Category Archives: War(s) on Terror

Drama, Family Issues, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Homeland insecurity: Torn ***

September 5, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 23, 2013)

In the wake of the recent LAX shooting, The Islamic Monthly ran an interesting piece by its Senior Editor Arsalan Iftikhar, who made this pithy (and prescient) observation:

Now, the same right-wingers who would shout “terrorism” from the rooftops if the LAX airport shooter was a Muslim will likely avoid using the word “terrorism” at all since the shooter was a white Italian dude from Jersey. They will characterize this non-Muslim terrorist as a crazy kooky loner whose undiagnosed mental-health issues or work-related stress probably led to the attacks.

Also, these same right-wingers who always call for the “racial profiling” of Arabs and Muslims after every terrorist attack will now be silent since they would now have to call for the racial profiling of every 20-something white dude from New Jersey.

As if on cue, there’s a new indie called Torn (running in limited engagements) that tackles that meme head on. Set in a quiet Bay Area bedroom community, Jeremiah Birnbaum’s modestly budgeted drama opens with a dreamy, lazily-focused montage of pure, tranquil suburban-American imagery: shoppers at the mall, doing what shoppers do.

Shortly after the segment dissolves into heavenly white light (rarely a good sign), we learn through a TV news bulletin that Something Terrible Has Happened. There’s been an explosion at the mall (possibly a gas line), and there are fatalities.

The TV is in the home of an upscale Pakistani-American couple, Maryam (Mahnoor Baloch) and her husband Ali (Faran Tahir), both just home from work and setting the table for dinner. On their answering machine, they hear a message from their son, telling them he’s headed for the mall after school (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you what that portends).

As the couple begins to deal with their soul-shattering grief in the days following the tragedy, Maryam forms a bond and strikes up a friendship with a woman named Lea (Dendrie Taylor), a divorced, financially-strapped single mother who has also lost a teenage son in the incident.

However, Maryam and Lea’s burgeoning relationship is about to hit a major roadblock. Police investigators discover irrefutable evidence that the explosion was caused by a homemade bomb. The detective in charge of the investigation (John Heard) informs Maryam and Ali that their late son is the prime suspect, and that the FBI has been called in.

Suspicion weighs even more heavily on the family when the local media dredges up the fact that Ali himself had been picked up and interrogated after 9/11 (although never charged). Lea gets caught up in the rush to judgment, lashing out at Maryam and then giving her the cold shoulder. Lea’s moral superiority is short-lived. It turns out another teenager killed in the explosion had been bullying her son; he had vowed revenge and is now being investigated as well (the shoe is now on the other foot).

Despite the setup, the odd red herring and the fact that there is a “reveal” in the final shot, Birnbaum’s film is not a “whodunit” so much as a “why do we?”. Why do we rush to judgment? Why do we always fear the Other? And why do we always find it so difficult to look in the mirror?

Screenwriter Michael Richter wisely keeps the police procedural elements on the back burner, instead focusing on these central questions, via the shifting dynamics of Maryam and Lea’s relationship.

In other words, by handing each protagonist a glass house and a bag of rocks, he is leveling the playing field; thereby he is daring the viewer (by proxy) to cast the first stone after examining his or her own fears and prejudices. And for the most part, this device works quite well, thanks to strong performances from Baloch and Taylor. The message has been proffered many times before, but until it finally “catches on”, perhaps it cannot be repeated enough.

Documentary, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

SIFF 2013: We Steal Secrets ***1/2

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 1, 2013)

For his timely political doc We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, director Alex Gibney sets out not only to construct a “people’s history” of the whistle-blowing website, but ambitiously aims to deconstruct the Sphinx that is founder Julian Assange.

As to the first goal, Gibney scores, on count two, not so much; Assange remains a bit of a cypher. Still, Assange is only half the equation here. The real heart and soul of the film is the story of Pvt. Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked 700,000 government documents and pieces of classified military information to the site (his court martial begins Monday; although you wouldn’t know it from watching CNN, who are otherwise abuzz with all their pre-game coverage of the Zimmerman trial).

