What Really Happened to Danny McBride's Character at the End of 30 Minutes or Less

The modest (at best) box-office performance of 30 Minutes or Less over the weekend is a bit of a disappointment to the folks at Sony, who had faith in director Ruben Fleischer and stars Jess Eisenberg, Aziz Ansari and Danny McBride to put an exclamation point on the summer of the R-rated comedy. That didn't happen -- in fact, many viewers might have perceived more of a question mark. To wit, what happened to McBride's character in the last scene of the film?

[Needless to say, major spoilers follow.]

The finished film features a junkyard showdown followed by a car chase between bank-robbing pizza guy Nick (Eisenberg) and would-be tanning-salon pimp Dwayne (McBride). When Dwayne catches up with Nick, who has taken off with the money he was forced to steal when Dwayne strapped a bomb to his chest, Dwayne levels a gun at Nick's head in the adjacent lane. But just before he can shoot, his van explodes; Nick explains to his friend Chet (Ansari) and Chet's sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria) that he reactivated the bomb vest and tossed it in Dwayne's vehicle as a precaution just before hitting the road. Done deal, end of film.

Except it's... not? 30 Minutes or Less has broad flourishes of dark comedy, but despite some pretty extreme violence -- from Dwayne's lottery-winning taskmaster father (Fred Ward) getting shot to hit man Chango (Michael Peña) withstanding the receiving end of a flamethrower -- nobody in the movie actually dies. A commercial for Dwayne's Major Tan is tacked on after the end credits to assure us that Dwayne, his father and his partner in crime Travis (Nick Swardson) made it in the end, but it might as well be a dream sequence. After all, how did Dwayne get to that point when his father hates him, Nick and Chet tore off with his $100,000 and the last we saw of the guy was in a burning wreck in the middle of the road?

So many questions! For the record, however, McBride supplied Movieline with some answers.

"Honestly, there was a big scene that was cut out of the movie at the end, and I totally understand why," McBride said. "Once the bomb goes off, the movie feels like it's over with. You're ready for it to be done. In the script, originally, there was a wrap-up with Jesse and Aziz, and those guys end up in Mexico. And then there was a wrap-up with Dwayne, where he stumbles home to his house after the explosion in the van, finds his dad still barely alive, and those two have this sort of bonding moment: 'You're not a fucking pussy.' 'Thanks!' You know? That's sort of what Dwayne has been looking for.

"But when you watch the movie," he continued, "it has such an amazing pace and moves so quickly that it's like the brakes had to come on at the very end to wrap these things up. Reading it in the script, it feels like it wraps up the characters nicely. But when you watch the film, it feel like it's a detriment to the pace. So it gets clipped in the end. But I was always playing the character with that intention that ultimately everything -- the tanning salon, the success -- is all just to find the acceptance of his dad. [...] When we saw the cut, we were like, 'Oh. I guess Dwayne dies at the end of this version!' Ruben put the tanning salon thing in the ending credits just so there's some air there, but at the end of the day, the movie feels like it's over when the climax is over."

So! Dry your eyes, already. Everyone's fine.