Home --> Hobbies and Interests --> Movies --> Arizona
Years ago all our TVs and CD/DVD players quit one by one so I’ve had to rely on Youtube for my cinema since. In that time though I’d still pick up the odd DVD here and there, because one day I’ll have the moeny to by new home enteranment equipment to play them on. In the mean time though I save up some money and got a CD/DVD player for my laptop. One of the first movies I put in was Arizona (2018) which I got at the drugstore last year. It’s about this real estate agent lady in Arizona during the house market crisis in ‘09, who gets kidnapped by a guy after she witnesses him manslaghtering her doosh-bag coworker who sold him his house (the same agent also sold Cassie her house), and he later kidnaps her daughter Morgan too.
I kinda liked the bad guy Sonny at first. You do have to feel bad for him a little, until he starts killing more people (obviously). He had a dog and a bad back, and likes to go golfing. Lowkirkenuinely though, I rather like golf. If it werent such an elitist’s sport I would probably go out and play it once in a while. Not even competitively, just to hit something and send it flying. Also Sonny is divorced, same as the agent Cassie, and their houses are both losing value. There’s also Cassie’s ex Scott and his shitty girlfriend Kelsey who is visibly unhappy when Scott gets up to leave because Cassie was very audibly worried for their daughter’s safety. She also plays around with his gun which he keeps in the glovebox (unloaded, stupidly enough, with the ammo in the trunk), fiddling with it and waving it around, claiming she knows how to handle guns (yeah, sure, bitch). Literally the most useful thing she does is try to go digging around for the one loaded mag in the trunk to go after Sonny, but just when she finally finds it, the car blows up from the fire she caused by running the damn car backwards into a fucking light pole.
So yeah the movie got harder to watch as it went on admittedly. About the only two justified kills Sonny had were Gary the real estate agent and his ex wife Vikki. But kinda like a horror movie protag, Cassie also makes a lot of stupid decisions. I guess nothing bad, but thers just a lot that I’d hav done differently in her situation, so I think that’s what I reelly want to talk about.
I think the first thing I’d do is when she see Sonny push Gary off the balcony. I’d turn around while he’s still looking away, and calmly pretend to still be on the phone with the debt collector. Hopefully he’ll think I had no idea what was going on, and won’t come into the room where Cassie was on the phone. I might glance out in a few minutes to see if he’s left, and if he hasn’t and he looks in I might do a “Sup” nod. If he does come in I’ll act like I’m still on the phone being like, “Yes… mm-hm… yea…” and glance at him and do a “Excuse me for a minute” to the phone, then turn to him and ask if I can help him. He’ll tell me about what just happened to Gary and how he didn’t mean it, how Gary was supposed to catch himself. So I would just nonchalantly shrug and say “oh, okay”, maybe a “So?” I’m not sure how to suggest going about getting rid of the body, maybe for Sonny’s opinion. Anything to show him I’m on his side, really. And fuck Gary. That too.
If that’s not good enough and he still decides to kidnap me I would do what I can to be as agreeable and empathetic as possible. I would be excited to pet his dog and everything and try to relate to him. When he shows me his gun collection, I won’t look scared like Cassie. I’d be like “Ah fuck yeah my dude!” and asking about how he made it and everything. When he talks about his divorce, as Cassie I might try to relate, or as myself, I might talk about my parents’ divorce. As for the countertop debate, I would try to offer some pros for both. Of corse I like black, so I would like it because it’s more colorful, but the whiter one (which I think Sonny prefers since he beat his wife with it) would be more practical, since more uniformity in color makes it to notice any missed spots when cleaning.
When Sonny notes Cassie’s ring and assumes she’s still married, she corrects him and says she keeps it on because it helps her sell more houses. This was her first major mistake, because Sonny thinks she’s trying to deceive people to get them to buy houses that she knows won’t be worth shit in the future. First of all, I would say that sadly many salesman of every good lie and oversell their products. After all, it’s their job to SELL. Secondly, I would try to suggest that the average real estate agent (the managers and highers-up might be a different story) probably had no idea any more than the consumers that the market would crash. But that’s IF I told him what Cassie told him, which I wouldn’t. Instead I would say that the divorce was the husband’s fault (since his wife filed for divorce even though Sonny wanted to stay together for their kids, this would bild rapor on the grounds that we’re in the same boat), and I’m still in shock and continue to wear my wedding band because, between the crisis, the impending forcloshure of my house, and the divorce, I just feel like the whole god forsaken world is collapsing around me, and trying to lie to myself – not to others, that’s the key here with Sonny – and pretend my family is still whole is usually the only thing between me and insanity.
The key with Sonny is that he hates liars, and lies are the one damn thing getting Cassie in trouble with him. So what makes me lying to him different? Recognizing when it’s safe to be honest with him, and when I need to bullshit him, and when I do bullshit, make damn good sure not to spill the truth afterward. He is the Bad Guy but until he starts really kiling after Cassie runs off, I don’t a bad guy, he seems genuinely remorseful about killing Gary and Vikki, and honest about being willing to let Cassie go. I reckon then that by this point I’ll be luckier than her and he’d actaully let me go, especially after we start venting to each other about what an asshole Gary was, I think he’d be convinced that I won’t tell anyone what all happened. I mean true Cassie also vented abut Gary, but she also fucked up royally for herself. Plus with how chil and supportive I am about Gary’s dhemise, I’d say that’s bonus points. And even if Sonny isn’t happy with my answer on the granite countertop thing, say he think I agree with his wife, well at least I offered a more genuin opinion than the “oh wow it’s such a hard decision” bullshit that Cassie gave him, so he shouldn’t get too pissed. If I tell him I like the black and white better, and he gets mad because I think his ex is right, then I’d try to consol him or whatever. “Well wait now, Sonny. So you like the whiter one? Well I get it, it’s got its merits too.” Hopefully that would work. I’d try to show a little support (and make damn good sure it’s genuin. The key to sounding genuin is remaining cool and keeping it casual).
So hopefully all that would be enough to make him untape me. Hell I’ll even tack on an offer to help bury Gary, whether he untaped me or not. And say he STILL don’t untape me?
Well by this point this ex would show up. And that’s my ultimitt time to SHINE, baby!!! Vikki is absolutely a bitch, and she shows up uninvited and unanounced. And of course she’d be freaking out if I’m not already untaped, but I’m not Cassie, so I’m not going to scream for her to call the police. Instead what I’d do is be on Sonny’s side (the Sonny side?). I might approach her and be fake nice. No exaggerated sympathy for Sonny. No “omg, is this your ex? *Gasp*/*scoff* OMG…” or any dumb shit like that. Maybe some “Hold on, everyone, hold on. … Hi. How ya doin’? Good, good. Well it’s nice to meet you. And uh… You know you don’t live here anymore right? And so you’re trespassing, yea? Why don’t you show your shallow ass out, eh?” I might try to shove her out. If I’m untaped, Sonny might let me. If not, he might instead whack her with the golf club like he does.
Whether or not he ties me up, I’ll still be on his side if he doesn’t let me go while she’s out. When Vikki starts bitching at him and calling him a loser and all that shit, Imma tell her to shut her bitch ass up. I’d tell her that I’ve only known Sonny for that day, and I may not know the whole story of their marriage and divorce, but I can tell from the way talks about them, he really loves his boys and tried to do his best as a father, and tried to make the house even nicer than what it already was, and if anything, she’s the real loser because she’s a selfish bitch who decided to divorce him rather than put aside whatever grevences they had with each other and try to make the marriage work for the kids sake. This probably wont shut her up (and it ain’t ment to) so shell still make Sonny play Whack-a-Bitch with a big-ass brick o granite. Sonny will freak the fuck out and try to revive her, so I’ll be saying “Sonny. Sonny. Hey, Sonny, it’s all right. She’s dead. It’s okay. She ain’t coming back, Sonny.” He’ll look up and say he didn’t mean to, which if you wanna beleive its bullshit, power to you. It probably is. I’d say “I know that, Sonny.” And at the end of the day, it’s still his fault. In spite of evrything he still made the choice to hit her. But still, I’m siding with him. “Obviously it ain’t right that you did that… But let’s be real. I’d’ve done it too. She really was a bitch.” And then I’d offer to help bury her.
Oh yeah, and also, if I’m still Cassie and I do have a daughter, I’m not going to say anything about her. When Sonny realizes if someone will be missing me if he keeps me for too long, I’ll keep quiet about Morgan, and about everyone. He won’t expect Scott to miss me with the story I’ve told him. This has a couple of benefits. First, if anyone does start serching for me, he won’t be expecting it. Based on the description alone I was planning on this movie being something where he keeps Cassie and Morgan tied up and fends off the police and Cassie’s ex husband as they try to get into the house. If my situation were to come to that, he wouldn’t be as prepared. And hopefully he won’t hold me as a hostage and hold me at gunpoint…. Second, he won’t try to go snatch my daughter to torment me. Suppose he asks if my kid(s) lives with me? Well Scott lives far away, hence Cassie being late to work because of the commute to drop Morgan off at school. I can say she lives with her father.
Oh shit… Suppose my daughter tries calling me while Sonny has me, asking why I’m not home? Late night at the office, call dad and have him pick her up. Maybe now Sonny will think I’m lying. But I’m not. She does live with her father, just sometimes she gets dropped off for a visit and I’ve been so stressed with work and everything that I forgot that today was her day. So far this is the first lie I can think of with any visible cracks. Until now I have not been catching myself up in my web of lies like Cassie, so he shouldn’t feel prompted to go kidnap Morgan to torment me. If my spouse calls, I’ll tell Sonny to decline the call. It’ll be less concerning to the caller than if I were to let it ring, and they’ll all expect the reason to be that I’m busy. If the ex gets to concerned, he’ll go to my workplace, find that I’m gone but my car is there, and realize that something is up.
Now, say I don’t escape, and I wait until Sonny finally frees me, or help arrives. Best I can say is I’ll behave and cooperate as best as I can, and just bullshit my way out of it like I’ve never bullshat before. But if I do escape, well, I’ll try to make note of the house number and the street name, that way we don’t have the incident of the Sheriff breaking into the wrong house, killing the home owner, then getting killed by Sonny. Up to the point where Cassie escapes, Sonny hasn’t harmed anyone innocent (he’s still in the process of going to get Morgan, and since I’ve arleady discussed my plan for her, she doesn’t count). Gary and Vikki are both assholes and so they got theirs, and I told Sonny I wouldn’t tell.
I think Sonny’s major flaw (aside from his short temper and poor impulse control) is that even though he believes he’s not evil, he’s not willing to cut his losses and accept the risk that he might get caught for killing Vikki and Gary, and would rather kill more people in order to not get caught, not thinking about the fact that if he were to still get caught in spite of everything, he would end up with a much heavier sentence than he might if he just stopped at one count of kidnapping and two counts of… manslaughter? Idk, he might claim manslaughter, I would argue 2nd degree murder at worst, others might call it premeditated. Whatever the case, that’s three crimes total. If it were to come up in conversation, I’ll try to reason with him that it would be best to stop it there, and if it helps, I’ll probably be going down too as an accomplice. If he lets me go, I’ll say, this all stays between us.
And if I escape it’ll still be between us. I won’t go to that stupid guard at the gate or call the sheriff. Well maybe I’ll go to the guard, but only to call for a ride home. After that, Sonny won’t hear from me again, unless I couldn’t get my keys, phone, and wallet when I left, though I’ll probably only escape when I can get them back from him anyway. Unless people start dying in the area between his residence, my residence, and my workplace, I won’t say anything. If the police come to me about Gary, I’ll play innocent. I won’t completely lie, the best lie is one with a helthy dose of truth in it. I’ll say the last I saw him was at work (how much time will have passed between the day I’m kidnapped and my escape, who knows. I’m picturing… several days). He was being an ass, then I had to take a call. I was on the call when another customer came in and started chewing Gary out. I was distracted and the guy wasn’t my customer so I didn’t think to get a look at him. They got into an argument and I left to another room to continue the call. The argument got really heated but I was on the call for so long I didn’t notice they had stopped by the time I got off the phone. When I went back to the office he was gone and so was the other guy and I didn’t really ever see either one again. Maybe I’ll acnowlege that I should have reported him missing or something, but I figured maybe his wife would anyway, and besides that he was an ass to work with (means I have a motive, sure, but doesn’t have to mean I had anything to do with it), so whatever reason he had for not showing up to work, I didn’t question it. As for me family out looking for me, well, that day between the call and their fight and everything leading up to that day, I had enough. I went for a walk to cool down, and it turned into a long walk. I went crazy, left town on foot. No plan of where I was going, just went to see where I’d end up, and how I would deal with whatever happened, I’d figure that out when I got there. If I still got found out, yea I’d have to finally rat on Sonny, if for no other reason than because lying under oath is beneath me (professionals have standards and all). But when I do, I’d be arrested, so safe from him, and he’d eventually get caught, so unable to come after me.
If “Arizona” was my story, I’d be fine with that ending. But this is a movie review, and Cassie still makes a bunch of stupid mistakes after she escapes, so I want to go through all of them I sware this is starting be be some sort of fucktangular “Choose Your Own Adventure” shit, like when you make the right choice and get a good ending, but you keep going back just to see how you could maybe still save yourself if you did actually fuck up back there…
So say Sonny does go out to get my daughter and I escape when Cassie does. Like I said, I’d try to remember the street address. I would of course call for the Sheriff, but I ain’t going back in there with just him. I’ll ask him to get help from the nearest police department. Even if we got the right house Sonny might be too sneaky for one officer. I’d also try and request back up for the incompetant gard, not because Sonny will kill him (bc I don’t know that yet), but so he has help against any armed-and-dangrous persons trying to leaving the housing development. I would also call my ex spouse (now, I don’t plan on ever getting married, but if I did, I would marry someone whos better with guns than Scott and his ditsy sugar baby girlfrend, but for now, let’s assume I’ve had to settle for someone like him), but tell him not to enter the neighborhood, just to wait outside the gate for me and our daughter.
If however we can’t get backup and I have to be happy with just the Sheriff, well, let’s assume that he still gets one-shotted by Sonny whether we have the right house or not. I would of course do everything he orders me to do, like hiding the cruiser and taking my daughter to help him bury Vikki. I don’t know how fast I can shovel, hopefully reasonably fast in the Arizona soil, since it won’t be stuck together and weighed down with water, but it’ll be faster than what Cassie did. When I get my chance, I’ll play Whack-a-Prick with the shovel, like Cassie. But ya know what that dumb broad did? She whacked him once and fucking took off! Didn’t even fucking bother to kick the gun out of his hand and kick it away. I might have tried wrestling it out of his hand and shooting him. But I think it would be a safer bet to stand on his gun hand and smack or stab at his head and neck with the shovel till he dies or is at least knocked out. Maybe that would be best – the fact that I stayed to kill instead of hurrying to get the hell away would only make it more ambiguous as to which of us was acting in self-defense. The fact as I would have done more than Cassie did to incompacitate her attacker. She’s damn lucky he has a bad back and by the time he could stand up she and Morgan were too far gone for him to see them, because God knows in broad daylight he could probably make a well-aimed bullet close the distance.
Anyway, at some point that little bitch-ass Morgan trips and decides she doesn’t want to keep running. I mean, suit yourself, I guess. I don’t remember if that was before or after they hid in the sewer pipe, but let’s talk about that.
. . .
Well, for starters, I would have waited till daylight to emerge. Hopefully then there’d be some people around to witness. Also, they were too fucking loud in those pipes, and they should have closed their fucking lighter, because depending on where they were, and from which opening he was looking into, Sonny would have seen the damn light (or heard them) coming. And that one time they tried clibing out of the sewer but they stopped because he looked in, they’re lucky he didn’t see them. And if he did like I first thought, they are so fucking lucky he didn’t try shooting into the pipe. Speaking of which, I was really starting to get frustrated with how many rounds he was firing off in total. Either he had some cartridges on him, or more likely, his 6-shooter had an infinite capacity. After all, it’s Hollywood, baby.
Anyway, they’re fucking lucky that the exit he waited outside of wasn’t the one they came out of, and even if it was going to be, he was playing games on his phone with the volume on, so 1) he was distracted, and 2) they would have heard him waiting. Ha. Plot armor, am I right? He still found out they were on the run again, though…
Eventually they find the keys to the vehicle of the woman who got shot by the Sheriff, and go and get her car to drive out of the development, but Sonny’s already there at the gate. He’s already killed the guard and dressed up as him. And obviously he saw them coming in the car and shot the tires. What Cassie should have tried to do is put the pedal to the metal and drove right towards him, ducking under the dash. Maybe they still would have crashed into the electric box, but maybe they would have run him over and made it out of the development. I have no idea why they took off running when he set the dog on them, how they thought they could outrun it. I would have tried getting on the ground and being nice to the dog, although I don’t know if that would have worked, because no one’s ever tried it. At least the dog turned on Sonny and got some licks in before Sonny killed it.
