Korean Job Discussion Forums

[sundubuman]

Hollywood Bombs
November 28, 2007; Page A22

What if they held a war movie, and no one came? That's the tale of woe at this year's fall box office, where Tinseltown's bleak vision of Iraq has many movie-goers taking a pass. Films from Brian De Palma's low-budget screed "Redacted" to Robert Redford's star-studded "Lions for Lambs" are playing to empty seats.

Small wonder. As Hollywood sees it, the fictionalized stories worth telling about Iraq and the war on terror involve the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by American soldiers ("Redacted"); the kidnap and torture of an innocent Egyptian ("Rendition"); the duplicity of the Army surrounding a soldier's death ("In the Valley of Elah"), and other American perfidy. "Lions for Lambs" has performed so poorly that it may not make back its $35 million investment.

This hasn't been a good year at the box office anyway, but that only goes halfway to explaining the numbers. Both "Rendition" and "In the Valley of Elah" have taken in less than $10 million, despite headliners like Reese Witherspoon and Tommy Lee Jones. Attendance at Mr. Redford's film dropped by 57% after the first weekend, as word got out of the movie's antiwar speech-making. One online site, filmcritic.com, described "Lions for Lambs" as an "op-ed masquerading as a motion picture." Entertainment Weekly remarked of "Redacted" that "War is hell . . . and so is this movie."

It is not impossible to make a successful antiwar film, as the "Deer Hunter" and "Platoon" proved regarding Vietnam. But they also came several years after that war ended, when our soldiers still weren't fighting and the public was in the mood for perspective. That's a different audience than the one now in theaters, which is less than thrilled at the opportunity to spend 10 bucks to watch American soldiers depicted as rapists and murderers while our own real-life troops are being killed by roadside bombs.

It's always a difficult venture to turn tragedy into entertainment, but war movies succeed when they capture the complex reality of the battlefield, as well as the sacrifice and heroism that emerge from it. Americans don't seem amused to see their countrymen or country portrayed as immoral imperialists, and they prefer to win the wars they start. Bring back John Wayne, or at least Clint Eastwood.

[sojourner1]

Hollywood has been declining in the quality of their movies for quite some time now. Look at how dismal both the science fiction and war categories have become.

It's about mostly about trying to make easy money with the lowest production costs while producing satire.

[thepeel]

I agree the the movies have been declining in quality. Well, the mass market movies. But TV programs are getting so much better. BSG, The Wire, Entourage, Mad Men and others all have movie quality scripts, sets, acting and production values.

[sundubuman]

The article wasn't about Hollywood in general, it was about its pathetic attempts to make America look bad and how Americans are refusing to go along with its indoctrinating tactics.

[thepeel]

I was replying to the poster above me, not the OP.

BUT, related to the OP. NPR's Intelligence Squared program had a 2 hour Oxford style on this very subject. It was quite interesting.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6625002

[peppermint]

I think the article in the OP is off base. War movies worth their salt have always been anti war, but that didn't stop Apocalypse Now, MASH or Saving Private Ryan from doing well at the box office.

The thing is, the movies mentioned aren't war movies in the conventional sense, they're dry procedural films that touch on war but do so in the least dramatic way imaginable.

Rendition could've been good, but they relied too much on a postmodern structure, and didn't develop the characters or plot enough for us to care

[happeningthang]

I haven't seen any of the movies mentioned, but couldn't it just be that they are bad movies? That would be reason enough to avoid them.

I share the ideas that these movies are said to espouse, but I don't want to sit through 90 minutes of being lectured to - from any perspective.

Sounds like 'Lions and Lambs' suffers from the same didactic, preachy approach that made movies like Philadelphia, and Crash insufferably boring.

[peppermint]

They aren't terrible, but they're going to be compared to great movies that have been made in the past, and by that standard, they fail miserably.

[igotthisguitar]

[ernie]

'lions to lambs' was one of the 5 worst movies i have EVER seen... i would have paid money NOT to have to sit through that one... the writing was stiff and horrendous, there was zero character development, and the young guy has got to be the WORST actor i have seen in a long time... somehow this movie managed to combine unnaturalness and predictability...

[Ya-ta Boy]

I don't see how you can draw any worthwhile conclusions about the American public's attitude toward anything except bad movies. If there were good movies the public was shunning, that would be another story.

[catman]