A Chorus of Angels (orig. Kita no kanaria-tachi) [2012]

MPAA (UR would be PG-13)  JapanTimes (2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
AsianWiki listing

JapanTimes (M. Schilling) review

A Chorus of Angels (orig. Kita no kanaria-tachi) [2012] [IMDb] [AW] (directed by Junji Sakamoto [IMDb] [AW], screenplay by Machiko Nasu [IMDb] [AW], based on the novel by Kanae Minato [IMDb] [AW]) is an award-winning Japanese film that I've seen recently.  I write about it here not only because there aren't that many Japanese films that play out here in Chicago, but also because I found it surprisingly "Christian" both on a superficial level (a lot of the story takes place in what appears to be a Christian school) and arguably on a thematic one (in Christian parlance this film seems to be definitely about "the wages of sin").

Now I could honestly be far off-base.  It could be that elementary schools across Japan hold Christmas concerts and most Americans would consider Japan to have at least traditionally been a very "honor-shame" culture.  Hence it would not have required the introduction of Catholicism (with the arrival of the St. Francis Xavier, S.J. to Nagasaki in the 1500s) or Protestant Christianity (in the years following the arrival of American Commodore Perry in Tokyo Bay two hundred years later) to Japan to inculcate a sense of moral revulsion toward adultery and especially (as has been the case elsewhere across the world) adultery on the part of a woman.

So it could just be coincidental that Kanae Minato [IMDb] [AW]'s novel made here into a film was about a former elementary school teacher named Haru Kawashima (played in the film by Sayuri Yoshinaga [IMDb] [AW]) who used to lead a children's choir in a Christmas concert at the school where she taught on a small island off the coast of the Japanese northern home island of Hokkaido before being forced to leave the school and the small island in disgrace after being caught carrying-on an extramarital affair even as her husband was dying of cancer.  (Note that in the story, the husband (played by Kyohei Shibata [IMDb] [AW]) himself seemed to be ambivalent with regards to her having the affair as he knew he was dying and both of them were young and he did want her to be happy afterwards.  BUT the outside community could not understand at all...)

However, at least the English titles of a fair number of Kanae Minato's* works [IMDb] [AW] [Amazon] repeatedly evoke Catholic/Christan (or at least generally religious) themes -- Confession, Penance, Atonement, Clergy -- even as Confessions [2010] [IMDb] [AV] at least is quite violent tale of revenge (following a heinous crime) and her other works could be similarly only superficially (or even tangentially) inspired by Catholic/Christian concepts.

It would be a fascinating question to find out what influence, if any, has Christianity or Catholicism had on her work. In preparing to write this review, I've tried to find the answer from interviews of her online.  There are almost no interviews of her in English.  Japanese interviews of her (which I ran through google translate), where she's become something of a phenomenon as "the housewife turned award winning author," didn't broach the question.  And in Italy, where at least some of her books have already come out in translation, no one has apparently asked her this question either.  But perhaps the question will eventually be asked ;-).

But to the film ... 

The arc of the story here is a rather simple one:  Twenty years after Haru was forced to leave that idyllic little island for Hokkaido in disgrace, a police investigator comes by her retirement party (she found a job as a librarian in Hokkaido's main city of Sapporo) asking if she could help him better understand the behavior of a young man who had once been her student back when she taught at that school on the small island.  She remembered him to be precocious even if already somewhat "at risk" as a child.  He was now being accused of a murder on that island.  The police officer tells her that he had specifically mentioned her as someone who could shed some light on his case.

This news shakes her even as it comes at a time when she could actually be of some help.  She hadn't been back to that island in 20 years, but the student had been one of her favorites.  And so she decides to go back.

The rest of the story that follows is both remarkable and very, very sad.  She is repeatedly reminded of the hole that she left in the community and in the lives of the kids that she had taught when she FELL (due to her adultery) and had to leave the island.

I may be reading the film very superficially.  I know very little of Japanese culture (and would welcome insight into how this film was understood by Japanese viewers themselves.  Please comment if you would know).  But it seemed so clear to me that what was being portrayed here were the tragic/horrific effects of a single and often considered "simply" personal sin:  She committed adultery.  As a result she had to leave the community and the kids who trusted her.  And as a result EVERYONE of that community lost, most especially that little "at risk" boy who grew-up to fulfill a destiny that PERHAPS she could have helped him avoid.

