Movies With Dodgy Moral Messages

[Blumf]

I love The Warriors, and it's set in a clearly stylized universe and based on some Greek legend, but they are a gang right? Do they just hang around in their cute outfits up at Coney Island, do they help people, or do they do like bad stuff sometimes?

They solve mysteries.

[NoSleep]

The PS2 game shows the formation of The Warriors and some of their day to day ways of making a living, which include mugging, stealing car radios, looting shops and running a protection racket.

[Dead kate moss]

You've Got Mail is very disturbing. Tom Hanks runs a huge bookstore chain, tricks small bookstore owner Meg Ryan into loving him via lies and manipulation, while still destroying her business, and she's just fine with it all at the end.

[finnquark]

The Death Wish series.

[Famous Mortimer]

I think we've discussed this before - it's meant to be extreme, in the vein of The Brothers Grimm. Plus, he wasn't just a crappy husband - he took over another person's life, and would have done so forever if he could have. Hubris!

Okay, then, "whose moral crimes weren't a lot worse than the two women who got to have a lovely happy life together, while he endures a lifetime of unimaginable torment".

Killing Zoe - be nice to your local prostitute! [nb]Actually, there's not a lot wrong with that, in principle[/nb]

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I wouldn't say the people he kills are just drug dealers/muggers. They're killers/rapists themselves, and nasty ones at that.

But he does go around killing them, and we're expected to accept that as a wholly reasonable response to the plight of Broken Britain.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I've not seen it myself, but isn't it supposed to be a Western, but on a British council estate?

It's more of a right-wing Dirty Harry-esque fantasy in which a lone wolf takes the law into his own hands in order to obliterate council estate scum who deserve death. The idea, as far as I can see, is that we're supposed to regard the Michael Caine character as someone brave enough to do something that our namby-pamby, politically correct so-called society won't allow in real life. It's an extremely dodgy film.[nb]Michael Caine is very good in it, though.[/nb]

[Pepotamo1985]

Blow, which spends something like the majority of its 2 hour running time massively glorifying and romanticising drug use (particularly cocaine), the drug trade and drug dealers (well, George Jung - a shining bastion of honesty and morality surrounded by some real bad folks out to screw him) and reveals that if anything untoward happens to you as a result of taking or selling drugs, you're the victim here, fergawd'ssake - after all, you're just providing a valued, in-demand public service, and those blasted evil bureaucrats and the fun police are out to screw you.

Admittedly, I guess Blow could be read as a profoundly moral flick which demonstrates that an apparently ideal existence financed by drug dealing can evaporate in an instant due to that profession's illegality - no matter how good it feels, and no matter how much money you make, it could destroy your life at any moment. However, I find it a little hard to subscribe to this, because the film seems to be propagating the message that the only real drawbacks of drug dealing are;

1. Those hateful shits you call parents might hot you up to the feds
2. Those cunts you think are your friends might set you up and get you sent to prison
3.  See that crazy bitch you call a wife? The one you smack from time to time? She'll get ya nicked if she can, just to spite ya, because she's hysterical
4. The borderline totalitarian legal system will send you to prison just for ferrying some 'plants' around and selling them
5. Banks situated in corrupt regimes where you hide all your hard won tender might decide to take it from you at any given moment, the monsters
6. If your drug profits are indeed stolen, you'll be relegated to a shitty, mundane life, forced to don cheap clothes like a loser
7. Got kids? The ungrateful turds won't even visit you in prison

[Blumf]

The Death Wish series.

Nothing wrong with them.

- Paul Dacre (age 63⅔)

[El Unicornio, mang]

But he does go around killing them, and we're expected to accept that as a wholly reasonable response to the plight of Broken Britain.

That comes down to a difference in opinion on what is the right course of action to deal with such individuals though. I mean, going around blowing them away is a bit extreme but I didn't think it was dodgy, just an old man who saw his best friend die at the hands of these people who had turned his neighbourhood into a violent no-go area, finding that the police were able to do fuck-all (as is the case in real life) and so taking the law into his own hands. The question being: is it morally better to allow innocent people suffer at the hands of bad people?

[Dead kate moss]

Does he even TRY to set up a neighborhood watch scheme?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Yes. Didn't work.

[Dead kate moss]

The Shawshank Redemption - you're not allowed to escape from prison just because you are innocent [nb]according to you[/nb]. The law's the law.

[Pepotamo1985]

Pulp Fiction, too. Murdering people for money is perfectly OK if you eventually repent - and repenting is, in any case, a wise decision because you might get capped by Bruce Willis if you don't.

Pretty Woman - Soliciting whores is fine because y'know what? You may well fall in love.

Sex In The City - Women should have no higher aspiration in life than getting fucked in every orifice well and often by rich people, and buying shoes. Shit tons of shoes.

And sitting around in expensive cafes and restaurants talking about said dicking and footwear consumption in somnolent detail. 

