The Most Immoral (Amoral?) Movie of all Time

Well, I watched a DVD last night which by the 15 or 20 minute mark left me dumbfounded. I thought I'd seen everything, but this one took the cake.

The movie was "Mr and Mrs Smith" where our fun loving hero and heroine are assassins who not only have no compunction about killing their targets, but also have no problem wiping out any innocent people (like police officers) who happen to be next to their targets.

Such protaganists used to be the despicable villains in all previous movies or, where they displayed some shred of morality or code of ethics, the anti heroes. But here, plain old psychopathic killers are the heroes - all they have to do is be funny and sophisticated while they do it.

Do you have any thoughts on this movie, or can you think of a more immoral (amoral?) mainstream movie?
Renato

Actually, that's why I've pretty much disliked the entire Star Wars series - it has insidious warped morals. It may be just a story, but its message is clear - only the elites matter, the average guy doesn't (they can be your companions killed by the hundreds while attacking a Death Star but you (the elite royalty or Jedi) will have a jolly nice celebration afterwards). The series went from bad to worse, when in episode two, after discovering that Annakin was a mass murderer who had just killed a village of innocent beings, his supposedly moral Princess girlfriend didn't show any repugnance and call the cops (i.e. Jedi Knights) but went and comforted him instead.

That's why I always liked the Star Trek franchise where, apart from in a couple of the last movies, the average guy was important and did matter, and any death was treated with real world concern.
Renato

I wasn't so much concerned with Annakin turning into a murdering maniac (we all knew he'd become one anyway), but the "there, there, that's okay, all will be better" type motherly reaction from the Princess girlfriend was extremely concerning. Who's the bigger maniac the flawed Annakin, or the charming Princess?

Somehow or other, I've missed Pink Flamingoes. Eating dog poo may be stomach turning, but it doesn't really equate to cheerfully trying to blow up four law enforcement officials doing their job. At the moment I'm not quite sure what to make of the Boogieman on WWE's Smackdown, who every week munches hard on a mouthful of wriggling worms.
Renato

Here's my thoughts -
Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood
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"It's a hell of a thing to kill a man, you take away everything he's got and ever will have"
by way of contrast, Mr and Mrs Smith has killing as a fun humourous activity, with as much consequence as doing the laundry. Both Clint and the viewer know the activity is bad and has consequence, and the sheriff learned the hard way that life can be unfair, and doesn't always go the way it "should".

Almost any war movie - killing is bad right? especially when the other guy is not a monster, but just a guy like you fighting for his country
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Hardly, especially when the other guy is fighting for his country trying to enslave you. The vast majority of war movies are WW11 ones, and in that particular war there can be little doubt that the cause of the allies was plainly and simply just. Killing is bad, but hardly immoral - we expect our police to kill people who are trying to kill us.


Payback with Mel Gibson - bad guy doing bad things to bad people - what no heroes?
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Haven't seen the movie - but bad people doing bad things to bad people is a moral movie - the message to the viewer is that they're "bad"


Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack & The Professional - Killers killing bad people to save people. This is pretty much the idea behind anti-hero.
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Again, I don't see where the immorality is.


Escape from Alcatraz and A Perfect World - escaping criminals is good?
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May not be good, but I was talking about the MOST immoral movie ever. Criminals escaping from jail is a common occurence, whereas killing innocent people and having fun while doing it is a relatively recent phenomena. I wonder if Hollywood will come up with a situation comedy set in the caves on the Afghan/Pakistan border?

Caligula - "based" on history, bad = bad, but this stuff pretty much happened.
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It's the ultimate morality tale - absolute power coupled with madness is not a good thing, and push your Guards too far and they'll happily slice your belly apart and make your cousin emperor instead. Hardly an immoral premise to a movie, just a tad voyeuristic. (Oddly enough, the Emporer who tried his best to stop the butchery in the Arenas became reviled by the citizens at the time and received, and continues to receive, bad press through the centuries and millennia - I'm referring to poor old Nero, who tried substituting theatre, poetry and music for the blood sports without success.)



Gladiator - killing people = good whether in war, in the pits against others like him, or bad guys
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Good guy gets done in and sent off to slavery by the bad guy. Good guy has to make his way back through the Gladiator school. Good guy gives the bad guy his just desserts, and goes off to heaven. Hardly an immoral movie.