While he was unable to interview Manning, Gibney weaves in transcripts of email exchanges Manning had with hacker Adrian Lamo to paint a very moving, human portrait of this young man who (like Assange) is hero to some, “traitor” to others. Regardless of where you stand on that issue, this is essential viewing and could the most important American film of 2013.

Conspiracy a-go-go, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Let them eat yellow cake: Fair Game ***

July 16, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 6, 2010)

I would like to invite you along for a little stroll down memory lane…to a time, not so long ago, when we had this man in the White House who, well…went a little ‘funny’ in the head after a terrorist group attacked America. You know, funny, and what he did was, you see, he sort of…girded his loins to invade a Middle Eastern country that actually had very little to do with the specific group of terrorists who attacked America.

Naturally, he first had to come up with a viable reason . And what he did was, he convinced the Congress that the country in question was not only chockablock with evildoers, but evildoers who had weapons of mass destruction that surely would be wielded against America in the near future.

Now, he couldn’t actually produce any photos of these Doomsday Machines, but they did discover some suspicious aluminum tubes. Oh-and they heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another that they had been messin’ around with a substance called “yellow cake” which can be used in the manufacture of WMDs. Again, no real evidence, but nobody in the Congress wanted to be labeled as unpatriotic or anything like that, so they all went “Booyah! Shock and awe!” and opened those bomb bay doors wide.

So, the invasion was going swimmingly for a spell, and even those Americans who may have been scratching their heads over the aluminum tubes and yellow cake and such were keeping mum, because they didn’t want to be labeled as unpatriotic, either.Besides, all the journalists on the TV were supporting the troops, too!

But then, as the war began to drag on, and no stockpiles of WMDs seemed to be turning up, sleeper cells of not-so-patriotic grumblers could be detected all around America. However, as they turned out to be mostly aging, drug-addled old left-leaning hippie panhandlers and radical progressive pundits, the White House didn’t pay much mind to such gibberish-that is, until the summer of 2003.

That is when a former Foreign Service officer and ambassador named Joe Wilson published an op-ed in The New York Times called “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”. Wilson had been sent on a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002 at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, to investigate a report that Iraq had purchased some of the aforementioned yellow cake back in the late 1990s.

The gist of the piece was that there seemed to be a credibility gap between what the guy in the White House (you know, the one who went, sort of ’funny’ in the head) was claiming regarding the alleged stockpiling of yellow cake in Iraq, and what Wilson had actually discovered. ‘Someone’ obviously lied.

And it wasn’t Mr. Wilson.

That’s why ‘someone’ involved with the White House became very cross with Wilson. As a result, ‘someone’ accidentally-on-purpose allowed some confidential information about Wilson’s wife to get leaked.

In fact, it was only 8 days after Wilson’s op-ed appeared that conservative journalist Robert Novak published an article in which he identified Valerie Plame Wilson as an “agency operative” (as in CIA). The Wilson’s life became hell, and the question of whether or not ‘someone’ in the Bush administration was guilty of a criminal act (by outing a CIA operative) became a widely debated issue.

Eventually, following a Department of Justice investigation, a member of the administration, Lewis “Scooter” Libby (former chief of staff for VP Cheney) ended up taking the fall in 2007, when he received a 30-month sentence for perjury and obstruction The President (apparently still feeling a little ‘funny’) commuted Libby’s sentence, 4 months after the conviction.

You’ll note that I said Libby “took the fall”. I don’t want to name names, or put on a tin foil hat and suggest that there was a powerful cabal behind the smear, but in 2007, the Wilsons did file a civil suit against Messrs. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Richard Armitage (it didn’t take). Ah-(*sigh*) those were the days.

Indeed, many “Kodak moments” from the BushCo era came flashing back as I watched Fair Game, Doug Liman’s slightly uneven dramatization of the “Plame affair”. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth based their screenplay on two memoirs, The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson, and Fair Game by Valerie Plame.

Sean Penn and Naomi Watts bring their star power to the table as the Wilsons, portraying them as a loving couple who were living relatively low key lives (she more as a necessity of her profession) until they got pushed into a boiling cauldron of nasty political intrigue that falls somewhere in between All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor.

