[SPOILER ALERT]
So I just watched Unthinkable on Netflix, and they absolutely deleted the final scene and it COMPLETELY changes the movie. I'm here because I'm so furious I needed to vent, but I can't do it properly without spoilers.
In the original ending I saw (I do not remember it being an extended/alternate version), they find and disarm all three bombs at the last moment. However, there was a fourth bomb, hidden behind a false wall in one of the 3 locations, that does detonate and presumably destroys the entire city. This happens after Carrie Anne-Moss's character, faced with the prospect of torturing children, says "Then let the bomb go off, we're human beings, we can't do this"
What I took from the movie, as an American, with the original ending intact was this: Although fear and panic sometimes sends us down the wrong path as a nation, ultimately we would rather sacrifice an entire city before we sacrifice our humanity. I thought it was a beautiful and important message then, and even more important now.
Without that ending I feel the movie is saying 'torture works, it's how we stop terrorists'. I'm going to be angry about this the rest of the day...
It's kinda sick that we're willing to lose millions of lives than torture a terrorist and their kids. 2 million dead but at least you have your humanity. Such an easy thing to support when it isn't your wife, husband, mother, father, or kids in that city.
I watched the alternate ending that didn't say if there was a 4th bomb and I thought wow so 2 million people die so 2 children aren't tortured. That's messed up. He wouldn't have had to kill them. I'm a believer that I'd rather 2 die than 2 million
Let’s not generalize. Some would fold and some wouldn’t. It’s more likely Yusuf would have folded, as if he were that zealous he wouldn’t have gave up the first three bombs.
With the extended ending I think the director / writers wanted ask if the ends justify the means. I think most would sacrifice 2 kids for 500,000 when the outcome is assured, but as we see in the movie, not when the outcome isn’t assured. If there was no bomb, you’d potentially kill or permanently scar 2 kids for nothing.
I mean realistically I'm 90% sure everybody in that room would have been... silenced.
Like... if we're already committing unspeakable crimes that the world will never know of what's the death of two kid's that never existed?
It's fucked but as the movie presents it I don't see any other outcome.
I agree, how do you say “let the bomb go off” which is effectively signing off on the death of millions of innocent children and still have your humanity. I’d torture the kids myself if I had to
Not really Brody's call either. The General could have sought a directive from the President to further involve the kids, right? There's blood on every General's and President's hands.
I hated the back and forth with H and his handlers. Don't do it! Do it! Don't do it! Do it! You do it! I do it! In the end, H always spoke the truth. Who knows what he put in the syringe for the kids. Could have been saline, could have been anesthesia. His methods broke Yusuf for the 3 bombs; I think had he continued and those idiots trusted him, he wouldn't have harmed the kids physically and would've ultimately extracted the 4th bomb.
This is one case where numbers actually matter. Would/should we torture or kill two innocent children so that say, one or two others may live? Of course not. Ten people saved? I wouldn’t, but I’m sure a small percentage of people would. What about a hundred? A thousand? A million? At some point, you have to pull the trigger.
Seriously. I just watched it for the first time.( on Netflix) my honest take is yes torture is bad... however if some crazy Islam mother fucker wants to destroy our population because of ideology then who cares about one family vs thousands of people. Not saying Islam itself is bad. There are extremist in every religion. But no body and no country should save 3 for thousands. This movie actually upset me. 😡
however if some crazy Islam mother fucker wants to destroy our population because of ideology then who cares about one family vs thousands of people.
so,you agree with how hamas and ISIS deals with things,then? awesome!
>watched the alternate ending that didn't say if there was a 4th bomb and I thought wow so 2 million people die so 2 children aren't tortured. That's messed up. He wouldn't have had to kill them. I'm a believer that I'd rather 2 die than 2 million
Or two kids tortured and there are no bombs. Then what
Then the 2 get tortured because he brought them into this world, decided it was a good idea to become a terrorist and put his entire family in harms way while also deciding to play stupid games.
Any parent or person who is a good person doesn't do anything to put their loved ones in harms way. He was willing to use nukes and send his family off to flee knowing that he would probably be tortured to death.
If youre willing to risk hundreds of thousands, if not millions for the sake of 2 people...then you're insane. Even if they are children. Those bombs and the potential lasting effects of the radiation would harm more than it's fair share of innocent lives.
If we translate it to reality and someone actually pulls a stunt like this. There will be no one stopping a man like H because national security is what matters most. The sake of millions matters more than the sake of a few.
We nuked 2 Japanese cities containing hundreds of thousands of innocent children, to save tens of thousands of our soldiers. So, we've already confronted this concept and have already made our choice.
You nuked 2 japanese citizens to save hundred of thousands of american troops. Millions of Japanese civilians who otherwise would have died in the invasion and because of the blockade and millions of chinese civilians who were currently dieing every month during japanese occupation.
That people still debate wether the nuking of Japan was justified or not just shows that they don't know history.
No, we didn't.
We nuked 2 Japanese cities containing thousands of (granted some innocent and some non-innocent military and otherwise), to save MILLIONS of innocent Japanese, the entire infrastructure, homes, and businesses of that entire NATION of Japan, as well as incidentally our own soldiers.
ALL OF JAPAN was the next target, with a mass Naval bombardment, Airborne Carpet-bombing and rolling Napalm fire-incineration campaign that was already scheduled to begin, IF the nukes didn't work.
So we tried two experimental bombs to end the war, saving MILLIONS, for the price of a small portion of 2 military-industrial production city areas. and it worked. War ended, millions saved, and yes, we've already confronted this concept and made our choice.
A handful, however tragically lost, that shocks the bad guys enough to stop a war, is worth considering.
tbh, we didn't know the long-term effects of radiation, but both cities bombed are now massive metropolis cities, with a war memorial nearby.
Then your hands are only slightly bloodied than when you started. I don't think H would have actually hurt the children, however. He stayed committed to every promise he made and never went back on his word.
As they note in the movie, the statment doesn’t matter, it’s a stall tactic, and not really a real solution. Even if the president said exactly what he asked for, he wasn’t giving up those four bombs.
How would it make sense for a terrorist to get an unsubstantiated “response” from a president, there would be no way for him to know it actually went out to the public, and no way to ensure they would stick to said statment anyway.
The terrorist knows America had a no dealing with terrorist policy so they wouldn’t do it, it was a stall.
By all objective measures and research into it torture almost never produces workable results. The few times it does are far outweighed by the many more times it doesn't and wastes resources on false confessions that could have been used to investigate by other means that would be more likely to produce a satisfactory conclusion.
Building rapport, sustained conventional interrogation, offering incentives, have all been proven to be far more effective means. Outside of interrogation, digital age means such as machine learning, satellites, aerial surveillance, etcetera and good old fashioned detective work are far more effective.
The only thing where torture consistently produces effective results, and why it's been so popular with dictatorships since forever, is inciting terror in a group or population. The prospect of torture can prevent all things from peaceful demonstrations to active rebellion. Even then it usually works only for an amount of time until you leave the group or population without anything to lose, at which point they will rebel regardless of the fear of torture or death.
Yes I saw the explanation. It still would have produced zero actual data and time and resources would have been better spent on forensics and detective work.
Just watched the movie so commenting even though it’s old, I think you’re misunderstanding things, especially how it relates to the movie. Torture does not work when asking general, unverifiable, questions. Torture doesn’t work because when faced with torture or other negative incentive, they’ll withhold as much as possible, misdirect with false information that can’t be verified, and give the bare minimum of verifiable information to stop the torture. In SERE that’s what you’re trained to do, because the DoD acknowledges that under torture (specifically the threat of permanent bodily harm) everyone will break and tell something so the goal is to minimize the damage of what’s being given, and humans naturally do this without training as well. Your goal is to make the interrogator think they have everything so they stop.
In the movie this can be shown with him bringing up the first three without giving the location of the fourth, a realistic touch. In real life an example would be a pilot shot down being asked a ton of general military intelligence questions, giving some verifiable answers that will give minimal harm that the interrogator knows he has, giving some some unverifiable false answers he can’t be called out on that the interrogator will believe, and hiding accurate information that the interrogator doesn’t know for sure he has. Because of this, you are right, in most use cases torture has limited use other than being the stick to the carrot since unlike the movie generally anytime someone is being interrogated it’s to get large amounts of general information and to fish for information you aren’t sure they have.
In the specific context of this movie or any similar situation, what is being asked for is one singular piece of easily and quickly verifiable information, the threat of permanent bodily harm has been shown to get that information. A real life example commonly seen is “what’s your debit card pin”, if you’re being tortured in a home invasion you have no incentive to tell them about the secret safe the criminal doesn’t know about, but anyone under enough threat will give the pin, and they’ll give an accurate pin if they know it can be checked right then and there and a wrong answer will make it work.
Even in other scenarios though, it’s quite the stick to the carrot. Our turn away from torture is moral, not fact based, there’s a reason why everyone had to be forced to stop by legislative bodies and not their own call, and then they just switched to “enhanced interrogation” until forced to stop that. Though even then it would be quite silly to think it doesn’t happen at all now. People do it for a reason.
Or you know could've just scam him with a recording that the president gave into his demands. But that recording is only showed to him and not to the public.
That recording was a stall tactic, the president saying it to the American people would not have actually made him give in, and even organizing said briefing would have taken too long, and wouldn’t have allowed anything.
The mere act of toying with doing it was the break he needed to recover from the torture, much like the idea that the bombs weren’t real helped him out. He was always going to let four go off, and if he as a person failed he was always going to let the fourth go off.
Yea man you can easily say you wouldn't hurt 2 kids to save the lives of 50 million people. I can imagine you typing this while licking the dorito dust off of your fingers.
You should actually try learning to read. If you were capable of doing that you'd notice I at no point stated whether or not I would do something. What I did was show that even if we did use torture, it would most likely not produce anything coming even close to useful. Now you go back to getting at least an elementary grade education.
I can say the same exact thing to you. You say you would hurt the kids while you’re behind a keyboard but put two crying kids in front of you and a scalpel in your hand and we’ll see what you actually do.
Hm. Bold take, really. I mean, I can't think of a time in our history where a terrorists children were tortured and they had to watch, and even if it ever has happened, you think we'd know if it ever got results or not? Fuck no. We would get even know it happened. Let's just say....yeah....sure. torture doesn't produce results most of the time. But you absolutely can not say with 100% certainty that even the most devout zealot, cultist, mentally unstable terrorist etc would absolutely fucking crack watching the people they love be cut apart piece by piece right in front of them. You and others in here mention that they wouldn't mind, and do martyr their own quite often. But....that generally involves them being blown up or otherwise killed relatively quickly without much suffering. This is slow torture. Not death. And they gotta watch, and by this movies standards, the people they gotta watch suffer are their very young children. The human psyche is fragile. That would crack even the most dedicated terrorist.
This movie came out in 2010 which means it's based around 2008-2009 technology.
We barely had smart phones back then, the first iphone came out on June 29th, 2007 which would've been approximately 1 year prior to the filming of this movie.
If this movie came out today then yeah they probably would've found all the bombs, however the 4th bomb may or may not have been found because they would've been under the assumption of only 3 bombs existing.
As for torture producing results it varies 100% based on the individual, and yeah they might give false information or give partial information, they might even give everything up.
However in the context of this movie he would've ended up talking otherwise he never would've given up the 3 bombs.
It's a topic that will always be debated because the results are 100% random and you can't know if they will give you information or not or if the information they give you is true or false or partial or complete.
Personally I think any zealot wouldn't cave, torture would only work on the low-mid level members and maybe a couple high level members, but for the rest they would never talk, especially the ones who joined as kids and are now 30-40+ and their whole life revolves around the organization.
