Those Puffy Sounding Body Shots

Rating: 6/10 (25 July 2013)

Hollywood has the ability to create incredible effects and adapt its talents to whatever has gone on. Like Argo, we are left wondering just how accurate these efforts can be. The film begins with torture and sheer brutality. A prisoner has things done to him that make us sit back and cringe. Are the people doing this supposed to be heroic in some way? Are there results really effective. After about fifteen minutes of this, we get to see the dogged, monomaniacal Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, use her anger and frustration with the slow acting military to get her way. I'm fully aware of the atrocities that had been committed and the role of Osama bin Laden, but was it worth any more than a publicity stunt to put the kind of effort into getting this guy. There is some very good intrigue and I am willing to bet that the movie is pretty accurate in its portrayal. My worry is that this kind of movie glamorizes the "anything goes" mentality that has filtered into the minds of people. We have always prided ourselves on being better than this. In the movie, when things go bad, it's because of inadequate security and indecisive authority. This, of course, ultimately leads to the Bin Laden compound in Pakistan and the raid that took the guy out. Once launched, we are treated to a feast of violence. Those second and third shots into an already dead body have a puffy little sound. These men will be seen as heroes, but they also will be seen as people have been trained to kill first and ask questions later. This mission was successful, but did it require a total disregard for the rights of humanity. Bin Laden was the target, but the bodies piled up all over the place and little children were terrorized.