Highly Recommended. Great antidote to the communist agitprop fake-umentary of Fahrenheit 9/11. A true documentary that shows stories of Americans across this great and diverse land, from a Cowboy in Wyoming to a Black Jazz musician in New Orleans to a polio victim who runs the Marathan in New York, and others. Just literally showing the heart and soul of America. Not political or agenda driven, just capturing the diversity of hard working individualists, entrepreneurs and average Joes. Fascinating. One criticism was that the diversity focused mostly on blue collar, lower income, rural, or small business types. There’s gotta be some white collar, big business, Wall Street, or upper class Americans that aren’t reducible to greed, power, and privilege, don’t ya think? After all they are just as much a part of the diversity that is the heart and soul of our beautiful country. Oh yeah, more on the community too. Individualism may have wrought much good in this land, but it has also wreaked much havoc. We’ve lost much community but we need to see and elevate the pockets of it where it exist because therein lies some hope.
Movies
Saved!
Not Recommended. This movie is bitter bigoted hate speech against Christians. Hysterical witch-hunting for “Christian witches.” But in the interest of not succumbing to the same imbalanced criticism against the movie that the movie propogates against evangelical Christianity, I will first note the positive. Every criminal has some good traits. The story is about a young girl, Mary, at a Christian school who tries to “save” her boyfriend from turning gay by sleeping with him. When she gets pregnant, she has to hide her shame and deal with the “queen Christian” in the school, self-righteous Hilary Faye (An obvious reference to Tammy Faye Bakker) played by Mandy Moore. Mary hangs out with the rebels, a crippled non-Christian, and the lone Jewish girl at the school who is there only because her other choice was homeschooling. She eventually gives up her evangelical faith for a humanistic faith in herself and her feelings. These filmmakers have clearly had some experience either in the Evangelical subculture or know some who are in it, because it captures some of the bad side of it rather well: prayer as a weapon of gossip, “God told me” baloney, Jesus as a cover for every kind of selfish pursuit, Jesus marketing, frauds, hypocrites etc. I actually agree in part with the critique that Evangelical subculture has become a fraudulent marketed substitute for secular culture with the same selfishness covered over in platitudes and rationalizations. The Christian subculture with it’s Christian versions of everything; Christian schools, Christian books, Christian music, Christian T-Shirts, and even Christian vices has become a pathetic pseudo-reality that too often fails to address the real evils of society. The panacea for all problems is “Accept Jesus into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior.” Well I agree with the filmmakers here. There is a form of this kind of subculture that exists and it is wrong. However, that subculture is not necessarily real Christianity and aye, there’s the rub. In this movie, all Christians are portrayed as hypocrites, losers, liars, and frauds. There is not a single authentic biblical Christian in the entire movie against which such exploitation is measured. Someone who lives out the teachings of Jesus with compassion yet a hatred for sin; loving, but righteous. Therefore, the filmmakers are not critiquing the abuse of Christianity, they think that twisted version IS Christianity. That is how you sniff out bigotry and propaganda in a film like this. And in the end, the homosexual, the handicapped kid, the Jew, the pregnant girl are all aligned against, the “Christian” lead, a self-righteous Fem played by Mandy Moore. Of course, there are no black people there because Christianity is, according to these filmmakers, not for them either. In other words, cast the Christian as against these special interests and “diversity” so they will hate Christians too. It appears that Christians are one of the few acceptable people groups to hate and attack in this country. Imagine a movie that focused on the homosexual community that showed all the homosexuals as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU and GLAAD and branded as sexist hate-mongers. Imagine a movie that focused on a school of African Americans that showed all the blacks as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU, and the NAACP and branded as racist hate-mongers. Imagine a movie that focused on a Jewish school that showed all Jews as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. They’d be attacked by the ACLU and the ADL and branded as Anti-Semitic hate-mongers. But I guess it’s okay to make a movie that shows all Christians as either hypocrites, losers, liars or frauds. The movie mocks good things as if they were bad. It paints gun owners as gun nuts, it mocks secondary virginity, recovery from destructive behavior, clean lifestyles, prayer, faithfulness in marriage, worship music, interventions, etc. The irony is that this movie is so bitter and unfunny that it will probably do terrible business. It rings with bitterness and hatred, not truth. I gotta say, how ironic it is for Mandy Moore, to act in a movie that mocks Christians, after starring in A Walk To Remember, that elevates Christian teens in a similar context of high school. Of course, authentic Christians