Cutting The Knot / Live-Action Films

Cutting the Knot in Live-Action Films.

---

• In Big Trouble in Little China, the heroes are trying to enter an elevator but the door is jammed. Jack Burton hauls out a knife and cuts through the wall to get in, which works because the wall is made of paper.
• Played with in Blue Streak. Martin Lawrence's character is a professional jewel thief, trying to steal a large diamond under heavy security. Him and his apprentice get to the safe. The pro asks the rookie (in a quiz-like fashion) how to open the safe. The rookie starts rattling off the procedure. The pro stops him and tells him that step one is to check if the door is open. Naturally, he's just kidding. The safe is locked.
• In The Bourne Identity, both Jason and Marie get in on this. Jason makes a complicated plan to get some information on one of his other identities from a hotel, but Marie simply walks up to the hotel manager, introduces herself as the personal assistant to "John Michael Kane", and asks for a photocopy of his hotel bill. Later, Jason and Marie are trying to get into Marie's friend's house to hide. Marie starts looking for the spare key, but Jason rams the door open with his shoulder.
• In Captain America: The First Avenger, one drill sergeant tells the recruits that if they can get a flag off the flagpole, they won't need to finish their run and can take a ride back to base. After everyone fails to climb up the flagpole, Steve Rogers takes out the screws at its base, causing it to fall over, removes the flag, and gives it to the sergeant. Despite his advantageous shortcut-taking when it comes to problem solving, he believes this is not how you solve a life-or-death dilemma and that someone claiming to be a real hero knows when you have to do it the hard way (whatever the consequence). This causes some friction when he confronts Tony Stark in The Avengers, who at the time believed this was the proper solution when you're in a bind. Almost having to sacrifice himself to a nuclear explosion and/or being trapped in the void of another dimension at the movie's climax is the breakthrough he needs to see things Steve's way. This trope is actually mentioned in dialogue in The Avengers aboard the Heli-carrier:
  Steve: You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play. To lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.
  Tony: I think I would just cut the wire.
  Steve: (smiles bitterly) Always a way out.
• Subverted in The Crazies (1973). An official isn't happy about the slow response to the outbreak, and orders the military to get off their behind and send the first available member of the Trixie team into the quarantine zone. He happens to be the developer of the virus, and all this does is cut him off from his laboratory and computers, when all that was needed in the town was a lowly technician who could take blood samples.
• The Dark Knight:
  • The main plot is kicked off when the Gotham mob fails to anticipate this from Batman. Batman and the GCPD are closing in on the mob's money, so their accountant Lau flees the country, putting him out of the jurisdiction of the GCPD and securing the money. The Joker correctly warns that Batman doesn't give a rat's ass about jurisdiction because he's not a cop; sure enough, Batman simply flies over to China, beats Lau up, and drags him back to Gotham where the GCPD can detain him for interrogation. This scares the mob so badly they turn to Joker for help and things go downhill fast...
  • Also referred to in Alfred's backstory. Alfred tells Batman about a bandit he chased in Burma who hid in the jungle and was stealing payoffs to and from the government and then simply throwing those rich payoffs away, apparently doing the robberies for simple thrill and to see the chaos that would unfold as a result. When Batman asks him if they ever caught the bandit, Alfred says they did. The bandit was using the woods for cover, and he couldn't be tracked while inside them because he knew them better than anyone else. So Alfred and his SAS unit burned the entire forest down rather than trying to track the guy. No more bandit.
• In the Day Watch, Tamerlane spends a while examining the ways into the maze guarding the Chalk of Fate, before realizing it would be a lot easier to simply blast through the walls themselves to get to the middle.
• Death Spa: Trying to get back into the computer room after the club catches fire, Michael tells Sgt. Stone that Catherine has used the computer to lock everything down. Stone replies "Fuck all this computer shit!", draws her gun, and proceeds to Shoot Out the Lock.