Viewers unfamiliar with the back story could be misled by the opening scenes, which give the impression you may be in for a Bourne-style action thriller. The conundrum is that the part of the story concerning Valerie Plame’s CIA exploits can at best be speculative in nature. Due to the sensitivity of those matters, Plame has only gone on record concerning that part of her life in vague, generalized terms, so what you end up with is something along the lines of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

However, the most important part of the couple’s story was the political fallout that transpired once Valerie was “outed” by Novak. Although Valerie (the more guarded of the two) is initially reticent to go on the counteroffensive, Joe is able to convince her that there is much more at stake than merely salvaging their pride by pushing back.

Liman wisely shifts the focus to depicting how Wilson and Plame weathered this storm together, and ultimately stood up to the Bush-Cheney juggernaut of “alternative facts” that helped sell the American public on Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The CIA, of course was no help; they dropped Plame like a hot potato once her cover was blown (essentially throwing her under the bus while wishing her best of luck).

In light of this past Tuesday’s depressing results, the timing of this film’s release could be seen as serendipity. We know from experience how ugly it’s going to get, and also learned that a bully is a bully until you push back. So why not take a bit of inspiration away from this political David and Goliath tale from our not-so-distant past? We’d best get in shape now. So…drop and give me 20!

Drama, Family Issues, War(s) on Terror

SIFF 2010: Son of Babylon ***1/2

June 27, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 22, 2010)

Son of Babylon is a tremendously moving “road movie” from Iraq, Set in 2003, weeks after the fall of Saddam, it follows the arduous journey of a Kurdish boy named Ahmed (Yasser Talib) and his grandmother (Shazda Hussein) as they travel south to Nasiriyah, the last known location of Ahmed’s father, who disappeared during the first Gulf War.

As they traverse the bleak, post-apocalyptic landscapes of Iraq’s bomb-cratered desert (via foot, hitched rides, and alarmingly overstuffed buses) a portrait emerges of a people struggling to keep mind and soul together, and to make sense of the horror and suffering precipitated by two wars and a harsh dictatorship.

Sometimes with levity; “I’m going to go call Sadaam,” a man says to Ahmed with a wink as he excuses himself to go take a leak. At other times, with understated eloquence; when one of their travel companions questions the futility of the pair’s fruitless search through the morass of mass grave sites spanning Saddam’s killing fields, the grandmother says “Losing our sons is like losing our souls.” The man’s mute reaction speaks volumes.

Director Mohamed Al Daradji and screenwriter Jennifer Norridge have created something that has been conspicuously absent in the growing list of Iraq War(s) movies from Western directors in recent years-an honest and humanistic evaluation of the everyday people who get caught in the middle of such armed conflicts-not just in Iraq, but in any war, anywhere. With few exceptions (David O. Russell’s Three Kings comes to mind), most of the Western-produced films about the Iraqi conflicts have generally portrayed the Iraqis as either faceless heavies, or at best, “local color”.

While the film makers do allude to some of the politics involved, the narrative is constructed in such a way that, whether Ahmed’s father was killed by American bombs or Saddam’s own pogroms becomes moot. This is a universal story about human beings, rendered in a direct, neorealist style that recalls Vitorrio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.

If the film has a message, it is distilled in a small, compassionate gesture and a single line of dialogue. An Arabic-speaking woman, who is also searching for a missing loved one at a mass gravesite sets her own suffering aside for a moment to lay a comforting hand on the lamenting grandmother’s shoulder and says “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Kurdish, but I can feel this woman’s pain and sadness.”

There’s one thing I can say for certain regarding this emotionally shattering film (aside that it should be required viewing for heads of state, commanders-in-chief, generals, or anyone else on the planet who wields the power to wage war)…I don’t speak Kurdish, either.

Drama, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

The worst years of our lives: The Messenger ****

June 22, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 7, 2009)

The bad news bearers: Harrelson and Foster in The Messenger

It took long enough. Someone has finally made a film that gets the harrowing national nightmare of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars right. Infused with sharp writing, smart and unobtrusive direction and compelling performances, The Messenger is one of those insightful observations of the human condition that quietly sneaks up and really gets inside you, staying with you long after the credits roll.

This is one of the best films I have seen this year (and one of the few with real substance). First-time director Owen Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon not only bring the war(s) home, but proceed to march up your driveway and deposit in on your doorstep.

Knock, knock.

