Like masturbation: it's fun, but what's it for?

Rating: 4/10 (7 April 2006)

I gave this movie a low rating, 4, despite the fact that I quite enjoyed it while it was going on. I would rate it at least a 7 if I hadn't found it, in the end, morally objectionable. In the end it is a nihilist production (very like 'The Matrix', come to think of it) which exists to damp down and defuse all thoughts of current politics and political action in the minds of those who watch it.
If the message of the movie had been: 'This is what things may come to if you don't guard Democracy with vigilance,' I might have looked on it more favorably. But the movie's message in fact is, 'We haven't got a prayer unless a super-human hero arises to lead us.' This was the Nazis' message, once, the basis of one of the most grandiose oppressions that the world has ever know.
Politics day-to-day is kind of a dull business. Like the laying of sewer-pipes, it is necessary, but unglamorous. You could certainly make a good movie about it, but its box-office would be small. The only way the media seem to be able to deal with it is by way of farce ('Spin City' and 'Where's my Bush') where the main point is, our leaders are idiots. But the dullness of politics is discouragement enough: please don't make movies that discourage us further, in the name of entertainment. Are you listening, Brothers Wachewski? At least the farce points out a current problem with a current solution: if our leaders are idiots, let's vote them out. If all available candidates are idiots, or worse, let's go deeper into politics and campaign for good men and women. A hero saving the people of the future from their oppressors is very much like a porn-film. It's politics without action, like porn is sex without love or relation. Both are masturbation.