Bad Presentation

Yesterday I wrote of Yves Perret, the improbably-named villain of "Tango & Cash". There's a lot to him beyond his fatal flaw of micro-managing. He seems rather eccentric. At one point, he is explaining his plan to his two lieutenants. The plan is to get the two supercops into prison and then kill them once there is no risk of them dying as martyrs and bringing more heat down on the criminal enterprise. Whatever the plan's faults are, incredible complexity isn't really one of them.

Sure, maybe it's a little more complicated than it needs to be, but you understood when I described it above, right? You don't need some kind of visual aid. Perret thinks maybe you would, or rather that his lieutenants will. Instead of just laying it out for them, he goes to the trouble of setting up a maze with mice in it to illustrate that Tango and Cash will be like rats in a cage. It's an amazingly sophisticated one, seemingly meant for high level academic studies.

The comparison Perret makes is about as apt as it is necessary. In likening Tango and Cash to rats who are to be locked in a cage, he demonstrated with mice in a maze. It makes for a fun phrase to say, but it doesn't make sense. Rats in a cage is fine. You'r saying they're filthy creatures out to get you. A cage contains them. Mice are a slightly difference creature. More importantly, the purpose of a maze is not to contain. It has a goal, and a means for the mice to reach it. 

Basically the message is that Tango and Cash will be able to get out of the prison, so let's just see if they do. It's a puzzling message, but it certainly comes to fruition. Even setting aside the appropriateness of the message sent by the demonstration, you have to wonder at the effort he puts into it. He buys mice, a traveling container for them, a giant maze made of plexiglass or something, and all for this one time presentation that seems entirely needless. It's no wonder that Perret is defeated in the end.