In many popular narratives of the period, it was the Baby Boomers (born 1943-1960) who “ruined” the movies. Here’s the pretentious film snob summary of the death of Hollywood’s alleged second Golden Age, as popularized by Peter Biskind. The seventies were filled with bold, dark art and transgressive intellectualism. Then the greedy Baby Boomers – like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas – made “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” and “E.T.” All of a sudden Hollywood did not want to make serious, grown-up pictures. Now it was the age of blockbusters so simple that 3-year-olds can summarize them.

It was the 1980s when Boomer Blockbuster filmmaking would arrive in the event pictures of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson. We see this tendency further in the films of arch-Boomers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. For a definition of Boomer cinema just look at the output of their company Imagine Entertainment. These aren’t the New Wave-influenced pictures of Roger L. Simon’s generation.

It was the Boomers who also gave us our most strident and simpleminded cinematic leftists: Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Michael Moore. Think about these three careers. Over the past 30 years have any of them shifted an inch in their political thinking? Of course not and neither have most Boomers who are still arguing over sex, race, and the Vietnam War as though it were still 1975.

If I speak with some hostility about the Boomers’ failings and excesses it’s partially because that’s my nature as a Millennial/Gen Yer. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe’s books each generation acts as a check on the excesses of its parent generation. As young adults in the ‘60s and ‘70s the Baby Boomers declared war on the cultural institutions of their GI Generation parents. The GIs (born 1900-1924) are what Howe and Strauss describe as a “civic” generation; they were driven toward creating social harmony. The Boomers (an “idealist” generation) were a check on that, fomenting greater individualism in the 1970s and culture wars in the 1990s. That our electoral maps are so split today is their fault. When the Civic GI President Ronald Reagan won in 1984 it was almost a solid red map. My generation – also a Civic generation – is a reaction against Baby Boomer extremes and will seek to create greater social harmony. This will become much more apparent as the younger Gen Yers in junior high and high school now start to make waves in 10 years.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet (born 1957) has been emblematic of the divisive Boomer paradigm for his whole career. His plays and films are famous for the “Mamet style” of short bursts of memorable dialogue and the mainstreaming of casual profanity.

And so in his book detailing his rightward shift away from a “Brain-Dead” Hollywood leftist, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, the reader finds this same mindset applied to the political essay. The need to divide the world into clear cut categories of Liberalism and Conservatism pervades the text. Mamet even capitalizes them to Emphasize the Great Importance of the Political War between Boomer Liberalism and Boomer Conservatism. Gone is Simon’s sense of skepticism in Turning Right at Hollywood and Vine.

The Secret Knowledge is a collection of 39 short essays. Mamet has crafted an experience like the signature Boomer film “Forrest Gump.” Life is like a box of chocolates – and devouring the delicious morsels of Mamet’s book is an addictive treat, filled with surprises. Who cares if it’s just a political sugar rush? Most conservatives are familiar with the bibliography Mamet cribs his ideas from: Sowell, Hayek, VDH, Friedman, etc. Thus they won’t learn anything life-changing but will still enjoy the thrill of Mr. Mamet’s Wild Ride. And if that sentiment doesn’t summarize the Boomer cinema of Lucas-Spielberg-Bruckheimer-Moore-Stone then what does?

The endowment of the Baby Boomer Hollywood Apostates is the call to fight, the drive to confront with big special effects, and the need to divide ourselves from the intolerable. This makes for satisfying blockbuster popcorn films and effective (James Carville-Karl Rove style) political warfare. While there is plenty to critique in the failings of the Boomer presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush credit must be given: the Boomer political strategists were masters. Too bad they wasted their brains on winning the electoral fights while ignoring (and sometimes exacerbating) the more vital policy fights.

In Part 4 of the Hollywood Revolt, we’ll see how the Gen X leader Andrew Breitbart is reinventing this confrontational spirit – what he calls Righteous Indignation — and redirecting it in a more pragmatic, effective way than the Boomers ever could.

“It is always about the work and if you do good work, people will honor you and work with you again. It is never about your politics.”

HANNITY: How did you get this love for the military? By the way, that “Blackhawk Down” movie it breaks your heart. You know, anybody that loves the military and appreciates their freedom, I mean, what they had to endure and what they went through was unbelievable.

