Man is a cannibalistic hyena to man

Rating: 9/10 (16 April 2009)

An interesting film on arms trafficking, but too pedagogical in many ways. It tries to prove too much and it misses the real point. The real point is not the horror of these tribal or neighborly wars. The point is not the corruption of all the little warlords in Africa and other areas in the world. The point is not the domination of arms trafficking by the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The point is not even the rottenness of the politicians of western countries, of developed and emerging countries. The point is the hyena that lives in the human heart. The idea sure is present in the film, but not shown the way it should be shown. There is no escape from this basic idea that the human being is a predator against his own species, hence a cannibalistic predator, one of the very rare animal species that has this characteristic. Somewhere this film tries to save the human side of that predator. There is no saving of that human side because there is no human side. The human side is nothing but an illusion projected by hypocrites to hide their tracks and footprints. That's what the film should have shown in the most realistic way. Unluckily it did not dare. It tried to save humanity and show it is manipulated by the few predators that would be living in our midst. But these are not a few. As soon as a human being, especially in a group, a band, a gang, or whatever collective structure or party (all meanings of this word intended), has a little piece of power, that human being is going to turn predator. The trade-unionists in a strike will kidnap and keep hostages the engineers or managers of their business. The minority students will block their universities to force classes out and they will speak of a strike and pretend their diplomas and degrees must not be retained from them as a payment for their strike just like a worker loses a day's pay for one day's strike.. Professors or students will sell university diplomas to foreign students (maybe to French ones too) to make their week-ends comfortable. A cop will release the evidence of still not yet tried case to hurt who knows who and the public will not see the denial of the rights of the defense but plain information for the public to know. A bunch of hooligans will kill someone in public and in front of a camera just out of rage, when it is not a five year old boy who kills a five year old girl at school or some individual who starts shooting in a school, on a campus, in an underground station, a supermarket or the street, not to speak of terrorist attacks and suicide bombers. There is no end to that horrible human nature. Sainthood, saint-dom or saint-ness not to speak of sanctity do not exist on earth. Maybe in heaven but after death only. In this film it is more or less asserted that some cops are honest though impotent, that some people hate violence, crime and guns, that some people may prefer poverty in purity rather than wealth in blindfolded innocence. I do not believe it. There is no right side in no conflict. The working class is in no way better than the capitalists. If they get power they turn terroristic, they open and manage some gulag, or whatever procedure to eliminate the other side. There is no guarantee that any one human being could be in any one way innocent. Better get used to that fact.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID