Movie Reviews: Pentagon Wars

Pentagon Wars
directed by Richard Benjamin

This older film is a black comedy that details the various battles in the Army over the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. 

Although military familiarity may help one understand this movie even better, ultimately the frustrations of the hero and his allies will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in any sort of bureaucracy, whether the organization's stated purpose is to kill people and blow things up or save the whales.  

Certainly design engineers or programmers reporting to clueless business managers will recognize some scenarios. The late author Jerry Pournelle conceived of an Iron Law of Bureaucracy such that: 

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. 

Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions. LINK

It's this thinking which allows auto companies to knowingly sell vehicles with defective transmissions or fuel tanks, banks to help drug cartels launder billions, or lawyers to go on vacation to islands owned by billionaire pedophiles. This mindset allows military officials to be more invested in a project's success rather than questioning if the project helps save American lives and win wars.

Congress has become irritated with the budget overruns and delays on the Army's proposed Bradly Fighting Vehicle, which by the late 80s has been in development for roughly twenty years. Congress no longer trusts the Army project updates.

Movie Reviews:Galveston

Galveston
directed by Melanie Laurent

This 2018 neo-noir movie was the English language directorial debut of Melanie Laurent. You may remember her from her role in Inglorious Basterds as Shoshanna, the Jewish cinema owner, who is seeking revenge on the Nazis for murdering her family. 

Apparently Laurent is something of a Renaissance woman, being a director, actress and singer among other things. Anyhow you may think after reading this post that you know what Galveston is all about. 

It's definitely a story you've seen before. A bad man is forced through circumstances to defend a broken angel of a woman from even worse people. In so doing he may rediscover his own humanity, find redemption and perhaps even find some love.

And as in many films of this type a road trip is included. You've likely seen or read that story a thousand times before. I know I have. 

Galveston follows that basic outline. The best way I can describe this film visually is that it hearkens back to some late sixties early seventies films. Things are literally very dark on screen at times, reflecting some of the characters and the decisions that they make. 

This is not Hollywood action film. No one gets shot in the shoulder and declares in a deadpan manner "It went straight through. I'll be fine." When people get hurt, physically or more often emotionally, they stay hurt for a while. Laurent takes her time establishing characters reactions and feelings. There's a fair amount of silence throughout the film as we watch people react to each other, wordlessly express feelings, or just survive ordeals.

This film was an emotional gut-punch because it defied typical Hollywood conventions even as it made the viewer think that they would be upheld. This is based on a novel of the same name by Nick Pizzolatto (creator of True Detective), who also wrote the screenplay under a pseudonym. I think I would like to read that book now.  

Movie Reviews: The Outpost

The Outpost
directed by Rod Lurie

This is a war movie based on a non-fiction book by Jake Tapper that details the 2009 Battle of Kamdesh between Afghanistan Taliban forces and US Army forces. 

If you are into war movies you will like this film, no doubt. If you are not into war movies, this film might really not be your cup of tea. 

That said although there is violence aplenty, a great deal of the film details the boredom and frustration of the isolated American soldiers, the stress they feel and their distaste for what appear to be foolish or even contradictory orders. But orders are orders. 

The US brain trust at the time apparently felt that it needed to have a lighter touch in Afghanistan while simultaneously maintaining the ability to respond quickly and decisively to Taliban activity. That might have been a good idea, strategically. But the implementation of that  went wrong at Combat Outpost Keating.

One of the stated objectives of the troop at Combat Outpost Keating was to engage the local population in community building and thus turn the locals against the Taliban. The other objective was evidently of course to kill Taliban. These two goals could occasionally be in conflict since many of the locals were Taliban or at least sympathetic to Taliban. 

DJ Fluker victim of Domestic Violence from Girlfriend Kimberly Davis

Baltimore Ravens lineman DJ Fluker is 6'5" and well over 325 lbs. As a professional football player he performs in a sport of unrelenting aggression which may take years off his life and/or leave him with brain damage. 

Fluker is expected to bench at least 300 lbs, squat over 400 lbs, and play through all sorts of pain, including broken bones. Absent immediate self-defense I don't see myself becoming violent with him. And yet his girlfriend Kimberly Davis apparently continually did so, slapping, punching and drawing blood. And this evidently wasn't the first time that she had done so.