BRUCKHEIMER: They protect our freedom. They protect our shores and you got to tip your hat to them. They put their lives at risk all the time. When you talk to them they say it is about country and family. That’s what they are about. They are about their country.

And so he has. Sparrow is back in “On Stranger Tides,” a dark race across high seas in search of the mythical Fountain of Youth.

“On Stranger Tides” begins with Jack Sparrow up to the antics that made him famous, impersonating a British judge in order to rescue Gibbs (Kevin McNally), his old shipmate. (Depp and McNally, like the actors playing all the reprised characters and most of the new ones, hit their marks with ease.) But their attempted escape is foiled by King George’s men, and Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush), now a privateer in service of the British Crown, demands that Jack join him on a quest in search of the Fountain of Youth.

The ever-adept Jack escapes Barbossa’s grasp, only to be captured by former lover Angelica (Penélope Cruz) and forced into the crew of her father, the mythically villainous Captain Blackbeard (Ian McShane), who is also searching for the famed fountain.

It’s a dark tale — in content, but especially in lighting. Much of the film occurs at night, in claustrophobic boat hulls or in life boats under cloudy skies. Jerry Bruckheimer’s latest (and director Rob Marshall’s first) is perhaps dimmer because of the 3-D, which isn’t great quality.

The story is “suggested by” Tim Powers’ 1987 novel of the same name, where characters are kidnapped by pirates, encounter zombies, and go searching for the Fountain of Youth. As such, it is a little convoluted, and the zombies and man/mermaid love story add little to the film.

Fortunately, if you’re looking for an action flick, this one doesn’t let up. From the first minutes, when Jack once again demonstrates his rare ability to elude British soldiers, there’s non-stop running, jumping, shooting, swordplay and explosions. Throw in killer mermaids and there’s almost nothing this film doesn’t have. This one earns its PG-13 rating, to the point that it’s not really for 13-year-olds. There’s a lot of dark violence. Captain Blackbeard is downright evil: he finds pleasure in burning a traitor to death and using sailors as bait to capture a mermaid (not your typical Ariel; these mermaids are topless and hungry). He’s willing to torture and murder to gain eternal life. Of course, his dedication is commendable, but there’s gotta be an easier way to live forever.

Actually, there is. Enter Philip (Sam Claflin), a solid Christian, unlucky enough to be a captive on Blackbeard’s ship. He lives out his faith through dedication to non-violence, outspoken advocacy for mercy in the face of danger, and through courageous defense of the helpless.

But Disney couldn’t follow through, and when Philip falls for a mermaid (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), his faith in God falters. Too bad – his spiritual foundation is stronger than the romantic dialogue that makes him question it, and the romance ends a little too weirdly to make the change of heart worth it.

This fourth installation truly sails stranger tides. It didn’t need to stay at the familiar shores of “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” and it avoided the extremities of Calypso in “At World’s End,” but these choppy waters are especially dark and more comedy-averse than the first voyage.  I, for one, look forward to when these pirates return to the Caribbean, and sail family-friendlier waters.

Bruckheimer’s latest new series (one of two this year), the police drama Chase (NBC, Tonight, 10 p.m. EDT), is up against a big challenge: Monday Night Football on CBS, the established hit cop show Castle on ABC, and the new hit cop show Hawaii Five-0 on CBS. Add to that a relatively weak lead-in from The Event (which is getting killed in the ratings by ABC’s Dancing with the Stars and CBS’s Two and a Half Men), plus a lackluster reaction from those who have seen the show (a C+ rating in the USA Today audience poll—14th out of the 21 new shows), and things do not look good for Chase.

That’s a pity because the show has some good things to offer. The central character is Annie Frost, a U.S. Marshall based in Houston, Texas, who is tasked with tracking down escaped fugitives. Nothing new there, of course, and Frost is struggling with personal demons of her own, which is one of the biggest cliches of contemporary crime fiction. She has endured traumas—her mother died when Frost was eight years old, and Frost’s father was apparently a raffish character involved in as-yet-unidentified misdeeds. She describes him as “a dad who confuses right and wrong.” This background seems to be what leads her to take excessive risks on the job—and her recklessness is presented as a moral failing.