“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your (son, daughter, husband, wife) (died/was killed in action) in (country/state) on (date). The Secretary extends his deepest sympathy to you and your family in your tragic loss.”

Those are words that no one ever wants to hear, and I can’t imagine any job in the world that could possibly be any worse than being the person assigned to deliver that message. “There’s no such thing as a satisfied customer,” deadpans Casualty Notification Officer Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson) to his new apprentice, Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster), who is emotionally shattered by his virgin encounter with bereaved “NOK”.

Sgt. Montgomery is a decorated, recently returned Iraq War vet whose enlistment is almost up. Although he accepts this one last thankless assignment with the stoic obedience expected from a professional soldier, he appears to privately suffer from PTSD; a condition that makes an odd bedfellow with his new responsibilities.

Stone is a hard-ass, a cynical careerist who carries a fair share of personal baggage himself. When he bluntly asks Montgomery if he is “a head case” right after meeting him, you suspect that this may be a case of “it takes one to know one”. Stone (and Harrelson’s portrayal) is reminiscent of SM1 “Bad Ass” Buddusky, Jack Nicholson’s character in The Last Detail.

In fact, there is a lot about this film that reminds me of those episodic, naturalistic character studies that directors like Hal Ashby and Bob Rafaelson used to turn out back in the 70s; giving their actors plenty of room to breathe and inhabit their characters in a very real and believable manner.

A subplot involving a relationship between Montgomery and a widowed Army wife (Samantha Morton) strongly recalled one of my all-time favorite sleepers from that particular era and style of film making, Mark Rydell’s Cinderella Liberty (worth seeking out).

Although the filmmakers hold back from making overt political statements, the notification scenes say it all-we continue to ship scores of young American men and women overseas whole of limb and spirit, and return many of them home sans either or both (or in a box)…and for what justifiable reason, exactly? And as heartbreaking, gut-wrenching and hard to watch as these scenes are-I am sure they pale in comparison to the agony of those families and loved ones who have answered the door and received that news for real.

In fact, I’ll take this one step further. I challenge anyone out there who feels we “need” to dig ourselves in deeper into our present Middle East quagmire to watch this film, reassess their justifications, and get back to me. Go. I’ll wait

Comedy, On Politics, Spy vs Spy, War(s) on Terror

Ay, cabron! The Men Who Stare at Goats ***

June 22, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 7, 2009)

These are not the droids you are looking for.

So what do you get when you cross Ishtar with Catch-22? Perhaps something along the lines of The Men Who Stare at Goats, the first genuine goofball farce that anyone has managed to squeeze out utilizing the generally unfunny Iraq War, Mark II as a backdrop. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste.

The film is directed by Grant Heslove (Clooney’s partner in their Smokehouse Pictures production company) and written by Peter Straughn, who adapted from Jon Ronson’s “non-fiction” book .

Ewan McGregor stars as Bob Wilton, a recently cuckolded Michigan newspaper reporter who decides on a whim to become a freelancing Iraq War journalist (circa 2003). As he tarries in Kuwait City, uncertain about how to actually go about getting himself into Iraq he crosses paths with a mysterious, intriguing fellow named Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) who “happens” to be heading that way. Initially playing it coy and denying that he is any kind of spook (in spite of veritably oozing Eau de Black Ops), Cassady does a 360 and opens up to Wilton, spinning him quite a wild narrative.

Before he knows it, the reporter is tagging along with Cassady on his nebulous “mission”, too gob smacked by tales of top-secret U.S. military programs involving the development of “psychic warriors” who liken themselves to Jedi knights, devoted to honing their mastery of various psychokinetic arts, to realize that he could be heading into the middle of the Iraqi desert with a man who is completely delusional and dangerously unhinged (it’s sort of a Hope and Crosby “on the road” flick-except with insurgents and IEDs).

As Cassady recounts the history of his personal involvement with these experiments, we are introduced to two significant characters in his past via flashback sequences (throughout which Clooney, sporting shoulder-length hair and mustache, bears an uncanny resemblance to a White Album-era George Harrison).

One is Cassady’s mentor, Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), a Vietnam vet who has written a bible of sorts, from which springs the concept of the “New Earth Army”…comprised of the aforementioned psychic warriors, with a litany of tenets co-opted from the Human Potential Movement to help guide them; think of it as a kind of a “hug thy enemy” approach-like if Wavy Gravy was the Secretary of Defense).

