Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan
Directed by Robert Redford
This film is the equivalent of spoon feeding baby food to a perfectly capable 40 year old man with a snowshovel. Not only does it smash the viewer over the head with its ideas, it throws burning oil in its face to be sure it is paying attention.
The film is obstensibly about three seperate sequences of events that are interconnected. One concerns a Senator Irving (Tom Cruise) who has granted an interview with left wing journalist Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) in an attempt to right his image with her and share his latest policy in the war on terror. Another concerns two soldiers (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) who are on the ground in Afghanistan after falling from their helicopter that has been shot down, one of which's leg is severely broken. The third sequence involves a Southern California university professor of political science, Malley (Redford), and his discussion with his promising student Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield). Throughout the discussions being had by Irving/Roth and Malley/Hayes, we learn the soldiers were on course to take a new vantage point on top of a mountain in Afghanistan. We also learn that the two soldiers were once students of Malley, who joined the service despite Malley's protests. Irving feeds the new strategem to Roth in hopes that she will publish it, and that her running the story will soften the delivery to the public. Malley tells his promising, but slacker, student Hayes about the two soldiers, and why they ended up joining the service.
This is a film about nobility and living by your principles. The problem though, is the actors portraying these subjects are so known for their politics, and the style of the film is so heavy handed that the points being made call into question the nobility and principles of the people inside the film preaching them. Redford's character ruminates his ethos to his student, although if applied to Redford himself, they cancel each other out. Therefore, his stilted politics that he eschews throughout the film are made specifically for the people that already agree with him. He says to Hayes: "You almost convinced me. Almost convinced me. That you really know what you're talking about. You're great with words son. But you know what would make them better? If they had a heartbeat. If they were rooted in any kind of experience."
The laughable irony of this is they apply directly to Redford as he speaks these specific words. He plays a noble character that served unwillingly in the Vietnam war, and although proud of his service and the ethos he supposedly fought for after his tour of duty, this character is the epitome of what Redford is not. Unless he considers Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or Quiz Show his part in some great war, he has none of this experience his character so easily drops knowledge on. This irony ruins any serious attitude the film had going for it.
In other parts of the story, Tom Cruise plays the Republic Senator Irving, who was so painfully obviously written by a liberal. When Janine Roth calls into question his integrity and dedication to the strategies he is proposing, he makes an impassioned statement about principles, and Meryl Streep's character shoots back "Says the man in the air conditioned room." What makes me want to cry about this statement is the fact that it applies directly to the screenwriter of this piece of overserious garbage. None of the actors involved have been part of this great fight on any real level, yet their characters passionately argue that is the exact fact that makes them capable of making these decisions and accusations. I understand these people are actors, but the only reason they made this picture was because of their heavy real life politics, so in the end, the entire thing stinks of complete fabrication.
This is the definition of preaching to the choir, spoonfeeding to the fat. Anyone who comes away liking this movie is lacking any personal politics of their own, and simply taking the ideas presented in this film as their own. Anyone with a brain and real thoughts on the subject at hand will be insulted by the forceful way in which this film presents its ideas. It is impossible to disagree with the politics of the film and like it. What's even crazier is I'm as liberal as anyone, but I still hate this film because of the portrait this film paints of any liberal.
In the last sequence involving Roth (Streep) she stands up against her conglomorate controlled news network, refusing to put to air the "propaganda" that is fed to her by the Senator, nobly standing up against the system she works for. Still laughably, Streep made this picture for 20th Century Fox, owned by News Corporation, the biggest conglomorate responsible for what the film is accusing Big Media of doing. Yeah, way to metaphorically stick it to the man Redford. They are just as much the proprietors of this sensationalism as the newsmen they are supposedly fighting against.
Of course, we learn that the soldiers became soldiers after experiencing Malley's class, just as Hayes did, only instead of learning they took action and joined the armed forces in show of their nobility and stance on the cause they did a report on, again, to show 'the man' whom in this case is Malley (Redford). I won't ruin the movie for those that may want to see it, but of course, as is the theme of the movie, they nobly stand up for what they believe, to the bitter end. This sentimentally absurd action falls in line with the rest of the movie, but it defies Redford's own logic in making the film. They have taken action for all the wrong reasons, and stood up for what they believed in despite Malley's resistance and became victims of the very monster they were trying to defeat.
In the end, you ask yourself, what is the point of this? No, not the war, the ruminations on that are clear, it's a bad war being run poorly by people with no personal stake in the results, who try to impose one upon everyone else. The film speaks against doing just this, but in the end, that's exactly what it does. The film itself makes its very existence pointless. Congratulations Redford, you've managed to defeat yourself at your own game. That will show them!
3.5/10 (merely for being well lit and well shot, the idea sucks so bad though that I cannot award it a single percentage more)
No comments:
Post a Comment