Movies With Dodgy Moral Messages

[Gulftastic]

Forrest Gump Blindly follow authority, ask no questions, and you will become an American hero.

Unless you're black, of course. Then you're the first to die.

[Cerys]

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).

Try mentioning it to SNG.  You and he can then sink into a comfortable, manly embrace of shared hatred.

[Cohaagen]

Zzzzzmoralmessagesnotgettingwarstuffwrongzzz

I like how you are so committed to reducing virtually your every interaction on this board to the level of a churlish disagreement or sour complaint that you ignored the other two thirds of the message. That is dedication and pro-level grudge-bearance even for a Trotskyist gnome like you.

[Phil_A]

Limitless: This movie is like a charter for selfish, morally bankrupt arseholes. It basically equates success with getting more wealth and power than you can dream of, and not having to suffer the consequences of any terrible things you might've done on the way. If you're king smuggo Bradley Cooper, this includes the possible killing of a young woman during a blackout you suffered due to all the untested brain drugs you've been scoffing, which you initially stole from the flat of a recently murdered acquaintance before his body was even cold, and have been using to fast-track your way to the top ever since.

[Brundle-Fly]

The Long Good Friday, the message is that a good old honest east end cockney gangster can't compete with the religiously driven IRA? I love the movie, but it's not really that simple and in real life, a shit on both their houses.

That isn't the message though, is it?  They never portray Harold Shand as some kind of paragon of fair play in the hard old East End world. Only Gary Bushell might watch the film in this light. He is depicted as a crimelord whose hubris gets the better of him. I also think the picture painted of the IRA is that they're not religiously driven but just Irish gangsters using 'the cause' for money and power.
Anyway, when Hoskins watched the preview with some real IRA activists, they remarked to him after the screening, " I wish we were that organised."

[Dead kate moss]

Hmm, well again it's been a while so I can't be sure. I just recall Hoskins being seen as an ok kind of gangster, like most criminals or gangsters that are protaganists it's a bit dodgy. But that may be Hoskin's charm (like De Niro almost makes Travis Bickle too cool imo). I do recall him being told that they can't compete with the iRA as its about religion and not just money [nb]edit, imdb again

Shand's top man tells him there is no fighting the IRA as they don't care about money ("they're fanatics")

[/nb]I also do now remember we are shown him being quite a monster too, so it wasn't the best example, no, sorry.

From imdb

He is brutal but he believes his behavior is within civilized boundaries.

Throughout he laments the decline of neighborhoods, respect for the church, respect for his power, England's economy, and honor among thieves. At the same time he professes to be appreciative of history, of what has been great about England, and is driven to build great things on the site of now idle dockyards.

You're probably right that only Gary Bushell these days would be nodding along, while he tortures people to find out who is after him [nb]Bushell not Hoskins[/nb]. The film probably isn't Morally Dodgy in the final analysis, as he's a ultimately a doomed deluded hypocrite, and compelling as his character is, I'm not sure the audience is supposed to be rooting for him.

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

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.

you'll be pleased to know there was a picket organised outside several indian cinemas by various dalit groups

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

Baby Boy

shooting your exs rapey boyfriend makes all your troubles go away

[Xander]

Try mentioning it to SNG.  You and he can then sink into a comfortable, manly embrace of shared hatred.

Can I join in? The hate I get for hating that film is staggering. Course, if there was to be some love-in, we would all get some sort of Zemeckis-related supercancer for daring to be different.

Also, slightly off topic, but given all of his achievements, how has no-one at the bus stop heard of Forrest?

[Glebe]

The Raymond K. Hessel bit in Fight Club... I know Tyler Duerden is not supposed to be any kind of role model, but he is made out to be a kind of cool, anti-establishment, anti-hero figure. "Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessle's life. His breakfast will taste better than any meal you and I have ever had." Oh, fuck off. And right after slagging off Gump ("Run, Forrest, run!").

There's a lot of conservative, reactionary stuff in John Hughes movies... like when Ally Sheedy only becomes acceptable when she dresses up nice in Breakfast Club. And I love Uncle Buck, but the stuff with "Have a rat gnaw that thing off your face" and hitting the guy with golf balls... I know it's just a comedy, but there's something really mean and self-righteous about that.