The other character is Cassady’s nemesis, Larry Hooper (the perennially hammy Kevin Spacey) a former brother-in-arms who has turned to the Dark Side (Okay, I’ll just say what everyone is thinking right about now-Bridges is Obi-Wan, and Spacey is Darth Vader…happy?). And now, it seems Luke Skywalker, oops, I mean, Lyn Cassady is on a “mission” to get the band back together.

The fact that Ewan McGregor was the young Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels is not lost on the filmmakers, who provide him with opportunity for self-referential spoofing reminiscent of Ryan O’Neal’s classic deadpan in What’s Up, Doc? (when he responds to Barbara Streisand’s Love Story quote, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” with “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard”).

There is some unevenness of tone, but with a dream cast, who are all obviously having such a great time, it’s easy to enjoy the ride. In fact, the film is a throwback to a certain kind of quirky, unfettered, freewheeling satire that pervaded the mid-to-late 60s; totally-blown fare like The Magic Christian, Skidoo, Candy and The Loved One.

A warning: There are two songs you will not be able to get out of your head for days: Boston’s “More Than a Feeling”, and the theme from Barney the Dinosaur’s TV show. You have been warned!

Just sayin’.

Biopic, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Superbaad: The Baader-Meinhof Complex ****

June 20, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 12, 2009)

Radical chic(k).

The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a new German political thriller that largely eschews the thrills for the politics, with nary a sympathetic character. I feel sorry for writer-producer Bernd Eichinger and director Uli Edel. Marketing a film that dutifully recreates a 10-year reign of terror by Germany’s most notorious (and nihilistic) group of underground radicals (especially this close to another anniversary of the 9/11 attacks) has got to be a tough sell, no matter how honorable the intentions. Still, the objective viewer will find much to admire within this difficult yet rewarding 2½ hour opus.

There are three fearless and incendiary lead performances that lie at the heart of it. Martina Gedeck is a marvel as Ulrike Meinhof. Meinhof was a well-known left-wing journalist in the late 60s, when she first met radical activists Gudrun Ensslin (a super-intense Johanna Wokalek) and Andreas Baader (Mortiz Bleibtreu, who played Franka Potente’s boyfriend in Run Lola Run).

The film begins during this time period, when the couple began to make the transition from protest to action. Their firebombing of a department store (to protest the Vietnam War) made an impression on Mienhof, who was already toying with the idea of making that jump herself. Within a year of their first meeting, Meinhof was firmly in league with Baader and Ensslin, who all eventually would form the nucleus of the self-proclaimed “Red Army Faction”.

After a prison break in 1970 that freed Baader (who had earned a 3-year sentence for the department store arson) and a stint of military training in Jordan with El Fatah, the R.A.F.’s actions began to lead to an ever-increasing body count. This naturally precipitated intense pursuit by authorities, who had the three principals and most of their associates rounded up by 1972.

Although the founding members were now incarcerated for good, there would still be another five years of activities by the R.A.F. Mark II- the so-called “second generation” of the organization; this period of their history (1973-1977) accounts for the final third of the film.

It is this part of the story that I found most fascinating. It demonstrates how (although doesn’t go to any length to explore why) such radical groups inevitably self-destruct by becoming a microcosm of the very thing they were railing against in the first place; in this case, disintegrating into a sort of self-imposed fascistic state that became more and more about internal power plays and individual egos instead of focusing on their original collective idealism.

This aspect of the story strongly recalls the late German filmmaker Rainier Werner Fassbinder’s 1979 political satire, cheekily entitled The Third Generation, in which he carries the idea of an ongoing disconnect between the R.A.F.’s core ideals and what he portrays as little more than a group of increasingly clueless, bumbling middle-class dilettantes who bear scant resemblance to the original group of hardcore revolutionaries, to ridiculous extremes.

As I mentioned at the top of the review, this is not a polemic, per se. Screenwriter/producer Eichinger (who adapted from Stefan Aust’s eponymous book) has stated in an interview that the intention was neither to make “…a didactic film nor a modern morality play about German terrorism,” but rather present events as they occurred, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusion. I think they succeed in achieving this neutrality; a wise choice, as these are not the most pleasant characters to spend 2½ hours with.

