He straight up murders a Neo Nazi so I wouldn’t make that argument. It’s simply about a guy who’s going through a downward spiral and mental breakdown (he has problems…); who is longing for a time which no longer exists in his life. It just gets more and more crazy as the film progresses to parody like you would see in a Naked Gun movie or something.
Some will even find it racist because the targets of the film’s hero are African-American, Latino and Korean - with a few whites thrown in for balance.
Btw, the scene with the Korean grocer must be held against the 1992 Los Angeles riots having happened just a year earlier where Korean-Americans were often targeted.
It’s simply about a guy who’s going through a downward spiral and mental breakdown (he has problems…); who is longing for a time which no longer exists in his life.
NO other group of people could have such a movie made about them without it suffering a barrage of critique for its obviously hateful plot.
Edit: not that the creeps in Hollywood would ever allow such a movie but whatever.
Look, I’m not saying the choices made in the making of the film were all good. There was some obvious bias there, but that was (& honestly mostly still is) an artifact of who provides the funding to make most Hollywood films. We have a long legacy wherein rich, bigoted white assholes run most everything, and they’re control freaks who demand their preferred POV be used. Whether & which of those involved in the making of the film are of the same mindset, I cannot say.
I see the film as a relatively early critique of the enshitification of our society by those same assholes, and so that it got made at all is a minor miracle. Potential compromises in the integrity of those involved in getting it done are easy to pick at roughly 35 years after the fact, but - while the racism is kinda blatant - I don’t think it should invalidate the entire message the movie was trying to convey.
It’s not about a white guy attacking minorities. It’s just about a guy sick of spending every moment grinding to merely exist with no real time for pleasure in a world running only for profit and not people, who just can’t take it any more. If you’re looking at skin color, you’re missing the point. He’s all of us. We’re all stuck in it. Many feeling the same way.
He straight up murders a Neo Nazi so I wouldn’t make that argument. It’s simply about a guy who’s going through a downward spiral and mental breakdown (he has problems…); who is longing for a time which no longer exists in his life. It just gets more and more crazy as the film progresses to parody like you would see in a Naked Gun movie or something.
Otherwise it would be too obvious.
In the words of Ebert:
Btw, the scene with the Korean grocer must be held against the 1992 Los Angeles riots having happened just a year earlier where Korean-Americans were often targeted.
NO other group of people could have such a movie made about them without it suffering a barrage of critique for its obviously hateful plot.
Edit: not that the creeps in Hollywood would ever allow such a movie but whatever.
(Holds up a mirror.)
Look, I’m not saying the choices made in the making of the film were all good. There was some obvious bias there, but that was (& honestly mostly still is) an artifact of who provides the funding to make most Hollywood films. We have a long legacy wherein rich, bigoted white assholes run most everything, and they’re control freaks who demand their preferred POV be used. Whether & which of those involved in the making of the film are of the same mindset, I cannot say.
I see the film as a relatively early critique of the enshitification of our society by those same assholes, and so that it got made at all is a minor miracle. Potential compromises in the integrity of those involved in getting it done are easy to pick at roughly 35 years after the fact, but - while the racism is kinda blatant - I don’t think it should invalidate the entire message the movie was trying to convey.
It’s not about a white guy attacking minorities. It’s just about a guy sick of spending every moment grinding to merely exist with no real time for pleasure in a world running only for profit and not people, who just can’t take it any more. If you’re looking at skin color, you’re missing the point. He’s all of us. We’re all stuck in it. Many feeling the same way.