The best of the anti hero movies were made by Sam Pekinpah. In the Wild Bunch, our anti heroes rob a bank, kill numerous innocent people while escaping only to find that their haul was worthless. They may not be too disturbed by it - in the sense of wailing and asking for contrition, but they are certainly pensive about it - the movie does not convey any notion that this is some kind of normal or acceptable behaviour.
In Major Dundee, the anti hero major may not think the whole episode was worthless, and a useless waste of life on both sides, but viewers of the movie are left in no doubt.
In Strawdogs, the good guy does kill most of the somewhat obnoxious guys - but the viewer of the movie doesn't feel high about the astounding outcome against overwhelming odds, rather there is a queasy feeling that something went wrong somewhere.
Renato

P.S. Â*- I get confused with this immoral/amoral business. Various writers describe a movie or book as amoral in a negative sense, probably with the premise that it should have been moral in the first place.

Cryptic.

I'm offended. Your implication that WWE isn't real - it's like telling kids that Santa Claus doesn't exist.

I think Bonny & Clyde was ultimately a very moral film - the director pumped several hundred bullets into the two protaganists to make the point.

Very interesting your observation about how Hollywood has changed what it presents. The other thing Hollywood has changed is it's depicition of nearly every Priest or Pastor - deranged, incompetent, wicked or hypocritical sleezebags, molestors or even worse (i.e. haters of rock'n'roll or dancing).
Renato

Sounds a bit like the Japanese movie Audition. Lots of sharp pins being put into the drugged guy by the psychopathic gal, before she starts sawing his foot off - but he kind of deserved it for being untruthful and a bit caddish when he first met her.
Renato

Looks like I'm the sole voice who thinks this movie is immoral.
Renato

Actually, I often react with a why bother for the "bummer hangover" movies you describe - particularly when they have the immature theme of "life's so unfair, and it shouldn't be".
Have you seen "Johnny Got His Gun"? Made back in the 70s, I think it gets an A++ in the depressing movie stakes.
Renato

Thanks for the information - I didn't know that.
Renato

Well they had to make the two main characters a bit more palatable, because the originals weren't that good looking, and one of whom could best be described as an ultra lazy sod ( willing to cut off two of his toess to get out prison work). There's little point making a movie about people engaged in very self defeating behaviour, if it's too realistic, or no one will watch it. Regardless, the facts of the film are that you can have a psychopathically enjoyable good time for a while, but ultimately you pay for it.
Renato

I watched the original Get Carter the other night. As I was watching it, I realised I'd only ever seen cut versions of this movie. I agree with your assessment, it was a rivetting film.
Renato

To my mind, the main thing wrong with this movie was that everybody was such a sod, that you didn't really care what happened to any of them. There weren't heroes or anti heros in this movie.
Renato

Hi Mario,
When I went to Italy last year, there were many cousins I hadn't seen for decades, and never even met their wives. After some mulling around, I found one common topic that we could yack our heads off non-stop - you guessed it - the WWE. I had no idea it was that big over there, much bigger than in Australia. They were surprised when I told them they had lousy commentators and were missing out on half of what makes WWE hilarious and fun to watch.

Brave, beautiful, and tragic young lovers - yes, but not all that bright either. The one time you don't want to be robbing banks is during a depression, when there's next to no money in them. While not dwelling on them, the film did portray their flaws in passing. I suppose the question with regards morality is does the film leave you with a sense of "It is better to go out in a blaze, than fade away" or of "Fading away has some good points, not least of which is that a blaze looks painful"?

When I think about it, there were several anti-hero types in the 30s and 40s. Maybe it's because I remember a psycho Jimmy Cagney blazing away with his machine gun, as the cops mow him down, that I think of Bonney and Clyde as I do.

Your comment about the sympathetic, lovable contract killer and and sympathetic sociopath are well taken. If you want to follow up on this topic, I suggest reading Michael Medved's "Hollywood vs. America" where he points out that Hollywood's version of America - far from being a depiction of reality as it claims - couldn't be further from the truth. He gives numerous examples - my favourite was "Kindergarden Cop" where every kid except one in Arnie's class doesn't have a father, and the only one who does have one, has an arrogant, abusive bullying father. Medved points out that this situation may be the norm in some suburb around Hollywood, but in the rest of the US, the vast majority of Americans who have ever been married, are still married to their original partners. Hollywood's reality is a falsehood.

The only other decent portrayal of religion and religions I've seen in recent years was in the television series Babylon 5. What's more, that series had one intriguing religious science fiction episode, when the very good and kindly monk discovers that he was originally a psychopathic killer who had his mind wiped - he asks how he can repent and save his stained soul, when he has no memory of the crimes he's committed.
Renato