REVENGE

Okay, this might be a rant, might be complaining, its also entirely possible I'm just rambling, but this is something I've noticed in most action movies: Most of them are about REVENGE.

I understand that in many stories revenge is a driving force, something import that moves the plotline, but just how realistic is it?

How many people have gone after something with revenge in mind and succeeded without being called complete and total psychotics or people with severe issues?

Really, its just not all that practical and though there's no doubt at all that shooting someone in the temple with a rifle might be a bit satisfying if they had in turn killed all of your family, in the end aren't you just as bad and in most cases aren't you just going to get arrested, sent to jail to rot and mull over the fact that your now a degenerate who took away someone elses loved ones and stew in your own self pity?

This mostly came to mind when I compared how movies tend to play out revenge/hate to how my own revenge/hate played out with a lawyer who commited malpractice when working with our case. To understand what this man did that brought up so much hate, you need to understand the case:

The case was against the COBRA company (No, not GI Joe Cobra ) for making a van whose design resulted in the death of my three year old brother. The attempts to make a case against Cobra, the people who made the seat that killed my brother, and other things went on for quite a while until we were told the statute of limitations had run out and we were unable to pursue a case against anyone. At this point the case and all the papers that went along with it were brought to another individual who did one look over and said anyone who had touched the case should be sued.

Why? Papers that we were told had been signed were unsigned, work was not done, most of it all was left undone due to laziness or apathy it seemed at the time and that certainly started a spark of hate for our old lawyer. Fast forward several more years, meetings with lawyers, and bam we're at the courtroom actually going to trail.

I don't remember most of the trial, I don't even really remember going up to testify (Mostly because I froze up on the stand but a psychologist told my mom to expect I'd do that and to expect I wouldn't remember testifying, and I don't), but what I do remember is what happened after a settlement was reached.

I had been sitting outside the courtroom in a hallway when our old lawyer walked past, and honestly I completely expected him to keep on walking. Instead he stopped, turned to me, and said 'good luck' before he left. I have no idea why, but at that point I just stopped being angry. Maybe it was because it was as close to an apology as he could give, or just the fact that his expression made me feel he was honestly sorry for at least part of what he'd done, but really I realized right then if he'd just said sorry before all of this I would have felt much better much sooner.

Which brings the whole thing around to its beginning, is revenge really so important or is just the closure important? Would action movies be able to move forward if the main 'villain' just stepped forward and admitted he was wrong and made an honest attempt to show it?