Sunday, January 18, 2015

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991) and the Corruption of the Justice System in Bad Movies



As a society, we are persuaded to believe that the police are always right and the people they go up against are wrong.  That is what we are told.  This is not always the case, but it is the story presented to us from a young age.  We play games like cops and robbers, where the police have to chase down the robbers because the police are the good guys and the robbers are the bad guys.  We are raised while being taught not to break the law because if we do, the police will come after us.  If we don’t do anything illegal, we should be fine.  The reality does not always line up with this description of law enforcement.  I’m not going to be writing about real life incidents like Ferguson or whatever the hell is happening in New York City.  Instead, I’ll just do what I do and use movies to discuss some serious topics.

What I really want to get into this week is corruption of law enforcement as shown through movies.  Movies are a great way to dilute any of the idealized thoughts about the justice system that may be rolling around in that head of yours.  As much as many movies make the police out to be heroes, there are numerous movies that show the injustice and corruption within this system.  Whether the movies show police officers breaking the law or wardens and guards of prisons overstepping their authority to basically turn a prison into a dictatorship, movies are able to open the eyes of the viewer to the idea that not all of the law keepers are actually keeping the law.

If you look back through the history of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, you’ll see that corrupt law enforcement has almost always been there.  Freelancers was the first movie I watched for the blog that took a good look at the police force and how easily they could be corrupted.  It dealt with some rookie police officers who got into the drug business after busting an operation.  It showed how easily money could corrupt anything, including the people whose job it is to prevent the corruption.  This is definitely true to some instances in real life as police officers have been found guilty of crimes that they are expected to stop.  But the reason this movie shows this side of the police force isn’t because they want to make some sort of statement.  Well, that could be a little bit of it.  Some movies do make statements.  However, I think that the primary focus of this movie was to be entertainment.  In the current day and age, viewers like to watch anti-heroes or just plain bad people.  Freelancers wanted to capitalize on this desire while also showing the dark side of the police.  They tried to show that these people are not the best people, as we had been raised to believe.  It didn’t quite achieve either of these objectives because it ended up being a very forgettable movie instead.

Freelancers was only the first movie in the Sunday “Bad” Movies that touched upon corrupt police.  Movies such as Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and The Marine 2 would end up using police corruption as a twist.  More recently on the blog, Exit Wounds took some of its story from this darker side of the police by pitting the good officers against the bad.  Steven Seagal’s character gets sent to a corrupt precinct in Detroit and makes it his job to clean it up.  As a movie, it is basically having its cake and eating it too.  And as bad as the movie might be, the cake is a very important thing to include.  Exit Wounds shows that there is police corruption while also highlighting that there are good cops as well.  This is a distinction that many movies don’t make (aside from a twist of one officer being bad).  Yet this one did, and it was a noble move to make.  It provides hope within a sad reality.

But corrupt police aren’t the only problem I have encountered with the justice system throughout the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Prisons have not had a much better light put upon them.  The wardens have been bad people, the guards have been bad people, and the prisoners have been bad people.  In many cases, the guards and wardens have been working with the prisoners to do something heinous.  They work together to take down someone who has gone against them, or they will strike a deal to make money.  The corrupt ways of the prison system have been on full display through the movies I have watched.

The Death Race franchise manages to highlight many of these corrupt tendencies within prisons.  Whether the first, second, or third movie in the franchise, the concept remains the same.  The prisons of the future are trying to profit off of the deaths of their prisoners.  Let’s start with Death Race 2, the one that takes place first.  The prison stages fights to the death between their prisoners and televises them for people to watch in the safety of their homes.  This soon escalates into races in which the racers are prisoners who try to kill the other prisoners and cross the finish line first.  Now let’s go back to the first Death Race, which takes place last out of the three movies.  After the previous Frankenstein dies (or escapes, as we see in Death Race: Inferno), the warden “hires” one of the prisoners to murder the main character’s wife and frame him for murder.  This is because the main character is a former race car driver.  Having him put on the Frankenstein mask and race will help keep the ratings high for the televised races.  It is capitalist prison corruption at its finest.  The movies help to show how influential money can be to the prison system, though it is done in an overly exaggerated way.  Even though prisons are supposed to be a way to get the bad people off the streets, there can be innocent people incarcerated when money is involved.

A movie that takes a different approach to the bad things involving higher-ups in prison is 1991’s Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.  This movie follows the character of Ricky Ho as he goes to prison for murder and must deal with corruption on every level.  There are inmates trying to kill him.  The deputy warden wants him taken care of, if you know what I mean.  The warden is growing opium on the prison grounds.  And they’ll beat, torture, maim, and kill whoever goes against their wishes.  The idea of corruption based on the profit of growing opium was set up early in the movie, though not explicitly.  Text on the screen mentions the privatized nature of prisons in the near future, and compares them to franchised businesses.  They didn’t say where the money really came from, but they set up that there was money to be made.  Money is a big problem in the prison system and much of the reason for the corruption in the institutions as shown through movies.  That and the basic cruelty of people.

The justice system is frequently shown to have corruption in movies.  Usually the bad movies that I watch for this blog focus upon the greed and capitalism aspects of it.  In Freelancers and Exit Wounds, it was police getting into the drug trade.  In Riki-Oh, it was the warden and his underlings involved in the drug trade.  In Death Race and movies like it (Gamer), it is the prison capitalizing upon the demise of the prisoners.  Not all movies focus on this stuff, however.  There are movies out there, usually better, that focus on other aspects of bad policing.  Movies such as Fruitvale Station show that money isn’t always the problem with the justice system.  It could just as easily be the mental stability of a police officer.  It could be racism.  It could be prejudice against a certain demographic.  Or it could simply be police brutality, which we all know exists.  There are many movies that depict this kind of stuff happening because it is real stuff.  If we’re not careful, our society could end up being similar to the over-the-top gory Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, or the high octane insanity of Death Race.  We already live in a world where Freelancers and Exit Wounds could happen, and probably are happening somewhere.  Isn’t that enough?
And now for some notes:
  • Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki is the first three time suggested movie.  It was suggested by @robtrench, @1sttimewatchers, and @TheTrueBrendanF.
  • Let’s link to the posts of the three other movies I focused on in this post.  They were Freelancers, Exit Wounds, and Death Race.
  • I also mentioned the Deuce Bigalow and The Marine franchises in there.
  • Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a foreign movie.  Other foreign movies (not North American) I’ve covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies are Dig Your Grave Friend… Sabata is Coming and Infra-Man.
  • Have you seen Riki-Oh?  Do you actually want to discuss the movie in all of its crazy, gory, actiony glory?  Are there other movies like it that you want to take about?  Did you like the movie?  You can use the comments below to discuss anything related to the movie or this post.
  • You can also use the comments section to give me suggestions about what to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movie installments.  If you don’t want to use the comments section, why not message me on Twitter or drop me an email at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com?  Those work too.
  • Next week’s movie will be The Time Machine (I Found at a Yardsale) and let me tell you that it was a tough movie to get through.  The post is going to be… I don’t know.  It’s not written yet.  Anyway, see you next week.

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