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Cinema - Movies supportive of the war

Here I collect reviews of the small number of movies supportive of the war effort.

Reviews

Team America: World Police - The only movie at all about the war in 2001-2005 (albeit a comedy).

• Team America: World Police (2004) is the perfect antidote to Fahrenheit 9/11.
  • A hilarious attack on Michael Moore, ignorant Hollywood celebrities and the anti-war left. Well, it's not quite the pro-war movie we're looking for, but it's something. It's a tiny bit of relief while we wait for a decent movie about the war.
  • See the script.
  • And it actually has the bravery to slag off a genuine dictator, the genocidal butcher Kim Jong Il of North Korea, who - unlike Bush - actually kills people who offend him. Slagging off Bush is safe and risk-free. Slagging off a real, living dictator takes guts.
  • Gary's famous speech at the end: "We're dicks! ... And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. ... But dicks also fuck assholes. Assholes who just want to shit on everything. ... I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole ..." Such delicious disrespect to a real-life living murderer.
  • The speech, with pictures

Munich (Dec 2005) - The first proper movie since 9/11 in which the bad guys are Islamists

• Memo to Spielberg: We're facing a "War of the Worlds" by Diana West, September 13, 2004 - Spielberg is honoured for his movies on World War 2: Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. His new movie is on the fictional War of the Worlds. And yet we are in World War 4, and Spielberg and everyone else in Hollywood is ignoring it: "But no "cinema" - not by Spielberg, not by anyone - is recalling anything, utterable or not, about the colossal struggle of our age. There is no cultural echo chamber in which this conflict finds resonance."
• War Of The Worlds, Mark Steyn, The Spectator, July 9th 2005 - "Hollywood is in the middle of its worst box-office slump in decades. ... And no one can quite figure out why this should be. ... my theory on why the box-office is down: in 'interesting times', Hollywood is making films about nothing. ... Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a lavish nullity: the industry's slump is set to continue."

But in fairness he then makes an important movie. It's still not about the modern war, but it is a modest breakthrough:

• Munich (Dec 2005) by Steven Spielberg, based on Yuval Aviv's alleged account of Operation Wrath of God, the assassination of Palestinians involved in the Munich Massacre.

• OK I finally got to see it. It was a good film dramatically, but I didn't believe a word of it. None of it rang true to me, and left me convinced that those who doubt Yuval Aviv's story are right.
• Getting their information from a mysterious French family, the CIA protecting a target, members of the team being stalked and killed (and not replaced!), the Mossad agents alone and abandoned by the agency, the Mossad and Palestinians sharing the same safe house, the endless agonising by the agents over the ethics of killing Palestinian terrorists - none of it felt true to me. It would never have been like that.

• It is disputed by many people (including the former head of Mossad) that Yuval Aviv was ever in Mossad at all:
  • Spielberg could be on the wrong track, by Yossi Melman
  • Munich: fact and fantasy by Yossi Melman and Steven Hartov
  • A 'Munich' to remember - or not by Yossi Melman

• So I thought it was all pure fiction. But did I enjoy it? Yes, I thought it was quite good. Critics said it was full of leftist moral ambiguity about counter-terrorism. Yes there was a bit, but not a huge amount. The Israelis were still the good guys. They were shown trying to avoid civilians, while the Palestinians were shown targeting civilians. Critics also said the film promotes the popular idea that Israel's response to terror may have led to more terror (including 9/11). But I didn't get that from the film at all.
• No, I liked it, though it felt like pure fiction. And why do I say it is "a modest breakthrough"? Simply because, even though it is not about the modern war, this is the first major movie since the Islamist killings on 9/11 where the bad guys are actually Islamists.

The TV movie Flight 93 (Jan 2006) - The best movie of the last 5 years

• Having at last seen it on video, it is beyond my comprehension why the TV movie Flight 93 (2006) was not in the cinema.
• This is without doubt the best movie of the last 5 years.
• In a historic time, when there is only one great story, and all of cinema is terrified to deal with it, this movie deals with it head on. This movie captures the raw emotions of that day far better than United 93. And yet it never made it to cinema, while a thousand worthless turkeys did.

The cinema movie United 93 (June 2006) - The first proper cinema-released movie about 9/11. The first cinema-released movie about the War. The first cinema-released movie since 9/11 in which the bad guys are the modern Islamists.

