echidna

What do you mean by this ?

Keith Russell

Serious spoiler alert. If you haven't seen Road to Perdition yet, please do not read the following. Serious plot details are revealed.

I saw Road to Perdition last Friday, and I agree that it is an excellent film.

I had only one problem with it, a problem that I have had with many movies.

The point of the film is that the surviving son, at the end of the film, isn't like his father--isn't a murderer.

The problem is, the situation in which he finds himself isn't one where 'murder' is an option. Instead, if he had shot Jude Law's character, it would not have been murder--but self-defense.

Had he shot Jude Law himself, he still would not necessarily have been 'like his father', who was a murderer.

There are numerous films that equate 'killing' and 'murder', and try to show that killing is always wrong, always 'taints' the killer, and that a 'higher morality' is somehow served by avoiding killing--even in self-defense--the same as one should avoid murder.

Not only do I think the character of the boy would have shot Jude Law in that situation, I think the film would have been made stronger had he done so, and then explained to his father that although he could kill in self-defense, he was not a murderer, like his father.

Keith.