The Pledge

Even though The Pledge (2001) is murder-mystery film, it is fundamentally a tragedy without regard to the murder. Jack Nicholson plays Jerry Black, a retired police investigator who loses everything because he is faithful to a pledge that he made to the parents of the young girl who had been raped and murdered by a serial killer. It is Jerry’s fidelity to the pledge that is highlighted throughout the film, and ultimately ends in his ruin. The film thus depicts what in Kant’s ethic is the ability of rational beings to be taken as promise-keepers bound by the promises we make as if they had the necessity of law.

The full essay is at "The Pledge."

Devil’s Advocate

In the film, Devil’s Advocate (1997), human free-will plays a very important role. It has implications not only for whether humans tend to be good or evil, but also on how culpable God is for the evil that committed by humans. One of the devil’s sons by a mortal woman, Kevin Lomax, must choose whether or not to impregnate his half-sister, Christabella Andreoli, to produce the Anti-Christ, which John Milton, who is the devil, wants so much. In Christian theology, both the extent of free-will and how tainted it is from the Fall have been debated. Even within Augustine’s works, his thought changes. The one thing that cannot be asserted is that free-will both does and does not exist. Also, that so many greedy people have been so destructive of democracies and even the planet does not necessarily mean that God is responsible or that humans are not capable of choosing to do good over evil.

The full essay is at "Devil's Advocate."