Through her sin, she let down "A chorus of angels ..."  Wow.  How terribly, terribly sad.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser. 

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Some Velvet Morning [2013]

MPAA (UR would be R)  Chicago SunTimes (3 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
Chicago SunTimes (M. Houlihan) review
RE.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

Some Velvet Morning [2013] (written and directed by Neil LaBute) is a well-crafted, well-acted unrated (would be R) dialogue driven film that involves just two characters and takes place in its entirety in an upscale Brooklyn townhouse.  It played recently at Facets Multimedia here in Chicago.

The film begins with a late-40 to mid-50-something Fred (played by Stanley Tucci) apparently some middle-level guy on Wall Street appearing on mid-to-late 20-something "Velvet's" (played by Alice Eve) quite elegant townhouse's doorstep with two bags in hand and news: "I've finally done it, I've left my wife!" 

Wow, talk about starting a story with a bang.  'Cept immediately there's a problem.  "Velvet" hasn't seen Fred in 6 months.  And while they did have something of an affair previous to that -- the two had met on account of Fred's son, as she was a friend of his while he attended college a number years back -- Fred and "Velvet's" "affair" was really more of a prostitution arrangement: he'd buy her stuff or even just pay her in cash and she'd sleep with him.  And not particularly surprisingly, Fred was never, ever Velvet's only such client.  So when he stopped calling six months back, she didn't particularly miss him.

But here he is now ... on her doorstep announcing six months after they had last spoken that he's left his wife and ... presumably wants to enter.  Being a basically nice/accomodating person, she lets him in with the more-or-less obvious hope/desire that soon he'd be on his way again.  But with his two bags in hand, it's clear that he'd really like to stay. ;-)  The rest of the dialogue driven film follows.

The film to me is fascinating because no matter how "adult" / "sophisticated" ADULTery (or sexual sin in general) is, it is Sin and it puts one into situations that one would really not want to be in.  AT DIFFERENT TIMES ONE WOULD NOT WANT TO BE EITHER OF THESE TWO CHARACTERS -- the guy who declares that he's "left his wife" only to find out that he has NO PLACE REALLY TO GO, or the woman who may have thought herself previously smarter, more in control of situations (including ones more or less inherently "off the reservation") than she probably should have.

Anyway, while this is a film that's definitely not for kids, I would imagine that it would make for a very interesting discussion piece among young adults and above.

A word about the ending: I don't particularly like it but I also understand the dilemma of the film-makers here.  I think most of us would know that a story like this can't really end well.  And yet, story-telling conventions kinda demand that the story like this end better than we'd suspect it would.  So while I don't think that the film's ending works particularly well, the rest of the film certainly makes its point.


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The Nut Job [2014]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-1)  ChicagoTribune (1 Star)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (F)  Fr. Dennis (1 1/2 Stars and really not for kids, see below)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review
AVClub (K. McFarland) review

The Nut Job [2014] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Peter Lepeniotis along with Lorne Cameron, story by Daniel Woo based on characters from Peter Lepeniotis' 11 minute animated short Surly Squirrel [2005]) is an animated film that IMHO really didn't deserve to be made and certainly not in its (PG / A-1) configuration. 

Both the animated short Surly Squirrel [2005] and now the feature film The Nut Job [2014] are about a rather unsympathetic squirrel named Surly (voiced in the current feature film by Will Arnett).  Why is Surly, well ... surly (rude, unfriendly)?  Well, he's presented as scheming and selfish.  He doesn't seem to care about the other nut eating rodents in the city park where he lives.

Now, in the actual "wilds" in front of my Rectory, it would seem that our neighborhood squirrels are, while cute as can be with white pelts on their tummies, not particularly altruistic either.  They don't seem to fight over nuts (or bulbs that they love to dig out of our garden) but they seem to "bury their stashes" of nuts, bulbs and acorns, each on their own.  So with the exception of being something of a foul mouthed squirrel (in the short) or simply "a squirrel with an attitude" (in the somewhat toned down feature), Surly doesn't really behave much differently than the average cute as a button squirrel "squirreling away" fallen crab apples from our tree gracing the front of our Rectory or the tulip beds gracing its sides.

