“Kill one, and, maybe, save a thousand.”

Thus said Fox, the role essayed by Angelina Jolie, in the latest Bekmambetov spectacle. Wanted comes at the heels of certain Hollywood movies (Pathology, Saw) that glorify killing in the name of some benevolent mission to rid the world of evil doers. Recent crime cinema, it seems, is going the logic of American neoimperialism. Get Saddam, save the Iraqi people. Get Ahmadinejad, save humanity from nuclear weapons. The strategic approach of course must echo Islamic terrorism—blow up and kill everybody to get to the singular target. Always and still, classical warfare even in the postmodern age. 

Which simply means that killing or murder isn’t necessarily bad; it just needs to be justified. Take the Crusades, for example, unparalleled model of manslaughter waged in the name of the one Christian god, with most everyone singing like Sinatra: “To think I did all that/ and may I say, not in a shy way.”