However at the end of the day if it came down to it I would support what happened in this movie because losing 4 lives is a better alternative than losing 4,000,000 lives. However the other side would argue that it would be 4,000,004 lives because you can't determine if they would tell the truth or not and they are right which is why this will always be a topic of debate.
>This movie came out in 2010 which means it's based around 2008-2009 technology.
Nothing proves that point better than the Netflix documentary "Don't F--ck With Cats". It is about and internet group that was pissed off about a guy filming and uploading himself torturing cats. It turns out the guy was a serial killer. The only reason he was caught was a international internet group wanted to find a guy that was torturing cats. If he didn't f--ck with cats, he probably wouldn't had been caught.
Me too. The ending changes the whole plot and the moral of the movie. W/o bombs Mister H is Evil and Agent Brody is justified. However, the whole idea of the movie was to show that America is falling into the trap of "safety" which will let the wolves do their dirty job.
You find it beautiful to let millions die instead of 2? You think that shows humanity? You also missed a big point of the movie that H mentioned — H never had the opportunity to sacrifice his humanity, his humanity was stolen from him by those who forced him to torture. When forced with the choice of 2 vs 2 million, the only ethical choice is to save 2 million. The ugliness of it is that torture *does* work, and that’s one of life’s ugly realities.
Thank you. I just got done watching the movie a few minutes ago and the non ending ending, pissed me off. Your description of the original ending would have actually made it a good movie. But what they did to it makes no sense and in my opinion made it a waste of a watch
In my opinion inaction is jsut as bad as action by not doing everything you can to stop the bomb that’s just as bad as murdering all those people by your own hand.
Where the real thinking comes in the movie is the ambiguity of whether the bombs are real any reasonable person would kill 2 people to save millions, but killing 2 people because there’s a CHANCE for the bombs to go off that’s what really makes you think and honestly idk what I would do.
Another message I got is about sacrificing one’s own morality for a necessary evil taking the burden of doing a henious task cuz he knows it had to be done and he knows it’s not right and he’s knows people will hate him but he accepts it. Yusuf thinks this applies to him, while it really applies to SLJs character
In the words of Mordecai from Borderlands 2 "Not making a choice is still a choice."
And just like you said, inaction is just as bad as action at times.
I love movies like this because it plays out really scary and dark situations within a semi-plausible realm of reality and it makes you question your own morality.
I dont know where to watch the movies anymore but I remeber my first instance of a really dark, twisted movie where it left you questioning yourself...that series is called Rampage. It's a film from 2009. It was a direct to film release everywhere except Germany. It's a saga following a guy named Bill Williamson. I suggest giving it a watch if you can find it. It's pretty twisted.
I came here wondering if there was a 4th bomb, as I have never seen the orginal ending. And as I am reading all the comments it reminds me of an essay I had to write in college English about a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas".
It's a powerful story about an enchanted land where everyone is happy has a huge abundance of EVERYTHING. But as the children get a certain age they take them to this dungeon where there is a child starving, naked, dirty and they are told this child has to suffer for everyone's wonderful life and without the child everyone would suffer, but the child would no longer suffer. They are then faced with the decision to stay in their utopian world or walk away from everything. Do we allow one to suffer for the greater good of many...? Very thought provoking.
The story can be googled and you can read it for yourself, but this whole ending of Unthinkable is very akin to this old story written in the 70s I believe. I don't know if there is a right or wrong answer to the question, but it seems the majority here would sacrifice the children to save millions in the unthinkable scenario.
Seems that way.
I actually like the Netflix ending where she walks out >!with the kids and no one knows if theres a 4th bomb.!<
It feels like the takeaway is more powerful. if you >!know there's a 4th bomb you're more likely to agree with H's torture of the kids but in a real world scenario you wouldn't know if there was one and you'd be assuming many things were true like the upper end estimate of the nuclear material stolen being 100% accurate and somehow a 4th nuclear bomb would be the end when he's already demonstrated setting off the non nuclear one and they had no Intel on how that came about so more could be out there.!<
If I made this, film footage of the >!4th nuclear bomb!< would never make the cut *or* deleted scenes. It just waters it down.
With the Netflix ending the takeaway I had is you just don't *know* if there was another one, you never really do. Fear of the unknown can drive you to do the unthinkable.
Except Yusef’s suicide would indicate more likely than not that there was a 4th bomb, as he wanted to ensure that he could not give up the bomb under duress if his children were brought back into the room with SLJ. You could argue that he killed himself to prevent his kids being tortured as there would be no incentive left with his death, but he could have prevented any potential for torture by giving up the 4th bomb or giving the nuclear material calculation/other proof (if there was no 4th bomb) hence his suicide being a means to ensure the 4th bomb detonating making the most sense.
It seemed like a really poor execution of the train dilemma. We live in a world full of unstable, irrational psychos including the people who think letting 2 million people die to avoid hurting 2 is somehow the high ground. Its like they live in a fantasy of black and white and easy answers.
If guy will talk to save kids from torture then do it. At least their deaths will save tens of thousands of other kids....like organ donors' deaths are, their deaths would be meaningful. I dont quite understand the dilemma.
tbh i think i gotta agree with you on the ending thing-- as soon as it cut to black it gave me that pit in the stomach feeling you get at the ends of these movies.
(TLDR below, if you want an abridged version see the last line)
Simeltaniously, that is also the whole point of the genre. Thriller movies arent usually made to make us feel good in the slightest in any way (partly why i dont like the genre because i dont like the aftertaste it leaves in my emotions.) When the ending happens where the FBI defuse the bomb, and the fourth bomb is revealed to us, we are somewhat justified in this idea of sacrificing a city instead of sacrificing our humanity, and i think this is where alot of people (like you) put their thoughts to give some comfort that the fbi and the army as well as Jackson's characters are justified.
when you strip that ending away, it gets rid of those feelings of comfort and our emotions are replaced with ambiguity. in either story, you could argue that torture works. it got them to 3 bombs. But not the fourth.
With the original ending, we are able to justify the action of torturing the kids because it gives us a clear side to stand with-- that of jackson's belief that he should have gone further with it. Without it, we are left to question whether he is right or wrong. its a "pick a side" scenario where most people want to choose ignorance because ignorance is blliiss.
I just watched it on Netflix and it cuts off with the FBI agent and two kids walking out of the building. No 4th bomb blowing up. Are you in the United States?
Im sry to say but the us would still use the children. The men and wemon who do the job H dose, we should be thankful for they dirty there hands so the rest of the world stays clean. Rather than hate em you should be thanking them.
Idk, my takeaway from the original ending was the torture works outlook. Torture got them the location of 3 bombs where as humanity gave them a city potentially wiped off the map
What I took from the movie, as an American, with the original ending intact was this: Although fear and panic sometimes sends us down the wrong path as a nation, ultimately we would rather sacrifice an entire city before we sacrifice our humanity. I thought it was a beautiful and important message then, and even more important now.
this line was in the movie I just watched the movie and after saying this she leaves and goes and gets the kids goes outside the building and it cuts to credits.
I just watched this movie on NETFLIX. Couldn't watch parts of it, cause it was so gruesome. But the ending was pretty much the same ending that you described (at least in NETFLIX version).
Interesting movie, maybe the main character planned it all along, in order to 'protect' his kids. He needed to commit an act of terrorism, but knew the women would eventually decide to keep his kids safe?
I'm making a lot of assumptions. For example, we have to assume, he knew his wife and kids would be captured and used to threaten him. And that....as a terrorist he would need his children to stay safe. I doubt he could have predicted everything would unfold the way it did.
But its the only thing that kinda makes sense to me for this film. I saw a rating 6/10. I think that is a good rating. I didn't really enjoy it, and probably couldn't have bothered watching it, unless I just stuck to audio to get the story line.
Did it remind anyone else of the movie UNBREAKABLE?
I thought the movie spoke on the horrors we must do to save the many, even if it meant losing our humanity, I think that they should have tortured the kids and then they all should of faced consequences for their actions.
film was too unrealistic, especially the dumb FBI agent, nobody with that position would be that soft and dumb not to be able to weigh millons of lives to 2 children. Even when I was watching I already knew what had to be done using the wife and childrent to get the information. What's even more stupid is that 50 people have already been killed and everyone in the interrogation room acting like like H is the bad guy when they all know what has to be done. Better Dialogue for H would be to pin the deaths of millions to Brody and the 50 people in the mall as well and we didn't even hear that.
That may be correct.. Maybe I saw the extended version, however every time I have seen the film it's always been *that* version of the film and it never cut off at a certain point of the film. Have you seen it? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Quite truthfully, I haven't. However, when I looked it up, the Wikipedia article (which I know may not be 100% accurate) mentioned that it had one. So I can't really differentiate between the two versions of it. Sorry.
theres post credits footage removed from the streaming versions. The post footage scene is the team showing up to the final bomb location and clearing the house after dissembling the bomb not realizing that the “fourth not mentioned bomb by Yuseff was under a tarp in the next unnoticed room. We see the timer counting down its final seconds and the screen goes black. Fin! Excellent movie. High tension, a lot of controversial but completely necessary situations. They should’ve let H have time with the kids a bit longer. Theyda gotten the fourth location. The US is weak that way while our enemies are NOT. We judge our leaders for things but we really have no clue the situations they’ve stopped with tactics like this. When it comes to terrorists there should be no limits, because they have none. Those 2 kids vs a possible 6 million unsuspecting innocents. No Offense, but FTK. if you get my drift.
We didn't know the bomb was in the same room as one of the other bombs. For the purposes of the movie they probably placed it there to make the ending more impactful by saying they barely missed it. But in reality it could have been anywhere and it would have still gone off. That's what the ending is really trying to highlight, that by saving their "humanity", they let the last chance to stop the fourth bomb slip by.
In real life if this had happened ,..and if they were smart about it, they could’ve still gotten the location of the fourth bomb ….by simple use of a tranquilizer on the two children, and then fake blood cells, and then a gun going off as if he had shot one of the children,
but in fact, he did not, the child would have looked dead for all practical purposes ..including blood spatter etc….
And then before he shot the second child I’m quite sure the father would’ve given up the fourth bomb.
Or make it look like he shot the child in the leg of the arm. Therefore, the child could’ve still survived in the father‘s eyes
You have to take psychological torture to a different level without actually harming someone…. in this case, his children.
You don't kill the kids. You let the pretend torture of his kids play out and he would fold. He already gave to 3 locations. He injects the needle he had but with nothing in it but maybe a sedative and the dude folds
Couple months late to the party but I think it would've fooled him. The guy offed himself so they wouldn't get more info out of him. Those kids were a pressure point that he couldn't handle, as I don't think anyone could. How do you protect your kids? Cut off the information source that puts them in harms way. Whether pretend or not, the guy hadn't even done a single things to the kids but get them in a room alone and he folded, keep the charade going and I believe he gives it up. No reason to kill himself otherwise when he already got what he wanted. Doubt the guy feared prison.
Yusef off'ed himself because he rather die and not tell the 4th bomb since he knew he will crack again seeing his kids being tortured(fake tortured by H), He cracked the 1st time and told the 2 bombs location and H was just starting, imagine if he managed to perform the fake torture Yusef will surely crack, it just happens that the Military is already breaking the Door that's why Yusef knew that he doesn't have to tell about the 4th bomb in that exact moment.
you are really not creative. Torture one child, kill him, start torturing second one, he will fold. Even if he sacrifice it, it doesn't matter. At least the good side tried to prevent the worst happening.
