Not that this movie has any explicitly Christian content; nor am I sure that the parable I’m seeing in it was intentionally put there by the film-makers. But I see it notwithstanding.
Anthony Hopkins plays a clever man who finds out his wife is cheating on him with a police lieutenant. So he hatches a fiendishly clever plan to kill his wife and manipulate the lieutenant into unknowingly destroying all the evidence of the crime. I mean, this plan is a doozie!
An up-and-coming young prosecutor tries to bring Hopkins to justice, but the killer outwits him at every turn. Meanwhile, the policeman is desperate for revenge and keeps trying to tempt the prosecutor to lie and cheat and manufacture evidence to win the case.
So where’s the parable? Let me see if I can tell you without spoiling the movie for you.
More than anything else, what brings criminals under judgment? What keeps them from getting away with their crimes? Why were even the pagan ancient Greeks so convinced that their gods would surely punish evildoers who’d seemed to escape punishment by worldly authorities?
Those are hints.
God does not always punish crimes here and now; sometimes He waits. Sometimes He uses evil men to chastise His own people. But you can be sure the crimes not punished here are punished somewhere else.
This movie can remind us of that.