I remember this scene, but cannot place where it’s from. However, it is from a film released in the last ten years or so. I only saw it once. It feels like it was a straight to VOD or Netflix film, not a large cinema release though I may be wrong on that. I did not see it when it was first released or in a cinema. It definitely does feel very throwaway.
The main actor is a type like Liam Neeson, Nicholas Cage or John Cusack — churns out several films a year, many of them variations on one another. He plays a detective with a younger partner, played by a Ben Foster, Elijah Wood, Aaron Paul, Dominic Monaghan type — younger, but also smaller.
The scene I remember only features the younger detective, who is investigating the disappearance of a little boy. I think this is an aside from the main plot of the film. The younger detective’s investigation leads him to a house in a sketchy area at night, occupied by a family known to the police. There is an older woman (wearing a white tank-top or sleeveless dress) in the house, an older man (shirtless with a beard) and also a younger man. The detective enters the house not waiting for backup to arrive feeling that he must seize his chance at once despite protestations from his partner on his cellphone. The older woman is in the living room watching tv in the dark. The detective goes past her upstairs to the bathroom, where he finds the body of the missing boy in the bathtub, behind or wrapped in a shower curtain. The younger man of the household tells the detective that the boy did not feel pain or that he tried to be gentle. The detective then loses its and shoots the little boy’s killer (the younger man). He heads downstairs where the older woman is screaming. She either has a shotgun or the other man in the house has a shotgun. There is a shootout, and I do not think the young detective makes it out of the house or is critically wounded. The older detective subsequently laments that his partner went in the house alone.
Although, I’ve mention actors above, I don’t think it is any of them as I have been sifting through their filmographies looking for this movie.
Is it this scene from Gone Baby Gone?
That is incredible. I completely misremembered where the scene was from. I kept on looking in the wrong places, in the wrong types of movies and the wrong time period. I knew finding the little boy wasn’t part of the main plot, but so many other elements of the scene in my memory were wrong. — And also, I’ve seen Gone Baby Gone twice! I went back to rewatch it years later because I thought there was a plot-hole in it. This is solved. Thank you, Saphriel.
You’re welcome! I almost didn’t guess this because I was severely misremembering this movie, but the part about the bathtub sounded so familiar to me that I decided to look it up. I’m glad I was able to help!
Solved!