MovieChat Forums > Broken (2013) Discussion > So why is he going around beating up peo...

So why is he going around beating up people?


Mental illness?






Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

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Anger management issues? Combined with the fact that he's lost his wife and mother of his children, who he now has to look after - plenty of stress...

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I have a feeling that this man had "anger" issues while his wife was alive, and that the yelling and screaming was a reality of their marriage and these children's upbringing already. Few families upon the death of the mother become such a sordid dysfunctional mess like this one. Yelling at Rick in the middle of watching their sister being carted away in an ambulance seemed psychotic in scope. I didn't believe that scene at all though I guess it was used to show why/how Rick went off the deep end.

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They're always out of milk.

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Full of rage about his wife dying (or was it leaving him?). Just an angry man in general and unable to parent his children properly. His only parenting instinct is to protect them with violence.

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Because he can. Personally I prefer killing them, but to each his own.

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Because he thinks thats how to deal with those kinds of issues. He is just a chav from a chav family. These people exist, there are plenty on my street.

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To put it simply....this guy has no clue what he's doing as a parent. Once his wife left any semblance of a female role model for the daughters disappeared, and no one took her place.

So pretty much Mr. Oswald went back into neanderthal mode. I will say he cares for his daughters, though has no idea how to be a good role model for them.

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I think he redeemed himself a bit towards the end, the way he was with his daughters before he got arrested. If he was more of a lousy person he probably wouldn't even care much about his girls or what they did. And then the way he was with Skunk when he found her in Rick's room, showing a bit more caring and that he was really afraid for her, especially after losing his own daughter. It showed that he wasn't a total uncaring monster, but more likely just a crude, very angry man.

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I liked this film.
It has a similar feel to 'A Room For Romeo Brass', where a similar angry character gains redemption at the end.
If you liked Broken then I recommend that film.

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I agree, despite being a nasty piece of work he did redeem himself a bit at the end, trying to save Skunk and calling for Archie.

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I agree, despite being a nasty piece of work he did redeem himself a bit at the end, trying to save Skunk and calling for Archie.


But, if you think about, the terrible events in the film can all be traced back to him and his awful daughters. Why does he get a shot at redemption when the guy his daughter falsely accused of rape and who he beat up and who was arrested ends up killing his parents and nearly killing a child presumably as a direct result of the aforementioned beating, being labeled a child rapist, and being incarcerated?

Don't try to cash in love, that check will always bounce.

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I would argue, not that he got a shot at redemption, but if anything Skunk offered redemption to him. The big question is if he will make the connection between his own brutality, his daughter's death and Skunk's new chance at life. A great moment of redemption, but I didn't think it was truly his.

BTW, one unknown about this moment--and a potential tragedy in its own right--would be that as he walked through the scene all his "suspicions" about Rick would have been confirmed.

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[deleted]

A man left alone due to the death of his wife trying to cope with the daughters from hell. But his reaction when believing his daughter had been raped by the mentally challenged young man next door or abused by her teacher is in some way understandable if you make allowances for his traumatised state of mind. The daughters were the real cause of the problem but they were possibly that way due to his inability to act as an effective parent on his own.

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