
Hollywood movies are especially big on dispensing justice to ‘the bad guys’. Characters who perform irredeemable acts (in the eyes of movie producers and financiers) must get their appropriate come-uppance. This could come in the form of prison time or a gruesome death but whatever happens, evil characters rarely escape their fate.
This sort of thing is particularly prevalent in action movies. An older one with Brandon Lee ‘Rapid Fire’ has some overt bad guys that get killed in bad ways but I’d like to look at a secondary villain. An FBI agent who takes payoffs from one of the criminals sets up the main character to be killed. During the scene where the hero escapes his imminent death, an innocent police officer is shot.
If betrayal wasn’t enough, he’s added indirect murder to his list of film crimes. Years of wicked activity haven’t caught up to him before this movie but because we’re on screen with a protagonist now, he’s going to get his. A few scenes later he’s gunned down by his former boss, despite his desperate attempt at redemption.
This sort of thing is particularly prevalent in action movies. An older one with Brandon Lee ‘Rapid Fire’ has some overt bad guys that get killed in bad ways but I’d like to look at a secondary villain. An FBI agent who takes payoffs from one of the criminals sets up the main character to be killed. During the scene where the hero escapes his imminent death, an innocent police officer is shot.
If betrayal wasn’t enough, he’s added indirect murder to his list of film crimes. Years of wicked activity haven’t caught up to him before this movie but because we’re on screen with a protagonist now, he’s going to get his. A few scenes later he’s gunned down by his former boss, despite his desperate attempt at redemption.