Revenge movies

In my experience, the French make the best revenge movies for the simple reason that someone eventually gets revenge and better still gets away with it. The best I ever saw (and I wish I could remember the name of it) related to a drunk (or maybe he was fondling his girlfriend) driver who killed a man’s son. The start was full of tension. Child fishing on the beach at dawn. Car driving fast in the countryside. Kid leaves the beach and goes back through the streets. Car comes racing through the streets. They meet at a fork and the child is killed.

Can’t remember how the father tracks down the driver but he does. He befriends him and then on the killer’s yacht, the father kills him. Moralise as you will but I see that as justice.

‘Revenge is a dish best served cold,’ someone said once and that is the way the French do it. There is another one at the back of my mind about an unfaithful wife but my memory is hazy.

In contrast, Hollywood once eschewed revenge movies and brought the culprit to trial. You know all that anti-lynching stuff and telling the Indians that the culprit must suffer ‘white man’s justice.’ It changed but it was never cold which revenge ought to be. Instead we got spectacles like Maximus v. Commodus in Gladiator, Kill Bill (which is entertaining but is insufficiently cold and lacks calculation) and Ben-Hur (another spectacle).

I don’t feel revengeful in any way but if I was, I’d do it quietly. I’d make sure my victim was fully aware of what I was doing and I’d make him/her suffer.

Does that make me bad? I guess so but you have to be highly motivated to want to take revenge anyway and so far, I have never been so motivated.