Captain Phillips (***1/2)

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viewed 12/1/13 5:05 at AMC Cherry Hill

Source Code (***1/2)

Imagine waking up on a Chicago-bound train with no idea how you got there or why the unfamiliar young lady (Michelle Monaghan) next to you seems to know you, but by another name. That’s what happens to the character played by Jake Gyllenhaal here, and it’s not a story about amnesia, but something else entirely. Perhaps he, a pilot who fought in Afghanistan, doesn’t remember because it’s not real. Perhaps the next people he speaks to, after everything disappears, an Air Force captain (Vera Farmiga) and a government scientist (Jeffrey Wright) who appear on a video screen, will explain. I won’t, because it’s better not to know.

This sci-fi thriller, a first feature for its screenwriter, Ben Ripley, is the second for its director, Duncan Jones, whose film Moon also dealt with artificial intelligence, alienation, and trust, but in a much quieter way. It may remind viewers of movies like Inception or The Matrix, with its plot involving virtual worlds, but also Groundhog Day, in that way it craftily telescopes myriad variations of the same scenario into a concise narrative. (Oddly, Gyllenhaal starred in another movie in which time gets recycled, Donnie Darko.) Obviously, it’s no comedy, but it maintains a lighter feel than those other sci-fi films (or than Moon) while carefully maintaining an internal logic that leads to a fairly satisfying outcome.



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viewed 3/23/11 at Rave UPenn [PFS screening with director Q&A] and reviewed 3/23/11 and 1/21/12

The Tillman Story (***1/4)

These fact are known about Pat Tillman: One, that the NFL safety turned US Army private died on April 22, 2004, in Afghanistan, in what was at first widely reported as a heroic act, in the face of enemy fire, for which Tillman was given a Silver Star. Second, that, as revealed to the public about a month later, Tillman had in fact died in a friendly fire incident, shot by troops from his own platoon. The discrepancy between what was reported and what occurred, and the efforts of Tillman’s family to find out why, is the subject of Amir Bar-Lev’s (My Kid Could Paint That) documentary, which follows by about a year Jon Krakauer’s book on the same subject.

Charles Spurgeon’s adage, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on,” seems particularly apt here, when the boots in question are army boots. Coincidentally, Tillman had been involved, peripherally, in an similar episode in Iraq, where he had served his first tour of duty. There, he was part of the unit sent to rescue the captured Jessica Lynch, a mission that was, as he wrote in his journal, a “ big Public Relations stunt.” Lynch herself would confirm that she had not, in fact, shot at the enemy, nor was she in the kind of danger that the public would be told.

Tillman’s reaction to this underscores his independence of thought and the contradictions of a man who both opposed the Iraq War and felt compelled to fight it, who became a bigger celebrity by volunteering for the military, and a bigger one still by dying, yet refused interviews and shunned that role. It is the character of Pat Tillman and his family—his two brothers, one of whom fought with him, his parents, and even his wife, the only girl he ever dated—that elevates this documentary. All of them are interviewed on camera, and the story of the movie is largely of the indefatigable efforts of his mother, especially, and his father to learn what happened.

Bar-Lev focuses narrowly. He does not place this in the larger context of the Bush administration’s efforts to boost support for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, or of military propaganda of the past. Krakauer gets more political, crediting the Tillman story with a temporary boost in public support for the war going into the 2004 election season. He is also more noticeably critical of the role of General Stanley McChrystal, later to become the commander of all forces in Afghanistan. It was McChrystal whose name was on the paperwork for Tillman’s unearned Silver Star, as the film shows. The implication of both the book and the film is that McChrystal would not have blatantly violated the rules without the knowledge and approval of higher-ups such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Besides the military, the media come in for some criticism. The inclusion of footage of Ann Coulter acting incredulous at being told of Tillman’s antiwar sentiments is almost too obvious. But possibly the public deserves a good deal of criticism too, for it is our need for heroes and apparent willingness to be persuaded by celebrities that encourages such myth-making.