would not endorse the silly and false Christianity presented in the movie. They would mock it as well. But the problem lies in the propaganda, the poisoning of the well, the special pleading. The answer the story gives for false Christianity is not true Christianity, but HUMANISTIC FEELINGS. Pretty much standard fare for Hollywood. Follow your heart, your feelings and that’s truth. I wrote an entire chapter on this in my book, Hollywood Worldviews. As an adulterous woman tells her preacher partner (of course, gotta have the sexually fallen preacher, another typical cliché of Antichristian agitprop), “Why would God give us these feelings if what we are doing is wrong?” The heroine at the end of the film says, “Life is perfect. There has to be a God out there – or in us. You just have to feel it.” Of course, the god that the humanist proposes to substitute for the Biblical God is a god called ME. God is in us, which really means “we are god.” The gay struggling with his homosexuality is affirmed in his feelings, the adulterers are affirmed in their feelings, the fornicators are affirmed in their feelings. Rebels are affirmed in their feelings. (Everyone is affirmed in their feelings EXCEPT the Christian. THEIR feelings are not legitimate). Sorry, folks, but I got a news flash. If your answer to an alleged self-righteous morality of restraint is “feelings,” without a moral standard to judge and restrain those feelings (since you’ve just denied moral restraint), then you’ve just disallowed any criticism of racists, child molesters, rapists and serial killers. They have feelings too. And their feelings tell them what they’re doing is okay, and who are you to judge? When you take away that standard of moral restraint, then stop griping about a society saturated with drug addicted kids, kids killing kids, pregnant kids, kid monsters without moral restraint. That’s all the result of your “feelings” oriented morality – or lack thereof. Here’s another whopping irony: The goal of the movie is to show the Christian subculture as homogenous, comformist, and the rebels are the heros, the ones who defy such conformity. The heroine asks, “Why would Jesus have made us all so different if he wanted us to all be the same?” Funny, last time I looked, this pluralistic culture we live in is the comformist homogeneity. Relative “gray” ethics is the hegemony. Christianity is not welcomed in the public square. Christians are the true counter-cultural force, the true rebels. I mean come on, normalization of sexual perversion on every level, abortion on demand, God out of government and schools. This is a post-Christian world, folks, and inmates have taken over the asylum. Think about it for a second, the “rebels” in this movie aren’t non-conformists, they are clichés of conformity carted in from what is the true homogenous society of dominant public schools. Christian schools are the anomaly. Christian schools and homschoolers are the true non-conformists in our world. TEEN REBELS are the real conformists, not the Christian. The Christian is the true rebel in this world, yet like usual, humanistic relativist filmmakers turn the truth literally upside down and try to make the victims guilty of the crime. Morality is the problem, not immorality. It is moral people that somehow are guilty of the consequences of the immoral behavior of immoral people. Christians cause teen pregnancy, abortions, sexual diseases and criminal behavior, not the true moral criminals. Such reverse logic actually prefers promiscuity, teen pregnancy, rebellion, adultery, as good and considers abstinent clean obedient kids to be the real evil. Can there BE anything more backward?
Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;
Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
(Now, the anti-Christian would consider quoting a Bible verse to be self-righteous. But think again. Who is self-righteous – the person who points to God to define righteousness or the person who points to themself [their feelings] to define righteousness?)
Shrek 2
Recommended for adults. Funny. Very funny. A good sequel, which is hard to do. It revisits the original movie’s theme that beauty and love is in the eye of the beholder, and trying to be someone you are not or measure up to society’s definitions of beauty and fashion is harmful. The problem I had with it is that it attempted to add to this theme the idea that cross-dressers and transvestites, and other perversities are part of the “goodness” of being yourself. Pinnochio wears women’s underwear and Cinderella’s wicked stepsister is actually a male cross-dresser or transvestite who owns a bar. The whole point is that, though given the magical opportunity to change herself and Shrek into beautiful “Royal Family” looking people rather than ogres, Princess Fiona chooses not to because that’s not who she married. It would be untrue to Shrek and herself. Well, the logical extension is to show other characters in the story who are victims of such social standards of “imposed” identities and fashion. These characters, then, by extension, are also reflections of the heroine’s own redemption (ala the Pinnochio and the wicked stepsister). It’s easy to see how the filmmakers considered bizarre perversions to be part and parcel of that redemption. Without an absolute moral standard to define good and bad social norms, ALL variety of human identity becomes legitimate. They just don’t realize the Frankenstein monster they’ve created.
