Don't Nod Off Before the End of Crime Month: Sleepers

Sleepers (1996)

Throughout my life -- and probably through the centuries -- an ethical argument has moved around Christian circles: is it ever morally excusable to lie? Jesus said, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no,’” but aren’t there times when the right thing to do is tell a fib? 

In these discussions, the name Rahab usually comes up. She was the prostitute who hid the Israelite spies in Jericho and lied when she was asked if she knew about their whereabouts. 

Someone else brings up the Holocaust and says undoubtedly it would be fine to lie to Nazis about hiding Jews. And then someone will tell a story from The Hiding Place about Corrie ten Boom's family, who believed God had called them to hide Jews from the Nazis. With people hidden beneath a trapdoor under the kitchen table, one member of the family, when asked, said that yes, people were hidden under the table. Feeling foolish because they'd lifted the tablecloth to look under the table, the Nazis left without noticing the trapdoor under the rug. Whoever tells that story will remind the listeners that God will protect His people as they tell the truth. 

Note: insert a smooth transition to this week’s Crime Movie, Sleepers here.

Written and directed by Barry Levinson, Sleepers is a very handy film for playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." The film stars not only Bacon as an abusive guard in a boys' reform school, but also features quite a number of other stars: Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Jason Patric, Billy Crudup, Minnie Driver, Bruno Kirby, Ron Eldard, and others. Most important (especially for our purposes here), Robert De Niro plays a priest, Robert “Bobby” Carrillo.

The film tells the story of four childhood friends living in Hell’s Kitchen in the 1960s: Shakes (Joe Perrino), Michael (Brad Renfro), John (Geoffrey Wigdor), and Tommy (Jonathan Tucker). All four are altar boys and also trouble makers. They have families that care for them -- with various levels of care. All four are cared for by their parish priest, Father Bobby. Shakes describes the priest in this way:

“Father Robert Carrillo was a longshoreman's son who was as comfortable sitting on a bar stool in a back alley saloon as he was standing at the altar during High Mass. He had toyed with a life of petty crime before finding his calling. He was a friend. A friend who just happened to be a priest.” Father Bobby plays basketball with the boys, but also calls them out when they start hanging out with neighborhood thugs.

One of the boys is beaten up by his mother’s boyfriend. After visiting the boy in the hospital, Father Bobby goes to see the boyfriend. He says to him, “You’re a big guy; how much do you weigh? How much do you think John weighs? Next time you will be fighting me. You won’t need a doctor, you’ll need a priest. See you in church.” 

Not exactly a meek and mild approach, but rather like a shepherd protecting a lamb from a wolf.

But one day the boys play a practical joke that goes awry, accidentally injuring an innocent bystander. They are sent to reform school. Before they leave, Father Bobby promises Shakes he’ll stay in touch. Shakes asks the priest to only send good news, even if bad things happen. “You asking me to lie?” the priest asks. Shakes tells him, sure. And the priest tells him he can’t do that.

At the reform school, the boys are verbally, physically, and sexually abused by the guards, particularly a guard named Nokes (Bacon).

Father Bobby visits Shakes at the reform school. Shakes, in a voiceover, says, “I loved Father Bobby, but I hated looking at him.” At this point, we've already seen Nokes sexually assault Shakes and mock him for his Mother Mary medallion. When Nokes rapes Shakes, he forces the boy to cry out to God, getting a perverse amusement out of mocking the boy’s faith.

Shakes says to Father Bobby, “You shouldn’t come here, I appreciate it and all, but it’s not the right thing to do.”

Father Bobby explains it was on his way, “I stopped off in Attica to see an old friend of mine.”

“You have friends in Attica?” Shakes asks.

“Not as many as I’d like,” Father Bobby tells him, “He’s a murderer. Best friend. We hung out together, like you and the guys. We were both sent up here. This place killed him. Made him. Made him not care anymore. Don’t let this place do that to you, Shakes.” The priest hugs the boy before he leaves, and Shakes says he never felt closer to another human being.

Shakes is released after a year, but the other boys serve another year after him. They grow apart over the years. Shakes (Patric) becomes a newspaper reporter and Michael (Pitt) becomes a lawyer working for the district attorney’s office. But Tommy (Crudup) and John (Eldard) become career criminals.

Years later, Tommy and John happen to meet their old guard, Nokes in a bar. They talk to him until Nokes realizes who they are. They then shoot him dead in the dark back room of the bar.

Tommy and John are arrested, and Michael insists on taking the case. Michael discloses to Shakes he took the case just to get his friends acquitted. He has a plan to make this happen, but a key part of his plan is bringing in Father Bobby to commit perjury and say he was with Tommy and John when the murder was committed.

This brings us back to the beginning of this post and the question, “Is it ever right to lie?” I won’t do any spoilers here about what Father Bobby does in the courtroom. I’ll just say that through most of the film, I thought I’d give the priest a Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples, but in the end, I’m just giving him Three Steeples.

Footloose (2011)

A fiery car crash and the death of five teenagers isn't intuitively the way to begin a movie musical, but it was a wise choice to open the 2011 remake of 1984's "Footloose." The original version opens with a preacher ranting about how we are being "tested" by the world's evils and especially by rock and roll music.

After we see the car crash in the remake, the film makers cut to Dennis Quaid as Pastor Shaw Moore preaching that "we are being tested." The death of young people in their prime (including the pastor's own son) certainly is a more relatable and devastating trial than facing the risk of hearing Men at Work playing on the radio. Moore goes on to say that though children have been lost, they still have children to protect.

Like the preacher in the first film, his sermon is Scripture free, but it is at least understandable on an emotional level for the viewer. In the first film, there was also a car crash killing teens including the minister's son, but the audience doesn't see it. In that film it's something that happened six years before, which keeps the audience from sympathizing with the human impulses that would lead to parents taking drastic measures to keep their kids safe.

