Suicide is injustice to oneself.

Augustine and Aquinas and Kant agree. In destroying oneself, one murders a human being, obliterates the charity and justice within, and annihilates the homo noumenon, the ethical self at the very heart of being human.

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The movie is called City Slickers and it is available on DVD and VHS. In the movie Mr. Crystal plays Mitch, a middle-aged man who lives in New York City and who is in crisis. His wife, his kids, his job, his friends, it all has become weightless and a punishing rock that weighs him down to the bottom of the deep dark sea. This is an overstatement, but really he is drowning and has lost the ability to swim.

As a desperate remedy his two best friends — Ed who sells sporting goods and Phil who committed adultery, lost his job, his wife and kids, and who’s jacket is still being made — take Mitch on a two week adventure out West to drive cattle. We ride. We rope. We sleep out under the stars, says Ed. For two weeks they will play at being real cowboys.

The trail boss, Mr. Palance, is a leathery tough-as-nails cowboy named Curly — the last of a dying breed. His reputation precedes him and the young cowpokes are terrified. Curly killed a man in a knife fight. Slit him neck to nuts, they say.

So Curly and the cowpokes lead Mitch, his friends, and a collection of quirky companions who are also there for the cattle drive— two dentists from Baltimore, a pretty girl named Bonnie, and two ice cream entrepreneurs — all city slickers. The term city slicker comes from the fact the city folk are often slick to the touch. They are folks who are soft and pampered and don’t know the meaning of hard and dangerous work in rugged conditions. When Mitch struggles with lassoing cattle he jokes that he’s not good with ropes and even struggles to untie the string on a bakery box. This is called foreshadowing and is really a piece of excellent script-writing.

The cattle drive commences and all goes well until the entire herd is spooked by Mitch with coffee grinder and promptly stampedes. When the herd is finally rounded up there are still a few strays that ran off into a canyon. Curly instructs the cowboys to take everyone and continue on with the herd, all except Mitch who will join Curly to pick up the strays.

Now Mitch is out alone on the trail with Curly. Mitch is terrified of Curly and can’t stop trembling. Curly only makes it worse by sharpening his knife by the campfire while glaring at Mitch and snarling insults. This continues until the moment when Mitch finally stands up to Curly. Shut the hell up, says Mitch. I’m on vacation. A harmonica is involved. And this is what Curly wanted all along, for little Mitch finally to grow up and be a man for once. To be serious instead of joking his way out of difficult situations that need more than a punchline. Curly knows that Mitch is playing cowboy, like all the other city slickers, because he is the rope tied in knots and doesn’t know how to come untangled. It is then that Curly gives Mitch the key to life that city folk just don’t get.