Sympathy for the devil

Rating: 8/10 (15 February 2005)

It was only a matter of time until Hollywood got its act together and began to examine the rise of the right wing in America: in this case, the unfettered power of capitalism over the rule of law. The genius of this film is that it looks at evil through the eyes of an evil protagonist, who introduces himself by asking his buddy "Do you think God will forgive us for what we've done?".
Why should we care? We care because the man who plays the evil character is an actor of INCREDIBLE power and dignity and because the first third of the film is given over to him enjoying a glimpse of the possibility of redemption. The courtship (I mean nothing smutty by the use of that word) between Denzil Washington and the preternaturally talented Dakota Fanning is the awakening of a deadened soul and it shines brightly against the sickening disorientation of the rest of the movie, as investigation becomes classical revenge tragedy, (here's the spoiler) until the rescue of the child turns it back into a 'American hero gaining moral advantage over lowlife foreigner' diatribe.
For this film to be a work of realist genius it only needed to follow its own logic and stick to the death of the innocent. That is what drives Creasy to commit a variety of grotesque murders with which this innocent viewer (albeit, drinking Glenmorangie) was prepared to sympathize. Hollywood's determination to always provide 'closure' on every moral dilemma is at the root of America's failure as an imperialist power: the subject nations suffer, while they tidy it up for their own consumption, and thereby continue the belief that they only need to keep feeling sorry for the victims and everything will be okay.
The music is brilliant, by the way, and the editing is incredible, and the use of subtitles within the screen is the most respectful to the speakers of a foreign language that I have seen: the whole inter-relationship between Protagonist imperial observer eye (America) and Antagonist subject sufferer eye (Mexico-in this case, although it could be a lot of countries, including...ummm...Iraq?) is a lot more objective than we are used to. By Hollywood standards this is a bloody intelligent film and all concerned come close to actually saying something truthful.
In the end, though, the devil's pain is his own, and I prefer to let him suffer.