Alignment in the movie "Man on Fire"

[Wolf72]

...



It disappoints me how few people understand this.

this is going off topic, but I should read up some more on those who play with out alignment, Paladins would still have some sort of code of conduct, and clerics would have to act in accordance with their diety.

 

[MoonZar]

Hello,

I think he's Chaotic / Neutral.

First of all he sold his service and don't follow law, order or any organisation. He's a free spirit who follow his own code of honor.

He's neutral because he kill so much people in is life how can he be good and if we follow is background he probably have kill innocent people in the past.

But he's not evil, because he still do many good deeds.

Moonzar

 

[Amal Shukup]

Originally posted at the Save My Game column at WotC:

"To be lawful is to be in favor of conformity and consistency, to act in a systematic and uniform fashion, and to take responsibility. As a lawful person, you establish patterns and precedents and stick to them unless you can see a good reason to do otherwise. Methodical efficiency is your byword, and you believe in the concept of duty. You plan and organize your activities to achieve particular goals, not just to satisfy impulsive desires. You believe a proper way exists to accomplish any goal, though it may not always be the traditional, tried-and-true way. Likewise, you cultivate long-term relationships and endeavor to build trust between your associates and yourself."

This describes Creasy (Denzel's character) In my opinion. Though he struggles with chaotic influences (drinking, guilt etc) in the early stages in the film, it is clear that he is a highly structured personality. Look also at his techniques for training Pita (sp?) for the swimming.

"Trained or untrained?" "Trained!"

All about the Lawful. Chaos has NOTHING to do with his actions (except in the sense that it is experienced by his opponents. Along with fear...). Everything he does is goal oriented, planned, organized, and structured in execution.

No, he doesn't respect the law of the surrounding society - but then who would? Hello? The cops were DOING the crimes... As someone said earlier: Lawful DOES NOT (even vaguely) equal 'Legal'. He doesn't have to follow anyone else's law to be a Lawful personality.

Now, Good vs Evil? There's a discussion there... I think he balances out overall.

Thus: Lawful Neutral.

A'Mal

 

[Altalazar]

I think he's a very very twisted version of LG. He has a code, of sorts. He doesn't kill anyone who doesn't have it coming - these are, after all, all people who kidnap and often murder small children for a LIVING. They are all Evil of the worst sort - in D&D terms, they are the "demons" of the world - monsters a Paladin wouldn't think twice about slaying with no preamble. The torture he does is merely for information, not pleasure - as soon as he has what he needs, he gives them quick deaths. Though one could argue he gets pleasure out of it - only the pleasure a Paladin would get from slaying evil demons.

 

[Malic]

You know, it really suprises me how many people think this character is good or doing good deeds. It is a revenge story. He wakes up to find the girl dead and decides to kill everyone involved. While justifiable and understandable I don't really see how this is good.

His motivation is just that one girl, not removing the threat to others. All his questions are about what happened with her, and when it comes to a choice between her and the head of the organisation, it's her all the way. The fact that the 'good' police later picked up the bad guy is a sideshow, not part of his plan. He knows nothing and cares less about the existance of 'good' police, if I remember right.

Having decided that he will die to kill everyone, he then swaps his own life for the girl when she turns out to be alive after all. Surely even evil people can trade their lives for people/things they really believe in? What about evil minions who die protecting the BBEG?

I suppose you could argue that might be the one good act of an otherwise evil being.

The lawful/chaotic split is very interesting. People who think he is lawful, what does that leave for chaotic behaviour?

He was trained in the past, yes. I can imagine this was a lawful character before he burnt out. But he's hardly sticking to his training now.

He approaches the task somewhat methodically - but how else would you do it? It's not really an intricate plan. Find the guy you know about, beat the name of the next guy out of him, move on. He gets weapons together first, yes. But he doesn't have medical treatment, even though that would improve his chances of hanging on long enough to kill them all. Why? Because he's emotional about it and wants to kill everyone straight away? There are other possible reasons, but the movie doesn't really go into that, I think because of the working against time drama and the way it lets him die at the end.

Serious question. If this guy is not behaving chaotically, what would count as chaotic behaviour?

