, it sucks?

• 45:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Kind of too corny?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Cause wouldn't you need like Brad Pitt from Seven to sit back down in character and give an interview?

• 45:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Maybe. Maybe you would. Or if you had the right voiceover, you, you, you wouldn't need it. I mean, you could do it without it, but.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:22Bill Simmons?

  The Floyd Gondoli butter in my ass, lollipops in my mouth award for something I just enjoy. So for me, it's any movie where a lawyer is trying to protect either a high conviction rate or a high plea bargain rate. I always loved this. They always put in the first, they didn't feel good, Ben. First 20 minutes, what kind of lawyer are you? Oh, well, you plea bargain 98% of the time, Kathy. You always know the guy's a piece of shit. It's the easiest way to explain it to us.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Devil's Advocate?

• 45:52Bill Simmons?

  Go.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  Devil's Advocate, Keanu Reeves, the guy fucking never loses, right? And that's a part of his hubris in the entire movie.

• 45:58Bill Simmons?

  Devil's Advocate.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Devil's Advocate. Like, oh, you thought I was saying I want to be the devil's advocate? No. In the movie, the devil's advocate, that's another thing.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  Literally devil's advocate.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 46:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, what do you have for Gondoli?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I said earlier, I like movies where something tragic has to happen for a guy to be a father. Like, he's not a dad. He's not a dad, right?

• 46:18Bill Simmons?

  He was never going to a cello recital in his life.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Doesn't go to the son's baseball game, terrorists take over the town, kill 50 people. And after that, the last scene of the movie, he's at his son's baseball game. That's what it took for him to go out there and coach him how to throw a fastball.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Which like isn't connected, like Nick going to his daughter's cello recital isn't connected to what he learned from, from the movie.

• 46:39Bill Simmons?

  Which is why if the tie started strangling him.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  Like, I don't, what is the, I don't know.

• 46:45Bill Simmons?

  If the tie starts strangling him during the cello recital, this movie's fucking amazing. I, like, honestly, this is, this becomes, this becomes like a seven level kind of twist.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  He's like, wow, Clyde taught me a lot about the justice system, so I have to go to my daughter's cello recital.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. My whole fucking team is dead. Everybody's dead. A guy got stabbed with a bone in his neck, so now I should go watch her play her instrument.

• 47:09Bill Simmons?

  Plus, I'm now the DA and the mayor of Philadelphia.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  I got promoted three times.

• 47:13Bill Simmons?

  I have all four of the high ranking jobs in the city. What's age the best? So initially Fox was gonna be the, the Clyde. Butler was gonna be the lawyer and Butler pushed to flip it.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Oh, Bu- Butler pushed to flip it?

• 47:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Butler had a whole, I'll find it.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's better the way it is.

• 47:36Bill Simmons?

  He said.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Maybe. I think Jamie plays that role though better than he played his, I think Jamie probably.

• 47:44Bill Simmons?

  I think he plays his role better, but I don't think it's a good use of Butler. I think Butler's awesome in his role.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  I don't think Jamie's gonna be better than him. Butler said, I became seduced by the other role. I'd often played more heroic, more straightforward, subtle journey. I wanted something I could get my teeth into. And I asked if Jamie would be interested in doing the other role.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  The fact that they, that they could talk about that, the movie was supposed to go that way and then they flip roles.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  I think it's a worse movie.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  I don't, I wouldn't buy Butler as the lawyer.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  I, I think it's probably a worse movie. It is a, I think it's a better role for Jamie though. And the fact that he was, the fact that it's an away game for him.

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  By the way, a good role for anybody.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:21Bill Simmons?

  Like this could have been, I even think like Tom Cruise, like name anybody. Another Woods Age the Best, the all nude arrest. What a choice. The cops are coming. I'm stripping all my clothes. I'm just gonna, just gonna flap it around.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  He, he's, he's, Butler added himself to the pantheon. I've talked about this before. Of white guys on their way up in their sexiness, show their butts to the camera. Him, Kevin Costner, Rutherford, Men of Thieves, Mel Gibson, butts to the camera, Tom Cruise, butts to the camera, very important to white guys.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Also, Gerard Butler is a hairy guy.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:01Bill Simmons?

  Scottish.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Bare naked ass. Nothing, not a hair on it. They always do that in movies. All these, these hairy men, when they have to show their butts, no hair ever.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Do you think they get waxed?

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. One hundred percent. I just think no matter what, they're like, there can't be a hairy ass on screen.

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  I, I'm surprised he didn't go salt burn on us and do a little self fluffing for the front shot.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Kind of get it?

• 49:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:28Bill Simmons?

  More Woods Age the Best, Philly is a movie location? Kind of underrated. Always good. I always forget where we are right away, but then as we do it and you're in the city, it's like, I kind of like it. Everything's confined.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  That's why it's an awesome movie location, cause you don't recognize it like off the bat, but you know that it looks cool.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. I wish they used it a little more. I wish Clyde was like, the Rocky statue's gonna explode at midnight. That would have been cool.

• 49:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh my God.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  The spectrum.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:57Bill Simmons?

  I think the, the city wouldn't have been upset until the Rocky statue was just blown up.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  The Liberty Bell would fall.

• 50:03Bill Simmons?

  I have one more Woods Age the Best, but you have any?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Regina Hall. She's in this movie only for like a couple of scenes. She was already building like a phenomenal career, but like you see her, she looks beautiful, she's amazing. And she still brings like a gravitas to the character to where you know, like now you see the courage she has now, you can see it right there, even in the smaller role.

• 50:25Bill Simmons?

  She's like three scenes too short in this movie, but I, I also, this movie's almost two hours, this isn't. My other Woods Age the Best, I like when a guy has a special set of skills that you need another character to explain. And in this case, he basically can kill anyone unconventionally, but you need the guy to come in. Who's, you know, we're in like a tunnel with this dude. We don't even know what, where that character came from. He's like, you don't understand. He can get to anyone. He doesn't have to be there. It's like, okay, cool.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  That's the House of Cards guy, right?

• 50:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  House of Cards.

• 50:57Bill Simmons?

  That guy.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:59Bill Simmons?

  Great shot, Gordon Award, probably the naked arrest.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  That's what you like, huh?

• 51:04Bill Simmons?

  But like, it, it, it's. It's like the most deliberate shot in the movie.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  It was the burning at the end when he's sitting there.

• 51:11Bill Simmons?

  That's good.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  And it's like, yeah.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  Big Coonah Burger Award, best use of food or drink, the Del Frisco Steakhouse.

• 51:19Bill Simmons?

  Actually made me kind of hungry. Food looked pretty good. I would have thrown in some potatoes au gratin, maybe.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I don't know if I would have included asparagus. I feel like that's.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  No asparagus. What do you eat with your steak then? What, what's your green?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  I mean, sure, on a normal day, but if we're in like final meal territory, I don't know if I'm including a vegetable.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 51:34Bill Simmons?

  Our director, Gary Gray, threw this in because they had been eating at Del Frisco Steakhouse. And really liked it, so wanted to work them into the movie.

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Threw them a bone.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  Got, got a little perk, a little steak perk. Chess Rockwell Brock Lander's Award for best character name. So Butler's character is named Clyde Shelton. And Fox's character is named Nick Rice.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  Kind of makes sense that initially Jamie Foxx's character was supposed to be Clyde Shelton and Gerard Butler was supposed to be Nick Rice. And they flipped it, flipped the names. How many white guys named Clyde in American history?

• 52:10Speaker 02

  That's really good.

• 52:10Bill Simmons?

  Three?

