"Crossing Frozen-Lake-Michigans-of-Believability"

Contrived Situations Hollywood Style.

In the movie,The Four Brothers, Andre Benjamin's character Jeremiah Mercer meets Victor Sweet (the bad guy) in the middle of a frozen Lake Michigan to make a deal. Essentially, money for his life and the life of his brothers. Now it looks bad for Jeremiah, being that he is out in middle of a frozen lake the size of a medium-sized state as it is just him Victor and his cronies, and it looks like he might be thrown into a fishing hole. Well, it turns out that Jeremiah has made a deal with Victor's "buddies" beforehand, and the tide turns against the ne'er do well. Well, Victor an amateur boxer asks who is going to step up and take him down. Initially there are no takers...but in the distance walking towards the group is a man. That man is Mark Wahlberg aka Bobby Mercer, Jeremiah's "brother." To make a long story short he dispatches with Victor and they ride off. Let me repeat he walks across Lake Michigan. Now maybe there is a car 10 miles or so away but...

I remember thinking little of this scene at the time, perhaps only to think, "wow, that Bobby Mercer is as cold and hard as the ice he's walking on." Or something ridiculous like that. The contrived situation that was orchestrated to generate this little plot loop as always struck me since as just a little strange. Something at that moment was broken. Though I did not realize it then, something changed in my understanding of the Hollywood movie industry vis-a-vis the suspension of disbelief. I feel as if now my ability to deal with movie situations that are not explicitly fantastical, i.e. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Narnia etc. has been seriously altered. It seems that the Frozen-Lake-Michigan-of-Believability that we are expected to cross for some new releases are too wide and are we are on too thin ice. It also seems that for many directors, producers, and screenplay writers the effort of actually making a story narratively operative is a wasted one. It is almost paradoxical, on one hand the imaginativeness of such a situation as described above is at least creditable to a degree, but on the other hand the lack of ingenuity to make a situation both engaging and at least thinly conceivable is absolutely deplorable. This particular critique of Hollywood is not particularly new or inspiring but as a particular example of an individual's moment of insight (such that it is one) I wished to share. Perhaps this realization (or perhaps it isn't a realization so much as it is a distortion) might be due to my increased viewing of classic and foreign films. La Strada, Battleship Potemkin, the 400 Blows, Hiroshima Mon' Amour, these are some great films, artistic, thought-provoking, stylish without being fetishized. There have been some great, very well done movies in recent memory as well, Fight Club, Memento, The Boondock Saints, GATTACA (the last two are just my preferences).
Simply put part of me fell through the ice on Frozen waters of Lake Michigan.

Walked across the damn lake.....seriously.