Crime Month: Sometimes, they're too pretty to be bad, right?

Crime Month: Live by Night (2016)

I always find it interesting how filmmakers attempt to make criminals the heroes of their films. In The Godfather films, the police are corrupt and the Corleones are surrounded with worse gangsters so they don’t look so bad. Often in films, we're supposed to sympathize with crooks who have a personal code, like Robert DeNiro’s thief in Heat. Or, sometimes, in films like Bonnie and Clyde, the killers are just so darn pretty the filmmakers want us to overlook their crimes.

In 2016’s Live By Night, we're offered several ways to believe Ben Affleck’s Joe Coughlin is a sympathetic character -- and it is Affleck’s character. He not only plays the role, he directed the film and wrote the screenplay based on Dennis Lehane’s novel. Though Joe is a thief and a killer, Ben wants to be sure we feel for the guy.

To start, Joe serves in World War I and is convinced of the idiocy of that war, especially in the way that world leaders kill people with impunity. Joe comes to believe there's no reason to respect government authority. He says, “The rules we lived by were lies and weren’t obeyed by those who made them.” (This isn’t a new argument for lawlessness in movies. by the way. It was made more subtly in the great 1939 gangster film The Roaring Twenties for James Cagney.) Joe doesn’t want to bow to any authority, even criminal authority, saying, “I don’t wanna be a gangster. Stopped kissing rings a long time ago.”

Joe falls in love with Emma Gould (Sienna Miller), the mistress of crime boss Albert White (Robert Glenister). When blackmailed to keep the affair secret, Joe refuse to pay and instead decides to flee to California from Boston, pulling one last heist to finance the trip. Instead, Joe is caught and sent to prison for three years. 

When he gets out, Joe swears vengeance on White and signs up to work for another crime boss, Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone), in order to have the resources to seek revenge.

Joe is sent to Florida, where the real machinations to make the audience root for him start: he opposes the Ku Klux Klan. The local sheriff’s brother-in-law, R. D. Pruitt (Matthew Maher), is a member of the KKK and he tells Joe he doesn’t like “Papists.” Joe tells him he hasn’t been inside a Roman Catholic Church for years, but this doesn’t matter to Pruitt, who becomes even more hateful when he learns Joe is dating a black Cuban woman. Pruitt starts a campaign of terror, bombing and shooting up Joe’s casinos.

Affleck was safe in assuming that audiences would cheer his character's vengeful campaign against the Klan after Joe is threatened for being a “N” lover. He drives the Klan out of the city of Tampa and gains great political leverage -- enough that he seems sure to be able to build his casinos without opposition.

But opposition comes from a very unexpected source.

Chief Figgis (Chris Cooper) considers going after Joe, so Joe takes extreme measures. Figgis’s daughter, Loretta (Dakota Fanning), had gone to Hollywood to be a star. Instead, she got hooked on heroin and was photographed in compromising positions. Joe showed the Sheriff those photographs and told the Sheriff his daughter would come home safely, but only if he (Joe) was treated well. The film makes it clear Joe didn’t harm Loretta in any way, and he feels really bad about using her for blackmail purposes, but a guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do.

Loretta comes back to Tampa a changed woman. She becomes an evangelist, not hiding, but building her ministry upon her recent sordid experiences. She claims she is newly married, to Jesus Christ. She preaches against sin, particularly the sin of gambling. “Gambling destroys the spirit of man. The gambler fritters away the gifts of God.”

Joe attends one of her crusades and is not pleased about these rants against games of chance when he is looking to build a casino. He arranges a discussion with Loretta after one of her meetings. He asks her whether she could tone down the anti-gambling rhetoric and promises a generous donation if she does so.

Loretta tells Joe her father had told her there was good in him, but that his offer of a bribe makes her doubt. She tells him, “You profit through the evil addictions of others… But you can free yourself of that evil.” It's not something Joe wants to do.

He again asks her to stop speaking about gambling, but she responds, “I will, if God rewrites the Bible to say gambling is not a sin.” There really isn’t anything in the Bible that specifically condemns gambling. You could take Bible passages that talk about the wise use of money and conclude that gambling isn’t wise, but it is never directly condemned in Scripture.

Loretta’s preaching has an impact.  Local politicians refuse to give permission for Joe’s casino. Joe knows his boss would want him to come down hard on Loretta, but he doesn’t have it in him.

Loretta asks again to meet with Joe, and she tells him that she wonders whether the things she preached were true. Joe tells her it was her crusade that killed his casino, and she takes some comfort in that. She tells him, “I don’t know if there is a God. I hope there is. And I hope He’s good. Wouldn’t that be swell?”

She tells Joe, “We’re all going to hell.” Later, presumably because she can no longer live with her guilt over what she did in Hollywood, she cuts her own throat.

Joe is upset by this but goes on with his life in crime for a time. He retires when he can, and faces a tragedy of his own. But he never forgets Loretta.

And the audience doesn’t either, because she is by far the most sympathetic character in the film, earning a Three Steeple Rating.

World War I Movie Churches: The Fighting 69th

I've watched a number of films that deal with the complicated philosophical, theological, and moral questions that a Christian faces with the issue of war. How does one reconcile Christ's call to be peacemakers with the blood thirsty business of killing people and breaking things?