• 52:11Speaker 02

  That's really good.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't even think about that. What if the names?

• 52:14Bill Simmons?

  Nick Rice. Jamie Foxx does not look like a Nick Rice.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  What if, what if, what if his name was supposed to be Darius Jackson?

• 52:22Speaker 01

  They just, they just leave.

• 52:25Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi, Street Happiness, where Best Needle Drop, Eminem fronts, Eminem's front by The Who. You might remember it from Craig's favorite show, Entourage. Where'd you, which side were you on with Doug Allen versus Grineer and Piven with the bet ads?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not on the side of Jake Paul ever. So I guess I'll have to take Ellen's, right?

• 52:45Bill Simmons?

  Team Ellen.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  I don't know what the fuck you guys are talking about.

• 52:48Bill Simmons?

  What are you talking about? The gambling ad with Piven and Grineer? And it seemed like an entourage scene, but it wasn't?

• 52:53Speaker 02

  You didn't see that?

• 52:53Bill Simmons?

  Then the entourage creator got upset about it?

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Jake Paul has a gambling app, made a commercial for it.

• 52:58Bill Simmons?

  Ben, you don't miss anything on the internet.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  I don't understand.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  It stars Piven and Adrian Grigné.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Well, what era is this?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Two weeks ago.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Oh, it just happened. Okay, cool. I'm off Twitter.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  And they're playing Ari Gold and Vinnie Chase, but they don't say their names. But they're clearly, they're speaking like them. They're at a party. And, and there's like now, I think HBO is suing.

• 53:18Bill Simmons?

  Piven shows up and he's trying to get in the party and asks for his name and he's like, Ted Lassoll.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  And he's like, where's my movie star, motherfucker? And it's like, okay, this is clearly an entourage.

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And it's like a big wide shot of a party and it's Jake Paul's party. And it just feels like an entourage scene. Because it, it felt like an entourage ripoff.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  It was like a blatant ripoff.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  So he didn't like it because of that, not because of?

• 53:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, because they was basically made it seem like it was the two characters. It didn't make it seem like it was Piven.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  It was a creative thing for him, not he wasn't like, don't use it for ads.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Ellen wasn't included in the process.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I see, I see, I see.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  And he was just like, this is a watered down version of, you know.

• 53:54Bill Simmons?

  The funniest thing was he's, he started out like, I'm not gonna make a big deal out of this. And then he did like three tweets and a long Instagram video.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  Also like, even though it was kind of cheesy, I still kind of liked seeing them. Uh, Grigné and, and Piven.

• 54:07Bill Simmons?

  I gotta be honest.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  It kind of enjoyed it too.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Man.

• 54:10Bill Simmons?

  I was like, Vince!

• 54:10Speaker 01

  And you, you, you go back and you, if you spin the show, you are so happy to be back in the world, bro. It's just, it was, it's a fun time, reminds you of a fun time.

• 54:19Bill Simmons?

  Little snapshot of LA in the 2000s.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  They could relaunch it now and I'd watch every episode.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  It'd be much more interesting now.

• 54:25Bill Simmons?

  From your mouth to Doug Allen's ears. He's ready. Was there a better title for this movie? I, I want to say yes, but I couldn't come up with the title, so.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  I, I have one.

• 54:36Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  The name of my title is Shut The Hell Up, Nick. That's the name of my title. That's the name of my movie. Every time Nick says something, every time Nick says something, the opposite happens in a terrible fucking way. He's out there with his whole crew, they're in the parking lot. And he goes, we're gonna find this guy and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Everyone dead. Every time he says something.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  So if he just doesn't speak?

• 54:59Speaker 01

  If he just like, if he just fucking chills, maybe everything is okay. But legitimately, every time Nick has a thought, the opposite, they make this guy look so dumb throughout this entire movie.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  It's a good point. I love the scene when Clyde's like, get me a nice mattress and I'll confess. And then Nick leaves and he's like, we don't negotiate with murderers. And his team's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Get him a goddamn bed, he's gonna confess.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  Ben, you have a flex category.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my top five, we shouldn't have fucked with this guy movie. Okay, so there, there's a lot of movies like this out here. But I tried to use body counts and consequences to qualify this list. You have to have Death Wish on the list at five, but like, Death Wish has like sort of a conservative body count with all of the first, only not because he kills in the first movie. But throughout the entire movies, he kills 125 people. So shit had never messed with him, 125 people died. Number four, The Equalizer, Denzel. Okay, should have left him alone. Robert was chilling, got a lot of stuff. But throughout that, he becomes a vigilante, kills the whole Russian mob. Over the course of three movies, kills up a bunch of people.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Number three, Taken.

• 56:11Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Taken is interesting in this because what you guys talked about before? Taken, I feel like is the only one where somebody else didn't describe to us how good Brian Mills is. Brian said it. So like normally you bring a guy in, it's like, this is the baddest motherfucker ever. But Brian goes, no, I have a very particular set of skills. He also told this guy, I don't really care about human trafficking. If you give me my daughter back, you can traffic all you want.

• 56:36Bill Simmons?

  Right, knock yourself out.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not gonna bother you, but.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  I like this. So you, so Brian was a self promoter.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Brian was a self promoter.

• 56:44Bill Simmons?

  Cause we just did Rambo too with Kyle Brandt. Kyle Brandt was saying, now Troutman was Rambo's wrestling manager, basically.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:50Bill Simmons?

  He's like, you don't understand what we've got here. Man's a killing machine.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Everybody else has somebody that comes along. Right, but like Brian was like, I'm gonna come to get you. I have all of these skills. Let my daughter go. All right, number two is First Blood.

• 57:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Rambo was not bothering anyone. Brian Dennehy.

• 57:06Bill Simmons?

  Just wanted to, wanted some breakfast.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Just walking through the town, walking through town. He got to listen to him at one time, like very sincerely and goes, why are you riding me? Like, what are you doing?

• 57:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Goes into the wood, kills all the cops. Over these movies, he went around the world killing. Killed in the US, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Mexico. They, they initiated Rambo and people died everywhere.

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  There's an alternate universe where he's just working at a Blockbuster through the entire 80s.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Where he's, he started an Italian restaurant in the Pacific Northwest.

• 57:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Just chilling, he's going to therapy, hanging out with his own.

• 57:39Bill Simmons?

  Rambo's Italian restaurant, restaurant.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. The whole deal, he's not bothering no one.

• 57:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  But they fuck with him and they unleashed the demon. Number one, obviously John Wick. They killed the dog. Then John Wick proceeded to kill 439 people.

• 57:54Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  In seven months. 439 people in seven months after they stole the car and killed the dog. He completely obliterated the high table. It is one of the worst mistakes in the history of organized crime in movies.

• 58:11Bill Simmons?

  It's a good list.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Rebel Ridge, shout out, other movies around that didn't make it, but Rebel Ridge is another one where they could have.

• 58:16Bill Simmons?

  Need a Rebel Ridge 2.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  Rebel Ridge 2.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  Rebel Ridge 3.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  That was a good one. Uh, we'll take a break and then we'll do Butch's Girlfriend.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins. And I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of. Major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 58:50Speaker 04

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins is not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone. Proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone. Building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 59:22Speaker 04

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 59:55Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the show-stopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 1:00:25Bill Simmons?

  Butch's Girlfriend award for weak link of the film. This could go a lot of ways. Couldn't he have just killed everyone normally?

• 1:00:34Bill Simmons?

  Nick?

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:00:35Bill Simmons?

  Not Nick, uh.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Clyde.

• 1:00:36Bill Simmons?

  Clyde. Couldn't Clyde have just, did he need to take 10 years to do this elaborate murder of everybody? Could have just killed Darby when he got out of jail.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  Could have killed all the people, could have killed the judge. Like, he just could have sniped him. He had to like dig tunnels for 10 years to get his revenge?

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  But I.

• 1:00:52Bill Simmons?

  What was his ultimate point? That the system was fucked up? Just kill everybody?

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  But if he.

• 1:00:57Bill Simmons?

  You're killing everyone anyway.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  But if he anonymously is killing all these people, he's not a public figure in prison who's making a point to the justice system. And everybody knows that this man who was wronged by the system is now getting his revenge.

• 1:01:09Bill Simmons?

  So let's say we're, we're friends with Nick. And Nick's like, here's my plan. Be like, dude, just kill everyone.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  You mean Clyde?

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Clyde.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Clyde.

• 1:01:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Clyde, just kill everyone.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Bill Simmons?

  This is, this would be 10 years of your life. Just take them all out.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Because.

• 1:01:23Bill Simmons?

  You, you know how to kill people.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Bill Simmons?

  Just get out of it.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  He could still like write letters and send emails.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  This is the.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  He could probably go on the news, do an interview after he does it all.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  But, you know, then we'll have a movie.

• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

  Darby gets out after five years, he lets him live for another five years?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Think about all the fun that Darby looked like he was having fun.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  How many more people did Darby kill? Because Clyde was taking his time.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:01:48Bill Simmons?

  The judge, Jamie Foxx are gonna do more damage? Like, why'd he wait so long? He's basically waiting until the lethal injection to start his revenge thing. Or maybe he had to finish all the tunnels. But this is, this is, the guy's fucking maniac.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  But this is part of the movie though. Part of the movie though is there, you, after the, the film kicks off, you feel for him. And so there's gonna be an implicit sense of altruism in like whatever he does.

• 1:02:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Right? But it's really not. It's like the difference between justice and revenge. Like, like say in Batman Begins, justice is harmony, revenge is making yourself feel better. So he really didn't have a point, which is why he did it in such a staccato, scot-free way.

• 1:02:29Bill Simmons?

  The other weak link would be.

• 1:02:32Bill Simmons?

  Him being able to be in isolation. And just being able to move in and out and nobody realizing. Also, like, those are the most elaborate isolation. Like, I'm used to Oz, where you're just in like a round cement box with, you're just naked the entire time. He's got, his thing has like nooks and crannies, the ability to go in and out. Um, and he was just able to build tunnels for all 20 spy.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  By the way, the tunnels are very manicured and extremely nice.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  Yes, there's a lot of them.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  There's like brick.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Was he rich? Like, I feel like all of this stuff that he was doing required a lot of technology.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Batman.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Bill Simmons?

  But also, he started a whole janitorial service called Nomo's. That he's working in the mayor's office and they know him, they're like, hey, Nomo, what's going on?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  So he's like.

• 1:03:19Bill Simmons?

  So he's also working at, does this guy sleep?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Well, he's also, that's a full shift he's gotta work.

• 1:03:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  So he can't, yeah, exactly. So he's gotta leave.

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  So it's like Clyde, what are you doing today? Uh, nine to four, I gotta dig some tunnels. Then I got my janitor shift from four to 12. Just fucking kill everybody, Clyde.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  This really might be Apex Mountain for like the long con.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 1:03:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  10 years of planning this is a, and, and him taking up a shift as a janitor for years.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  And then he also has to dig all the tunnels. Maybe he contracted guys out there to do it, you know?

• 1:03:54Bill Simmons?

  New award, the Death Wish Two Award for did this home invasion scene go too far?

• 1:04:02Bill Simmons?

  It's, obviously, it seems like his wife gets raped.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  I would say visually, no, it doesn't go too far. But what happens is grotesque.

• 1:04:11Bill Simmons?

  The little girl shows up.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Bill Simmons?

  And that guy's, I love playing with kids or whatever it says.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  That line's too far.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that part, we outta here, man. At that point, it's like.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  It, it, it allows you to, to kind of get behind Clyde the whole movie. Like, you keep thinking back to that scene. And so then, whenever, every time Clyde does something, you're kind of like, I still get it.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  How come he didn't John Wick himself out of that situation? How come he, like, in that situation, he got hit with the fucking bat? Well, I guess John Wick didn't John Wick himself out of that situation.

• 1:04:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but so, I had this in nitpicks, but we can do it now. This guy, by all accounts, is one of the great murderers and planners of all time. They get a postmates. He obviously might have some people with an axe to grind.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Bill Simmons?

  Right? He doesn't even like look through the little eye hole, doesn't, doesn't, just like, oh, hmm, smells good. The guy hits him in the head with a bat.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Makes no sense. It's night, it's dark out, he doesn't look through the peephole, he just opens the door for strangers.

• 1:05:06Bill Simmons?

  Opens the door at night without looking to see who's there.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  He just opens the door for strangers.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  That hypervigilant as well.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Like, other people might have been like, eh, whatever, but he, this guy, there's murder around every corner and like whatever like that, he just wouldn't have been that way.

• 1:05:19Bill Simmons?

  Ridiculous. What stage the worst? I, the Philly accents are just non-existent in this movie.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  They didn't even try.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  They didn't even try. They just said, fuck it. No Philly sports references? This is like, the Phillies are, I think, in the World Series in 09. Um, Sixers, not really sure what was going on with them in 09, probably nothing great.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:39Bill Simmons?

  But the Eagles.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Andrew Igudala?

• 1:05:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, early Igudala. The Eagles are, I don't know, felt like somebody could have been like, oh, I'm going to the Flyers game tonight or some, sports is such a big part of Philly.

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Here's my other one, though.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Chase Utley will die tonight if I don't get a Del Frisco steak.

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  Or have them in a game. Like, have them at like a Phillies game. And then, you know, they get some message on the board.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Sometimes I like it when the killers in this, uh, in these movies just say like a passing reference. It's like, yeah, you're probably loving it with your family going to the Birds game or something like that. Like, there's a passing reference to it.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  It, it's something Clyde would have done. You catch the Phillies game, Nick?

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Catch the Philly game, Nick?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  You like Chase Utley? Good player, isn't he, Nick?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Ryan Howard hits bombs. I do bombs.

• 1:06:25Bill Simmons?

  She liked the Elton Brand signing, Nick?

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  My other one, stage the worst, it's just, Viola Davis is in this movie who's one of our better actors of the last 20 years, just completely wasted. She's in the mayor for like three scenes. She has lines like, your boys sure fucked this one up. It's like, we need Viola Davis for the, for this.

• 1:06:45Speaker 01

  But look, earlier, but she's also, she also pops up, like, for a brief second in, uh, damn, I'm drawing a blank.

• 1:06:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, she's in Black Hat.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:06:56Bill Simmons?

  She's in a bunch of movies where it's like, why is Viola Davis?

• 1:06:58Speaker 02

  She's like a legitimizer. People just throw her in a movie to raise the floor.

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  What was it? One scene in Out of Sight.

• 1:07:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yep, one scene in Out of Sight, she pops up, interesting character. But like, I think she was still on the, you know, took a while that she, she was still on the.

• 1:07:13Bill Simmons?

  If you have her, I'm writing three more scenes with the mayor. The mayor's gonna just be more involved in the, in the movie. Any other what's age the worst for you?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  No, just, I say, just Nick. Every time I watch it, I'm like, yo, Nick sucks.

• 1:07:25Bill Simmons?

  The Vincent Chase Award for are we sure this character was actually good at his job? Mayor Viola Davis. What, what, she's like, first of all, everybody blows up. And she has this speech and she goes, I'm gonna have to swear you in as the new DA. As she's uprooting him for all the damage that he just caused. You don't want to have a little search here for a week?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Right. This gotta be Nick. Are you crazy? Nick is the worst, bro. Nick, this gotta be Nick. No, Nick, Nick for no reason, by the way. Nick, take it to trial, you gonna win. Like, she, dog, you gonna, like, you gonna win. You don't think that Nick is the, Nick is the worst DA.

• 1:08:05Bill Simmons?

  He's the worst everything.

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  He shakes a rapist's hand on television.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  This would have been like the Jaguars bringing Urban Meyer in and being like, this is going terribly. You're now the GM.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like, it's gotta be Nick.

• 1:08:18Bill Simmons?

  We'd like to have you also be in charge of the players. The, uh, Ruffalo Hannah Rubenic Partridge over acting award, I think goes to Darby.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Okay, Darby was laying it on thick.

• 1:08:27Bill Simmons?

  I think that could have been a really good criminal role for somebody and that guy, I've never seen him bef, I don't know where that guy came from.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  He did look greasy and disgusting.

• 1:08:35Bill Simmons?

  I get it. That could have been a really good part, though, for somebody.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  I was fascinated by his day to day. You know, him laying in that nasty apartment.

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Darby was getting to it.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  He also, he got up out of there quick, man. He turned into Jason Bourne on the roof for a second.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  Did we talk about that scene? That, like, that, that's the Matrix. That's Neo, like, go left, go right, go, in that situation, that's the Matrix. That, that was a fun scene to me.

• 1:09:01Bill Simmons?

  Really good scene.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:02Bill Simmons?

  Little, little shades of The Fugitive. Uh, Sierra thinks Luke Wills could have been Harris supporting out of stake where, did you prepare one for this?

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  I did not, because I did not know I was gonna be sitting in this chair.

• 1:09:11Bill Simmons?

  Did you prepare one for this?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Sarah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Which is Leslie Bim?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. She deserved to die.

• 1:09:19Bill Simmons?

  She should have found husband?

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  She should, like, Sarah, it was just.

• 1:09:23Bill Simmons?

  She's working too hard?

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Sarah deserved to die. I, I can tell you what's gonna happen in, with Sarah. Down the road.

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  She's gonna make a run at Nate.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  It was good.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Down the road, Sarah, talking about Chip, the boyfriend, they're already getting a little too familiar.

• 1:09:41Bill Simmons?

  I know, I would argue that maybe it already happened.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I, down the road, Sarah.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  There was a scene missing.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Well, when they jump to 10 years later, you're like, man, they've been working together for 10 years?

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, what was gonna end up happening is Nick becomes a governor or something like that. He brings Sarah to the NAACP awards. Everybody go crazy on Twitter. I'm telling you, Sarah was that, had to, that had to happen like that.

• 1:10:01Bill Simmons?

  Or she's, she's a single mom of a.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Because she might have cheated on her boyfriend with Nick.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  I put the black family ahead of everything. Okay?

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  She's a single mom with a biracial baby, but she's like, it's adopted.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  It's adopted.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Here's my hottest take.

• 1:10:22Bill Simmons?

  I think Gerard Butler should have been James Bond 20 years ago instead of Daniel Craig.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 1:10:27Bill Simmons?

  I think it's a great fork in the road. I think they were both at around the same points of their career, and I think he would have been a better James Bond.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  So this is.

• 1:10:34Bill Simmons?

  I would have rather seen him in Casino Royale, Skyfall. Name a James Bond movie, I'd rather Butler. I think it would have been fun if Bond got like older and fatter from all the cigarettes and drinks.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  So this is why you are who you are, because this is the most entertaining total bullshit take.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  That I can like really wrap my mind around. But it is, it's fascinating to even consider it. When you consider the trajectory of both guys' careers and how successful Daniel Craig was as Bond.

• 1:11:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  And the fact that Gerard Butler kind of couldn't make Olympus's Fallen work. So when you look at it through that lens, it's like this almost dazzling, dazzling putrid take, but it's very entertaining. Yeah, that's what, that's the fucking thing, yeah.

• 1:11:21Bill Simmons?

  Also, if he's James Bond, is he now in better shape? Do we get Den of Thieves? Because he can't play somebody like Nick, because he's got to stay in James Bond shape.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Right. So you wouldn't have gotten, wait, hold on. What about Daniel Craig in Den of Thieves?

• 1:11:34Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's what happens.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  Daniel Craig could have been in Law Abiding Citizen. Daniel Craig could have been Clyde. He's got a little bit of that grit to him.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  So you don't think Gerard Butler could have been James Bond?

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  You know, you know, I, I can't, I think that James Bond, Gerard Butler's brand is brutality.

• 1:11:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  And James Bond's.

• 1:11:57Bill Simmons?

  There's a swabness.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  There's a swabness and a subtlety to it.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Is Gerard Butler ordering martinis and sleeping with mistresses at casinos? I, I don't know if I, in, in a suit?

• 1:12:06Bill Simmons?

  He's also got that Scottish thing where he kind of talks out of the side of his mouth a little bit.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Right, would he have, could he keep the Scottish accent as Bond or would he have to?

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  I will say this, though, he is sort of.

• 1:12:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're coming around.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Well, no, what I, look, I entertain every idea, it's my problem. Like, it, he does kind of fit into the Sean Connery man's man version of James Bond that had kind of been subverted by that point. But no, it's fucking terrible. But it is an interesting thought experiment.

• 1:12:32Bill Simmons?

  I feel it coming around. Casting what ifs, we mentioned the Butler Fox thing. This movie was originally supposed to be directed by Frank Darabont.

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:12:42Bill Simmons?

  From Shawshank Redemption.

• 1:12:45Bill Simmons?

  Creative differences left the movie.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  He was like, I can't do another movie with tunnels leading to jail cells.

• 1:12:50Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that's why they wanted him.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  He's a creative differences guy. There's been a few of those, like even Walking Dead. He ended up like suing AMC for Walking Dead, so. Um, never. Okay. Joey Pants Award for Best That Guy.

• 1:13:04Bill Simmons?

  Cole Meany is the guy who ends up basically, he's the only one that survives other than Jamie Foxx. The sidekick, he's been in a bunch of shit.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  He's like Star Trek guy, right?

• 1:13:14Bill Simmons?

  Mr. Alaska, like he's been around forever, but I think people, some people might know he's Cole Meany. The warden.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:13:22Bill Simmons?

  Is a full-fledged over the top.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  It's not Bruce McGill. Bruce McGill is Bruce McGill.

• 1:13:26Bill Simmons?

  McGill's Bruce McGill.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 1:13:28Bill Simmons?

  The warden was played by President Logan from 24. I didn't even know what this guy's name was. I had to go look it up.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He was the evil president in 24. I didn't know what his name was, but it's Gregory Itzen.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:13:40Bill Simmons?

  He was the warden, so I think he wins.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  The only other guy I'd throw out is the dude who plays Clyde's coworker.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Oh, that guy's been around.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Michael Kelly.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Oh, well, no. Michael Kelly.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  He just got added to, um. Season three of.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Landman.

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  Landman?

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  But, but which makes me think, I'm not gonna spoil anything, but. He is also on Lioness, so I feel like he's maybe sort of ascended past.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  You think he's Michael Kelly?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  I think he's Michael Kelly, yeah.