• In Disaster on the Coastliner, Mitchell suggests shooting the computer that has shut down all the safeguards preventing a crash, but Snyder tells him that will cause hundreds of other crashes.
• In Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, the title dolt confounds a doctor who asks him a version of the Knights and Knaves problem. Kaspar's response: "I would ask him if he is a tree-frog." It Makes Sense in Context.
• In Ever After, the servants are trying to get Danielle out of the cabinet her stepmother locked her up in. Feeling that it is useless to pick the lock, Da Vinci comes over, simply pulls the pins out of the door hinges and opens it that way. Da Vinci comically lampshades this.
  Servant: That was genius!
  Da Vinci: Yes. I will go down in history as a man who opened a door.
• In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, No-Maj Jacob Kowalski and witch Queenie Goldstein come across a door that's magically locked and none of Queenie's spells can un-magic it — so Jacob simply kicks the door down.
• The Fifth Element gives us the Korben Dallas method of negotiating a dangerous hostage situation:
  BLAM!
  Korben: Anyone else wanna negotiate?
• G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra:
  Breaker: What you'll have to do is rewire the laser panel's brain by—
  (Snake Eyes stabs the panel)
  Breaker: —or you could just stab it.
• In Glass Onion, Miles Bron seals invitations to a murder mystery in five complicated puzzle boxes. Four of the recipients join forces to solve the puzzles. The fifth recipient grabs a pair of safety goggles and bashes the box with a hammer until she finds the invite in the debris.
• In the film version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, this is how Harry deals with the Artifact of Doom Elder Wand. In the books he had a Thanatos Gambit in which he had it buried with Dumbledore in the hopes that himself dying peacefully without tempting fate by using it would break the curse surrounding it. In the movie he just snaps it and throws it into a gorge, guaranteeing that it'll never be used again as even if it were rediscovered only the Elder Wand itself can repair a broken wand.
• In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), G-Team are stuck in a damaged osprey heading back to the Argo, whose hangee bay doors are jammed and unable to be opened. When he goes to resovle the situation. Mark notices a pair of unused Ospreys hanging over the door which he promptly drops, smashing them open and allowing G-Team to land safely.
• Godzilla vs. Kong: When Mechagodzilla powers up and begins destroying Hong Kong, Josh makes an attempt to hack its controls. None of his attempts works, but just before he's about to give up Josh spots Bernie about to take a swig from his flask. He promptly takes it all and dumps it all down the central computer's vents, frying it and causing Mechagodzilla to glitch.
• Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum: The door to Room 402 is the one door in Gonjiam Psychiatric Hospital that's locked. Since no one who visited it before had the key, they usually tried to get in by breaking the doorknob. The crew of Horror Times tries to get in with a circular saw, but they aren't any more successful than anyone else.
• Near the end of I, Robot the enemy shuts a critical panel on the protagonists. Turns out that the panel isn't as tough as maverick cop Detective Spooner's mechanical arm. Said arm comes in use again soon after when they have to descend several stories to get to VIKI's core processor, because a mechanical arm isn't compromised by having its skin flayed off. Still hurts like hell though.
• This is practically Indiana Jones' hat (well, other than the cool fedora).
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark:
    • When Indy sneaks into a Nazi U-boat base, he could continue sneaking around, staying out of sight. Or he could knock out a guard and steal the guard's clothes. Then, after finding that the guard's clothes are too small for him, he could bluff his way out of trouble when a larger superior officer mistakes him for the guard and begins lecturing him for his poor appearance, or he could knee the superior in the balls, knock the superior out too, then steal clothes that will actually fit.
    • Earlier in the film, Indy encounters a swordsman in Cairo who wants to fight him, complete with showing off some impressive sword skills. Undaunted, Indy just pulls out his gun and shoots the swordsman dead.