How then to make a compelling movie about a squirrel acting like a ... squirrel?

Well both the short and the feature film postulate that "all the other rodents and nut-eating animals" of the city park where Surly lives "share all the nuts and other food stocks that they collect."  Communism.  And to make the point, both the short and the feature film posit a Raccoon (voiced in the feature film by Liam Neeson) as the Park's "Boss" in the short, and first its "Benevolent Leader" then exposed as its chief "Crook" in the feature.  So in good part, Surly is "surly" simply because he's living in a strange city park where the rest of his companions are behaving unlike normal animals (They seem to share what they find rather than keep what they find for themselves).

So is the message (remember that this is a children's film that's received a PG rating from the MPAA and an A-1 general admission rating (!) from the U.S. Catholic Bishops' media office) that sharing is unnatural (even a slippery slope to Communism) and humans too should be allowed to simply fend for themselves??  Hmm.

But the message gets even more confusing when one realizes that both short and feature film juxtapose Surly the squirrel's avarice for foodstuffs that he has no intention of sharing with anybody with a gang of humans seeking to rob a bank next door to the park.  So here the film makers seem to compare Surly's attitude of "the nuts I find are mine" with stealing. 

So what the heck are the film makers trying to say?  And is this really a film that you'd want your children to see?  At minimum, Surly is really a quite nasty (surly...) squirrel who never really changes for the better.  Parents, would you want your generally cute little kids to be nasty and never really change for the better either?

This is an odd little movie (the feature itself is only 87 minutes) and honestly not really for kids.


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Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  ChicagoTribune (2 Stars)  RE.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (1/2 Star)

IMDb listing
KinoNews.ru listing*

CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (I. Vishnevetsky) review

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit [2014] (directed by Kenneth Branagh, screenplay by Adam Cozad and David Koepp) is an ideologically cumbersome and technically silly reboot of the characters around American spy-thriller author Tom Clancy [IMDb]'s most famous hero, the mild-mannered Langley based "CIA analyst" who when need be becomes a butt-kicking field agent Jack Ryan [IMDb] and who's become Anglo-American pop-literature's most famous spy after Ian Fleming [IMDb]'s James Bond [IMDb].

Hmmm, so what's so wrong with the story? ;-)  Well, above all, whatever Tom Clancy's political affiliations actually were (and the American-Right has certainly tried to claim him as its own) Tom Clancy was both imaginative and intelligent.  His villains were widely dispersed.  In his universe, the villains who crash a Boeing 747 into the U.S. Capitol Building during the U.S. president's State of the Union Address (a scenario described in his book Debt of Honor [1994] (!!)) killing the President, most of Congress and all of the U.S. Supreme Court WERE JAPANESE.  Now THAT's one heck of a ("didn't see that one coming...") compelling spy novel scenario as opposed to the eyes rolling "Ah, it's the Ruskies (TBtG at least it's not the 'turban heads') again..." pedestrian quality of the current film. 

Then while it's always a challenge to make compelling optics of spy-craft in our computer-based, digital age -- the last James Bond movie, Skyfall [2012], actually did a much better job with this -- the sort-of "cliff-hanging" scene, where the young rebooted Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine) has broken-into the Evil Russian FSB-connected oligarch Viktor Cherebin's (played by Kenneth Branagh) post-communist glass-and-concrete by Moscow's Red Square fortress-like lair and then into Cherebin's computer (after calling back to his cover-job (now as an undercover "Wall Street Analyst") to ask his naive/salt-of-the-earth "just makin' money for da stockholders" Wall Street boss VIA CELL PHONE: "BTW can you quickly give me the password we have on file for Cherebin's accounts") and is then seen DOWNLOADING all of Cherebin's "secret accounts" to his (Ryan's) trusty little netbook / flash drive WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY ANALYZING the hundreds upon hundreds of lines of numbers and text scrolling down his screen PER SECOND from said "secret files,"  makes a mockery OF ANYONE who's ever tried to make sense of a simple "Google search" while the phone starts ringing or one's being "called down for dinner" back home ;-).  It's just insane: Jack Ryan presumably can read hundreds upon hundreds of lines of text scrolling down his screen at break-neck speed, PRESUMABLY IN CYRILLIC, to quickly (in real time) unravel the Evil Russian Oligarch Cherebin's plot to "crash the whole U.S. economy" in a single financial if coordinated blow.  Note to the NSA: there's no need for supercomputers to analyze ECHELON data (every phone call, ever made, anywhere ...) when one has superhuman analysts like the new Jack Ryan on staff ;-).