REISTERSTOWN, Md. (SBG) — A Baltimore Ravens lineman has allegedly been a repeated victim of domestic abuse, according to police documents. According to police reports obtained by WBFF, D.J. Fluker says he has been the victim of several assaults over the course of his long-term relationship with Kimberly Davis, who he has a child with.

Davis was arrested following a July 13 incident at the couple’s home in Reisterstown, Maryland, after she allegedly punched Fluker in the nose over an argument over social media. The responding officer observed dried blood coming from his nose and a photo obtained by WBFF from that night shows blood on Fluker’s face. LINK
If Fluker had done the same to Davis or retaliated to her violence there would be another million editorials, tweets, blog posts, and cable segments talking about the evil NFL black ape thug and how savage he is. Fluker could become a billionaire philanthropist, cure COVID-19, cure cancer, and die bringing food to the hungry. Obituaries written would ignore all that to center his domestic violence issue.

Hagia Sophia Becomes A Mosque

Something that remains near constant across time and cultures is that when one group of people successfully invades, dominates, displaces, or conquers another group of people, members of the victorious group often, not always but often, decide to build their important political, social, or religious buildings and monuments on top of those of the defeated peoples, change the functions of those older buildings to something more in line with the values of the winning side, or just gleefully destroy the older structures altogether. 

It's a spike of the ball in the end zone complete with touchdown dance. It's hanging on the basketball rim after a particularly vicious dunk. It's watching the baseball soar out of the stadium, glaring at the pitcher, flipping the bat and taking a slow jaunt around the bases. In other words, it's something specifically designed to let the other group know that they lost and there's not a damn thing they can do about it. It's not a very nice thing to do. And that's the entire point. 

It's not often remarked upon or noted but Islam like Christianity, has its own history of invasion, conquest and imperialism. The Turks, who are originally from Central Asia, not only conquered the region known as Anatolia, now modern Turkey, but also much of Eastern Europe, including the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine), Constantinople, renamed Istanbul. 

Movie Reviews: The Hunted

The Hunted (1948)
directed by Jack Bernhard

This is a workmanlike noir movie. It hits most of the major noir themes, alienation, loneliness, untrustworthy femme fatales, uncaring or corrupt officials and of course a few criminals. 

But it rushes through all of those plot points, rarely giving its two leads a chance to bite down into them. It looks great though.

From a purely visual standpoint if someone wanted to know what film noir looked like, you could show them this film. The framing of light and shadow, the blinds, the darkness, the streetlights, all let the viewer know that he or she is in an untrustworthy world. This could have been a better movie with a larger budget and stronger secondary actors. 

Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster) is a world weary homicide detective. He's just learned that his former special rider Laura Mead (Belita) has been paroled from serving her prison sentence for her role in a robbery. It seems that not only were Johnny and Laura an item but Johnny was the one who arrested Laura. 

Despite her protestations of innocence Johnny thought Laura was guilty. He apparently didn't even bother to visit her during her stint in the Big House. As you might imagine this has caused some strain in their relationship. Laura has sworn to murder Johnny and her lawyer Simon Rand (Pierre Watkin) once she gets out. And since she's out her parole officer feels legally and morally honor bound to warn the two men. 

Movie Reviews: The Rental

The Rental
directed by Dave Franco

The Rental is Dave Franco's directorial debut. Franco wrote it with director/actor Joe Swanberg (The Sacrament, You're Next).

It is inspired in part by some dodgy experiences that Franco had in hotels or private rented homes as well as some even more negative experiences that some of Franco's non-white friends or acquaintances had when trying to rent lodgings. 

It is true that it is illegal to refuse to do business with someone because of their race, religion or ethnic origin. It's also true that such discrimination can be difficult to prove. This discrimination remains so common that often it's not worth the time or trouble to take someone to court, which is usually what the offenders hope will be the case. 

Franco and his co-writers combine those elements and mix them up with a few more generic thriller cliches to make a quality story that doesn't set the genre on fire. It was fun to watch and had the requisite double crosses and misdirection. I think that because the cast was small with a very tight focus the viewer was able to understand the characters a little better. That doesn't necessarily mean that the viewer will sympathize with the characters. 

At least two of them are real scumbags while the other two are only marginally better. But they are very real. People make mistakes. People act selfishly. If you dig into anyone's past you're going to find a few things that might give you pause. So it goes.