In the 2009 film “Inglourious Basterds,” Brad Pitt, as 1st Lt. Aldo Raine, leads a merry band of Jewish American Nazi-hunters. In one particularly gruesome scene, a captured Nazi officer who refuses to cooperate is bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. Another German prisoner is then summarily shot while holding his hands behind his head. A third, properly intimidated, gives up the intelligence the gang is after.

It’s pure fiction, all in good fun, and the audience presumably cheers because the bad guys — and these are really bad, bad guys, after all — are only getting what they deserve.