Then the film's makers can't seem to decide how Evil / closed they want to make Russia today.  One on hand, they want to make Russia a still largely impenetrable Cold-War like entity.  On the other hand, the CIA is apparently able to drive freely (and _discretely_) around Moscow with an NYPD-style surveillance van stuffed to the hilt with electronics gear.  Indeed, a far more interesting film could have been made of simply imagining how American intelligence would secret-in all the parts to make such a surveillance vehicle in Moscow.  After all, one would imagine that the FSB would have a surveillance cam (or two...) around the U.S. embassy monitoring traffic in-and-out of its motorpool ;-): "Sergei, looks like discrete Amerikanskij NYPD-style surveillance van going out for spin again today.  Tell Sasha to put on tail..."  Then wouldn't the Russians be able to confiscate such a super-secret "top of the line" surveillance van (if only temporarily ... but not before completely disassembling it and returning it to our embassy in boxes) by simply stopping it for a random "tail light" violation? ;-)

Sigh, Chris Pine seems to be doomed to play B-grade rebooted versions of legendary characters (he also has had the unenviable task of playing the new Captain James T. Kirk [IMDb] in the rebooted Star Trek films).   And poor Keira Knightley playing the young Jack Ryan's future wife Cathy [IMDb].  She played the hilt out of the script that she was given, but the Anna Karenina [IMDb] of two years back really deserved better than this.

What then of the overall nefarious plot?  The Evil Russian FSB pissed-off at the proposed construction of pipeline through the Republic of Georgia / Turkey (To carry whose oil/gas?  CERTAINLY NOT RUSSIA'S... so...?) decide nevertheless to retaliate by seeking to destroy the U.S. economy with a single coordinated blow.  To do so, they awake "sleeper agents" in the U.S. by sending a cumbersome coded message through the RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH.  Imagine ALL THOSE YEARS sitting at _endless_ Orthodox Christian liturgies (they are _lovely_ but they are so, sooo long ;-) waiting for a single out of place word to be said.  "Slava Bogu!" one sleeper agent exclaims on catching the coded message.  Slava Bogu indeed ;-).  And here one thought that the FSB was merely sending coded messages to its agents through endless piles of internet porn ;-).

Anyway, working on Wall Street, undercover (hmm... the CIA's charter must have been "discretely changed" post-9/11...), is CIA analyst Jack Ryan who finds something amiss with Evil Russian Oligarch Viktor Cherebin's accounts with his firm just as tensions between the U.S. and Russia appear to rise over said proposed pipeline.  SOOO he asks his naive, salt-of-the-earth Wall Street Boss if he could fly out to Moscow to ask Viktor Cherebin "what's up with that?"  He gets permission ... the rest follows ;-)

Sigh ... could the Japanese be hired to crash their 747 into ... never mind.


ADDENDUM - Since this film came out / I wrote my above review about it, obviously a number of things have changed "on the geopolitical scene" as it were, notably the crisis in the Ukraine / Crimea.  Please don't take any of the above review as somehow an endorsement of Putin, et al's policies.  It's not.  Yet I honestly don't believe it serves anybody's interests, American or the world's to make fun of people.

Indeed, one of the very, very few things that I'd agree with Putin in would be his assessment of many Americans' attitudes toward his country.  In one of the articles run by Time Magazine when Time selected him as their "Person of the Year" one year, they quote him as saying that it appeared to him that many Americans think of the Russians as "only one generation from swinging from the trees."

Unfortunately, I do believe he's right (in _this_) and no I don't believe it's anything remotely approaching "a good thing" that such disdain for another people is considered acceptable by many of us.  In fact, it's been my experience that common Russians consider themselves as "exceptional" as many common Americans think of themselves -- They see themselves as having a "proud history of 1000 years of expansion" (their version of "Manifest Destiny" ...) they remember themselves as having driven the Nazis back to Berlin (and Napoleon back to Paris before that), etc, etc -- It's not particularly good if common Russians think that Americans are blithely spitting the olive pits from their Martinis at them ... and yet many (including Putin) do ...

