June 1 movie: Ransom. Not the remake with Mel Gibson, although I have seen that. This was the original, with Glenn Ford. The basic plot is the same: a rich man's son is kidnapped for ransom, and instead of paying the ransom, he offers the money as a bounty on the kidnapper's head.
The interesting thing is that this action is portrayed as a gutsy move, in the Glenn Ford version that is. I can't remember about the Mel Gibson version. Anyway, this is shown as a daring gamble, and the naysayers who urge him not to do it are shortsighted cowards. But they're right and the movie is wrong. Ford's gamble is stupid and arrogant. His logic is that paying the ransom doesn't improve his chances of getting his son back (this is stated as a fact in the movie; I have no idea if it's true, or was true at the time). So he might as well forget the ransom and use the money for another purpose that might increase the odds of getting his boy back. But this totally wrong. His TV statement about the ransom/bounty is a giant, public "Fuck you" to a criminal whose only way to fight back is to hurt Ford's child. That would lower the odds far more than they would be improved by bringing in random bounty hunters. It really makes no sense at all that this would work.
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