• United 93 (2006) by Paul Greengrass.

• To be precise, it took 4 years and 9 months.
• If the same absurd leftist McCarthyism had prevailed in Hollywood in WW2, then the first movie about the war would have come out in Sept 1946.

• This movie is not bad. Not a masterpiece. It is brilliant on capturing the confusion of that day, the totally unexpected, unbelievable nature of the attack, and the sheer innocence of the targets. It captures that "Sept 10th" feeling.
• But it doesn't capture the raw emotions of that day remotely as well as the TV movie Flight 93.
• But still, what a breakthrough for cinema. It is the film Hollywood has been terrified to make ever since 9/11. Not a masterpiece. But it's a start.

• Note Flight 93 had no children on board. Neither did the lead (Mohamed Atta) WTC flight.
  • The other two flights - the second WTC plane and the Pentagon - had children on board.
  • When you watch the video of the second plane hitting the WTC, you are watching a 2 year old, a 3 year old and a 4 year old being killed live on TV.

The Kingdom (Oct 2007) - The first fictional movie since 9/11 in which the bad guys are the modern Islamists.

• The Kingdom (2007)
  • This is a historic film. It is the first movie since 9/11 with a fictional story in which the bad guys are the modern Islamists. It took 6 years, but Hollywood finally delivered one film.
  • And it is a quality action film. Restrained, stylish, and beautifully shot. The Americans are the good guys. But with a convincing, sympathetic Saudi policeman and his colleagues among the heroes. No jingoistic speeches. No wisecracks as bad guys are killed. The Saudis help the Americans not so much because they are pro-American but because they are conservatives who despise jihadi anarchy. The film is strongly pro-American, but in a restrained, low-key way.
  • It has a really convincing, classic Islamist attack - against defenceless civilians, with a followup attack using a bomb-laden ambulance to kill a huge number of rescue workers. Classics of the Islamist way of war.
  • And no shit politics. None! No dumb, trite messages at the start or the end. None!
  • Some people on the right thought the fact that both sides in the film said "Don't worry - We're going to kill them all" was some sort of statement of moral equivalence. But I didn't get that at all. It was just a statement of reality. The jihad wants to kill all infidels - men, women and children. And the good guys want (or should want) to kill all jihadi fighters (rather than, say, address their grievances). What is the problem?

• One for the Good Guys: An action thriller that approaches reality, by John Podhoretz, 8 Oct 2007. He likes The Kingdom, and brilliantly mocks Hollywood's previous efforts: "Unfortunate moviegoers who have suffered through Hollywood's recent efforts to make geopolitical sense of the Middle East may spend some of the running time watching this new suspense thriller .. with a sense of looming dread. Surely, any moment, there will be a scene in which it is revealed that the bombing of an American housing compound in Saudi Arabia ... was not the work of Islamofascist terrorists but rather of an evil oil company. Or the U.S. government. Or militant Christians ... who are killing Americans to try and start a holy war with Muslims" "The great surprise of The Kingdom is that it does not take this approach at all - which is why, among other things, it is going to be embraced by Americans who will be thrilled by its unapologetic depiction of a heroic crew of stateside good guys going into Saudi Arabia in pursuit of those who slaughter innocent Americans in Allah's name.".

Further movies about the war

• World Trade Center (2006)
  • This was directed by the leftist Oliver Stone, the man who perhaps more than any other has provided us with a distorted, negative, anti-military, anti-American image of the Vietnam War:
    • Platoon (1986).
    • Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
    • Heaven & Earth (1993).
  • And yet, incredibly, he does not bring his stupid politics into this movie. It is a fine piece of filmmaking, capturing the heroism both of the Port Authority police officers and of their rescuers. I never thought I'd say it, but well done, Oliver Stone.

I haven't seen these yet:

• American Soldiers: A Day In Iraq (2005). Not in cinemas here.

• The documentary God And Country (2007). Not in cinemas.

• The Outside the Wire documentaries.

Honourable mention

1. The James Bond film, Die Another Day (2002). The enemy is the communist genocide state of North Korea. Braver than most Hollywood movies.

2. Tears of the Sun (2003). Haven't seen it yet. Sounds good. The bad guys are rebels in Nigeria. They are identified as Muslim, but whether they are really Islamists I don't know.

