Sam as our Shepard

Rating: 8/10 (27 December 2019)

Ridley long passed the point where he makes movies about the story... somewhere around Black Rain. His movies since then have been about the making of that movie. What you might call self-referential. I call it folding.
There's a reason Sam Shepard was cast as the General devising the mission. He's our stand-in for Ridley. Sam himself was a playwright, and as a fringe celebrity himself, hanging alongside the margins of the 1975 Dylan Rolling Thunder tour. Then he got into movies where he's almost always cast as The Man. Watch as Sam "directs" the proceedings, then has to adjust to things on the fly. This is a movie about making movies.
This is the movie making phase where Ridley is into his second wind, the experience of Gladiator and digital cinematography having inspired him. This was so well made, I could not tell the seams of the digital backgrounds until I invested in a top of the line thin screen TV.
The movie itself is not intended to explain anything or illuminate anything. It's just a movie.
Full disclosure, I attended a college class with one of the Ranger survivors. This was 1996, most Americans had no idea what went down. He told the story of how they were there to help feed those people, and his friend was killed in the battle and his corpse dragged through the street. I'll never forget the sound of his voice as he talked about his friend. It was 100 times more harrowing than any movie I ever saw.