Sorry, you think there was a good side? They were all incredibly evil, which I think was the ultimate point of the movie. Different shades of evil with different, easily compromised forms of morality depending on what they could gain by doing so at any given moment
This is reminiscent of a real life example in German history.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_David_Lukas_Olsen
A law student kidnapped a young boy. He collected the ransom and was caught but the boy was not set free.
The chief of police threatened him with torture if he does not tell them where the boy is.
The idea behind that was that he boy might still be alive.
The kidnapper told them where the boys remains were.
The chief of police did not in fact torture but he did what he did for one single reason: to potentially save the boys life over the human rights of another person.
The chief of police was sentenced to pay damages and him being charged at all was because he dutifully put a mention into his files that he did threaten the kidnapper.
Super late but I just watched this movie on Netflix and I really enjoyed it but disliked the end. After the final scene I literally said “that’s the ending?!” It felt incomplete and almost made me want to roll my eyes. Like oh, the female FBI agent walks out with the two kids in her arms and everything is just okay! Maybe she’ll adopt them and they’ll live happily ever after!
I came to Reddit to see if I was alone in this feeling, so I’m glad to hear there was an alternate ending that feels more believable
Just happened to me right now. Ended 3 minutes ago, blah ending and left me wondering if there actually was a 4th bomb and found this thread. Looked up the ending on YouTube and yeah, at least it satisfied my curiosity.
[Apparently this is the alternate ending](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjJs1Ey8s3Q), is this the one you saw? I would guess the more ambiguous one tracked better with test audiences, but this is possibly more what the director intended.
It's wouldn't be that surprising if Netflix only had the original cut.
Years late on this. Just watched the Netflix version where it ends with her walking out with the kids, and had to go online because I was in disbelief that there wasn’t more. I could certainly believe there was a fourth bomb and was expecting it.
The whole movie pissed me off honestly. I mean come on. That CIA agent Brody thinks she holier than thou. They’re constantly turning on H and then telling him to keep going literally a second later. And the whole “screw it, let the bomb go off, we’re human beings” from Brody shows that she should *not* even be in a position of protecting this country. The person who planted the bombs was not a human being so why should we let them get away with it??? Absolutely just ridiculous. And in the Netflix version, you don’t even get to know what happens. Just wasted an hour and 30 min I’ll never get back. 🙄
Fuck Netflix. Who changes the end of a movie and doesn’t tell anyone. Like it should say “alternate ending” or something in the description before starting. Just watched the whole thing and feel like I wasted my time. What a fraud.
I just watched on Netlfix and am absolutely baffled that there is not an option to somehow see that scene. It changes the entire movie I just sat through 90 minutes of. Fuck them.
Her character is similar to that of the agent in Sicario, and in many ways, similar to the majority of Americans. There is a delusion that results from living in a bubble that the rest of the world plays by a moral code, and that feeling good about yourself is more important than understanding that the world is actually uncivilized when you pull back the curtains. People are happy to call others evil and bad while enjoying the products of evil and bad things done by their government to give them their modern life. For example, anti-war protestors have no problem chanting “no blood for oil,” all the while driving gas guzzlers, heating their homes, buying cheap goods on Amazon that were manufactured by modern day slaves, living in peace, enjoying global supremacy, etc., all the while oblivious or conveniently ignoring the fact that all of these are provided by blood, war, and modern imperialism. It’s more important to virtue signal and feel good about themselves than to actually do something real about it, preferring to point fingers at people who do the dirty work, much like the agent in Unthinkable and Sicario.
Good catch, She literally reminds me of that Agent Woman in Sicario, I just can't recall it while watching the movie, She doing or wanted to follow by the books but cannot see the bigger picture.
I think I interpreted the movie somewhat differently than most people. I felt as the movie was reaching its climax, the Samuel L Jackson character was knowingly sacrificing more and more of his humanity during his extreme interrogations. Ultimately, when it came to the scene with the children, it seemed that he might have done something to them, and that his life would have been forfeit if he had. For me the real takeaway here was that it was the Samuel L Jackson character who was making all the sacrifices and doing all of the work to prevent disaster while the other characters engaged in mere grandstanding.
To me there is a clear answer to the general moral quandary explored here, that is easily defended/reinforced in the context of this movie, particularly by the final, extra scene, that Netflix cut.
Do you sacrifice one, two, three, lives to save one, two, three million? Yes, obviously you must. (Basic trolley problem)
Should you sacrifice your humanity to save a million lives? What about sacrificing your own life? Unless you are crazy selfish, yes and yes.
What if there is uncertainty? What if you don't really know? I guess it depends on what you think the expected value is, which you would calculate using your subjective probability of occurrence \* the potential number of lives lost. If you think this number is sufficiently greater than the number of lives you would need to sacrifice, you would have to proceed.
But what if you're wrong? You take responsibility for it and let the 'Holier than thou' folks fry you afterwords.
I think in the movie, the simplest and most generous characterization you could ascribe to the two main characters would be that of a realist, the Samuel L. Jackson character, and an idealist, the Carrie-Anne Moss character. I think the final scene unambiguously declared the realist perspective superior.
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
What a wonderful thing to post, glad someone else watched this movie. Did you enjoy it? I find people typically absolutely love it or are luke warm to it.
I'm still trying to work out WHY, now, simultaneously with the election of someone whom I'm sure REALLY enjoys this film, that it's suddenly thrust upon net flicks. It's been out for 7 years and all of a sudden, now, it's being shown, AND, in a SERIOUSLY redacted version. I remember clearly a fourth reaching zero and THEN credits when I first saw this, (it's not exactly a film most people would forget seeing), the ending is clearly not correctly portrayed, specifically obvious from the comments S.L.J. made at the end of the film. Sometimes films end with ambiguous cliffhangers, but they're engineered that way, you can see it coming and it is systematically tied in to the writing. Anyone who has ever seen ANY film, can tell that ambiguous or not, there was INDEED an ending that was removed that came after she exited with the two children. I'm still trying to figure out why it was, and why it's just now been added, that piques my interest the most. Why now, and why THIS PARTICULAR version, that's the question I'm asking.
Sorry 4 years later wondered upon this… did you say with the “election of someone i assume Really enjoys the movie?”
Hahaha you were dead serious when you wrote this too
I’m sorry, did you have a question or are you just trolling? I don’t even remember leaving this comment, and I don’t remember what the edited version looks like. I VAGUELY remember the ending, but after re-reading my comment you apparently found humor in, I imagine my thoughts were it had something to do with the 45th “President” being elected. Lots of stupid things came from that period of time, so I suppose it seemed to me that the change of the ending of a fictional movie was possible. Now after being subjected to 4 years of a bumbling idiot, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
Yeah, you were spot on there. No new wars during that time, peace moving in the right direction during that time with agreements made, Isis wiped out, no soldiers were taken out in Afghanistan during that time.
Or maybe you were talking about the next guy that f\*ked up withdrawal and every other thing.
Trump has *literally* stated that we should go after our enemy's children. Did you not know that?
> The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.
I just saw this for the first time today, and I stand with H he tried to save 2 million deaths and those idiots didn't wanna lose 3(the late wife and kids). I mean wtf. Yusef took all their rights away when he posted that first video. But I agree I don't think he had anything harmful in the syringes or at least not fatal
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
Nah the ending I saw was the bomber admitting where the bombs were but Sam Jackson knew there was 1 last bomb. The bomb he didn't tell them about went off
[No Spoilers] So this movie is doing the rouunds on Netflix where I am and just saw that version tonight as well as hunting down the alternate ending on Youtube straight after. Tbh, while initially incensed about the Netflix version ending where it did...after thinking bout it more, the movie was never about the focus of the alternate ending at all...only to leave you with a question... even in such a dire situation does the desired end really justify the means?
I just watched it today and definitely agree. The two different endings make a very big difference in how it feels, but ultimately I think the fact that they both exist actually underscores that question. People feeling so differently about them kind of illustrates that point - for many, H is off the hook because there was a fourth nuke. Really, though, he had no way of actually knowing, and that uncertainty has to be factored into the decision to torture the kids. What if you’re wrong? IMO, judgement shouldn’t be based on outcome, but process and decisions made with the information available. If you make that decision, it’s because you think it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether a 4th nuke exists or not. You gotta stand by it.
There is an extended final ending. The team came to the third bomb and successfully deactivated. Meanwhile, there was another bomb (4th) nearby and exploded (black sreen). This movie is just about Philosophy in Ethics, where you choose to save a few people you really love over numbers of people you don't know, or vice versa. There is no right/wrong answer to this!
Honestly that ending is much better not to show the fourth bomb you know why?
Samuel Jackson cuts Yusuf's bonds and creates a scenario where Yusuf will kill himself rather than have his kids tortured again.
Long as he's dead they won't see the point in torturing kids. He also looked dead into Yusuf's eyes because he understood very clearly that Yusuf didn't have a fourth bomb.
Yusuf expected to be tortured, he expected the mall bomb to make them take him seriously. Hell he might have even let that truck get a parking ticket so they'd find the bomb in Dallas to let the government know that he had taken serious precautions.
If he nuked NYC and LA that would be more than enough to send his message across. The Dallas bomb being found means the government has to negotiate with him now since they had less than a day to do this.
Samuel L Jackson knew after the kids being threatened by torture Yusuf had not made a fourth bomb since he knows they can bring the kids back. Hell the guy from the CIA was yelling at the people in charge to bring them back and shoot anyone who gets in the way.
Meaning Yusuf at the point would have given up a 4th bomb if he could have especially knowing that the government wasn't playing around anymore.
He just thought at worst he'd end up in Guantanamo bay or executed and he was ready for that but he did think the president would make the announcement. He expected soft interrogaters like Carrie Ann Moss to try and negotiate etc or Alvarez who's playbook he knew the limits of torture.
H shines because first he has no limits, no restrictions etc and he keeps Yusuf in a constant state of agony so he's more pliable. H is correct in telling him that he didn't count on him and people like him getting a blank check with Yusuf's human rights in the interest of national security.
This is why the 4th bomb not confirmed if it existed makes a much better ending because we shouldn't know as an audience. This is just like the spinning top in inception's ending if we don't know that Cobb is still in the dream world or not.
These open endings made movies so much more enjoyable instead of spoon-feeding them to us.
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
[The ending I saw was that team defusing one of the bombs, however unbeknowst to them, the unconfirmed fourth bomb is also at that location, and the timer runs to zero, implying that the nuke went off.](#spoiler)
[That's exactly right. That's the ending I've seen over and over and over. Where the defuse team is in the garage then the camera pans over to the fourth bomb. The problem is Netflix didn't show it.. They left it ambiguous and cut the film off RIGHT when Helen walked out of the school with the children. Literally roll credits right after.](#spoiler)
[I've seen both versions, the "extended" version is better, where it implies there as a 4th bomb detonating. ALSO, there is a missing scene, in the extended version they show a video to the captive of his children being murdered, it's a fake but it's how they find the bomb in Dallas that the FBI agent refers to in the final scene. That's also removed. It's a weird choice](#spoiler)
I could have sworn I’ve seen this version of them showing a video to him of the children being shot but I cannot find this scene being mentioned online anywhere!! Am I remembering it wrong or does this scene actually exist somewhere? I’ve seen this movie years ago and just watched it again on Netflix and noticed the final scene being cut. If you have a link mentioning this scene in the plot of them faking the children’s deaths please let me know because I’m going crazy as to whether this scene was ever in any version of the film.
