What’s Old Is New Again
In looking at the plot for the new film The International, it is a real throwback and should be a warning sign to politicians who state things aren’t as bad as they were in the thirties and that we are not heading into a depression. The villain of the film is an unscrupulous banker. Like Edwin Maxwell in Burn’em Up Barnes (1934), the villain in the new film is a super rich banker wanting to get richer by illegal means and will order people’s death to achieve it while being pursued by a hard to kill hero. I could see this plot being used by Universal with John Davidson as the villain and Tom Tyler as the hero, or at Mascot with Robert Frazer as the villain and Jack Mulhall as the hero. Then like now, films are a reflection of the public’s fears and concerns. The International shows our already lost faith in financial leaders, when we get an action film featuring an unscrupulous, greedy politician who wants to get richer by illegal means and ordering people’s death while being pursued by a hard to kill hero, start watching the polls to see if there is a large turn over in Washington come election time. Maybe I’m reading a little too much into what is essentailly a mindless shoot’em up action film, but people generally see what they want to see in a movie, and I see this one as a sign of the bad times we are in not getting better any time soon. Of course it could also just be Hollywood pandering to the public by having a banker as a villain in an attempt to make money by giving us a sterotype we are geared to immediately hate and want to see pumped full of lead by a dashing hero (or in this case a rugged hero). Guess it just depends on your level of cynicism.
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment