Favorite movie about a social issue?

[1981]

The Insider is the first to come to mind. It's about corporate power. Since it's something that influences and is opposed by a considerable number of individuals [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_issue], I guess it counts as a social issue.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Minority Report is a good one, with a message about what happens when the police get too much power and overreach too far. Especially with the morality relating to punishing someone for a crime they haven't committed yet. The message that apparently got dropped was: The idea punishing someone for a crime they'll commit, instead of preventing the crime from happening, is obviously stupidity at it's height.

I fail to see how Minority Report supports that message. The system in place worked spectacularly and - at least as presented in the film - likely had a lower false conviction rate than real life does due to the nature of the system (the only innocents at risk of incarceration were those who had a serious - but not 100% - chance of committing the crime in question) and very little in the story could be put on the heads of the officers in Precrime, making "a message about what happens when the police get too much power and overreach too far" a very poorly supported message. How desperation born from the best of intentions can lead to terrible decisions? Yes. How much personal freedom is worth giving up for protection? Yes. Questioning what, if any, sacrifices (real and/or potential) are worth making in our efforts to stomp out crime? Yes. The need to vet even what we believe to be near certain truths? Yes. The need to judge our methods based off of whether we'd feel them fair if we were the ones they were employed against? Hell yes. A warning against the police getting too much power? Not so much.

"(the only innocents at risk of incarceration were those who had a serious - but not 100% - chance of committing the crime in question)"
That is, arguably, what makes it such a warning statement about Police overreach. Granted, it has been a while since I've seen the movie, but one of the things Tom Cruise talks about is how the system is perfect because there hasn't been a murder in years. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the PreCogs have perfect precognition (in fact we find out they don't), it's that people THINK they have perfect precognition.

Here's another way I'd look at it: we all know that lie detector machines (polygraphs) are not 100% accurate, they aren't even admissible in court. What would happen tomorrow if the Government claimed that they had invented a 100% accurate polygraph machine, and you could be prosecuted, found guilty, and sent to prison if the machine said you were lying? We would likely see a large drop in crime, as people are aware that they're up against a 'perfect' system.

But what if you found out that this magic polygraph wasn't 100% accurate? Shoot, maybe it's only 99% accurate. Would it still justify it's use as a singular tool that allows us to send people to prison (possibly even kill them) based completely on what it tells us, knowing full well that it isn't always right?

 

[Halla Burrica]

I believe District 9 did racism in a rather unique way, but fairly well. It was uncomfortably believeable that something like that would happen if that kind of event occurred in our society. Though I still can't wrap my head around why the task of managing aliens stranded on earth would be given to a goddamned company that specializes in weapon technology. Where the heck was the UN or Amnesty in that situation?

I was considering putting Equilibrium here also (I've only seen that movie because Moviebob referred to it as one of the best sci-fi films of the decade along with Moon and I liked Moon), but that's more of a philosophical issue than a social one. It is a good movie, though strangely one of the few action movies I've seen where the action sequences takes away from the overall experience. By that I mean they are so ridiculous and floaty that The Matrix feels more grounded in reality and it takes away the tension instead of enhancing it. Christian Bale (the main character in the movie I forget his name) is so untouchable and invincible there that it's hard to take things seriously. Especially the last fight scene is downright stupid and not only doesn't add anything to the movie, but it takes away my enjoyment from it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, when you think hard enough there's few movies that aren't about social issues or that can be interpreted as being about social issues. Robocop has the obvious message that business shouldn't control public services, like law enforcement.

 

[Asita]

I fail to see how Minority Report supports that message. The system in place worked spectacularly and - at least as presented in the film - likely had a lower false conviction rate than real life does due to the nature of the system (the only innocents at risk of incarceration were those who had a serious - but not 100% - chance of committing the crime in question) and very little in the story could be put on the heads of the officers in Precrime, making "a message about what happens when the police get too much power and overreach too far" a very poorly supported message. How desperation born from the best of intentions can lead to terrible decisions? Yes. How much personal freedom is worth giving up for protection? Yes. Questioning what, if any, sacrifices (real and/or potential) are worth making in our efforts to stomp out crime? Yes. The need to vet even what we believe to be near certain truths? Yes. The need to judge our methods based off of whether we'd feel them fair if we were the ones they were employed against? Hell yes. A warning against the police getting too much power? Not so much.

Basically all the things you listed are the effects of police overreach, I.E. living in an police state where thought crime is imminently punishable. Punishable in a really inhumane way too... Being put into stasis forever? That's a fate worse than death. Also it highlights corruption, because they intentionally buried the Minority Report, the titular event of the movie, to hide the fact that the system is flawed. Also as part of police politicking, corruption, and overreach... The system can be influenced and fooled under the correct circumstances. Because it means that the police could frame anyone up, at anytime, for a reason other than that person potentially committing a crime. Also take into account that being able to arrest someone for a crime they have not yet committed, no matter how strong or compelling the evidence and suspicion, is an egregious overreach. If only because no crime has yet actually been committed, that's a fundamental violation of someone's rights, especially when we're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law. At least in places that don't employ the Napoleonic Code.

