Hostage Drama

Just last Sunday, mom and I watched a movie starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. It is entitled, "The Taking of Pelham 123". In this film, Denzel as Walter Garber is a dispatcher while John plays the villain, Ryder. Ryder along with three other men take 17 people, mostly passengers of a subway train, as hostages.

It was a great movie. Mom and I were glued to the TV.

Yesterday, as the whole world knows, a real-life hostage drama took place. The hostage-taker was dismissed policeman Rolando Mendoza.

Let me do a bit of comparing...

...In the movie, Ryder gave a deadline of one hour to receive the ransom of $10 million or he will kill one passenger a minute beyond the deadline. Yesterday, the hostage drama stretched for 10 hours.

...In the film, Walter was not an experienced negotiator but he was a real hero, willing to risk his life. In the real drama, sadly there was no "hero" to speak of.

...In "The Taking of Pelham 123", only two hostages were killed...and, sorry to spoil your fun, Walter kills Ryder. Yesterday, several hostages were killed (last I heard, there were eight of them). And Mendoza himself was killed by the police.

Conclusions? Watching movies is fun and enjoyable. We love the suspense. And endings are almost always happy.

In real life drama, on the other hand, there is nothing enjoyable about learning that a hostage is taking place. You stay tuned to media because there is no script being followed, you don't know what will happen next. And sadly, we are not assured of happy endings in reality.

The question being asked is, "What can we learn from this?".