Paparazzi

One last entry before my retreat begins...

Paparazzi is the story of a new movie star: Bo Laramie (Cole Hauser). He is new to fame, new to the industry, etc. With his newfound fame, come the paparazzi.

The paparazzi plague him and his family, especially four of them who seem to have really evil intent. They follow Bo, his wife and child one night and in a scene that reminds us of what it might of been like for Princess Diana's last night, cause a terrible accident that leaves Bo's son in  a coma and his wife injured.

Bo ends up in therapy for anger (!). One morning when he is buying coffee in a little shop in Malibu, a shop worker hugs him and one of the paparazzi takes a photo. Bo wants to strike out but instead leaves and on the way home, stops along a cliff road to call his therapist. The paparazzi has followed him, gets into an accident, and when Bo has a chance to save him, the paparazzi threatens him, and after a moment of hesitation, Bo lets him fall off the cliff and die.

Thus, Bo starts to eliminate the three remaining paparazzi one at a time.

A Colombo-like detective kind of figures things out as he tries to solve the mystery of the murders.

The problem with this film is how it justifies revenge and how the producers of the film, Icon Pictures, Mel Gibson and Steve McEveety, could have taken on such a project that promotes such brutal, violent revenge (and getting away with it), right after The Passion of the Christ.

I don't get it. Did they not even stop to ask themselves "What would Jesus have done in these circumstances?" I doubt he would have done what Bo did and then flaunt it as if to say, "I sure taught those guys a lesson and kicked them in the a_ _ !"

To me, this is the whole problem with contemporary religiosity: the split between Sunday and the rest of the week, or how we can profess faith and make a movie about it, and then turn around a make a movie that competely promotes and justifies the opposite: immoral behavior.

This is the problem with violence in film; the movie promotes violence as a way of life and as the way to solve problems. There is certainly nothing remotely redemptive about this film.

What would Jesus think?

Wouldn't the better film have been one that figured out how to stop the paparazzi in a non-violent way? That's a film I would love to see.

Just more violent films cluttering up the cultural landscape.

No thanks.