The Guy

Rating: Null/10 (10 January 2010)

I saw this immediately after "Avatar."
It broke my heart because it awakened things in my memory of Avatar that I would have noticed and not liked. I'm a cinematic sucker. I am easy to hypnotize and readily fall into the world that the competent filmmaker can shape, just in time for me. I did not need to think about the fake morality, the tired stereotypes, the prefabricated celebration.
Here is Cameron's ex-wife. Not for very long, but long enough for me to see that they share values.
This here is effective, darn effective. I can taste the dust. My sweat smelled of the same fear as that in the suit. I admired what I was supposed to.
But this is about war. Not pretend otherworldly war, but war that is being conducted in my name with my dollars, included in the social contract.
Now this filmmaker made two films that were wonderful. "Weight of Water" was miraculous. "Strange Days" was strange enough to matter. She knows what she is doing.
So here is a choice. War is cinematic. We will always have war movies. Do you make "Platoon"? Or do you make "Full Metal Jacket"?
This is to say, is it a movie about a man in a war, who bends the war to himself. In this case we will cheer as tides are reversed and the moon flies backwards. We win!
Or is is about a war, about the world that grinds us up in spite of ourselves, and incidentally can people flash their eyes in the smoke of the tornado? These are harder to make, and we do not cheer. We only have nightmares and sometimes — too rarely — do something about it.
Bigelow goes for the cheap shot. It is excellent and AI would see it again. But she made a clear choice to go for the testosterone flavored ice cream. And because it is so well made, we are possibly worse off for it. It at least tarnished Avatar
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.