BEFORE: OK, it's done, I've ordered a complete heat-and-eat Thanksgiving meal from a grocery store in my hometown, near where my parents live. Perhaps I could have gone all out and bought the frozen turkey, made the stuffing in the bird, peeled the squash myself and added the crispy onions to the green bean casserole, I have all of those skills from cooking the same holiday meal over and over as my mother's sous chef. But that's SO much work, and spending a full day cooking this meal (we used to shoot for 1 pm with prep-work beginning at 7 am) means less time spent with my parents, so screw it. Let the grocery store make the stuffing and the mashed potatoes, I'll heat everything up on the stovetop or in the microwave. I'll still need to pick up some extras, like butter for the rolls and milk for the coffee, plus it might be nice to have some cheese and crackers before hand, maybe even those mini cocktail franks, but that can all be purchased when we pick up the whole meal next Wednesday. And we'll hang around in town a few days after, just to eat the leftovers.
Oh, also the dinner comes with cranberry sauce, but it might be that weird stuff that's not in the shape of a tin can, for some reason. So I should probably have one of those on hand, plus an extra jar of gravy, because who doesn't love a little more gravy? I just need to keep a list of these little extras, and we'll be all set. With the supply chain problems of late, and news of an impending turkey shortage, I'm glad I got the bulk of this lined up today.
John Gallagher Jr. carries over from "The Best of Enemies".
THE PLOT: Five years after her husband and daughter are killed in a senseless act of violence, a woman comes back from self-imposed exile to seek revenge against those responsible and the system that let them go free.
AFTER: The title of this film comes from the last thing the lead character's daughter ate at the winter carnival before getting caught in a drive-by shooting, it was some peppermint ice cream. While this doesn't really seem to be a great reflection of the holiday spirit, it does hammer home an important point - that you never know if this will be your last holiday with a loved one. So, really, it's extra important to spend time with them and let them know you care. (This message brought to you by the Council of Churches and the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Stay safe, buckle up, and get your damn vaccine.)
But I'm being presented with a conundrum here, because of two films I've already watched in the past week, one depicted a teen torturing a family because he believed that the father of that family was (directly or indirectly) the cause of his own father's death. So he believed that the scales needed to be balanced, and someone from the doctor's father needed to die. Grief turned into a need for revenge, or justice, or karma, whichever you want to call it. But did that make his horrible actions right? This film's premise hits some of the same notes, with a woman seeking out the killers of her husband and daughter and killing them (most of the time, anyway). Again, it's her inner grief turned outward and manifesting itself in more violence in order to bring about some kind of perceived balance, or justice, or revenge. And then WAY on the far side we've got Jeffrey Dahmer, and we may never know what type of balance he was hoping to achieve with his horrid actions, because nothing that could have happened to him could justify all that, and under no circumstances can we call murder and cannibalism right. But, then, why DID he do it, and was his killing spree the outward representation of SOMETHING within him, or something that happened TO him?
In one of the flashback/before scenes, we even hear Riley North telling her daughter about right and wrong, how you can't just punch everyone you don't like in the face, even if you feel they deserve it. Even if you're being bullied or hurt by a bad person, if you fight back or get revenge then you become just as bad as the other person. So, umm, what happened, Riley, why did you change your mind about this? Oh, right, your family was shot, so I guess there are different rules now? But don't you dishonor your husband and daughter's memory if you hunt down and kill their killers? Maybe she's so close to the situation that she can't see how hypocritical her actions are, or else she just doesn't care. Either way, it's a problem.
I can't draw the line between the two characters in question (from this film and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer") so what am I supposed to do? I have to either forgive both characters or point out that they're both imperfect, and they're both at fault. If killing is wrong, then even killing the killers is wrong - I think this is the argument against capital punishment in a nutshell, but even then, there are people willing to make exceptions for the Ted Bundys and Jeff Dahmers of this world.
But then again, Riley North's origin seems mighty close to Batman's - after seeing family members gunned down, both characters traveled around the world for years, under false identities, to learn the martial arts and gadget skills they'd need to become proper vigilantes. (Bruce Wayne was already rich, but Riley had to rob a bank to pull this off...). And if Batman's a hero, then Riley North is a hero, right? Not exactly - Batman famously doesn't kill, and he doesn't use guns. (Maybe a grappling gun, but not a regular bullet-firing gun.). It makes sense, a guy with a gun killed his parents, how could he pick up a gun and not think about that EVERY time he did so? Riley doesn't seem to have that problem, but it feels like she's not thinking clearly, or hasn't thought the whole plan through, even though she has.
In addition, by killing the men who killed her husband and daughter, then they don't get redeemed, they don't pay for their crimes with time spent incarcerated, and in a way, killing's too good for them. Once she kills them, their suffering is over, but if she could get them arrested, spending thirty years or more behind bars could be a lot more painful for them. In other words, why would Riley learn all these shooting and fighting skills, just to track down her family's killers and then end their pain, along with their lives, so quickly? Again, it just feels like she hasn't thought the whole thing through, or from the right angle.
When the police figure out WHO'S taking down the South American drug gangs, then they try to figure out WHERE Riley's base is, and to do this, they use a computer that displays a big map of the city, with all the crimes marked with small colored squares. They find a large area with NO reported crime, and assume that's where Riley is hanging out, because she'd take down all the criminals in that general area. But does this make sense, or can I call a NITPICK POINT on this? Anything she would do to a criminal near her home base would, itself, probably constitute a criminal act - a killing, a wounding, a beat down of a criminal could be reported as a crime and then show up marked with a little colored square - so I suspect this method of finding Riley just plain wouldn't work.
BUT, I like the intent here - I suppose Riley also calls to mind the Punisher, not just Batman, and there is some degree of difference between those two, also. Social media puts regular people on Riley's side, once they all hear her story - but just having a lot of followers and supporters online shouldn't make her actions more "right", either. And yeah, I know that the real person responsible for the death of Riley's husband and daughter is - Peg. Peg was the woman who didn't like Riley's daughter Carly selling cookies in her claimed primo territory, so she held a better holiday party on the night of Carly's birthday party, which meant that nobody came to the party, and Riley and Chris then had to take her to the winter carnival, and we all know how THAT turned out. Peg might as well have been named "Karen", and just like a "Karen", she never took any responsibility for her own actions, never admitted she did anything wrong in that passive-aggressive way of hers. Maybe she didn't pull the trigger, but Peg killed those people - why can't Riley see that? If anybody deserves to die, it's clearly Peg.
Also starring Jennifer Garner (last seen in "13 Going on 30"), John Ortiz (last seen in "Replicas"), Juan Pablo Raba (last seen in "The 33"), Annie Ilonzeh, Jeff Hephner (last seen in "Maid in Manhattan"), Pell James (last seen in "The Lincoln Lawyer'), Cliff "Method Man" Smith (last seen in "Shaft" (2019)), Cailey Fleming (last seen in "Supercon"), Tyson Ritter, Ian Casselberry (last seen in "Contraband"), Richard Cabral (last seen in "End of Watch"), Johnny Ortiz, Michael Reventar, Gustavo Quiroz (last seen in "Instant Family"), Eddie Shin (last seen in "Dumb and Dumber To"), John Boyd (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Michael Mosley (last seen in "The Proposal"), Jeff Harlan, Chris Johnson, Caspar Brun, Kyla-Drew Simmons, Michael Adler, Samantha Edelstein, YaYa Gosselin, Mario Cortez (last seen in "Den of Thieves"), Emma Thoraval, Hunter Wright.
RATING: 4 out of 10 boxes of Firefly Scout cookies
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