Great one-off movies

YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH!

(Hollywood-types might be listening!)

 

You've often wondered this?

 

I could see a payoff scene like "Frequency" for the Shawshank sequel:

It's 1992.

Tommy's daughter, Tammy, a lawyer, now 28, digs through old Shawshank records including secret diaries kept by Warden Norton. She finds evidence that Tommy was killed for his knowledge of Elmo Blatch and the possibility he would have testified in a new trial for Andy Dufresne.

She attempts to track Blatch down, and runs into "Peter Stevens," a heavily appearance-modified Andy Dufresne, with a beard and brush cut, 72, who himself is hot on the trail of Blatch.

In the course of her investigation, Tammy finds evidence of Byron Hadley's killing of Fat Ass back in 1947.

No statute of limitations on murder, so if convicted, this means Hadley, now 76 but still a hardass and freshly paroled after serving 25 years for killing Tommy, would end up back in the slam for the rest of his life.

In the big payoff scene, Tammy Williams has tracked down Elmo Blatch to a geriatric prison ward where he's still living at 83.

Sure enough, he's still a big twitchy fucker willing to talk about jobs he pulled, women he'd fucked, and people he'd killed. Including the golf pro and Andy's wife.

"What the fuck do I care," says Elmo. "They add two life sentences to my ticket, you think I'm ever walking out of here anyway? I'm 83 fuckin' years old and I've been in jail since 1963. Why the hell would I ever want to get out?"

Armed with evidence to clear Andy Dufresne and hang the Fat Ass murder on Hadley, Tammy is ready to take her case to the prosecutors. But before she does, a vengeful white haired Byron Hadley corners her in her office that night and prepares to kill her -- and then gets blown away by "Peter Stevens" -- Andy Dufresne -- standing in the shadows.

Of course the case raises a huge media sensation. The fade out explains, "Williams had uncovered conclusive evidence connecting Hadley to the brutal 1947 prison beating murder of .... "
And we finally learn the name of Fat Ass.

 

Given Leigh Steinberg's downfall and return - I would think a Jerry Maguire part II would be interesting.

 

Waterworld

 

You sick bastard.

 

Did Fat Ass even die? I thought he was just beaten severely and taken to the infirmary. We never see him again, mostly because he's not worth mentioning.
Also, wasn't killing Tommy to keep him quiet about Blatch common knowledge? Why would she be digging for it? The headline in the Portland Daily Bugle said "Murder, corruption at Shawshank," which implies that all of that would have come out in the subsequent investigation and trial.
Your Shawshank fan fiction must be something to behold.

 

There were so many of these types of movies in that 1993-2000 period.
Braveheart
Shawshank
Saving Private Ryan
Forrest Gump
Apollo 13
The Nic Cage action trilogy of The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off (all awesome classics in their own way)
Leaving Las Vegas
The Usual Suspects

Maybe the fact they haven't been diluted by sequels is why they're still enjoyable and infinitely rewatchable 20 years later.

 

Blame It On Rio, Basic Instinct, Wild Things... Oh! ONE-off? Not... well, never mind.

 

I think the concept of The Fugitive's offshoot should have worked- U.S. Marshals was a good popcorn flick, anyway, with a memorable crash scene- but it still rang hollow.

 

1. Yeah, Fat Ass died. The next morning at breakfast, Heywood comes in big-dealing it because he won the bet and saying he's gonna have to give Fat Ass a "big sloppy kiss," so he asks the black guy at the next table, who served as infirmary orderly, "how is he?" and the guy says, "Dead. Hadley busted him up something awful, by the time the doc came in the morning there wasn't nothin' he COULD do." Then Andy, the "new fish," asks what his name was, and Heywood says, "who cares, he's dead."

2. The official story had been Tommy had been killed in an escape attempt. With Tommy dead and Blatch nowhere to be found, the connection with the Dufresne murders would be harder to prove. Andy's expose would have implicated Hadley in the killing of Tommy but maybe not revealed the reason. If Andy's expose blew the lid off the whole Elmo Blatch connection and his own innocence, really, why run to Mexico?

3. I also presume Andy would have been careful to create an evidence trail which would eventually take Norton down in flames, but probably leave "Peter Stevens," the silent silent partner, out of the discussion so Andy could keep most of the loot.