Trevor McKee

Was reading an article recently about how movie cops are rarely ever in the wrong when shooting and killing a suspect... think John McLane, Dirty Hairy, Popeye Doyle. They're always seen as the heroes that cut through the red tape of the bureaucratic justice system. Partly, this is because bureaucracy doesn't make for good cop/action movies. There are certainly movies that deal in bad cops, (Serpico, for instance), but rarely do the heroes of those stories become pop-culture icons...cuz ya know, goody goody cops are boring or something. My point is that for example, the French Connection is legitimately a great movie. It's a heavily fictionalized/based on a true story type of thing, but how sad it is that some people have looked at that film and thought that Popeye Doyle was somehow meant to be seen as a good person or a hero. Hell I'm pretty sure he uses "N" in a completely in context unambiguously racist way within the first 10 minutes to clearly establish him as a raging racist cop. How sad it is that good character writing (of a largely "bad" person) has almost become the rule instead of the exception when forming anti-heroes that we're supposed to cheer. I'm guilty of it myself, I loved LOVED 24, but ya know, I understood it was a tv show and the real world doesn't really have ticking time bombs who's location needs to be beaten out of a terror suspect. I enjoyed it purely as suspensful entertainment. Horrified am I to slowly come to realize that some people think the world DOES work this way and seem to want to encourage the pressence of Popeye Doyles and Jack Bauers in real-life law enforcement. They say kids have trouble separating fiction and reality, but I'm much more worried about the adults who vote and should know better. Not sure why I felt the need to write about this at 3am.