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Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan War’

Dirty Angels

Monday, March 17th, 2025

DIRTY ANGELS is not the newest Martin Campbell joint – that’s CLEANER starring Daisy Ridley – but the one from 2024, now on DVD in Canada. I don’t exactly know the events that shifted Mr. Campbell from A-lister who kicked off the last two eras of 007 and did the motherfuckin MASK OF ZORRO to journeyman in the trenches making barely released, mostly generic but pretty cool female-driven action movies, but I’m not gonna knock it. There are many worse trajectories to take in life.

This one is Afghanistan War Movie #562 (set as the war is ending, like most of them now), but the female stars and commando nature of the conflict do make it stand out a little. You have your vicious terrorist leader (George Iskandar), local contacts and lack of trust, but there are no raids on houses, it’s low on desert, and it’s about rescuing hostages ISIS abducted from an all girls school in Pakistan. Can’t object to that cause. (read the rest of this shit…)

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant

Tuesday, September 19th, 2023

GUY RITCHIE’S THE COVENANT really is the official title of Mr. Ritchie’s 2023 Afghanistan War action drama. You know – in the tradition of LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER. The backstory is they were gonna be straight forward and call it THE INTERPRETER, but then they decided to get a little pompous and change it to THE COVENANT, but that meant they had to add the GUY RITCHIE’S to distinguish it from Renny Harlin’s warlock movie THE COVENANT. That’s okay, this is one he can be proud to put his name on. It’s a good one.

Let me tell you this. A few years ago I hit my breaking point with War On Terror films. I felt like even when they weren’t pro-war or militarism propaganda they were still perpetuating our complacency on this unending war. Then we finally pulled out of Afghanistan, so that sort of changed the ethics of using it in action movies, but I still wasn’t anxious to revisit the topic. When I started seeing trailers for these new Jake Gyllenhaal and Gerard Butler movies where they’re a soldier trying to get their interpreter to safety I thought “oh jesus, this how they’re gonna keep milking this thing?”

So I’m thankful to the Action For Everyone podcast and others that have kept praising THE COVENANT and KANDAHAR and explaining why they’re more interesting than I assumed. I don’t know about that second one, but I’m glad I didn’t go with my initial plan to skip THE COVENANT. (read the rest of this shit…)