Plans, codes and rules held up against the accident that outranks them — and characters forced to decide which of the two they actually trust.
Every film here builds an apparatus of control and then breaks it, but the interesting variable is what the break reveals.
The Dark Knight treats it as an experiment with a control group: the ferries, the hospital and the interrogation are the same question asked three times, and the Joker is only ever interested in the answer. Pulp Fiction treats it as comedy, because a bathroom door defeats three separate professionals. Parasite treats it as weather, and weather does not negotiate.
Watch which characters keep faith with their code afterwards. Jules does. Ki-taek concludes that the plan that never fails is the one you never made.
The Dark Knight2008 · Christopher Nolan★ 4.0 · 1The Joker's only stated aim is to prove Gotham's order is a costume, and the ferries, the hospital and the interrogation are one experiment staged three times.
Pulp Fiction1994 · Quentin Tarantino★ 4.5 · 1Everyone here works to a code — Jules's scripture, the Wolf's timetable, Butch's inherited watch — and the joke is that a bathroom door outranks all of them.
Parasite2019 · Bong Joon-hoKi-taek's line about the plan that never fails is the film auditing its own first hour, in which every scheme works beautifully right up until it rains.
Seven Samurai1954 · Akira Kurosawa★ 4.8 · 1The plan is the film: a village fortified, a battle rehearsed to the last fence post, and then rain and mud in which the plan's own authors are killed.
Apocalypse Now1979 · Francis Ford CoppolaMilitary order thins out with every mile upriver until command is one man in the dark reciting poetry — the chain of command as a thing that evaporates.
Do the Right Thing1989 · Spike LeeThe heat rises all day over a set of rules nobody states aloud, and the film is exact about the moment they stop holding.
Memories of Murder2003 · Bong Joon-hoA procedural whose procedures fail one by one — forensics, coercion, intuition — until the case is simply left open, staring back.
No Country for Old Men2007 · Joel Coen, Ethan CoenChigurh's coin is the thesis: a man who believes he is fate's instrument, in a film that keeps handing the last word to accident.