Torn: Dark Bullets is a 2020 Canadian film on Amazon Prime.
Detective Jason Pearce (Samuel Vincent) is a police officer who kills a black boy he thought was a criminal. Now the dead boy's family are suing him. Driven to drink and obsession, Pearce goes to the Bell family home to apologize.
Tropes
- The Atoner: Subverted. Pearce doesn't come to the Bell family home to apologize, he goes there to make excuses and to get out of his desk job.
- Dies Wide Open: Pearce after his Suicide by Cop.
- Dirty Coward: After he shoots Trey Bell, Pearce picks up the gun left behind by the criminal and puts it in the corpse's hand after realizing it wasn't a gun Trey drew on him.
- Double Standard: Pearce disarms a white criminal after Saks shoots the other one, and admonishes him for shooting him. He later shoots an innocent black boy.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Pearce is driven to alcoholism after he's demoted.
- Establishing Character Moment: At the beginning, Saks kills a white criminal while Pearce disarms the other one.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Pearce has a wife and daughter he genuinely loves.
- Gentle Giant: Ethan Bell, despite his large frame, is very gentle and affectionate. When Pearce initially broke into his home, Ethan had initially thought of shooting him, but tried to send him out of the house without a fight.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: When Pearce bursts into the gymnasium, all of the kids start running. Trey Bell, however, has earphones in and is confused as to why everyone is running, which leads to Pearce fatally shooting him.
- Imagine Spot: Ethan Bell imagines shooting Pearce. However, Pearce doesn't die until the film's end.
- Men Can't Keep House: Ethan doesn't fix anything. Not even the television.
- Mistaken from Behind: Trey Bell was unfortunate enough to have worn a similar hoodie to one of the boys Pearce was pursuing.
- Mr. Fanservice: Pearce gives the audience a very generous Shirtless Scene where he shows off his finely-toned, muscular body.
- Never My Fault: Pearce refuses to admit his own racial prejudice and shoves all the blame onto the late Trey Bell and his famiy.
- Papa Wolf: Ethan Bell. First by suing Pearce for murdering his son, then by protecting his son when Pearce beats him.
- Playing the Victim Card: Pearce keeps insisting that he's lost everything, and tries to downplay the suffering of the Bell family.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Pearce denies he's this, yet he obviously has a low opinion of black people.
- Rabid Cop: Pearce had shades of this at the start but they became more overt as he goes into a Villainous Breakdown.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The film was inspired by the many, many murders of unarmed young black people, usually boys, over the past century, such as the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Philando Castile. A Freeze-Frame Bonus is a cutout of a newspaper article about Pearce which mentions Martin, Brown and Castile's shootings.
- Tragic Villain: Deconstructed. Pearce thinks he's a hero in a Greek tragedy, being highly respected and then losing everything. In actual fact, he never checks his privilege and considers being consigned to a desk job as "losing everything". This was after he murdered a child.
- Scary Black Man: Subverted. Mr. Bell is actually a Gentle Giant whose patience has limits, and this trope is what makes Pearce all the more hostile towards him. In truth, Pearce is a scary white man.
- Suicide by Cop: Pearce commits suicide by drawing his gun on his colleague, provoking her to shoot him.
- Villain Protagonist: Pearce. He's virulently racist and at the end drops the N-bomb on Dom.
- Villainous Breakdown: Pearce undergoes a steady one throughout the course of the film until finally he shoots Dom in the leg and calls him a nigger.
- Would Hurt a Child: Pearce murders a young black boy, Trey Bell, who drew an iPod on him.