  • In the case from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indy and his father are in a zeppelin looking to make their escape from Berlin. Suddenly Indy notices an SS officer looking for them. How exactly does one evade a search by a powerful faction in a confined yet public place with lots of witnesses and no place to hide? Well, you could knock out a member of the zeppelin's staff, disguise yourself in his clothes, hit the officer with a surprise attack and throw him out the window. Then, when the witnesses stare at you incredulously, simply point to the window and say "No ticket."
• James Bond:
  • In GoldenEye, the villains make their getaway in a car into a crowded Russian street. Bond commandeers a tank and drives through walls to chase them.
  • In Casino Royale, Bond pursues a freerunning enemy who nimbly scales obstacles and slips through narrow gaps. Bond finds simpler but equally effective means of traversing obstacles, such as running straight through a plaster wall, depressurizing a hydraulic ladder lift and, eventually, hopping into the driver's seat of a bulldozer.
• In Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, when the survivors of Corbulo Academy come to the live rounds, Master Chief asks why they haven't gotten them out of the locker. Lasky quietly says that it's locked, to which the Chief simply punches the locker open.
• Johnny English Reborn: While chasing someone, the sequence goes as follows: Opponent climbs over a fence. Johnny opens the door. Opponent uses parkour. Johnny uses a ladder. Opponent jumps across a gap and onto a building. Johnny uses a crane carrying a load of bricks to send himself across. Opponent scales scaffolding to get down. Johnny uses the lift.
• Jurassic Park:
  • In Jurassic Park, the raptors become intelligent enough to open doors and try to get into the control room, forcing Ellie and Alan to hold the door shut long enough for Lex to reboot the system and engage the electronic door locks. She succeeds and the beasts can't get through the door anymore, but...
    (Smash)
    Ellie: It's gonna come through the glass!!!
  • Jurassic Park III : Finding a row of vending machines, Paul Kirby starts pulling out change and counting how much he needs. Billy, remembering that they're on an abandoned island, simply kicks a hole through the display window of the next vending machine and takes what he wants. Paul tries this himself next, but his feeble blow just bounces off.
• In Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Lara finds the old clock containing the Plot Coupon (conveniently in her own basement), and her Smart Guy tries to disassemble it carefully and slowly, keeping track of which screw goes where. Lara will have none of it and smashes the clock to pieces with a hammer.
• MacGruber sees the eponymous hero confronted with a nuclear missile that's about to launch. He looks at the complicated wiring, panics, and declares he doesn't know how to defuse it. His allies express their disappointment and the villain basically says "I Knew It!"...to which Mac replies that he wasn't finished. He does know how to rip out the guidance computer, the plutonium, and a couple of other critical parts. The missile will still explode, but it won't go anywhere before it does and it won't be nuclear.
• In Moneyball, Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's vision for the team hits a snag when field manager Art Howe, a staunch traditionalist, refuses to start one of Beane's players, Scott Hatteberg, over established starter Carlos Peña because he sees Hatteberg as a liability at the position. Unable to persuade Howe to take the risk, Beane decides to force the issue by trading Peña to the Tigers, then having every other bench player who could play the position demoted to Triple-A, leaving Howe with no other option but to go along with Billy's scheme and start Hatteberg.
• Patton:
  • During the invasion of Sicily an entire column of troops is being held up by a couple of stubborn donkeys on a bridge. After his subordinates try to push, pull and cajole them out of the way, Patton steps up, delivers a bullet to each of their brains and has them tossed off the bridge.
  • In a non-violent method, he comes to a cross road with two caravans of vehicles trying to both get by at the same time. He pulls rank and stands in the cross road, ordering one vehicle from one group to go by, then one from the other group. All they needed was a traffic cop directing them but it took a general to do it.
• In Red (2010) Frank has to break into a secret archive in the basement of CIA headquarters. He gets right to the door but it is protected by a state-of-the-art biometric system that he cannot break or subvert. However, it is not an actual vault but a converted file room so the walls around the door were built by a lowest bid government contractor. He simply smashes through the drywall around the door.