Wizard of Oz - Crushing ugly people with unsettling laughs to death is A-OK, baybay.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

That comes down to a difference in opinion on what is the right course of action to deal with such individuals though. I mean, going around blowing them away is a bit extreme but I didn't think it was dodgy, just an old man who saw his best friend die at the hands of these people who had turned his neighbourhood into a violent no-go area, finding that the police were able to do fuck-all (as is the case in real life) and so taking the law into his own hands. The question being: is it morally better to allow innocent people suffer at the hands of bad people?

Well, I don't think Michael Caine - or any old man for that matter - shooting criminals dead is the answer to our society's problems. As for the moral question that the film raises, I'd say that violent vigilante justice is just as unethical as the criminals it seeks to punish.

Batman only gets away with it because he wears a cool outfit.

[Dead kate moss]

Yes. Didn't work.

Then I support his 'shooting the scum in the face' approach.

[Gulftastic]

In Revenge Of The Nerds one of the nerds tricks a girl into sex by disguising himself as her boyfriend, but the rape is forgiven because she fakkin' lavs it!

[Jemble Fred]

In Revenge Of The Nerds one of the nerds tricks a girl into sex by disguising himself as her boyfriend, but the rape is forgiven because she fakkin' lavs it!

Similar scene in The Boat That Rocked, with Nick Frost arranging the rape of January Jones. Supposed to be Carry On-style naughtiness, but it's pretty sickening.

EDIT: Actually, I think it was Gemma Arterton who was lined up for jocular rape.

I love Richard Curtis, but only Mel Brooks gets cinematic HAHA RAPE gags right.

[El Unicornio, mang]

In Thunderball when a woman at the clinic makes a mistake and Bond tells her that if she doesn't sleep with him he'll report her. I mean, it's Bond so he's doesn't exactly need to twist her arm, but still...

[Xander]

Forrest Gump Blindly follow authority, ask no questions, and you will become an American hero. Try to escape your abusive past by embracing the counterculture and you will attempt suicide, become a junkie and eventually die of AIDS.

And

Spoiler alert

beauty and the Beast

[close]

is essentially just Stockholm Syndrome, isn't it? Suffer horrific mental and physical abuse but it's all okay because he is just misunderstood and you will make him all better.

I also had Pretty Woman on the list, and rant about these three at length every time someone says they love the films.

[Famous Mortimer]

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

If you kidnap a bunch of women, chances are they'll fall in love with you.

[clingfilm portent]

They're called films.

[Cerys]

But the pictures - they move!  THEY MOVE!

[Gulftastic]

Roadhouse has many dodgy moments, but my favourite is the end, where the local townsfolk gang up and shoot the big villain of the piece, followed by them all having a right good laugh about it.

[Feralkid]

Slumdog Millionaire.

It begins with our hero being tortured by police who are convinced he must be cheating in that quiz show, for how else could he possibly know all those answers.    Then, as the non-linear narrative unfolds it's revealed that he's just extraordinarily lucky and that all the questions posed on the Indian Version of Millionaire related directly to pivotal moments from his life.  Quite the cosmic coincidence.   So nothing in the story is actually in the hero's control, not really, he just got lucky.   The moral?   Everything's pre-destined you see.  Don't even think about bucking the wheel of karma.   

Considered in light of the very real poverty suffered by the under-classes in India and the role played by the caste system in reinforcing said suffering the whole movie becomes spectacularly suspect. 

[Cohaagen]

I know I've mentioned it before, but Saving Private Ryan is full of them, main ones being:

1) The British and Canadians were superfluous to the war effort.
2) Trying to help civilians is altogether a bad idea, gets soldiers killed, and the damn frogs won't even thank you for it anyway.
3) Murdering prisoners-of-war, cold-bloodedly executing them in fact, is an acceptable way for desk-jockeying nerds to fulfil and assert their new-found martial toughness.

[Famous Mortimer]

I know I've mentioned it before, but Saving Private Ryan is full of them, main ones being:

1) The British and Canadians were superfluous to the war effort.

Zzzzzmoralmessagesnotgettingwarstuffwrongzzz

[Bingo Fury]

Forrest Gump Blindly follow authority, ask no questions, and you will become an American hero. Try to escape your abusive past by embracing the counterculture and you will attempt suicide, become a junkie and eventually die of AIDS.

This. I fucking detest Forrest Gump for exactly those reasons, but anyone I've mentioned this to just finds my stance bewildering (and probably wishes I'd grow the fuck up or something).

[kidsick5000]

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers

If you kidnap a bunch of women, chances are they'll fall in love with you.

A musical based on The Rape Of The Sabine Women

[kidsick5000]

In Thunderball when a woman at the clinic makes a mistake and Bond tells her that if she doesn't sleep with him he'll report her. I mean, it's Bond so he's doesn't exactly need to twist her arm, but still...

In Live And Let Die, he also tricks a girl, meant to still be in her teens and a virgin to sleep with him by cheating convincing her via his loaded tarot cards.