The Day After Tomorrow
Recommended mostly for the Special Effects. Standard disaster movie fare. A pretty good subplot of a father and son loving relationship between the lead characters, Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal. Good self sacrifice ethics. The mother/wife of the lead characters stays at a hospital with a terminally ill boy at the risk of her life — great anti-euthanasia ethic. A friend cuts himself loose from a hanging rope to save the other guys from dying with him. Jake going back to rescue the girl at risk to his life a couple times. You know, that’s what really makes a good disaster movie are precisely the self sacrificial acts of heroism. And that makes a movie like this good on a mythological level for reinforcing the kind of values that civilization is built upon.
I gotta say though that the idea that this movie is somehow a “warning” to our exploitation of natural resources is really rather laughable. Although I believe in responsible stewardship of the earth’s recources, there is really no evidence that man can do the kind of damage that extreme environmentalists claim. In the beginning of the story it is explained that the same thing is happening now that happened 10,000 years ago, with global climate change. The ice caps are melting causing worldwide distruptions, etc. etc. And then at the end of the movie, the US President says on a speech that if we aren’t more careful with our resource consumption, we’ll destroy ourselves. Well, let’s see, which industrial smoke stacks, SUVs and aerosal sprays brought on the previous Ice Age 10,000 years ago? HUH?? They undercut their own message with a non-sequitir. In the movie itself, they illustrated that global climate change has nothing to do with Man. It’s part of the natural processes. Volcanos destroy more ozone in one eruption than 100 years of man’s industrial activity. Ex-radical environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg wrote a massive documented tome, The Skeptical Environmentalist, systematically dismantling the fear claims of pollution, chemicals, greenhouse effect etc. There just is no such extreme danger. There is a moment in the film when the President of the US says, “How come nobody told us about this, where are the scientific facts?” The scientist says, “We did, but you didn’t listen to our science.” People in the audience laughed. The fact is, if we had listened to all these other fanatical junk science claims over the years, we’d be bankrupted. If only we’d listened to the population bomb experts that told us the 30 years ago that the earth would be uninhabitable right now because of population explosion and the 1980s AIDS scaremongers who said one half the population would have AIDS right now. Junk science may make for good movies, but not for real science.
Troy
Excellent production values, but hard to recommend. A hollow epic. This movie was well-written. It had all the necessary elements of a good epic: a strong warrior lead in Brad Pitt as Achilles, superb acting, superior supporting cast that fit their roles perfectly, excellent and profound dialogue, good slimmed down battle scenes, a focus on the individuals over the masses, bigger than life issues of honor, courage, love, nobility, revenge, greed, gods and country. The problem is that it lacked the most important ingredient that gives true meaning to everything else: transcendence. Oh, it tried to have transcendence, don’t get me wrong. But it quintessentially could not achieve transcendence because it appears that the storytellers (ie: the writer and director) did not themselves believe in transcendence so they fundamentally could not manufacture it no matter how hard they tried. Let me explain. Epics like Lord of the Rings, Braveheart, Patriot Games, Last of the Mohicans, Rob Roy, all achieve a profound moving of the heart that lingers in our souls because of the transcendence of the worldview in the story. The characters are fighting for things like freedom, love and honor because they are rooted in a higher reality, a higher law, a higher existence than mortal experience. Now, the truth is that only the triune God of Christianity can provide the necessary philosophical foundation of our belief in such things as human rights, universal freedom, and these things. These movies may reveal that truth to varying greater or lesser degrees, but they point to it nonetheless. And since we are created in the image of God, these truths, no matter how incompletely expressed, resonate in our souls. In Braveheart, we know that king Edward Longshanks is evil and the people of Scotland have a right to freedom because there is a higher king, a higher reality (ie: God and His law) upon which our belief in human rights is founded. But you see, if there is no higher reality, no transcendent law or God, then there is no such thing as evil, and one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter as they say. Without the idea of God, human rights, absolute wrongs are all illusions and reality reduces to the will to power (there goes Nietzsche again). There is no “right” there is only might. So within a worldview that negates transcendence, Longshanks would really be a hero (an “Overman”) because he rejects moral absolutes and creates his own values (As Nietzsche would have it). Longshanks would be beyond good and evil, and beyond criticism. As the Overman, he does not bow to the prejudices of tradition and society, etc.
