What a waste

Rating: 1/10 (31 October 2006)

The budding screenwriter in me admires the craftsmanship of the story and the direction, editing, and acting -- but the journalist in me spent the whole time cringing. Despite claims of authenticity, this story mixes gun-running and arms-dealing -- blending those who operate legally, albeit in a moral gray zone, with those who simply sell guns to child soldiers. I'm not sure about the claim that the US simply leaves its guns behind because it is cheaper than to take them with -- that does not ring true, but I would not be surprised to find an element of truth in it. If so, then it certainly should be exposed -- but the real crime in the arms trade is one that exists in this film, but is not properly explored: namely, that that arms travel through loopholes all over the world. There are no raids on arms dealers the way there are on gun runners. Arms dealers are clean and above the fray. And the problem isn't a conspiracy from the top down, but rather a failure to cooperate multilaterally. Interpol, far from being a solution, is part of the problem -- it does not exist the way portrayed in this film. There are no James Bond-like Interpol agents, because that treads on issues of national sovereignty. All Interpol can really do is pass information on from one agency to another. The real stuff gets done by agents of governments working with each other in a legal gray zone that is truly fascinating to explore. My experience with intelligence agents, by the way, is that most of them are conscientious, truth-obsessed, and and professional. That reality is actually quite fascinating, because it contradicts our preconceptions. This film, on the other hand, plays up to them. This film tries to portray incidents like the Iran-Contra Affair as being the rule rather than the exception. The film works dramatically because they chose to over-simplify reality -- but that is an artistic cop-out. I'm giving it a much lower rating that it should get if I were basing it just on its technical merits, but because the film pretends to be revealing a disturbing reality to us, it has taken on a degree of difficulty that it comes nowhere near achieving -- and judging by the comments from other people, it has done a disservice rather than a service.