Now, if I was Scott (well, in his position, rather…) I would be suspicious of the guard (Sonny) at the gate. Whether it’s his blood or not, even if he got all bloody from helping someone get out of their crashed car, how could he have gotten that much blood on him, especially on his face? But even then I’m not sure what more he could have done. Even if he had realized at any point up to getting head-shotted that Sonny wasn’t who he claimed to be, and especially if he figured out that Sonny is dangerous, his best bet would be to just play along and not make it known that he suspects anything. So even though Scott was pretty dumb (and believe me, I respected him until he was on the road with Kelsey), there’s not much he could have done differently, except for maybe keeping his FUCKING GUN LOADED!!!! Oh my god…
You know what I was sad when he got shot, mostly for Morgan because she wouldn’t have her father. But honestly now that I think about it I’m glad he died. As much as I hate her, Kelsey had a point: what fucking good is the gun if it ain’t loaded and ready for any emergency?
But there’s a shit-ton that Cassie could have done differently, like go running out when she heard Scott calling for her and Morgan. I’m sure it was an act-on-instinct reaction, but she had a window of time before revealing her presence to stop and think. She knew that Sonny was at the only way in and out of the development. How was Scott able to get through? Maybe he had managed to kill Sonny, or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Sonny was following behind him, letting Scott act as bait to unwittingly lure his wife out of hiding? Or maybe Sonny was continuing his guard act and was with Scott, and just wasn’t calling out because then he’d be telling Cassie that he was around too? That would then mean Scott would drive by her and then not find her again for I don’t know how long, but with any luck he’d still be alive. I mean seriously, if this shit was real life, and most certanly if I was her, Sonny would have killed Cassie right after killing Scott. I couldn’t even beleve he let her run back into the house!
But honestly I think Morgan and Cassie handled him in the pot house about as well as they could have. I think Morgan shouldn’t have waited for him to decide which of them to shoot first before blinding him, and I think Cassie should have aimed more medial (closer to the throat) than she did with the clippers and/or stabbed more than once. But the use of the basement with no stairs was pretty cool, awesome Chekov’s fucking Gun right there. But instead of pushing him (and I was impressed that he was quick enough to turn around and grab onto her) she should have fucking 300-kicked his ass. But falling forward maybe he would have broken his fall. Maybe he would have broken his bones and been unable to get up though. So at least falling backward he couldn’t do anything, and he died.
And that’s how it ends. He’s dead and Cassie and Morgan walk in slow-mo away from the backdrop of the burning houses. Sure hope the old fart that watched Sonny and Scott drive by didn’t go up in flames…
So yeah, this was actually a hard movie to watch. Usually I enjoy movies where everyone is just fucking dying, but most of the people who got killed weren’t even assholes. There was Gary (played by Seth Rogen btw, fucking hell as if I wasn’t already tired of hearing his name everywhere before that stupid Animal Farm movie (still can’t fucking believe that the based studio that made “Sound of Freedom” made that shit)) and Vikki, and Sonny, who all got theirs, and Scott and the guard, well… they were innocent, but their stupidities made their deaths natural selection, so I’m mixed on them. And then there were the dog, the homeowner, Kelsey, and the sheriff and maybe the neighbor, who were all innocent (the homeowner lady was killed by the sheriff, not Sonny, but still a death, same with Kelsey, and even though she was a daft broad, I can’t confidently call hers a death by natural selection, just because even if she tried getting out of and away from the car as soon as she grabbed the loaded mag she still might have got caught by the blast).
I didn’t hate everything, there were some good moments in there, but nothing that really would have me coming back to this movie. I guess I’m not the only one because it’s rated at 43% and 44% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.8/10 on IMDB. I don’t know, maybe I’m taking the movie too seriously. I mean it’s a dark comedy for fuck’s sake! But I’m not familiar with that genre, and I’m definitely no film critic, not that their opinions are usually worth considering anyway, but I’m not all that cinema literate. So I don’t know how what a good balance of thriller and humor looks like. But for me, this movie had way too much more seriousness than comedy, especially in the second half after Cassie first escapes. I fuckin forgot it was supposed to be a comedy except for when Sonny’s homemade remote for the TV drew down the blinds instead and he was like “Okay fine, guess we’re just gonna stare at each other.” I don’t know. I guess at the end I just thought it’s be fun to think about how badly the main character fucked up and what I would have done differently.