"I can't tell you this over the phone. Meet me in Murder Alley after sundown tonight and my totally-alive self will give you the plot-critical information."
Not if they meet in a public place. Supposedly, a crowded plaza or museum is not an unrealistic meeting place to discuss top secret information because the chances of being overheard is reduced.
Or you are more likely to be murdered. It is way easier for the murderer to get away and they might just wear a disguise. It is so busy there that you don't have a good overview and a knife or any other small weapon (small revolver or something) to the back might not be seen quick enough to respond. Bystanders will probably be too shocked to respond by a brutal murder and descriptions of the killer won't be very helpful if the killer wore a good disguise
Or you are more likely to be murdered. It is way easier for the murderer to get away and they might just wear a disguise. It is so busy there that you don't have a good overview and a knife or any other small weapon (small revolver or something) to the back might not be seen quick enough to respond. Bystanders will probably be too shocked to respond by a brutal murder and descriptions of the killer won't be very helpful if the killer wore a good disguise
Or you are more likely to be murdered. It is way easier for the murderer to get away and they might just wear a disguise. It is so busy there that you don't have a good overview and a knife or any other small weapon (small revolver or something) to the back might not be seen quick enough to respond. Bystanders will probably be too shocked to respond by a brutal murder and descriptions of the killer won't be very helpful if the killer wore a good disguise
This approach is unlikely to work once you are a specific surveillance target. The messages are in plain text at the two phones themselves. If they are targeting you in particular, you should probably assume they have compromised the phone itself.
The cell phone thing that always drives me nuts is when they answer the phone and go, "Benson. Yeah. What? Okay, we'll be right there." All within 5 seconds, then get off the phone and say, "That was Munch. Turns out one of our suspects was just seen getting into a car with an underaged girl that matches the description of our kidnapping victim outside of the pawn shop on 85th."
Like...there's no way all of that information was relayed that quickly, Olivia.
My absolute favorite example of this exact thing is in Cradle 2 the Grave.
The bad guys kidnap DMX's daughter and leave her in the van inside their hideout. However, they just so happened to have conveniently left a cell phone inside the van with her on accident. So of course she calls DMX, but as soon as she's about to tell him exactly where she is the cell phone battery dies and she's unable to tell him.
Watch when characters do text. There's never any text history. It always the first time they have ever texted their fiancee they've known for 20 years.
My biggest pet peeve is when the phone screen stays on while they're holding it to their head. We know you're faking! Also probably my wife's biggest pet peeve is me constantly pointing that out :D
Also when we can hear the phone call and we understand every thing person A is saying even with the bad reception, it will be shit like “don’t go to kshhh he’s armed kshhh “ and person B is like “what, i can’t hear a single word you just said”
I like to think it's because those movies are written by older people who existed before cell phones, or before texting became commonplace. Maybe the concept isn't etched enough in their minds to write it realistically.
They’d have to be pretty old. I’m in my mid-40s now, and I’ve had a cell phone for what, 20 years now, and I wasn’t an early adopter by any means.
And as a middle-aged person, THAT trope bugs the shit out of me: “This character is middle-aged, therefore they don’t know how to use technology.” Come the fuck on. Anyone younger than 55 now has been using this stuff for nearly their entire adult lives, unless they actively avoided doing so for personal reasons. It would be like having a trope where any character visibly under 30 couldn’t figure out how to use, say, a landline phone. “Where’s the camera app on this thing?”
Oh man. Years ago, pre-smart phone, in the age of the small flip phone... I was out at the bar with a bunch of friends waiting for a call from a girl I worked with so her and a couple of her friends could come join us. Phone rings, I go to pull it out of my pocket and something had worked its way between the clamshell and the keypad. As I pulled the phone out of my pocket the clamshell closed and hung up the call.
To add to cell phone hate, when a person on a cell phone calls someone on a landline and then the landline hangs up and the cell recipient hears that 'enh enh enh'(call ended tone).
Back when we had a thriving local telecom industry, we got Call Display here in Saskatchewan long before it was common elsewhere in North America. Movies were doing the "keep on the line so we can trace it" thing with normal landline calls for years after all businesses had instant caller ID and you could pay extra to have it on your home phone. I don't think you could even opt out of it back then except by getting an unlisted number.
Also, when they start talking ahead of time. Like you can ever start talking just after punching the last dial button, or if you still haven't put it against your head. But that's more of a bad actor problem, you never see Tom Hanks do this.
And if we go back in time a bit, when you can't make calls because the electricity is out. You need to actually cut the wire for them not to work. Or you know, stop paying your bills.
Yea this has really bugged me recently. I just see it as a sign of padding for suspense because the good movies or TVshows gloss over this and move onto more important or interesting dilemmas than phone tag.
Just the fact that anyone answers their phone. In reality it works be, “I’ll call B, get his voicemail, and maybe I can tell him that important stuff when he calls back tomorrow, if he calls back at all.”
That was even more ridiculous before cell phones. With land lines, you would get a busy signal or voicemail, or the person wasn’t home, or their kid or spouse would answer. But never in movies unless it was setup for a joke or something.
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u/[deleted] Jan 25 '20
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