The Ref !!LINK!!

On Christmas Eve in an affluent Connecticut hamlet, Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur are in a marriage counseling session. Caroline has had an affair, and Lloyd is miserable and blames the behavioral problems of their 15-year-old son Jesse on his wife's coddling of him. Caroline calls out Lloyd for his inability to stand up to his domineering mother, Rose.

The Ref

In the same town, cat burglar Gus is in the midst of stealing jewelry from a home he has broken into. However, his plan goes awry when he accidentally sets off the alarm and is chased out by a guard dog. His getaway car, driven by his bumbling partner Murray, is no longer there. At a convenience store, he runs into Lloyd and Caroline and decides to take them hostage, ordering the couple to drive him to their house. Along the way, Caroline and Lloyd continue to argue, with Gus having to repeatedly intercede and telling them to shut up.

At the Chasseur house, Gus has Lloyd and Caroline tied up as he figures out a way to flee town with Murray. Lloyd and Caroline continue to bicker. Knowing that Murray usually seeks refuge at seedy bars, Gus calls the local bar and manages to get in touch with him. He instructs Murray to steal a boat for their getaway. The local police set up roadblocks and impose a curfew to look for Gus, while two inept officers go door-to-door. Lt. Huff, the police chief, is less than concerned because the town rarely sees criminal activity like this.

Jesse, who has been away at a military school, arrives home earlier than his parents expect. Unbeknownst to his parents, Jesse has been blackmailing the school's commanding officer, Siskel, with photographs of an affair, and is stashing the money with plans of running away. Gus has Jesse tied up along with his parents. Jesse, unhappy with his home life, pleads to join Gus into a life of crime, but Gus calls Jesse out on his naivety and tells the boy he should appreciate his comfortable upbringing.

Siskel turns up at the door and reveals how he is being blackmailed. Jesse has managed to untie himself and his parents discover his hidden money. George, still dressed as Santa, but now very drunk, returns to the home, protesting why he never gets a gift in return. He spots the gun and realizes who Gus is but gets knocked out. The state police arrive, and Lloyd, having a change of heart, decides he cannot "spend [his] life sending everyone [he] care[s] about to prison", and instructs Jesse to take Gus to the docks using a path through the woods. Gus, in George's Santa suit, makes it safely to a boat where Murray awaits. The men escape, arguing in much the same manner he argued all night with Caroline and Lloyd.

Back at home, the couple's bickering even drives away the police. Having aired out their differences throughout the evening with their armed robber's assistance, they make up and decide to stay together. Their reconciliation is interrupted when John informs them that "grandma Rose is eating through her gag."

Richard LaGravenese co-wrote the film with his sister-in-law Marie Weiss.[4] It was inspired by their families. For example, the dinner scene: "Both Marie and I are Italian Catholics who married into Jewish families, so we do have those big holiday dinners," LaGravenese said.[5] Weiss began writing the script in 1989 after she and her husband moved from New York to California. Inspiration came from an argument she had with him and she thought, "Wouldn't it be great if there were a third party to step in and referee?"[5] She wrote several drafts and consulted with LaGravenese in 1991 and they took it to Disney. The studio approved the project within 20 minutes. LaGravenese spent a year revising the script until he finally got "tired of doing rewrites for executives."[5]

After Ted Demme directed comedian Denis Leary in No Cure for Cancer, a stand-up comedy special for Showtime, they got the script for The Ref and decided to do it.[4] The studio cast Leary based on the sarcastic funny-man persona he cultivated in MTV spots that Demme directed.[6] Leary joined the project as part of a three-picture deal with Disney.[7] Their involvement motivated LaGravenese to come back to the project.[5] Executive producer Don Simpson described the overall tone of The Ref as "biting and sarcastic. Just my nature."[8]

The Ref did not perform as well at the box office as Leary would have liked, and he blamed the studio's method of marketing it: "They did me like the MTV guy. And they shortchanged what the movie was all about."[9] The film grossed a total of only $11,439,193 at the domestic box office, after coming in at #4 opening weekend, behind Guarding Tess, Lightning Jack and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.[1] Leary made fun of himself in a humorous article written for a 1994 issue of Playboy where he pretends to interview Pope John Paul II: Leary asks the Pope if he has seen The Ref, and the Pope responds that he was told it was very vulgar, as evident by its unpopularity.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a "Certified Fresh" approval rating of 73% based on reviews from 55 critics, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The site's consensus is: "Undeniably uneven and too dark for some, The Ref nonetheless boasts strong turns from Denis Leary, Judy Davis, and Kevin Spacey, as well as a sharply funny script."[10]