Of course there are a lot of action films and B-movies that are just too silly to get annoyed at... in fact, I find the unintentional humour in a lot of films' dodgy morality messages is part of the fun (Two words: Chuck Norris). The Exterminator is hilarious, where Robert Ginty's 'misunderstood' shell-shocked Vietnam vet goes on a vigilante rampage. Favorite part: the mobster getting fed into a giant mincer.

[BlodwynPig]

Lesbian films where the girl gets with a man in the end. Darn it...

[The Duck Man]

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.

It's a film set behind the Omaha/Utah beachhead. Where do you expect the British/Canadians to be?

[Dead kate moss]

I'm not sure it's morally dodgy but I never bought the reason why it was worth risking so many lives for one. It's a shame all his brothers were dead, but you can't do wars based on risking loads of men for one, so the mum has one son left. Or maybe you can, I'm not a war expert really. Would she be happy that loads of other men died to save Ryan? Probably, the selfish cow. Just send him a telegram saying you can come home and he'll probably get it. I can't really remember the film, it got boring anyway.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I do recall him being told that they can't compete with the iRA as its about religion and not just money [nb]Shand's top man tells him there is no fighting the IRA as they don't care about money ("they're fanatics")[/nb]

It's a while since I saw it too, but he meant political fanatics, rather than religious, didn't he? Fanatical about 'the cause' and that.

Pan's Labyrinth is a bit confused in its views of autocracy. The fascists are portrayed as absolute monsters, as you might expect, but it also seems to be rather pro-monarchy.

[Cohaagen]

It's a film set behind the Omaha/Utah beachhead. Where do you expect the British/Canadians to be?

The British actually landed a lot of the US troops on Omaha on D-Day, but I was thinking more that it would have been better if the only mention of the other allies hadn't been along the lines of "aren't those guys fucking useless". To be honest it's not really a moral problem, I just wanted to get an extra dig in - I'm more bothered by the casual murder at the end.

Rambo is so much like a live-action cartoon that it's almost pointless to criticise, especially when it's so entertaining, but I had to admire its fidelity to the right-wing action movie code which strongly implies that the best form of therapy for traumatised 'Nam-fried killing machines is to embark on a cathartic 30-minute rampage in which hundreds more faceless yellow people are literally blown to pieces with a huge gun. Only when gooks die by your bullets can you retire to your Norman Rockwell farm with swaying wheat fields, an iron rooster on the barn roof, and a wheel-less pickup rusting out in the yard.

Likewise, while the mentality of the Death Wish sequels is repellent to anyone with an ounce of conscience, the execution is so ramshackle and over-the-top that they immediately put themselves beyond serious criticism. Remember, this is a franchise in which a dandruff-afflicted transvestite hitman named "Flakes" is killed by an exploding remote-control football piloted by a 70yr old architect/vigilante who by this point has murdered at least 50 people on each coast of the continental United States.

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

you'll be pleased to know there was a picket organised outside several indian cinemas by various dalit groups

it also got right up the noses of the RSS over its depiction of Lord Ram in the pogrom scene so the film is not entirely without merit.

[Desi Dubs Dallas]

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.

Sadly police brutality and corruption and mistreatment of dalits is endemic in india. Whist researching the hitler in india movies i came across things like Black Christmas and the rape of sister meena, nasty stuff indead.

[Bill]

Seven Pounds. "An aerospace engineer with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers."

Or:

A vile abomination of a film in which a self-absorbed sociopath plays God with people's lives, and generally behaves like a monumental cunt, to 'atone' for killing seven people in a car crash. Rather than topping himself at the beginning, and saving two actual hours of (the viewer's) life, he spends the duration stalking, harassing and abusing various unfortunate people, including a sickly Rosario Dawson, insinuating himself into her life, as if her debts and health problems weren't stressful enough, by means of a made up tax audit (he's not even an IRS Agent, he's just an unbelievably massive cunt).

Apparently she has a thing for creepy jug-eared Scientologists and inexplicably falls in love with him, which he encourages, all the while knowing he plans to kill himself. As if fucking with someone's emotions and then devastating them with your suicide wasn't incomprehensibly evil enough, he donates organs to her (because apparently donors get to decide who is the recipient) without her advance knowledge, so she has no say in whether she even wants a permanent reminder of all the pain he has gone to such enormous lengths to cause her.

