July 12, 1996
I know why I didn’t watch COURAGE UNDER FIRE in ’96. I was very anti-war, in a country that had generally accepted the Gulf War as a good thing, and I didn’t want to sit through more bullshit about how proud we should all be about it. And also, let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly looking for Serious Adult Drama unless it was from filmmakers I was already into. I was not into director Ed Zwick (GLORY, LEAVING NORMAL) or writer Patrick Sheane Duncan (84C MOPIC, MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS), so it didn’t really matter that it was shot by Roger Deakins (between FARGO and KUNDUN), edited by Steven Rosenblum (STEELE JUSTICE, BRAVEHEART), with music by James Horner (BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, UNCOMMON VALOR, COMMANDO).
Watching it now, sitting through the opening news montage about the war, it doesn’t feel like we’re supposed to question any of it. Then we go into a tank battle that’s very visually connected to the way we experienced the war on CNN: night skies, burning oil wells, explosions in the distance, cuts to green, pixelated night vision, “enemies” virtually invisible, barely given faces, never voices. And they’re mostly referred to by slurs.
If that was commentary I would guess most viewers didn’t notice. It feels more like a continuation of how the war was seen at the time. However, there is something to be said for Lieutenant Colonel Nat Serling (Denzel Washington between DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS and THE PREACHER’S WIFE) having his troops pray and then immediately saying, Let’s kill ‘em all!”
And I do suspect it’s intentional that the fight is almost uncomfortably one-sided. They’re just driving along firing machine guns through rows and rows of human beings. The only tragedy, in their eyes, is when they mistakenly blow up one of their own tanks, killing their friend Boylar (Tim Ransom, OUTBREAK). The tank operator who fired, Patella (Sean Astin, ENCINO MAN), is racked with guilt, but Serling takes the blame. It was his orders. (read the rest of this shit…)
April 3, 1992
THUNDERHEART is not a weird movie like some of these other 1992 releases, but it’s a pretty unusual one: a procedural thriller that attempts to shine a light on real life injustices taking place on tribal land in the U.S. An opening title says “This story was inspired by events that took place on several American Indian reservations during the 1970’s.” From what I’ve read it’s largely inspired by the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973, but director Michael Apted (COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER) also released the documentary INCIDENT AT OGLALA later in the summer, and that was about similar clashes between traditional and Americanized Sioux and a shootout with the FBI on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. I assume those events influenced it as well.
I’ve never been a war movie guy. I’m not actively against them like when I was young and rebellious and thought they were propaganda, but I don’t seek them out. Of course there are some great ones, but I wasn’t in the market for Sam Mendes, director of 
I don’t know about you, but for me it’s hard to imagine a better sequel to 
Here we go yo, here we go yo, so what’s a what’s a what’s a sicario? In Mexico, the onscreen text tells us, it’s a hitman. And the movie SICARIO is a nightmarish portrait of the byzantine conflict such a hitman would be in the middle of. Literally that would be the War On Drugs but metaphorically, it’s easy to think, it could be about the War On Terror, or any number of seemingly intractable cycles of violence. This is, after all, Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (
I saw KILLING THEM SOFTLY today and I’m working on the review right now, and that made me realize that when I finally caught up with the director’s previous movie earlier in the year I didn’t ever post a review of it. But it turns out I did write some stuff in my notebook, so I dug that up and I don’t mean to brag but I am a pretty good typist so here is a quickie review for you, friends.
