I like action movies, and shoot ’em ups are some of my favorites. Improbable, yes, but it’s the idea that counts. The illusion. The fantasy. We identify with the hero facing insurmountable odds, and surmounting them. Never mind you can plainly see the hero’s weapon-handling skills in the real world would result in the bad guys, sporting similar skills, never being hit at all. That’s probably why Hollywood guns come with 300 round magazines, making up in volume for the lack of shooting skills.

But lately I’ve become more critical of some of these movies. No, I don’t mean the 300-round magazines, although that is another pet peeve. I mean the movies themselves. I still like them, but I’ve become more sensitive to certain aspects of these movies, especially in some of the newer batch of movies.

I’m referring, of course, to the treatment of innocent victims. Movies like No Country for Old Men, while certainly technically excellent and engrossing, leave a lot to be desired as far as entertainment value. They remind us a psycho could target us for no apparent reason other than for self-amusement and entertainment. At least the body count of innocent victims in that movie is low.

Not so in other movies I like. One that comes to mind is Hitman. “Where are the innocents?” you ask. Well, they are cleverly hidden in plain sight. Policemen. In the first attempt to capture the UPCed hero of the movie, sixteen men of the SWAT-like squad were killed. Presumably, there were more who were injured. These were not evil people; they were not the bad guys. They were just cops, or soldiers, doing their job. Probably had families, parents, hobbies, and possibly even owned hamsters. Later on, another batch of people just doing their jobs gets mowed down so as to allow the plot to progress.

The UPCed hero in Hitman does not care. Contrast that to other movies where the hero avoids killing what are essentially the same kind of people. A good example is the Bourne Identity. Jason certainly seems as capable as Agent 47 of laying waste to the police who are chasing him. But he does not. He flees, even at the risk of personal injury and even death.

The interesting thing with Hitman is all the innocent victims wear masks, thus removing the ability of the audience to connect with them. Note these are different masks than those worn by Zorro. Had in fact the victims been sporting cloth covering their faces, we might have identified them as human. Eyes, noses, mouths just like you and I. Instead, they wore a mask that replaced their normal human features with grotesque, monster-like, exaggerated features. They had no identity. They were alien looking. We could not see their eyes, and hence could not see the reflection of ourselves in them. Shoot them!! Shoot them all!!

Once you think, even for just one moment, there is a person behind that mask, a person with fears, hope, and a great desire to live, you cringe a little… a lot… when the “hero” casually puts an end to them. Sure, kill all the bad guys you want; drug dealers, crooked politicians, people whose car audio system can be heard from three blocks away… kill them all. We’ll cheer, and point you toward others… as long as it is in a movie. And sure, innocent people die in movies all the time.

But it’s usually the bad guy who kills innocent victims. It’s what bad guys do, and we sort of accept it because we expect them to eventually pay for it. But here we have a movie that puts us in a position of cheering for a hero killing people who are merely doing their jobs. If we don’t stop to think about it, if we just accept the premise and cheer, is that shaping the way we look at the world? And if we do stop and think about it, what are we to think of the movie?

Readers might notice there is no obvious tie-in to Science Fiction. Except this was triggered in part by watching the final release of Blade Runner. It’s never satisfactorily explained why replicants should be killed in the first place, and that’s the point of the story. Certainly by the end of the movie the lines between heroes and villains are blurred. We have learned something about replicants. They are guilty of no more than wanting to live, and they are looking for no more than what is given all of us; the uncertainty of life.

It’s not fair to compare Hitman with Blade Runner. It’s only marginally better to compare Bourne with Hitman, as they are not the same kinds of movies. Hitman is not charged with making us think about ourselves, life, and the meaning there of. And yet, a movie can’t help but present us with a point of view of the hero. A point of view we sometimes identify with. And Hitman presents no distinction between one life and another. Good or bad, innocent or not, it matters not. It’s not even a point of consideration. The hero is insulated from such moral distinctions.

As I said, I like all these movies, but I guess I am wondering whether audiences identify with Jason’s or Agent 47’s point of view. I sure hope the vast majority of people identify with the former.