Now most of the time I’m willing to forgive and forget.  Life is too short to hang onto hurt over frivolous things.  But have you ever wanted revenge so bad you were willing to break the law to get it? Or maybe thought about what it would be like to be a superhero, taking out villains via your alternate identity in your spare time, such as the likes of spidey or batman?  If so, then you’ve got to love good revenge or vigilante style movies, and some of my favorites other than the two I just mentioned include, in no particular order:

1. The Count of Monte Cristo
2. Man on Fire
3. The Boondock Saints
4. Death Sentence
5. The Crow
6. Gladiator
7. Kill Bill
8. The Punisher
9. Reservation Road

Now most of these movies portray normal everyday people who are put into tragic circumstances by bad nasty people, and while the revenge they exact on said bad nasty people may not bring back their loved ones or fix the problem that was caused, they at least find some justice in their actions, when the legal system failed to do it for them, or if it wasn’t coming to them via any other means.  Now I know some people believe in the old saying “Turn the other cheek”, but for me, there are just some offenses that cannot go unpunished, and I applaud the revenge seeker.

But there is another series on Showtime that I have been following that kind of goes against the normal formula for a vigilante, and that is Dexter.  Here is a guy who goes after bad guys much like a spiderman, except that he kills them, and he gets off on it.  For those of you who may not be familiar with it, he is a forensic scientist for Miami Metro by day, and a serial killer by night. Only his victims are all people who deserve to die, such as killers and rapists and the like.  So while you would normally be appalled by a serial killer, this one you actually root for!  He realized at a young age that he had a desire to kill, but his father, who was a cop, was able to channel his energy towards only targeting bad people.  Rather brilliant, in my mind.

So anyway, back to the original question.  If faced with the type of situation where somebody took your loved ones away from you, how would you deal with it?  Would you take the view of the pacifist and forgive them?  Would you just hope that the legal system did its job?  Or would you take matters into your own hands?  I have often wondered what I would do.  Part of me would love to be a vigilante and avenge myself and others who are incapable of it themselves, but when it comes down to it, I’m not sure I could.  Unless of course I were put in the situation where I just had nothing left to lose…