“If he had been a dog
in a city, a policeman would have shot him and sent his head to a laboratory,
to see if he had rabies.” – Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse Five
The
above quote occurs to me more often than I'd care to admit. There's a certain
kind of character -- in movies and in real life -- that always calls it to
mind: the guy who is outraged when he's given the due punishment for (or
reaping the natural consequences of) his bullshit behavior. The kind of guy who
cuts you off in traffic and then flips YOU off. Or, in the case of Jimmy (Phil
Daniels), the type of bloke who runs roughshod over vacationing families on
Brighton Beach, tosses bricks through windows, smashes cars, burglarizes
pharmacies, etc. etc. and then gets all bent out of shape when he gets tossed
out of his parents' house (or nabbed by the police). Jimmy and his ilk are
often labeled "antiheroes" but -- as they slamdance their way back
and forth across the line between anarchy and nihilism -- they’re perhaps
closer to the spirit of Antichrist.
