Nah’msayin’
I Don’t Wanna Pay For It
Action movies have a time-honoured tradition of having a climactic sequence where the hero(s) rampage through a bunch of anonymous henchmen, snapping necks and filling them with enough lead to build a dozen “Made in China” toys.
Quite frankly, I think the hero is fucking us all over—because those henchmen are often dirty police officers.
Think about it. You’ve got the pensions and other payments that will be owed to the families. Bad guys need love too, so you’ve got a lot of grieving widows and junior henchmen to compensate.
Next, you’ve got the training costs that go into replacing dozens of cops. Filling those bloody shoes ain’t cheap. Hell, even crooked cops make the occasional just arrest—maybe a slap on the wrist would have been a better punishment for taking a bribe than, say, being dismembered by Jason Statham.
Finally, you’ve got the expense of those public funerals that cops get. Those horse chariots don’t rent themselves, not to mention the cost of all the blanks for an endless series of 21 gun salutes.
So thanks a lot, Seagal/Van Damme/Willis, etc… Way to screw the taxpayer. Maybe next time, you could just write a letter to the editor and file a complaint like the rest of us?
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 24, published March 7, 2011.
