Call me old fashioned, but I believe that when the insane 7-Eleven franchisee who pays you to beat people up sends you to pick someone up and bring that person to him for a conversation, and that person gets up to go with you, you shouldn’t flinch like he just pulled out a gun. Yet that is certainly the reaction of Tinker and the Bleeder when, after Tinker says “Mr. Wesley wants to see you. Let’s go,” Dalton…gets up to go see Mr. Wesley.
This is the one time in the entire film when Tinker and O’Connor do a job that does not immediately go amiss, but their loser mindset has conditioned them to expect a beating no matter what. If they’d offered Dalton a handshake and he reached out to shake hands in response they’d burst out in flopsweat while pulling out a bowie knife. If they’d asked Dalton out on a date and he showed up to the date they’d shoot at him through the window of the diner.
You could chalk this up to Dalton’s martial prowess, with some justification. I mean, you can see what happened to them the last time they tangled with the cooler the moment you look at them. But I think that when it comes right down to it, Brad Wesley does not have a good eye for talent. Does he not say so himself when, following the defeat of Tinker and O’Connor and Pat McGurn in their attempt to restore the sister-son to his job at the Double Deuce, he ruefully acknowledges he should have sent Jimmy, one of two or three goons in his employ who’s actually good at his job? (Karpis very effectively trashed Red Webster’s auto shop in his sole observable mission, and while Ketchum lost in humiliating fashion in the parking-lot brawl, he winds up running over a car dealership with a monster truck and murdering Sam Elliott.)
Small wonder the purpose of this go-see is to try and hire Dalton away from the Double Deuce. Wesley can read the bruises and gashes all over his employees just as well as Dalton can, though admittedly in O’Connor’s case he’s responsible for at least as much damage himself.
But that ship has sailed. By hiring Dalton as his first act in the creation of the new Double Deuce, and also by establishing a bridge to Wade Garrett via Dalton, Frank Tilghman once again proves himself the town’s true visionary. He is a man who builds power; Wesley, who parasitically feeds off the town just as he coasts on the hard work of the founders of JC Penney and Fotomat, can only buy it piecemeal. In the time it would take him to accrue enough Tinkers and O’Connors to take down the likes of Dalton, the fight would already be lost.
Tags: brad welsey, dalton, goons, o'connor, road house, tinker