This is not a film for everyone. The 150-minute running time will be daunting if you only have a passing interest in the subject matter. If you’re intrigued by the sociopolitical historical angle, and appreciate top-notch acting, you won’t be disappointed. If you go in expecting an action thriller, you may find yourself glancing at your watch.

There is a line in the film that stuck with me. It is uttered by Bruno Ganz, who plays the head of the German Federal Police Force. It’s almost a throwaway, but I think it’s significant. Unfortunately I can’t recall the exact quote, so I will paraphrase. During a strategy meeting, he says something to the effect of “In order to effectively fight terrorism, it is essential to be able to step back far enough to objectively understand the terrorist’s point of view.”

The reaction of his colleagues is very interesting; they seem aghast and quite ruffled by the fact that he would even say such a thing. It’s such a simple concept (to me, it’s a variation on the axiom, “Know thy enemy”) but so difficult for the powers-that-be to understand sometimes. It reminded me of an era not too far past (September 12, 2001-January 19, 2009 to be precise) during when such “objectivity” was interpreted by certain members of our government as “empathy” ( “unpatriotic”, “not supporting the troops”). Good times!

Comedy, Conspiracy a-go-go, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Generals and majors ah ah: In The Loop ****

June 16, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 8, 2009)

Here’s a revelation, in the midst of summer movie torpor: The political satire is not dead; it’s just been sort of resting …at least since Wag the Dog sped in and out of theaters in 1997. Armando Iannucci and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche (much of the team responsible for the BBC series The Thick of It) have mined the headlines and produced a nugget of pure satirical gold with In the Loop. I daresay that it recalls the halcyon days of Terry Southern and Paddy Chayefsky, whose sharp, barb-tongued screenplays once ripped the body politic with savage aplomb.

When the British Minister for International Development (Tom Hollander) gets tongue-tied during a BBC news interview and blurts out that “War is unforeseeable” in response to a question about his stance on a possible U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, it stirs up a trans-Atlantic political shit storm, as hawks and doves on both sides of the pond scramble to spin his nebulous statement into an endorsement for their respective agendas.

When he later tries to backpedal by saying “Sometimes, to walk the road of peace, we have to…climb the mountains of conflict” it raises murderous ire from the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications (Peter Capaldi, as a classic Type-A prick) who tells the minister (among other colorful admonishments) that his awkward metaphor made him sound like some kind of “Nazi Julie Andrews”.

The gaffe-prone minister is given a chance to redeem his now precarious career status with a “fact finding” visit to D.C., under the watchful eye of Capaldi. Also along for the trip is the minister’s ambitious new advisor and chief handler (Chris Addison).

They are feted by the dovish Assistant Secretary of Diplomacy( Mimi Kennedy) who is desperately trying to keep him from the clutches of the hawkish Assistant Secretary of State (David Rasche) who is like an amalgam of Rumsfeld and Cheney, and of whom Kennedy observes that “…the voices in his head are now singing barbershop together.” Things get interesting when a war-weary general turned desk-bound Pentagon brass (James Gandolfini) joins the mix.

The filmmakers take aim at multiple targets, and hit the bull’s eye nearly every time with creatively honed insults delivered in deliciously profane pentameter by all members of the cast. Capaldi’s character in particular spouts some of the most uproariously clever lines I’ve heard in years. As for my personal favorite, I’d say that it’s a tossup between “I’m putting you on a probationary period…from today until the end of recorded time” or (b) “I will marshal all the media forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide.”

Politics as usual, I suppose.

Drama, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Surge protectors: Stop-Loss ***

May 13, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 5, 2008)

Stop-loss was created by the United States Congress after the Vietnam War. It has been used on the legal basis of Title 10 , United States Code , Section 12305(a) which states in part: “… the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States” and Paragraph 9(c) of DD Form 4/1 (The Armed Forces Enlistment Contract) which states: “In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless the enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States.” Furthermore, every person who enlists in branch of the Armed Forces signs an initial contract with an eight (8) year obligation, regardless of how many years of active duty the person enlists for.

