Three words:
DON'T
DO
IT!
Friends don't let friends watch sorry ass movies.
We plowed through 20 minutes of bad tactics, stupid lines and "weaksauce" as Mike would call it, before Tony started cracking me up about berets and sexual orientation and saying stuff like, "Why did you pick this movie again?"
From the movie jacket I thought it was a war movie, but the art they used only represented about 15 minutes of bellocosity. The rest was ala Lifetime channel hybridized with a bad Monday night movie.
No.
Worse.
Turn away! Turn away!
According to the director, everyone comes back from Iraq mentally unstable, angry and well versed in the profiles of most psychotropic drugs. Granted I have no idea where people's minds are when they come back, still, I can't believe that this movie would depict all it's characters as broken by the war and emotionally stunted, anti-American teeth gnashers.
The complex issue of the war on terror was depicted by the director like a bad paint by number kit.
8 comments:
I can assure you that MOST people do not come back from Iraq with issues like that. Strangely enough, we have found that most of your PTSD cases are not even front line troops but rear echelon types. Funny how people who have not been there feel they can make a "realistic" film about what we go through when we come home. Clowns.
I have no idea what the movie is about, but I do not think that anyone can "assume what one comes home like."
We all take our "blows" differently. Wheter they are physical, emotional, or mental...we all take them, differently!!!!!!! I feel for anyone who has had to go through...this...(sorry,for lack of words)...war.
I hope that everyone comes home safe. And by safe, I mean sound.
I will watch the film... just to tell you that were right.
Thanks for the review.
thanks for the warning....or review...there are not enough good movies ....esp about what war really is...
( Best Movie - 6-6 and I went to see Ironman...not a movie or little kids, 6-6 is a teen...but an amazing movie...and amazingly it is about war and what it does.....)
namaste mama...
Mike-I think this is what bothered me the most. If you want to see a movie look for a documentary made by people with boots on the ground. Not by Hollywood folks motivated by money and a political hook.The only people that really have a right to comment on it are the folks who have been there and lived it.
anon- I agree. No one should assume anything about what has gone on there. Thanks for stopping by and for posting.
Here are several places to go and look at Iraq, Iraqis and Americans. These are just the tip of the iceberg and I am sure at time contradictory. Still if you want to know somethign you have to study lots of perspectives. Even the ones that may make you feel uncomfortable.
War Tapes http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2006/04/70749
or Home Front
http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/filmguide/archive/12725942.html
or Blood of My Brothers
http://www.storytellerinc.com/Iraq-site/BOMB/bomb-pages/bomb-about.html
or Voices of Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_of_Iraq
When I was in Iraq, someone sent me DVDs from TiVo...so I saw TV shows only a week old... There was one really stupid show called "Over There" At the time we called it "Over here".
The writers took all the stereotypicalbullshit TV/Movie characters from Viet Nam (every bad thing you could think of) and applied it to the people in that show.
It was really stupid. When I was in Iraq, I worked with some really smart, motivated, highspeed Soldiers, Saliors and Marines...they were all great people and I'd take almost anyone of them anyday and compare them to the assholes in holloywood as far as smarts and bravery.
Someday Hollywood will take the time to get it right...but don't hold your breath...
I just had the pleasure to sit down for more than an hour with a combat marine, a triple purple heart "winner." He had the fortune to survive getting blown up 3 times in two wars; twice in Korea and once in VN. I'm going to write about him. He's cool as a cucumber and at 74 he is dimly aware that something called PTSD exists, but not within his psyche. His wife begs to differ though, so I'm going to get him into a psychiatrist and found out how he "truly" is. Meeting men like him makes MY life worthwhile these days. I'm in awe of folks like him; and there are countless more serving right now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I know exactly what you mean about "trying" to watch a stupidly made war movie. The only semi-good ones are those on which Capt Dale Dye (USMC Ret) are a part of. Sometimes though, even he can't get the film makers to "get real." Thanks for the warning on this one: I WON'T watch it...