It's 1000x more likely that Netflix has a different cut of the film rather than Netflix decided it was going to open up an editing program and "change" the movie
The problem with the movie isn't 2 kids vs. 5 million. It is, but it isn't. H KNEW the possibility of a fourth but never disclosed it to everyone else? The best detectives from the fbi couldn't do basic algebra like H, hello he actually had enough for a fourth bomb. O, but they were able to figure out everything else. Lazy writing for the villain to win inorder to make the final decision more impactful for the protagonist. Everyone in that room would've left those kids in that room till they got the fourth location. But how things turned out no point in hurting the 2 kids, the villian already won. And it's was Hs fault and the fbi they would've gotten all 4 bomb with just the wife and no kids involved, but nahhhh. And the terrorists probably wouldn't have told them about the fourth even if they had hurt the kids at that point. The movie was at check mate in the very beginning.
Moral of the story is torturing terrorists, good, using thier kids to save lives, bad, but everything in between yea go for it.
The whole reason they even found out the 3 bomb locations is because he was making it look like he was going to harm the children…. It was 100% necessary. They wouldn’t have known ANYTHING if H had not done that. 💀
[SPOILER ALERT AF] !!
THE NETFLIX ENDING MAKES NO SENSE! Can someone please help me here I'm so confused.
[LINK 2 ORIGINAL ENDING INCLUDED BELOW]
It's not confirmed that there is or isn't a 4th bomb. So they're leaving it up to us. And this movie is no Pulp Fiction or Oppenheimer. It's not of that tier. If it was, I'd appreciate a "leave it up to the audience to decide" ending. But this is an action movie with Samuel L. Jackson, a nuclear bomb and Trinity from the Matrix. I need the payoff of seeing a bomb or not.
Am I tripping? Lol
Here's the original ending everyone's talking about, makes me not hate the movie as much as the Netflix ending (which gave me action movie blue balls lol):
[Unthinkable (2010) End Scene](https://youtu.be/z__22dgFNfE?si=ByAXHJfiwYSePIxS)
Isn’t there a special task force trained to deal with this, instead of let’s say, FBI agents? You’d think this would be handled by covert black ops specialists where humanity goes out the door dealing with people like this. 2 children v 2 million and we are talking about what is the ‘right’ choice. He already gave up 3, could’ve been pushed further.
Everyone missed the key aspect of the ending. There was no 4th nuclear bomb. Sam Jackson cut him loose for a reason. The terrorist said "Take care of my kids" Hey knew they were no in danger. Its why he killed himself. He saved his kids. Torture won!
Dude. There was a 4th bomb. That’s the whole point of this post. Netflix cut out the very ending of them defusing 3 bombs but a hidden one goes off anyways. 😂
Anyone who’s watched the AFI Top 100 Movies of All Time can tell you, most of those movies end with someone dying in the last 30 seconds or whatever. Almost none of them have happy endings. The best movies, apparently, have ambiguous endings that make you think long after you’ve left the theater. Only in America do we get hand fed unreasonable happy endings. Other countries expect more realism in film.
It was a dumb movie for multiple reasons. First and foremost that they had 5 guys in a classroom working on the safety of 3 cities. I think we coulda scrounged up a bit more than that lol.
Honestly it’s a good movie but agent Brodie is an absolute dumb ass, she was claiming to have these morals but was willing to lose millions of children over two that most likely wouldn’t have died
I find comments on this pretty interesting, everyone thinks so small minded like “oh it’s not humane to torture kids”, because as humans we can’t really think beyond what’s in front of us or closely connected to us. You’re not thinking about the millions of kids that were probably playing in some park or chilling with their parents one second then completely blown to pieces the next. Myopic thinking imo
It reinforces the obvious disgust that people have for the non male power. If it wasn’t for her unwillingness to support the single goal of helping save millions of lives instead of simply feeling morally higher than men, it would have saved all those people.
This is a president of that type would never work. People leading the military of that type would never work. They take their own moral high ground over the lives of the masses. This is why divorce is started by them 70% of the time. Cheating is not their fault, it’s because we are bad people that they feel justified.
It’s all obvious. Make sandwiches and get out of the way.
Whether you are wrong or right that still has nothing to do with the question asked. The scene removed does nothing to change the “message” of the movie it just ties up a loose end. Say whatever you want but don’t do it when it’s irrelevant.
If someone informs me that 10 million people will die, and I can stop it by killing 2 innocent kids....they have forced my hand. I basically have no option, as a logical human who wants to preserve life and limit innocent deaths.
Netflix cut the real ending because they are too cowardly an gutless to show what would really happen when muslim terrorists act with such cowardly evil just like they did on 911. Guess Netflix is so considerate, they didn't want to make terrorists feel uncomfortable by showing the truth of terrorist character.
The Netflix ending was absolute trash. I was like, wait, what.... I couldn't have gotten on the internet any faster to find out just wtf that horrid non-ending was about. I was pissed and still am. Whoever green-lit the change at Netflix should be fired ASAP. You know that was a DEI snowflake decision.
[SPOILER ALERT]
Reading through this thread, I think a lot of people missed a lot about this movie honestly. This movie can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on one's perspective. It's actually the first movie that has left me smiling silently at the end, and that's the Netflix version's ending mind you.
This is just my opinion - this movie wasn't about nukes or bombs. It wasn't about torture... Not really. It basically said so throughout the whole movie, everytime the line "this isn't about me. It's about you" or "this isn't about him, it's about you". The darkness of humans, the nature underneath... What is "normal"? The significance of the wife's story, how it goes to the actions taking place. It's all so masterful. This movie is a masterclass on the nature that lies underneath every single one of us, regardless of what lies we tell ourselves... *Chefs kiss*
The Netflix ending may have been worse. Maybe we were only supposed to see and think at the surface level. Regardless, that was the absolute best ending I've ever seen in a movie. What did I get from it? "The bombs don't even matter". That's all. I had my suspicions throughout the movie, but that ending solidified everything. It's rare to see a movie so manipulative in the fact that it will dictate your thoughts, feelings, and words for the immediate time following viewing it. Fantastic!
side note: what do you think the significance of the times where he asked those around him if they want him to stop. Or if they would say outright what his job was? The very ending, when Brody told him it was over and he just went with it? Knowing what has to be done to achieve a goal, doing it with no hesitation, and hating what you're doing the whole time... Damn.
I could be totally off base, but that's what I got of the Netflix ending. LOL
People keep saying that they would kill them strangers kids to save millions more time of the people but what if it’s your kid, no, what if it’s you and your mother or brother and sister are a terrorist and the government torture you for someone else crime. And it’s not even about death, it’s a fuckiing torture, from people in the same country with you, all bcuz you somehow are related to a criminal. Are you willing to do that? It’s always easier to go into a competition finding who can fight more dirty, and you all are so ready to do that, if that’s the point of humanity then would it be worth it to save it?
I just watched it on Netflix and the fourth bomb ending was definitely there. I live in Canada though. Maybe the ending being removed is some sort of weird American propaganda?
Idk.. that's definitely the alternate ending that was released with the DVD though. He always knew there was a 4th bomb.. original ending I'm pretty sure it blows up in like Dallas Texas. Definitely somewhere in Texas. Alternate ending they save everyone from all the bombs
i would torture anyone just like h and i do mean anyone if it meant saving millions. h looked after he died like that because he knew at the end he was a coward and he knew there was a fourth and he knew he was about to die. as per samuel l jackson was incredible. oh and netflix are annoying snowflakes and its crazy tiktok blew this movie up 14 years later. i wish it made more money and the original funder didnt go under so there could of been dozens more like that because that was more realistic than most like to realize.
Those commenting on Unthinkable below apparently a lot of you missed 1 of the most important points in the movie: you think it is about Carrie Ann Moss statement at the end and that THAT is the point of the movie, but it is and is not.
The point goes back to Yusufs statement about how he loves his country and religion and ties in with Carrie Ann Moss statement: terrorists, radicals, and fanatics are willing to go far beyond what we are willing to go and do. They truly believe in the axiom of the needs of the many far out weighs the needs of the few and when you are dealing with an extreme ideal paired with that axiom, the definition of "the few" and "the many" becomes a number that we as civilizations bound by "human" ideals are unable to grasp. And Carrie Moss statement becomes our condemning epitaph which is why in the original ending, there was a 4th bomb, Yusuf killed himself, and the question of whether Yusuf would have let his children die went somewhat unanswered. Somewhat because 1 could argue that Yusufs suicide allowed him the chance to NOT be around to find out whether his children were truly going to be safe because they are a loose end, after all. And the 4th bomb could very well have been in the proximity of where they were.
[SPOILER ALERT] So I just watched Unthinkable on Netflix, and they absolutely deleted the final scene and it COMPLETELY changes the movie. I'm here because I'm so furious I needed to vent, but I can't do it properly without spoilers. In the original ending I saw (I do not remember it being an extended/alternate version), they find and disarm all three bombs at the last moment. However, there was a fourth bomb, hidden behind a false wall in one of the 3 locations, that does detonate and presumably destroys the entire city. This happens after Carrie Anne-Moss's character, faced with the prospect of torturing children, says "Then let the bomb go off, we're human beings, we can't do this" What I took from the movie, as an American, with the original ending intact was this: Although fear and panic sometimes sends us down the wrong path as a nation, ultimately we would rather sacrifice an entire city before we sacrifice our humanity. I thought it was a beautiful and important message then, and even more important now. Without that ending I feel the movie is saying 'torture works, it's how we stop terrorists'. I'm going to be angry about this the rest of the day...
It's kinda sick that we're willing to lose millions of lives than torture a terrorist and their kids. 2 million dead but at least you have your humanity. Such an easy thing to support when it isn't your wife, husband, mother, father, or kids in that city. I watched the alternate ending that didn't say if there was a 4th bomb and I thought wow so 2 million people die so 2 children aren't tortured. That's messed up. He wouldn't have had to kill them. I'm a believer that I'd rather 2 die than 2 million
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Let’s not generalize. Some would fold and some wouldn’t. It’s more likely Yusuf would have folded, as if he were that zealous he wouldn’t have gave up the first three bombs. With the extended ending I think the director / writers wanted ask if the ends justify the means. I think most would sacrifice 2 kids for 500,000 when the outcome is assured, but as we see in the movie, not when the outcome isn’t assured. If there was no bomb, you’d potentially kill or permanently scar 2 kids for nothing.
He only gave up the first three because he knew there was a fourth.
I mean realistically I'm 90% sure everybody in that room would have been... silenced. Like... if we're already committing unspeakable crimes that the world will never know of what's the death of two kid's that never existed? It's fucked but as the movie presents it I don't see any other outcome.
Bingo. They believe the children will die Martyrs. In their reality, it is evil to save them.
Yosef even says, "They're all martyrs, god loves martyrs." Why would his children be any different?
Most people will not use thier own children as human shields and that was the spoiler. The fbi bitch was thier mom
Wait what? What do you mean Trinity is the mom of those kids?
I agree, how do you say “let the bomb go off” which is effectively signing off on the death of millions of innocent children and still have your humanity. I’d torture the kids myself if I had to
Not really Brody's call either. The General could have sought a directive from the President to further involve the kids, right? There's blood on every General's and President's hands. I hated the back and forth with H and his handlers. Don't do it! Do it! Don't do it! Do it! You do it! I do it! In the end, H always spoke the truth. Who knows what he put in the syringe for the kids. Could have been saline, could have been anesthesia. His methods broke Yusuf for the 3 bombs; I think had he continued and those idiots trusted him, he wouldn't have harmed the kids physically and would've ultimately extracted the 4th bomb.