My point is that this modern/postmodern belief of today, that morality and truth is relative is not workable and does not ring true to us if we play it out in our stories, and no matter how much they protesteth, no matter how much modernists and pomos try to persuade us that there is no objective truth, no absolute right and wrong, no transcendence, it does not resonate with our souls because we are created in the image of God. We know better. And epics are the profound expression of this transcendence. Now, the problem with Troy is not the paganism so much as the humanism. Of course, the paganism is silly superstition, and I concur with the filmmakers’ critique of it. The problem is that the critique comes out of a humanist immanence that ultimately rejects true transcendence and tries to replace it with an Existential appeal to living bravado. The two main warriors, Achilles and Hektor, are both humanists who mock the gods subtley (Hektor with his comments about how many battalions does Apollo command for Troy) or outright (Achilles defiantly cuts off the head of the Apollo statue, a blasphemous act, even to his fellow soldiers). They don’t believe in gods, only the peons and masses of mindless soldiers do. Of course, King Agamemnon doesn’t believe in gods either, but he uses them for his own selfish gain. The point is that through the protagonist and antagonist of Troy we see the storytellers’ contempt for religion. Achilles retorts to his lover that “The gods envy us because we are mortal” rather than the other way around. To him, this life and mortality is of more value than the next life and deity. This is also expressed when he seeks revenge for his cousin’s death because “there is nothing higher” than personal vengeance. In other words, there is no vengeance in the next world. There are no higher things than man’s own existence, than the natural world. There is no supernatural. Achilles is an Existentialist, “Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed.” As if we could not appreciate this life if we are concerned about the next. Achilles is a western individualist as he is the lone warrior who defies King Agamemnon, doesn’t follow orders, is captain of his own fate and master of his own destiny, does what he wants, sleeps with several women at once, parties hardy and cares not for politics and politicians, princes and royalty. Achilles in this film is the American hero, the cowboy of the ancient world, a Greek James Dean. He is the Nietzschean Overman. So because of this nihilistic worldview that there is nothing higher than “this life,” he seeks greatness though glory, through being remembered. That is the dominant theme of this film, that immortality is not spiritual, but mortal. It is through being remembered and not forgotten in this world that we receive glory, not through spiritual transcendence in the next world or after life. It is this world that counts, not the next. The movie ends with the narration that “these names will never die. Men will say “I lived in the time of Hektor, I lived in the time of Achilles.” Okay, that is why the story is ultimately empty and we walk away without really caring about it. Because if there is no higher reality, no transcendence that roots our beliefs in eternity, then all of life is vain, no matter how full you think you may live it. Nothing is of ultimate value, not even personal gratification of the senses. The highest experience of life is but a blink of nothingness in the vast sea of time. All meaning and value is illusion, created by us to soothe us to the truth. Honor, nobility, courage are foolish delusions and are of equal moral value with dishonor, ignobility and cowardice.
Do you see what I mean? The story undercuts it’s own epic values. And this is why it is hard to recommend the film. It has some really great appeals to courage, honor, love, consequences of sin, love of country and loyalty. In the story, Achilles, finds a certain redemption from his selfishness when he realizes his pride and vegeance as wrong and allows the King of Troy to bury his son, rather than desecrating him. Achilles apologizes to his closest officer for his temper tantrum, and seeks true love with a captured priestess of Apollo. Paris starts out a cowardly child and redeems himself as a patriotic warrior willing to die and even fight Achilles. The loyalty of friends and family is seen in Achilles and his cousin and fellow warriors. Servant-like leadership is exalted in the king of Troy versus the power warmonger Agamemnon. These are all good epic values, I won’t deny that. And they were somewhat touching. But you see, all these revelations are empty and especially Achilles’ redemption is a delusion if there is no next life, no transcendence, no God. There is not one whit of a value difference between Achilles repenting or Achilles killing if there is no transcendent reality. There is no redemption and there is no meaning if there is no transcendent reality. So the movie rejects transcendence but then tries to rescue it by maintaining the transcendent values of courage, honor, love and valor that it has already negated. This rational/irrational dialectic makes it a very dissatisfying myth.