The film’s biggest flaw is an unavoidable one. Because it cannot answer the central question it asks—who, ultimately, was responsible for covering up what happened, and why—the film is ultimately frustrating. But it is valuable.

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viewed 9/1/10 at Rave UPenn and reviewed 9/2–5/10

Green Zone (***1/4)

One of the few Iraq features to focus on the actual reasons for the war re-teams Matt Damon with his Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum director, Paul Greengrass. Written by L.A. Confidential’s Brian Helgeland, it’s a smart, (literally) dark action thriller, tied in to the ultimately futile search for WMDs in 2003.

As with The Hurt Locker (or the Bourne movies, for that matter)‚ Greengrass uses handheld cameras for authenticity. Helgeland’s script takes in actual events now widely assumed to be major blunders, like the dismantling of the Iraqi army, or the failed attempt to install Ahmed Chalabi as leader, and shows how they played among the Sunnis Arabs who formed much of the opposition. The Chalabi character is called something else, and Amy Ryan’s reporter character is only a fictional representative of the real ones who failed to question what turned out to be bad intelligence about WMDs. Of course, you won’t have needed to read the book that “inspired” the film, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, to figure out that Damon’s character, too, is a composite, that there was no single hero who uncovered all the bad intelligence that provided the casus belli that largely sold the public on the war.

For me, watching this was to experience again the frustration of watching foolish arrogance produce unnecessary destruction. Green Zone is no exposé, though, just an action thriller with a novel backdrop. It does have other virtues, like having a few distinct Iraqi characters, and not emphasizing a high body count. But it’s only a movie, and even Matt Damon wouldn’t have been able stop all of the people for whom self-reflection represents weakness.

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viewed 3/9/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/12–18/10

Brothers (***1/4)

Who’d have figured, back in 2004 when Susanne Bier directed the original Danish version of this Afghanistan war drama, that years later a present-tense American version could be filmed? Both version deals with a soldier presumed lost in battle, here played by Tobey Maguire. Like most of the recent crop of American war films, the focus is on the trauma of war to the soldiers fighting it. In this case, it is also on how that plays out with those left at home—the distraught wife (Natalie Portman), the just-out-of-prison older brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) who’s also felt the disfavor of his father (Sam Shepard), the father himself, and the children who adapt quickly as their uncle takes up some of the father role. The audience knows, as the family does not, what has happened to the soldier. So a lot of the movie feels like mere prelude to what will happen in the last half hour or so. Still, the acting is very good, maybe Portman’s best role, and that last part is powerful, albeit showy. It’s a smart tearjerker, for sure, as well as a film about ethics and family dynamics.

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viewed 11/30/09 at Ritz East (PFS screening); review written unknown date and posted 4/16/10

Standard Operating Procedure (***)

Errol Morris’s Abu Ghraib film has a certain redundancy with Taxi to the Dark Side, the Oscar-winning documentary about the US military’s systematic abuse of detainees in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and at Guantanamo Bay. However, the focus is more narrow here, looking at the faces, like Lynndie England, famously shot holding a leash attached to an Iraqi prisoner, behind the photos that turned prisoner abuse into an instant scandal. It’s slightly better than Taxi at explaining the thinking of the individuals, mostly low-ranking military police, who participated in abuse or failed to report it, but not as good at placing it in the wider perspective of what was going on outside the prison.

Hannah Arendt’s coinage “the banality of evil” came to my mind while watching this. England and others have a lot to say about what went down, but aren’t especially articulate about why. Morris leaves you to judge their culpability for yourself, but none of these people seem extraordinary save, perhaps, the absent Charles Graner. Graner, boyfriend to England and artistic genius behind the naked prisoner pyramid, was still in prison and could not be interviewed for the film. Janice Karpinski, who was supposed to be in charge of Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi facilities, appears to defend herself, but I was never quite clear to what extent she was saying she didn’t know what was going on and to what extent she was saying she was following orders. In any case, she adds only a little to the explanation of how it all happened, and there are neither military experts nor Army higher-ups to explain more about the orders that were given, and why. The result is yet another indictment of US policy that leaves much more to be explained.

