3 Strikes (2000) and Sunday "Bad" Movies with Messages

Art doesn’t always have to mean anything. It doesn’t have to have some message to give to audiences. It could just be something nice to look at or a delightful tale. There may not be anything deeper than that. However, in many cases, there’s a message. The artist behind the creation had something to say and they funnelled that through their work. In movies, that message could come through themes. It could come through the retelling of a true story. It could even come through satire. If a filmmaker has something to say, they will find a way to say it through their work.

Throughout the Sunday “Bad” Movies, there have been many movies that didn’t have much of a message at all. They were meant as pure entertainment and that was all they ended up being. But there have also been a hearty handful of movies that had a message behind them. The filmmaker had something to say, and they used their art to do so. Not all of them were successful in getting their message across. It’s time to discuss a few of them, in the order that they were covered through the lifetime of this blog.

Death Race

One of the earliest posts for this blog was about the remake of Death Race and the two sequels that followed. It was a post that discussed the ways in which the movies showed how audiences wanted a symbolic character. It didn’t matter who the real person was. The idea of Frankenstein that people built up in their own heads was all that was necessary. The person behind the mask could be changed and people wouldn’t care because it was the character that mattered to them.

Sure, that’s a message that could be taken away from those three films. It’s a message that I would likely still take away from them if I were to watch them today. Another message that was just as present through that trilogy was the inherent desire of people to watch violent acts, particularly to people they didn’t care for. People are prone to resort to violence when things happen that they dislike. It’s their ultimate form of retaliation. If someone does something that they don’t like, people will threaten to physically harm them. You only need to look at politics and the wishes of death that are thrown around all the time online.

The way this instinctual violence was showcased in the Death Race films was through the Death Race event. In Death Race 2, a prequel to the Statham outing, it was shown that the Death Race evolved from a more gladiatorial styled event. Convicts would be pitted against each other in a fight to the death that would be broadcast in a pay-per-view event. People paid to watch a premium broadcast of convicts killing each other. It was fine because they were convicts. Audiences wanted bad stuff, including injuries and death, to happen to the convicts as punishment for whatever they had done. Punishment by way of violence. Cars would eventually be added, but the overall idea was the same. Convicts dying for the entertainment of the free.

The message was loud and clear. The filmmakers wanted to point out to audiences that human civilization tends devolve into violence, as long as the victims are perceived to be in the wrong. If the victims are being punished for a wrongdoing, the violence inflicted upon them is okay. Mix that in with a capitalistic society and you get pay-per-view events about violent sports. Hell, boxing and UFC are already out there.

Tiptoes

Tiptoes, Tiptoes, Tiptoes. This one comes up a lot because the message was so blatantly forward and so fumbled. I feel like I write something about it every other week. It was a movie about the hardships of being a little person. There’s a stigma that comes with it. Being a little person makes you stand out because of your stature. It makes you stand out because of the way your body is put together. People notice the visuals of being a little person first because a first impression is visual.

There could have been a good movie within Tiptoes. Some of the themes that it hit were good themes that could plant a seed inside an audience’s head and make them think. The way that the movie let people know how the smaller stature affected the health of little people. That was an important thing to get out there because I don’t think a lot of people knew about that stuff at the time. I still don’t think a lot of people know about it. They see a little person and think the person is little and that’s about it. They don’t think about how that physical difference could affect someone’s health. Tiptoes at least got that out there.

What it didn’t do so well with was the stigma. Sure, the crux of the movie was about a woman who fell in love with a little person while being pregnant with a child that could also be a little person. There’s a story there about compassion. There’s a b-plot about another romance between a little person and a non-little person. That makes two stories about compassion and care. But then there was Matthew McConaughey screaming about how he was a little person (he wasn’t) and how he didn’t want his child to be a little person. Oh, and Gary Oldman playing the lead little person on his knees while all other little person characters were cast with little people in the roles. It might have the themes down pat, but it’s not the best at representing them.

Frogs

We all know that people haven’t treated the world well. This is especially true since the time of the industrial revolution. As industries grew, pollution grew. Smog became a greater disturbance in the atmosphere. Oil spills started happening. There was a fire in the Gulf of Mexico this year. Toxins have been dumped in local drinking water locations. People are being poisoned by lead piping. Asbestos, the atomic bomb, garbage dumps… So much of what people did contributed to a growing pollution problem that doesn’t look to be going away anytime soon.

Frogs was about nature fighting back against the human race that encroached upon it and damaged it with pollution. Animals were attacking humans as revenge for turning many places uninhabitable. This message was shown through horror violence and death, but it was there. The movie began with someone boating through a polluted swamp. A wealthy family had polluted the area with pesticides. The idea of pollution was as integral to the story as the animal attacks. One justified the other and let the audience know the error of their own ways.