Another thing that makes Troy dissatisfying is the modern/postmodern negation of good and evil apparent in the story. There is no good guy or evil guy. Everyone is a mixture of both, with mostly evil. Now, this may satisfy the politically correct pomo agenda that there is no such thing as good and evil sides in any war (and I’m not against a certain amount of it within a bigger context of good and evil), but it makes for bad storytelling in this case because there is no one to root for. There is no good and evil, only the will to power of men and nations. You see? When you try to incarnate postmodernism, it results in empty storytelling. Hollow epics, delusionary love. That is another reason why we leave the theater not caring at all for anyone because they were all just tragically messed up. The closest it comes to good guys are the king of Troy and Hektor. But the king is a relic of an era past and is rather incidental. And Hektor, the most honorable one, good guy Hektor’s goodness and honorableness just leads to his death. So his goodness is his tragic weakness that we know will lead to his downfall in this world of will to power. Well, if you don’t really root for anyone, you’re not going to care at the end how it all turns out because you’re not going to really care for anyone. In short, contrary to the film’s thematic proposition, all of these characters and their story will be easily forgotten because there is no transcendence to the story or to their lives. Here’s what King Solomon said about remembrance:
Ecclesiastes 2:16 For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die!… 24 There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. 25 For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?… 12:13 The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. 14 For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.
NOW THAT’S WORTH REMEMBERING.
Van Helsing
Not recommended. I liked the idea of this movie, that Van Helsing, the infamous vampire hunter from the novel Dracula, was actually a monster hunter who tracked down vampires, werewolves and monsters of all sorts. But the execution was just a motley concoction of absurd action sequences and rambling expositional details. It seemed that there were so many special rules in this world that had to be explained, that it bogged the story down. Before every action sequence we are treated to quickly spoken dialogue by an indigent who explains all the special rules so we can make sense of the behavior that is about to follow. When Van Helsing tries to get the Frankenstein monster out of Transilvania because he is the key to Dracula’s diabolical plan, we are told that he used Transilvania horses on the carriage because they are the fastest on earth and can outrun werewolves. We hear this because we have seen how easily the Wolfman runs, jumps, and catches people. But then the vampires and Wolfman catch up with them halfway anyway! Whatever. One interesting twist was that the Frankenstein monster turned out to be very human, indeed humane. They show him having read a Bible and he quotes the 23rd Psalm when captured by the vampires for their elaborate plan. We see that he has a faith relationship to God, which makes us very sympathetic toward the monster. Unfortunately, this idea is never explored which wasted the potential transcendence of the story. It was all rather silly.
Godsend
Not recommended. Another thriller that is so mediocre that I really don’t have anything to say about it. Except it’s moral implications. The story is about parents who clone their dead child in order to replace their lost love with a child who would be exactly the same. This is a fine premise, one that rings true and is worthy of exploration. The worldview behind the story is physicalism: there is no such thing as human transcendence, and everything is reducible to physical properties, even memories and soul. Physical cells in our bodies contain the memories of our abstract experience. So cloning our cells will create a complete replica of our old selves, not merely physical twins, but a full replica, complete with the same memories. Talk about silly medieval superstition. So what happens if you mix some DNA of an evil boy with the DNA of a good boy? You get a split personality boy who is alternately good and evil. And that’s what happens. This is just irresponsibility if you ask me. There are no “evil genes,” and this entire physicalist naturalist movement is a gargantuan shift of blame away from the human will onto genes. Don’t these people realize that when you negate morality and human responsibility, you create a society of monsters and cruelty? This is not a game, folks. Kids are raping and shooting other kids in schools because they’ve been taught there is no morality, everything is reducible to physics and chemistry and everything is relative; they are merely evolved machines. Well, evolved machines in an amoral universe destroy other evolved machines that get in their way. If morality, soul and even ideas are reducible to physical and chemical properties of the brain or body, then no behavior is ultimately “wrong” or “evil,” just statistical variation. This is Nietzsche’s “beyond good and evil.” Well, if kids (indeed everyone) are being taught they are Terminators, then why do we wonder why they are acting like a bunch of Terminators? Duh. So the movie, when deconstructed, becomes a conflicting contradiction. It is a moral tale about how morally wrong it is to apply science to amoral physical machines called humans. I like the moral part, but the movie undercuts itself with the physicalist worldview. And plotwise, it is just totally stupid that the doctor who helps the couple clone their son, secretly adds the DNA of his own dead son I order to reproduce him. The problem is that this doctor’s dead son was a monster himself who killed his own mother and burned down the house. But the doctor is not portrayed as malevolent himself, but misguided. So why in the world would he want to reproduce his evil son if he is not himself with evil intentions? It just doesn’t make believable sense.
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Still not recommended at all. Okay, so some people kept saying, but Volume 2 is different. You should see it. So I did. And I need to amend my previous comments. Regarding Volume 1 I said, “Tarantino turns out to be merely an ex-video store clerk obsessed with bad 70s TV, bad Hong Kong karate films, bad exploitation films, and pastiche culture, who struck a single good chord with Pulp Fiction.” But I must now change my mind. I must now say, “Tarantino turns out to be merely an ex-video store clerk obsessed with bad 70s TV, bad Hong Kong karate films, bad exploitation films, and pastiche culture, who struck a single good chord with Pulp Fiction – and has some cool camera angles.” Okay? So there. I was wrong. My goodness, homage to spaghetti westerns and kung fu movies is one thing, but does every single line delivered by every character have to be whispered like the last slow-boil line of a Clint Eastwood Western? Too long scenes, too long dialogue, too long monologues, too many rambling “asides”, too many and too long stories told by too many characters — TOO LONG. TOO BAD.
Man on Fire
Highly Recommended with Caution. Now THIS is a revenge movie the way it should be. The Punisher, Kill Bill, Walking Tall, all recent and failed revenge movies because of their simple inability to understand the morality of revenge and its implications. First of all, Denzel Washington as the lead. Pure unadulterated class. This guy is my absolute favorite actor, not merely for his presence but for his choices in movies. He seems to be choosing more and more stories that have spiritual sides to them. This one clearly has it. Training Day was brilliant. He is a cynical ex-assassin for the CIA who has lost the will to live. He gets a job as bodyguard for a little girl of a Mexican aristocrat. The girl is played with wonderful brilliance by my favorite child actor, Dakota Fanning. BEWARE, big spoiler here: Anyway, he fails and she gets kidnapped, and ultimately killed and Denzel goes on a one man killing spree to track down every man connected with her kidnapping and killing right up to the top. This is what makes the movie harsh and probably not viewable for those more squeamish about violence. The story plays out the emotion of vigilante justice for us and we follow it because it rings true in our souls, good or bad. As I’ve explained elsewhere, vigilante violence is wrong, but it is a strong reality in our world and we must wrestle with the reality of our own duplicity. The fact is we do want those S.O.B.s who kidnap, rape and kill kids to die, and that is a righteous desire. But the fact is the law often does not bring justice for us. But is our rage or hatred justified by violating the law ourselves, or does that merely reduce us to the very evil we want to destroy? We want to follow Creasy on his spree to see justice achieved. Why? Because we want our innocence back. So, in some ways revenge against injustice is a natural and understandable desire. But is it ultimately right? The reason Creasy hunts them all down is because Pita, the little girl, was the one person to bring him hope again. Her innocence gave his depravity a chance for redemption, and that was stolen. Now, with that gone, he has nothing left to lose. Anyway, no playing around with fairness like in The Punisher, he kills them each without mercy, save a lowly Mexican woman. The point is, it rings absolutely true and genuine. Throughout the film through snatchets we learn that Denzel’s character, Creasy, has a spiritual past. He’s given up on God because of his own darkness. A nun asks Creasy if he sees the hand of God in his work as a bodyguard protecting the innocent. He says dryly, “no.” He can even quote the Bible but doesn’t believe it anymore, and struggles with reading the Bible in his moments alone in his apartment, because he knows it has the answer, he just can’t bring himself to go there. One moment even has him putting away the bottle to read the Bible. Near the end when Creasy discovers that Pita is actually alive, he gets the offer that she will live if he gives himself up to the head bad guy, “The Voice.” So when Creasy does give his life for the girl, he does so willingly in love for her. And he must die in a moral sense because of his own evil. But he redeems himself by realizing that to regain innocence he must sacrifice himself, not others. He must give his life for another. Substitutionary atonement. In this way, Creasy is a Christ figure. He is a metaphor of what Christ did for his own children. He sought them out, one by one, went to the very bowels of hell to rescue them and gave his life as a ransom for many. And I believe this self sacrifice is what redeems the otherwise vigilante story. Creasy realizes that freedom will be purchased by him