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Vengeance Is MineBy STANLEY FISHThe New York Post includes among its 10 best movie lines of 2009 a speech delivered by Liam Neeson in "Taken" (released in 2008 in England and France): "If you're looking for ransom, I don't have any money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you." No one who has seen even a few movies in the "revenge and avenge" tradition will be surprised to learn that the "Taken" script follows the Neeson character's speech exactly. The bad guys pay no attention. The hero springs into action, finds the first of his targets in less than 16 hours, and in the following 80 or so hours he dispatches everyone in sight (a body count of at least 20) before a confrontation with the man behind his daughter's kidnapping brings the story to its inevitable end. The movie also follows its predecessors in being efficient (93-minute running time); after a set-up - divorced father trying to hard to please a spoiled child - there are no wasted minutes. The avenging father is on the clock - he is told that after 96 hours his daughter will disappear into the world of international prostitution - and so is the movie. It's bang, bang, bang, and with each bang at least one body. The formula is sure-fire and fits nicely into many movie genres: the literary classic - the Richard Chamberlain "Count of Monte-Cristo," the best of many versions; westerns - Gregory Peck's "The Bravados," Steve McQueen's "Nevada Smith," Burt Lancaster's "Valdez is Coming," Charles Bronson's "Chato's Land," Robert Redford's "Jeremiah Johnson," Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales"; lawman-on-a mission - Steven Seagal's "Out for Justice" and "Under Siege," Joe Don Baker's "Walking Tall," Bruce Willis's "Die Hard" (maybe); ex-cons/gangsters with a moral code - Michael Caine's "Get Carter," Terence Stamp's "The Limey," Gary Busey's "Eye of the Tiger," Denzel Washington's "Man on Fire," Lee Marvin's "Point Blank," Mel Gibson's "Payback"; kick-ass feminism - Uma Thurman's "Kill Bill," Jennifer Lopez's "Enough," Jodie Fosters "The 'Brave One"; and the sturdiest category of all, the worm turns or (apparently) ordinary man transformed into a killing machine - Dustin Hoffman's "Straw Dogs," Cole Hauser's "Paparazzi," Charles Bronson's "Death Wish"and "Mr.Majestyk," Mel Gibson's "Mad Max" and "Braveheart," Patrick Swayze's "Road House," Kevin Bacon's "Death Sentence," Viggo Mortensen's "A History of Violence," and the comic version, Kevin James's "Mall Cop." Gibson, who specializes in sanctified violence and the enduring of pain, has another one coming out next month, "Edge of Darkness." The formula's popularity stems from the permission it gives viewers to experience the rush violence provides without feeling guilty about it. The plot gives the hero the same permission when a wife or daughter or brother or girlfriend (in Jodie Foster's case a boyfriend) is abducted, injured or killed. Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills declares that he would tear down the Eiffel Tower to get at the men who have taken his daughter. He doesn't do that, but he does shoot (but not kill) the entirely innocent wife of a former colleague just to make the point that he means business. Of course cars, buildings, airplanes and entire towns are destroyed without a backward glance, and also without any legal repercussions. (Law enforcement officers are often secretly and sometimes openly sympathetic with the vigilante, as in "Death Wish," "Eye of the Tiger" and "Paparazzi.") Once the atrocity has occurred, the hero acquires an unquestioned justification for whatever he or she then does; and as the hero's proxy, the audience enjoys the same justification for vicariously participating in murder, mayhem and mutilation. In fact, the audience is really the main character in many of these films. You can almost see the director calculating the point at which identification with the hero or heroine will be so great that the desire to see vengeance done will overwhelm any moral qualms viewers might otherwise have. The trick, raised to high (or low) art in "Straw Dogs," is to have audience members thinking, and sometimes shouting, "Yes, yes, yes" in response to actions they would never countenance, never mind perform, in real life. Or would they? The question of violence's relationship to morality (a question debated in the arguments over "just war" theory) is raised explicitly in many of these films, often in a manner as exploitative as the films themselves, but sometimes almost seriously. In both "The Brave One" and "Death Sentence," much is made of the fact that the victimized everyman (or -woman) has now become indistinguishable from those who inflicted the initial injuries. After hunting down and dispatching those he holds responsible for his wife's death, Gregory Peck's Jim Douglass, in "The Bravados," discovers that they weren't the ones, although they did enough terrible things to warrant punishment. Viggo Mortensen's Tom Stall, in "A History of Violence," tries to escape violence, but finds that he can't get far away enough; it will always return, and he must return to it in order to protect his family. In "Gran Torino," Eastwood's most recent attempt to have his violence and renounce it too, the protagonist neutralizes violence by becoming its self-sacrificing recipient. He makes the world pure (or at least a little better) by taking everything on himself in an obvious imitation of Christ. But in the genre's purest film, "Point Blank," neither moral anxiety nor semi-religious cleansing is anywhere in sight. The anti-hero Walker just wants the $93,000 his ex-partner and betraying wife stole from him. That is his only motive, although those he encounters and assaults can't believe it. They reason that there must be something behind what he's doing; but there is nothing behind him and nothing inside him. There is no point except the trivial one of getting what he's owed. It's a point that's blank. And the 10 best of these guilty pleasures? Here's my list in alphabetical order. "Death Wish," "Get Carter," "A History of Violence," "The Limey," "Mad Max," "Out for Justice," "Point Blank," "Straw Dogs," "Taken," "Valdez is Coming." What's yours? |