A movie with no easy answers. A movie with inevitability inside of its deliberate action.
Every man, or most every man anyhow, has inside him the reluctant hero. As a boy, we make weapons out of sticks not because we're preprogrammed to war, as our concerned mothers worry about, but because we're pre-programmed to dominance games. We're a pecking order society, and that flushes every man. It's inherited through money and class, race and privilege, and just plain doggedness and especially through violence. Boys need righteous heroes because they want to be their heros. If their heroes are not righteous, than the men they grow into not righteous either.
A former friend, who screwed me over more than once, when I asked him why he was such an asshole told me that all of the people he admired were assholes. Despite the fact that they barely knew him, he was working awfully hard to impress them.
When confronted with violence or situations we find unfair, the first impulse is to fight it, but that impulse is tempered by our life-long pecking order training. You can sum it up with the oft used phrase "Can I take this guy?" If you can, and you do, you can be a hero. If you can, and you don't you're a pussy. If you can't and you do, you're brave for trying, but should learn your place. If you can't, and you don't you're frustrated and impotent.
Which is why video games are cathartic, just as movies are. Men can step into the heroes shoes and show, briefly, that they are the toughest motherfucker around. In the Darwinian pecking order, albeit fake gore and fragging, they live on the top. Which is why superhero comics are so beloved by adolescent males, living the hero life by proxy. Which is why smart women understand that male pride is not an annoying secondhand trait, but a complex weaving of his individual history, his failures and successes. It's the core of his identity (although, granted, often overwrought, in need of check, and especially annoying).
I'm a peaceful guy. I've never been in a fight. Literally. My whole life. I feel like I don't back down from conflict, but I've been lucky in my own confrontations of violence. I've had times where I had to pick whether I wanted to fight or walk, and I've walked. I've had times where I could have pushed the situation a bit more, but I don't like violence. I don't like conflict.
That said, how the hell would I react if attacked? I would like to think I'd do one thing, but the proof is in the pudding, and that's pudding I ain't likely to go seeking. But then, just because I've never fought doesn't mean that I've never been angry, or even violent myself. I've channeled it into other venues than hurting people (loud music, mostly), but I understand the rage. I think every man alive understands that.
So when Tom Stall has to defend his diner, we understand. And when he has to defend his family, we understand. And when he has to go face his brother, we understand. It's inevitable, no matter how little we like it. If he wants to be the person he chooses to be, he has to face fully the person he was. We understand and we hope that our family would offer us again the place at the table if we, through no fault of our own, showed them that we're reluctant heroes too.
Where we saw it: Movie Theater | We deign to rate it: 88 outta 100