However since allowing her to remain blissfully unaware wouldn't be humble enough, he sends her, and everyone else he has donated pounds of flesh to, a posthumously delivered letter, modestly letting them all know what an absolute fucking saint he was and that they're all alive thanks to him, and don't fucking forget it.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

The British actually landed a lot of the US troops on Omaha on D-Day, but I was thinking more that it would have been better if the only mention of the other allies hadn't been along the lines of "aren't those guys fucking useless". To be honest it's not really a moral problem, I just wanted to get an extra dig in - I'm more bothered by the casual murder at the end.

It is a bit annoying I agree, but it is more accurate to the period.  Troops from other countries would have been closer together, the Canadians and Australians were British Empire and so were much more mixed up with the British troops, as were the Free French and Free Polish divisions.  But the Americans were essentially kept separate.  They were obviously trained to think they were the best, and morale generally was fairly high around D-Day, particularly as the majority of the US troops were coming up against less experienced and capable German troops.  The British were tasked with taking Caen, which was not only highly defendable, but also had much more experienced troops defending it.  There was no way the Americans could know that, but Eisenhower and Monty knew it of course.  So the push from Utah and Omaha became to swing down and under Caen and clear the rest of the countryside and its towns and villages, taking key crossroads and so on, whilst the British held up the bulk of the German troops at Caen.

Caen itself became known as The Crucible.  There was practically nothing left of the city when it was finally taken.

But yeah, there wasn't a lot of mixing of troops, if only to prevent in-fighting or accidentally shooting a man in a uniform you don't recognise.  If you want a more complete and even-handed picture of D-Day, watch The Longest Day, which not only is filmed in many of the actual locations (Pegasus Bridge, Sant Mere Eglise and Ouistram are all the real locations), but is taken from accounts of people who were there on the day and actually stars many of the people who were there too.

The moral message is better too - there isn't one.

[Jemble Fred]

Pan's Labyrinth is a bit confused in its views of autocracy. The fascists are portrayed as absolute monsters, as you might expect, but it also seems to be rather pro-monarchy.

Is there some logic to this paragraph? You seem to think the two things are incompatible. But you surely can't really be that daft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

[Dark Sky]

I saw The Princess Diaries 2 at the cinema.

The beautiful diary keeping princess fancies the socks off this rather sexy prince, but secretly he and his mother have stage managed the whole thing so they can take over the princess' kingdom MWAHAHA.

Anyhoo, she figures out that the handsome boy is actually evil, so decides to find a new prince to snog, and settles on this other boy who isn't half as attractive, but there's this lovely montage where it turns out they become really good friends, and they're having lots and lots of fun together, and they generally seem to really like each other, and...you know what...it's lovely.

Then they have a kiss and decide there's not enough sexual attraction so she goes back to the first prince who may be evil but sure is fucking fit THE END

[Famous Mortimer]

I like how you are so committed to reducing virtually your every interaction on this board to the level of a churlish disagreement or sour complaint that you ignored the other two thirds of the message. That is dedication and pro-level grudge-bearance even for a Trotskyist gnome like you.

I just pointed out the bit that I thought didn't fit with the thread. I ignored the other two-thirds because although they were dull and not funny, they were at least on topic.

For future reference, a "churlish disagreement" is some fuckwit on a message board, every time war is mentioned, rolling in to give tedious, long-winded refutations of what people have said, or just a technical post that no-one will read which proves you've read more books about it than anyone else here.

[Cohaagen]

I just pointed out the bit that I thought didn't fit with the thread. I ignored the other two-thirds because although they were dull and not funny, they were at least on topic.

For future reference, a "churlish disagreement" is some fuckwit on a message board, every time war is mentioned, rolling in to give tedious, long-winded refutations of what people have said

Says the human quaalude who like nothing better than to treat discussions as a potential argument and therefore an opportunity to cast disapproval, make snide observations, or just beefcake rhetorical from atop mound of his own snark. Still, you were at least slick enough to edit your reply and remove the outright lie about me finding war "fun", which was only sensible given that it was just a week or so ago that I gave you half a dozen historical posts displaying the exact opposite of the views you ascribed to me.

which proves you've read more books about it than anyone else here.

