The Usual Suspects vs Retribution

I feel that we gained a lot of influences from The Usual Suspects which may be why I also feel that there are a lot of similarities in the plot and also the opening.

Below is the opening to The Usual Suspects:



Below is the opening to Retribution:

I feel that there are a number of similarities between Retribution and The Usual Suspects. Firstly both contain an aspect of mystery and slight confusion. In The Usual Suspects you do not know who the character who shoots the man on the boat is due to his face being obscured - this is similar to not knowing the man who enters the girls house in Retribution for the same reason. In both films you also follow the 'victim' of the scene and then the killer/villain enters the scene midway through - allowing you have time to build a certain allegiance with the character that you have been following.

Retribution though, has more establishing shots than The Usual Suspects, in my opinion, during the opening shots. Retribution has quite long shots with the car driving towards the screen, the long angle shots of the house and street also set the scene of suburbia. In The Usual Suspects you do not get this, you are straight into the middle of the scene with tight shots of the character and then it gradually moves out into slightly longer shots to allow the audience to see things which will be important later in the film. The Usual Suspects also isn't set in suburbia, the opening begins on a boat.

Retribution and The Usual Suspects share the fact that both delay any major action until later in the opening. Retribution has Zak entering the bathroom quite a while after Evie and the idea of Zak being in the house are introduced, however no physical contact (such as an attack) is shown which is different in The Usual Suspects in that the character which we follow (the man with the matches) gets shot in the opening. Yet The Usual Suspects follows this same idea of delaying the action until the end in order to allow the audience to get accustomed to the set up of the scene and for them to form even a basic allegiance with a character.

Plot wise I feel that the films are relatively similar in that they both contain 'gangster' and police aspects. Both also contain a fear factor/drive - in The Usual Suspects they are frightened of Keyser Soze who they are working for and in Retribution, Trent is driven to following Zak's demands due to his fear of losing his daughter. Both stories contain a twist at the end as well. Both beginnings don't really give much of the plot away either, it is only later on in the film that their relevance will become apparent so I feel that both have good audience engaging qualities which will keep the audience interested and wanting to gain answers to the questions which have been raised from the openings.

Applying the theories to Retribution

For this project we studied the four main theories relating to thrillers, so I decided to apply them to Retribution to see whether or not it contains some of the generic conventions. I am applying these theories to only the opening itself because we haven't made the rest of the film.

Claude Levi-Strauss - Binary Opposites
male vs female - you can tell the intruder is male
freedom vs entrapment - she cannot get out of the house without passing him
prisoner vs captor - he has her trapped within the house
justice v injustice - Zak getting justice against Detective Trent's injustice

Roland Barthes - Action & Enigma Codes
Enigma Codes:

• You don't see the intruders face - Who is he?
• There is no interaction between them and he doesn't make himself known, yet he was waiting for her - Does he know her? What is their relationship?
• The last shot being just of their feet in the bathroom - What happens next? What does he do to her?
• The phone call whilst she is in bed and she gets up - Who was on the phone? Is she going out somewhere?
• The camera moving behind the car from the intruders point of view - Has he been planning this? Is it spontaneous? Why is he waiting for her specifically?

Action codes:

• She gets a phone call - leads to her getting out of bed
• Goes to bathroom - leads to the intruder trapping her inside the bathroom
• Drops door keys - leads to her leaving the door open
• Leaves the front door open - leads to the intruder getting in

Tzvetan Todorov - Narrative Structure

Equilibrium - Woman walking home
1st disruption - Leaves the front door open and the intruder gets in
2nd disruption - The woman is trapped in the bathroom

The final sections of this narrative structure do not work because we haven't made the rest of the opening and usually this theory is applied to the entire film. However the first few do work because they generally happen at the beginning of the film. The sections of the theory which don't apply are the big disruption, thwarted attempts at resolution, a resolution and a new equilibrium. However if we had continued to make our film according to our synopsis, then the other sections would be applicable. The big disruption would be Zak kidnapping Evie and holding her hostage whilst setting a trail for Detective Trent to follow, the thwarted attempts at a resolution would be Detective Trent attempting to find her, the resolution would come in the form of whether or not Evie lived and Detective Trent possibly being framed for her supposed murder and finally the new equilibrium would be Zak's new situation concerning his revenge and whether he achieved it or not.

