One of the great things about movies is how much they can get away with being totally and utterly absurd. If we wanted to see "real life" play out, we'd pay a homeless person $10 for the right to sit at the bus stop for two hours, staring at the miserable faces of humanity as they shuffle by in cheap suits, clinging to Styrofoam cups and occasionally - this is climax - stepping in chewing gum. Fact is, movies give us the chance to witness things
out of the ordinary, because the scene I just described is depressing as hell, and even writing about it has ruined my day. Thing is, in order to entertain us, movies have to go on for, like, hours and hours, because - for some reason - 45 minute flicks don't exist. In order to make you feel like you've got enough bang for your buck, then, the stories have to be long or complicated enough to feel worth paying money for. In most cases, screenwriters justify the telling of a two hour story, and everybody comes out saying, "Man,
two hours wasn't long enough for that thing. Me want more." Now and again, though, you can't escape the feeling that the characters within the movies have totally avoided a completely obvious and far more logical solution at the mercy of their "complicated" plots. Here's 7 movies that gripped to dense narratives or plot points, featuring characters who spent hours and hours dealing with the associated problems (despite the fact that every one of 'em had a far simpler solution staring them right in the face from the very start)...