Ally's manager sticks in my craw

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2019)

My wife and I watched A Star is Born together. I didn't know what to expect, as I has never seen any of the earlier movies of the same name. It had us both in tears repeatedly... and then the final act rolled on stage.
The plot had well established Maine's destructive behaviors by that point, and how those behaviors had finally affected his wife and not just himself. We see him return from rehab, teetering on the cliff's edge of recovery, and then... Ally's manager corners him alone and - knowing his vulnerabilities - ruthlessly, selfishly, says things to him cruelly calculated to drive him away from her at the least and drive him to suicide at the worst. And he succeeds in his selfish plot to protect "his property" (Ally), because minutes later Maine is dead, having finally been given the emotional push to succeed where he had failed at thirteen.
The sociopathic behavior of Ally's manager should be remembered as the moral of the story.