This movie, “Harper,” follows a detective named Harowr who’s kind of down on his luck. He hasn’t had a really big case, and he’s kind of running low on funds. He decides to skip the signing of his divorce papers because he’s offered this big job to find this guy named Mr. Sampson.
Mr. Simpson is a very wealthy kind of eccentric man who is missing, and no one can find him, and his wife is looking for him. Harper goes and talks to Mrs. Sampson, who has played by Lauren Bacall, and she is worried. She is basically disabled, so she’s not able to go out and look for him herself.
So she is worried that he is squandering the money that she’s going to be, leading to her and his inheritance. And she just wants to make sure that he’s not doing that. And she says he probably will be with the girl.
Harper Movie Plot
While Harper is at Mrs. Sampson’s house, he meets the daughter of Mrs. Sampson, who is supposed to be portrayed as a beautiful young girl like you would have in like a film noir. I guess she’s kind of Femme Fatale, but not really Harper’s Femme Fatale.
There’s another gentleman named Graves who is interested in this woman or this girl. I don’t know what his age might be. It’s hard to tell how old these people are in this movie. I hope they look a lot older than they are. I’d say he’s probably in his late 30s, early 40s. But I would probably go more toward the early 40s. And she’s probably like 18 or 19 years old.
So it’s this typical movie where the much older guy is falling for the younger female. Well, they make jokes about it in this movie. So Grave’s kind of helping Harper.
He got Harper the job. Because Mr. Simpson’s like a client of his and he’s also worried about Mr. Simpson and about how eccentric he is. At the same time, Harper meets the Personal pilots of Mrs. Sampson’s daughter, but they also believe in a relationship as well.
Throughout the course of the movie, there are a lot of twists and there’s a lot of turns. There’s a lot of, for me, mixing up who people are. As I said, Harper is trying to find where Mr. Sampson is. Is he alive? Is he dead? Was he kidnapped? It’s at some point in this movie he’s not sure if there was a kidnapping or if Mr. Sampson just went off on his own somewhere.
Eventually, the general was told there was a kidnapping. There’s kind of a handful of people involved in this kidnapping for different reasons. There’s a lot of moving parts, there’s a lot of people who are involved, there’s a lot of people who have to investigate, and you really have to remember who these people are.
Harper Movie Ending Explained
When Puddler brings Harper to a dockside area, Harper escapes and kills the person who is following Puddler. Harper believes Betty, her brother Eddie and Taggert kidnapped Sampson. When asked, Taggert draws a gun on Harper, only to be shot by Graves, who reaches just in time.
Harper immediately heads to Betty’s cottage to find her and finds her being abused by Claude, Troy, and Fay. When she explains where the money has been kept, Harper jumps in, shoots Troy, and knocks Claude senselessly; trapping Fay in a cupboard, he assists Betty in escaping.
When Harper informs Betty that her secret boyfriend, Taggert, has died, she adds that Sampson is currently held in an empty oil ship. Harper asks Graves to meet them there as well, but he is knocked senseless from behind as Harper investigates the ship.
Graves eventually revives Harper, and they learn that Sampson was recently dead. As they chase Betty up a hillside road in Harper’s vehicle, which she had taken off in the meantime, Betty gets killed when the vehicle veers down an incline.
Graves takes Harper home after they get the money. On the way there, Harper tells Graves that he knows he is the thieves’ secret ally and kills Sampson. Harper informs Graves that he has no other option than to turn him in. When Harper exits and steps to his side door, Graves is unable to get himself to shoot, and Harper lifts his arms in defeat.
Was The Harper Ending Good?
I will say at the end of the movie, let’s say there are four people who were closely involved in this kidnapping. I was able to guess 3 of them, in the very beginning of the movie.
So it’s like in the film noir, I feel like if you’re going to have twists and turns and you’re going to have like different mechanisms going on with the plot at some point, you should second guess yourself. You should be able to say, “Oh well, this evidence now shows that maybe I was wrong, and maybe at the end of the movie, I’m going to be surprised. But that never happened in this movie.
I think they were clearly laid out throughout the movie people’s motives, and you are clearly able to see at least two people being in the movie who are involved in this, and it was kind of a letdown. I really was hoping that I was wrong. I was really hoping that it was something else, but it wasn’t. It was very easy to guess a movie that you have to invest so much of your time in. But it just wasn’t for me.
I would call it a very bizarre point in the movie where Harper runs into this religious guy. This guy, by the way, I think it’s fairly obvious, but he’s also somewhat involved in this kidnapping as well. You get several hints about him. They’re trying to suddenly tell you that he’s a bad character even though he’s trying to convince you that he’s not a bad character.
Hispanic People Coming Out Of The Bushes
But there’s this part, I would say in the mid towards the middle to end of the movie where the Harper goes to this guy’s temple. And Harper has basically figured out at least a couple of the moving pieces, at least a couple of the people who are involved in this kidnapping.
Then like, out of the bushes and out of the Bush came a bunch of Hispanic people. Is this like a zombie apocalypse? Like, where are all these Hispanic people coming from and all the bushes and a little bit like capturing Harper?
They tried to explain later on in the movie that the holy man is working, and he’s bringing in illegal immigrants, and these illegal immigrants are like working for him under the table when they shouldn’t be. And it’s like this big reveal at the end of the movie. I just thought it was very bizarre and very weird.
That’s weird, but that was cool at the same time. It was just like a bizarre thing that was like, ‘Why is it there?’ It’s so out of left field, and it’s so weird to me that it just took me completely out of the movie. I wasn’t a fan of it at all.
The Wrongs In Harper
I would say the character that Shelly Winters plays wasn’t that convincing as well. She plays a bit of an alcoholic lady character. And her acting is great in this movie, but I don’t know. Her character wasn’t a character that I could get into. I mean, Harper is playing her. He’s trying to get information from her. I thought I was playing the obvious what Harper was doing, to be perfectly honest.
And a lot of the things that Harper does in this movie where he’s trying to get information from people, he’s putting on different accents. He’s doing a lot of things to try to do like that Good detective, like Good Sleuth who’s getting information about things. I just thought it was all very obvious.
If I’m the person, if I’m on the other side and I know that I’m involved in a crime and I know that I’m doing something illegal and I’m doing something that I shouldn’t be doing, It is very obvious to me that he is trying to get information from me.
I thought this movie was OK. The plot, as I said to me, there are too many characters in the movie. The plot is a bit too confusing, and it’s all over the place when he’s trying to figure out who’s doing what and where everyone is, and who’s involved and who’s not involved.
I prefer a much tighter film noir where there are fewer characters, and they treat the characters a little bit better, where each of them has their own motives, but they also have a reason why they might not be doing this. And you have to really try to decide in your head who it could be, who has the best motive. And I don’t really think they provided that in this movie.
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