• RoboCop
  • In the the climax of original film, RoboCop cannot do anything to Dick Jones because of Directive 4, which prevents him from acting against any senior officer of OCP. Jones knows this, and is holding The Old Man at gunpoint. The solution? The Old Man tells Dick that he's fired, thus he's no longer an executive of the company, and Directive 4 no longer applies. RoboCop promptly shoots Jones five times in the chest.
  RoboCop: Thank you. (Opens fire)
  • In RoboCop 2, RoboCop is saddled with dozens upon dozens of directives when he's rebuilt by OCP, so many that he can't even work right. When one of the techs in the Detroit Police Department mentions that hitting him with a surge of electricity could erase the directives but kill him in the process, RoboCop pulls off the plug attached to him, heads for the precinct's fuse box, and shoves his hands into it, hitting him with enough electricity to get rid of the directives.
• In a flashback from Saw, Tapp and Sing manage to catch Jigsaw in his hideout. Jigsaw activates one of his traps to distract them so he can escape. The trap involves two drills closing in on the head of his hostage Jeff, and the key needed to free him is on a janitor-sized key ring with dozens of others. After some time of trial and error with the keys, Sing gives up and shoots both of the drills to deactivate them.
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Sky Captain tries to figure out a way to get into Dr. Jennings' lab. Polly smashes the window, reaches in and unlocks the door.
  Polly: It's open.
• Sneakers: Marty is trying to break into a hotel room, only to discover the door has a keypad on it. He lets Crease and Mother, who are listening, what's going on. Mother digs up a book of instructions, at which point Crease reads them to Marty, and we see him listening, nodding his head, and saying variations of "Yeah, okay." Then, he kicks open the door.
  Marty: It worked.
• A rare non-violent example in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In Kirk's backstory, it is revealed that he dealt with the infamous "no-win" scenario in Starfleet training by hacking the game so the Klingons would flee upon hearing his name, reasoning that he would be a starship captain of some reputation if he's been sent to investigate a distress signal in the Neutral Zone. He is given a citation for creative thinking.
• This comes up again in the Star Trek (2009). However, in this timeline, he programs in a glitch that shuts down the enemy defenses and restores his ship's systems, technically "winning" but in a much less creative way than his original-universe counterpart.
• Star Trek Into Darkness:
  • On the planetoid, McCoy's hand is stuck in a torpedo counting down to detonation. Carol tries to deactivate it and, failing that, rips out the control unit. Cue torpedo power down.
  • Carol Marcus valiantly stands up to her father, Admiral Marcus, stating that if he wants to destroy the Enterprise, he'll have to kill her too. His solution? Immediately transport her off the ''Enterprise'' to his ship.
• Superman Returns: Superman's solution to Luthor's growing island of Kryptonite is to dive deep below the island carve out a mile deep layer of rock beneath it and boost the whole thing into space. The rock provided enough distance and protection for Superman to use his powers, at least until the Kryptonite crystals burrowed through it towards the end.
• In Terminator 2: Judgment Day:
  • Miles Dyson starts to explain how to open the container holding the robot arm, but is interrupted by John breaking it.
  • When his keycard isn't working to open a door earlier in the scene, he is interrupted by Arnie blowing it up.
    Miles: My personal access code might still work... no good.
    Terminator: [hefts grenade launcher] Let me try mine.
  • When John Connor, in a phone box, asks the T-800 if he has a quarter for a phone. The Terminator smashes open the phone's money box, picks up a quarter, and hands it to John.
  • While the T-800 tears apart the steering column on a station wagon to turn the ignition cylinder by hand, John wiggles a set of spare keys he found by simply checking the visor.
    John: Are we learning yet?
• Under Siege 2: Dark Territory: Casey is informed by mad hacker Dane that he's too late to stop the Kill Sat from firing, and even if he wasn't, there's no way he'd get through his laptop's encryption program. Casey proceeds to get through the encryption program, the laptop, and Dane's chest via the expenditure of a few rounds of ammo.
  Dane: Didn't think of that...

---