I love any and all stories where you feel for the character who is obviously the bad guy. It messes with my brain though. I went into this movie knowing one thing: Matt Damon plays a murderer (thank you to my dad for spoiling it). In spite of that, all I wanted in this movie was for Matt Damon’s character to succeed. He’s this shy underdog, clearly trying to deal with his sexuality, and I felt for him the entire way. This was juxtaposed with Jude Law’s character, who is careless, and had clearly had a lot of the luxury he experiences in life handed to him. I really wanted him to get in trouble for what he did to the local woman, even though he did not technically have a hand in her death. When the movie handed this karma to him I was glad, and then horrified that I was glad. This movie is clearly meant to make us think about criminal justice in general, which is probably why the judge chose it to screen. The murder forces considerable analysis of Ripley’s motives. I don’t think that Ripley got into the boat with the intention of killing anyone, but it’s a grey area. It also made me wonder whether the motive should matter when a crime takes place. When we went over the types of murder in the US criminal justice system I found out that it does already play a significant roll (whether or not the motive was self defense, or whether you truly intended to murder someone), which is interesting because it is so difficult to determine without actually witnessing the murder take place.

The second half movie was absolutely gripping. In spite of it all I wanted Ripley to get away with it all. Even after watching all those gruesome killings. Even when he murdered the man he loved. This is a shocking opinion to have. Am I the kind of person who thinks murdering a bad person is okay? I would hope not.