-from Wikipedia

One year ago (almost to the day) I wrote a post where I tied in some classic “vets coming home” films with a war weary nod to the (then) 4^th anniversary of the interminable debacle in Iraq. At the time, Hollywood was yet to tackle a story about our latest generation of walking wounded; I was starting to wonder; did the studios have a case of cold feet on the subject, like they did throughout the duration of the Vietnam War, or was it simply “too soon”?

A few filmmakers have tested the water, with admirable efforts like In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone and Robert Redford’s Afghanistan-themed drama Lions for Lambs. Unfortunately, none of the aforementioned films have received much more than a nibble at the domestic box office (sadly, College Road Trip has already grossed more than any of those films have to date).

It will be a damn shame if Stop-Loss, a powerful and heartfelt new drama from director Kimberly Peirce, elicits the same yawning indifference from the American public. With echoes of The Best Years of Our Lives, Deer Hunter, Coming Home and Born on the Fourth of July, this could be the first substantive film to address the plight of Iraq war vets.

Co-written by the director along with Mark Richard, this is Peirce’s belated follow-up to her haunting 1999 heartland noir, Boys Don’t Cry, which was based on circumstances leading up to the tragic real-life murder of trans-gendered Teena Brandon, who re-invented herself as Brandon Teena (interestingly, the protagonist in Peirce’s latest film shares the same first name).

As the film opens, we meet Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), an infantry squad leader leading his men in hot pursuit of a carload of heavily armed insurgents through the streets of Tikrit. The chase ends in a harrowing ambush, with the squad suffering heavy casualties.

Brandon is wounded in the skirmish, as are two of his lifelong buddies, Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). They return to their small Texas hometown to receive Purple Hearts and a hero’s welcome, infusing the battle-weary vets with an brief euphoria that soon gives way to varying degrees of PTSD for all members of the trio.

Brandon, who has had a bellyful of war horrors, has decided to pass on his option to re-enlist. Steve, a crack marksman who is also up for re-enlistment, is on the fence. His company commander (Timothy Olyphant) is pressuring him to re-up and return to combat duty; but his long-time fiancée, Michelle (Abbie Cornish) is concerned about Steve’s sometimes violent flashbacks and may leave him if he opts to stay in the Army. Tommy, who is suffering the most mental anguish, dives into a maelstrom of alcohol and textbook self-destructiveness.

Brandon appears to be holding up better than his two friends; that is, until he is ordered to report back to his unit and finds out that he is to be shipped back immediately for another tour of duty in Iraq, on the very day he is slated for his official discharge. When he starts asking questions, he is curtly informed that he has been “stop-lossed, under Title 10 of the United States Code…” (see above) and is summarily dismissed.

Even though he has served in good faith and with a sense of patriotic duty, it now appears that the government has betrayed his trust (and why are we not surprised?). Determined not to take this sitting down, Brandon confronts the company commander, who views his protestations as “mutinous” and orders him to be thrown in the stockade. Brandon gives his M.P. escorts the slip and goes AWOL; Steve’s fiancée Michelle offers to tag along.

Brandon and Michelle’s subsequent road trip drives the film’s third act; it becomes both a literal and metaphorical journey through the zeitgeist of the modern American vet. Peirce and her co-writer largely avoid clichés; sans a few obligatory nods ( I believe that there is a rule stipulating that every war vet film must contain at least one scene where the protagonist gets goaded into a street fight and goes temporarily medieval after it triggers a flashback).

Aside from a brief (and eye-opening) depiction of an “underground railroad” network that enables U.S. expatriates to flee to Canada, the filmmakers manage to remain low-key on political subtext; this is ultimately a soldier’s story. After all, the bottom line in any appraisal of our current “war” (or any war, for that matter) is (or should be) the human cost.

The irrefutable fact here is that young people are dying, and many who do survive their tours of duty are left to deal with horrendous physical and/or mental damage for the rest of their lives. A beautifully played scene centered on a visit to a V.A. hospital brings this sad point home quite poignantly. Anyone with an ounce of compassion should find Stop-Loss to be wrenching and moving.

