No plot, no good, Did I miss something?

Disregard all of the torture and basically 99% of everything else. My question is WHY. Flashbacks of him half apologizing to people, taking back the 20 dollars from the kid, etc. What was the point of showing this? It's like they were implying these bad deeds landed him here. If that happened to me, I wouldn't be sitting around pondering the time I threw rocks at a kid on the playground or stole a candy bar. You can't say it was just a random kidnapping because Nick Cage's doppelganger kept saying he wasn't innocent and deserved it.