" Even though Jem asserts: "I ain""t scared.I go past Boo Radley""s house nearly every day of my life," he doesn""t take the challenge as they go out into the street to play.As the train pulls away, his pursuers (Annabella""s rival spies) are unable to catch the moving rain.BackgroundTerms of Endearment(1983) is a comedy/drama classic, an entertaining film, but also a manipulative, soap-operatic melodramatic tearjerker, with an ending similar toDark Victory (1939)andLove Story (1970).The next sequence was a pivotal turning point for he two sisters, occurring in the mid-1930s - decades before the present day of 1962.Two of the film""s main characters are introduced.Corps Commander General George Broulard (Adolphe Menjou), a wily, cultivated but calloused, evil, scheming and ruthless officer in the French High Command arrives in an open car, to discuss top-secret military maneuvers with his vainglorious subordinate - the scar-faced divisional General Paul Mireau (George Macready, with a real facial scar - the result of a serious car accident).[Debra (voice-over): "It was a pretty one-sided conversation."]Debra received a cell-phone text message from her little brother, telling her that her family had been camping for four days in West Virginia, and were still alive and driving home.