Kevin was smart enough to know you don’t call the police.
He couldn’t have phoned anyone! The phone line was out!
No, he could not call the police. A tree fell on his phone line and disconnected his house.
And his parents did notify the police, but the police were, A: completely incredulous, B: completely incompetent and uninterested. They came and knocked on the door, but Kevin was still scared and confused and was hiding under his parents bed the whole time. The cop just gave up and left.
Source: I watched the movie again… and I am going to do so this year along with a Die Hard trilogy (I never watched the third movie) marathon.
Also one of the robbers scoped out the place disguised as a cop and already spooked him.
Die Hard With a Vengeance isn’t a Christmas movie but IMHO it’s the best of the series
Little early in the day for blasphemy isn’t it?
Seriously. Die hard is also a seemless, perfect movie. 80s sleeze, hard boiled cynic cop who has a heart of gold, “ho ho ho now I have a machine gun?”
Aint nothing that followed it up kept up.
Blas ph emy, blas for you, blas for everyone all around.
one call [to the police] and he would have been safe
just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s fantasy
And also he couldn’t have called anyone, the phone line was out.
Well, he is a white kid in an affluent neighborhood (whole huge family affording vacation, large house), so he probably would have been treated better.
He thinks his family actually disappeared. He remarks that they couldn’t have gone to Paris, because their cars are still in the garage. The garage having been left open is even a plot point, to allow Kevin to make this realization quicker.
He does eventually call the police. It’s the last step of his plan. He calls them to his neighbor’s house.
The movie is seriously bulletproof. Like how Kevin spills Pepsi on his ticket and we see it accidentally get thrown in the garbage the night before.
Fun story:
When my daughter met Santa Claus for the first time, she’d recently seen Home Alone and was obsessed, and she introduced herself as Kevin.
When it was time to take a picture I said, “Ok [daughter’s name which in all fairness does have an “ev” sound in it], get in Santa’s sleigh.”
Then Santa leaned over and whispered, “Ohh. I thought she said her name was Kevin.”
“Yeah, no, she did say Kevin.”
Santa thought that was weird.
Leviathan is also a beautiful name.
He knew the police would likely put him into child protective services due to parental negligence and decided he’d deal with that shit himself.
Are there actually kids who are that smart even when they are at that age? Dayum…
You need to be wiley to live in the USA.
America, Police, Safe. Hmmm.
Or he was just too afraid to contact the police. Remember, this took place in the USA, where people have reason to fear them.
He was white and from a wealthy family, he’d be fine.
His neighborhood was an upper-middle class family who were fucking loaded. Cops kiss up to the wealthy.
Didn’t he not trust the cops because Pesci pretended to be a cop in the opening scene, in order to case the house?
He didnt call the police because the phone lines are being worked on in one of the opening scenes before we even see the McCallisters and presumably are down.
His parents couldn’t even call home to make sure he was okay.
Pretty sure only long distance lines were down. Local calls were still good which is how he ordered the Pizza.
There’s no difference between those lines at the local level. The only long distance lines would be the oceanic ones.
E: does nobody know how old lines worked? I can’t believe the number of people trying to force some twist to make their version work. The phone repair guy was right there on the residential street. If local lines were down, no in/out calls would work, yet Kevin ordered pizza and called the cops locally. It’s a huge leap to assume that this area would have had a side junction to separate international calls to a different system. Extremely unlikely, and that would probably be a feature reserved for businesses that needed to make such calls regularly. Old lines just weren’t run for international like that on analog runs for regular homes. His family were able to call friends and neighbors from overseas to see if they were home. So those lines weren’t down even if for some bizarre reason they were separate.
It’s just a plot hole. NBD. Enjoy the movie.
E2: digging around on the internet people have pointed out the plot hole. The only scenario where it would work is full of “ifs” that allow international calls in through a separate system, but nonetheless, it would basically only have to affect that one house getting perfectly hit to knock out international but not local by the tree branch yet nearby neighbors get calls on their answering machines from overseas.