Another movie that touched on the same idea was The Happening. Instead of animals attacking the human population of one island, the movie had trees using the wind to attack the human race. People would be hit with some sort of tree pheromone that would cause them to commit suicide. It was another lesson in nature fighting back after centuries of being treated poorly by people. Frogs tackled the idea long before The Happening, but both had similar messages to convey. People needed to treat the planet better.

Jingle All the Way

One of my favourite Christmas movies is Jingle All the Way. A lot of that comes down to the comedy within it. There is some over-the-top goofy antics between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad. Phil Hartman is in there doing some of his best work. Rita Wilson is a great straight-man to all of it. The performances really help to sell what could otherwise be a forgettable farce. The other side of the comedy, which is just as good as, if not better than, the performances is the satire. The message that the filmmaker wanted to get across comes from the satirical elements.

As much as Jingle All the Way was family fun at Christmas time, it was an obvious criticism on the capitalistic holiday that Christmas has become. It was about a man trying to get an action figure for his son on Christmas Eve. It was about how much he had to endure to get the action figure. There was a scene where a bunch of people waited outside a toy store at open and then swarmed in like a flood, trampling someone. There was the contest where people competed for a bouncy ball with a draw number that could potentially get them the action figure. Radio contests, scalping, black markets… It was all in there.

Knowing how crazy Black Friday shopping can get, it was easy to see where the satire was coming from. Jingle All the Way tackled the competition that came with shopping over the holidays. People were fighting each other for an action figure. It was like how people will fight for a holiday deal on towels at Walmart. The movie was about desperation as the holidays grew closer. It was about consumerism. It was a satire about the crazy shopping of the holiday season.

God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness

Here’s another movie I bring up a lot. You might be bored of me discussing this one. You might be bored of the reason that I keep bringing this one up. And, yeah, what I’m going to discuss about it in this post is going to be the same thing I keep saying about God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness. If you’ve already grown tired of my repetition about this movie, skip down to Reefer Madness. That one’s coming up next. I’ll see you when I get there.

The first two movies in the God’s Not Dead franchise had something to say. They said that Christianity was the right thing to believe. They said that people should follow Jesus Christ. To do anything else would lead to trouble. God would lead to good. The first film leaned a whole lot more into that, but both of those first two movies were about believing in Christ. The third movie changed things up a little bit and what it said was much better to people, in general.

God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness was about compassion. It was about allowing people to believe what they wanted to believe. It wasn’t right to tell people they had to believe a certain thing, or in a certain higher power. To tell people that they had to believe in Christianity was like the professor in the first film telling people they had to believe that God was dead. People should be able to make up their own minds. They should be free to choose what belief system works best for them. Pastor Dave learned that lesson through his brother, the death of a friend, and forgiving a vandal. There was room for all belief systems. Pastor Dave just had to open the door and let them in. It was a movie with the message that it was okay to allow multiple faiths to exist.

Reefer Madness

The 1920s and 1930s had a bunch of caution films, which were heavy handed in their messaging. They were about taboo subjects. Cautionary tales about what would happen if you broke taboo came across the screen on a regular basis. Sex, drugs, but no rock and roll because it didn’t exist yet. People were spiralling out of control. They were turning evil. They were killing people. At least, that’s what the people behind the movies wanted audiences to think. Or they didn’t and just wanted to make a quick buck off a controversial topic.

Reefer Madness was a movie that tackled the topic of marijuana. Maybe I should say “marihuana,” since that’s the way the movie spelled it. People were smoking marihuana. They were feeling the side effects of marihuana. The side effects of the marihuana got out of hand. The characters began acting wild. They started acting violently. It was the marihuana. The marihuana made them act that way.

The side-effects were meant as a cautionary tale. The message was laid out for audiences in the opening moments of Reefer Madness. Parents were told to watch their children because marihuana could cause the many bad side-effects depicted in the film. It could turn their children into murderers. Parents had to cut their kids off from marihuana as soon as they possibly could, or someone would end up dead. Their children could have literal blood on their hands. The message was about how bad marijuana could be.

3 Strikes

The final film to discuss, and the one that brought about this post in the first place, is 3 Strikes. Robert Douglas (Brian Hooks) was released from his second stint in prison. Upon his release, the guy who picked him up to take him home got into a gunfight with the police. Rather than be arrested for the third time, Robert went on the run. He spent the next couple days trying to evade police and avoid a third strike that could put him in jail for life.

There was an obvious message that 3 Strikes made, even though it was packaged in some bottom of the barrel comedy. It had some satire about the three strike system of policing and the systemic racism of the justice system. There were news clips on people’s televisions where a politician promoted the three strike rule. There was a black police officer who became almost as racist as the white police officers just from working with them. At one point, he even claimed that an unarmed black man had a gun so that the rest of the officers would open fire. The movie put the spotlight on an unfair justice system, the same unfair justice system that we have been seeing for many years. It was calling for a change that would never come.