Pastor Moore is on the city council, and laws are passed to "keep children safe," including a curfew for those under the age of 18. Dancing is not outlawed, but teens are forbidden from staging dances on their own. In the world of this film, schools and churches can stage dances. The schools won't stage dances anymore because of liability issues. The churches stage dances but the kids don't want to go to "church dances."

This does sort of undercut the basic conflict of the first film. Dancing and even rock music are not banned. They're just regulated. How many teens throw a senior prom for themselves? But teens being teens, if they're told they can't do something, they'll want to do it. Perhaps at the church dances they didn't let them play the anti-Christian theme song, "Footloose," with lyrics such as "Kick off your Sunday shoes" and "Pull me off my knees."

The next sermon we hear from the Rev. Moore is about the evils of progress. He bemoans the use of ATMs (he's probably the kind of guy would call them "ATM machines") instead of going inside to see Old Banker Brown who would give the kids a piece of Bazooka Joe. He chastises his congregation for staring at screens rather than the faces of their families and friends. Many might see value in that sentiment, but again the Rev. Moore uses no Scripture to back up his points. (We do see him practice preaching on the text where the disciples are unable to cast out the demon because of their lack of faith. But we never see him use Scripture in the pulpit.)

The final sermon the Rev. Moore preaches in the film is the same sermon preached towards the end of the first film. He "allows" the dance to go on, because he reasons that parents need to eventually let kids make their own choices. Not a bad sentiment, really, but a sermon should be about God's Word rather than the pastor's opinions.

There is another interesting scene set in a church. After Ariel, the pastor's daughter, is beaten by her boyfriend (not our hero, Ren), she finds her parents in church. Her parents are concerned, but also upset with her. Ariel says "Isn't church where we're supposed to bring our troubles?" If that is true of this church, that people bring their troubles there, that's a good thing. (Also, this is an interesting change from the earlier film, where Ariel says, "Isn't church where we confess our sins?")

During this scene, Ariel confesses to her parents that she isn't a virgin. In both films, the father says, "Don't use that kind of language in this place!" If the word "virgin" isn't welcome in the church, it does make one wonder what euphemism they use at Christmas time.

I have to admit, in spite of the always awesome Kevin Bacon factor, I preferred the remake of "Footloose" to the original; perhaps because I'd take pyrotechnic school bus demolition derbies over tractor chicken competitions. I even prefer the movie church in the "Footloose" remake to the one from the original, if only because it falls into fewer fundamentalist clichés. I'm giving it 2 steeples.

Footloose (1984)

I should admit this up front; I've had a real grudge against this film.

The first time I went to see it was back in seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

A college girl I had a bit of a crush on loved this film. She thought it had profound things to say about Trinity College's dancing ban. I asked her to go with me to see it, and she agreed to meet me at the theater. But she didn't come. I was stood up.

It was years before I tried to watch the film again, this time on DVD. I only made it a few minutes. The opening credits were pretty fun; a montage of dancing feet accompanied by the theme song by the great Kenny Loggins (with music in this, "Caddyshack," "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," "Rocky IV," "Top Gun" -- Loggins IS the Eighties.)

But then I got to the film proper with John Lithgow as the Reverend Shaw Moore preaching, and I didn't last much longer. The Rev. ranted about "Our Lord testing us" and why God allows the plague of big cities.

Then he turns to the evils of that "obscene rock and roll music and its gospel of easy sexuality." He again asks why God is testing us with this horrible thing when He could easily wipe all this evil from the earth. The Reverend argues that this testing is allowed by God to make us stronger for Him. At no time does he use Scripture to back up his assertions. The Reverend also does not seem concerned about the people in big cities or the makers or fans of rock music. He doesn't seem to consider that God may love these people and that is why He continues to show them grace (II Peter 3:9).

That's when I turned off the film the last time I tried to watch it.

But for the sake of this blog, I set out to watch the whole film. And, of course, I did so not to write about the film but rather about the church in this film.

The sermon I had already seen would probably lead me to choose not to attend this church. It reminded me too much of the days of my youth, attending Bill Gaither's Basic Youth Conflicts Seminar where he spoke of the evils of rock music. It didn't seem true to God's word to me then, and it doesn't now. Certainly, there are rock songs that have lyrics contrary to God's Word. But the argument against the musical genre itself is pathetically weak.

The next sermon Rev. Moore gives is about the glories of small town life. The director of the film,  Hebert Ross, presents this sermon as a montage, as taking place from the pulpit and in conversations with parishioners. He says he doesn't miss the hustle and bustle of the big city, but prefers small towns where everyone is part of a big family. He says he feels safe with his people in the small town. He, of course, doesn't use any Scripture to support his points, because the God of Scripture loves the City. In the book of Revelation part of the New Heaven and New Earth is the New Jerusalem. So obviously, unlike the Rev. Moore, God is okay with the city.

In the final sermon of the film, the Rev. Moore has finally seen the light and allows his daughter and the kids of the church (and, one assumes, the town) to go the dance that Kevin Bacon is staging. He gives the analogy of a new parent that must learn when to let go as well as when to hold on. Again, he uses no Scripture in his sermon.

Which is perhaps why Rev. Moore is won over a bit by Kevin "6 degrees of" Bacon quoting Psalm 149 about dancing and the book of Samuel (he never says whether it is First or Second Samuel) about dancing before the ark, because the young man dancer incorporates Scripture in his city council speeches better than the pastor does in his sermons.

This inability of the pastor to use the Bible is one of the reasons the nameless Movie Church of the town of Bomont in the '80s version of "Footloose" earns only one measly steeple.