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viewed 6/4/08 (Ritz Bourse); reviewed 6/5-6/08

In the Valley of Elah (***1/2)

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The Host (***)

? South Korea’s all-time box-office champion is a monster movie that, like the original Godzilla, has pretensions of social commentary. Extrapolated from an actual incident in 2000 when an American military employee poured a large quantity of formaldehyde down the drain, the story here is that chemicals released into the Han River cause a mutation that unleashes a truck-size amphibious creature thought to carry a deadly virus on the local populace.
+ The computer-rendered beast, looking like a reasonably realistic version of a fish with legs, is pretty good, and its initial rampage when it terrorizes the populace is mostly terrific, but the best thing about the movie overall is the characters. If you go by movies like Anaconda or Primeval, you’d expect that there’ll be, say, a brainy female journalist, a cocky male adventurer, a tourist or three, and assorted sidekicks who will get offed, one-by-one, until the two most attractive characters are left to kill the beast and probably hook up. But nope, here we get an ordinary family of five. The father’s narcoleptic and not too bright, the grandfather’s old, the brother’s a drunk, and even the sister, a competitive archer, compromises her superior skills by being seemingly afraid to pull the trigger. It’s this goofy lot that has to outwit the government trying to quarantine them and locate the youngest one, the daughter who’s been carried off by the beast. Just as writer-director Bong Joon-ho subverted the conventions of the serial-killer mystery (a little like Zodiac did) with his last movie, Memories of Murder, he injects a similar note of melancholia into this most unlikely vehicle for a family drama.
- After the beast’s opening rampage, things get a little too calm as the plot plays out. Also, some of the attempts at humor are on the hokey side. As for the plot, it didn’t bother me that the American government and military are villains (the Korean authorities fare no better, in any case), but if Bong had come up with a mad scientist instead it would have seemed only slightly more cartoonish and one-dimensional.
= *** Most of the action occurs at the beginning and end. So people looking for another King Kong, or even another Godzilla, might be disappointed if they start hoping the beast will start tearing up downtown Seoul. I expect the planned American remake will be more to their liking. I was on the fence about this one, but I’m giving it an upgraded rating for having a surprisingly poignant conclusion that, though containing familiar elements, has one really big surprise.

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reviewed 3/16/07

The Guardian (***)

 ? Veteran Coast Guard rescuer Kevin Costner takes a gig teaching new recruits, including cocky Ashton Kutcher.

+ This is just like all of those military films in which a young private faces off against tough drill sergeant who seems to have it in for him. However, that these are Coast Guard rescue swimmers being trained in unusual skills like holding their breath and swimming in icy water gives the movie a novelty aspect that makes it more interesting. Most interesting is an offhand comment about how other branches of the military don’t respect the Coast Guard because they save lives rather than take them.

- Other elements, like the younger man’s obligatory romance and the older one’s foundering marriage, still feel overfamiliar. The ending is needlessly protracted and overly melodramatic.

= *** If you like military films, you’ll like this one.

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Sir! No Sir! (**3/4)

The history of U.S. military opposition to the war in Vietnam, as told by the participants, raises as many questions as it answers.

David Zeiger’s debut feature tells the story of perhaps the most powerful drive to oppose the American war in Vietnam, the one within the American military. It began with isolated individuals but burgeoned in coffeehouses near military bases, in underground newspapers, and in Army barracks. (This was the war that gave rise to the term fragging, which referred to the killing of an officer by his own soldiers.) The movie is the history of a movement, not the story of the war itself. (For people who don’t know much about Vietnam, this isn’t the place to begin.) Nor is it particularly meant to persuade. Zeiger, a former protest organizer, more or less takes for granted his subjects’ view that the war was immoral and lets the ex-soldiers tell the story of what they did about it. There are no historians, no journalists (other than in period footage), and just about no non-soldiers in the interview segments at all, save the ubiquitous Jane Fonda. Fonda has been a lightning rod for critics of antiwar protesters for decades. Love her or hate her, though, the footage of her and others being cheered on at overseas rallies by thousands of in-uniform soldiers at the height of the war makes it clear that she spoke for a great many of the military rank and file. I would have liked to see more of an attempt to quantify the film’s implication that opposition to the war was the rule, not the exception, among the lowest ranks, but the period footage alone clarifies that this was a mass movement. (One statistic that the movie does throw out is that there were over half a million “incidents of desertion.”)

