How nice: Poetic justice and its problems.

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2002)

SPOILERS, interpretation:
This movie is a good example of how contrived Hollywood movies can get when they believe poetic justice to be an absolute necessity. With poetic justice, since both Williams and Pacino commit a sin, they must both be punished. Williams must be punished most because his crime was committed with clear intent. So in the end, Williams receives his punishment when he dies. Pacino dies as well, but there is a difference between his death: he repents before he dies. So what was intimated from the beginning is affirmed: though both men work together and both have committed a sin, Williams clearly represents evil while Pacino represents good. With his repentance, Pacino is assured his place in heaven, and William's punishment will continue in his hell-bound afterlife. This is further evinced when Pacino falls asleep because his conscience is now clear. The problem with this, which is nicely explained in Hermann Hesse's Demian' is that a deathbed repentance is quite easy and convenient. Take the biblical story of the repentant thieve for example. Two thieves are crucified with Jesus. One insults Jesus and one repents to Jesus, and is thus granted entrance to heaven. But is it really so virtuous to live a life of sin and then repent when staring death in the eye? The repentance is not authentic, but fear based. Hence, both Williams and the non-repentant thief are the virtuous ones, for truly accepting their life and it's decisions and its consequences. A final scene in which Pacino isn't made to look heroic would have been much preferred, because 1) it's not so very trite and would possibly redeem some of the movie's slow and self-serious plot, and 2) it's more philosophically and religiously coherent.