5/10
Hollywood Justice
11 May 2008
I thought the film's ending, contrary to others, showed something about why vigilante justice doesn't work. Moreover, though it gets there in a round-about way, it shows that justice has many complex twists and turns. As H.L. Mencken gets credit for saying, "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

Hollywood justice leads us to believe that cops can't search garbage on the curb, but in reality, on the contrary, they don't even have to wait for the city's own truck to arrive to search one's "private" garbage. Moreover, in reality, cops violate the law with impunity. Judges work "buddy buddy" with cops, contrary to the portrayal in _The Star Chamber_.

Judges make a mistake in this movie, and they often make mistakes, too often. In this movie, they make mistakes with both criminals and innocents alike, and in reality they do likewise. However, in reality, in the "aughts" at least, DA's go after their "usual suspects," letting other violent criminals go in lieu of non-violent crimes where prosecutors don't have to worry about justice but have evidence of their liking, and law enforcement get away with whatever they want, including murdering people such as Sean Bell and Cau Tran in San Jose and New York, the latter in her own home.
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