ROAD TO PERDITION

Revenge is “the action of inflicting hurt or harm on someone for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands”. Rancour is “bitterness or resentfulness, especially when long standing”. Throughout human history, these two feelings have made millions of people suffer, be unhappy, and, the worst thing, die. Road to Perdition, a film released in 2002, is a very good example in which revenge, rancour and violence lead the main characters to a situation of bitterness, fear, sadness or what is the same, to “perdition”.

Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks) is a hired gun who works for John Rooney (Paul Newman), an Irish man who belongs to Al Capone in Chicago and has brought up the orphan Michael. The biological son of Rooney is Connor (Daniel Craig), a jealous and selfish man who hates Sullivan and always tries to destroy him. One evening, gripped by curiosity, Michael’s son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), hides in his father’s car and witnesses the murder of a man at the hands of his father and Connor. After that, although the young boy promises not to say a thing about what he has seen, Connor takes advantage of the situation and tries to destroy the whole Sullivan’s family. However, he only succeeds in killing Sullivan’s wife and little son. After finding his family dead, Sullivan and his son get involved in a vicious circle of vengeance and violence which will end in “perdition”.

Violence is one of the main topics of this film. In the previous film we reviewed, violence was also an important matter but in that case it was related to racism. Now violence is related to thirst for revenge and rancour. Michael Sullivan is a hurt man who devotes his time to make a lot of people pay the damaged they have caused to him and his family. In the film, we learn that, after all, violence and weapons won’t take us anywhere and that the only thing that revenge and rancour will give us is a broken and sad life.

Another recurrent matter in this film is the relationship between a father and his son. Michael Jr. is a young boy who loves and admires his father. Sullivan is a busy man and, at the beginning of the film, we can see that he doesn’t pay as much attention to his son as the little boy would want him to. After all, their relationship becomes closer and Sullivan realises that he has been wasting his time at working instead of paying attention to his family.

To conclude, “Road to perdition” is a very good film in which we learn that revenge and violence don’t lead us anywhere and that sometimes we have to pay more attention to important things such as our family or our friends because we don’t know how much time we’re going to have them. Finally, I would like to highlight the end of the film in which Michael Jr. says: “When people ask me if Michael Sullivan was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them... he was my father”. I think this sentence is the best example of the love that Michael Jr. and, I think,  all of us have for our father.

GRAN TORINO

            Racism, solitude, culpability, violence… They’re all problems which, far from disappear, affect our society of nowadays. Every and each day a person feels discriminated against simply because he/she is different from the others. Every and each day a person suffers because he/she doesn’t have a family or just someone who likes him/her. Every and each day a person feels torment, shame or even repugnance for the acts of his/her life. Every and each day thousands of people choose violence as a way of life or just as a way to achieve all expected. Gran Torino, a film produced in the year 2008, deals perfectly with all these problems in the scenario of a Hmong Neighbourhood.

            Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), an old Korean war vet, is the male lead of this film. His wife has recently died and he’s the last white person who lives in an old neighbourhood which has been repopulated with immigrants. He lives alone in an old house in which beer and a dog are his only company. Next door lives a Hmong family (people from Southeast Asia) whose two well brought-up kids, Thao and Sue manage to earn the affection of Mr. Kowalski with their tender and friendship. Thao, the first one, is a young boy who has no example to follow and has always been considered “a disaster”. Therefore, the young boy has no self-esteem and is completely lost in life. Sue, his sister, is a young girl who has always been “the favourite” of the family, a family only composed by women.

            During the film, one of the most important matters dealt with is racism. Racism is “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races”. Racism has been one of the biggest problems faced by mankind and it affects our society every day. It affects all generations and all countries although it’s true that it’s more usual among the elders. Mr. Kowalski, at the beginning, is an extremely racist man who believes that “yellow people” are inferior to him. We can see a clear example of this belief in the scenes in which he spits to the ground of the Hmong family’s loan. In my opinion, although some people say that this problem has already been eradicated, I think we should work harder to create a better world in which all people understand, as Mr. Kowalski does in the film, that racial differences are not only prejudices created by our society but also a positive fact of our world from which we can learn a lot.

            Related to the topic of racism comes violence. Violence is a “behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something”. Every day, lots of people use violence to obtain what they want or simply as a “way to defend themselves”. In the film, violence appears continuously (both Walt Kowalski and the gang of youngsters use it) and, at the end, we learn that violence only takes us to a “sad final”.

            Finally, I think this film is a good lesson of social behaviour because we learn that violence and racism won’t take us anywhere. I have talked about racism and violence because I think they’re “the two biggest problems of mankind” and I wish that, after reading this review, you thought about them and tried to answer this question: are we so different? 

BILLY ELLIOT

Billy Elliot is an 11-year-old boy who tries to grow up in a striking coal mining town at the North of England during the 80’s. While his widower father (Gary Lewis) and brother (Tony) spend their days on the picket lines, Billy goes through adolescence and takes care of his senile grandmother (Jean Heywood).

Influenced by the society of the moment and “obliged” to follow his father’s example, Billy begins to attend boxing lessons at the local village hall. However, soon the young boy realizes that his dream is not to box but to dance. So, during the film, Billy has to fight against the prejudices of the society and even against his own family to achieve his main dream: to be a professional dancer.

The film reflects perfectly the British patriarchal society of the moment in which homosexuality was regarded as a disgrace and young boys were expected to do “men’s things”.  Whenever a boy wanted to do something that was not branded as “men’s things”, he was discriminated and even punished by his social environment. Moreover, dancing has always been branded as “girls’ things” and, even nowadays, boys who like dancing are usually labelled as “poofs”. In the film, Billy, who suffers the consequences of these prejudices, says: “Just cause I like ballet, doesn’t mean I’m a poof”.

Nowadays, we think these problems are not anymore in our society but the real and sad fact is that in their daily routine a lot of people have to be the object of discrimination because of their sexual orientation or just because of the things they like. It’s true that our society has progressed against discrimination but I think we still have big problems to solve in order to achieve a society in which all people could “be himself” without fear.

To conclude, I think the young boy is an example of courage and perseverance because he never gives up and pursues his dream until achieving it. Often, we worry much more about what people would say than about what we really want to do and I think we all should follow Billy’s example and pursue our dreams.