So IMHO films like this one really don't help ANYBODY.  Instead, they serve to confirm the worst stereotypes that both Russians and Americans have of each other.  And I can't see that as being even remotely "good" in any conceivable way.


* Foreign language webpages are most easily translated using Google's Chrome Browser. 

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The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013]

MPAA (PG-13)  ChicagoTribune (3 1/2 Stars)  RE.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (A-)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (G. Cheshire) review
AVClub (M. D'Angelo) review

The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013] (written and directed by Oscar winning Asghar Farhadi [IMDb]) continues a wave of insightful, generally gentle, personalist dramas coming from Iran in recent years.  I've already reviewed two such films here Farhadi's A Separation (orig. Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) [2011] which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012 and Adel Yaraghi's Meeting Leila (orig. Ashnaee ba Leila) [2011].  A third Iranian film, by Rafi Pitts, The Hunter [2010], not nearly as gentle but still very much personalist in nature (about a troubled man and his family) I was able to see when it passed through Chicago sometime last year, but I wasn't able to write a review of it (for lack of time).  Everyone of these films has been excellent, films that if I were Iranian I would certainly be proud of, and they are films that offer Westerners an opportunity to see how Iranians would like themselves to be seen (beyond the hyperbolic rhetoric that American comic Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has had the insight to remind us is often driven by the requirements of populist politics across the globe).

Any Westerner who's actually gotten to know an Iranian or two during his/her life would come to appreciate how proud they are of their 3500-4000 year old "cosmopolitan" culture (they've been on the "Silk Road" since its beginning ...) who'd really like to compare Tehran to London, Paris or New York (Chicago from where I write, would seem to to most Iranians as being of  "second city" status, sort of the Tabriz of the United States, "nice" perhaps but not of "first league" status like the other Western capitals listed above or ... "one day" Tehran again...).  Even the structured/hierarchical Shiite Islam, dominant in Iran, would compare (and this would by my own insight) far closer to Catholicism than what most members of both faiths would (at least initially) like to admit. 

I do believe that the age, cosmopolitality of Iranian culture and even the paternalism of the (presently overbearing) ascendant Shiite "Church" in Iran make for fertile ground for the making of the personalist dramas coming from Iranian film makers today, just as similar personalist films were produced in post-Fascist Italy of the late 1940s (one thinks of the films of Vittorio de Sica [IMDb]) and during the Czechoslovak "New Wave" of the "Prague Spring" era of the 1960s.  For personalism, focusing on the dignity, problems and immediate relationships of the humble individual, can be poignant, _safe_, and even a subtle platform for protest when (fill in the regime) becomes overbearing and entering into parts of the lives of individuals against which most people would begin to chafe.  Interestingly enough, a big exponent of Christian personalism was none other than Pope John Paul II.

So then ... the current film, The Past (orig. Le Passé) [2013], has absolutely nothing to do with politics ... :-) ... but is instead a personalist drama about the final spasms of a marriage between Ahmad (played by Ali Mosaffa), Iranian, and his Parisian French wife Marie (played by Bérénice Bejo). 

At the beginning of the film, Ahmad, flying in from Tehran, is picked-up at Paris' airport by Marie. Why?  He's flying into Paris, after having returned to Iran some years before, at Marie's request to finalize their divorce.  Why?  The marriage has been dead for years now and Marie's found another guy, interestingly enough another Iranian immigrant/expatriate living in Paris, named Samir (played by Tahar Rahim) who she wants to marry.

The nationality/similarity in appearance of Samir to Ahmad is not lost on Marie's oldest (teenage) daughter Lucie (played by Pauline Burlet) of yet another relationship of Marie's (previous to Ahmad) who tells Ahmad "she's only marrying Samir because he looks like you."  Needless to say, Lucie's not excited about Samir's entry (as now her third father figure...) into her life.  One could say that she's had it with her mother in this regard. 

There are two other children in the mix.  There's Lucie's younger, 8-9 year old sister Lea (played by Jeanne Jestin) and there's Samir's again 6-7-8 year old Faoud (played by Elyes Aguis) from his marriage, also to a Parisian woman, who we find out, is lying in a coma after trying to commit suicide.

