Happy Endings

[forsyth]

I don't really complain about happy endings in movies. Sometimes, I'll complain about lame or "typical Hollywood" endings, when the ending's so out of sync with the rest of the film or its theme or something. But, honestly, I like happy endings. The hero gets their love. The bad guys get caught. What was wrong at the beginning of the movie, or broken along the way, is set right. Or at least right-ish. People can change, even redeem themselves. I like that in my stories. Maybe I'm an optimist, maybe I'm a sheltered American, maybe I'm one of a dozen other things. I don't know. I don't think it matters.

This comes to mind because I just finished watching Sixteen Blocks. It was a good movie, I thought. A lot less action-ey than I'd expected, a lot more suspense. But it was really good. I really liked it. On the DVD, they have an alternate ending, that isn't completely sad, or a complete loss or anything, but I didn't like it as much. I guess in some ways it fit better, since it tied together with the characters initial opinions about whether or not people can change. But by doing that, it undercut what I got as one of the themes of the whole movie, which was that people can change.

But in the end, it was a satisfying movie I'm glad I saw, and it's probably silly of me to be trying to read too many deep themes into an action movie at almost three in the morning.

Comments

[amazingadrian.livejournal.com]

I too, love a happy ending. And I have definately been accused of being an optimist, and I am coming to discover that perhaps I have been living a somewhat sheltered life.

But yeah, I beleive that people can change, and that there's redemtpion for everybody. You see it from time to time, although most of the endings in the real world are seldom happy ones.

If you reccomend the film, maybe I'll look into it. It wasn't really one of those that struck my interest initially, and a critical article I read about it pegged it as a worse off Die Hard clone. But what do they know, eh?

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's really comparable to Die Hard. It's not that much of an action film. It's much more of a thriller/suspense movie.

And part of what I liked is that Bruce Willis looks OLD in it, old and beat up and every bit not the action hero. And doesn't really act it, either.