Die Hard's big lie

I went to see the latest Bourne movie yesterday. Sitting through the previews was pretty appalling. I think I saw 20 murders just in the previews. I don't know if Hollywood is coming up with more violent movies, or if because of the high military presence Yuma gets all of the finest shoot-em-ups, but it was awful. Or maybe that it what I get for going to see an action movie, even if it is an action movie where the hero has a little bit of a conscience, who is haunted by his crimes and trying to escape.
The movies that really bother me are these ones where these supposedly good loving family men turn into Rambos when someone does something to their families. These movies- Die Hard and all its spawn, Kevin Bacon being the star of the most recent one- sell the lie that it is ok to murder and maim with astonishing brutality if your family is in danger. It's this sick marriage of love for family, and brutal violence. All this, and when you've washed the blood of countless people from your hands, you can go back to your wife and kids, cleansed with gory adrenaline, as if it was all worth it. We are sick- to twist a good impulse- love and sacrifice for your family- into a license to kill.
These type of movies especially bother me because they are fundamentally dishonest. Because violence has a cost. Even violence that is undertaken with the best of intentions, for the most noble of causes. I saw another movie two weeks ago, one that was much more honest about the effects of violence. I think that any really realistic war movie leaves me with a sinking realization of the absolute inutility of war. The Wind that Shakes the Barley, about Ireland's war for independence. It shows the journey of two brothers, who, motivated by the abuses perpetrated on their beloved country by an occupying force, turn away from the lives that they should have had in a better world, and fight for their country. And it shows how the war twists them, how it ultimately destroys their family and all that they fought for, and you are left with a single despairing question: Why??? War is voracious, and once you are immersed in it you cannot get out, even if the cause is hopeless, because what of those who have already died? And so you go on fighting and dying because of those who fought and died before. So that their fighting and dying was not in vain. These men saw their death approaching, and yet could not/would not budge from a path that they had embarked on, and the movie helped me to understand why they could not escape.
I wish we had more portrayals of war like that, instead of those that portray killing as costless.