Remember when you actually had to use bank tellers? Some of you deadbeats might still. This teller falls for the robber. It would have worked out if the cops wouldn't shoot first and ask questions later. Happens all the time.
Bank
Teller On the Run
It
was hot yesterday and the day before, but today it is hot. And right on cue, the air-conditioning
in the 1st National bank is not working.
Everyone is sweating profusely including Jean. Jean is a teller in the bank. Three years ago he moved to Los Angeles
to be an actor. Now he is doing the
same job he did in France. Jean
counts his money and finds that he is one dollar short at the end of the
day. He thinks nothing of it, but
another teller, who never really liked him anyway, thinks he has seen him
pocket the dollar. He is in a bar
later that day getting drunk when a private security agent hired by the bank
comes to talk to him about the missing dollar. They begin to argue and the security agent
pushes him and Jean hits him. The
security agent doesn't get up. Jean
gets scared and runs away. The
agent isn't dead but after this the real cops get involved and begin to search
for the teller. After the alcohol
wears off, the realization comes to him that his nightmare has just begun, and
over one dollar, which he didn't take.
Jean is in over his head. He
has seen probably every American movie made when he was young, but real action
was never his style. Jean is a shy
introverted man.
Driving
back to his small apartment a police car tries to pull him over, his instincts
take over and he runs a red light.
The police car to swerves and another car to crashes into it. Jean gets away, but he is in shock.
Jean
decides to try and contact a friend of his. The friend, Shelby, has seen his name on
the news and isn’t willing to help him.
He wants to take her car, but she won’t let him. She makes fun of him now since this is
the only way he could get famous. He rides the bus to a Greyhound station
and buys a ticket to as far as he can afford. When he arrives in Santa Barbara, Jean
realizes he has no money. He walks
down to the beach and spots a rich looking couple. He runs up behind them, pushes down the
woman and punches the old man. Jean
grabs his wallet and her purse and runs off. When Jean thinks he's safe he sees that
he has several hundred dollars. Now
he has a decision to make. He has
reached a point of no return.
In
the old woman's purse is a pistol.
It's getting dark. Jean waits
at a dark intersection and uses the gun to car jack a Toyota. The man in the car puts up a fight and
Jean's eye gets slashed from broken glass.
He can barely see, but he manages to drive to a secluded area. There is a cellular phone in the car and
Jean calls his brother back in France.
His parents are still refusing to talk to him. His brother asks how he is, and Jean
says that he is having fun as he pats his bleeding eye with a rolled up
sock. He can't go back no
matter how much he wants to . No one will listen to him now, and well
that they shouldn't. But as his
crimes grow after his initial innocence, for the first time in his life, he is
alive and using all his senses and really living. In a perverted way, it is good for him
but at the expense of many others.
Jean
ends up ditching the car after driving north for a few hours. He finds an all night diner. He has fashioned a makeshift patch for
his eye with some paper and tape.
Over eggs, Jean decides he must do something to redeem himself before he
gives himself up. As he walks out
of the diner he sees his chance. A
mean looking fellow is screaming a young woman. She is telling him that she wants him to
leave her alone. He hits her. Jean puts his hand on his gun, but
decides to speak up instead. He
tells the man to stop hitting the lady.
The man walks slowly over to Jean while Jean raises his gun. The man smiles. He punches Jean in the face. Jean drops the gun and falls to the
ground. The man picks up a tire
iron and hits Jean in the back with it.
Jean starts to lose consciousness, but before he does, he sees the young
lady fire one shot into the man's head.
Jean
wakes up in a strange car. The
young lady is driving and Jean demands they stop. The young lady says her name is
Maria. They argue about stopping
the car. Jean grabs the wheel
during the argument and the car swerves into a ditch, busting a tire. Maria gets out of the car a finds there
is no spare and becomes hysterical.
Jean crawls out of the car and tries to comfort her. Nothing works so Jean tells her a joke
in French. She doesn't understand,
but he explains he just told a very funny joke. She has him tell it again and this time
she laughs. They eventually begin
to talk. Not about their private
innermost thoughts, but about places they liked to go to when they were young,
TV shows they enjoy now, and other seemingly innocuous topics. They both discover they love
soccer. Maria says she wants a
tattoo, but can't find anything she likes enough to permanently put it on her
body.
As
they continue to talk, Jean realizes that he is in love for the first time in
his life. He leans towards Maria
and they kiss. When they finally
separate, Jean tells Maria that she can get away if she leaves him here. She wants to run away together. After much discussion Jean gives Maria
the phone that is still in her pocket and tells her to
call her girlfriend to pick her up down the road. Jean just tells her that he wants her to
remember him. She agrees.
Jean
stares down the road as she walks away, once she is gone from sight, he crawls
back into the car and drives on the tire rim into the nearest town. Before he makes it to a town, Jean comes
upon a highway blockade. He stops
the car. A patrolman tells him to
get out of the car over a bullhorn.
Jean starts to walk toward the policemen. The patrolman yells for Jean to stop,
but Jean doesn't. The police are
perplexed as Jean keeps walking towards them. Jean then realizes that he has put the
gun in his pocket. He decided to
reach in his pocket and throw out the gun.
One of the patrolman sees this and yells he's
got a gun. There are several people
now yelling at Jean and he becomes confused. He raises his arms to give himself up,
but one policeman becomes nervous and fires. Jean is hit. The patrolman with the bullhorn mutters,
"Goddammit" after it's all over.
Several
days later Maria is in a tattoo parlor.
She tells the artist that Jean is spelled J-E-A-N.