3. The Lives of Others (2006) - A real, serious film about communism.
   • Was it only 20 years ago? Hard to believe it was the 1980s. I was young and free, and I was on the Internet, and half of Germany was communist. It is hard to believe.

4. 300 (2007) - Cracking, subversive stuff. The best movie since 9/11.

5. The Kite Runner (2007). Haven't seen it yet. Sounds good. About Afghanistan. Not about the Americans (it's all set before 2001), but rather about the Soviets and the Taliban.
   • Libertas says it is "the first serious look from a major studio release at the brutality of our Islamofascist enemies, and more importantly, the very people we are so deperately hoping to liberate."

6. The quality monster movie Cloverfield (2008). Very pro-military. The U.S. military are portrayed as brave and heroic, rushing forward to fight this monster as all the civilians run away. Right from the start, the U.S. military are the only hope to save the day. The civilians can't help at all. They can only hope the military win. At the end, a B-2 stealth bomber appears like an avenging angel, and when it drops its bombs you cheer with relief.

7. Vantage Point (2008)
   • This is a strange film. It's entertaining, but the plot makes no sense and has a million holes:
   • On the good side, the US are clearly the good guys. The terrorists are the bad guys.
   • But it is never made clear who exactly the terrorists are. There are hints that they are Islamists, but it is never confirmed. There is a back story about a threat from Moroccan Islamists, but there are a lot of decoys and double bluffs in this film, and it is never made clear if the Moroccan back story is connected with the gang who actually carry out the attack here. One of the gang has a wife in hijab, and carries out a suicide bombing, but others (e.g. a girl in a flimsy top) seem very European and secular. They never mention Allah, or jihad, or infidels, even when talking among themselves. The closest we get is one saying: "This war will never end." (What war?)
   • Debbie Schlussel and Libertas think they are Islamists, but I think it is left deliberately ambiguous. I don't think it counts as a movie where the bad guys are Islamists. It's far too ambiguous.

8. The comic-book movie Iron Man (2008) features Afghan jihadi bad guys.

9. Rambo (2008) - not about the war, but about the brutal Burmese regime, so still braver than almost all films since 9/11. Making the bad guys a foreign tyrannical government has become very rare in cinema.
   • Libertas review. "Stallone's made an allegory about the fight against al-Queda, the fight against evil - the fight against those who do nothing to stop evil."
   • Allegedly, Stallone wanted to make it about Bin Laden, but Hollywood wasn't interested.
   • Rambo inspires Burmese dissidents (and here). Comment: "I think this news item is a testament to the power of film, and it just serves to underscore the depth of betrayal we've suffered from our own people in the last five years. If one man with a clear moral sense can inspire the Burmese with a mid-budget movie, what could twenty of them have done? Thirty? Instead we get hateful, wretched, stupid anti-American crap."
   • Burma bans the film. The unelected regime is furious. "Stallone's fictional exploits have made him a folk hero among the government's real-life foes here, who circulate bootleg DVDs of the film". " 'Everyone likes to live in the world of fantasy at least for a short period. Even in a movie, we are happy to see the American mercenary enter Myanmar to smash up the brutal army,' a 22-year-old university student said." Since when have Hollywood's safe, predictable films ever managed to really upset any of the world's tyrannies? Seems a long time since Hollywood made a film this dangerous.

