As a society, we are persuaded to believe that the police
are always right and the people they go up against are wrong. That is what we are told. This is not always the case, but it is the
story presented to us from a young age.
We play games like cops and robbers, where the police have to chase down
the robbers because the police are the good guys and the robbers are the bad
guys. We are raised while being taught
not to break the law because if we do, the police will come after us. If we don’t do anything illegal, we should be
fine. The reality does not always line
up with this description of law enforcement.
I’m not going to be writing about real life incidents like Ferguson or
whatever the hell is happening in New York City. Instead, I’ll just do what I do and use
movies to discuss some serious topics.
What I really want to get into this week is corruption of
law enforcement as shown through movies.
Movies are a great way to dilute any of the idealized thoughts about the
justice system that may be rolling around in that head of yours. As much as many movies make the police out to
be heroes, there are numerous movies that show the injustice and corruption
within this system. Whether the movies
show police officers breaking the law or wardens and guards of prisons
overstepping their authority to basically turn a prison into a dictatorship,
movies are able to open the eyes of the viewer to the idea that not all of the
law keepers are actually keeping the law.
If you look back through the history of the Sunday “Bad”
Movies, you’ll see that corrupt law enforcement has almost always been
there. Freelancers was the first movie I
watched for the blog that took a good look at the police force and how easily
they could be corrupted. It dealt with
some rookie police officers who got into the drug business after busting an
operation. It showed how easily money
could corrupt anything, including the people whose job it is to prevent the
corruption. This is definitely true to
some instances in real life as police officers have been found guilty of crimes
that they are expected to stop. But the
reason this movie shows this side of the police force isn’t because they want
to make some sort of statement. Well,
that could be a little bit of it. Some
movies do make statements. However, I
think that the primary focus of this movie was to be entertainment. In the current day and age, viewers like to
watch anti-heroes or just plain bad people.
Freelancers wanted to capitalize on this desire while also showing the
dark side of the police. They tried to
show that these people are not the best people, as we had been raised to
believe. It didn’t quite achieve either
of these objectives because it ended up being a very forgettable movie instead.
Freelancers was only the first movie in the Sunday “Bad”
Movies that touched upon corrupt police.
Movies such as Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and The Marine 2 would end
up using police corruption as a twist.
More recently on the blog, Exit Wounds took some of its story from this
darker side of the police by pitting the good officers against the bad. Steven Seagal’s character gets sent to a
corrupt precinct in Detroit and makes it his job to clean it up. As a movie, it is basically having its cake
and eating it too. And as bad as the
movie might be, the cake is a very important thing to include. Exit Wounds shows that there is police
corruption while also highlighting that there are good cops as well. This is a distinction that many movies don’t
make (aside from a twist of one officer being bad). Yet this one did, and it was a noble move to
make. It provides hope within a sad
reality.
But corrupt police aren’t the only problem I have
encountered with the justice system throughout the Sunday “Bad” Movies. Prisons have not had a much better light put
upon them. The wardens have been bad
people, the guards have been bad people, and the prisoners have been bad
people. In many cases, the guards and
wardens have been working with the prisoners to do something heinous. They work together to take down someone who
has gone against them, or they will strike a deal to make money. The corrupt ways of the prison system have
been on full display through the movies I have watched.
The Death Race franchise manages to highlight many of these
corrupt tendencies within prisons.
Whether the first, second, or third movie in the franchise, the concept
remains the same. The prisons of the
future are trying to profit off of the deaths of their prisoners. Let’s start with Death Race 2, the one that
takes place first. The prison stages
fights to the death between their prisoners and televises them for people to
watch in the safety of their homes. This
soon escalates into races in which the racers are prisoners who try to kill the
other prisoners and cross the finish line first. Now let’s go back to the first Death Race,
which takes place last out of the three movies.
After the previous Frankenstein dies (or escapes, as we see in Death
Race: Inferno), the warden “hires” one of the prisoners to murder the main
character’s wife and frame him for murder.
This is because the main character is a former race car driver. Having him put on the Frankenstein mask and
race will help keep the ratings high for the televised races. It is capitalist prison corruption at its
finest. The movies help to show how
influential money can be to the prison system, though it is done in an overly
exaggerated way. Even though prisons are
supposed to be a way to get the bad people off the streets, there can be
innocent people incarcerated when money is involved.
A movie that takes a different approach to the bad things
involving higher-ups in prison is 1991’s Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. This movie follows the character of Ricky Ho
as he goes to prison for murder and must deal with corruption on every
level. There are inmates trying to kill
him. The deputy warden wants him taken
care of, if you know what I mean. The
warden is growing opium on the prison grounds.
And they’ll beat, torture, maim, and kill whoever goes against their
wishes. The idea of corruption based on
the profit of growing opium was set up early in the movie, though not
explicitly. Text on the screen mentions
the privatized nature of prisons in the near future, and compares them to
franchised businesses. They didn’t say
where the money really came from, but they set up that there was money to be
made. Money is a big problem in the
prison system and much of the reason for the corruption in the institutions as
shown through movies. That and the basic
cruelty of people.
The justice system is frequently shown to have corruption in
movies. Usually the bad movies that I
watch for this blog focus upon the greed and capitalism aspects of it. In Freelancers and Exit Wounds, it was police
getting into the drug trade. In Riki-Oh,
it was the warden and his underlings involved in the drug trade. In Death Race and movies like it (Gamer), it
is the prison capitalizing upon the demise of the prisoners. Not all movies focus on this stuff,
however. There are movies out there,
usually better, that focus on other aspects of bad policing. Movies such as Fruitvale Station show that
money isn’t always the problem with the justice system. It could just as easily be the mental
stability of a police officer. It could
be racism. It could be prejudice against
a certain demographic. Or it could
simply be police brutality, which we all know exists. There are many movies that depict this kind
of stuff happening because it is real stuff.
If we’re not careful, our society could end up being similar to the
over-the-top gory Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, or the high octane insanity of
Death Race. We already live in a world
where Freelancers and Exit Wounds could happen, and probably are happening
somewhere. Isn’t that enough?
- Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki is the first three time suggested movie. It was suggested by @robtrench, @1sttimewatchers, and @TheTrueBrendanF.
- Let’s link to the posts of the three other movies I focused on in this post. They were Freelancers, Exit Wounds, and Death Race.
- I also mentioned the Deuce Bigalow and The Marine franchises in there.
- Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a foreign movie. Other foreign movies (not North American) I’ve covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies are Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming and Infra-Man.
- Have you seen Riki-Oh? Do you actually want to discuss the movie in all of its crazy, gory, actiony glory? Are there other movies like it that you want to take about? Did you like the movie? You can use the comments below to discuss anything related to the movie or this post.
- You can also use the comments section to give me suggestions about what to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movie installments. If you don’t want to use the comments section, why not message me on Twitter or drop me an email at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com? Those work too.
- Next week’s movie will be The Time Machine (I Found at a Yardsale) and let me tell you that it was a tough movie to get through. The post is going to be… I don’t know. It’s not written yet. Anyway, see you next week.
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