Now why did Samir's wife try to commit suicide?  That's much of the rest of the film.  What becomes clear is that Samir and Marie had entered into an affair prior to her attempting to commit suicide.  Was this a factor?  Yes? no? maybe?  To the story's credit, after exposing this central sin of the story -- the affair between Samir and Marie (after Ahmad's more or less permanent departure for Tehran...) -- the rest of the film is really about the nuances and distributed culpability for the sin and its effects.

And here Catholic moralist would be proud: (1) because it's absolutely clear that there was a fundamental sin here, and (2) it's _also_ complicated (NO ONE except for the littlest of the kids comes out looking good here).

Then there is a final question: Is a life (or a marriage...) "in a coma" truly over?  This is a gentle, nuanced film NOT done by a western-style (there are no rules) atheist but by someone who's still fundamentally a "there are rules believer."   Fascinating! 


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Lone Survivor [2013]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  ChicagoTribune (3 Stars)  RE.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J.P. McCarthy) review
ChicagoTribune (M. Phillips) review
RE.com (S. Boone) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review

Lone Survivor [2013] (directed and screenplay by Peter Berg, based on the memoir by Marcus Luttrell [IMDb] and Patrick Robinson) is about the skill, dedication and heroism of U.S. Navy SEALS fighting in the post-9/11 U.S. War on Terror, often, obviously, in the mountains of Afghanistan where this story is set.

From this description, it should be clear that the film carries with it a clear, basically, pro-American, pro-American-military point of view.  To many American readers here, this may seem like a somewhat annoying restatement of the obvious: Of course this is (and should be) a pro-American, pro-American military film, for it to be anything else would disingenuous or unpatriotic or both.  Yet though I am an American, I belong to a world-wide Catholic Religious Order (the Friar Servants of Mary), I've been on various national and international committees for my Religious Order over the years (including Justice and Peace), and a significant portion of my blog's Readership comes from overseas.   I know well that non-American Readers of my Blog (and non-American Viewers of the Film) would approach this same film with a great deal of skepticism wondering: Is this just "another American propaganda piece?"  I WOULD TELL READERS HERE, BOTH AMERICAN AND NON, THAT IN A CERTAIN SENSE IT (NECESSARILY) IS (an American propaganda piece) BUT (!) IT IS A RATHER GOOD / THOUGHT PROVOKING ONE WORTHY OF THE CRITICAL ATTENTION OF EVERYONE (of both Americans and non).

Why would I write that this film deserves "the critical attention of everyone?"  I write this because the film does deal with both moral questions AND portrays, I believe QUITE WELL certain fundamental characteristics of "American military doctrine" THAT ARE WORTHY OF REFLECTION UPON and COMPARISON WITH fundamental characteristics of the military doctrine of both "other lands" and "other times."

I write this because we all know well that ANY COUNTRY could produce wonderful, compelling "pro-Our Folks" military pieces.  American director Quentin Tarantino did the ENTIRE WORLD an enormous favor by including in his fascinatingly deconstructive "WW II" film Inglourious Basterds [2009] the subplot of the German propaganda machine seeking to produce an American style but PRO-NAZI GERMANY World War II film about "a brave lone Nazi sharpshooter in a bell tower keeping 300 American soldiers at bay" in some random town in Italy (One scene even shows the "brave Nazi sharpshooter" holed up in said "bell tower" pulling-out his pocket knife to carve the crisscrossing lines of the Nazi Swastika into the wood of the floor next to him, to the wild applause of the pro-Nazi German audience watching the film's premiere) the point being precisely that ANY COUNTRY can make its people look Good and "the Enemy" look Bad.   

That said, even propaganda films reveal more than "Our guys are Good and Their guys are Bad" and that is what I believe makes THE CURRENT FILM fascinating.

For the setup of the current film is conventional enough: A team of four über-fit, highly trained U.S. Navy Seals -- Marcus Luttrell (played by Mark Wahlberg), Michael Murphy (played by Taylor Kitsch), Danny Deitz (played by Emile Hirsch) and Matt 'Axe' Axelson (played by Ben Foster) -- are inserted on a "recon" mission into the mountains to Afghanistan to positively I.D. a Taliban leader by the name of Shah (played by Yousuf Azami) reported to be operating out of a small Afghan village in said mountains.  Once positively I.D.ing said Taliban leader, the rest of U.S. Navy Seal Team would be brought in by helicopter to take him and the rest of his company out.

