Whatsthatsmell?

Saw Death Sentence the other night...

Death Sentence is a revenge film wherein Kevin Bacon is the protagonist whose son is randomly killed by a gang-banger in an initiation killing.  Instead of fingering the perpetrator in court and thereby sending him away for 1-5 years on a plea bargain, something flips and he decides to get even.

What ensues is an escalation between Bacon and the gang to which this fine young man belongs.

It was fun to watch, although I think it spent way too much time on character development.  Also, it preached a bit.  By taking it back to the gangbangers the overall PC message running through the film was that Kevin Bacon brings any subsequent misfortune upon himself.  And he "becomes" one of them.  Also there were a few whiny moments where the gangbangers complained about the media not caring if one of them from the wrong side of town was to get killed...No sh** Sherlock.  The difference is that the kid who was killed at the beginning was not a fellow drug dealer, just a guy getting a slurpie in a gas station.

This kind of wound me up a bit, because whether Bacon's character broke the law or not in becoming a vigilante, what he did was not the same as what the gangbangers did to start it.  His character was looking for justice.  The gangsters were looking for trouble.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but I don't remember Death Wish expressing the same sort of PC moral equivalence wherein all violence is wrong even if it is just or in self-defense.

It reminds me of another fun to watch recent violent film featuring Clive Owen: Shoot 'em Up.  That film, like Death Sentence, had some fantastically over-the-top violent action which felt cathartic.  But, get this, the bad guys are a pro-gun rights gun manufacturer and his political stooge.

I mean...FFS...WTF...

I am getting tired of being preached to by people who capitalise on the cinematic portrayal of mindless violence telling me how wrong violence is, especially in self-defense or in aid of justice.

Is it me?  Am I being to sensitive to this crap?

Here we have some major ultra-violence laced with mealy-mouthed platitudes about how wrong it is.

It's not as if the industry of Hollywood is a bastion of morality, anyway.  Members of the most cutthroat, superficial, amoral industry in the world are presuming to be my moral compass.

Puh-LEASE!!!!

Listen Hollywood: If you're going to make millions from a film where the body count from violent means exceeds, say, 5, in the first five minutes of the film, then don't tell me how wrong it is.  I might be so suggestible as to stop watching your crap films altogether.

At Long Last, It's Finally Here:

Geert Wilders' notorious Fitna film (H/T to Laban Tall):

And another thing we saw last night...

If you get a chance, watch The Lives of Others.  I was wary at first - judging from the trailers on the DVD for pretentious artsy PC films, including a trailer for that one where George Clooney played Edward R. Murrow - but it turned out to be one of the best films I have seen in a long time.

Certainly an indictment of the dehumanisation of society under socialist totalitarianism.  And a damned good story exploring the character of a member of the Stasi who speaks maybe five sentences in the whole film and his relationship to those people he is assigned to observe.

German cinema seems to be going from strength to strength to strength over the last several years.

John McClane as a Metaphor for America?

From Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Free or Die Hard in the US):

"You know what you get for being a hero? Nothing. You get shot at. A little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Kids don't wanna talk to you. Get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy."

I don't have the exact follow-up quote, but when the character is asked why he continues to be a hero he said something to the effect that "If I don't, no one else will."