Dick & Jane: Criminals and Heroes

"Fun with Dick and Jane" is a 2005 remake of the 1977 film of the same name, directed by Dean Parisot and starring Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni. The plot follows Dick Harper, who after being promoted at his job asks his wife to quit hers, but when the company closes due to fraudulent actions by the boss, the protagonists begin to run out of money, which leads them first to look for a new job and then steal to avoid having his house repossessed.

The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but I personally enjoyed it very much and I think any Jim Carrey fan does too. Her duo with Leoni is one of the funniest I've ever seen, so I'm quite surprised that she doesn't have more comedic roles in her filmography.

The reception of these characters is a rather interesting case, because they really do not deprive themselves of any crime (theft, armed robbery, home invasion, complicity in illegal immigration, forgery, etc.), but one cannot help but support them. In part this is because they are very funny and that as an audience we have a love for Carrey that would make us support him even wanting to steal Christmas, but it is also because they suffered an injustice caused by the greed of the owner of the company where Dick worked.

The film, beyond being a simple remake, sought to echo the then recent Enron scandal. Enron was an American energy company that, as a result of the fraud of some executives, ended up bankrupt, leaving thousands of employees without jobs and without savings (which they had in company shares). But anyway today, the final third of the film reminds me of a case that is being widely commented on, that of Luigi Mangione.

Mangione is the main suspect in the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a US health insurer, but far from being criticized as a murderer, he is being praised on social networks for "doing justice" by considering the dead tycoon evil (the insurer is the largest and most questioned in the country). It clearly also helps to make him an icon that is attractive and he wrote on the bullets that he used the words "Deny", "Defend" and "Depose".

Towards the end of the film Dick and Jane decide that they have to act against the culprit of their situation and develop a whole plan to transfer the money that the owner of the company (played by Alec Baldwin) had saved to a help account for those affected by the bankruptcy of the company. And although they make it seem like the boss did it of his own free will, we as viewers know that they were the ones who helped all those people by stealing from the "villain", becoming a kind of modern Robin Hoods that makes us care much less about their previous criminal acts.

Clearly there is a big difference between stealing fraudulent money and murder, but the fact of ordinary people going against big businessmen makes me relate both stories, the real one and the fictional one.

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