Frost appears to be in her thirties and is blond and reasonably attractive but not glamorous. That, too, is all par for the course. But as played by Kelli Giddish, Frost is interesting, a very hard, driven woman whose choices can occasionally surprise. There’s a visible emotional intensity about her that seems to be always a bit more than the situation demands, especially when contrasted with the more even-keel demeanor of partner Jimmy Godfrey (Cole Hauser). There’s always a sense that Frost might do something crazy, like a milder version of Mel Gibson’s Riggs in the Lethal Weapon movies. She never really does, but that risk seems always to be there, and intended by the showmakers.

In narrative terms Chase is basically a straightforward contemporary police procedural with a small team of officers looking for clues; questioning witnesses; discussing the case in their common room while team leader Frost points to words and photos on a whiteboard; chasing criminals in cars, helicopters, on foot, and even in a river; and engaging in gun- and fistfights. Its story lines are pretty much what the show’s title suggests.

Visually, Chase emphasizes dark, underlit scenes, in the contemporary crime show style (even the daylight scenes are murky), and its stories accord a significant amount of screen time to the criminal, who is identified very early on.

The episodes shown so far establish the show as straightforwardly concerned with law and order. Some attention is given to analyzing clues to the killer’s psychology, but only as a way of figuring out where he is, not to diminish the sense that he’s responsible for his actions.

In that light, an interesting element of the show is the criminals’ attachment to elements of bourgeois home life. In the pilot episode, the killer has a young daughter whom he clearly loves.  In episode 3, “The Comeback Kid,” the criminal, a former Boston hitman, has been living a simple life with a good woman for 17 years, before a bad investment (probably the result of a scam perpetrated against him) and an encounter with three thugs set him off on a killing spree, and he is later confronted by double-crossing gunrunners.

None of this, however, is employed to diminish either criminal’s responsibility for his actions. The attachment to family is not shown as proving that the criminal is good at heart. Far from it, in fact: it tends to suggest that the criminal is willfully turning his back on a normal life in order to pursue morally wrong ends.  Moreover, in “The Comeback Kid” the additional wrongdoings by others serve to indicate the pervasiveness of crime in contemporary society. One gets the sense that this last element is meant less as a realistic depiction of the world than as a symbolic representation of original sin.

“When I was your age, I was renting penthouses with Harvard-educated hookers,” the hitman brags to two lowlife gangsters whom he’s about to kill. Clearly, then, his choice of a simple, bourgeois life was not a moral decision but a simple strategic matter, using the new identity as a sort of personal witness-protection program to keep himself from being tracked down by his former employers or angry associates of his past victims.

That sort of smart writing and morally uncompromising point of view are nicely original and true to life, and they help balance out the more formulaic aspects of Chase. It’s interesting to see a police drama—or any kind of TV series—with such an intense, continual examination of moral issues and uncompromising assertion of individual responsibility.

Whether that can save Chase from an early grave, however, remains in great doubt at this point.

The show is on life-support after debuting to an anemic total of 4.8 million viewers. It might last a little while, since it’s from Jerry Bruckheimer Productions, the makers of the successful CSI franchise and numerous other hit shows but also several unsuccessful series in recent years (such as Miami Medical and The Forgotten), but the lack of audience excitement (a C+ in USA Today’s audience poll) suggests it’s going to be a tough slog.

—–

The show is certainly not bad, just not particularly compelling. Its biggest flaw appears to be the lack of any particularly likable characters among the leads. The latter seems an odd choice, especially given that there’s nothing in the concept to suggest the central characters couldn’t have had some charm, and the performers chosen to play them have a history of decent audience appeal.

The concept is not only workable but in fact rather smart. It’s a legal show depicting both sides of a trial, as the prosecuor and defense both preapare their cases and then present them—to the jury and the TV audience. I can’t think of any specific instances offhand, but I imagine that this has been done before in a TV series, yet so has everything else. Thus it’s what the producers do with the concept that counts.