The sole reliance on the participants to tell the story is both the strength and weakness of the movie. It gives the film focus, but also raises many questions about which a historian’s perspective might shed light, such as the idea that the widespread reluctance of ground troops to carry out their missions was what caused President Nixon to switch to an air-based strategy. Near the end, the film explores a bit (not enough) of the revisionist history that has followed the war, notably the myth of the spit-upon Vietnam veteran. I’m not sure it completely justifies its subtitle, “The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the War in Vietnam.” After all, the issue surfaced not long before this movie was produced in the presidential campaign of John Kerry (who’s not seen in the movie). Yet Kerry’s opportunistic strategy of portraying himself as a war hero, not a hero of the antiwar movement, suggests that those who supported the Vietnam War have been successful in framing the issue as one of protesters versus troops. In fact, Sir! No Sir! shows that the fierce debate about the war pervaded the military itself. As one veteran states, these soldiers weren’t proud of their service, and didn’t think themselves heroes, because what their government was asking them to do wasn’t heroic.

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posted and slightly revised 8/15/13

Annapolis (**3/4)

Brooding James Franco stars as a working-class kid trying to make good at the Naval Academy. Never especially original but never stupid, it’s worth a look if you like movies about military life.

Brooding James Franco has already played James Dean in a TV movie, and seems to be channeling him in this angst-y tale of an underdog rebel who enlists in the Naval Academy to fulfill a promise to his departed, saintly mom and maybe, just maybe, prove something to his impassive father. Yeah, this movie won’t exactly wow you with its originality. There’s the semi-abusive commanding officer, the bonding with fellow recruits, the rigorous training. But, as I said about Glory Road, a movie full of clichés can still be perfectly enjoyable if it doesn’t lay them on too thick. So even though, for example, the subplot with Jordana Brewster as a potential love interest is pretty ho-hum, I’ll take that over that corny, up-where-we-belong crap any day. For me the most interesting part of Annapolis is when one of the cadets wants to snitch on his roommate for violating an idiotic, unfairly given order. Is this an honorable adherence to duty or mindless deference to authority? I’d have liked the film to tackle that issue, but here it’s just one of those things that can happen. It’s just an episode on the hero’s personal journey as he fights (literally­—he’s a boxer) to prove himself to his Academy superiors, his dad, and maybe, just maybe, to himself.

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posted 9/17/13

Jarhead (**3/4)

Based on a Gulf War memoir by ex-Marine sniper Anthony Swofford, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Jarhead reflects that it in that it feels more like a collection of memories than a single story. The beginning’s a lot like those training scenes you’ve seen in any number of war films, from Full Metal Jacket to An Officer and a Gentleman. Jamie Foxx plays the tough staff sergeant. Peter Sarsgaard is Swofford’s rifle partner, as gung-ho as Swofford is wary, though his character could have used more fleshing out. The film’s end is, but for a very brief epilogue, the war’s end. In the Gulf War, the pre-war—the buildup of troops and then the waiting—lasted much longer than the combat, and Jarhead reflects that. Although I really can’t say, it seems like an accurate portrayal of Swofford’s experience, and the life of a solider generally. However, accurately portraying boredom is not always compelling drama. Without a strong narrative thread, Jarhead is a film where your interest will wax and wane with each scene. There’s not much politics, but one of the more powerful sequences is a reminder of the stiff toll of the war (or war in general) on civilians. If the film has a central idea, it’s that the military is about engendering the will to aggression, and that different men find different ways to draw off that aggression as they await actual combat. For me, the underrated Three Kings remains the definitive Gulf War movie.

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circulated via email 11/10/05 and posted 10/9/13