Hey, this is an interesting thread. More so than some other alignment threads as it has a fairly long sequence of known actions to think about, which we have all seen, and just to see the different interpretations and reasons that people put on them. I'm suprised that this has got me thinking so much about a movie I didn't like all that much.

Cheers, all!

 

[Henry Hankovich]

I think a strong case could be made that, in the movie, Creasy shifts from being LE to LG.

He's definitely Lawful...even though the sense of order and justice he believes in, also condemns him. After all, at the beginning of the movie, his question for Walken's character is (something like) "So, do you think we can really be redeemed for all the stuff we've done?" All of the acts he's performed as a CIA assassin he appears to see as 'sins,' which condemn him.

And at the beginning of the movie, he definitely sees himself as being Evil...and you'd have to be an exceedingly charitable viewer to disagree. He has enough 'good' in him not to relish his Evil tendencies...but at the same time, he's not actively trying to redeem himself. Instead, he's wallowing in his own self-destructiveness--even when doing so puts others in danger (by becoming a bodyguard despite believing he's unfit to do so).

Even when he goes on his revenge-spree, it's not really "Good" he's doing. He's just punishing evil with more evil. Especially in his own mind...as he tells the girl's mother, he's "going to do what I do best..." In other words, he's returning to the same acts for which he was condemning himself at the beginning of the movie. And there's little or no hope for redemption by doing so--the girl is already dead, or so he believes. So he's not so much trying to 'save' anyone, as trying to fulfill what he sees as his (Lawful) duty to the family he failed to protect.

By the end of the movie, he's found a way to redeem himself, by actually rescuing the girl, as opposed to simply slaughtering "bad guys." Doing so, he seems to have found peace--a way to live with being Good. Just not for very long, sadly...

 

[Starglim]

Lawful Good.

 

[fusangite]

Now, for those of you who claim the alignment system works just fine at representing people whoever they might be, you must credit at this point in the thread that something is wrong, be it with the explanation of alignment in the RAW or with the system itself because the following alignments have been offered for Creasy: Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil. Only two alignments, Neutral Good and Chaotic Evil have yet to be suggested.

 

[Rel]

After further consideration I'd have to say he's either Neutral Good or Chaotic Evil.

I got your back Fusangite.

 

[Amal Shukup]

People who think he is lawful, what does that leave for chaotic behaviour?

Again, my sense is you're dismissing him as 'lawful' because he breaks 'laws' and fights against the putative authorities. Lawful is not 'Legal'. Nor is Chaotic neccesarily 'illegal'. He definitiely does things that are evil AND very much against the law (hence I don't seem him as Lawful Good) - but he does them in a structured, organized fashion in furtherance of a defined goal. Hence he is absolutely, 100% Lawful...

What might he have done were he chaotic?

Chaotic Good
- Donate his earnings (which he now feels weren't 'earned') to a relevant charity
- Randomly select other targeted children and protect them from the kidnappers

Chaotic Neutral
- Just walk away - what does he care? He's been paid...
- Write some free verse poetry
- Hook up with the Reporter chick, just 'cause she's hawt

Chaotic Evil
- Randomly kill people, just cause he's pissed
- Offer services to bad guys, just 'cause they got a good racket going
- Go on a killing spree - but with less planning. Get bored and move on
- Just start killing cops - because they were the 'bad guys' who shot him

Now, for those of you who claim the alignment system works just fine at representing people whoever they might be, you must credit at this point in the thread that something is wrong, be it with the explanation of alignment in the RAW or with the system itself because the following alignments have been offered for Creasy: Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil and Neutral Evil. Only two alignments, Neutral Good and Chaotic Evil have yet to be suggested.

I agree that it's a somewhat blunt tool. I also suspect that individuals shift around amongst the nine alignments (which seem to work better descriptively than prescriptively) a lot more than the mechanism supposes - which makes it MUCH more difficult to pigeonhole people. For instance, a nominally Lawful Good character could conceivably lose their temper and commit what would objectively be considered a Chaotic or Evil act (haven't we ALL?). The 'Alignment' effectively describes the behavior - but does it DEFINE the character?

That said, I think that the MAIN reason the system seems to break down is because individuals don't know (or, charitably, do not agree about) what the different qualities MEAN.

A'Mal