Sweeney!

People have often speculated about George's behaviour in the last scene of this film, and wondered why he reacted as he did. I watched this again recently and noticed that after McQueen breaks free of his arresting officers, as he runs onto the bridge he shouts 'Johnson' as if he is almost inviting the smiling assassin to take him out. Johnson and his mob duly oblige. It's almost as if he knew it was going to happen. It's possible also that they would have killed McQueen even had he not escaped, since the chap who stripped Lynda Bellingham at the start was also present, pretending to be a road sweeper. Why? Were the going to murder McQueen, or try and free him? Who knows.

I've often found the end of this film confusing, and George's reaction is a surprise. Why would anyone be so upset about the death of someone as wicked and nasty as McQueen? Also, with reference to the aforementioned LB, surely even someone as ditsy as Janice Wyatt would have smelt a bit of a rat being coaxed into a hotel room and made to record specific references to Charles Baker and 'going to sleep' before being murdered by lethal injection. What was she told they needed that for? I think it's a bit far fetched to expect anyone to actually do this with no explanation, and none is never offered on screen. I agree with another posting however that the murder scene is surprisingly effective, and Janice certainly looks dead pretty quickly after being given a forced overdose. On the DVD Lynda Bellingham states that she was actually injected with distilled water, and had they caught a vein she might well have gone the same way as her character.