I’m not going to claim that I know the experience that people have lived through under the three strike rule. I am a white man who gets to live with the privilege that white men have. What I can say is that the demographic of 3 Strikes was Black. It was made for Black audiences. Therefore, the message that the movie was putting out there would have been lost on most white people. That’s why so many are surprised to hear about the systemic racism when the unfair aspects of society are brought up. This movie might not have been intended to enlighten people about that sort of thing. But it definitely made the injustices of the justice system a major part of the story.

Sunday “Bad” Movies has featured its fair share of movies with important messages. The tendency for society to resort to violence has been tackled. The health issues and stigmas associated with being a little person have come up. There have been movies about the poor ways people treat the planet. Capitalism, religion, drugs, and systemic racism have also been topics within the movies covered. Each of these messages were ones that the directors felt needed to be passed to audiences, and they made the movies stand out.

A movie can be nothing but pure entertainment. That’s possible. Most filmmakers want to say something with their work, though. They want to get a message across about something that they find important. When those messages come into a movie, they can lead to an interesting look at society or other aspects of the world. Perhaps they can broaden the worldview of the audience. A message can make a movie so much more than entertainment. Sometimes the message makes things better. Sometimes it makes things worse. But it at least makes things different. A message makes the filmmaker’s voice come through. And who doesn’t want to feel the artist in the art?

Now let’s get a few notes in here before we take off:

• Movies that were mentioned in this post include Death Race (week 9), Death Race 2 (week 9), Death Race: Inferno (week 9), Tiptoes (week 28), Frogs (week 103), The Happening (week 185), Jingle All the Way (week 160), God’s Not Dead (week 230), God’s Not Dead 2 (week 230), God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (week 319), and Reefer Madness (week 339).
• 3 Strikes was directed by DJ Pooh, who directed The Wash (week 303). DJ Pooh was also featured in Budz House (week 198).
• Faizon Love made his third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in 3 Strikes. He was previously in Torque (week 43) and Budz House (week 198).
• Another three-timer was Phil Morris, who was featured in Jingle All the Way (week 160), Officer Downe (week 242), and 3 Strikes.
• 3 Strikes featured George Wallace, who was also in Santa, Jr. (week 107) and The Wash (week 303).
• Rashaan Nall has now been in three Sunday “Bad” Movies with an appearance in 3 Strikes, an appearance in Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120), and an appearance in The Wash (week 303).
• The last three-timer this week is Anthony Anderson, who had a small cameo in 3 Strikes. His other appearances were in Exit Wounds (week 93) and Kangaroo Jack (week 414).
• Big Boy was in Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (week 20) and 3 Strikes.
• David Alan Grier was in 3 Strikes and Tiptoes (week 28).
• Dean Norris returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in 3 Strikes, after appearing in Money Train (week 109).
• Meagan Good had a small role in 3 Strikes, and a bigger role in D.E.B.S. (week 111).
• 3 Strikes had Barima McKnight in it. So did Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120).
• Antonio Fargas was in both 3 Strikes and Up the Academy (week 136).
• Mike Epps had a cameo in 3 Strikes. He had a role in Fifty Shades of Black (week 219) as well.
• You may have noticed Terence Paul Winter in Godzilla (week 282) and 3 Strikes.
• 3 Strikes featured Shawn Fonteno of The Wash (week 303) fame.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (week 210) and 3 Strikes each featured Denney Pierce.
• Jascha Washington appeared in both Snow Dogs (week 322) and 3 Strikes.
• Brian Hooks was the star of 3 Strikes. He was also in The $cheme (week 333).
• Michele Maika made an appearance in 3 Strikes after previously showing up in Tammy and the T-Rex (week 408).
• Regino Montes, of All About Steve (week 409), was in 3 Strikes.
• Finally, 3 Strikes had Vincent Schiavelli in it. He was already seen in The Beautician and the Beast (week 429).
• Have you seen 3 Strikes? What did you think? What other movies have important messages they get across or satirize? Use the comments or Twitter to let me know.
• Tell me what movies I should be checking out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts by contacting me through Twitter or in the comments. I’m open to suggestions and like using them to schedule future weeks.
• Check out Instagram to see more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun all week long. Or some of the week.
• Okay, so next week is a big one. It’s a franchise week. That means that multiple movies are going to be watched to inspire me for the post. What movies will I be watching? Well, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know I like to watch WWE franchises. There’s another big one that I haven’t yet seen. That’s going to change when I watch the 12 Rounds trilogy for next week’s post. I’ll see you then with some more writing!