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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Classic foster product. Three years old, Marshall Krupcheck witnesses daddy kill mommy then sees daddy kill himself. You can guess the rest.
Yeah. Why's he standing there? Why's he just standing there? He's not just standing there. [pause] He's watching him die. We're talking to the wrong guy. |
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| ~ Jeff as he describes Marshall's sadistic nature. |
Marshall "Mars" Krupcheck is the main antagonist of the 2001 thriller novel "Hostage" by Robert Crais and its 2005 action film adaptation.
Mars is a remorseless sociopath driven by a twisted desire to inflict suffering. Callous and devoid of empathy, he exploits those around him, discarding them without hesitation. Mars' depravity reaches its zenith when he sadistically torments two innocent children, cementing his status as a villain of the darkest order. Unwilling to face the consequences of his heinous crimes, Mars ultimately chooses suicide.
He is portrayed by the early Ben Foster which this is his only Pure Evil role.
What Makes Him Pure Evil?[]
- It is revealed that, at the age of 17, he carried out an armed robbery of a gas station, where he mercilessly watched the clerk he shot to death, bleed out as he begged for help, then dumped newspapers on his bloodied remains. This was prior to the events of the movie.
- He targeted the wealthy Smith family along with his accomplices, Dennis and Kevin Kelly, following them to their house, breaking into their garage and taking Walter, the 15 year old Jennifer, and the 7 year old Tommy hostage in their own home.
- When an officer arrives at the house after Tommy activated the silent alarm and discovers their parked vehicle near the driveway, she questions Walter, who tries to talk her away at gunpoint, only for Marshall to shoot her down when she realizes the truck was involved in a carjacking.
- When Talley and the police arrived, he immediately started a violent gunfight, firing at them mercilessly and disregarding Talley's pleas for him to carry the dying cop to safety without being fired at, despite the injured officer crawling helplessly on the driveway.
- As Talley is sent to transport an unconscious Walter to the ambulance, he sadistically points his pistol at him before jokingly whispering "bang" and slipping away behind the shadows.
- He makes unwanted sexual advances towards Jennifer after he had her tied up into a chair,blew smoke in her face and forcibly kissed her despite her only being 15, crossing the line into sexual assault.
- He also declares her for the taking and plans on getting together with her in a helicopter and when she refused and said that she wasn't his girl, he angrily slammed her against a rock wall, choking her replying "You're my girl".
- While Talley attempts to negotiate with the trio, he then tricks Dennis much to Kevin’s frustration and makes the situation worse by holding Jennifer at gunpoint and persisting that Jennifer goes with him after Talley states that the helicopter can only carry three at a time.
- He then ties Jennifer's arms and legs to bedposts and prepares to rape her once he realizes she won't be able to accompany him in the helicopter.
- He tosses Kevin from a balcony, mortally wounding him, when he decides to let the children go. He then shoots Dennis as he comforts his dying brother, feeling regret for the way he treated him; nevertheless, rather than becoming upset, he heartlessly stares at both of his friends as they die from their injuries.
- He didn't actually care or respect his friends, and he only saw them as pawns to get closer to Jennifer, the girl he was obsessed with.
- He drives Tommy to pull the trigger when he draws a gun on him in an attempt to protect his sister (Jennifer) from being raped, but instead of being frightened, he teases him that the gun was on safety mode before disarming him and shoving him to the floor.
- After Jennifer unties herself and stabs Marshall in the face, he angrily pursues both children into the air ducts, eventually leading them to the home's panic room, where Jennifer kicks him in the face as he tries to drag her away. While the children hide in the panic room, he approaches them from across the bulletproof wall, smashes the two-way mirror, and tries to shoot them through the bulletproof glass.
- Just after after he smears the words "Burn it." in his blood on the glass wall, he attempts to burn the house down with Molotov cocktails as the children are trapped inside so that he could not only kill the children but also escape from the authorities.
- He tosses a Molotov Cocktail at Talley's squad car, setting it ablaze before he enters the burning house to rescue the children. Even when the Watchman's goons break into the home, he murders several of them for his own amusement despite that their mission was only to retrieve a DVD that belonged to Walter.
- When one of the goons shoots Talley and threatens the children, he tosses a cocktail at him, as Talley fires back. Despite saving the three, he killed the goon to get closer to them, particularly Jennifer, so that he could finish them himself, rather than to protect them.
- As he approaches Jeff and the children, he attempts to toss his final cocktail at them before succumbing to his injuries and dropping it on himself, melting him to his death.
- His death scene where he and Jennifer share a look before he lets the cocktail fall on himself isn’t sympathetic or pitiable because he was dying from his wounds, not from regret or guilt, even if he had planned to kill Jeff and the kids.
- While he may have initially seemed charming or sympathetic towards the girl, Jennifer, this was all part of a calculated effort to manipulate and exploit her. This is shown from the start of the movie when he first laid eyes on the teenage Jennifer, he became immediately and intensely obsessed with her, viewing her solely as an object of his twisted desires rather than as a human being. After which she offended Dennis by sticking out the middle finger at him, he deliberately took advantage of the confrontation between Jennifer and Dennis, recognizing it as the perfect opportunity to insinuate himself into Jennifer's life and gain her trust, all in service of his own predatory and selfish motives.
- To top it all off, he'd actually started lusting after her.
- He lacked any authentic emotions for Jennifer, showing no concern for her well-being. His desire was for her to comply with his wishes and to feed his obsession, rather than to cultivate a true romantic connection.
- While he had a tragic backstory of having witnessed his father murder his mother and then commit suicide when he was just 3 years old, it does not justify any of his actions. If anything, he willingly became worse than his father.
- To simply put it, he'd rather actually enjoyed watching his parents getting murdered, showcasing that, even at a younger age, he displayed early red flagged signs of a psychopath.
- It’s also heavily implied that he also somehow influenced his father into killing both his mother and himself, showing he’s also manipulative at the early age.
- Throughout the whole film, he showed absolutely no remorse for his actions.
- While he did attempted to do so with Jennifer, it’s been heavily implied that he actually already raped several other teenage girls before her just prior to the film, and the reason the authorities weren't able to put him behind bars for a crime he'd possibly repeated multiple times was because it's implied that he killed his rape victims and their families in order to dispose any witnesses who might report on him for his crimes.
Trivia[]
- This is Ben Foster's only Pure Evil role.
- The film is based on a Robert Crais novel, where Mars is described as more psychotic and brutal. In the book, Jennifer escapes from Mars when he accidentally digs a nail into her cleavage, while in the film, Mars approaches her menacingly while taking off his jacket.
External Links[]
- Marshall Krupcheck on the Villains Wiki
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