Please don’t let details like this get in the way of his victim hood.

Try taking a look at “Munich”.

Nuff said

I look at what Peter Berg did with THE KINGDOM and find a ‘yes we can’ pony in the Hollyweird manure pile. First, it’s an excellent film, every character vital to it’s compelling story. Second, politics is a viseral pathos that any ten-year-old implicitly detects without need for explaination. Third, particularly carried by Jamie Foxx, it is unappologetically heroic without descending into melodrama or becoming didactic.

People provided box office (as they did for THREE KINGS) BECAUSE IT WAS GOOD CLEAN PROVOCATIVE AND ENGAGING ENTERTAINMENT.

Contrast that with IN THE VALLEY OF ELI. Why was this suck of a film such a total morgue at the box office? Heck of a cast. I didn’t catch any drop off on production that provided any LOL moments. But take a closer look at what that esteemed ensemble signed on to: A hardened army vet – whose strained marriage is suffering the loss of his son after serving in Iraq – when viciously murdered stateside – becomes obsessed with finding his killer. The Army covers it up and fights him at every turn. The local police don’t care – until he shames a single mom detective into giving a damn. What does he discover – through shrewd and determined detective work with that ally – but to his dismay his son, tested in the ultimate way, discovered a sadistic dark side, as did the uncared for vets who served with him after they came home, got inebriated, and slaughtered him. Of course he is devestated, and, in a poingant ending, he reinstructs a local immigrant on how not to fly the flag.

To me, the whole point Breitbat & Nolte are making with Big Hollywood is sadly wrapped up in this monster. Not just that it is disgusting – tugging on all the strains of leftist anti-heroics to bash who we are as a people – Post-Stress = murder = grandiose commentary on Bush’s immoral war – BUT THAT HOLLYWOOD AS IT EXISTS BELIEVES THIS MESSAGE – AND WORSE BELIEVES THAT THE REST OF AMERICA NEEDS TO BELIEVE IT AS WELL.

It was many years after my Uncle returned from Vietnam that he shared one of his most angry resentments. In 1991. That the Post-Stress strain that became common wisdom represented barely a fraction of those who served, and, as heartwrenching as those stories were, there was rarely a mention that the vast majority found their ways through to live their pursuit of happiness. Nor that Corporate America was largely averse to hiring ex-military. That the chasm between those educated on revolting colleage campuses and those in the military remained seemingly unbridgable well into the Clinton years. Is there any corporate domain more doggedly recalcitrant in this manner than Hollywood? One of his favorite films from the whole sub-genre? THE GREAT SANTINI – hardly jingoistic despite Duvall’s powerful performance.

As a child of the sixties I believe part of that was because like it or not PLATOON and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY and even ‘Apoxy Now’ & COMMING HOME had a lot of influence.

Waldo more elequently expressed my heartfelt sympathies to Deb for her sacrifice and loss. I’ll only add that I truely believe that the generation who served with her son are already re-awakening the true spirit of sacrifice and service with what they are doing in the military today, and the books and articles reflecting on that sacrifice when returning home to grateful Americans.

They will make great movies – and help the rest of us muddle about what and why we believe what we believe – if they make movies good enough to compell us to watch – and take us on the magical journey back to ourselves. Free enough to view, and secure enough to have the time to contemplate it.

Of this I no longer have any doubt. There is no stopping the passion to get these projects made; not because of money, or politics, or the entrenched editorializing of a generation in power with the determined intent to blacklist them from existence.

Thank you Big Hollywood. God Bless Deb. And congradulations Peter Berg, miracles can happen, even on Hollywood & Vine (or there abouts)

Deb GOD BLESS YOU, you are one of our GOD STAR MOMS and I honor you. You son is now in the ranks of real heroes that protected all of us. Forget the traitors and what they don’t do. My own son is over in Iraq and I can vouch for everything you have said because he has told me how much the Iraqi people just love President Bush, America and our troops over there.

The sacrifice of Gold Stars Mothers like yourself will return to the entire world a 100 fold. Just as the Gold Star Mothers of WWII, that their hero sons saved the world from total evil in 1945. Your brave Capt. Argel has saved the world from Islam taking over the world. It is men like your son that become legends for future generations, who will return the favor when it is their turn to do their duty.

Deb
Proud mom of Capt. Derek Argel, KIA Memorial Day, 2005

2) Above the line, you can acount the number of people in Hollywood who actually know anything about the military, let alone who have ever SERVED in the military, on your fingers. If you took out Dale Dye and Lee Ermey, you’d probably only need your thumbs. The pedigree of actors, directors, producers, writers, etc. who served before 1960 is an aged and dwindling remnant, and the number who served after that is…virtually non-existant.

With that sort of talent base, it’s no wonder we continue to get the peurile, traitorous dog droppings most studios plop on the lawn and try to pass off as military pics. What’s more a wonder is how we ever, even accidentally, get anything else than that.

Even back in my military days, we regarded any Hollywood effort to portray the military as a de facto comedy. Probably a very bad one. Any resemblance to our actual military was purely coincidental.

And there certainly isn’t a star with the guts John Wayne had in 1968, willing to risk career suicide by making a 21st century “Green Berets”. Our modern crop of nancy-boy metrosexuals are too afraid they might break a nail, or be confused for someone who actually had a spine, a bass voice, and testicles.

They needn’t fear.