Xie Zongyu's
Hollywood story of revenge, the new film "Law-abiding Citizen" does not bring us more novel sensory stimulation. The only contribution is that it accidentally revealed another face of the law to the audience.
In the impression of many people, the law has only one face, that is, "seeking fairness and justice." Clyde, the protagonist of "Law Abiding Citizens," is obviously also bewitched by the face of the law. The gangster who broke in, in front of him, molested and killed his wife and daughter. According to the principle of fairness and justice, such gangsters should be sentenced to death. But this is not the case. The main culprit did not know whether it was because he had a harder background, or because he had thicker banknotes, and because he was willing to come out to testify against the accomplice, he was acquitted. In order to maintain the high conviction rate of the cases he handled, Nick chose to compromise without accidentally failing in court. Clyde had no choice but to watch the prosecutor at large.
As a result, another face of the law appeared in front of the audience and Clyde: that is "seeking social balance." The trial of the murder of Clyde's wife and daughter was just for a certain balance, disregarding fairness and justice, and throwing out a result that is acceptable to all parties in the game.
When this happened, it should have ended. Both the murderer and the judiciary accepted the result, but the victim Clyde did not accept it. In the following ten years, he carefully planned and used bloody tragedies to prove to the world that there were huge errors and loopholes in Philadelphia's laws and judicial procedures. But the effort was wasted, but the effect was not obvious. Most people from the female mayor of Philadelphia regarded him as a pervert with a high IQ and vowed to destroy him as soon as possible. In the end, Clyde was destroyed by a bomb he made.
Many netizens believe that the prosecutor Nick deserves to die. Clyde did not murder Nick or even his family before his death. This is really the screenwriter's biggest failure. But netizens don't understand that if Nick dies, everything Clyde has done will not make any sense to him. Clyde is not a pervert, he is a very rational person. In Philadelphia, perhaps only Nick understands his motives for the murder. From the tragedy created by Clyde, Nick finally realized that he simply pursued a high conviction rate and chose to compromise with criminals. Clyde spent so much thought to change people's mindsets, but Nick was the only one who was touched. How could the screenwriter be willing to let the only remaining Nick die?
Strictly speaking, "seeking fairness and justice" is not the true face of the law, but just the "emperor's new dress" of the law before the public. Anyone who is a little familiar with the world will know that the legal underwear is "seeking social stability", and "heavenly mud" is the greatest essence of the law. More generally speaking, the purpose of the existence of law is to make all social strata, various forces, and people of all kinds become "harmonious." From the moment the law was born, there was no intention to really make "the prince offends the law and the common people commit the same crime". "The prince and common people commit the same crime" is just the law's propaganda slogan for seeking its legitimacy. The flexible legal provisions, coupled with a large number of human factors in the law enforcement process, make the law impossible to be fair and just. Unless the fair and just judicial result is exactly the same as the goal of seeking social balance, the law may show its fairness and justice. And once "fairness and justice" runs counter to "social balance", the law will not hesitate to set aside the "fairness" it declares to the outside world. For example, in the American blockbuster "Twenty-Four Hours of Terrorism", the heinous gangsters who killed a hundred times in accordance with the principle of fairness and justice are not enough for civilians to infuriate, but because they have a certain secret, and this secret will If it poses a huge threat to the security of the government or thousands of people, the president can only issue an amnesty to them in exchange for their secrets. In fact, don't cite such a special case, just say that the traffic around you violates the rules. Different people violate the same traffic rules in the same place, and the results of the treatment are very different. Even in the daily handling of neighbourhood disputes, it is difficult to reflect fairness and justice, and the final settlement is often the result of the overall strength of the parties.
Clyde's fault was that he did not agree with the essence of the law "and mud." His ambition is so great that he actually wants to turn the law into a bowl of clean water on his own. How can this be possible? If Clyde only punishes the two criminals who killed his family, then the screenwriter may, like other blockbuster films, arrange for him a happy ending that escapes the sanctions. But when Clyde was blindly pursuing fairness and justice of the law, he had already caused an uproar, which greatly broke the social balance, and in turn threatened the fairness of the law. The screenwriter could only leave him dead. The reason why the screenwriter did not portray Clyde as a complete villain and made the audience sympathize with his death is probably because the screenwriter also seems to have a Clyde-style questioning in his heart: one day, our society will Wouldn't you be willing to pay any price for pursuing the impartiality of the law? ! (Abridged version)
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