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  Dion Waiters Award, I can offer you Darby. Clyde's old coworker, Michael Kelly. Um, Leslie Bibb's in it too much, but I think the answer is Clyde's cellmate. They're doing a whole separate movie for five minutes. I'm like, I could have spent 20 more minutes with this guy.

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got a couple bitches back home.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  I got Kross, you know what I'm saying? They made us like that guy.

• 1:14:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was into that guy. It's Dion Waiters. He checked. Recasting Couch Director's City. Can I offer you Denzel and Tom Hanks making Philadelphia?

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  Are you fucking nuts? I cannot believe you just said that.

• 1:14:40Bill Simmons?

  You have that too?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  I, I cannot believe, like, I cannot believe that you just said that. That was my big reveal for this thing. The Philadelphia Shadow sequel that actually has Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington in it.

• 1:14:53Bill Simmons?

  We just go Law Abiding Citizen, three years later, after Philadelphia, or two years later.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Um, this, this, my approximation of myself has gone down to such a degree.

• 1:15:01Bill Simmons?

  Or gone up.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Well, I thought that what you would do is have Denzel as Clyde and have Tom as.

• 1:15:09Bill Simmons?

  Like the Jamie Foxx character.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:11Bill Simmons?

  Or we go the other way and Tom Hanks finally breaks bad. He's finally a bad guy in a movie. Gets like ripped, gets like fake tattoos.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Neck tattoo?

• 1:15:21Bill Simmons?

  Yes. Goes, shows his ass. It's like this is a Tom Hanks we've never seen.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  Wax is his ass.

• 1:15:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I feel like Denzel's made nine versions of this movie, but never actually made this movie, but he's done a bunch of these.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  So you believe me.

• 1:15:35Bill Simmons?

  I believed you.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:15:37Bill Simmons?

  Ian, you should be excited that we had the same idea instead of upset.

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough. I gotta reassess.

• 1:15:44Bill Simmons?

  Craig, give a flex category.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  I was gonna do Kevin Costner Award for the worst American accent, which has gotta go to Gerard Butler. The guy, he just. There's, the Scottish is falling out of his mouth with every line.

• 1:15:57Bill Simmons?

  Is he even trying to do an American accent?

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  You like mac and cheese, Nick?

• 1:16:03Speaker 02

  It's like, it's just not fair.

• 1:16:07Speaker 02

  It's just, it's not like they're like, this is the best we're gonna get. Let's just keep going.

• 1:16:10Bill Simmons?

  But is he supposed to be American?

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Well, I would think so. He's a CIA operative. Well, maybe he's some kind of guy that works for everybody.

• 1:16:20Bill Simmons?

  My take on this always consistently is just have your normal accent.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:16:24Bill Simmons?

  That Chris Hemsworth in Black Hat trying to have the Brooklyn accent, just be Australian. Who cares?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  It, it, we never remember it, like in Robin Hood, in the movie that this is named after, he's, I don't know, the guy's from fucking Long Island or whatever, like Robin of Long Island, but it doesn't even fucking matter. Like, you don't remember it.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  It's a good one.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  Del Frisco steak, Nick. And you're just like, come on.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Would you like some steak?

• 1:16:49Bill Simmons?

  Half ass certain research. Butler loved the script because he actually graduated from Glasgow Law School.

• 1:16:56Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, Glasgow?

• 1:16:57Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, what did you just say?

• 1:16:59Bill Simmons?

  He graduated from law school in Scotland. Yeah.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  I never knew that. And was a trainee solicitor and got fired and then decided to become an actor. Um, he also said this movie really fucked with them. He spent three weeks in a very funky place, came back to Scotland, went away, climbed a couple hills, got a tent out, and then went off to India.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  He, he might be one of the five most interesting people in the world.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. I feel like he, he would be a good BS podcast, Gerard. Have you ever talked to him?

• 1:17:27Bill Simmons?

  No, I would love him though.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  He'd be great.

• 1:17:29Bill Simmons?

  That sounds great. I would just ask a lot of Dennis Thieves questions. They filmed in Philadelphia.

• 1:17:36Bill Simmons?

  Butler said. That, that there was one scene when they, uh, when he, when he kills the guy. When the blood was gushing it, no, when he kills the guy in the cell. We had guys working on this who'd worked in the industry for 30 years, so were standing in front of the cameras with their hands over their mouth going, holy fucking shit, I've never seen anything like that. It was incredibly graphic and powerful, but the ratings board said we had to be rated NC 17.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:03Bill Simmons?

  So they somehow. Cut that down. I thought that's a pretty brutal scene.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Blood everywhere. I would be really interested. Yeah, to see what it was before they trimmed it.

• 1:18:14Bill Simmons?

  Was it like just pouring out of his neck?

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  I know. He stabbed him.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Already poured out of his neck.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  10, 20 times with the shit.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Bill Simmons?

  His name, Nemos, the, the cleaner, the janitor. Identity had, in Greek, it means law, related to the idea of dispensing justice.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:18:35Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Bruce McGill, two car explosion deaths for him in his career. The other one was, what movie? We've done it on rewatchables.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  The Last Boy Scout.

• 1:18:44Bill Simmons?

  There you go. I was thinking there should be a website that has all the deaths, all the deaths of real, of the actors.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. How they died.

• 1:18:52Bill Simmons?

  IMDb for death, just to see who had the most, who's died the most.

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, howtheydied.com. That's great.

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Bill Simmons?

  Somebody, some, somebody should work on that.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  That scene in Last Boy Scout is great. Head or gut.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Gets punched, blows up.

• 1:19:09Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain.

• 1:19:13Bill Simmons?

  Gerard Butler? What is it?

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  300, right?

• 1:19:19Bill Simmons?

  It's probably mid 2000s.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Mid 2000s.

• 1:19:21Bill Simmons?

  Coming out of 300 felt like.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  This is the next big guy.

• 1:19:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:26Bill Simmons?

  Jamie Foxx, probably after Ray.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ray collateral, he's wins for Ray and is nominated for collateral same year. He's the biggest fucking thing in the whole industry.

• 1:19:34Bill Simmons?

  I don't know what it is for Leslie Bibb.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  Oh, well, White Lotus. Talladega Nights as well, kind of close to this, but yeah, White, White Lotus.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  I guess it was.

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  She's the lead in Talladega Nights, right?

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  It would have to be Talladega Nights, though.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  Lady.

• 1:19:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd have to be Talladega.

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Mid 2000s, yeah. Philadelphia law movies, I'm gonna say Philadelphia, still has that one. Vigilante movies, I'm gonna say Death Wish. Del Frisco Steakhouse, definitely.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  Then.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Double Eagle.

• 1:19:59Bill Simmons?

  Eminence Front, still probably the first episode of Entourage.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 1:20:04Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  What'd you say? What, what, what'd you say? The what?

• 1:20:06Bill Simmons?

  Eminence Front.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  The Who song.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Oh, the Who song, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Well, that's why I had it. I had Cruise in the Philadelphia Shadow sequel with Hanks and Nick as Denzel and Clyde.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Cruise would be a phenomenal Clyde.

• 1:20:24Bill Simmons?

  It's the role I always kind of wanted Cruise to do, out of the many roles I've wanted Cruise to do.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:20:30Bill Simmons?

  Just a, like a law-abiding citizen where collateral's the closest he came to being Dark Cruise, but this would have been a good version of it.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  The thing is, he was so good at it. It was so seamless in collateral. The fact that he never spent time as that in movies as much as he should have. In collateral, it is so natural, almost grounds his performance in a different way.

• 1:20:51Bill Simmons?

  It's like he's a different human.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Different.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  Cruise would have crushed Clyde, like the hyper fixated, like manic.

• 1:20:56Bill Simmons?

  Right. He would have learned tricks too, yeah.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Over the top. Yeah, you, you would have totally bought it.

• 1:21:00Bill Simmons?

  He would have learned like how to make bombs. He would have learned how to tunnel.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Bill Simmons?

  And be like, I was tunneling under my house for six months to understand tunneling.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  Does he, does he have any running to do though in this?

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  They would have added some.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Put some running in there somewhere.

• 1:21:13Bill Simmons?

  I think parking lot, when he has to park in the garage at the end, he probably has to run.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Bill Simmons?

  What did we think of that interview, by the way?

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:21:22Bill Simmons?

  The Cruise GQ interview.

• 1:21:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I haven't watched it yet for Zach.

• 1:21:24Bill Simmons?

  See, Craig was thinking Cruise would be a good rewatchables guest and we argued back and forth about it.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  He would be.

• 1:21:30Bill Simmons?

  And my take was he would not be.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  He'd be phenomenal.

• 1:21:34Bill Simmons?

  Would he be, would he be good at actually talking about the movie though?

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  He would be one of the best ever.

• 1:21:39Bill Simmons?

  He didn't, I'd be answer, I'd be like, all right, Tom, what's your most rewatchable scene? And he'd be like. You know, I think one of the best things about race car driving is the feeling you get.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Who cares? If, if Tom Cruise is sitting in the seat I'm in.

• 1:21:51Bill Simmons?

  Answered a single category question.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  I love this. Talk your shit. Tom Cruise is not good enough for my movie podcast where we've talked about his movies.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  If he would have been good. All I wanna do is have a good podcast.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  I think that Tom Cruise, if you've ever listened to him, when you, when he gets going, talking about movies and talking about.

• 1:22:08Bill Simmons?

  I tried to listen to him in the GQ interview and he was incoherent.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  I, I, I.

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  Go ahead.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  I think what's nice is when he sits down for a GQ interview, you have to ask about him and he is very skilled at skirting around things. If he's sitting down talking about a movie, he can just talk about the movie.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  If you have him in here with, uh, doing Days of Thunder, that's gonna go crazy. He'll be amazing.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  He'll probably tell great stories, but he wouldn't do a movie he's in, because we usually don't do that.

• 1:22:30Bill Simmons?

  All right, so Tom Cruise, don't be a wuss. Come on the rewatchables. Prove me wrong.

• 1:22:37Bill Simmons?

  I had another category.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  What's going on with this guy?

• 1:22:40Bill Simmons?

  The Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for did this movie need a random sports scene?

• 1:22:46Bill Simmons?

  Let me give you this. Jamie Foxx, he's playing, he has a Saturday morning basketball game.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  Basketball.

• 1:22:53Bill Simmons?

  Plays with some of the, some of the people, some of the people like in the, in the legal community. Saturday mornings, like nine o'clock.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  And the Gatorade jug is poisoned by Clyde.

• 1:23:01Bill Simmons?

  No, the basketball, somebody's going for a layup and the basketball just blows up, blows up five, but Fox through the pass, so he didn't get it. Yeah.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Bill Simmons?

  Rap is playing? Are you trying to make this? What sport would we have done? What do you put? Tennis?

• 1:23:20Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think of a Gerard Butler trying to blow up some sort of sporting event.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Ball, I'm fucking with you.

• 1:23:26Bill Simmons?

  I mean, tennis would be good, too, I guess.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. Basketball's don't.

• 1:23:29Bill Simmons?

  Basketball's the best because the guy's going to the layup.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  And the ball just explodes.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Or he's like, he's like, uh, somebody's mad because they won't swing the rock. It's like, hey, you're not passing the ball, Nick, you're taking every shot. Because Nick is like arrogant. And so Nick goes, fuck it. And he passed the ball to the guy. And the guy, as soon as the ball gets there.

• 1:23:47Bill Simmons?

  Slow mo.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Slow mo, he just blows up, rips the fucking skin off of his face.

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  The other one I was thinking was softball would be great. It's like the, I just don't know if they would have been playing a lot of, uh, Philadelphia softball as the city was blowing up.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:23:59Bill Simmons?

  But Fox is the pitcher and throws the ball and then the guy hits it.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  The thing that I love is that he's actually playing this game while all of this shit is happening, which is exactly what his dumbass character in this movie would do.

• 1:24:10Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I can't skip my Saturday hoops game.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  Right. I can't go, I can't go to see my daughter play the cello.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  We're in the seventies, sorry.

• 1:24:21Bill Simmons?

  The Van Lathan Award, did this movie need more black people?

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think we're good.

• 1:24:26Bill Simmons?

  You think we're good? Okay.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Because if, the more people that you have in this movie, the higher the body count goes. And I think it's good that we were spared.

• 1:24:32Bill Simmons?

  Picking nits. We've mentioned a few of them already. I mean, there's a good question of two guys just randomly rape and murder the wife and daughter of somebody who's Kaiser Soze and don't realize it.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:43Bill Simmons?

  Pretty massive coincidence.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  But see, this is.

• 1:24:45Bill Simmons?

  Of all the houses to go to.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  But this is another reason, this is another way that this movie could have been a little smarter. And maybe the venture version is that this is not just some random crime that happens to this guy. This is something that happens i- in a different way. And like, you start to learn all of that throughout the movie.

• 1:25:06Bill Simmons?

  When Nate, Nick, Nate Nick, Jamie Foxx's character, when he shakes Darby's hand in front of all the reporters, he would never do that. Nobody's that stupid.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:16Bill Simmons?

  It's the dumbest thing he does in the movie.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:18Bill Simmons?

  You're like, no, I'll, I'll hold it on the handshake, fucking rapist guy.

• 1:25:25Bill Simmons?

  So he's in the isolation cell. No cameras in this cell? And once stuff starts blowing up, nobody says, we should put a camera in that cell to see what he's up to, what he's doing? They're not just photographing him 24/7 to make sure he's not doing shit?

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, he's now the most dangerous guy in the whole city.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  If you're the mayor, you're gonna call that one in? Hey, let's put a camera in the cell so we know what he's doing.

• 1:25:47Speaker 02

  Also, on the Clyde side of things, at the end of the movie, wouldn't Clyde have noticed that Nick and what's his name broke into his warehouse? Went into the tunnel, moving things around?

• 1:25:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:57Speaker 02

  Clyde was in there after that. He would have noticed.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  And by the way.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  They broke into the warehouse.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  How do them motherfuckers know how to do that? They don't know how to do that? They, they, that's the DA and a cop. How the fuck do they know how to do bombs and all of that? They Google it? They, they don't know how to do none of that.

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  I just think the biggest picking nit is that the, the final crime that Clyde is trying to commit is the least inventive. It's like the least smart.

• 1:26:22Bill Simmons?

  Just blowing up the mayor.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  He puts a bomb under a table.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  But by this point though.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  And there's no cameras on it. He can't see it. Wouldn't he rig a camera to be able to see if anyone's messing with it?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  You mean the function of it, not the actual?

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  The function of it is very rudimentary.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  The mayor was giving a press conference. And it was almost like how the bodyguard ended, where it was like the cameraman ended up trying to shoot Whitney Houston.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Bill Simmons?

  So he has the camera shooting by old Davis, but really it's gonna kill her.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  It would have been better if he'd have had some want. If there were to, if there was some ask of something that gave him some sort of purpose beyond carnage. Because to you guys' point, if it's just carnage, there's no reason to play all of these games. You wait till everybody is going to fuck into the thing. You just blow up and kill as many people as you can.

