Last night, I viewed a dvd "The Pledge" staring Jack Nicholson as a retired Detective.

It was a wonderfully crafted story with an edgy plot and masterfully woven together to bring us to the edge of our recliners, gasping for breath.

And that's the good news.

THE PLOT. A serial killer, viciously rapes and brutally murders young girls of approximately 9 yrs of age. They all have red dresses and blonde hair. The killer lures them with f'ship and chocolate, and once isolated, he goes his grisly work.

SUB PLOT. It is also a beautiful but eventually tragic love story of the most sensitive kind. (Nicholson and a single mother)

THE VILLAIN. At first, we are led to think the villain is an Indian man with an intellectual disability. He confesses to the crime, but after confessing, grabs the policemans gun and committs suicide.
Case Closed..... or is it?

Jack Nicholson, who has taken in an abused single mother with an 8 yr old blonde daughter, is convinced that the Indian was not the perpetrator. He does some research and it become very clear that he is right. Other girls in different areas (not too far away) have also been murdered and raped and the pattern is evident.

His investigations reveal that the last girl murdered did a drawing of the perpetrator the 'Porcupine man, a giant' who drives a black car. The focus ends up on a whacky religious weirdo, who is portrayed as a 'fundamentalist Christian' who used 'Jesus' as a means of disarming the childrens defenses. He invites Nicholsons partners daughter to 'Church'.. Nicholson finds out, races to the Church, gun in hand only to find all is well.

Then.. we see the 'preacher' approaching the girl and talking about 'Jesus' to her..... as he arranges to meet her alone at a picnic spot.
The events are so chilling, and horrific that the connection between 'Those who mention Jesus' and.. 'serial rapist killer' is strongly made.

Does this kind of repeated message have an impact on how people who speak about Jesus are pereceived? I think so.

Boazy, it's unlikely that you will change that kind of portrayal. You can possibly make a difference a bit closer to home.

- Start with your own double standards of your attacks on other belief systems whilst ignoring similarities to your own. Planks and specks. Old territory for us and I've said enough on this in the past as have others.
- Be a bit more willing to challenge the way out there posts from some of your fellow christain posters on this site. Gibo's posts spring to mind as a starting point where you could make it clear that not all believers are that far out there. If you think that movie was bad imagine what Gibo's flying saucers do for the image of christianity. Plenty of other material being posted here by people claiming to be christains which makes your faith look extremist and founded in fantasy.

R0bert

The similarities with clowns are astounding. Nobody likes clowns much anymore and it looks like Stephen King has a hand in it even though it's not really his fault.

I think R0bert said it pretty well.

We hear so many calls for moderate muslims to differentiate themselves from extremists, which is fair enough.

Regrettably, I think too many religions focus on the power they have as a united front, instead of rejecting the uglier aspects of some of their followers - lets face it, any major world religion is going to have some bad eggs. That's just the nature of man.

Gibo's commentary about the evils of Harry Potter and the existence of demons and flying saucers make it all too easy to realise there are christians out there with views that are not only backward, but unsettling.

Hi there team.

Well.. on Gibo... he is indeed colorful, but nothing I'd worry too much about. I don't agree with some of his takes on some things, but I sense his heart is sincere.

IF....he was advocating we take up arms... start bashing Homosexuals.. Muslims.. etc.. I would surely take him to task.

This film by the way.. I didn't regard it as a bad movie.. as movies go it is exceptionally well made. The sting though is in the continued and ongoing portrayal of "Jesus" people as freakish, child killers.

I mean..I've claimed a lot of things about Mohammad, but serial child killer is not one of them. It can be argued on the basis of substantiatable evidence that he did kill a TRUCKload of people... no one denies that.. not even you blokes I'm guessing, but the point of departure is this.....

I say he had carnal and very human motives, yet you blokes just say I'm 'whacking mozzies'. All I've ever asked is that you actually look at and evaluate the available evidence, and that from universally recognized sources. (The Quran) You can (as F.H. does) dispute the validity of the hadith, but the problem there is that they are in fact the basis of much Islamic law.

The thing is... I'm not aware of any basis for criticizing Jesus, in any remote way that the Christians are accused, abused, and portrayed in such horrific ways, such as this movie.

Does anyone (like say Bugsy for example) ever ask "Am I so anti-Christian because of this oft repeated image"....

One of these days, I hope Bugsy, Ginx and others actually take the time to carefully explore the life and words of Jesus, and try to forget all these negative stereotypes built up over a long period of time.
CJ actually seems to regard Jesus as 'ok'.. which makes me wonder why he does not seek a more meaningful connection.

There have been plenty of films with similar themes of homicidal religious fanatacism (Kevin Spacey in "Seven" for example) because this is probably what drives a lot of serial killers and where many get their misguided personal justification.

Although Hollywood in particular is responsible for a lot of religious myths, such as Christians being fed to the lions in the Colosseum and tales of early mass persecution and martyrdom I don't think this one is part of a trend.

Historically the film villains have always been contemporary with political propaganda - the Germans, the Japanese, the Communists, the Chinese, the South Africans (during the apartheid era) and the Muslims.

When it's not an international setting then local groups can be targetted - Mafia (Italian and Russian), Triads, Gangstas and so on.

When hostilities cease with one group, former enemies somehow become the hero's loyal sidekick and they join forces to fight the new foe.

Then of course there are the deliberately religious films, from as the Charlton Heston epics to the "Name of the Rose" Spanish Inquisition type of dramas. "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is a blatant retelling of the Jesus story.

I'm guessing that this is more a psychological thriller than a deliberate propaganda piece or part of a trend. I wouldn't be too concerned - it's all "just pretend" anyway. Entertainment for some, history for others.

By the way, that giant spider in "Lord of the Rings" was not real.