MIM Movie Review

This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

From MIM Notes 59:

HOMICIDE
(1991)

The main character in Homicide is a Jewish cop who is out of touch 
with his heritage. Through an investigation, he finds the office 
of a Nazi organization which prints and posts-among other things- 
flyers that read "Crime is caused by the Ghetto, the Ghetto is 
caused by the Jew!" The cop also gets in touch with a Jewish 
terrorist group with ties to Israel, which investigates and plans 
attacks on such Nazi organizations.

Homicide dramatizes the existence of anti-Jewish organizing in 
Amerika, links it with the necessity for an Israeli state in 
Palestine, and refuses to analyze it in any significant context.

Anti-Jewish propaganda exists in the context of Jewish privilege. 
Jewish people, as a group in this country, do experience 
oppression, but the material privileges they enjoy far outweigh 
this oppression. The prevailing consequence of white supremacist 
anti-Jewish actions is more money for Israel, and more support for 
the myth that Jews are not oppressors themselves.

When Jews are attacked, they have the state to protect them. 
Homicide stresses the importance of Israel in this role. It uses 
the security Israel provides, set against the supposed lack of 
security in Amerika, as a frame for the action of the film. It 
plays on the idea that Jews can only rely on each other for 
protection, and that their struggle everywhere is righteous, 
regardless of the conditions against which they are struggling.

The cop's growing self-awareness, and solidarity with other Jews 
is Homicide's central theme. In the film's ultimate, predictable 
expression of Jewish unity, the cop works with the terrorists to 
bomb the Nazi headquarters. The film treats this as a heroic 
victory, but it is only a victory in the reactionary extreme. The 
struggle for Jewish nationalism in Amerika can only take the form 
of defending class status as part of the parasitic white nation. 
And fascist propaganda will only be eliminated with a victory of 
the proletariat against imperialism, not by terrorist lackeys of 
imperialism.

-MC45