Their choice is to take a generally somber tone. Rob Morrow and Maura Tierney star as a defense lawyer and prosecutor, respectively, who were lovers during their law school days. The two remain friends but are somewhat antagonist in their personal relationship as well as in their opposing courtroom work. Tierney’s character seems to carry some special resentment toward Morrow’s, though her exact complaint was not made evident in the pilot.

With this rather unpleasant relationship as a backdrop, the pilot episode includes the expected controversial content in the legal case:  a high school teacher is accused of having raped and killed one of his students. Ethnic tensions are brought out, as the accused is a non-Hispanic Caucasian and the victim is a Hispanic female.

An early scene skillfully conveys the agony of the murder victim’s family and the worries and fears of the accused and his family. Bringing the ethnic tensions to the fore, hardnosed, determined prosecutor Kathryn Peale (Tierney) pursues the case as a hate crime on the basis of a student’s claim that the accused once said he hates “Spics.” Confident, resourceful defense attorney James T. Brogan (Morrow) explores every possible way of undermining the prosecution’s case, as is the convention in such situations.

The story then becomes a murder mystery in which the clues are uncovered through the simultaneous separate investigations by both the prosecution and defense as they build their cases—a very promising concept, as noted earlier.

All of this is distinctly reminiscent of the numerous contemporary UK TV crime series in which gloomy people confront dismal situations. Visually The Whole Truth has the dingy look common among contemporary U.S. crime shows, and it also involves the usual surprise revelations, cliched competitive banter between prosecutor and defense lawyer, arguments and competition within the legal teams, an open homosexual among the main characters, a wise African-American as authority figure, and other such overly worn conventions of the genre.

On the plus side, although the ethnic and gender angles are exploited as ways to spice up the story, they also present a fairly realistic look at how these issues affect political and social behavior.

As the story plays out, the prosecutor and defense attorney function in the classic role of mystery fiction detectives, and their summations before the jury at the end of the trial function as a pair of competing solutions offered at the traditional Gathering of the Suspects that’s a staple of the genre. The jury’s decision functions as the revelation of the murderer, though an astute person might still harbor doubts. Hence the writers include a coda indicating whether the jury got it right. I think it’s a good idea.

It’s one of many good ideas in the series, starting with the show’s basic concept. If the series can survive long enough for the producers to correct its unnecessarily dreary tone, The Whole Truth might just make it.

That verdict, however, may already have been determined by the initial audience reaction to the show, as the broadcast TV networks are highly reluctant to give a series a chance to find its way and connect with audiences. And that’s the sad truth about TV these days.

There’s another welcome and rare quality Cage delivers like few others at his level. Whether he’s drinking himself to death in Vegas or expressing admiration for America’s traditions and Founding Fathers during a quest for National Treasure, Cage never plays it anything less than sincere. Regardless of the role, this is one actor who refuses to wink at the elites so they know he knows he’s throwing a bone to the hoi polloi; he never acts as though he’s above the material. When you’re a star, goodwill matters and Nic Cage has had mine since his marvelous turn as a good man whose decency never fails to get him nearly killed in 1993’s under-rated  and under-appreciated “Red Rock West.”

For “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” which opens everywhere tomorrow, Cage re-teams with “National Treasure” producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director John Turteltaub. Unfortunately, that pedigree combined with all the goodwill in the world isn’t enough to lift this flat, noisy, special effects extravaganza into anything worth recommending.

Other than a single awkwardly contrived scene, the comedy adventure is not based in any coherent way on the famous and memorable cartoon chapter of the same name that starred Mickey Mouse and appeared in the Walt Disney masterpiece “Fantasia.”Like he did with “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Bruckheimer grabbed a known Disney brand and loosely built a feature film around it. That worked splendidly for “Pirates,” but it’s doubtful we’ll see a “Sorcerer” franchise.

Cage plays Balthazar Blake, a master magician and protégé of Merlin currently residing in modern-day Manhattan and on the lookout for a chosen one, a protégé of his own who might be able to save the world from his arch-nemesis Horvath (Alfred Molina), and free his one true love, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), from a spell that has kept them apart for centuries. Balthazar’s unlikely apprentice ends up being Dave (Jay Baruchel), a jittery, nerdy, whiz kid more comfortable in his physics lab than anywhere else.