I’m not pursuing this further, lol. It’s just entertainment. I’m not going to ruin the fun with over-analysis and bickering over “but if…”
I’m not sure that was true in 1990 in the United States. In the old analog networks, the central offices could route calls locally among phone numbers that shared the same central office, which was basically any number that had the same first 3 digits of the 7 digit number under the North American Numbering Plan. At least for the suburban neighborhood I grew up in, in the 80’s, the neighborhood pizza places had the same central office code as my home phone number.
It wasn’t until the rise of digital switching that the phone number itself got decoupled from the actual network topography, and things like number portability became possible. But in the analog systems they wanted to minimize switching where possible, so “local” calls weren’t all equally local.
Right, and the family was in France.
And the mom/fam was able to call from overseas to local PD, and leave various messages with friends or neighbors to check on Kevin.
The lines weren’t down. If local lines are non-functioning, all phone traffic is inoperative regardless if it’s long distance or not. Kevin also called for Pizza and the police himself.
Let’s face it, the phone is a plot hole.
And the mom/fam was able to call from overseas to local PD…
Yes, Ma Bell would prioritize getting the police phone lines working first
…and leave various messages with friends or neighbors to check on Kevin.
Family: they were all on the trip. Friends/neighbors: I don’t remember.
If local lines are non-functioning, all phone traffic is inoperative regardless if it’s long distance or not.
Back then it’d be easy to knock out long distance lines but keep the locals up; you just had to take down the right trunk. And in a city that big the trunks would have been split up into local and long distance.
That’s not how that works. There are no separate residential lines for police.
The rest, that’s not how that works, either.
Yeah I know that but he was able to leave. He went grocery shopping. Iirc the storm took out the lines just to his house, maybe the neighborhood.
He did call the police
And the quality of the police work was documentary level realism for a Hollywood movie.
“You like The Wiggles? Their early music was a little too New Wave for my tastes…”
But the part we always forget is that the robber was the “cop” that had come to the house the night before the trip.
So this kid was like the cops are so corrupt I have to deal with this on my own.
That’s a really good point I never thought of.
Is it realistic that he didn’t have any other friends / trusted adults in the community?
As a movie though the suspension of disbelief is pretty good. Phone lines are down, neighbors are on vacation too, …
The McAllister’s are rich as hell. All their friends are too. The whole neighborhood went on vacation except that one old guy.
Which is, again, another thing explained in the movie within the first 5 minutes.
Didn’t even think of that. You’re right.
and that’s what we should all learn from him
Didn’t the storm knock the phone lines out? That’s why Moira didn’t call the house and called the cops to try and get them to do a wellness check.
Yes.
This movie is nearly bulletproof. John Hughes thought of every plausible hole and plugged it. He was a genius.
He calls and orders a pizza
Because later the lines get fixed.
Kevin also didn’t want his parents to get in trouble so he didn’t call the cops
Wasn’t he under the impression his parents (and all of his family, really) had ceased to exist?
“I made my family disappear.” 😈
Kevin is a shop lifter after he panics with the tooth brush. Since he learned never to trust cops, he assumes he’d get thrown in jail like the hardened criminal he is… And then there’s the cop who’s trying to break into his house. Yeah, can’t blame him for not making that call.
Also, ACAB.
Yeah, the first movie pretty clearly lays out why he didn’t want to call the cops. Also, IIRC, the snow storm knocked out the phone lines. His parents mention that they can’t get ahold of him because the lines are down. So he couldn’t have called them even if he tried.
The second movie though? He was a predator stalking his prey. He wasn’t just a victim of a break-in. He actively lured them to his twisted funhouse, and didn’t call the cops until the very end when he wanted them to get caught red-handed.
He learned what he was good at… And what he enjoyed.
He has a particular set of skills.
The McAllisters are the family he gets sent to live with after the good son.
That movie is fucked
This is Kevin now. Feel.old yet?
