Bisbee '17

This is a movie to up your game for: be ready with a few small critical notes. That it’s 2017 goes back in time to understand 1917. That vigilantes and hyper patriots live in both eras and incline toward extremism to defend the “homeland.” Imagine a time when a single metal, copper, defined wealth and technological efficiency (like rare earth in the cell phone age). Then add the US-Mexican border and formative labor relations in the rough southwest. If you keep all this in mind your vision will expand to the dimensions operating all at once in this brilliant flick.

The rule of law rests on a foundation of due process. The deportation involved no due process and therefore can't be said to have been legitimized by the rule of law. As the movie points out, the deportation relied instead on a legal concept called the Law of Necessity: a self-justification engaged in by the town after the fact, used to rationalize the extra-legal removal by a deputized, armed mob of both the workers and (most revealingly) other residents who opposed the action.... About the Law of Necessity, suffice it to say that it is the sham-legal shield of lynch mobs in all times and places.