Writing Crutch: The Crooked Friend/Partner!

The other day I watched a film called The Confessor staring Christian Slater. As murder mysteries go, it was an ok film that started well, but lost momentum with every major decision the writer made. But what killed me was the ending when the writer reached for one of the worst writing crutches in the book.

** spoiler alert. . . yada yada yada**

To give you a quick thumbnail of the plot, the story involves a priest who is accused of murder. He asks to see another priest, Christian Slater, who has very little faith and spends his time handling church public relations. When the accused priest apparently kills himself while in jail, the church becomes intent on burying the whole thing because the priest was gay and suicide is bad for business. But Slater doesn’t want to let it go because he believes the priest was innocent and he doesn’t believe the priest killed himself.

Naturally, Slater somehow convinces the skeptical church to let him take over the parish. Once there, he tries to solve the murder and himself becomes a suspect in a follow up murder. Then the killer reveals himself by trying to kill Slater and. . . this is the part that just annoys me to no end. . . the killer is Slater’s best friend!!! Argh.

I am so sick of this.

In dozens of movies, the bad guy turns out to be the cop’s partner or the hero’s best friend or the guy’s boss. I think it was even a girlfriend once. It’s so common now that it's become a horrible cliché, and it’s sloppy, lazy, incompetent writing at its worst. Indeed, the main reason writers choose this path is because they don’t know how else to surprise the viewer. They don’t know how to introduce the killer among the list of suspects without the audience spotting them immediately. So they select the one person you can’t logically suspect.

And why can’t you logically suspect this person? Because it makes no sense.

Consider the standard bad cop scenario. The hero spends 12-14 hours every day with their partner because that’s what cliché Hollywood relationships require -- you’re either at work with your partner or at a bar with your partner after work. And when the hero isn’t with the partner, we’re told the partner has a wife and child, with whom they spend more time. That doesn’t leave enough time in the day to become a city drug lord or get involved in these massively complex criminal enterprises.

Moreover, how stupid does this make the hero? In all the time the hero spends with this guy he never sees anything? Not one odd phone call, not one off the cuff comment, not one bad guy identifies the partner as the city's biggest drug lord or pimp, the partner/friend doesn’t seem to suddenly be awash in cash or bling? Nothing, huh?

Or consider Schwarzenegger in Eraser, where his boss turns out to be the bad guy. Schwarzenegger and the rest of the Witness Relocation Program are losing witness after witness and the only person who knew where each witness was happens to be Arnies’ boss, but brilliant Arnold can’t see it even though he could decipher vast global conspiracies with the smallest of hints? How could he have missed the obvious?

This is just wrong.

What's more, the writers who do this never provide any clues to the audience that the friend/boss is crooked until they reveal themselves? Why? Because the writer doesn't know how to provide such clues without giving the whole thing away. But in real life, these people get caught all the time because they give off clues left and right. . . creepy behavior, too many coincidences, a pattern of disappearance, errant phone messages, failed polygraph tests, snitches, spending money they shouldn’t have, etc. But not in Hollywood. In Hollywood they are entirely beyond reproach until they are ready to reveal themselves -- then everybody knows about it except the hero. That's cheating by the writer and it's pathetic.

Mystery writing is difficult if you do it right. This is doing it wrong. This is cheating. This is the same as introducing the villains ten seconds before the reveal. Writers need to stop doing this. And if you find you can’t do that, then you should rethink your whole story because it’s obviously crap.

What other writing "short cuts" (to be generous) drive you crazy?