“Oh Christ,” says Brad Wesley to Dalton, “you get paid for beating people up! Tell me you don’t love it. Of course you do! You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t!” It’s a revealing moment for two reasons. First, it’s the third time in this scene alone that Wesley has employed his favorite blasphemous expletive. I’m going to assume that “Ben, you said ‘Christ’ three times that take, do you think we can go again” was not going to cut any ice on that particular set, so there’s that, but recall which character spreads a gospel with a wound in his side. Second, Brad Wesley’s defining characteristic of humanity is the enjoyment of establishing dominance by inflicting pain, particularly in exchange for cash. This squares with everything we know about him: hiring goons to strong-arm the other weird old men who own businesses around town, beating his girlfriend, citing his survival of “Korea” and “the streets of Chicago” as the sole points of interest in his pre-Jasper biography, festooning his home with the stuffed corpses of literally dozens of different slain animals. (Trust me, you haven’t seen the half of it.) If Dalton needed any more evidence that this is a man who cannot be negotiated with, he has it now. But third, when you turn it around in your mind, you can see it as proof that he does care about his “boys,” the goons. If getting paid to beat people up is a way to do what you love and love what you do, if it proves your essential humanity, then what a gift he has bestowed upon Jimmy, Ketchum, Karpis, O’Connor, Tinker, Morgan, Mountain, and his sister-son Pat McGurn, all of whom he pays to beat people up. For Brad so loved the goons, that he gave his only begotten cash, that whosoever worketh for him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