"The Ref" is a flip-flopped, updated version of O. Henry's The Ransom of Red Chief, in which a kidnapper naps more than he was counting on. The movie stars sometime standup comic Dennis Leary as Gus, a would-be jewel thief who sets off an alarm in a private house in an affluent Connecticut hamlet, and in desperation kidnaps a married couple on Christmas Eve and orders them to drive to their home.

Once there, he assumes, he will have time to plot his next move. But he doesn't get a moment's peace, because the couple he has kidnapped, Caroline and Lloyd, have been fighting for years, are constantly at each other's throats, and are both completely incapable of surrendering in an argument.

The couple, played by Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey, are smart, bitter and articulate - and boy, can they fight. Gus is almost forgotten at times; he has a gun, but he can't get the floor. He tries to explain: "People with guns can do whatever they want.

Married people without guns - for instance, you - do not get to yell! Why? No guns! No guns, no yelling! See? Simple little quiz!" That doesn't stop them for a second. After the kidnapper demands rope to tie them up, for example, Lloyd says they don't have any, but Caroline helpfully remembers some bungee cord in the kitchen, and that sets off Lloyd, who thinks his wife is being cooperative because she's attracted to the criminal. Caroline explains that she was frightened: "Humans get frightened because they have feelings.

Didn't your alien leaders teach you that before they sent you here?" The situation at the house grows even more desperate after the couple's young son arrives home from military school. The kid is a conniver who has made piles of money by blackmailing a teacher (named Siskel) at his military academy, and now he's impressed by Gus and basically welcomes new excitement in his life. And all of Lloyd's hated relatives are scheduled to arrive shortly for a holiday supper.

At some point during this process, the relationship between Gus and his victims subtly shifts; he becomes not so much the kidnapper as the peacemaker. He tries to enforce silence, truces, agreements. The couple begins to cooperate with him, maybe because they're afraid of his gun, but more likely because the situation takes on a logic of its own. (It's pretty clear Gus isn't going to shoot them.) Lloyd's relatives know the couple has been seeing a marriage counselor, and so it's agreed that Gus will pretend to be the marriage counselor so that the kidnapper can continue right through the Christmas Eve gathering.

Material like this is only as good as the acting and writing. "The Ref" is skillful in both areas. Dennis Leary, who has a tendency, like many standup comics, to start shouting and try to make points with overkill, here creates an entertaining character. And Davis and Spacey, both naturally verbal, develop a manic counterpoint in their arguments that elevates them to a sort of art form.

There are a lot of supporting characters in the story: The relatives, each with their own problem; the local police chief; Gus's rummy-dummy partner; the drunken neighbor dressed as Santa Claus; and of course Siskel, the teacher from the military school, whom the kid is blackmailing because he photographed him consorting with topless dancers. The director, Ted Demme, juggles all these people skillfully. Even though we know where the movie is going (the Ref isn't really such a bad guy after all), it's fun to get there.

When used in a method's parameter list, the ref keyword indicates that an argument is passed by reference, not by value. The ref keyword makes the formal parameter an alias for the argument, which must be a variable. In other words, any operation on the parameter is made on the argument.

For example, suppose the caller passes a local variable expression or an array element access expression. The called method can then replace the object to which the ref parameter refers. In that case, the caller's local variable or the array element refers to the new object when the method returns.

Don't confuse the concept of passing by reference with the concept of reference types. The two concepts are not the same. A method parameter can be modified by ref regardless of whether it is a value type or a reference type. There is no boxing of a value type when it is passed by reference.

To use a ref parameter, both the method definition and the calling method must explicitly use the ref keyword, as shown in the following example. (Except that the calling method can omit ref when making a COM call.)

An argument that is passed to a ref or in parameter must be initialized before it's passed. This requirement differs from out parameters, whose arguments don't have to be explicitly initialized before they're passed. 041b061a72