Someone editing this movie's page seems to have missed some title cards and dialog and jumped to some strange conclusions. The tropes listed seem to imply that the movie wants viewers to believe it's told in flashback with the character who broke in at the beginning being an older version of Haley Joel Osment's character. The transition from the shooting in the fist scene to Bruce Willis's first scene with Osment's character has a title card saying "The Next Fall" (or similar) and Willis's character addresses the man who broke in (Donnie Wahlberg's character) as "Vincent Grey" and we see two separate pages on Willis's notepad with this name and "Cole Sear" (Osment's character) as their headings before Willis ever meets Osment. Add the dialog at the restaurant about this case being similar to the older one and the later scene (at the hospital) where Willis tells Osment about failing the earlier patient so it's pretty clear that the movie doesn't intend you to think that it's being shown in flashback or that the two are the same character.
Someone editing this movie's page seems to have missed some title cards and dialog and jumped to some strange conclusions. The tropes listed seem to imply that the movie wants viewers to believe it's told in flashback with the character who broke in at the beginning being an older version of Haley Joel Osment's character. The transition from the shooting in the fist scene to Bruce Willis's first scene with Osment's character has a title card saying "The Next Fall" (or similar) and Willis's character addresses the man who broke in (Donnie Wahlberg's character) as "Vincent Grey" and we see two separate pages on Willis's notepad with this name and "Cole Sear" (Osment's character) as their headings before Willis ever meets Osment. Add the dialog at the restaurant about this case being similar to the older one and the later scene (at the hospital) where Willis tells Osment about failing the earlier patient so it's pretty clear that the movie doesn't intend you to think that it's being shown in flashback or that the two are the same character.
Edited by 216.99.32.43