A Mighty Heart

• A Mighty Heart (2007), movie about Daniel Pearl, directed by leftist Michael Winterbottom, starring Angelina Jolie.
  • I was pleasantly surprised by this. It's a well-made film about the torment suffered by Pearl's family and friends.
  • I'm not sure it counts as a movie where the bad guys are Islamists, though, because, believe it or not, there are no bad guys. At least, not on the screen. The Islamists that kidnapped and killed Pearl never appear on screen. Only a few shots of their associates. We never see Pearl in captivity. We do not see them behead him. We do not see the video of it that is online: We do not see them dismember him. We see no jihadi actions on screen at all. They all take place off-screen. It's a well-made film. But it feels as if there is some bizarre and extreme self-censorship making a hole in the middle of it.
  • The movie contains shots of Pakistani police torturing a jihadi, and TV clips of jihadis in Guantanamo. And yet not a single clip of the jihadis in action. It's very odd. Some have thought the message of the other clips was one of moral equivalence - that both sides are as bad as each other. But I didn't get that. It was very understated if that was the message. The film seemed pretty anti-jihadi to me.
  • So I don't agree with Debbie Schlussel's review, May 24, 2007, that the film was trying to find excuses for the jihadis. But I do agree that it was an odd film. "instead of scenes of Muslims beating, interrogating, torturing, beheading, and dissecting Daniel Pearl, we see Muslim Asra Nomani crying and anguishing over Danny. We see Muslim police officers very concerned about Pearl." I'm sure many secular and liberal Muslims in Pakistan did anguish about Pearl, and tried to help. But to show them and not show the Islamist execution and mutilation seems like an act of evasion. Why not show the whole world, warts and all, instead of a sanitised version?
  • As usual, the Internet provides a much more shocking reality: The image of the jihadi holding up Pearl's severed head is one of the iconic images of this war against utter evil. It is a symbol of what the global jihad will do to all of us if it wins. Maybe cinema could not show this. But why did it have to be so sanitised?
  • Libertas blog: "The only "terrorist" behavior shown on screen is done by our side. Our government teams up with the Pakistan anti-terrorism squad to find Pearl and along the way the "good" guys torture, threaten, and even talk about how much they enjoy it. We only see Daniel Pearl through photographs sent by his kidnappers. Their treatment of him is never dramatized and Winterbottom doesn't even bother to let us hear Pearl's execution videotape, much less see it."
  • The film made very little money, and perhaps the decision not to dramatize Pearl's murder (or even his kidnapping!) is the reason why. Libertas blog: "Is it unreasonable to wonder if the failure of A Mighty Heart is due to an agenda-driven approach to the film? What else explains the conscious decision to not let us feel something for Daniel Pearl? ... To not dramatize his ordeal or let us get a sense of his suffering? To only show our side brutalizing others? It's all so cold and efficient you have to wonder if the people involved in crafting it weren't so worried about ginning up support for the War on Terror that they decimated their own film"

The movie 300 (2007)

• The movie 300 (2007), based on the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller.
  • Dialogue

• This is about the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC - the last stand of Ancient Greek civilization (and infant western democracy, science, mathematics and philosophy) against invading Persian armies. A rare movie whose subject matter at least is attuned to the times.

• Macrohistorical battles tied to the existence of European civilisation
• Victor Davis Hanson: "almost immediately, contemporary Greeks saw Thermopylae as a critical moral and culture lesson. In universal terms, a small, free people had willingly outfought huge numbers of imperial subjects who advanced under the lash. ... If critics think that 300 reduces and simplifies the meaning of Thermopylae into freedom versus tyranny, they should reread carefully ancient accounts ... who long ago boasted that Greek freedom was on trial against Persian autocracy, free men in superior fashion dying for their liberty, their enslaved enemies being whipped to enslave others."
• Victor Davis Hanson on the argument that this was not freedom v. tyranny: "True, 2,500 years ago, almost every society in the ancient Mediterranean world had slaves. ... Sparta turned the entire region of Messenia into a dependent serf state. But in the Greek polis alone, there were elected governments, ranging from the constitutional oligarchy at Sparta to much broader-based voting in states like Athens and Thespiae. Most importantly, only in Greece was there a constant tradition of unfettered expression and self-criticism. Aristophanes, Sophocles and Plato questioned the subordinate position of women. Alcidamas lamented the notion of slavery. Such openness was found nowhere else in the ancient Mediterranean world. That freedom of expression explains why we rightly consider the ancient Greeks as the founders of our present Western civilization - and, as millions of moviegoers seem to sense, far more like us than the enemy who ultimately failed to conquer them."

• 300 Shocker: Hollywood takes a detour to reality, David Kahane, March 12, 2007 - "When, early in the film, a sneering Persian emissary insults King Leonidas's hot wife, threatens the kingdom, and rages about "blasphemy," the king kicks him down a bottomless well. And yet nobody in Sparta asks, "Why do they hate us?" and seeks to find common ground with the Persians on their doorstep. Why not? ... that noise you hear this morning is the wind created by hundreds of writers from Playa del Rey to Santa Barbara, sticking their fingers in the air to see if the wind's suddenly shifted, wondering if they can shelve their metrosexual Syriana and Babel knockoffs and conjure up some good old-fashioned "men of the West" material. Because the dirty little secret is, we used to write these movies all the time. Impossible odds. Quixotic causes. Death before surrender. Real all-American stuff, in which our heroes stood up for God and country and defending Princess Leia and getting back home to see their wives and children, with their shields or on them. And the dirtier little secret is: We loved writing them."

