(May 4, 2023 ● Oslin Pierrette)
Is there a humane way to rob a bank? Not the process, but the reason. Can you decide to rob a bank, and still hold a sense of humanity with you? And I feel that’s a lot of what this film speaks to. Sonny is a nice charming guy, very warm encounters. He doesn’t seem like the most competent and prepared bank robber. Doesn’t seem like he wants to cause any harm. He has so much consideration with the others involved, the “hostages” who weren’t really hostages, no real danger at least, never felt that one bit.. It was constantly reinforced how much of a nice and caring guy he was. So why is he robbing a bank?
I feel the madness of the world got to Sonny. This isn’t a “cold-hearted no good thug”. This is a very decent person, with a heart full of consideration, care, and humanity. You hear subtlety about what his life has been like. And he seems like an honorable guy that tried to do all the right things to make a living for himself. He seems like a very determined guy who is willing to put the work in. It’s just any avenue he tries, just hasn’t been working for him, in this world. There is no “honorable” way to make a living in this world, to hold dignity to be ok mentally. I’m told from young what to be, to be a good successful man. I do this, it doesn’t work, I go to the army and come home, nothing works, I work in a bank, and people think that would work, but it doesn’t. There is no honorable path that is possible for me. So you start to understand that you may have to expand the ideas and lines of options you have to ponder to be able to survive. You start to see the humanity in criminality. I’m not a bad person, I tried so hard to be good, but the world has failed me. So what other options do I have? I can’t continue to drown in my madness, in my sorrow, in my hellscape of this living death. So now I’ll have to do what I have to do. I’ll risk it all, because there’s nothing in my hellscape to hold on to.
When it feels like you’re trapped in a hellscape no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, when you become aware to the reality of that, to the callousness of society, the social mobility lie, the lack of humanity in the major society structures, it becomes very understanding that someone can go mad in a world full of madness. It’s an understandable human response to a callous world.
With the crowd of people outside, they see and feel the humanity in Sonny. They see that there’s goodness in him. They probably understand that it’s an understandable situation, but the world we live in doesn’t have the most understandable ways to deal with humanity. There’s an “honor code” that trumps humanity. Officers and people of authority can look into the eye of a “criminal” and understand their whole plight, understand the whole situation, maybe even have the resources to handle the situation. But there is an “honor code” that has to be upheld. This is what they call order. A system that denies humanity and honors a way of life that is cruel to humans. Basically our society has drug addicts, we don’t need a system that tries to get rid of the supply, we need a society that deals with helping why humans demand it at such high rates. We need to invest in humans, and work to bring humans wellness, not have a pointless constant war against drugs. The system doesn’t have humanity in the equation. We need less departments to get criminals off the street, and need to focus on why people feel the need to become them. The war against crime is a system that abandons humanity. Like Sonny says “It’s your job, right? The guy who kills me… I hope he does it because he hates my guts, not because it’s his job.” Basically, being behind a badge for some is an excuse to lose their humanity. You shouldn’t have a lack of agency in your life with life or death. That’s an absurd time to use your excuse of lack of agency, to say it’s just my job. That’s a system that lacks humanity if that’s how it operates. Then you have the system society has for homelessness, is how to get rid of them on the street, and barely or not address their homelessness issues, another blatant ignorance to humanity. An insane ignorance, where are they going to go, if you want to displace them, they have to have a place where they can go. They just make all the comfortable places they may go, and absolutely remove the humanity from those places, and force them to leave elsewhere, like removing a bench, or making it unsleepable. Poverty systems don’t work to help end poverty, it ignores humanity and its suffering, and just does enough to maybe have some sort of suffering survival, and cut you off the second you’re somewhat ok. Basically for many people, there is just no opportunity for good. So that’s why you may see them choose bad. Look at what I have to do to make a living for myself, why couldn’t you just give me an opportunity to make a living for myself, many people would love that. You ignore my poverty, my suffering, my hunger, and my lack of safety, you never are there then. Nothing right I can do, but when I choose to do “wrong” you throw the whole department at me. All the resources to stop me are front and center, the irony. You’ll send no help to get me out, but you’ll throw everything at me to keep me in my hellscape.
People like to say there’s a mental health crisis, but there’s more of a society abandoning humanity crisis. “Mental Health Crisis” is just an inevitable symptom of the humanity crisis. The general public wasn’t born with mental health, many of just grew up in a society that abandoned us, what do you expect to happen.
This is probably my favorite Al Pacino performance. One of them at least. It just felt so naturalistic. He fit that endearing, warming, charming character so nicely. There was such an intense feeling of his innocence that he kept performing amazingly.
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