It is interesting to peruse the discussion boards on the Internet Movie Database regarding this film. As you might guess, there is predictable wing nut blather condemning the film as anti-American, anti-war hippie propaganda. But the most telling comments are coming from Iraq veterans themselves, who for the most part seem to indicate that the film rings true. Hmm, I wonder which of those two camps is more likely to know of what they speak?

Documentary, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Wish you were here: Standard Operating Procedure ***

May 10, 2015 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 24, 2008)

Auschwitz staff, 1944.

Abu Ghraib staff, 2004.

There was a fascinating documentary recently on the National Geographic Channel called Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell. It was the most harrowing depiction of the Holocaust I’ve seen, but it offered nary a glimpse of the oft-shown photographs of the atrocities themselves. Rather, it focused on photos from a recently discovered scrapbook that belonged to an SS officer assigned to Auschwitz.

Essentially an organized, affably annotated gallery of the “after hours” lifestyle of a “workaday” concentration camp staff, it shows cheerful participants enjoying a little outdoor nosh, catching some sun, and even the odd sing-along, all in the shadow of the notorious death factory where they “worked”.

If it weren’t for the Nazi uniforms, you might think it was just a bunch of guys from the office, hamming it up for the camera at a company picnic. As the filmmakers point out, it is the everyday banality of this evil that makes it so chilling. The most amazing fact is that these pictures were taken in the first place.

What were they thinking?

This is the same rhetorical question posed by one of the interviewees in Standard Operating Procedure, a new documentary about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal from renowned filmmaker Errol Morris. The gentleman is a military C.I.D. investigator who had the unenviable task of sifting through the hundreds of damning photos taken by several of the perpetrators.

I don’t feel a need to rehash the back story (especially when a Google search of “Abu Ghraib” yields over 3 million results). We’ve all viewed those repulsive photos ad nauseam, and the cold hard facts of the case have been well-documented and dissected.

The next logical question might be, what was Erroll Morris thinking? What startling new insight could he offer on this well-worn subject?

This guy is no slouch-he has been responsible for several of the most well-crafted and compelling American documentaries of the last 30 years, from his 1978 debut Gates of Heaven (a knockout doc about pet cemeteries) to the true crime classic The Thin Blue Line (1988), and his most recent critical success The Fog of War (2003). Once again, Morris serves up intimate confessions from his interviewees, delivered directly into a modified teleprompter.

Morris makes an interesting choice here. He aims his spotlight not so much on the obvious inhumanity on display in those sickening photos, but rather on our perception of them (echoes of Antonioni’s Blow-Up). So just who are these people that took them? What was the actual intent behind the self-documentation? Can we conclusively pass judgment on the actions of the people involved, based solely on what we “think” these photographs show us?

According to Abu Ghraib poster girl Lyddie England and several other of the convicted MPs who Morris interviews in the film, the “reality” behind the prisoner “abuse” was (in their perception ) “standard operating procedure”; they were merely “softening up” the subjects for the CIA interrogators. You know-just doing their job. One phrase you hear over and over is “everybody knew what was going on”, which sounds suspiciously like that old Nuremberg litany “we were only following orders”. And so it goes.

Morris also plays up the bizarre love triangle. When asked to explain her hammy poses for the infamous photos, England blames it on amore. “What can I say,” she shrugs, “I was in love.” She is referring to Charles Graner, currently serving 10 years for his part in the scandal (Morris was denied permission by the military to interview him).

As we now know, Graner was concurrently dating another MP, Megan Ambuhl, whom he has since married (it’s all so Jerry Springer). Here’s a sobering thought: Thanks to the “softening up” of America’s prestige conducted by the Bush white house, all it took was this taxpayer-funded white trash “scrapbook from hell” to drive the final nail into its coffin.

Morris has taken some flak for focusing only on those who some may consider the low-level “scapegoats” of the Abu Ghraib debacle; these critics seem to be implying that he is not targeting high enough in the food chain.

There is some merit in this assertion; the only brass who appears on camera is the palpably embittered ex-brigadier and former Abu Ghraib overseer Janis Karpinski, who angrily asserts she was treated to a dog and pony show whenever she visited the facilities.

But history will be the judge on those matters; regardless of where the chips fall, this film is a compelling (if disturbing) treatise on the fine line between “the fog of war” and state-sanctioned cruelty.