Vladimir Propp - Folk Tales & Character Types
1. The villain/antagonist - Detective Trent (for his actions which made Zak end up in jail)
2. The hero/protagonist - Zak (we follow his story and want him to achieve his revenge)
3. The donor - Evie (in that she gives Zak the means to achieve his revenge)
4. The helper - there isn't really a helper in our plot, but it could be Evie due to finding our her father killed her mother
5. The princess - In the sense of him getting his revenge it would be Detective Trent, but due to his relationship with Evie then it could be her if she wasn't killed
6. The father figure -Again there isn't really a father figure, although in the rest of the film Evie could hate her father when she finds out her father killed her mother
7. The dispatcher - Detective Trent
8. The false hero - we don't really have a false hero

I also studied a fifth theory, by Syd Field. His theory is that thrillers contain a three act plot structure. So I have chosen to apply this theory as well, although it is slightly more difficult to apply as the synopsis didn't go into immense detail of the ending etc.:

Act One - Setup

• Two of three main characters identified in opening sequence: Evie and Zak
• Detective Trent would then be introduced along with the story behind the kidnapping
• The audience are given reasons to support Zak in that he was wrongly framed, yet also don't agree with him kidnapping Evie - there are split loyalties
• The problem facing the protagonist is identified: Zak is having to keep ahead of Trent, who is a detective and so has far more resources available to him

(Plot point one: Evie discovers that her father killed her mother)

Act Two - Confrontation

• Zak is beginning to face more problems as he begins to fall for Evie and she has to die for his original plan to work
• Evie also wants to die to punish her father
• Detective Trent keeps following the clues, but quicker than Zak anticipated.

(Plot point two- Zak realises that he cannot kill Evie, so he begins to conduct a plan to frame Detective Trent as planned, but without killing Evie or having a body)

Act Three - Resolution

• Zak carries out his plan and frames Trent
• Trent goes down
• However Evie may or may not be dead, which has the possibility to tarnish his revenge

Retribution: Misery & Other Aspects Of Influences

I've noticed that Retribution doesn't really compare to or mirror any opening sequences that I've seen, in my opinion. Retribution definitely shares qualities with films and certain scenes throughout those films, however I do not think that we took much inspiration from any actual opening sequences.

Originally we began with an inspiration from the Misery opening sequence with the close up of the glass and alkaseltzers in the morning scene and then the smoking section mirroring Misery's opening sequence with a cigarette on the table and the champagne glass. But as this isn't directly at the beginning of the opening I feel as if we didn't really draw much from other films openings.

Also we didn't just mirror one idea or draw influence from just one film. We all had different ideas and blended a few together that worked (all of which were from different films).

I think this method of doing things was good because it doesn't mirror any particular film too closely, which could have the potential of looking as if we just directly lifted our idea from that film. I like how our film can have different influences, rather than just one, because I think it shows the variation within the group that we all had different tastes and inspirations when given our initial idea. This theme continued into our production because people would suggest things that others hadn't necessarily thought of, which kept the creative process in motion and led to a varied opening in terms of interesting shots to look at.

Finished Opening Sequence for Retribution

Below is the finished opening sequence for our thriller - Retribution. Any feedback would be appreciated.



Overall I really like our opening sequence, however I think that it is unclear in the girls significance to the rest of the film. Only when you have read the blurb do you understand who she is and what her purpose is. Of course, if this was a real film, the sense of mystery surrounding the girl would be appealing to the audience and make them want to find out who she is, what the man's motives are and of course what actually happens to her. I think some of our shots could have been better framed, particularly the shot going from the glass on the table to the bedside table and some of the outside shots. But generally I'm proud of what we have achieved.

