The Final Scene that Still Leaves Me Scratching My Head

JD from Valley Dreaming is having a blogathon called Endings, which is conveniently located at the end of the year. It deals with film endings and individual the opinions of individual bloggers to them.

When I first saw Formula 51 (which I understand is also known as The 51st State overseas), the Samuel L. Jackson/Robert Carlyle/Emily Mortimer action vehicle, it didn't really appeal to me. I think I went into the movie expecting something different, and when it wasn't what I expected, I temporarily rejected it.

But since its release in 2002, I've grown to like the movie, probably based on my Samuel L. Jackson fandom. It has some good quotes, some good action sequences, and the plot, while a little daffy, gets the job done.

If you haven't seen the movie, Jackson plays Elmo McElroy, a pharmacologist who due to some bad judgment, ended up working for a crime syndicate. After many years of doing so, he decides he wants to be free and decides to take his newest creation, POS 51, a drug which looks to be the hot new thing when it reaches the streets, to an outside buyer in Liverpool. What happens from there you'll just have to check out, but I will say, Mr. Jackson wears a kilt throughout the

Now, I am not going to spoil the plot ending, as the scene that has me scratching my head is almost a throw away. It involves McElroy, now sporting an Afro and what I would describe as a full Scottish bedecking (Tweed suit top and a kilt) in front of a manor house and playing golf, sinking a putt and generally bewildering his companion.

It is at this point that we go off the rail and into something just surreal, for you see, all of a sudden, McElroy strips naked and walks bare ass back towards the manor house. Out of the blue. There is no build up to that moment (at least that I can remember).

If there was some reasoning in the movie for that moment, I could get behind it (no pun intended), but it just seems so random, that it messes up the rest of the movie for me now.

Maybe Samuel L. Jackson had a clause in his contract that at some point he would get to have a butt double for a movie and he exercised that clause (because if that was his real ass at 52ish, I have to get on his regiment, because I wish my ass looked that good now).

I mean, I can think of no narrative reason for that scene at all and as a final moment in the movie, well, I could have done without it.

Tags: samuel l. jackson, emily mortimer, meat loaf, elmo mcelroy, kilt, robert carlyle, bare ass, butt double, pos 51, 51st state, formula 51, ronny yu, action movie, endings blogathon, valley dreaming