Steven Hunter - Decalogue 5

“Thou shall not kill”

The Polish Decalogue series illustrates the Ten Commandments. Decalogue 5 tells the story of a taxi driver who is murdered. The commandment the movie demonstrates is “Thou shall not kill.” A nomadic man seems to have it all planned out that he is going to murder someone. The taxi driver eventually gets murdered by the wanderer. Other than the blatantly obvious teaching that you shouldn’t kill, the story teaches to be kind to others. The taxi driver is constantly being shown as a cruel person. He annoys people and is concerned with only himself. The driver even leaves people stranded to pick up someone else. If he had just been kind he would have never picked up the murderer and been killed. The story also has illustrates the director’s view on the death penalty. The director uses an ethical lawyer and painful hanging scene to show that he is not accepting of the death penalty.

You can either agree and think that God should be the one who controls life or death; or you can disagree and believe the death penalty is good because it is rids the world of one more corrupt and evil person. I think that God should have complete control in this case; however, it is hard to say that if it was someone that was really close to you. The emotion of revenge may be too overwhelming. The movie shows how valuable a human life is and the director shows how hostile and vicious people can be toward others. I found this movie to be more entertaining than the 1st movie, but it still was not that entertaining. Though, I did find it interesting that the director used almost a “karma” approach to the whole plot because if the taxi driver would have been nicer he would have never been put in that situation.