The Devil's Own...a dissection

Today, I have been thinking. Those that know me well know that I never seem to stop thinking.

I have watched the movie "The Devil's Own" with Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt today twice. I watched it with notebook in hand.

This is an old movie, but one that I have loved since the first time I watched it. It is troubling, emotional, and a tragedy. There is no happy ending as most people in the general consensus would define it. However, it is a happy ending in the fact that mass destruction was avoided at an extremely high cost.

Rory (Brad Pitt)...or rather Frankie is a troubled young man who cannot escape his life. There is no going back, there is no salvation for him except in death.

I sat there tonight and tried to decide whose story this was...who learned and grew the most and it the Tom O'Meara (Harrison Ford) character. He wasn't really the one with the most to lose per say, however his character is the one who learned and grew the most.

It is a heartbreaking story of struggle and strife. It brings to light some very hard things to digest.

Favorite quotes from the movie:

"When you pick up a gun, someone is going to catch a bullet. Big Boy Rules."

Tom O'Meara to Rory: "I'm sorry about your father."
Rory: "There's no happy ending, Tom. This isn't an American Story, it's an Irish one."
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Tom is the character whose normal everyday world is disrupted by his static trait for always doing the right thing. No matter how it breaks his heart, eats at his soul, he cannot do anything other--be anything other than what he is...as Rory says "You're a good mon, Tom" It is stated several times in the movie. (A que to us as watchers of this film to pay attention) Also meaning that Rory himself knows that he is NOT a good man. He has done things that are evil, he has become the very evil that he vowed to extinguish. Due to this, Rory, cannot escape his life. He has no where to turn...there is no safe harbor but in the arms of death.

"There is no better way to go to sleep, than by the rocking of the waves." Rory tells Tom as he lays dying. Rory's father was a fisherman, just trying to raise his family. However, because of what he "was" he was killed in front of his family. Rory, as a boy of eight witnessed this and it becomes his defining moment. The moment that changed the course of his life.

This story is full of good things to learn from...the symbolism, the quiet predatory nature of evil, and the fact that no matter how badly you want to be good, sometimes one cannot escape fate.

The only salvation for Rory is in death. It is his only escape, and Tom gives it to him unintentionally.

Over all this is a movie that makes you think. Helps you to understand good and evil. Motive and emotion is what drives character. Rory should not have been evil...you could see that at times he truly tried to do the right thing, but he was driven by revenge against those that had taken the most important thing away from him. The love of his father.

A good film to study...
Hugs,
Michelle