You don’t need me to tell you how the rest will play out, and predictability is not the problem here. You can know how a story will unfurl and still enjoy the execution. The problem is that a hundred million dollars have been spent on eye-popping special effects and a concept with unlimited potential, but the silver bullet that undermines everything is the lack of rules in reference to the magic. There has to be rules in order for the audience to understand the stakes. Instead, in “Sorcerer” it’s anything goes. Horvath creates a giant dragon, Balthazar turns it into confetti; and on and on like this until the special effects dull your reason for living.

The unimaginative plot is also confusing. The story opens with two five-to-ten minute prologues, which is one too many. The first is set 1,000 years ago where no amount of voice over can make the needlessly complicated set up make perfect sense. The second is set in 2000 when Dave is ten and first meets Balthazar and is completely pointless.  

The characters aren’t very well developed. It isn’t until we’ve stopped caring that Balthazar is given any kind of emotional life and Dave’s quirky shyness is a little too mannered as played by Baruchel. There are plenty of laughs, but not enough to make up for a hollow shell of a story and relationships that never seem to connect.

Kids who enjoy watching others play a video game might enjoy this. Monica Bellucci is GORGEOUS to look at. Parents will appreciate the obvious desire on behalf of the filmmakers to create an innocent, old-fashioned romp for the whole family. The rest of you, however, have been warned.

If for no other reason than she saves me from having to spend money on a “Variety” subscription, I love Nikki, but this conservative has no problem whatsoever with Michael Moore being elected to the Academy’s prestigious Board of Governors, because this conservative believes Michael Moore has earned it.

Yes, Michael Moore is a liar, a shameless propagandist and an anti-American leftist of the highest order. But he’s also one helluva talented filmmaker and it would be wildly hypocritical for me to believe or argue that anyone should be blacklisted from AMPAS due to their political beliefs. And that’s the only reason I could possibly use to argue against this appointment.

In the medium of documentary filmmaking, Michael Moore is one of the very best at what he does, no more or less accomplished than Kathryn Bigelow, who was also elected this year. No more or less accomplished than the other Governors.

We Hollywood-hating conservatives are not the ones looking to hold people back based on their political beliefs. If I have an argument with AMPAS it’s not that they should blacklist Michael Moore, it’s why not elect Jerry Bruckheimer, Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty, or Robert Davi to this board? For they are also no more or less accomplished than many of the others.

I’m sorry to disappoint those looking for outrage over Michael Moore’s new gig, but we’re not the blacklisters here. I despise everything Moore stands for just as much as the Left surely despises everything Jon Voight stands for. But a blacklist is a blacklist is a blacklist.

Big Hollywood will fight Moore in the arena of ideas and expose him as the liar he is any day of the week, and relish it. But my frustration with his agitprop — especially the fact that he’s good at it — isn’t about to turn me into what disgusts me.

UPDATE: Commenter shinsnake says it better than I could….

Difference between them and us: they fight for power, we fight for balance. They fight for submission, we fight for freedom. No one cares that Michael Moore is a tool of a lying leftist filmmaker. We only aim to point out his lies, not to silence them. There’s no doubt he’s talented. He’d have to be to make his propaganda seem interesting and truthful.

I think that’s the single biggest thing people misunderstand when us crazy, right wing, conservatives rail against America-hating Hollywood. We’re not saying they shouldn’t be able to say what they want. We’re merely saying why they’re wrong. And we argue that they shouldn’t keep conservatives out of the conversation. People don’t seem to get that.

Gyllenhaal as adopted-Prince Dastan wields wits and a time-altering dagger as he flees for his life after being falsely accused of assassinating his father, Persia’s King Sharaman (Ronald Pickup). Aided by a mysterious princess on a mission of her own (Gemma Arterton), Dastan searches for the truth of his father’s murder, a plot that would devastate the empire. To save the kingdom, he must expose the plot before time runs out. 

Given that the film’s underlying premise is a video game, it’s no surprise that the story is a little weak. Actors take too long to say what they mean, and corny jokes abound. The script’s dialogue just isn’t quite as polished as most Bruckheimer films. 

But as a fun action-adventure, “Prince of Persia” is a good early summer flick. Gyllenhaal dodges assassins and soldiers with a free-runner’s agility, and early in the film the camera exquisitely follows the video game’s style. Sand-speckled scenes involving the time-altering dagger also set this film apart from other B movies. 

