Tough Guys

I love this scene from Robert di Niro's "A Bronx Tale."
First, it kind of makes me homesick, although I'm from Chicago and not the Bronx. The Italian neighborhood I grew up near was a VERY safe, low-crime area. Know why? If something happened, they didn't call the cops. They called somebody else. And then, God help you.

Second, it's my experience that if you scratch a bully, you find a coward just under the surface.
Gangs, like this biker gang, depend on strength in numbers -- and sometimes superior fire power. They wouldn't hesitate to go 8 against 1 or 2 or 3, or to use weapons against an unarmed person. It's easy to be a tough guy when the odds are all in your favor.

Now suddenly. it's a reversal of fortunes.
It doesn't get much better than that.

But one more thing.
At the end it's a bunch of KIDS who chase one biker down the street and stomp him.
There's something about that.

It harkens to me images of hundreds of (unarmed) Jews being loaded into trains, guarded by just a handful of (armed) German soldiers. What if ALL those people had said, "To hell with it," and jumped those guards?

Or when a half dozen cops are beating down some poor guy, or tasing someone, while dozens of people watch, what if all those people jumped those cops, disarmed them, cuffed them...

I wonder.


sj