"Three-dimensional Character Creation"
As we all know, the United States is a country that values individualism and heroism. This feature is vividly reflected in "Black Water". The protagonist Rob helps innocent people without hesitation, regardless of the status of his law firm, the financial pressure of his family, the misunderstandings of his family, and the scorn of bystanders. At first glance, he is nothing more than a masked messenger of justice, the object of praise in chicken soup.
But is it really just that? Todd Hines tells you, nonono, don't simplify things.
First of all, is Rob helping those vulnerable people out of his own sense of justice? The film tells us through Anne Hathaway; Rob is a poor child with no childhood. Moved many times, no friends, no contact, only his family, his friends and neighbors carried in his childhood memories. Therefore, he is unwilling to live up to the expectations of his grandmother, and the expectations of his former neighbors. As a competent environmental lawyer, he can help them. It is both public and private.
Second, as a husband, Rob is not perfect. Regarding the case, he was tight-lipped about his wife; he didn't care about the family. It's hard to imagine that as a lawyer, he should be eloquent and eloquent, but it is difficult for him to even say a complete sentence when facing his family.
Again, Rob is a devout Catholic. Catholics are often seen as conservative and ignorant when it comes to things like abortion and guns. But a coin has two sides. It is because of their piety that they have a stronger sense of morality than the average person, which can also explain Rob's behavioral motives.
"The Price of Justice"
The core dramatic conflict of this film lies in the various pressures faced by the protagonist Rob, among which the pressure from DuPont and the pressure from the family belong to the dominant pressure, and the most thought-provoking pressure comes from the pressure of the public. The public who was helped by Rob kept urging him and scolding him; the public who had nothing to do with the incident just regarded him as a cash cow, and even defended DuPont, believing that DuPont was innocent.
Under this kind of pressure, Rob finally couldn't take it anymore. His hands were trembling uncontrollably, he began to have hallucinations, and he suspected that Dupont's people were coming to harm him, even inserting the car keys and starting the car took a lot of courage. But in the face of these, he still chose not to tell his relatives and friends, so I said, this is a tangled hero, silently insisting on what he thinks is right.
Having said that, despite the hehe ending of this film, I'm still skeptical of the phrase "justice is late, but never absent". Because there are huge variables, what if Rob did not wait for the day of victory to hang up, what if DuPont did not give Rob the complete information. Even with the he in the film, we can hardly say that it has achieved complete fairness. For an industry giant, these compensations may be debilitating, but not out of business. What's more, the times will forget, and people will forget that when a giant falls, there is another giant because of capital but the logic has not changed. The only thing we can do is to pray that the "messenger of justice" will appear in time and the country's supervision can be effectively implemented. I think this is one of the key points of this film. Although we have some resistance to heroism and some doubts, in our hearts, we all long for such a "messenger of justice" to save our world full of lies.
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