Technical Pacifist / Live-Action Films

• Nonnie in A Far Off Place professes her belief poachers should be killed at the beginning of the film. At the end, she has the poacher Ricketts at gunpoint but decides not to shoot, showing she now chooses to kill only when necessary.
• Theo in Children of Men bashes a couple of heads in self-defense (with a car door and car battery, respectively), but not once during the course of the film does he ever pick up a gun.
• Sneakers arguably had one of the best uses of this, as the villain (played beautifully by Ben Kingsley) looks at the hero with the line, "I cannot kill my friend." Just as the characters (and the audience) sigh in relief, he turns to his shotgun-carrying minion, and in the exact same tone of voice repeats his last three words.
• Averted in Rush Hour 2. One of the fight scenes focuses on everyone in the room trying to get their hand on a gun. A behind-the-scenes DVD featurette shows that the script originally called for Chan's character to have the gun fall in his hand, and then throw it away in disgust. Chan rightly pointed out that, given the fight going on in the room, throwing it away was "stupid."
  • This is a trait shared by Bruce Lee himself. Despite never actually using a gun, in most of his latter movies he specifically asks about if he can use one, only for the possibility to be handwaved away (Enter the Dragon and the uncut version of Game of Death, for example). Also, from his 1971 English-language interview: "Why doesn't someone just pull out a .45 and — 'BANG!' — settle it?" In his own writing, he was rather explicit about how guns versus fists would actually fare.
• Charlie's Angels (2000) featured this trope in contrast to the original series, due to producer/star Drew Barrymore's aversion to glamorizing gun use (as opposed to kung-fu violence). The change is commented on in the second film by villainous former angel Madison who says "In my day we used guns," before shooting the heroines, hitting their surprisingly small bulletproof vests.
• Field of Dreams played this one for laughs: Costner's character is threatening James Earl Jones with a fake gun, prompting Jones to pull out a crowbar and start walking toward Costner with a maniacal but serious look. Costner falls down, muttering about 'rules', then finally gets his act together just in time and shouts "You're a PACIFIST!"...to which he gets a very disappointed look and puts down the crowbar.
• In the Bud Spencer Flatfoot series of films, the titular character, Commissario Manuele "Flatfoot" (Piedone) Rizzo forgoes carrying a gun in the mafia-infested Naples of the 70's in favour of his fists (which earned him the "Flatfoot" moniker), much to the exasperation of his superiors at the Neapolitan Polizia. This trait is so famous that the uniformed policemen in town joke he actually needs a license for his fighting skills, and it is a very startling moment in the first film when he actually picks up his service weapon from his office.
• Partial example: In Tall Tale, Pecos Bill will not kill a man on a Sunday. He shoots off their trigger finger instead.
• Subverted in Blade: Trinity. At one point, Blade and his sidekicks get into a fight with a group of security guards armed with nightsticks. The heroes kick and punch the security guards into submission, then Blade whips out a pistol and kills the last one just to show that he can.
• The Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Ordered not to kill by a young John Connor, he shoots people in the kneecaps instead ("He'll live"). The one from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines also fits (complete with again a shootout where lots of cars are blown but no one dies), even though we never see anyone ordering him not to kill.
• In First Blood (but not in the original novel), Rambo largely refrained from using lethal force. Even Gault only died when he fell from the helicopter.
• Walker does not directly slay any of his enemies in Point Blank (1967).
• In The Saint (1997), the Saint neither uses a firearm nor does he take a life, something the prose version of the character had no qualms about. The main gangsters even live to see trial at the end of the film.
• In The Glimmer Man, Steven Seagal's character (a police officer) declares he can't fight when he and his partner are held up by some, but then proceeds to fight them (using a razor to slice a couple of throats, then his good old fashions limb breaking attacks and a final kick of one bad guy onto some spiky things). His partner says "I thought you said you can't fight?" to which he answers "It's not that I can't fight; I'm not supposed to. I'm a Buddhist." Prior in the movie, he neutralises a hostage situation because he knew SWAT would most likely kill the hostage taker (a high school student). The character's history also shows a violent person who converts to Buddhism in Vietnam (the war anyway, he wasn't actually in Vietnam at the time) which explains his skill in fighting.
• Star Wars:
  • The Jedi are made out to be "keepers of the peace" who try to defend life and only kill when necessary. Even when the order is almost defunct, they try to solve problems peacefully rather than rush into battle. Of course, when that fails, they will battle.