• Frank Miller understands the modern war:
• Holy Terror, Batman!, forthcoming graphic novel by Frank Miller in which Batman defends Gotham City from Al-Qaeda.

• Libertas: "I sat in the theatre waiting. Waiting for the switch. ... There's always a bait and switch. ... But there was no switch. Here's a movie about free men dying to protect freedom against tyranny - where the anti-war voices are corrupt, cowardly, dead-wrong, and politically driven - where people talk about the honor of dying for one's country - where a strong women urges a skittish council to declare war because the enemy already has - and there's no switch. ... I've no doubt critics ... are calling 300 old-fashioned, and worse. But they're wrong. After forty years of liberal rule in Hollywood it is nihilism that's old-fashioned. It is moral relativism that is tired. It is political correctness, the always-noble people of color, the always-evil white guy, and the metrosexual that is cliched. A film with a clear divide between good and evil is something new. A film that celebrates patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, freedom, and honor is something revolutionary."
• Comment: "it's what movies are supposed to be about. It is what Hollywood has lost."
• Libertas: "300 is what war movies used to be: uncompromising when it came to liberal ideals such as freedom and liberty. These are men choosing death over the "peace" of enslavement, refusing to even talk with those who demand surrender."

• Iran's complaints about 300's insults to the Persian Empire are ridiculous. Like Egypt, Iraq and other Islamic countries, Iran had little or no respect for their pre-Islamic history, which was regarded as a time of paganism and idolatry. Almost all of the history of ancient, pre-Islamic Persia was written up and excavated by enthusiastic infidel Europeans, not by largely uninterested and ungrateful Iranians.

• Dilios, fighting with a massive Greek army one year later at the Battle of Plataea: "Long I pondered my king's cryptic talk of victory. But time has proven him wise, for from free greek to free greek the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his 300, so far from home, laid down their lives, not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds. Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, Persian hordes face obliteration! Just there the barbarians gather, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers, knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of 300. Yet they stare now across the plain at 10,000 Spartans commanding 30,000 free Greeks! Ho! The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one! Good odds for any Greek. This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny, and usher in a future brighter than anything we could imagine. Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300! To victory!"

300 is the no.1 grossing R-rated movie in the world since 2004

• 300 box office
• 300 had the biggest Spring opening weekend of any movie ever, and briefly hit no.1 grossing film of 2007 both in the U.S. and worldwide charts, before the summer kids' blockbusters came out.
• It ended the year as still the no.1 R-rated movie of 2007, and in fact the biggest R-rated movie since 2004.
• It was made for $65 m, and has so far made over $450 m. You can come up with theories why this is, but I think it illustrates my point that people are desperate to see a movie showing the defence of the West against its enemies. The group-think of Hollywood was never going to listen to the 6 long years of complaints about the lack of such films. But now they can see with their own eyes the amount of money they are losing, this may change. Some real films about the War may be made soon.

• Comment on the mystery of Hollywood not wanting to make any money: "We’ve heard Hollywood’s lame ass excuse every time a new “We Hate America” movie comes out and bombs, people are sick of the war and don’t want to hear anymore about it. O.K. if they are then why do they keep cranking these films out if it’s clear that the public doesn’t want them? Why would you keep making a product that you say no one wants? What’s also odd is that Hollywood has not even tried to make a film that shows the war or the troops in a positive light. You’d think that it would make business sense to test the waters with both types of films and see which makes money. The real reason is Hollywood is scared to death at even the chance of such a film even being moderately successful. Because that would blow their lame argument right out into space and they would rather drink their own urine then make any pro-war/US films even if they make them money. People always say how inefficient the government is and how it should be run like any other business. Well here is a business that seems to be even worse run then government. They keep making products they claim people don’t want. Yet when the public tells them want they want they ignore it and keep making the product they don’t want. Washington is a model of efficiency compared to this."

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