DVD Roundup: Hollywood's Smear Campaign
Tom Miller
Feb 19, 2008
Last year with polls showing Americans growing weary of the war in Iraq, Hollywood rediscovered its elitist, far-left, blame-America-first voice and released a minor wave of anti-war and anti-GI movies.
They included "Redacted," a particularly distorted rant, that veteran Hollywood agent Pat Dollard described as part of "a campaign to smear U.S. troops in Iraq" and "an anti-war propaganda movie [that] fellow liberals will love all the way to Oscar."
They also included "In the Valley of Elah," a film whose writer/director Paul Haggis described as "a political Trojan Horse disguised as a murder mystery."
As it turned out, Hollywood had miscalculated. Whatever their feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the public wasn't in the mood for Hollywood's smear campaign. Most of these movies hardly made a ripple at the box office and disappeared faster than the truth at a political rally.
Now, they are beginning to come out as DVDs. The change in format, however, hasn't improved them. Three are being released this week, and they range from dishonest to toxic. Handle with care.
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"In the Valley of Elah," DVD-2008 ($27.98, Warner Home Video) Also available in Blu-ray and Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD.
This is director-writer Paul Haggis' Trojan horse: a bleak anti-war, anti-soldier polemic.
Haggis' story is relatively straight-forward. When Hank Deerfield (Tommy Lee Jones), a retired military policeman, gets word that his son Mike, recently returned from Iraq, is missing, he sets out to find him. When Mike's dismembered body turns up in a field near the base, Hank and local police detective Emily Sanders (Charlize Theron) team up to find out what happened.
Nobody else seems to care. The MP's want to sweep it under the rug. The local cops don't want the aggravation of an investigation. That leaves it to the little guys (aging ex-MP and young, inexperienced detective) to take on the big, bad establishment. That explains Haggis' pretentious title: the valley of Elah was the scene of the Biblical encounter between David and Goliath.)
There are lots of soldiers in this film, but not one is portrayed sympathetically. Not one. This is one scary demographic.
Haggis' soldiers torture their wounded enemy. They run down innocent Iraqi children. They redeploy home without telling their anxious parents. They abuse drugs. They frequent sleazy strip clubs. They drown pets and wives. They murder and dismember their buddy. They dissemble. They cover-up.
Not ONE soldier or officer does the honorable thing.
Soldiers aren't Boy Scouts. A few will even kill their wives or girlfriends. The movie is "inspired" by a true story, so something like this happened. Once, anyway. Here, it looks universal, not isolated.
In his enthusiasm to condemn the war in Iraq, Haggis apparently got carried away in casting his soldiers as victims, unhinged in their service to a depraved policy. In the process, he dehumanizes them. It had to have been a miscalculation. After all, he supports the troops. Everybody does. Right?
Military.com Rating: *
(This is a bare-bones DVD.)
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"Rendition," DVD-2008 ($28.98, New Line Home Video)
In "Rendition," director Gavin Hood's melodrama about the CIA, the War on Terror, and the use of torture to obtain information, we "learn" several (Hollywood) truths.
Following a suicide bombing that kills a CIA agent in North Africa, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a successful Egyptian immigrant living and working in Chicago and married to pert soccer mom Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), is pulled off a plane in Washington, D.C. and flown to Africa to be tortured by a foreign government.
El-Ibrahimi is targeted because a known terrorist has placed several calls to his cell phone. He claims he never received the calls and doesn't know the terrorist. He even passes a polygraph test.
In Africa, the CIA assigns an inexperienced pencil-pusher, not an agent, to observe the interrogation and report back to headquarters. The analyst, Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal), is repelled by the torture and tries unsuccessfully to convince his superiors that it's not working.
In fact, can't work if "Rendition" is to be believed. In a subplot we also "learn" that torture not only doesn't work but that it begets new terrorists. Exponentially. 1000 to 1 in fact. Who knew?
Meanwhile, back at home, a very-pregnant Isabella rushes to D.C. to get answers. She doesn't get far though with a Senator who cares more about his career than a missing husband and father.
Torture is brutal and dehumanizing, but that doesn't mean that it never works. Just read Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ted Morgan's My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir. Morgan was a young French officer during the Battle of Algiers and recalls that "Torture produced immediate results" that allowed the French to roll up the terrorist cells operating in the city.
Gyllenhaal, who plays a conscience-stricken CIA agent here, a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain," and a sermonizing Marine in "Jarhead" claims to hate "preachy" movies. Maybe he thinks this is a learning experience instead of a Hollywood sermon. Think again!
Military.com Rating: *
(DVD extras include deleted scenes including an alternate ending; director commentary; and two documentaries: "Outlawed," and "Intersections: The Making of Rendition.")
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"Redacted," DVD-2008 ($26.98, Magnolia)
Handle with care. This one is toxic. It's director Brian De Palma's "fictional documentary" that was "inspired" by a 2006 rape-murder committed by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, Iraq.
A self-righteous De Palma told a New York Film Festival press conference that "We basically just wanted to sort of end this war, you know, by trying to show the reality of what this war is."
Reality? This war? For De Palma, reality means out-of-control Americans troops committing rape and murder. There is no other reality. And, is "this war" so different in its essential "reality" than every other war in history?
Are there a few very bad apples in the military? Certainly. Do atrocities happen in war? Unfortunately. In fact, three of the four soldiers accused in the Mahmoudiya incident have already been convicted and sentenced by military courts.
But, why not recognize such atrocities for the isolated events that they are? If reality is your goal, why not provide some context that truly depicts the extraordinary efforts U.S. troops make to avoid civilian casualties?
Beyond the biased rant that passes for a theme, the characters are cartoonish, the dialogue is melodramatic, and the patchwork of images (from a soldier's video to internet sites and a faux French documentary) resembles nothing more than a crude home movie.
Military.com Rating: *
(DVD extras include refugee interviews, a photo gallery, and a "Behind the Scenes" featurette.)
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Military.com Picks & Pans Rating Scale
* Pan-Save your money & time
** Borderline Pick-Okay but only as a last resort
*** Pick-Worthwhile & enjoyable
****Enthusiastic Pick-Excellent
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Copyright 2008 by Tom Miller
