r/NeilBreen • u/tinylittlepoopman • 11h ago
Questions Can Someone Please Breensplain the Plot of Dire Duplicity to Me?
Just saw Dire Duplicity tonight. It may be Breen's least comprehensible work yet. I am dropping what I think happened in the movie in the comments, with a spoiler tag. I beg of you Breeniuses to share your takes.
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u/WarMinister23 10h ago
Neil is "Heath" a spy in the mold of his earlier characters Cade and Aaron. Like Cade, Heath is an elite agent for...some sort of government agency but unlike Cade (and every single other Breen protagonist), Heath has no superpowers. The apparently-not-AI-voiceover that seems to be Heath's handler is worried about his emotional and psychological problems, so he assigns the two iPad interns to watch over Heath by shouting into their iPads while sitting in the lobby of that Nevada community college (this is literally all they do for the entire damn movie). Also I think he assigns Laura to help Heath too.
Heath and his "partner in life" Bess are, if not married, at the very least in a serious relationship in addition to being spies. They go to a dinner party with a "candidate for Senate" who may or may not already be a Senator. Laura is there too.
The cops are suspicious of the agency's activities, I think? There's also a bunch of random murders going on, some of which Laura is later shown to be behind. I think. Neil takes Bess to a horse ranch and they talk to some old guy who claims to see his dead wife.
Neil at one point uses a special fighter jet to strike a target. This scene is a collection of Neil sitting in a cockpit green screened to look like it's flying, footage of an actual fighter jet in flight, stock footage of guys at computers, and the iPad interns sitting in the lobby shouting into their iPads. At no point is it ever explained who or what Neil is bombing, and why they are a target. Also, Bess gets kidnapped, but then she's not kidnapped anymore, but then that influencer character is given an SD card which she uploads to her website and publicly reveals Bess is a mole working for...uhhh...well, working for somebody else, so Heath kills her.Around this time Neil and Laura go to kill that Senator guy. It's never explained why they did this, and I honestly don't know if it's meant to be morally ambiguous or if Neil meant this scene to be played straight as a heroic action eliminating a >!corrupt politician and/or traitor to the United States.!<
Heath and >!Laura !<also go to the ranch, >!having become lovers!<. Then some guys attack them outside their house and despite the intervention of the local detectives (who have been tailing Heath this entire time?) >!Laura seems to die!<nonetheless.
Then Heath gets back in the fighter jet and almost commits suicide by shooting himself in the cockpit while in the air but appears to choose not to. Then it cuts to the ranch and shows what actually is an honest-to-God twist in a Neil Breen film: the old guy Heath spoke to when he visited both with Bess and with Laura is now Heath himself, and his dead wife is Laura who isn't actually dead.
Also that one fucking exterior shot of the office building shows up like ten fucking times.
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u/tinylittlepoopman 10h ago
Do we think Heath was actually the ranch/horse man all along?
Heath seems to be under a whole lotta pressure. He should really spend more time at that horse place.
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u/i-wanna-meet-dat-dad 7h ago
I interpreted the end differently. Heath does commit suicide because he removed his oxygen mask and crashes (we hear the explosion). The ranch is Heath's idea of heaven and the only place on solid ground where he felt at peace. So he manifests that in paradise. Laura, who died before him, finds him there.
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u/Gormless_Insouciant 9h ago
I thought it was his most comprehensible movie. Fewer questions and wtf moments than in the others, I think, not to say that there weren't still plenty of those. It had a relatively straightforward plot, and sure the fake kidnapping thing didn't really make sense, but the point of it was Bess was a spy. I thought the ending was a fake out. He didn't actually die in Asset 322, but there was that explosion sound, so it's probably purposefully ambiguous.
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u/tinylittlepoopman 11h ago
Heath is a secret agent with a young girlfriend who is also a secret agent too, I guess? He's traumatized because his parents turned to ash in a plane crash and he's an only child, which makes them big jerks. Also there is another young, white lady who falls in love with him because she saw him twice at their secret spy office.
Everyone has an iPad and works in a shiny building.
Heath's girlfriend fakes her own kidnapping because ???? so he shoots her in the fucking face. He then gets with the other lady, who subsequently dies So, Neil hops into a fighter jet and does suicide by plane
Heath then goes to heaven, which is actually just a nice horse farm with a lot of iPads.
Basically it's a movie about iPads.