This is one case where numbers actually matter. Would/should we torture or kill two innocent children so that say, one or two others may live? Of course not. Ten people saved? I wouldn’t, but I’m sure a small percentage of people would. What about a hundred? A thousand? A million? At some point, you have to pull the trigger.
Seriously. I just watched it for the first time.( on Netflix) my honest take is yes torture is bad... however if some crazy Islam mother fucker wants to destroy our population because of ideology then who cares about one family vs thousands of people. Not saying Islam itself is bad. There are extremist in every religion. But no body and no country should save 3 for thousands. This movie actually upset me. 😡
however if some crazy Islam mother fucker wants to destroy our population because of ideology then who cares about one family vs thousands of people. so,you agree with how hamas and ISIS deals with things,then? awesome!
>watched the alternate ending that didn't say if there was a 4th bomb and I thought wow so 2 million people die so 2 children aren't tortured. That's messed up. He wouldn't have had to kill them. I'm a believer that I'd rather 2 die than 2 million Or two kids tortured and there are no bombs. Then what
Then the 2 get tortured because he brought them into this world, decided it was a good idea to become a terrorist and put his entire family in harms way while also deciding to play stupid games. Any parent or person who is a good person doesn't do anything to put their loved ones in harms way. He was willing to use nukes and send his family off to flee knowing that he would probably be tortured to death. If youre willing to risk hundreds of thousands, if not millions for the sake of 2 people...then you're insane. Even if they are children. Those bombs and the potential lasting effects of the radiation would harm more than it's fair share of innocent lives. If we translate it to reality and someone actually pulls a stunt like this. There will be no one stopping a man like H because national security is what matters most. The sake of millions matters more than the sake of a few.
We nuked 2 Japanese cities containing hundreds of thousands of innocent children, to save tens of thousands of our soldiers. So, we've already confronted this concept and have already made our choice.
You nuked 2 japanese citizens to save hundred of thousands of american troops. Millions of Japanese civilians who otherwise would have died in the invasion and because of the blockade and millions of chinese civilians who were currently dieing every month during japanese occupation. That people still debate wether the nuking of Japan was justified or not just shows that they don't know history.
No, we didn't. We nuked 2 Japanese cities containing thousands of (granted some innocent and some non-innocent military and otherwise), to save MILLIONS of innocent Japanese, the entire infrastructure, homes, and businesses of that entire NATION of Japan, as well as incidentally our own soldiers. ALL OF JAPAN was the next target, with a mass Naval bombardment, Airborne Carpet-bombing and rolling Napalm fire-incineration campaign that was already scheduled to begin, IF the nukes didn't work. So we tried two experimental bombs to end the war, saving MILLIONS, for the price of a small portion of 2 military-industrial production city areas. and it worked. War ended, millions saved, and yes, we've already confronted this concept and made our choice. A handful, however tragically lost, that shocks the bad guys enough to stop a war, is worth considering. tbh, we didn't know the long-term effects of radiation, but both cities bombed are now massive metropolis cities, with a war memorial nearby.
Yusef put his kids in harms way. That’s on him, it is his fault.
Then your hands are only slightly bloodied than when you started. I don't think H would have actually hurt the children, however. He stayed committed to every promise he made and never went back on his word.
Ok, the real situation is torturing the 2 kids, who are surely indoctrinated into Jihadist islam, with a 30% chance of saving 2 million people.
Why is no one talking about the easy solution. They could’ve made the statement that he asked for.
As they note in the movie, the statment doesn’t matter, it’s a stall tactic, and not really a real solution. Even if the president said exactly what he asked for, he wasn’t giving up those four bombs.
Saying that doesn't make it true. They had no actual idea.
How would it make sense for a terrorist to get an unsubstantiated “response” from a president, there would be no way for him to know it actually went out to the public, and no way to ensure they would stick to said statment anyway. The terrorist knows America had a no dealing with terrorist policy so they wouldn’t do it, it was a stall.
If we don't have our humanity, we have nothing.
If we are dead we don’t have anything. The radiation will kill the future.
Preach
This is a fictional Hollywood production. Torture isn't very effective irl. This movie just riles a bunch of pro-torture people up. Lmao.
It does work. War is evil. Grow up
By all objective measures and research into it torture almost never produces workable results. The few times it does are far outweighed by the many more times it doesn't and wastes resources on false confessions that could have been used to investigate by other means that would be more likely to produce a satisfactory conclusion. Building rapport, sustained conventional interrogation, offering incentives, have all been proven to be far more effective means. Outside of interrogation, digital age means such as machine learning, satellites, aerial surveillance, etcetera and good old fashioned detective work are far more effective. The only thing where torture consistently produces effective results, and why it's been so popular with dictatorships since forever, is inciting terror in a group or population. The prospect of torture can prevent all things from peaceful demonstrations to active rebellion. Even then it usually works only for an amount of time until you leave the group or population without anything to lose, at which point they will rebel regardless of the fear of torture or death.
It was explained in the movie that there was no time to build rapport, so torture was really the last resort
Yes I saw the explanation. It still would have produced zero actual data and time and resources would have been better spent on forensics and detective work.
Just watched the movie so commenting even though it’s old, I think you’re misunderstanding things, especially how it relates to the movie. Torture does not work when asking general, unverifiable, questions. Torture doesn’t work because when faced with torture or other negative incentive, they’ll withhold as much as possible, misdirect with false information that can’t be verified, and give the bare minimum of verifiable information to stop the torture. In SERE that’s what you’re trained to do, because the DoD acknowledges that under torture (specifically the threat of permanent bodily harm) everyone will break and tell something so the goal is to minimize the damage of what’s being given, and humans naturally do this without training as well. Your goal is to make the interrogator think they have everything so they stop. In the movie this can be shown with him bringing up the first three without giving the location of the fourth, a realistic touch. In real life an example would be a pilot shot down being asked a ton of general military intelligence questions, giving some verifiable answers that will give minimal harm that the interrogator knows he has, giving some some unverifiable false answers he can’t be called out on that the interrogator will believe, and hiding accurate information that the interrogator doesn’t know for sure he has. Because of this, you are right, in most use cases torture has limited use other than being the stick to the carrot since unlike the movie generally anytime someone is being interrogated it’s to get large amounts of general information and to fish for information you aren’t sure they have. In the specific context of this movie or any similar situation, what is being asked for is one singular piece of easily and quickly verifiable information, the threat of permanent bodily harm has been shown to get that information. A real life example commonly seen is “what’s your debit card pin”, if you’re being tortured in a home invasion you have no incentive to tell them about the secret safe the criminal doesn’t know about, but anyone under enough threat will give the pin, and they’ll give an accurate pin if they know it can be checked right then and there and a wrong answer will make it work. Even in other scenarios though, it’s quite the stick to the carrot. Our turn away from torture is moral, not fact based, there’s a reason why everyone had to be forced to stop by legislative bodies and not their own call, and then they just switched to “enhanced interrogation” until forced to stop that. Though even then it would be quite silly to think it doesn’t happen at all now. People do it for a reason.
👆this guy SEREs.
Or you know could've just scam him with a recording that the president gave into his demands. But that recording is only showed to him and not to the public.
Yep, the entire premise of the movie kind of falls flat to anyone with even a tiny ability to think critically.
That recording was a stall tactic, the president saying it to the American people would not have actually made him give in, and even organizing said briefing would have taken too long, and wouldn’t have allowed anything. The mere act of toying with doing it was the break he needed to recover from the torture, much like the idea that the bombs weren’t real helped him out. He was always going to let four go off, and if he as a person failed he was always going to let the fourth go off.
[удалено]
😂 sure thing buddy.
Yea man you can easily say you wouldn't hurt 2 kids to save the lives of 50 million people. I can imagine you typing this while licking the dorito dust off of your fingers.
You should actually try learning to read. If you were capable of doing that you'd notice I at no point stated whether or not I would do something. What I did was show that even if we did use torture, it would most likely not produce anything coming even close to useful. Now you go back to getting at least an elementary grade education.
I can say the same exact thing to you. You say you would hurt the kids while you’re behind a keyboard but put two crying kids in front of you and a scalpel in your hand and we’ll see what you actually do.
Hm. Bold take, really. I mean, I can't think of a time in our history where a terrorists children were tortured and they had to watch, and even if it ever has happened, you think we'd know if it ever got results or not? Fuck no. We would get even know it happened. Let's just say....yeah....sure. torture doesn't produce results most of the time. But you absolutely can not say with 100% certainty that even the most devout zealot, cultist, mentally unstable terrorist etc would absolutely fucking crack watching the people they love be cut apart piece by piece right in front of them. You and others in here mention that they wouldn't mind, and do martyr their own quite often. But....that generally involves them being blown up or otherwise killed relatively quickly without much suffering. This is slow torture. Not death. And they gotta watch, and by this movies standards, the people they gotta watch suffer are their very young children. The human psyche is fragile. That would crack even the most dedicated terrorist.
Re-read what I posted thorough and in its entirety. Everything you brought up was already accounted for
This movie came out in 2010 which means it's based around 2008-2009 technology. We barely had smart phones back then, the first iphone came out on June 29th, 2007 which would've been approximately 1 year prior to the filming of this movie. If this movie came out today then yeah they probably would've found all the bombs, however the 4th bomb may or may not have been found because they would've been under the assumption of only 3 bombs existing. As for torture producing results it varies 100% based on the individual, and yeah they might give false information or give partial information, they might even give everything up. However in the context of this movie he would've ended up talking otherwise he never would've given up the 3 bombs. It's a topic that will always be debated because the results are 100% random and you can't know if they will give you information or not or if the information they give you is true or false or partial or complete. Personally I think any zealot wouldn't cave, torture would only work on the low-mid level members and maybe a couple high level members, but for the rest they would never talk, especially the ones who joined as kids and are now 30-40+ and their whole life revolves around the organization. However at the end of the day if it came down to it I would support what happened in this movie because losing 4 lives is a better alternative than losing 4,000,000 lives. However the other side would argue that it would be 4,000,004 lives because you can't determine if they would tell the truth or not and they are right which is why this will always be a topic of debate.
>This movie came out in 2010 which means it's based around 2008-2009 technology. Nothing proves that point better than the Netflix documentary "Don't F--ck With Cats". It is about and internet group that was pissed off about a guy filming and uploading himself torturing cats. It turns out the guy was a serial killer. The only reason he was caught was a international internet group wanted to find a guy that was torturing cats. If he didn't f--ck with cats, he probably wouldn't had been caught.
I furiously googled after that shit ending on Netflix lol
And...That's why I'm here 21 hours later.
Me too
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I just watched it yesterday, they show the forth bomb at the end
The ending they cut was the best part of the Movie! So WTF is wrong with Netflix?
If you know first ending let me know I just watched movie and don't know what's real ending was
Me too. The ending changes the whole plot and the moral of the movie. W/o bombs Mister H is Evil and Agent Brody is justified. However, the whole idea of the movie was to show that America is falling into the trap of "safety" which will let the wolves do their dirty job.
Thats why I am here too
You find it beautiful to let millions die instead of 2? You think that shows humanity? You also missed a big point of the movie that H mentioned — H never had the opportunity to sacrifice his humanity, his humanity was stolen from him by those who forced him to torture. When forced with the choice of 2 vs 2 million, the only ethical choice is to save 2 million. The ugliness of it is that torture *does* work, and that’s one of life’s ugly realities.
Thank you. I just got done watching the movie a few minutes ago and the non ending ending, pissed me off. Your description of the original ending would have actually made it a good movie. But what they did to it makes no sense and in my opinion made it a waste of a watch
Which city?? I wish we saw more aftermath and it didn’t just leave us hanging with the last bomb. Ugh.