Great minds of history like Augustine and Aquinas, Martin Luther King and Gandhi, have struggled with these issues. Father Duffy of The Fighting 69th (1940) is not one of those great minds struggling with these issues. He never doubts the rightness of America's cause in World War I. As he says, "I'm a soldier as well as a priest."

Father Duffy is based on a real person, Francis Patrick Duffy, who served as the Catholic chaplain for the Army's 69th Division. In the movie, he’s played by Pat O'Brien, who portrayed priests for much of his movie career.

There are other real characters in the film, such as the regiment commander William "Wild Bill" Donovan and the poet, Joyce “Trees” Kilmer. The real Father Duffy was a bit of a scholar and an editor of The New York Review, but in the film he's just a regular guy.

In the film, Father Duffy is beloved because the men of the 69th are his and he is theirs. As a chaplain, he can't carry a weapon, but he goes against regulations to join his men at the front. He wants to be where ever he is needed.

Just as the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 9 talks about being a slave to the slaves, a Jew to the Jews, etc...Duffy is an soldier and an Irishman to the soldiers and Irishmen of the division.

Father Francis P. Duffy

We even see him be a Jew to a Jew. In the film a Jewish soldier tells Father Duffy he'd be willing to go to Mass because Duffy's there. The soldier says he'd be willing to go "to the Devil" if Father Duffy told him to. When the man is mortally wounded with no rabbi near, Father Duffy prays a Psalm with the soldier.

The star of the film is James Cagney as Jerry Plunkett, a smart aleck New Yorker who’s nothing but trouble. But Father Duffy thinks of Plunkett as the lost sheep of Jesus' parable. Although Plunkett gets into fights with other men in his division, disobeys orders, and even deserts, Father Duffy always stays by his side.

Plunkett tells the priest he came to be a soldier, not to pray. Duffy tells him he needs to recognize the fact of an Almighty God. When Plunkett is afraid, Duffy tells him, "There's only one way you can lick cowardice, with faith and prayer. I'm offering you peace and courage. You need to ask for the Lord to help you." I was glad to hear Duffy affirm the need for prayer before going into war, because earlier he said, "What does an Irishman need with prayer in a fight?"

The film ends with an image of the real statue made in honor of the real Father Duffy (he passed away in 1932), with a voice over of Pat O'Brien praying for "America's lost generation" and for "America, the citadel of peace, peace forevermore."

There are plenty of historians who say that America's involvement in World War I was a mistake. There are many Christians who believe that Christians should never go to war at all. But I'm glad that the soldiers of the 69th had Father Duffy with them, and so I'm giving the ministry of Father Duffy three steeples.

Seen in Oklahoma (on the small screen)

When we were choosing the films we'd watch in every state, much thought and research went into choosing the film for Oklahoma. So, I'm imagining the surprise and jaws a'droppin' when you learn we went with Oklahoma! The 1955 musical is as corny as an elephant's eye (I think that's how the lyrics go) but it still is fun, and it has a classic score. Very talented people were involved, though the star, Gordon MacRae, did very little else that anyone cares about. The director, Fred Zinnemann, won two Oscars (for From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons), and Shirley Jones and Rod Stieger went on to win Oscars as well.

As for the Movie Churches angle, there's not much to be found in the film. Even when Laurey and Curly get married (SPOILERS!), the service doesn't seem to be performed by a member of the clergy. But one of the reasons I was happy to see it was that I was in the play in high school. (I played Jud Fry and, as I've tried to explain to many through the years, he's not a villain; he's just misunderstood.)

The real disappointment was to discover that the film was not filmed in Oklahoma but rather in Arizona (and California studios). But that's OK.

There are other films that use the state name in the title. There's Oklahoma Crude with George C. Scott and Faye Dunaway. But I haven't seen it.

There's The Oklahoman, a western with Joel McCrea, but I haven't seen it either.

Someday I must see The Oklahoma Kid with the most incredibly unlikely Western stars, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, but I haven't yet. And none of them were actually filmed in Oklahoma.

I have seen Hang 'Em High, one of Clint Eastwood's first American-made Westerns, which is set in Oklahoma. But not filmed there. I've also seen Cimarron, the Western that won the 1931 Oscar for Best Picture. It also is set in Oklahoma but not filmed there and is boring as can be.

To find films set in Oklahoma and actually filmed in Oklahoma it's best to go to the world of juvenile fiction. Where the Red Fern Grows, based on the classic children's novel, is set and was filmed in Oklahoma (primarily Tahlequah). Several works by adolescent author S. E. Hinton were set and filmed in Oklahoma. You might wonder if the phrase "adolescent author" means a young author or an author who writes for young people. Both definitions apply to The Outsiders, which was written while the author was still a teen. Francis Ford Coppola (of The Godfather fame) adapted the novel to the big screen (as well as Hinton's Rumble Fish). And Disney adapted her novel, Tex, as a feature. All three films were set and filmed in Oklahoma.

But perhaps the greatest film set and filmed in Oklahoma is the masterpiece written by the great "Weird Al" Yankovic. Sadly, UHF still awaits the critical appreciation and public adoration it deserves.