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  Because the best part of this movie is, is, is every 10 minutes, it's like, what is Clyde gonna do next? What is the next elaborate scheme? And then the last one is he puts a bomb in a briefcase and puts it under a table. And you're like, this is, you know, a little underwhelming.

• 1:27:21Bill Simmons?

  How do they get to his jail cell before he does at the end is another one I've always wondered when I watch this movie. I guess you could say because he has to go to the garage because he can't get through. Maybe they got bought more time, but he has a big head start in them.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  The biggest, the biggest picking nit is, it is one thing for, uh, one of the richest men in the world to build a command center bunker under his mansion that exists outside of the city limits.

• 1:27:50Bill Simmons?

  With wifi and state of the art cameras.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  Right. So it's one thing for a guy named Bruce Wayne to do that.

• 1:27:55Bill Simmons?

  It's like, hey Verizon, um, I want to install my wifi in my underground bunker.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  Can we get fiber under here?

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  It is another thing for a prisoner to down, essentially be a super criminal in a base while incarcerated. It is so nonsensical that it, it, it makes absolutely zero sense.

• 1:28:13Bill Simmons?

  There are no guards just walking up and down?

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  There's nothing.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  It's like, hey, Clyde.

• 1:28:16Speaker 01

  That bitch looks like it's.

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  Clyde has moved in a while.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  It looks like it's climate controlled. There's electricity down there. Like, in no fucking way.

• 1:28:22Bill Simmons?

  Did you see what he did? He puts the pillow and the blanket under the blanket, under the other blanket? So it makes it seem like there's a body in there? Every other prison movie you've seen, they're like making fake heads with hair.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  They, they, half a.

• 1:28:34Bill Simmons?

  Clyde's like, yeah.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Half a skeleton, half a trash is them making the live, thought of molds of themselves so they can fucking escape.

• 1:28:40Bill Simmons?

  I love that movie. I just, I fucking love that movie. I was telling Craig about that movie.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  I haven't seen it.

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  That's a North Carol.

• 1:28:46Bill Simmons?

  CR is a huge fan of that movie, too.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  That's a classic.

• 1:28:48Bill Simmons?

  We might have to do that one.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  Sneaky hot take.

• 1:28:51Bill Simmons?

  That movie's amazing.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  It's my, that's my favorite Eastwood movie of all the movies that he's done. That and Unforgiven, obviously. But like, I love.

• 1:28:58Bill Simmons?

  I'm not even gonna ask you if I, if you thought they actually got away. I'll save it for the podcast.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:04Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, prestige, TVL, Black Cast are untouchable. So May 22, they announced that there was gonna be a sequel.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  May 22, when?

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  Four years ago.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Oh, shit.

• 1:29:15Bill Simmons?

  Kurt Wimmer hired to return as screenwriter. Gerard Butler was gonna be a producer. The producer, Lucas Foster, said, we look forward to revisiting these great characters and said the premise seems even more relevant today than when the original film was released. But then, three years later, they basically said this isn't happening.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  So later on, I'll just do it now, of what happens the next day, I have an idea for the sequel.

• 1:29:40Bill Simmons?

  Zouatneo?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. We basically already talked about it. Nick realizes that Clyde set all kinds of booby traps for him, like, in his world, in case he died, in case something happened to him. And Billy Bob Thornton comes in, gets hired as a former accomplice or like person of Clyde's that has to get into his brain and figure out.

• 1:30:06Bill Simmons?

  Figure out all the booby traps that were left.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  All the booby traps that, that went off and are gonna go off.

• 1:30:09Bill Simmons?

  That could be my basketball scene in that, in the sequel.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30:12Bill Simmons?

  It's like, oh, he knew you played basketball on Saturdays.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Gonna blow up the game. He races home because he gets told there's a bomb in the cello.

• 1:30:23Bill Simmons?

  I had for the sequel, um, I actually just said, Nick goes to jail because he blew up a prison. Probably all the people in it and security guards.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  So it has nothing to do with what the.

• 1:30:35Bill Simmons?

  Thirty people to get revenge on this guy. He didn't give anyone a heads up. I mean, that was like a huge bomb. The prison might have collapsed.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yo, this is the take. There's no way he didn't kill a bunch of people.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 1:30:48Bill Simmons?

  He's like, he should be arrested at the cello recital.

• 1:30:51Speaker 02

  Because when their bomb expert opened up the briefcase when it was at town hall, he's like, this could take out two floors.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  And they just put that in his, in Clyde's cell. So that thing takes out the whole floor in the jail.

• 1:31:01Speaker 01

  Some dude in his cell, he goes, goddamn, man. You know, it's gonna be tough. I only got three years on a minor weed charge. I'm gonna do my time.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  That guy over there got a steak and mac and cheese.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Right, like.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  They're playing the Who.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  I'm good. All of a sudden, he's fucking dead.

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, everybody else? I'm just trying to think of football for this. Go, go Collinsworth, we go Troy Aikman.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  Um, Clyde's like Josh Allen out there, Mike.

• 1:31:33Speaker 02

  He's running the offense. He's calling audibles left and right. He's reading the defense.

• 1:31:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, man, I can't get over Clyde. Digging tunnels for 10 years.

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her, who gets it? Probably Butler, right?

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, Butler.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 1:31:50Bill Simmons?

  Imagine if Butler got nominated for this. They're like, all these categories, and Gerard Butler for law-abiding citizen.

• 1:31:58Bill Simmons?

  They just show a scene of him stabbing a so.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  He's like, I'm gonna cut your penis off with a box cutter.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  The audience.

• 1:32:08Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answer for questions. I only have one. So we talked about if there was a different ending for this movie.

• 1:32:15Bill Simmons?

  What happens if Fox is at the cello recital for his daughter?

• 1:32:20Bill Simmons?

  And something jars his memory and he realizes the recital is about to blow up? And we go wide shot and just entire school blows up and that's the end of the movie?

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  Bill.

• 1:32:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think, how dark, how dark of an ending could this be? Cause.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  The whole school blows up.

• 1:32:37Bill Simmons?

  I think that's too dark.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  That's definitely too dark. Yeah.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  Hundreds of kids die.

• 1:32:40Bill Simmons?

  But I wonder in the writers room, did they?

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Did they?

• 1:32:43Bill Simmons?

  Blow for prison?

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. Different than children.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  What could they, okay, let's, what could they blow up?

• 1:32:50Bill Simmons?

  But could the recital, is there a moment where he's watching the recital and you do the thing where you do the fate and? And then you're like, oh no.

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  Maybe when she plays a certain note, it triggers a bomb.

• 1:33:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  I was trying to think of what movie this reminds me of and it's Arlington Road.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Did you ever, you ever see?

• 1:33:09Bill Simmons?

  Arlington Road is great and they actually follow the premise all the way to the end.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  All the way through. Yeah.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 1:33:15Bill Simmons?

  Don't.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  You're rooting for yourself. Yeah.

• 1:33:18Bill Simmons?

  But I was wondering, like, how dark could this get? The cello blowing up.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:24Bill Simmons?

  That's really dark.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  As it gets.

• 1:33:26Bill Simmons?

  The school blowing up, really dark. Him starting to get strangled by his tie, I think would have actually been a really great.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  Because he.

• 1:33:36Bill Simmons?

  Him doing this, like.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:38Bill Simmons?

  And then we do flashback of Butler in his closet, just adding shit to all his tie, adding his weird C I shit.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Or, or Nick is sitting there during the recital, watching his daughter play the cello and then he kind of looks stage right and behind the curtain is Clyde and he just peeks his head out. And he's like.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  That would have been hard.