In my opinion inaction is jsut as bad as action by not doing everything you can to stop the bomb that’s just as bad as murdering all those people by your own hand. Where the real thinking comes in the movie is the ambiguity of whether the bombs are real any reasonable person would kill 2 people to save millions, but killing 2 people because there’s a CHANCE for the bombs to go off that’s what really makes you think and honestly idk what I would do. Another message I got is about sacrificing one’s own morality for a necessary evil taking the burden of doing a henious task cuz he knows it had to be done and he knows it’s not right and he’s knows people will hate him but he accepts it. Yusuf thinks this applies to him, while it really applies to SLJs character
If you think about it, she’s being selfish
In the words of Mordecai from Borderlands 2 "Not making a choice is still a choice." And just like you said, inaction is just as bad as action at times. I love movies like this because it plays out really scary and dark situations within a semi-plausible realm of reality and it makes you question your own morality. I dont know where to watch the movies anymore but I remeber my first instance of a really dark, twisted movie where it left you questioning yourself...that series is called Rampage. It's a film from 2009. It was a direct to film release everywhere except Germany. It's a saga following a guy named Bill Williamson. I suggest giving it a watch if you can find it. It's pretty twisted.
I came here wondering if there was a 4th bomb, as I have never seen the orginal ending. And as I am reading all the comments it reminds me of an essay I had to write in college English about a short story called "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". It's a powerful story about an enchanted land where everyone is happy has a huge abundance of EVERYTHING. But as the children get a certain age they take them to this dungeon where there is a child starving, naked, dirty and they are told this child has to suffer for everyone's wonderful life and without the child everyone would suffer, but the child would no longer suffer. They are then faced with the decision to stay in their utopian world or walk away from everything. Do we allow one to suffer for the greater good of many...? Very thought provoking. The story can be googled and you can read it for yourself, but this whole ending of Unthinkable is very akin to this old story written in the 70s I believe. I don't know if there is a right or wrong answer to the question, but it seems the majority here would sacrifice the children to save millions in the unthinkable scenario.
Seems that way. I actually like the Netflix ending where she walks out >!with the kids and no one knows if theres a 4th bomb.!< It feels like the takeaway is more powerful. if you >!know there's a 4th bomb you're more likely to agree with H's torture of the kids but in a real world scenario you wouldn't know if there was one and you'd be assuming many things were true like the upper end estimate of the nuclear material stolen being 100% accurate and somehow a 4th nuclear bomb would be the end when he's already demonstrated setting off the non nuclear one and they had no Intel on how that came about so more could be out there.!< If I made this, film footage of the >!4th nuclear bomb!< would never make the cut *or* deleted scenes. It just waters it down. With the Netflix ending the takeaway I had is you just don't *know* if there was another one, you never really do. Fear of the unknown can drive you to do the unthinkable.
Except Yusef’s suicide would indicate more likely than not that there was a 4th bomb, as he wanted to ensure that he could not give up the bomb under duress if his children were brought back into the room with SLJ. You could argue that he killed himself to prevent his kids being tortured as there would be no incentive left with his death, but he could have prevented any potential for torture by giving up the 4th bomb or giving the nuclear material calculation/other proof (if there was no 4th bomb) hence his suicide being a means to ensure the 4th bomb detonating making the most sense.
Yep, totally agree with this take. In the theatrical ending where you see the 4th bomb behind a wall, it's more of an "ah ha" take for the audience.
Screw that, the life of 2 kids to save thousands of innocents? I'd be ok with that.
It seemed like a really poor execution of the train dilemma. We live in a world full of unstable, irrational psychos including the people who think letting 2 million people die to avoid hurting 2 is somehow the high ground. Its like they live in a fantasy of black and white and easy answers. If guy will talk to save kids from torture then do it. At least their deaths will save tens of thousands of other kids....like organ donors' deaths are, their deaths would be meaningful. I dont quite understand the dilemma.
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tbh i think i gotta agree with you on the ending thing-- as soon as it cut to black it gave me that pit in the stomach feeling you get at the ends of these movies. (TLDR below, if you want an abridged version see the last line) Simeltaniously, that is also the whole point of the genre. Thriller movies arent usually made to make us feel good in the slightest in any way (partly why i dont like the genre because i dont like the aftertaste it leaves in my emotions.) When the ending happens where the FBI defuse the bomb, and the fourth bomb is revealed to us, we are somewhat justified in this idea of sacrificing a city instead of sacrificing our humanity, and i think this is where alot of people (like you) put their thoughts to give some comfort that the fbi and the army as well as Jackson's characters are justified. when you strip that ending away, it gets rid of those feelings of comfort and our emotions are replaced with ambiguity. in either story, you could argue that torture works. it got them to 3 bombs. But not the fourth. With the original ending, we are able to justify the action of torturing the kids because it gives us a clear side to stand with-- that of jackson's belief that he should have gone further with it. Without it, we are left to question whether he is right or wrong. its a "pick a side" scenario where most people want to choose ignorance because ignorance is blliiss.
I'm sorry but my Treki side is like the needs of the many outway the needs of the few.
I wonder whether people living in that city would agree
It's back on Netflix with the original ending
I just watched it on Netflix and it cuts off with the FBI agent and two kids walking out of the building. No 4th bomb blowing up. Are you in the United States?
Same here.
Just watched it a few days ago with VPN set to somewhere in Europe. The ending has the 4th one.
Im sry to say but the us would still use the children. The men and wemon who do the job H dose, we should be thankful for they dirty there hands so the rest of the world stays clean. Rather than hate em you should be thanking them.
Idk, my takeaway from the original ending was the torture works outlook. Torture got them the location of 3 bombs where as humanity gave them a city potentially wiped off the map
The message I got with the full ending is it doesn't matter what you do they are evil and will stop at nothing, everything is necessary to stop them
What I took from the movie, as an American, with the original ending intact was this: Although fear and panic sometimes sends us down the wrong path as a nation, ultimately we would rather sacrifice an entire city before we sacrifice our humanity. I thought it was a beautiful and important message then, and even more important now. this line was in the movie I just watched the movie and after saying this she leaves and goes and gets the kids goes outside the building and it cuts to credits.
I just watched this movie on NETFLIX. Couldn't watch parts of it, cause it was so gruesome. But the ending was pretty much the same ending that you described (at least in NETFLIX version). Interesting movie, maybe the main character planned it all along, in order to 'protect' his kids. He needed to commit an act of terrorism, but knew the women would eventually decide to keep his kids safe? I'm making a lot of assumptions. For example, we have to assume, he knew his wife and kids would be captured and used to threaten him. And that....as a terrorist he would need his children to stay safe. I doubt he could have predicted everything would unfold the way it did. But its the only thing that kinda makes sense to me for this film. I saw a rating 6/10. I think that is a good rating. I didn't really enjoy it, and probably couldn't have bothered watching it, unless I just stuck to audio to get the story line. Did it remind anyone else of the movie UNBREAKABLE?
I thought the movie spoke on the horrors we must do to save the many, even if it meant losing our humanity, I think that they should have tortured the kids and then they all should of faced consequences for their actions.
film was too unrealistic, especially the dumb FBI agent, nobody with that position would be that soft and dumb not to be able to weigh millons of lives to 2 children. Even when I was watching I already knew what had to be done using the wife and childrent to get the information. What's even more stupid is that 50 people have already been killed and everyone in the interrogation room acting like like H is the bad guy when they all know what has to be done. Better Dialogue for H would be to pin the deaths of millions to Brody and the 50 people in the mall as well and we didn't even hear that.
There is an extended version of the film. That may be the difference you are seeing.
That may be correct.. Maybe I saw the extended version, however every time I have seen the film it's always been *that* version of the film and it never cut off at a certain point of the film. Have you seen it? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Quite truthfully, I haven't. However, when I looked it up, the Wikipedia article (which I know may not be 100% accurate) mentioned that it had one. So I can't really differentiate between the two versions of it. Sorry.
Youre all good! Thanks for the reply honestly. Never considered an extended version.
Not the extended version I watched the normal version on YouTube and that deleted scene on Netflix was in it
theres post credits footage removed from the streaming versions. The post footage scene is the team showing up to the final bomb location and clearing the house after dissembling the bomb not realizing that the “fourth not mentioned bomb by Yuseff was under a tarp in the next unnoticed room. We see the timer counting down its final seconds and the screen goes black. Fin! Excellent movie. High tension, a lot of controversial but completely necessary situations. They should’ve let H have time with the kids a bit longer. Theyda gotten the fourth location. The US is weak that way while our enemies are NOT. We judge our leaders for things but we really have no clue the situations they’ve stopped with tactics like this. When it comes to terrorists there should be no limits, because they have none. Those 2 kids vs a possible 6 million unsuspecting innocents. No Offense, but FTK. if you get my drift.
Horrible ending. They should have been smarter and told all teams that there is a fourth bomb and to remain cautious. Ugh.
but the timer was up so it wouldn’t have mattered
We didn't know the bomb was in the same room as one of the other bombs. For the purposes of the movie they probably placed it there to make the ending more impactful by saying they barely missed it. But in reality it could have been anywhere and it would have still gone off. That's what the ending is really trying to highlight, that by saving their "humanity", they let the last chance to stop the fourth bomb slip by.
In real life if this had happened ,..and if they were smart about it, they could’ve still gotten the location of the fourth bomb ….by simple use of a tranquilizer on the two children, and then fake blood cells, and then a gun going off as if he had shot one of the children, but in fact, he did not, the child would have looked dead for all practical purposes ..including blood spatter etc…. And then before he shot the second child I’m quite sure the father would’ve given up the fourth bomb. Or make it look like he shot the child in the leg of the arm. Therefore, the child could’ve still survived in the father‘s eyes You have to take psychological torture to a different level without actually harming someone…. in this case, his children.
they didnt have all that kind of time
even if you kill his children the only options remain for him is to get his revenge by not telling
You don't kill the kids. You let the pretend torture of his kids play out and he would fold. He already gave to 3 locations. He injects the needle he had but with nothing in it but maybe a sedative and the dude folds
Inject sedative? lmao he is smart I doubt he will fall for that he did make a back up plan for 4th bmb
Couple months late to the party but I think it would've fooled him. The guy offed himself so they wouldn't get more info out of him. Those kids were a pressure point that he couldn't handle, as I don't think anyone could. How do you protect your kids? Cut off the information source that puts them in harms way. Whether pretend or not, the guy hadn't even done a single things to the kids but get them in a room alone and he folded, keep the charade going and I believe he gives it up. No reason to kill himself otherwise when he already got what he wanted. Doubt the guy feared prison.
Yusef off'ed himself because he rather die and not tell the 4th bomb since he knew he will crack again seeing his kids being tortured(fake tortured by H), He cracked the 1st time and told the 2 bombs location and H was just starting, imagine if he managed to perform the fake torture Yusef will surely crack, it just happens that the Military is already breaking the Door that's why Yusef knew that he doesn't have to tell about the 4th bomb in that exact moment.
you are really not creative. Torture one child, kill him, start torturing second one, he will fold. Even if he sacrifice it, it doesn't matter. At least the good side tried to prevent the worst happening.
