RIFLE RANGE BOY

Prisoners (2013) Director:  Denis Villeneuve Sometimes, bad things happen to good people; conversely, good things happen to bad people. "Who are we to judge?" we ask ourselves. When things get too complicated, we end the conversation by saying, "God knows best!" When an adult dies after living a fun-filled life with booze, drugs and flesh, we rationalise his demise by uttering words like 'he should have seen it coming' or 'he lived his life to the fullest'. When no vices are detected, the spot diagnosis would be 'God loved him more'. If the deceased is an infant, toddler or newborn, the standard answer is 'God, in his wisdom, had bigger plans.' We are too perplexed to think of a reasonable explanation. Invoking the name of God somehow seems acceptable. Washing hands the responsibility and passing the buck to an invisible force that does not justify His moves is legitimate. Nobody gets angry with God. Nobody can derail God's plans ...

Juror #2 Director: Clint Eastwood Yet another big one from Clint Eastwood. This 94-year-old may have directed his last movie, but one can never say never. This one makes us think, as did his previous offerings, like 'Letters from Iwo Jima', 'Flags of Our Fathers', and 'Gran Torino'. It is a courtroom drama along the lines of '12 Angry Men', where the moral decision of convicting a person of a serious crime is the mainstay. This film, however, goes one step further. One of the jurors, Juror #2, may have committed the murder in the case he is judging. On the day of the incident, the Juror witnessed the tussle between the accused and his girlfriend at a bar. The girlfriend was found dead later that night by a creek beside a road. The accused was seen following his girlfriend in his car. With his destructive anger management issues, he was naturally accused of having mortally wounded his girlfriend.  The trouble is Juror #2 is a recovering alcoholic and was ...

The New Indian Lady Justice Note the saree, absence of blindfold and sword . (knowledge replaces brutal force) I have been naive all through my formative and even adult life. I had thought that Truth or the Universe would put everything in order. In the end, Dharma will rule. No matter how deviant, conniving, or evil humans may be, Nature has a way of tipping things back to equilibrium.  Little things convinced me of this. When Man thought pests needed to be eradicated to increase their harvest yield, he introduced DDT. Little did he know it disrupted the food chain, from insects to birds and pollination of flowers and back to less yield. The spring of 1962 fell silent. When environmentalists were screaming, 'Save the Tigers on Sundarbans', little did they know that they had later to give protection to the people of that region when the tiger population doubled. People equate the Courts with holding the balance of Justice. The courts are supposed to be independent, not swayed b...

We Want Justice! A thing or two came up on my radar recently. Firstly, yet again, the unending saga of 1MDB took another court  postponement. The deposed Malaysian PM has not finished disposing of his cases. This time, he has excruciating knee pain that needs hospitalisation. When told to be wheeled into the courtroom, the defence lawyers quipped that since he would be on opioid painkillers, he would not be in the correct frame of mind to follow the proceeding. They said their client must be seen to be given a fair trial. So be it, said the judges.  Across the Straits of Malacca and Bay of Bengal, over in Kalkota, demonstrators are screaming that new legislation must be passed to expedite trials on rapists and impose the death penalty on them. The West Bengal Legislative Assembly even stipulated that investigations into sexual assault and rape must be concluded in 21 days. Are we overdoing it in the haste to right the wrong, punish the wrongdoers, and set an example to potenti...

Indian 2(Tamil, 2024) Director: S. Shankar Even though his movie did not live up to its predecessor, which came out in 1996, there are a few instances in the film that make the Indian diaspora pause and reevaluate their behaviours. Forget what is happening in India. It would be irrelevant for a person residing in India to assess and enumerate the changes in India since the original Indian movie came out 28 years ago. Let a Malaysian of the Indian diaspora look at what has changed since. The theme of Indian 1 was to highlight how the system was broken because of rampant corruption and the lack of willpower of civil servants and public figures to change the status quo. It took a pre-independence freedom fighter to re-don his combat gear to highlight the rot to the public consciousness. In his own psychotic ways, Indian Tata (grandpa) brought the people in charge to task, even killing his own son approving the permit of an unroadworthy school bus, which killed many school kids. That is wh...

Taxi Driver (Miniseries, S1E1-16; Korean; 2021) With the wisdom proffered by age and experiences learned from the School of Hard Knocks, I am convinced that life is convoluted. Nothing one does is 100% right or good; conversely, not doing is not always wrong. If one can justify his actions and give convincing rhetoric, he can be considered a do-gooder.  The miniseries is about this in sixteen episodes and more than 16 hours altogether. In the crooks-filled metropolitan city of Seoul, there is no shortage of murderers and serial killers. After the tedious process of investigating, collecting evidence and prosecuting, the victims and their relatives find that the courts are pretty docile. More often than not, the accused go scot-free. Sometimes, they get away with a slap on the wrist or technical issues. The feeling is that the perpetrators never feel the pain that the victims and their families endured. To add injury to insult, the wrongdoers mock the system, police and the accusers...

Zulfarhan Osman A news report piqued my interest recently. The parents of a murdered college student prostrated in prayer right after the verdict was announced by the court of appeal that six accused would be hanged. Later, they told reporters they were showing their appreciation to the Almighty as justice was done.  These types of news often leave me more perplexed than I already am. An overseeing Almighty who was cognisant of all the things going on with their loved one but procrastinated would typically get a cold shoulder. If He were a mere mortal, He would get a notice of professional negligence for napping on the job. His nemesis, the horned and tailed one, through His proxies in robes, would have a field day trying to act smart and reenact all the fraction of seconds when danger could have been averted. But deep inside, these Satan's representatives on Earth thrive on maladies like these.  On one hand, we are products of the Original Sin, imperfect in every way and pron...

No disrespect is intended for the believers, but these could be cautionary tales for others. Recently, a close relative told me that he had made an appointment to meet a holy man at the unusual hour of 3 a.m. It may appear unearthly to some, but to others, it is referred to as ' Brahmamuhurtham '*, one of the most auspicious times of the day. The holy man wanted to dispel him of some negative energies. Quickly, my mind wandered to the story of P. Rajagopal, the founder of the world-famous chain of South Indian vegetarian restaurants, Saravana Bhava. A classic tale of how capitalism breeds entrepreneurship and how trickle-down economics works is his life story. Starting off as the son of a poor onion farmer, he ran away from home to work as a chaiwala . He later became a sundry shop owner but was restless. Being the pious person he was (he named his shop after Lord Muruga), he consulted a priest-astrologer about his future. By then, he was married to Vani, his first wife. The a...