The film’s greatest gem however is Alfred Molina as Sheik Amar, a self-described unscrupulous small businessman. He waxes moderately and eloquently about a great evil that plagues the empire: taxes. His exasperation over government attempts to control his business, and later over the secret government-run, tax-funded assassin organization that is after Dastan, left the audience I watched with laughing and even clapping. 

This harmless film is complete with a significant message regarding brotherly bonds and government involvement. Not a bad way to start the summer.

The mystical adventure, based on a popular 1989 video game, is set in ancient Persia and surrounds the quest for a magic dagger capable of doing all sorts of things that include, naturally, bringing about the end of the world. Keeping its awesome powers to do both good and evil out of the hands of evildoers is left to Dastan (Gyllenhaal), the wrongfully accused Prince of Persia currently on the run from his own brothers, and Tamina (Gemma Arterton), the drop dead gorgeous Princess of Alamuta – a sacred city that holds the magic sand needed to make the dagger work.

In that sexually charged kind of way, things are a little tense between Prince and Princess. But that has to do with the fact that the adventurous Dastan was the one who led his country’s invasion and occupation of her’s. He’s roguish and in need of wisdom, she’s tough but a little spoiled. You’ve seen it all before but that’s because the dynamic works so well. And so in-between the many action set-pieces, banter and sparks must fly.

“Persia’s” glaring flaw is that it never takes off. While the plot has plenty of turns, there’s no moment where the story grabs hold and owns you. To the director’s credit (the versatile and under-appreciated Mike Newell), at worst it’s diverting and at best a few of the sequences involving Dastan’s striking acrobatic abilities do deliver in an old-fashioned Saturday afternoon matinee kind of way. Unfortunately, though, this is another one of those over-stuffed summer spectacles where as it rolls on you just know that what’s coming is an underwhelming climax that will at least look marvelous. And you would be right.

What “Persia” does have, though, is a spirit and charm that takes hold immediately and never loses its way.  The actors are smart enough to play it straight even as the story wisely never takes itself too seriously. And again, the real surprise here is Gyllenhaal, who strips away that soft, bewildered, meterosexual look and replaces it with a sparkle of wit and adventure. Upon first notification of his casting I’ve openly laughed at the very idea he could convincingly sword and sandal. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Another excellent piece of casting is Arterton as the love interest. There are way too many girls in movies today. Arterton, however, is all woman and refreshingly feminine. She can handle herself in a fight but there are none of those wildly stupid feminist moments like Cate Blanchett’s Marian showing up in full armor for the climactic battle in “Robin Hood.” As a mercenary scoundrel, Alfred Molina shamelessly (and effortlessly) steals his scenes with an ongoing rant against taxation that should warm the heart of tea partiers across America. There’s also something for our friends on the left. What’s not for them to like when a story involves the invasion of another country based on faulty weapons intelligence? 

I keed! I keed! None of these plot points come off as anything close to a political statement. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film after all… and have you stopped to thank the Almighty for Jerry Bruckheimer today? The only agenda this uber-producer has revolves around the putting of many asses in many seats. This is a man not only deserving of a Thalberg, but I’m currently lobbying the Vatican for the waiver necessary to begin cloning him. Five Jerry Bruckheimers and I can go back to bill collecting.

As far as the so-called controversy surrounding the casting of Caucasian Gyllenhaal as a Persian, just know that the same Leftists wringing their hands over this are the first to applaud when all kinds of Middle Eastern actors lose work after Hollywood bends over for CAIR and switches out Arab villains for Dutch munitions makers, or some such absurdity. Only after the left gets their indignation straight will I try to summon my own shit to give. Big Hollywood’s James Hudnall will address this “controversy” a little more thoughtfully next week.

Much better than Ridley Scott’s “Robin Hood,” somewhat better than the new “Clash of the Titans,” but nonetheless flatter than its energetic makers obviously aspired to, “Prince of Persia” — as viewed in an air-cooled theatre while grasping a fistful of Twizzlers – will deliver (an instantly forgettable) bang for the buck.