All goes more-or-less according to the set plan until ... the four Navy SEALS perched in the mountains overlooking the village are happened upon by a number of goat herders -- two boys and an old man.  The Navy SEALS quickly overcome/bind the three Afghani goat-herders, but the question becomes, what now?   The team radios back to HQ for instructions, but alas, radio reception even today isn't ideal in the mountains _anywhere_ let alone in Afghanistan.   Without instructions (or the hope of immediate backup ...) the team has to decide what to do on their own.  The team's leader identifies three options: (1) let them go, which will almost certainly compromise their positions and virtually guarantee a firefight coming from directions/positions that they only guess (the Taliban is an army after all, with its own communications networks, and their garrisons aren't simply "sitting in town" waiting to be attacked by Americans ..., (2) leave the three tied-up, with the Navy SEALS bugging-out to another position (with presumably better possibility for communications), (3) "terminate the compromise" -- kill the three goat herders.

ONE COULD IMAGINE AN ELITE SQUAD OF ANY NATION'S ARMY FACING A SIMILAR SET OF OPTIONS.  What distinguishes THIS ELITE SQUAD is that it is _American_ and thus two characteristic concerns/values pervade: (1) The four have been trained according to post-WW II U.S. Military Doctrine to value their team.  One of the Navy SEALS says it bluntly: "I don't care about them (the three Afghani prisoners), I don't care about the higher-ups, I care about you, you and you (the team)" and (2) professionalism / a learned sense of accountability.  Another of the Navy SEALS points out: "If we kill these three Afghanis, or leave them here to freeze/die, it will be found out (someone's going to go looking for them and those goats are going to remain in the area), it will make CNN and we'll end up in Leavenworth."

I DON'T THINK A RUSSIAN SQUAD to say nothing of a NAZI "ELITE" WAFFEN-SS SQUAD would think that way.  In both cases, they would be "fighting for country" rather than "team" and in both cases, there would be no "CNN" to worry about, let alone "accountability back at the base."

Now I am no "pie in the sky, we do no wrong" naive American patriot.  Indeed, I reviewed (and gave high marks) to a documentary film produced by liberal/left leaning Nation Magazine national security correspondent Jeremy Skahill named Dirty Wars [2013] which chronicled various time when U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) weren't nearly so careful and killed all kinds of civilians both in Afghanistan and in Yemen.

But this is exactly a good part of my point: In the United States these stories DO COME OUT.  Violating "rules of engagement," blithely killing civilians, does actually carry risk in the U.S. military (and other western armies).  It doesn't elsewhere.  And please, if I'm wrong, show it to me.  Please offer me an example or two when members of Russian Special Forces units have been held accountable for "accidental killings" in the Caucuses, or even members of Indian Special Forces Units for similar actions in The Kashmir?

Jeremy Skahill's documentary Dirty Wars [2013] did show _clearly_ that U.S. Special Forces have killed innocents in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the War on Terror.  Still, I do get the sense that U.S. special forces units DO TRY TO BE CAREFUL and do understand that there are consequences (including possible jail time) for unprofessionalism.

Anyway, the Navy SEAL team in question in this story lets the three Afghani goat herders go free and the rest of the film follows.  The title of the film itself is a spoiler, suggesting more or less obviously that only one of the four will make it out.  I'll add a SECOND SPOILER -- the one who got out alive, made it in good part because of assistance from Afghani peasants (other "goat herders ...") who ALSO "happened upon him" when he was wounded ...

Great story and honestly one giving one much to think about.


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The Legend of Hercules [2014]

MPAA (PG-13)  RE.com (1 1/2 Stars)  Fr. Dennis (1 Star)

IMDb listing
ChicagoTribune/Variety (S. Foundas) review
RE.com (S. Wloszczyna) review

The Legend of Hercules [2014] (directed and cowritten by Renny Harlin along with Daniel Giat, Sean Hood and Giulio Steve) is really kinda a mess.  Presenting an "origin story" for the Greco-Roman hero Heracles (Hercules), it actually borrows more from The Gladiator [2000], Oliver Stone's Alexander [2004] and 300 [2006] than from the classical myth.

