The Badge (2002)

Too much of everything

This is How Movies Should Be Made

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

With transgender rights issue getting more and more media exposure and opponents saying and doing all kinds of desperate things to prevent them becoming a protected class, the film The Badge assumes a more frightening relevance now than it did in 2002 when it came out as a made for television film.Billy Bob Thornton, sheriff of a rural Louisiana parish catches the case of a young woman found dead near a road after being shot. It's only when the body is brought to the coroner that there's a male body part. In her short life, she presented well in the sex she felt she was meant to be. Thornton is as good an ole boy as you can get. He even threw his gay brother Thomas Haden Church out of the parish. But as he investigates the homicide he steps on some very powerful toes like the local parish boss William Devane. Even his wife Sela Ward who is the local prosecutor disowns after he's framed on a charge of corrupting the morals of a minor.As it is in these cases that only makes him madder. His only allies turn out to be LGBT including Patrica Arquette wife of the deceased.I think native Louisianans will recognize actor Michael Arata as their former Governor Edwin Edwards who was quite the party animal known in the state as the Silver Zipper. There's an election going on and the victim had been one of the women entertaining at a sex party. That's all Arata needs is to get hooked into a sex crime. Through Devane he really puts the squeeze to Thornton.In the end all too sadly transgender people will recognize the motive for the killing. Just the notion of the existence of transgender people freaks a lot of people out. Not to mention then as now the idea of such people demanding equal protection under the law.November 19 every year is the Transgender Day Of Remembrance, a solemn occasion that marks an annual tolling of the roll of new killed members of the community, worse even because law enforcement around the world doesn't take these crimes as seriously as they should, they're all not lawmen like Billy Bob Thornton. This film would be a good one to show at that time and in all kinds of LGBT venues.More relevant now than when it came out.

Sheriff with dirty hands in a Louisiana parish, up for re-election and losing to an officer he himself hired, ties in the murder of a transgendered female with the all-powerful local judge and officials in high government positions. Paltry murder investigation without a hint of mystery, but plenty of sordid goings-on and continual foul language. Billy Bob Thornton, once an actor and filmmaker of some merit, simply goes through the motions here, talking in a low guttural tone. As the judge, William Devane (walking slightly stooped and with a cane) plays Southern like a Bostonian on vacation. The little bursts of artistic 'style' (speeding up or slowing down the footage randomly) are the earmarks of a filmmaker who doesn't know what he's doing behind the camera. Writer-director Robby Henson seems to know very little about the manner of small Southern towns; either he has no rhythm or his timing is off. Henson's narrative skills are also puny (Thornton keeps running into characters he's apparently related to, their backgrounds clumsily sorted out later in the exposition-heavy dialogue). It's a mess, with plenty of offensive talk that serves no particular purpose except to show off the ignorance of hicks. NO STARS from ****

A friend lent me this movie, and I'm glad she did. Didn't realize "whodunit" until Darl (Billy Bob Thornton) pulled all the clues together, and I enjoyed how the action and drama built. It's fascinating watching this story about values and politics in the South. The family relationships and especially dialogue with his gay brother seemed very realistic. I thought Patricia Arquette gave an especially convincing performance as Mona's wife. Given how little they showed the victim Mona (Cindy Roubal), and the fact that s/he is transgender plays so much into the plot, it's too bad they couldn't have cast a true transgender person instead of a former Playboy bunny!

The movie is set and filmed in the areas I lived in for some time, and I can assure everyone that the characters depicted bear little resemblance to the people and politicians that really live there.The movie opens at night with a female figure running through some swampy land, then onto a 2-lane road where a big rig driver runs down a short embankment and deposits the trailer on its side in the muddy ditch to avoid hitting her. In daylight they find the body, while Sheriff Darl (Thornton) is supervising the distribution to the local folk of the shoes that were on the truck. After all, it is an election year. So, the movie is about trying to find the killer of this woman, 'Mona', amidst political jockeying for a casino and the governor's re-election. Moderately interesting and entertaining.SPOILERS. BIG ONES. CAREFUL. In the morgue it turns out the dead 'lady' has a penis and breasts, is in fact a trans-sexual. Her 'wife' turns up, Scarlett (Patricia Arquette) who dances in a New Orleans dive. Through much of the movie it appears that the dead 'entertainer' had been at a party with the governor, and that one of the politicians had shot and killed her, it turns out that the mildly retarded filling station operator did the shooting. He had a peephole in the wall so that he could spy on pretty girls using the toilet, and was so disgusted when he saw Mona's male equipment, he chased and shot him/her, wounded he/she was able to run a bit before collapsing and dying in the ditch near the overturned truck. Sheriff had traced a call Mona placed to Scarlett from the phone booth at the filling station, and that was the last place she had been before she died.