Fatal Attraction vs Retribution

Although our opening doesn't contain the same main theme of Fatal Attraction (stalking) I feel that the end shots of our opening do contain a lot of influences from Fatal Attraction. In Fatal Attraction there is a point when Dan's wife (Beth) is running a bath and she goes to look in the mirror to clean up her face. Then when she closes the bathroom cabinet door Alex appears. You expect her to be there, but that only adds to the suspense and enigma of the situation. With our opening the build up to the last shots contained the door being left open, the hand on the banister and the footsteps as well as her washing her face and you realise how vulnerable she is that she hasn't realised he is in the house. Then when his feet walk into the shot of the bathroom floor and her feet the audience is willing her to turn around and see him, much like in Fatal Attraction the audience sense something isn't right and are willing Beth to realise this.

There are obvious differences in that with our film it is a revenge attack, whilst in Fatal Attraction Alex is just jealous, however both attacks are in order to gain something for the attacker (Zak wants to hurt Trent and Alex wants to hurt Dan and get him for herself). The fact that in Fatal Attraction you don't see Alex come into the room works because the whole entirety of the film allows the audience to build up an understanding of Alex's character so you expect this sort of behaviour from her. However, as our sequence was just the opening we needed to build as much enigma and suspense as possible whilst introducing the situation and characters (even if some of the characters you do not visibly see fully).

Fatal Attraction also differs from ours as there is an attack as the next section of the scene, we originally planned to have Zak attacking Eva Trent, however when we filmed it we found that it looked tacky on screen and very amateur, so we decided to leave it out and have our last shot of both of the characters feet as this also kept the suspense and enigma up, whilst the attack pretty much took away the suspense and with it the intrigue of the audience. As the whole point is to make the audience want to watch more of the film, I feel by leaving out the attack sequence it helps to give the audience more questions that they want answered from the film.

I feel that because we watched Fatal Attraction as preparation for this project then it influenced us in including a bathroom sequence in the latter stages of the opening sequence.

Influences: The Usual Suspects

WARNING: if you haven't seen the usual suspects this post contains a spoiler.

I watched the Usual Suspects during the project and I really enjoyed the criminal/gangster aspect to the film. I liked the fact that the 'suspects' didn't know who they were working for but still did it, mainly out of fear of disobeying him. And so when I suggested that our group centered our plot around a slightly more gangster/criminal theme rather than a psychopathic killer I thought it would also be good to include a fear driven aspect to the film (which led to the inclusion of the daughter) and possibly a twist at the end of the story which The Usual Suspects pulls off amazingly (if you read the blurb of Retribution there is a hint to a twist at the end).

The end of the Usual Suspects has Keyser Soze being unveiled as Verbal Kint, which you do not expect as he was one of the suspects working for Keyser Soze throughout the story. From this idea the group thought that (had we needed a plot for the ending) then Zak Hayton (our main character) would frame Detective Trent for the murder of his daughter. Having Zak feel torn between killing Evie to get revenge on Trent and keeping her alive as he has grown to like her throws conflict into the story. The fact that then Zak would eventually kill Evie anyway then disrupts the audience's relationship towards him that he would be that hungry for revenge.

Final DVD cover for Retribution

This is the final version of our DVD cover for our opening sequence. I hope you like it. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Just leave a comment.




Blurb:

‘Retribution’ is one of the most exciting British thrillers of recent times. Directed by Angela Yaz it tells the tale of Zak Hayton (Joshua Dean – ‘Archie’), released from prison after being framed for the murder of the wife of Detective Trent (introducing Henry Carter). In a bid to avenge the past, Zak begins his dark and chilling venture to force his enemy to face the repercussions of his actions. As events move towards a violent climax, Evie (Stephanie Miller – ‘Starling Manor’), Trent’s daughter - a troubled young woman already touched by tragedy, becomes a pawn in their game, and Zak finds his feelings towards her are compromised when he unwittingly gets too close. We follow Zak along this journey of regret, uncertainty and ultimately redemption, climaxing in an electrifying twist which will make you re-evaluate the power of human weakness.