Respectfully, that explanation sounds like a reach to me as much as it would to describe Minority Report as a movie about the dangers of fascism. For all that while these are all at least plausibly symptomatic of that subject, the core issue remains pretty unaddressed. Similar to an interpretation of the entire film being nothing more than the machinations and hallucinations of Anderton's grieving, drug-addled mind, the interpretation is possible, but it seems less like the film explores that theme than it does a case of "if you look at it from the right angle...". Take police corruption as a case in point. Not particularly well represented. The number of people even aware that it was possible game the system before the big climax could be counted on one hand, and the police overwhelmingly acted as we'd expect servants of the people to act, even if the laws they worked under are morally questionable. What we saw was the way a single rotten apple can spoil the bushel. What I'm trying to say is that it feels more like an interpretation projected onto the film rather than one presented by it.

On a tangent, let's clear something up. "Thought crime" is not a premise of Minority Report. The story is very firmly based in a deterministic worldview wherein the future can - under certain circumstances - be predicted with reasonable certainty. People are not incarcerated for thinking something wrong, they are incarcerated preemptively for something that the system legitimately believes they will do. The major wrinkle and moral problem comes in when they realize that the world isn't quite as deterministic as they believed. Or rather, the universe was still as deterministic as presumed[footnote]

Spoiler

The only times we see the precogs be 'wrong' about something still shows events playing out exactly as they foresaw, Precrime just mistook a suicide for a murder, like we could reasonably expect any eyewitness to do under the same circumstances.

[/footnote], but the prophecies could be misread. That's not thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime is when the act of having controversial or socially unacceptable thoughts is criminalized. Thinking about killing someone wasn't criminalized in Minority Report[footnote]see for instance the guy in the VR bar asking for a fantasy/program that he could 'kill' his boss within, which was implied to be a viable possibility, albeit one that the owner wanted to keep on the down-low[/footnote], having upwards of 2/3 of the precogs see you actually follow through with it. Which is morally questionable, don't get me wrong, but it's not thoughtcrime.

 

[shteev]

I might be stretching it a bit here but Battle Royale really stood out for me in this respect. It came at a time when (certainly in the UK) young people, especially 'hoodies', were being demonised extensively by the media and blamed for problems in society that it really wasn't their job to fix, and this film provided a very graphic demonstration of the outcomes of dealing with them in a confrontational manner rather than engaging with them.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I might be stretching it a bit here but Battle Royale really stood out for me in this respect. It came at a time when (certainly in the UK) young people, especially 'hoodies', were being demonised extensively by the media and blamed for problems in society that it really wasn't their job to fix, and this film provided a very graphic demonstration of the outcomes of dealing with them in a confrontational manner rather than engaging with them.

I've read a few papers on Battle Royale, most of which seem to suggest that it's an incredibly on-the-nose satire about the Japanese education system and the terrifying level of pressure it places on very young children to compete with each other for school places. The kids in the film are actually depicted at being of the age when Japanese kids (at the time, I'm not sure about today) took the school placement exam, which effectively determined the entire course of their lives.

Juvenile delinquency also crops up quite commonly in Japanese films, because it's a particular fear about the loss of traditional values and, in particular, the declining importance and ability of families to provide for people. The random scenes of the old woman in The Grudge, for example, are not as random as they might seem. In Japan at the time, the idea of an old person being left to fend for themselves was considered quite shocking and again, indicative of the breakdown of the social order.

 

[cleric of the order]

The bi centennial man.
Though one would argue it's more philosophical than social but considering the nature of robot intelligence and robots could at one day be a social issue.
And it was one I felt fairly important to how i see the world now.

 

[StreamerDarkly]

Crash. It explores the idea that real racism is something inside that has no connection to whether a person says or does all the right things in public view for the sake of appearances. Suspicion is cast on individuals who are just a little too eager to show how progressive they are in superficial ways.

 

[maninahat]

Kekexili: Mountain Patrol

It is a Chinese "Western" about a Tibetan posse trying to track down a gang of poachers, killing off a critically endangered species of deer.

Why is a cowboy movie about environmentalism a good social issue movie? Because, as the film wonderfully demonstrates, environmentalism is essentially a luxury. The poachers and skinners themselves are unemployed and starving. Meanwhile, the posse are made up of volunteers who can't even afford the fuel their truck, and have to resort to selling the pelts they confiscate just to fund their operation. It does a wonderful job of showing how alien and impractical a higher concept of environmental awareness is to people living on the brink of survival in a bleak and hostile climate. We are naturally inclined to support the protection of endangered animals and hate those who prey on them, but this movie goes out of its way to show you that there is another side to the coin.

 

[pookie101]

hard candy

its an ellen page movie that has around 3 actors in the film and deals with pedophiles

 

[FPLOON]

Tokyo Story.. A movie about grandparents visiting their grown-up kids and their grandkids in Tokyo... and that's kinda it... I mean, the movie is shot, mostly, at a stationary angle and the camera never moves outside of jumping from room to room, scene to scene, and one single sequence that I won't spoil because I don't want to... But, man, was it an engaging movie for me...

Other than that, 2015's DOPE... One of the rarest movies to almost fully relate to... and one I wished I could have watched with my best friend...