But there, the individual is killed for only one of his organs.
But while we dither, more species are being wiped out – an elephant is killed for its tusks every 25 minutes.
A teenager is killed for his trendy sneakers, and everybody associated with the shoe — the designer, the guy who created the advertising campaign, the president of the shoe company — has to come to grips with issues of attitude and perception.
Language has always been a weapon of nationalists: in the Bible, in Judges 12, Ephraim is killed for mispronouncing the word "shibboleth" and revealing himself an alien to the Gileadites.
The event that sets things in motion — a black teenager is killed for his trendy basketball shoes — feels less surprising now than it might have in the early Air Jordan days, but Mr. Kalleres has a good time with the premise, once it gets rolling.
He took out the scene at the end in which a few members of the Sharks help the Jets shoulder Tony after he is killed, for instance, because he felt it was inauthentic; in real life, the police would not let anyone carry off a body from a crime scene.