Hasn’t it occurred to the overpaid and over-educated studio execs that the rest of America, minus the liberal bastions of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco, would probably pay to see Americans be the good guys again? Jerry Bruckheimer has a great Afghanistan War project called Horse Soldiers based on Doug Stanton’s incredible non-fiction book about the first teams of US Special Forces who led the Northern Alliance to victory over the Taliban – on horseback. With Bruckheimer behind the project it will have high potential for box office success, if Disney lets it see the light of day.

Producer Chris Godsick has been trying to get the World War II version of Horse Soldiers about the last combat charge of horseback US Cavalry made for a number of years. Colonel Ed Ramsey who led that heroic charge of the 26th Cavalry against the Japanese is a good friend of Godsick’s and an acquaintance of mine. I’ve actually filmed several hours of in-depth interviews with Colonel Ramsey for a possible documentary, yet we can’t get The History Channel to bite, “We aren’t doing those kind of shows any more.” No kidding, Ice truckers, pawnbrokers and UFOs are The History Channel’s stock-in-trade now. Ramsey is 94, a still sharp and vital 94, but Chris and I both would like for him to see he and his men’s real life courage celebrated on film before he goes off to Fiddlers Green, the cavalrymen’s Valhalla in the sky.

America — you know, all the rest of America out there in Oklahoma City, Denver, Houston and Nashville, Albuquerque and Sacramento — wants to see heroes, American heroes and not just comic book heroes. Successful political thriller author Vince Flynn, Extreme Measures and ten other extremely well written “war on terror” centered novels gets this. On the Glenn Beck show recently, Flynn described his Mitch Rapp, CIA counter terrorism hero as a CIA version of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Rapp is a take no prisoners, break any law necessary and take any risk necessary to protect America kind of guy.

At least six of Flynn’s novels have made it to the New York Times Best Seller list, and he’s now made the number-one spot there as well. The amount of in depth research and his own innate understanding of the world his characters inhabit actually brought him under temporary scrutiny by the Secret Service and other top-level government security. Now the same government law enforcement and intelligence types are huge fans and often appropriate sources.

In a telling scene from Flynn’s Protect and Defend an enlightened but fictional centrist Democratic President tells Mitch Rapp:

“There are too many people in my party who think that violence is never the answer. It’s a very enlightening and alluring argument when made in a civil society that has a relatively efficient justice system. Even more so when unchallenged in the lecture halls of academia, but in the real world it’s a bunch of bullshit.”

Producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura has the rights to Flynn’s Mitch Rapp character, but now according to Daily Variety no studio is going to want to make these films. Flynn himself has said that in most of his Hollywood meetings the first thing the studio execs want to do is change the bad guys from Muslim extremists to something far more politically correct. His books deal with the intelligence, front line and political war on terror today, who the hell do they think the antagonists are supposed to be, a twisted Santa Claus and a group of demented elves! It doesn’t mean Flynn or his hero hate Muslims, in fact there are often sympathetic and even heroic Muslim characters. It’s the extremists who are in Mitch Rapp’s gun sights. Lorenzo di Bonaventura gets Flynn and his hero, so there is hope. If the no-nonsense Mitch Rapp is cast right the film could make a fortune, but will the studios bite?

Vince Flynn

In the 1987 action thriller Wanted Dead or Alive Rutger Hauer’s former CIA operative, now a bounty hunter, catches a murderous Muslim terrorist played by Gene Simmons just before he sets off a bomb that would produce a poisonous gas cloud that could kill tens of thousand of Southern Californians. Simmons has also brutally killed Hauer’s police detective best friend. The bounty hunter leads out the terrorist with his hands bound and a live grenade shoved in Simmons’ mouth, the pin of which Hauer now has his finger through. Hauer tells the government types to send the reward to his late-friend’s family and he’ll keep the bonus for bringing in Malak Al Rahin alive. Then he has a change of heart and says, “Fuck the bonus,” pulling the pin on the grenade and exploding Simmons’ head in a ball of flame. It’s an incredibly satisfying film moment.

If studio execs today want to attract audiences they should think about more Rutger Hauer and Mitch Rapp-type heroes in their movies instead of corrupt Americans, bleeding hearts and left wing actors.