dying for the girl, not necessarily killing the evil men. Of course, killing them in self-defense or through due process of law is certainly morally good, but personal vigilanteism is not. Vigilanteism is driven by hatred, not justice. Sacrifice is driven by love, not hate. As Denzel drives away with the bad guys, the screen fades out and we can only imagine the Passion-like horrors he will endure for the little one he saved. Very powerful. A thought comes to me head that it would have been great to tie in an element previously from the movie. Previously, Creasy blew up a guy by putting a bomb up his butt and setting it off with a watch timer. Well, wouldn’t it have been just nice for Creasy to be driving away with the Bad Guy and his gang, and then they hear a “beeping.” What is that? And they explode because Creasy had placed one of those bombs in himself. But even though that would have still been a self sacrifice, it would have spoiled the real sense of true suffering that we knew he would endure for the little girl. It would have been more Hollywood in wrapping up all the ends and getting the Bad Guy at the end anyway. And being Hollywood isn’t necessarily bad. But in this case, they probably chose the right path. Not to show that bad guys get away, but to show the deeper myth of atonement that was trying to be illustrated. Interesting how Brian Helgeland, the writer, would write the nihilism of Mystic River and L.A. Confidential then write a redemptive story like this. I think it clearly shows the influence of Mr. Washington, just like Training Day was influenced by him when he challenged the storytellers with the Scripture, “the wages of sin is death,” as a guide to the moral theme and the bad guy’s ending.
The Punisher
Not recommended. First of all, this is a revenge movie, so for a theological examination of the morality of revenge see my article, “A Time To Revenge?: Vigilanteism and Movie Justice in A Time to Kill. But leaving that aside for the moment, I would like to address the story of this genre movie. This movie was very difficult to watch, not because it was a revenge movie, but because it was a revenge movie trying not to be a revenge movie until the last act, which totally confused it. Basically, you have this undercover cop, Frank Castle, whose entire family and friends are killed as revenge for a mobster’s son’s death under Frank’s sting operation. The storytellers try to make Frank a righteous and good man by showing that the mobster’s kid shows up unannounced, and Frank doesn’t know who he is, and then Frank is disappointed when he discovers that the kid is accidentally shot dead in a drug bust he was working on. No one was supposed to get hurt, we discover. Okay, so that’s fine. I like righteous men as heros. But the problem is this: the movie sets up a very emotionally extreme revenge situation but delivers a confused pay off by trying to make Frank’s revenge, “legitimate” or “fair,” rather than embracing the full heart of revenge. It just isn’t emotionally or humanly believable. The mobster, Howard, finds out that Frank was the head of the sting that killed his kid, and Howard’s wife gets him to slaughter Frank’s entire family and friends at a party in revenge. Frank barely survives and embarks on his blood vengeance. The problem is that this slaughter is very extreme, and even believable, but Frank’s reactions are not. After he gets well, he packs up a pile of guns and weapons and moves to the city to track down Howard. BUT THEN HE DOESN’T USE THE WEAPONS. Rather, Frank decides to try to be a pest to Howard by dumping his dirty drug money into the streets, and get his Cuban connections mad at him for losing money, and then to get Howard thinking his wife is committing adultery with his most trusted henchman. Frank does all this in an effort to get Howard’s own evil to turn against him and bring his downfall. Okay, that’s a clever revenge tactic, but it does not fit at all the emotional set up of the story. Frank is set up as an ex-special forces guy with all these weapons, etc. etc. His ENTIRE family is slaughtered, so his revenge is to go and cause financial trouble for the responsible mobster? NO WAY. He would track him down and each of his family members, one by one, and kill them like an avenging angel, that’s what he would do. The kind of revenge the storytellers actually have Frank embark on would work best if the mobster just financially screwed over a NON-ACTION guy, who then gets back by screwing up the Mobster’s financial life, but then the mobster kills the guy’s family half way through, which leads the hero to then track down the mobster’s family. You see? Escalating revenge, not backwards revenge. Howard killed Frank’s entire family for goodness sake! He would kill them all, not be a pest. The heart fizzed immediately out of