  • The Naboo are pacifists, with no enemies. Their Royal Security Forces have anti-tank weapons (as they demonstrate against the Trade Federation invasion) and surprisingly effective hyperspace-capable fighters that carry proton torpedoes, useful against capital ships. Both have very practical reasons: Naboo's natives, the Gungan, had fought a war against the human settlers about fifty years previously and, seeing the remaining tensions, the Naboo decided that not being sure the Gungan still had an army was a good reason to fully disarm (the Gungan, it turned out, have to maintain an army, as their underwater cities are constantly under threat from Kaiju-and if they can turn said army against the Trade Federation it's a nice benefit), and as Naboo's economy depends from export it only pays to have the means to escort trader vessels in the pirate-infested Rim worlds, especially as the previous king of Naboo, Ars Veruna, had been engaged in a pissing match with the Trade Federation for quite a while and thus Naboo traders couldn't be sure to count on their Trade Defense Force anymore (the N-1, in fact, is a recent development of an earlier and lighter design, made to take on the Trade Defense Force if necessary-and severely underestimating what the Trade Federation could muster for a military confrontation).
• Played with in a rather creepy way in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010). It's against the White Queen's vows to harm other beings, but she's surprisingly well-prepared for Alice to do so in her stead (even having armor made for Alice to wear) and leads an army out against the Red Queen. Word of God says the reason she swore this vow is out of fear of turning into a monster like the Red Queen if she starts harming others and can't stop. She was so well prepared because Alice was predestined to kill the Red Queen's Dragon.
• The priests from Beneath the Planet of the Apes pride themselves on never killing anybody. On the other hand, they have no qualms about using mind-controlling powers to make their prisoners kill each other.
• Unlike other action movies dealing with terrorists, Arnold Schwarzenegger never uses a firearm at all to kill anyone in Collateral Damage. Even in the scene when escaping from a police roadblock in Colombia and disarming an officer's AR-15, he just throws it away the instant he gets shot at.
• Dr. Heller from Mystery Men is a weapons designer...who builds nothing but non-lethal weapons. Just because they're non-lethal, though, doesn't mean they can't kick huge amounts of ass.
• Batman in The Dark Knight Trilogy most definitely counts.
  • In Batman Begins he refuses to execute a murderer, opting instead to blow up the whole building he is in, let the leader get crushed under a pile of debris, and then rush out, leaving a great many ninjas, as well as the guy he originally refused to kill, in the building, presumably to die in the fire. ^note Also, he was Bruce Wayne at that point, not Batman, and implicitly killed people travelling around the world, likely in self-defense. Later on, he traps Ducard on a train, after demolishing the supports to its track, and shorting out the controls so it can't stop. Then, just as the train is heading over the edge, he jumps out, telling Ducard, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you," leaving him to fall to his death. Yeah, definitely never does any killing.
  • A similar scenario is set up in The Dark Knight as it seems Batman is willing to let gravity kill the Joker, but then saves him with his grappling hook. This is immediately followed by tackling Harvey Dent off a ledge in order to save a child, and killing him.
  • In The Dark Knight Rises, he actively uses lethal force in order to try and stop a nuclear bomb destroying Gotham, in what's easily the most desperate stakes in the entire series. He retires as Batman right after.
• Valentine from Kingsman: The Secret Service absolutely hates the sight of blood, so he leaves the killing to Gazelle and his mooks. He also has no problem with wiping out most of humanity by sending a Hate Plague to make them kill each other, but the only time he personally kills someone, he's very Squicked out afterwards.
• The hero in The Big Heat doesn't kill anybody in the movie.
  • He leaves Larry to be killed off by his partners just like the latter used to off his victims.
  • He refrains from strangling Mrs. Duncan and lets Debby do the dirty work.
  • Having The Dragon at gunpoint, he doesn't pull the trigger even though the latter just shot Debby.
• Sergeant Nicholas Angel, the highly-trained by-the-book London Metropolitan Police officer turned small-time village policeman in Hot Fuzz, shoots at a lot of people in the film's climactic shootout, but not once does he actually shoot to kill, only to incapacitate. This is likely due to the amount of paperwork he'd have to do if he did actually kill someone, even in self-defence.
  Angel: You're a doctor. Deal with it.
  Danny: Yeah, motherfucker.

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