Thanks, I will note that for future reference. It's clearly bad form that someone should be interested in, and research, a subject, in an attempt to know what they're talking about, rather than just have a big opinion.

or just a technical post that no-one will read

In 1915 the Director of Naval Construction received instructions to prepare designs for a Battlecruiser, incorporating the latest thoughts as regards, armament, armour, protection and speed, to counter the threat of German Battlecruisers, that were known to be building. A great number of designgs were submitted to the Board and consultations continued during 1915. Owing to the lack of large berths being available, definite orders were not given until April 1916. By March 1915, the approved design was nearing completion and this original design formed the basis for the HOOD. Four ships were projected and here their Lordships seem to have continued their preference for names of warships from the late Victorian Navy, as HOOD, ANSON, HOWE and RODNEY were allocated to this class...

Read the rest of DG Weldon's seminal 1972 Warships International article on HMS Hood for free at Scribd.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44316559/Warship-No-2-1972-From-www-jgokey-com

[Famous Mortimer]

Well...proved, I guess?

[Gulftastic]

  If you want a more complete and even-handed picture of D-Day, watch The Longest Day,

The moral message is better too - there isn't one.

Isn't the message that English officers are daft eccentrics and John Wayne is the hardest bastard ever?

I love the French Resistance lot, especially the oh-so-dramatic farewell kiss two of them share before undertaking their mission.

[Unoriginal]

Most Hollywood and mainstream films for that matter promote awful views on relationships, love, sex, politics and many other important topics. Almost every film you see in a chain cinema is as much an arm of preserving the status quo as schools. It's a shame how interesting directors such as Antonioni, Fellini, Cassavetes and many others were actually recognised and watched by a large audience just 30 years ago, and now we treat glorified hacks such as Tarantino and Lynch as geniuses.

[ColonelVolestrangler]

"Bram Stoker's Dracula" - feeding babies to your three brides and turning into a big dog to rape the best friend of the girl who looks like your ex is fine because, in the end, you'll turn into Jesus and the girl who looks like your ex will still love you.

[Gulftastic]

in 'Gone In 50 Seconds', nicking cars is a bit of a laugh, which is almost akin to Robin Hood's antics. The only owners we see are dickheads like the one played by Bob Kelso out off of Scrubs, and he deserves it. Anyway, it's OK, because you are only doing it to beat an English arsehole.

BTW, in that film Dr Who claims he enjoys carpentry becuase wood is better than metal as it is provided by nature. Where does he think metal comes from?

Oh, and black people are always hilariously shucking and jiving and Asian people can't drive very well.

[Artemis]

In Flight of the Navigator, a child is depicted as having appreciation for a robotic cunt just because it shows him a few cool tricks. See also: those who abuse children.

[Pepotamo1985]

We treat glorified hacks such as Tarantino and Lynch as geniuses.

Karma'd this already but seriously, great fucking post. Lynch just bores the hell out of me and I find that his style generally walks this bizarre, antithetical line between contrived confusion and almost infantile obviousness - I'm a fan of Twin Peaks (the series) though.

Tarantino, on the other hand, is downright reprehensible. Quite aside from his turgid as fuck oeuvre, and his bafflingly deferential and obsessive idolotary (he could've been said to have been an edgy, subversive film maker maybe 20 years ago - his output now is as mainstream both in its execution and the response it induces that the alternative reverence his work is unduly afforded seems more than a little misplaced), I find his films often glorify racism, sexism and homophobia, and far from satirising and subverting conventions and stereotypes, they serve to entrench those attitudes both on a filmic and societal level.

Take Pulp Fiction for example, a film that is basically a collage of popular cultural references and genre conventions, particularly American popular cultural stereotypes/cliches - said cliches and stereotypes often contain a racist/homophobic/sexist and generally bigoted sub text. The film is full of people being misogynistic and using racist terms, and rampant homophobia (the two gay men in the movie are presented as sick, perverted rapists, and their murder is an enactment of justice). But Pulp Fiction does not deal in anti-heroes, the perpetrators are frequently presented as being exceptionally cool – we're not instructed to hate anyone for being homophobic/racist/sexist, or a murderer, or be disgusted with any of the behaviour we see on the screen (bar those nasty deviant homosexuals). In fact, the film's heroes are clearly presented as heroes, and the audience is effectively told to endorse and embrace these characters and their attributes – and perhaps consider them worthy of emulation.

In short, Tarantino deifies unpleasant aspects of culture and presents them as heroic, which clearly has the potential to reinforce by mere token of failing to challenge them in any way.