Just watched Jet Li’s Fearless. Has anybody else seen it? I thought it was pretty good — the warrior sees his faults, and then comes back in a resurrected, wiser form later on. Of course we’re supposed to celebrate the majestic simplicity of Moon’s tribe’s outlook on life, in a Last Samurai type of way, and it is kind of magical, but not all that. In the end, the solution is the same, lay down your life, end the vicious cycle of revenge and death, and gain victory through martyrdom, in a strange sort of patriotic move.

I think I like the overall idea. I ask myself: if I were poisoned to death, and my followers were willing to defend my honor, would I let them? Would I fight back? You could of course ask the question w/ respect to Christ: nailed unjustly to the cross, did he call down legions of angels from heaven? No, he didn’t, and perhaps we should follow His example. But then why don’t we all just become pacifists, and defend nothing w/ violence? It seems to me that it’s at least honorable to defend the weak and innocent w/ force, and in fact it is our duty. But Jet Li was not defending such people, but himself, as the leader of a movement. And this is why the martyrdom was such a brilliant sacrificial move, opting out of the revenge he could have taken. So that’s good.

Summary: don’t take vengeance, because the Lord will repay. We can see that in Jet Li. But this film doesn’t paint the full picture w/ respect to fighting back, or causing death. Law and justice demands death sometimes in order to protect the innocent — and that is why there will always be bloodshed in this sinful world, until Christ returns to bring perfect justice in the new world. No pacifistic pipe dream will change that.

So I relaxed tonight and caught a couple flix: Crank and The Covenant.

Crank is the tale of Chev Chelios, a man injected with Chinese super-poison that slows down your heart until you day. The only way he can survive is with a constant supply of adrenaline. Fortunately, he’s Jason Statham, so he’s an athletic, fighting, driving, kicking, sexy super-ninja-transporter who has no problem keeping up the pace. A few car chases, Red Bulls, epinephrine shots, and defibrillations later, he’s still alive and kicking baby!! So this sort of film is fun and all, but it suffers by having no real good guys. We are supposed to sympathize with Chelios, but for crying out loud he’s a hired hit man out for revenge! Not a real hero.

The Covenant is about the sons of Ipswich, the four families of witches who escaped from the European persecutions to America. Or wait, there were actually five families, one of which was completely wiped out in the Salem Witch Trials. But wait! It turns out one of the distant descendants impregnated some other gal as a ghost or something and had a living heir! And he’s coming back to kick some butt! Or something. Anyway, lots of entertaining superhero action, with some pretty typical teens trying to be mature, and learning that with great power comes great responsibility. Eye candy, teen memories, oh-to-be-young-and-idealistic-again — not much more than that.

So, I enjoyed myself a lot tonight, but I still came away feeling like I kind of wasted the evening. I want to do more to prepare myself for the great battles of life — and spending four hours on pretty trivial film really isn’t helping me be a better warrior. So I’m probably going to be reallocating my time here — fewer movies, more really powerful books. Hopefully I’ll have some book reviews up here soon.