no one is purely evil, and no, Keegan was not meant to be purely evil. they made that clear when the black cop who was working for the bad guys made his point about his whole hero stance to the mercenaries...
However...
1. He might not have killed the asian tattoo clients, but not killing Lisa was because her use as a hostage/bait was alive. dead, she would not have had any worth to them.
2. So, not raping a girl makes you not evil... again, the whole point of grabbing Lisa was to use her as a pawn to bring Jimmy to them.there would be no point in torturing her, and killing her would have negated her use.
3. I do agree he cared at least a little about the men under his command. He seemed pretty pissed indeed when his boss treated them as simply collateral damage.
4. His whole "You do not have to do this" was not about bringing Lisa out. His boss had no intention of killing her at that moment. His point, as pretty well explained in the next part of the scene, was that his boss didn't need to hire Jimmy to bring in the cop. He was pissed that his boss was bringing in another contractor to do a job he himself felt he should be doing. And at the same pay rate. That was his concern, it had nothing to do with honorable intentions towards the girl.
5. Not shooting Jimmy was not about a warriors honor code. It was about who Keegan was as a person. He thrived on being the biggest bad ass in the room, and he really wanted to kill Jimmy, especially after continuing to be antagonized by him throughout the movie. He blamed Jimmy for the death of his team at the boathouse. He was angry that Jimmy made him look bad by taking Christian Slater's character out of the party right under his nose. And he was pissed that he failed to kill Jimmy in the first place at the bar.
Sure, he wanted to kill him without the gun, but lets be honest, He had several inches, quite a few pounds, and a lot of youth on Jimmy... The fight should have been a lot more one-sided, and clearly Keegan expected it to be. This wasn't warrior code... this was wanting to beat his ass slow, and kill him more painfully than a simple gunshot wound.
all together, no not pure evil, but no one truly is... except Sauron, and Emperor Palptine.
Basically a pretty decent and competent bad ass bad guy with a grudge.
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coolcleangreen
11 years ago
i think also, keegan wanted to stay in control of his own plot to antagonize Jimmy by keeping his daughter out of sight. keep jimmy guessing until they got what they wanted. he was going to kill jimmy, lisa, and kwon anyway just to cover all bases... as evidenced by his willingness to kill everybody in the room just to cover his tracks at the gangster's bar.
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"the whole world's on fire, isn't it?"
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zachanscom
11 years ago
wrong. evil is a social construct, so it depends on the person's definition of evil. you cannot say someone is or isn't purely evil as if it's an objective thing.
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Fuxxored
11 years ago
Actually men infinitely more intelligent then you have mused on the nature of evil as it applies to normative ethics and under these conditions it is rather easy to define. In fact I would go so far as to say that in deontological terms you can actually be objective about this.
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"I am nobody's bitch! You are mine"
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