Now why should this be a problem?  After all, Marvel Comics has done a pretty good job converting the Norse God Thor [wikipedia] [marvel] into one of its comic book Superheroes, a character that's happily appeared in three Marvel films reviewed here [1] [2] [3].  Further, the Percy Jackson series, its latter film Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters [2013] reviewed here as well, did a reasonably good job re-imagining the various Greco-Roman heroes for the present day (I've found it particularly amusing that Percy, et al have been portrayed as growing-up with largely "absent fathers" ;-).  And I didn't find it particularly necessary to check the classical mythology underpinning films like Clash / Wrath of the Titans [2012], the latter film reviewed here as well.  Yet in the case of the current film, The Legend of Hercules [2014], I did find it necessary to do so and let me explain why:

Though bearing the name that derives from the Greek Goddess Hera (the Goddess of Hearth and Home), in the classical myth Heracles was actually tormented by Hera throughout most of his story.  Why?  Because he was the illegitimate son of her serially unfaithful husband, Zeus (the head of the Olympian Gods).  Indeed, in the classical myth, so terrified was Alcmene, Heracles' mother, of Hera's wrath that she left her infant Heracles exposed (to die) after giving birth to him.  Yet Athena (the Greek Goddess of Wisdom) seeing this injustice taking place, had pity on the infant and (playing a trick on Hera) brought him up to her, who (as Hera is the "Greek Goddess of Hearth and Home") cheerfully raised him as her own even giving him the name Heracles -- meaning "Hera's glory" because ... well that's what a Goddess of Hearth and Home does when she sees an abandoned infant: SHE TAKES CARE OF HIM / RAISING HIM AS HER OWN.  Imagine then Hera's anger when she discovered that her "pride and joy" Heracles was actually the illegitimate son of her philandering husband-God Zeus!  So she then took-out her anger on Heracles in all sorts of ways for the remainder of his earthly life.  That's the classical myth.

In the case of THE CURRENT FILM, Queen Alcmene (played actually quite well by Roxanne McKee) irritated with her husband King Aphrytion's (played by Scott Atkins) endless-warlike ways prays to Hera (again the Goddess of Hearth and Home) to knock some sense into her husband who was causing SO MUCH PAIN TO SO MANY HOUSEHOLDS (including her own) with his constant wars.  Okay, that would kinda make sense.  In the Greco-Roman world, Hera would probably be the Goddess to pray to with such a request. What doesn't make sense is Hera's answer to Queen Alcmene's prayer: HERA sends her randy/ever-philandering husband Zeus to impregnate Queen Alcmene so that she'd give birth the to the future Heracles (here understood as "Hera's Gift").  ANYONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT GREEK MYTHOLOGY WOULD KNOW THAT THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE.  There's simply NO WAY that Hera would "vend out" her husband like that.  Not only was she EXTREMELY JEALOUS in the Greco-Roman conception, she was THE GODDESS OF HEARTH AND HOME.  She wanted peaceful households, NOT ones where there was infidelity present.

So from the get-go this story is "Hollywood, in your dreams" nonsense ...

Then the rest of the story simply plays on elements of the three above mentioned Hollywood films:  King Aphrytion is never sure whether Heracles (played by Kellan Lutz) is really his son (shades of Oliver Stone's Alexander [2004] where Alexander the Great's father is portrayed as having similar worries).  At one point, Heracles is betrayed by King Aphrytion and Heracles' older/half-brother -- and SOLD INTO SLAVERY (as in the Russell Crowe starring The Gladiator [2000]).  How does regain his freedom? Through a series of "Gladiator-like" arena fights...  Finally, in case one didn't remember from 300 [2006] what a phalanx battle formation looked like, I can't imagine how one would forget it after this film, as this CGI friendly formation is used OVER AND OVER AGAIN THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF THE MOVIE.  There's even an a la last Hollywood version of Troy [2004] "doomed love story" between Heracles and a Cretian princess named Hebe (played by Gaia Weiss) which could be have been at least partly inspired by the Classical Heracles' falling in love with a Princess named Iole.  However, one gets the sense that the film-makers here really could care less about the Classical Heracles and just wanted to produce a generic, heavy on the CGI, "sand and sandal" movie with a more imposing name than the film in any way merited.


Sigh, there's a second Hercules movie coming out in the summer.  We'll have to see what this next one brings ...


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