This is a mediocre movie with an unrealistic perception of how sharpshooting works, some good action scenes, and a very generous helping of Hollywood partisanship. The theme of a lot of my recent posts has been the total impregnation of American media with liberal messages. I literally can't watch a movie anymore without obvious, heavy handed attacks on the Bush administration. So, this is a decent action movie with strangely mumbled and inaudible diologue. I enjoyed watching it, but not a ton.
On to the ridiculous partisanship.
First off, there's this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-de-zengotita/must-see-movie-shoot_b_45406.html
“Ok, I saw this movie yesterday, on impulse, just plugging into my retrograde and boyish American male love of bang-bang action movies--and lo and behold what did I find? A really smart bit of left wing (I'm for it!) propaganda aimed at the Bush administration, the Iraq War and, especially, Dick Cheney.“
Smart? Dude? It was hamhanded and obvious, and not at all insightful. It had all the usual “they fight wars for oil, but nobody will challenge them on it“ crap that makes my skin crawl. Nobody challenges them on it? Please go kill yourself.
But anyway, the arch badguy is a Senator named Charles Meachum, and he's meant to be Dick Cheney, only much more obese, poncey and ridiculous. He's a Senator from Montana... Which borders Wyoming... And we cut to a scene of him shooting clay pigeons, and making gay eyes at a waiter tending to his opulent outdoor spread. And later we cut to a scene of Danny Glover's character joking with him, saying “So I said, nice shot Senator! In the face!'' AHAHAH! Cause Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face, remember that?
It's just laden with anti-Bush messages, to the point it starts to get a bit sad and embarassing. And I have to sit through this.
How many movies have you seen where there's a Hillary Clinton character, who is comically evil, pandering and power hungry? How many movies have you seen where there's a John Kerry character who fakes his military service and is really a coward and an idiot? None.
So, sure, you're probably saying “Hollywood is liberal, duh, tell us something we don't know.” To that I would respond that it certainly is obvious, and given how obvious it is, it's a mystery to me why we can't be equally objective about the fact that the left has near total control over all other media (not just movies) consumed by our populace, and that they use it constantly to push their message?
Ultimately this movie's argument is a paradox. It proffers up the argument that greedy men like Dick Cheney go to war for oil, and we, as a nation, are too scared to face that fact. But this is a major motion picture, a popcorn flick, and it's making the very argument it claims is off limits. If we're not allowed to to talk about how evil Republicans fight wars for oil, then how come we do it so much that it's become a mandatory inclusion in every political thriller in the past three years?
We're not allowed to talk about it? You sure? I think we're more than allowed to talk about it. I think we're required to talk about it, to the point it's become a meme in our society.
But, whatever, you fuckwits over at Huffington Post can keep telling yourself it's “subtle.” Then it'll be ok for me to shoot you in the face, because that'd just be “argumentative.”
P.S: The character played by Elias Koteas is ridiculous, and I forbid Hollywood to include this forumla in any more films. He's that bizzare, gropey, sexual badguy who always seems to get his hands on the female love interest, and start slurping words into her ear, and acting all manic and deranged when the hero is in peril. It speaks to the “subtlety” of this film that they felt the badguys weren't suitably evil when they murdered a bunch of Etheopian villagers, murdered an Etheopian Cardinal, framed an American hero, and generally acted like jerks. The need to be rapist perverts, too.