this story. And to make matters worse, they always try to make Frank super fair, even though he’s seeking revenge. Frank is supposed to be dead, right? SO he has the surprise element which is perfect, right? He can start attacking Howard and no one will know who the heck is doing it, right? SO what does Frank do? He shows himself in front of his ex-partners at the Police headquarters to complain that they haven’t done anything to jail the mobster after killing Frank’s family! He tells the world he’s alive, when he had such great cover? How stupid and unbelievable. Then, on Frank’s first revenge, he spills Howard’s millions of dollars out a window, and when he comes across two of the bodyguards who killed his family, he faces them down like a gunslinger fight. And he let’s them draw first before he shoots them both. Are you kidding me? A man bent on revenge, who gives his enemies a fighting chance? Who are they trying to kid? I applaud the storytellers for trying to make a hero with ethics who always is justified in his violence out of self-defense, but it just doesn’t fit the genre. THIS IS A REVENGE STORY GUYS, not a superman comic. Road to Perdition deals with this theme how it should be dealt with in a much more believable way. Okay, so then Frank is holed up in a little apartment where he is recognized by his tenants, and he doesn’t seem to care. Also, he doesn’t seem to care about being found out and tracked down by the mobster, so he doesn’t hide his whereabouts. How ignorant can he be? And then there’s this big scene where a loser neighbor with body piercing determines he is not going to talk to the mobster to tell him where Frank is hiding in the building. So he is tortured, but he never talks. This is completely unbelievable. They try to set up that Frank saved this kid from being beaten up earlier, so he returns the favor. But the problem is that the kid is such a white trash weak loser that it is entirely unbelievable. Of course, he would give up. Heck, hardened soldiers give up when tortured. It is laughable. And then the mobster doesn’t kill the neighbors for not talking? Yeah, right. He slaughters entire families, but doesn’t kill people who are covering for the hero. And now here is the ridiculous part. After the mobster hurts this one kid by ripping out all his body rings, NOW Frank is really mad. NOW he takes all his guns and weapons and hunts down the mobster and his family to kill them all brutally. Of course, he still let’s the mobster kill his own wife out of misplaced jealousy, but still, this is the last act where Frank goes ballistic and finally mercilously slaughters the Mobster’s gang, one by one in a deliberated hunt. Oh, so you kill his entire family and he causes financial trouble for you, but hurt my white trash neighbor friend, and that’s going too far. Now, I’m going to kill you all. That is so backwards that I should have walked out of the movie for that alone. Okay, I didn’t. I had to be able to finish my argument. ☺ And the scene where Frank prepares to kill them all is where they have a little voiceover of Frank explaining his rationale why sometimes you have to go outside of the law to get justice done. It’s all rather pedantic and preachy, but it shows just how confused the storytellers are, trying to make a revenge movie, but to stay as fair and self-defense oriented as long as possible. Of course, I’m with them in their intent, but they just picked the wrong story to work that theme. It would have been more germane to the story to have Frank go out on an emotionally justified revenge, but learn in the end that it kills his soul just the same. Like I said, watch Road to Perdition, which is the story, these guys were deliberately trying to copy. It is the better version of this story. When the hero in Road to Perdition goes after Capone’s money for revenge against his family being killed, he does so only because he knows he is way too small to be able to get to the bad guy, so he does it to draw attention to his plight and force the big guys to do something about it. Also, there is the political family issue that the hero was beloved by and loved the father whose son deserved to die. So he couldn’t just kill the person responsible for his family’s murder without drawing down the wrath of the entire mob upon him and his surviving son. So his dilemma was complicated by trying to keep his son alive as well. The terrible injustice done to the Road to Perdition story was that they raped the original graphic novel story of it’s spiritual redemption which was intrinsic to the whole meaning of the story. In the novel, Jesus is the antithesis of revenge, but in the movie, “gun control” is the antithesis of revenge. Very stupid. But, you know Hollywood hates Jesus, so what can you expect. But that’s a whole different movie, so I’ll stop.