Brilliant moves in modern cinema

Here I want to talk a bit about –what I call- brilliant moves in modern cinema. It’s like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. It can be scriptwriting (the ending of The sixth sense), casting (see below) or any other trick a moviemaker pulled that makes the movie a better experience. I’ll explain it during the text. Maybe this will be an ongoing topic? Let’s start with this one.

Brilliant moves in casting.

Deadly pursuit (or shoot to kill)

The premise of this movie is that a city detective played by Sidney Poitier is teamed up with northern wilderness expert Tom Berenger to catch a diamond thief/murderer. This murderer just stole several million worth of diamonds and tries to escape across the Canadian border by joining a group of hikers led by Kirstie Alley (Berenger's character's girlfriend).

It's the typical fish-out-of-the-water story wherein Poitier is said fish.

A fun move the movie makes in the third act is flipping the scenery around from forest to city. This time it is Berenger who is out of his comfort zone and Poitier is in control. But that's not what I want to talk about here. The brilliant move the movie makes, in my opinion, is the fact that you don't meet the villain for a long while. You know it's a man and that's it.

So when you meet the group of hikers, anyone of them except Kirstie Alley could be the culprit. But, since I've seen a lot of movies (you've seen a lot of movie)- pinpointing the bad guy is usually a simple matter for the audience of discovering the biggest star amongst the bunch, especially if he played villains before.

Not this time around though. The entire hiking group is made up of recognizable actors who all played villains before. So until -literally- the gun drops it could be any of them. In a meta-sense the villain of the piece is hidden amongst other villains (who happen to be to be playing good guys this time around).

The same trick -sorta- was pulled in the slasher film Urban Legends (1998). Starting the movie with Brad Dourif (Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings, but probably better known to horror fans as Chucky in Child's play) as a creepy gas attendant immediately puts you on edge. You wonder what the heck he is going to do with the young, female, would-be-victim.

Well, nothing, he's plays good guy who tries to help her -as it turns out...too late. 

But then the movie tops it off with introducing Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) as one of the professors at the school.

In a movie full of villains...who's the villain? 

Speaking of Urban Legends. There is one little fun fact I want to end with. I read online about this movie that the school motto ("Optimus Amice Numquid It") is visible in various scenes throughout the movie. Now, if you can read Latin you can pretty much guess who the hooded killer is.

However, I own the DVD, I've seen the movie several times, and I never found the darn motto anywhere. Moreover, such a peculiar easter egg, there must be some person on the interwebs who made a screengrap, right? Nope, nobody.

So, I wonder. Did somebody create an urban legend about the movie Urban Legend? 

Edit: Alright I finally found the time to listen to the Urban Legends DVD commetary track and: This whole idea of the school motto being 'the best friend did it' was actually an idea that was left out early on. So it's confirmed, not an urban legend. But, not visible in the film.