Black butterfly - 2017

Not bad you know, I rather liked it, specially the end. It wasn’t what I thought at first, and I liked that. 

Antonio Banderas was ok, I didn’t like Jonathan Rhys Meyers but maybe that’s a good thing because he’s the mysterious vagabond who must give you the chills, Piper Perabo was ok too.

I recommend it to anyone who is not in search of a strictly orthodox thriller or horror because this movie is not that. There is no horror at all, there isn’t much in terms of crime investigation, barely any in fact, and there is a bit of thriller but there are also moments of slow talking and slow scenes.

It is an enjoyable movie to watch once, not so sure the second time because once you know the end, you’re left with the boring parts only. 

So this is a serious WARNING to future me and everyone who might find this, if you haven’t seen it or have forgotten it completely, don’t read further because once you know the end there’s no more reason for watching it again.

Details:

It starts with a crime, we see a family: father and son are playing while the wife walks to their car alone. When they reach the car too, she’s nowhere to be found.

Then the movie starts introducing the main characters: Paul is a writer who lives alone in a very solitary area, with a big empty field in front and a small lake. He drinks a lot and his house is a mess. His wife left him and he has writer block. He wants to sell the house because he has no money, so Laura is trying to sell it for him.

While driving to the shop, his agent tells him that his screenplay has been rejected the way it is and he’s so angry that he starts driving fast and wants to pass a truck at all costs but the driver won’t let him go easily.

He stops for a coffee with Laura, they talk of the house then he invites her to dinner. She appears hesitant but accept, to talk about business.

The truck driver appears and seems mad at his earlier behaviour, but a man throws him out, whispers something in his ear and the driver goes away.

Paul has no money so he buys everything promising he’ll pay later. Poor shop owner, I hate it when people do that, if 1% of them may actually need help and will pay as soon as possible for sure, all the rest are just taking advantage. Even if they will pay, that’s still taking advantage since shop owners have to pay for their stuff too, and usually immediately of they won’t get their goods. 

People: pay for what you buy!! 

Anyway, let’s move on.

Driving back home, Paul meets the vagabond Jack who helped him earlier and picks him up. He tells him that he can stay at his home for the night and a hot shower, but then the next day Jack starts talking about doing a few jobs for him, repairs around the house, cleaning and cooking, in exchange for his hospitality, and it may take a few days or more...

Paul tells him that he’s alone and there is no phone and no internet (well he has his cell phone, but no home phone due to some problem), which doesn’t seem the right thing to do, it really seems the basic start of the classic thriller, and you start waiting for the moment Jack will turn psycho on him.

Jack has a black butterfly tattooed on his back, and says that it’s very rare and hard to catch, hence the title of the movie.

Other than working, Jack talks to Paul asking about his life and his work. Tells him that he must stop drinking (Paul drinks A Lot!) and focus on his writing. Jack suggests writing a new story using his life, a story about a once famous writer who is now an alcoholic and picks up a vagabond... they talk about it together, Jack reads the first draft and burns it and gives more suggestions.

He attacks Paul in his sleep with a knife at his throat, saying he only wanted to show him how it works in real life, unlike in his script where girls begs not to be hurt when that happens for real one is not able to talk at all.

A delivery man knocks on his door and Jack raises the rifle at Paul, who tells him to put it away. Jack apologises, saying that he’s been in prison once and is a bit paranoid now (doesn’t really makes sense, but let’s move on). Paul is angry and tries to walk away, Jack follows him, Paul punches him, they fight and Jack wins.

Paul tries to drive away at night, but Jack stops him and makes him smash his bottles of alcohol.

When Laura shows up saying she was worried because she hasn’t heard from him in days, he tries to leave with her using her car, but Jack appears on the road stopping them shooting at the car, and brings them back to the house. 

Jack is now using a black double-barrel rifle, whatever that’s called, which is definitely not the one he had used before, not the one he found in Paul’s house and that he said he used for hunting.

Where does that come from??

A sheriff arrives asking Paul if he has seen a missing woman, he says he has never seen her, but then when he’s walking away Paul screams his name so Jack runs out, forces the sheriff in the truck of his car and shoots him.

This is where I got suspicious, because we didn’t really see him shooting the man, why not?

Paul and Laura lock themselves in the house. Jack pretends to drive away with the police car so Paul takes Laura out and they run towards the train (why? to catch it while it’s moving? I don’t think that might work in real life, those things are fast and people’s arms are not made of iron...) but Laura hurts her ankle running so he stops for her and Jack catches them again.

Laura stabs Jack with a small pair of scissors and angry he takes her to another room not telling us what happens there.

Paul has been tied up with duck tape, but he manages to free himself breaking a picture frame and cutting the tape with the glass (and not even a scratch on his hands or wrists!!)

He takes the weapon, sees the girl on the floor and threatens Jack, starts saying that it is a sign from God, that he is grateful because Jack was sent by God to him, the vagabond who goes around killing women giving him the chance to stop him... and he takes a hidden box with mementos of those women putting something in Jack’s bag. 

So Paul is the one who killed those women! And now wants to blame it all on Jack. Paul shoots him but it turns out that he only shoots blanks. He has his hunting rifle again? It looks like that, but this is a double-barrel, the first one looked smaller, like it only had one??  I’m not sure about this though, hunting rifles always have two after all right? Boh.

Jack takes the rifle and knocks him off. When Paul comes to he’s on a chair, handcuffed, and Jack and Laura are wearing FBI vests, and even the ‘truck driver’ has one, and the sheriff is alive.

Many people are in his house, searching for evidence. 

Jack tells him that he’s been looking for him for three years, that they found all the bodies but the first one, his wife, and asks him where he buried her.

Paul plays it cool, saying that he came into his house and planted those evidence, and the words he said were just part of his screenplay and nothing more.

Jack must get a confession or they have nothing, but then Jack notices something. A dirty excavator. He looks at the picture of Paul’s wife, taken right outside the house, and notices that there was no lake. He asks Paul, what would he found if he were to dig underneath his pond, really underneath it? Would he find his wife?

Now Paul understands that he’s lost and tries to bargain to put the death penalty out of the table, but Jack tells him that he had his chance and now it’s too late and walks out.

The end? No it’s not. There’s one more scene!

The screen goes black and it looks like the ending but then something falls down waking Paul up, and we see him lying on a couch with an old typewriter in front of him and he starts writing a new script called Black Butterfly...

you can understand that it was all a dream, from the start, because everything looks different (only the bottle of alcohol looks the same).

Before he wrote on a computer sitting at a desk, now he has an old typewriter and writes sitting on the couch.

This was the second switch, it had all been but a dream, all of it, and he uses it as his new screenplay.

Personally I like this ending :-)