Killer FilmsWhy the new vigilante movies are a lot like the old vigilante movies.
Posted Thursday, Sept. 13, 2007, at 1:34 PM ET
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StumbleUponAt the same time, Erica dedicates much of her vigilantism to shooting random predators, which puts the film somewhat out of step with the current cycle. Today, we are less afraid of the random punk than we are of the sleeper cell. Shadowy networks and evil syndicates are the new muggers and rapists, as seen in a number of films—Batman Begins, Munich, Man on Fire, The Punisher, and Death Sentence among them. In fact, Brian Garfield says that the most outdated aspect of his novel Death Sentence—and hence one of the first things to be jettisoned in adapting it—was the prevalence of muggers. This explains the film's violent methamphetamine outfit, a decidedly more "today" villain.
Warner Bros. has positioned The Brave One as a serious-minded drama. Death Sentence, a more straightforward genre piece, is also surprisingly sober. Still, neither film is as ambivalent as Steven Spielberg's Munich. Despite Munich's exhaustive running time (and the lead assassin being recruited because he is not "a sabra Charles Bronson"), the film reduces the vigilante ethos to its troubled core. While the film is ostensibly a period piece chronicling the revenge Israel exacted for the 1972 killings of its Olympic athletes, many saw Munich's use of Israel's 30-year-old vendetta as a stand-in for today's "war on terror." But Munich (nominated for five Academy Awards) can also be seen as continuing a dialogue begun in Death Wish (nominated for none). When Bronson asks, "What do you call people who, when they're faced with a condition of fear, do nothing about it?" his son-in-law replies, "Civilized." Thirty years later, the exchange continues, but it's not Bronson who answers, it's Golda Meir: "Some people say we can't afford to be civilized."
It's easy to imagine that in a post-9/11 America, vengeance occupies more of our national imagination than before. Maybe it does. But today's vigilante movies channel many of the same frustrations that their predecessors did. Today, as in the '70s, America faces economic, environmental, and energy-related crises. In both generations, Americans wrestle with political powerlessness, on fronts ranging from their own health care to the country's role on the global stage. (America's invasion of Iraq, unsanctioned by the U.N. and launched by a president happy to be seen as a "cowboy"—or more accurately, a gunfighter—could be seen as a vigilante war.) And both generations of Americans watch as the executive branch flouts its accountability to the public and to the law, proves unable to "win" an increasingly unpopular war, and refuses to acknowledge the reality of the war's downward spiral.
Fundamentally, both eras also share an anxiety about the government's ability to keep them safe. As Barak notes, vigilante fantasies of the 1970s stemmed less from actual crime than from the feeling that the criminal justice system was ineffective. Although crime rates fell steadily between 1994 and 2005, we still face a similar unease about trusting our safety to "the system." New Orleans is a perfect example. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it was not the storm but the design of the levees and FEMA's response that caused so much destruction and misery. This is the one-two punch we now fear: the calamity, and then the realization that help from our institutions is not on the way.
Enter the vigilante. In a pop culture of tumultuous times, he is a steadying presence, a recognizable archetype. At such moments, vigilante movies offer gut-level reassurance, as if saying, "There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that we lost habeas corpus; the good news is that the Twinkie defense also just became moot." In the case of The Brave One, this is why the film's most important question is not the one it seems to pose most often: "What is Erica becoming?" Instead, the film's most important question is raised just once, and by a minor character. Against the jungle of a park in the middle of the night, a girl Erica has freed from a particularly scummy tormentor awakens from a daze to ask the question we all could ask:
"Is this still America?"
Is it ever.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Isn't it a bit of a stretch to try to tie two recent films with shared themes of vigilantism into some grand thesis about the state of American society? I'm inclined to see The Brave One as simply another installment in a series that includes The Panic Room, and Flight Plan -- Jodie Foster (and the film makers) makes good money depicting women in danger who overcome their antagonists. Perhaps the success of these films has more to do with the audience's interest in seeing an attractive woman at risk, and then victorious, than any larger concern about American society.
--softa
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I think this article really misses the boat in discussing Hollywood vigilante films. In fact, there are two schools of vigilante films and this review mixes both together.
In one school, the hero is pitted against a society held hostage to rampaging street crime. This includes films like Death Wish, the Dirty Harry movies, and also both of the new films.
But films like these should not be confused with the other school--the hero pitted against a society that is itself corrupt and unfair. School 1 could be called "Good Guy vs. The Scumbag Criminals". School 2 could be called "Good Guy vs. The Man."
The Good-Guy-vs-The-Man school includes films like Billy Jack, Walking Tall, and First Blood. There's a very real difference in these two kind of films and the fact that Lichtenfeld demonstrates no thinking on this difference is disappointing. In a nutshell, one school demonstrates conservative dissatisfaction with liberalism and the other demonstrates liberal dissatisfaction with conservatism.
--RobMac
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Neither Dirty Harry nor Walking Tall is a true vigilante movie. Each of the protagonists is an authorized law enforcement officer.
A vigilante, as such, takes the law into his own hands--no authorization or affirmation by the regulating powers.
If anything, the above mentioned two are views that while the system has problems in dealing with known and obvious criminals it has a reluctance or impotence to issue reasonable punishment because it is confined by its own language and bureaucracy.
The simple but clear minded protagonists produce the corrective for felons. In Harry's case, no further consequences are known to the audience while in Buford's he suffers the ultimate price for exacting justice.
These movies are not vigilante movies, rather benedictions of cops acting on their own initiatives--which are apparently just but encourage the notion that police, as we see so often, as justified no matter what they decide or how much force is applied. ( See the 2nd of the Dirty Harry movies Magnum Force which supports this.)
No vigilantes here, just cops--corrupt cops-- as also protrayed in Prince of the City, Serpico, Romeo is Bleeding, The Bad Lieutenant, The Professional.
The real vigilantes in film are shown in the likes of Shane, Ride the High Country.
--pescatore
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(9/15)