Henry and Kristl went Zero Dark Thirty(2012) on each other.

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 2014)

"My my," Kristl whispered when the credits started to roll.
"Cool movie," Henry raised his voice, while he slammed the arms of his chair, "Come on Kristl, you can't say otherwise."
"Cool is not really the word I would use to describe this movie."
"All right. Here we go.... so...how would you call it then?"
"Impressive and reprehensible."
"Eh.. reprehensible?"
"Let's start with the impressive bit. I think it is well made and well acted. I felt the people and situations might actually resemble something that exist in reality. There is no 'hero': a special person that is better than all the rest.. The people are believable as far as can be in a movie. I cannot say much about how real the events are, but they appear to be real enough. Although.. to be honest.. I do not believe any of it. I see it as another 24 episode. Or a movie like Syriana. A fictional thriller that depicts events that might have happened and even depicts actual historical events, but for a large part remains fictionalized.. That is what I think because I have no way to affirm the truth of the happenings in one way or another."
"Ok."
"It is reprehensible because this movie is a sad testimony to the moral bankruptcy of a democratic government that not only feels fit to proclaim the death sentence on a foreign person without any form of judicial process whatsoever, but also stages a manhunt with the purpose to execute him instead of arresting him, and in addition it condones the use of any means to achieve that end, including murder, torture and blackmail."
"Eh? But that man killed thousands of my people. He deserved to be killed."
"Point of fact: that were not thousands of your people, there were many foreigners killed as well."
"Yeah, but it was an attack by an enemy on our country and we responded. We defended ourselves and the bastard got what he deserved."
"Japan attacked you.. did your government then decide to send out assassins to kill Hideki Tojo? Or say, drop an atom bomb on where he lived?"
"That is not the same. He was a head of a government of a country we were at war with. So killing him would not only have been hard, but would probably not have ended the war."
"Has the United States ever ordered such a thing? Has any democratic government ever done so?"
"This was exceptional."
"It sure was. It shows how your government, a duly elected government from a country that some of your citizen say to be the greatest country on earth, scoffs at anything that resembles a law, international relations and, when push comes to shove, human rights or moral integrity."
"Gosh Kristl. He was a terrorist. He deserved to die."
" Perhaps he did. Perhaps he should have died, but the fact that your government apparently did not even consider an alternative option but decided to execute him can only be labeled as 'Epic Fail'."
"So you would not have had him killed, but instead have had him arrested? And then what? Let him go? Put him in jail and thus give every Islamic fanatic a reason to kill, sabotage and hijack in order to get him released?"
"Well.. Yes."
"At the cost of how many lives?" Henry said.
"I can not tell."
"So there we have it..we kill one man but you would have had him live so many other people can be killed."
"I still think it would have been better if he was arrested and put on trial like the trials at Nuremberg. Perhaps a special tribunal that had the option of a death sentence, but at least as much as possible according the rule of law," Kristl sighed.
"Well.. sometimes you have to break the law to maintain it."
"If you have to do that, it defeats it's own purpose and the law has become obsolete. I think the test of a law is that you uphold it even if everything pushes you to break it."
"Let's just stop.. we're never going to see eye-to-eye on this one."
"No...."
"So the movie is a good movie as a movie."
"Yes. I think it is."
"Goodie. I think so too."
"Hmmph."
"And what is more. The bad dude dies in the end. As it should be."
"How very convenient."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, perhaps they did not want to have a process because you never know what he might say."
"Like what.."
"Like things that embarrass people in high places. Like your enemy's enemy is your ally, until you become enemies and then the money and the weapons that you supplied your former ally with are now turned against you."
"Are we back at the reprehensible bit again?" Henry raised an eyebrow.
"Eh.."
"Just drop it."
"Okay."
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