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Because maybe he sneaks back into the tunnel or something.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Fucking escaped.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Like, or something like that?

• 1:34:02Bill Simmons?

  No, but though, when we see the flames coming behind him, we know he dies, they shouldn't have showed that.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Bill Simmons?

  I think they should have left it open that maybe he didn't, we never found his body.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  What's Nick leaves, if Nick leaves and we don't see that, we would almost assume that he has.

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  But they can still show the explosion when Nick's outside in the parking lot, but I don't think they should have shown the flames around Clyde.

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:21Bill Simmons?

  Or she's playing the cello recital and there's other people on stage, including the teacher with the, playing the piano. And Nick's kind of looking at the teacher and realizes that it's Clyde.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Bill Simmons?

  Clyde's playing the piano and kind of turns to Nick.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  Maybe if, uh, a phone rings in his pocket and his wife's like, turn off your phone. He's like, I didn't bring my phone.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Oh. Got you motherfucker. I'm texting.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  Basically Nick has to die in the last scene.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  I think we all agree.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't believe.

• 1:34:50Bill Simmons?

  It's a better movie.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  I can't believe Nick made it out alive.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  Memorabilia you'd most want from this movie? I was gonna say the sport from the jail scene, but I guess I'll say the steak bone.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  But definitely the bone, could put it right, right there under Farrah. Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi word, best, worst life lesson? Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Yep. Lessons not learned in blood, soon forgotten. Yep.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  You believe that, Bill?

• 1:35:18Bill Simmons?

  Best double feature choice?

• 1:35:21Bill Simmons?

  Half Italian. Best double feature choice has to be Den of Thieves. You need both ends of Butler. Need Butler when he has it and then Butler when he doesn't.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Both ends of Butler too. You want both of them, motherfuckers. There you go, Bill. Go ahead and get to that. Uh, it, it, it, um, I put Rock and Roller, just cause I love Rock and Roller, but Den of Thieves is a good one too.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Sure. Maybe John Wick one?

• 1:35:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, another revenge one. And then I think we all think Butler won this movie, without a doubt.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  By the way, he wins most movies that he's in.

• 1:35:56Bill Simmons?

  I agree.

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  And it don't matter.

• 1:35:57Bill Simmons?

  You don't want him as James Bond for some reason.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Fuck no, hell no. But he wins most movies.

• 1:36:01Bill Simmons?

  Sweet on Daniel Craig.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  But that's kind of the design of the Butler.

• 1:36:04Bill Simmons?

  I love Daniel Craig.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Daniel Craig revolutionized, he revolutionized the character. He really, like, it was like very important.

• 1:36:10Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Butler would have. We never gave him a chance.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  I, I'm a Gerard Butler guy. Me and, me and Kalika went to see.

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  Obviously not. You don't think he should be James Bond?

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  I don't think he should be, you know what? I also don't think he should play Malcolm X. That doesn't mean that. I think he should be in every movie, right? But Gerard Butler as Malcolm X would be a choice.

• 1:36:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Play with rock.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Um, but I, we went to see every Olympus movie in theaters.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  I've never seen any of those falling movies. Are they good?

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  All of, everything's fallen.

• 1:36:41Bill Simmons?

  They're fun.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  The first one is passable, then they kind of get away from themselves.

• 1:36:44Bill Simmons?

  Than any of those movies.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  It might not be better than the first one. I could, I could make an argument for the first one.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Olympus?

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Olympus. I can make an argument for the first one.

• 1:36:53Bill Simmons?

  What role would he play in the Kyle, the Colin Kaepernick sports movie?

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  Retired linebacker.

• 1:36:59Bill Simmons?

  Jim Tomsula?

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Let's see. Who would he play?

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  Jim Harbaugh?

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Maybe Harbaugh.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  Jim Harbaugh with the Scottish accent?

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Maybe Harbaugh, maybe.

• 1:37:07Bill Simmons?

  We gotta do a little more shotgun coming out of there.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  We gotta use Colin's legs.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  But he is, he has been underused though, to me.

• 1:37:19Bill Simmons?

  I agree. I think he's great in Chasing Mavericks. That's not a movie that should be good and he's great in it.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  For his physicality, I'm surprised. He was never like a football player in a movie.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  He could have been a linebacker.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Did he do sports movies? Did he do like?

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  Well, Den of Thieves, he was a high school star.

• 1:37:33Speaker 02

  He could have been in the replacements.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Serving.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Like he could have been in the replacements or something, you know?

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  No question. Do you need to do your closer? Cause you already talked about the movie. Anything left?

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  No, I just, I, I think, I think the most interesting part of the movie is when you decide that you are no longer rooting for Clyde and, or does that ever come?

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  When does it, when it was, when was it for you?

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  Uh, when Leslie Bibb blew up, I was like, all right, he's killing paralegals and assistants now and people who are barely related to this case and he's kind of lost his mind.

• 1:38:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:03Speaker 02

  But in, you know, but until then I was like, I'm on board. And even till the end, there's still a percentage of you that's like, I get it.

• 1:38:10Bill Simmons?

  That's one of the great reasons why this is a rewatchable movie. He's like, why am I fucking rooting for this guy?

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:15Bill Simmons?

  He's a complete maniac.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  And I think maybe it's why purposefully Nick is not a likable character because if Nick was, if Nick was a great guy or more charming, you might be more against Clyde, but because Nick sucks, I think you're, in the back of your head, you're like, still rooting for Clyde a little bit.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Clyde's right until he becomes criminally and crazily wrong.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  This whole movie is like one, if, if, like one big gray area and you just like, don't quite know where to land.

• 1:38:39Bill Simmons?

  That's what makes it a rewatchable. Yep. Well put. Craig, thank you.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Can't believe you hesitated.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you did great.

• 1:38:46Speaker 02

  Well, I just, I walked in and he was like, you're in the third chair. I was like, oh, I didn't prepare to host. He's like, it'll be fine.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Tracy Letts doesn't hesitate.

• 1:38:54Speaker 02

  Tracy Letts is great. And have you seen I Play Rocky? He's, he's great in it.

• 1:38:57Bill Simmons?

  So you liked I Play Rocky?

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  That was really good. I, I was, I had low expectations. I thought, I, I don't know what I was expecting. I thought it was.

• 1:39:04Bill Simmons?

  And the guy who played Stallone was realistic?

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  He's amazing in it.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a real crowd pleaser.

• 1:39:09Bill Simmons?

  I'm excited for it.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Bill Simmons?

  And there's a sports movie coming out too, the, the, uh, Mr. Irrelevant?

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. With, uh, what's his name?

• 1:39:16Bill Simmons?

  Maybe sports movies are making a comeback.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  I just didn't realize how interesting the Rocky story was. Like the whole negotiation about him with the studio. I didn't, it's pretty compelling.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  It was, it was like a story of legend, like around the town for just the.

• 1:39:30Bill Simmons?

  Sticking up for yourself. It's an all time bet on yourself.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  All time bet on yourself.

• 1:39:33Speaker 02

  They offered him 25K for the script. He said, I know, I want to star in it. And they went all the way up to $360,000 in 1974 for him not to star in the movie and he still said no. And they ended up allowing him to star in the movie for 20 mil, for $20,000.

• 1:39:48Bill Simmons?

  And nine years later, he ended the Cold War.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  John Rambo.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  That's what happens. Ben, thank you. Craig, thank you. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo and Chris as well. Back next week on the Rewatchables.

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