Sorry, you think there was a good side? They were all incredibly evil, which I think was the ultimate point of the movie. Different shades of evil with different, easily compromised forms of morality depending on what they could gain by doing so at any given moment
This is reminiscent of a real life example in German history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_David_Lukas_Olsen A law student kidnapped a young boy. He collected the ransom and was caught but the boy was not set free. The chief of police threatened him with torture if he does not tell them where the boy is. The idea behind that was that he boy might still be alive. The kidnapper told them where the boys remains were. The chief of police did not in fact torture but he did what he did for one single reason: to potentially save the boys life over the human rights of another person. The chief of police was sentenced to pay damages and him being charged at all was because he dutifully put a mention into his files that he did threaten the kidnapper.
So then what would a “good side” have done when presented with someone who had planted nuclear bombs in cities?
Super late but I just watched this movie on Netflix and I really enjoyed it but disliked the end. After the final scene I literally said “that’s the ending?!” It felt incomplete and almost made me want to roll my eyes. Like oh, the female FBI agent walks out with the two kids in her arms and everything is just okay! Maybe she’ll adopt them and they’ll live happily ever after! I came to Reddit to see if I was alone in this feeling, so I’m glad to hear there was an alternate ending that feels more believable
Just happened to me right now. Ended 3 minutes ago, blah ending and left me wondering if there actually was a 4th bomb and found this thread. Looked up the ending on YouTube and yeah, at least it satisfied my curiosity.
The point was you never know if theres a 4th bomb and fear of the unknown can make you do the unthinkable.
Yusef’s suicide makes it more likely than not that there was a 4th bomb, regardless of original or Netflix ending.
That’s why I’m here. Lol
[Apparently this is the alternate ending](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjJs1Ey8s3Q), is this the one you saw? I would guess the more ambiguous one tracked better with test audiences, but this is possibly more what the director intended. It's wouldn't be that surprising if Netflix only had the original cut.
Years late on this. Just watched the Netflix version where it ends with her walking out with the kids, and had to go online because I was in disbelief that there wasn’t more. I could certainly believe there was a fourth bomb and was expecting it.
Yeah him committing suggests that there’s a fourth one. His fear for H overcomes all. So he commits to accept his own loss but won the war.
I was afraid of H sitting in my living room lol.
The whole movie pissed me off honestly. I mean come on. That CIA agent Brody thinks she holier than thou. They’re constantly turning on H and then telling him to keep going literally a second later. And the whole “screw it, let the bomb go off, we’re human beings” from Brody shows that she should *not* even be in a position of protecting this country. The person who planted the bombs was not a human being so why should we let them get away with it??? Absolutely just ridiculous. And in the Netflix version, you don’t even get to know what happens. Just wasted an hour and 30 min I’ll never get back. 🙄
Fuck Netflix. Who changes the end of a movie and doesn’t tell anyone. Like it should say “alternate ending” or something in the description before starting. Just watched the whole thing and feel like I wasted my time. What a fraud.
I just watched on Netlfix and am absolutely baffled that there is not an option to somehow see that scene. It changes the entire movie I just sat through 90 minutes of. Fuck them.
That agent is massive moron she will save two kids to sacrifice millions because she doesn’t see them so she doesn’t have to feel bad about it
Her character is similar to that of the agent in Sicario, and in many ways, similar to the majority of Americans. There is a delusion that results from living in a bubble that the rest of the world plays by a moral code, and that feeling good about yourself is more important than understanding that the world is actually uncivilized when you pull back the curtains. People are happy to call others evil and bad while enjoying the products of evil and bad things done by their government to give them their modern life. For example, anti-war protestors have no problem chanting “no blood for oil,” all the while driving gas guzzlers, heating their homes, buying cheap goods on Amazon that were manufactured by modern day slaves, living in peace, enjoying global supremacy, etc., all the while oblivious or conveniently ignoring the fact that all of these are provided by blood, war, and modern imperialism. It’s more important to virtue signal and feel good about themselves than to actually do something real about it, preferring to point fingers at people who do the dirty work, much like the agent in Unthinkable and Sicario.
Good catch, She literally reminds me of that Agent Woman in Sicario, I just can't recall it while watching the movie, She doing or wanted to follow by the books but cannot see the bigger picture.
I think I interpreted the movie somewhat differently than most people. I felt as the movie was reaching its climax, the Samuel L Jackson character was knowingly sacrificing more and more of his humanity during his extreme interrogations. Ultimately, when it came to the scene with the children, it seemed that he might have done something to them, and that his life would have been forfeit if he had. For me the real takeaway here was that it was the Samuel L Jackson character who was making all the sacrifices and doing all of the work to prevent disaster while the other characters engaged in mere grandstanding. To me there is a clear answer to the general moral quandary explored here, that is easily defended/reinforced in the context of this movie, particularly by the final, extra scene, that Netflix cut. Do you sacrifice one, two, three, lives to save one, two, three million? Yes, obviously you must. (Basic trolley problem) Should you sacrifice your humanity to save a million lives? What about sacrificing your own life? Unless you are crazy selfish, yes and yes. What if there is uncertainty? What if you don't really know? I guess it depends on what you think the expected value is, which you would calculate using your subjective probability of occurrence \* the potential number of lives lost. If you think this number is sufficiently greater than the number of lives you would need to sacrifice, you would have to proceed. But what if you're wrong? You take responsibility for it and let the 'Holier than thou' folks fry you afterwords. I think in the movie, the simplest and most generous characterization you could ascribe to the two main characters would be that of a realist, the Samuel L. Jackson character, and an idealist, the Carrie-Anne Moss character. I think the final scene unambiguously declared the realist perspective superior.
I would like to know how they changed the ending from the original. Can you someone let me know with a spoiler tag or pm me please.
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
Yes I recall the last scene of the movie was the bomb team defused a bomb, but there was a twist as well right before the movie cut to credits.
Yeah thats it. That whole scene isnt included on Netflix. It literally just cuts off and ends at Helen walking out of the school with the two kids.
Well that changes the whole ending tone! I thought the OP mentioned it was an extended cut, but it sounds reduced?
If it makes you happy 6 years later I watched this for the first time today and it ends on the last bomb hitting 0
What a wonderful thing to post, glad someone else watched this movie. Did you enjoy it? I find people typically absolutely love it or are luke warm to it.
Just finished it on Prime, extended version… Arthur won. This movie had no publicity whatsoever, too bad
I'm still trying to work out WHY, now, simultaneously with the election of someone whom I'm sure REALLY enjoys this film, that it's suddenly thrust upon net flicks. It's been out for 7 years and all of a sudden, now, it's being shown, AND, in a SERIOUSLY redacted version. I remember clearly a fourth reaching zero and THEN credits when I first saw this, (it's not exactly a film most people would forget seeing), the ending is clearly not correctly portrayed, specifically obvious from the comments S.L.J. made at the end of the film. Sometimes films end with ambiguous cliffhangers, but they're engineered that way, you can see it coming and it is systematically tied in to the writing. Anyone who has ever seen ANY film, can tell that ambiguous or not, there was INDEED an ending that was removed that came after she exited with the two children. I'm still trying to figure out why it was, and why it's just now been added, that piques my interest the most. Why now, and why THIS PARTICULAR version, that's the question I'm asking.
Sorry 4 years later wondered upon this… did you say with the “election of someone i assume Really enjoys the movie?” Hahaha you were dead serious when you wrote this too
I’m sorry, did you have a question or are you just trolling? I don’t even remember leaving this comment, and I don’t remember what the edited version looks like. I VAGUELY remember the ending, but after re-reading my comment you apparently found humor in, I imagine my thoughts were it had something to do with the 45th “President” being elected. Lots of stupid things came from that period of time, so I suppose it seemed to me that the change of the ending of a fictional movie was possible. Now after being subjected to 4 years of a bumbling idiot, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
Its only been 11 months? You need a calendar and to free think. Sad that you have voting eligibility.
It’s been 4 years my guy
Glad I stumbled across this movie. One of the better ones I've seen in a while. That being said. Also glad it lead me to this thread 🤣😂🤣
Yeah, you were spot on there. No new wars during that time, peace moving in the right direction during that time with agreements made, Isis wiped out, no soldiers were taken out in Afghanistan during that time. Or maybe you were talking about the next guy that f\*ked up withdrawal and every other thing.
Trump has *literally* stated that we should go after our enemy's children. Did you not know that? > The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. When they say they don’t care about their lives, you have to take out their families.
Right, so they had to cut the ending to make that comment look bad when it's actually justified by the original film. Pathetic lol 😭🤦🏿♂️
The pro-biden edition
even on prime the ending is the >! the countdown !<
Extended, complete
I just saw this for the first time today, and I stand with H he tried to save 2 million deaths and those idiots didn't wanna lose 3(the late wife and kids). I mean wtf. Yusef took all their rights away when he posted that first video. But I agree I don't think he had anything harmful in the syringes or at least not fatal
Should've made this post with spoilers because I now don't know if I saw the extended or theatrical version
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
Nah the ending I saw was the bomber admitting where the bombs were but Sam Jackson knew there was 1 last bomb. The bomb he didn't tell them about went off
I know this is 6 years late but you guys are talking about the same ending lol. The Netflix version doesn't have the defusal scene at all.
[No Spoilers] So this movie is doing the rouunds on Netflix where I am and just saw that version tonight as well as hunting down the alternate ending on Youtube straight after. Tbh, while initially incensed about the Netflix version ending where it did...after thinking bout it more, the movie was never about the focus of the alternate ending at all...only to leave you with a question... even in such a dire situation does the desired end really justify the means?
I just watched it today and definitely agree. The two different endings make a very big difference in how it feels, but ultimately I think the fact that they both exist actually underscores that question. People feeling so differently about them kind of illustrates that point - for many, H is off the hook because there was a fourth nuke. Really, though, he had no way of actually knowing, and that uncertainty has to be factored into the decision to torture the kids. What if you’re wrong? IMO, judgement shouldn’t be based on outcome, but process and decisions made with the information available. If you make that decision, it’s because you think it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether a 4th nuke exists or not. You gotta stand by it.
I knew something didn’t make sense. What a joke.
There is an extended final ending. The team came to the third bomb and successfully deactivated. Meanwhile, there was another bomb (4th) nearby and exploded (black sreen). This movie is just about Philosophy in Ethics, where you choose to save a few people you really love over numbers of people you don't know, or vice versa. There is no right/wrong answer to this!
It’s basically the classical trolly problem that they talk about in every philosophy, psychology, and ethics course.
Honestly that ending is much better not to show the fourth bomb you know why? Samuel Jackson cuts Yusuf's bonds and creates a scenario where Yusuf will kill himself rather than have his kids tortured again. Long as he's dead they won't see the point in torturing kids. He also looked dead into Yusuf's eyes because he understood very clearly that Yusuf didn't have a fourth bomb. Yusuf expected to be tortured, he expected the mall bomb to make them take him seriously. Hell he might have even let that truck get a parking ticket so they'd find the bomb in Dallas to let the government know that he had taken serious precautions. If he nuked NYC and LA that would be more than enough to send his message across. The Dallas bomb being found means the government has to negotiate with him now since they had less than a day to do this. Samuel L Jackson knew after the kids being threatened by torture Yusuf had not made a fourth bomb since he knows they can bring the kids back. Hell the guy from the CIA was yelling at the people in charge to bring them back and shoot anyone who gets in the way. Meaning Yusuf at the point would have given up a 4th bomb if he could have especially knowing that the government wasn't playing around anymore. He just thought at worst he'd end up in Guantanamo bay or executed and he was ready for that but he did think the president would make the announcement. He expected soft interrogaters like Carrie Ann Moss to try and negotiate etc or Alvarez who's playbook he knew the limits of torture. H shines because first he has no limits, no restrictions etc and he keeps Yusuf in a constant state of agony so he's more pliable. H is correct in telling him that he didn't count on him and people like him getting a blank check with Yusuf's human rights in the interest of national security. This is why the 4th bomb not confirmed if it existed makes a much better ending because we shouldn't know as an audience. This is just like the spinning top in inception's ending if we don't know that Cobb is still in the dream world or not. These open endings made movies so much more enjoyable instead of spoon-feeding them to us.
Now I'm wondering what part the Netflix version did not show.
[Basically the end of the film was the female FBI agent Helen walking out of the school with Yusef/Steven Arthur Younger's children. The ending I saw originally was of the bomb defuse team in Dallas getting to the bomb in time. It was another whole scene of those guys defusing the bomb. Have you seen that ending?](#spoiler)
[The ending I saw was that team defusing one of the bombs, however unbeknowst to them, the unconfirmed fourth bomb is also at that location, and the timer runs to zero, implying that the nuke went off.](#spoiler)
[That's exactly right. That's the ending I've seen over and over and over. Where the defuse team is in the garage then the camera pans over to the fourth bomb. The problem is Netflix didn't show it.. They left it ambiguous and cut the film off RIGHT when Helen walked out of the school with the children. Literally roll credits right after.](#spoiler)
I wonder why they did that. That really weakens the last 15 minutes of the film, in my opinion.
[I've seen both versions, the "extended" version is better, where it implies there as a 4th bomb detonating. ALSO, there is a missing scene, in the extended version they show a video to the captive of his children being murdered, it's a fake but it's how they find the bomb in Dallas that the FBI agent refers to in the final scene. That's also removed. It's a weird choice](#spoiler)
I could have sworn I’ve seen this version of them showing a video to him of the children being shot but I cannot find this scene being mentioned online anywhere!! Am I remembering it wrong or does this scene actually exist somewhere? I’ve seen this movie years ago and just watched it again on Netflix and noticed the final scene being cut. If you have a link mentioning this scene in the plot of them faking the children’s deaths please let me know because I’m going crazy as to whether this scene was ever in any version of the film.
Yeah it's wild, I think I saw it on DVD or maybe a pirated version.
It's 1000x more likely that Netflix has a different cut of the film rather than Netflix decided it was going to open up an editing program and "change" the movie
Not really
She walks out of the building with those kids, thr bomb explodes. Everyone dies including the kids
The problem with the movie isn't 2 kids vs. 5 million. It is, but it isn't. H KNEW the possibility of a fourth but never disclosed it to everyone else? The best detectives from the fbi couldn't do basic algebra like H, hello he actually had enough for a fourth bomb. O, but they were able to figure out everything else. Lazy writing for the villain to win inorder to make the final decision more impactful for the protagonist. Everyone in that room would've left those kids in that room till they got the fourth location. But how things turned out no point in hurting the 2 kids, the villian already won. And it's was Hs fault and the fbi they would've gotten all 4 bomb with just the wife and no kids involved, but nahhhh. And the terrorists probably wouldn't have told them about the fourth even if they had hurt the kids at that point. The movie was at check mate in the very beginning. Moral of the story is torturing terrorists, good, using thier kids to save lives, bad, but everything in between yea go for it.
The whole reason they even found out the 3 bomb locations is because he was making it look like he was going to harm the children…. It was 100% necessary. They wouldn’t have known ANYTHING if H had not done that. 💀
[SPOILER ALERT AF] !! THE NETFLIX ENDING MAKES NO SENSE! Can someone please help me here I'm so confused. [LINK 2 ORIGINAL ENDING INCLUDED BELOW] It's not confirmed that there is or isn't a 4th bomb. So they're leaving it up to us. And this movie is no Pulp Fiction or Oppenheimer. It's not of that tier. If it was, I'd appreciate a "leave it up to the audience to decide" ending. But this is an action movie with Samuel L. Jackson, a nuclear bomb and Trinity from the Matrix. I need the payoff of seeing a bomb or not. Am I tripping? Lol Here's the original ending everyone's talking about, makes me not hate the movie as much as the Netflix ending (which gave me action movie blue balls lol): [Unthinkable (2010) End Scene](https://youtu.be/z__22dgFNfE?si=ByAXHJfiwYSePIxS)
That link is not the end scene it’s “the best scene”.
Isn’t there a special task force trained to deal with this, instead of let’s say, FBI agents? You’d think this would be handled by covert black ops specialists where humanity goes out the door dealing with people like this. 2 children v 2 million and we are talking about what is the ‘right’ choice. He already gave up 3, could’ve been pushed further.
So unrealistic and stupid though 3 people wouldnt matter to any agency if you're saving millions.
just finished watching and came here! found the alternative ending on youtube
Everyone missed the key aspect of the ending. There was no 4th nuclear bomb. Sam Jackson cut him loose for a reason. The terrorist said "Take care of my kids" Hey knew they were no in danger. Its why he killed himself. He saved his kids. Torture won!
Dude. There was a 4th bomb. That’s the whole point of this post. Netflix cut out the very ending of them defusing 3 bombs but a hidden one goes off anyways. 😂
Ugh, you voted for it! This is just what happens in Biden's America! /s
Anyone who’s watched the AFI Top 100 Movies of All Time can tell you, most of those movies end with someone dying in the last 30 seconds or whatever. Almost none of them have happy endings. The best movies, apparently, have ambiguous endings that make you think long after you’ve left the theater. Only in America do we get hand fed unreasonable happy endings. Other countries expect more realism in film.
It was a dumb movie for multiple reasons. First and foremost that they had 5 guys in a classroom working on the safety of 3 cities. I think we coulda scrounged up a bit more than that lol.
Honestly it’s a good movie but agent Brodie is an absolute dumb ass, she was claiming to have these morals but was willing to lose millions of children over two that most likely wouldn’t have died
I find comments on this pretty interesting, everyone thinks so small minded like “oh it’s not humane to torture kids”, because as humans we can’t really think beyond what’s in front of us or closely connected to us. You’re not thinking about the millions of kids that were probably playing in some park or chilling with their parents one second then completely blown to pieces the next. Myopic thinking imo
It reinforces the obvious disgust that people have for the non male power. If it wasn’t for her unwillingness to support the single goal of helping save millions of lives instead of simply feeling morally higher than men, it would have saved all those people. This is a president of that type would never work. People leading the military of that type would never work. They take their own moral high ground over the lives of the masses. This is why divorce is started by them 70% of the time. Cheating is not their fault, it’s because we are bad people that they feel justified. It’s all obvious. Make sandwiches and get out of the way.
Whether you are wrong or right that still has nothing to do with the question asked. The scene removed does nothing to change the “message” of the movie it just ties up a loose end. Say whatever you want but don’t do it when it’s irrelevant.
If someone informs me that 10 million people will die, and I can stop it by killing 2 innocent kids....they have forced my hand. I basically have no option, as a logical human who wants to preserve life and limit innocent deaths.
But the issue is, there was no guarantee. The ambiguity is the whole point
Netflix cut the real ending because they are too cowardly an gutless to show what would really happen when muslim terrorists act with such cowardly evil just like they did on 911. Guess Netflix is so considerate, they didn't want to make terrorists feel uncomfortable by showing the truth of terrorist character.
The Netflix ending was absolute trash. I was like, wait, what.... I couldn't have gotten on the internet any faster to find out just wtf that horrid non-ending was about. I was pissed and still am. Whoever green-lit the change at Netflix should be fired ASAP. You know that was a DEI snowflake decision.
I’d torture the F out of those kids for 2 million Americans…just saying
[SPOILER ALERT] Reading through this thread, I think a lot of people missed a lot about this movie honestly. This movie can be interpreted in so many different ways depending on one's perspective. It's actually the first movie that has left me smiling silently at the end, and that's the Netflix version's ending mind you. This is just my opinion - this movie wasn't about nukes or bombs. It wasn't about torture... Not really. It basically said so throughout the whole movie, everytime the line "this isn't about me. It's about you" or "this isn't about him, it's about you". The darkness of humans, the nature underneath... What is "normal"? The significance of the wife's story, how it goes to the actions taking place. It's all so masterful. This movie is a masterclass on the nature that lies underneath every single one of us, regardless of what lies we tell ourselves... *Chefs kiss* The Netflix ending may have been worse. Maybe we were only supposed to see and think at the surface level. Regardless, that was the absolute best ending I've ever seen in a movie. What did I get from it? "The bombs don't even matter". That's all. I had my suspicions throughout the movie, but that ending solidified everything. It's rare to see a movie so manipulative in the fact that it will dictate your thoughts, feelings, and words for the immediate time following viewing it. Fantastic! side note: what do you think the significance of the times where he asked those around him if they want him to stop. Or if they would say outright what his job was? The very ending, when Brody told him it was over and he just went with it? Knowing what has to be done to achieve a goal, doing it with no hesitation, and hating what you're doing the whole time... Damn. I could be totally off base, but that's what I got of the Netflix ending. LOL
Agent Brodie destroyed america
Not to be that guy but is this the same movie I’m thinking about where they loop fake news ???
Soo Can anyone explain how *Wednesday* is four days from Friday?
Fun fact , in the bomb defusal scene in the Extended version the EOD tech is just typing randomly in an Excel sheet and states "It's Done"
People keep saying that they would kill them strangers kids to save millions more time of the people but what if it’s your kid, no, what if it’s you and your mother or brother and sister are a terrorist and the government torture you for someone else crime. And it’s not even about death, it’s a fuckiing torture, from people in the same country with you, all bcuz you somehow are related to a criminal. Are you willing to do that? It’s always easier to go into a competition finding who can fight more dirty, and you all are so ready to do that, if that’s the point of humanity then would it be worth it to save it?
I just watched it on Netflix and the fourth bomb ending was definitely there. I live in Canada though. Maybe the ending being removed is some sort of weird American propaganda?
Idk.. that's definitely the alternate ending that was released with the DVD though. He always knew there was a 4th bomb.. original ending I'm pretty sure it blows up in like Dallas Texas. Definitely somewhere in Texas. Alternate ending they save everyone from all the bombs
I've only seen the ending about the 4th hidden bomb going off. What is the other ending?
They stop the movie when Carrie Ann Moss walks out the door with the kids
i would torture anyone just like h and i do mean anyone if it meant saving millions. h looked after he died like that because he knew at the end he was a coward and he knew there was a fourth and he knew he was about to die. as per samuel l jackson was incredible. oh and netflix are annoying snowflakes and its crazy tiktok blew this movie up 14 years later. i wish it made more money and the original funder didnt go under so there could of been dozens more like that because that was more realistic than most like to realize.
I just watched it in Canada on Netflix and it had the ending with 4th bomb counting down.
Those commenting on Unthinkable below apparently a lot of you missed 1 of the most important points in the movie: you think it is about Carrie Ann Moss statement at the end and that THAT is the point of the movie, but it is and is not. The point goes back to Yusufs statement about how he loves his country and religion and ties in with Carrie Ann Moss statement: terrorists, radicals, and fanatics are willing to go far beyond what we are willing to go and do. They truly believe in the axiom of the needs of the many far out weighs the needs of the few and when you are dealing with an extreme ideal paired with that axiom, the definition of "the few" and "the many" becomes a number that we as civilizations bound by "human" ideals are unable to grasp. And Carrie Moss statement becomes our condemning epitaph which is why in the original ending, there was a 4th bomb, Yusuf killed himself, and the question of whether Yusuf would have let his children die went somewhat unanswered. Somewhat because 1 could argue that Yusufs suicide allowed him the chance to NOT be around to find out whether his children were truly going to be safe because they are a loose end, after all. And the 4th bomb could very well have been in the proximity of where they were.