According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the most fundamental and basic four layers of the pyramid contain: esteem, friendship and love, security, and physical needs. He suggests that the most basic level of needs must be met before the inpidual will strongly desire the secondary or higher level needs. While safety and security needs include: personal security—physically, financial security—money, health and well-being, love and belonging—interpersonal relationship. And all humans have needs to be respected and to have self-esteem and self-respect. People need to engage themselves to gain recognition and have an activity or activities that give the person a sense of contribution, to feel self-valued, be it in a profession or hobby. This is the spiritual pursue that people want to prove their existence. The whole process Joe and Terry getting close to their dreams is their way to prove their self-value to the world.
3. Pursuit of a Perfect Life
Joe and Terry want to run a nightclub have perfect life in Mexico. Harvey wants to buy a special suit for his fire action and attracts woman. Kate wants passion in her life. To realize these dreams, they have their own way to pursuit. They make a string of plans, then practice them, when stocked, they find their way to run away to have new life.
3.1 Plan
Like Terry says in the movie, the biggest problem when robbing a bank is “getting caught”—“guards to shoot at you, tellers to hit alarms, customers to get in the way”. They need to “control the environment”, which is without guards, tellers and customers. They come up with a plan that they kidnap to bank manager the night before like Terry says.
“We pick a town. We pick a bank. We find out who is in charge. We pay him a little visit. We spend the night with himthe next morning we all go to work together before any body else get there. And we take the money and run.”
Just two of them are not enough to work out their plan, so they get Harvey, a special effect actor, to be the before the frontman. The front man handles everything except robbing banks. He rents the rooms, gets the supplies, the food and he drives the getaway car.
Then everyone has his work, Joe to be cool and control the bank managers and get the code from them; Terry to plot the banks in small towns and make all the plans. Then they find out the banks’ schedules, routines, the bank guards, the tellers.
After everything is ready, they go to the bank managers’ houses and spend the night with their families.
3.2 Practice
They go to the managers’ house after making up to other people. At first, the hostess is very afraid of them and keeps crying during the dinner. As time passes, when Joe discusses the detailed things about the bank with the bank manager, Terry talks with the bank manager’s wife to calm her down. He first tells her that they’d like to spend a quiet night and won’t hurt them. When the children have problem on the food, Terry even helps the girl to cut the noodles. He also discusses the sauce the food has used to relax the mother. After a while, the atmosphere becomes a little bit peaceful. Therefore, the mother can talk freely to Terry. The children even regard them as uncles at that moment.
Because Joe and Terry treat the hostages softly and won’t hurt them easily, people in small towns no longer feel afraid of them. When one old lady in a bank comes across them, she says, “I know it, you are the boys from TV—the Sleepover Bandits. I guess that means I’m a hostage. You’d better come on in. we got to get started.”
When she refuses to give the money to them, she says without any fear, “You wouldn’t hurt a flea, Joe. Everybody knows that.” When she gets to know that they are run after by the police, she even reminds them to drive carefully. 英语论文《完美盗贼》中的完美生活(4):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_2686.html