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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| When liberal filmmakers attack |
| 2007-09-28 |
| Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal What has come over liberals? Suddenly they've turned bloodthirsty. And they're not just lobbing "Daily Show" coffee mugs or brandishing the rusty business end of their DEAN 2004 campaign pins. Liberals are locked, loaded and licensed to kill--at the movies. The new Jodie Foster film, "The Brave One," is the latest in a string of left-wing Bush-era movies about violence. These films--which range from popcorn flicks (the "X-Men" series, "The Hills Have Eyes 2") to more ambitious works and Oscar nominees ("A History of Violence," "V for Vendetta," "Munich," "Blood Diamond")--so deeply entangle killing with liberal idealism, though, that at times their scripts are as muddled as EEOC directives or U.N. rules of engagement. For all of the critical acclaim that attended most of these films, few are as effective as "Dirty Harry" or "Death Wish." . . . The makers of these films must be disappointed, though, that audiences remain more interested in crisp revenge than messy guilt. Steven Spielberg's "Munich," for instance, which chastises Israel for retaliating against the Palestinians involved in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, was completely misread by a character in this summer's hit comedy "Knocked Up," who was cheered by audiences when he said: "That movie was [star] Eric Bana kicking f--ing ass! In every movie with Jews, we're the ones getting killed. 'Munich' flips it on its ear. We're capping motherf--ers!" Americans made it clear which film they thought missed the point: In the U.S., "Knocked Up" earned more than three times as much at the box office as "Munich." |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #15 You always were more interesting than Luke Skywalker. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-09-28 20:51 |
| #14 Hannibal Lecter's character was also much more memorable than whats-her-name in Silence of the Lambs; memorability doesn't always indicate identification. Hannibal's character was also more interesting and deep than agent Starkiss. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-09-28 16:41 |
| #13 Any time liberals try to put their views and messages in pulp fiction movies, it bombs. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2007-09-28 16:39 |
| #12 Broadhead, One thing I noticed when I saw AFGM - not only did everybody identify with Nicholson's character, they almost all saw him as a fundamentally decent officer who screwed up and was going to pay for it. (Not to mention that when the verdict was announced on the two Marines, you could tell who in the crowd had been military - they were all nodding while everybody else was asking, 'WTF?') Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2007-09-28 15:43 |
| #11 Anonymoose, what you say may be why the screenplay was greenlite but it was written by John Milus (Apocolypse Now, Red Dawn) and I think it was more a comment on the system not allowing the cops to do their job until the one good/effective cop tosses his badge at the end. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2007-09-28 12:23 |
| #10 Hannibal Lecter's character was also much more memorable than whats-her-name in Silence of the Lambs; memorability doesn't always indicate identification. Hello Aris. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2007-09-28 12:00 |
| #9 A lot of things don't indicate anything. The easy way to figure out who Americans identify with, is to ask a simple question. Do you think Americans would rather support the ass-kicking Marine or the pretty boy lawyer that goes after the ass kicking Marine? |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-09-28 11:00 |
| #8 Hannibal Lecter's character was also much more memorable than whats-her-name in Silence of the Lambs; memorability doesn't always indicate identification. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2007-09-28 10:53 |
| #7 I'll second that among the general population, AS. I couldn't tell you a single word that Cruise said in the entire movie, but everybody knows the "You can't handle the truth!" line. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-09-28 10:51 |
| #6 Broadhead6: It's not _just_ Marines. I think I've noticed wrt the public in general is that Nicholson's character has made a much larger impression than Cruise's. Just go out and ask random people on the street to quote some lines from the movie; they're going to be Nicholson's, not Cruise's. This sort of thing has been happening a lot in popular culture, to the extent that the site http://tvtropes.org has an entry on the Anti-Villain. |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2007-09-28 10:19 |
| #5 "A Few Good Men" -- an attempt to make us jarheads look like fanatics (we don't need hollyweed for that, haha), anyhow -- If anyone remembers Col Jessup aka Jack Nicholson's dialogue when he's on the stand at the end telling Cruise to get f*cked for questioning his methods -- prolly one of the most quoted monologues amongst Marines. Kind of a strange juxtaposition -- even though hollywood is trying to make Cruise look like the hero going after the bad Colonel, most jarheads identified w/Nicholson's character in spirit. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2007-09-28 09:40 |
| #4 It’s all so strange until you realize that Hollywerid is the epicenter of the greatest transdimensional interface between two universes. As a consequences beings from both plans of existence inhabit the same space time continuum, each interacting but only viewing or experiencing their part of their reality. This manifested physical condition is maintained by the large sucking sound of money made possible by politically engineered tax write offs and creative bookkeeping that would in their absence otherwise have collapsed the entity long ago. That, and the presence of some really hot babes. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-09-28 09:24 |
| #3 Ironically, I think that Dirty Harry was originally intended to be highly critical of the police, but they picked the wrong, or right, guy to play the main character. They were actually surprised when audiences really liked Harry and were rooting for him. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-28 09:09 |
| #2 I haven't seen it, but you're telling me "The Hills Have Eyes 2" has a left-wing political message? Or is Smith over-stating the case? |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2007-09-28 07:41 |
| #1 So they make their films to soothe their egos, and pity us poor fools for not buying tickets and making them more rich and even more famous. [wrings hands] |
| Posted by: Bobby 2007-09-28 06:58 |