Jarhead
LIBERTAS
“Waddaya mean it’s all a lie?”
For satiric purposes only, I was pitching an idea to a friend of mine recently. “Let’s recycle a few left-wing, Baby Boomer clichés about the American military as a dehumanizing, paranoid institution that’s only used to inflict terror on peaceful, supine, Third World civilizations that mean us no harm. We’ll have a stock soldier - a cherubic young white guy - who’s thrown into the Middle East meatgrinder only to fine that he’s being exploited, you see, as a pawn in a rapacious war over oil. He’ll have some sort of ‘revelation’ or ‘crisis of conscience’ about halfway through the film, which will put him in conflict with delusional, robot-officers giving him insane orders on the battlefield. Also, let’s make certain that service in our armed forces is portrayed as an indoctrination into lies that are used exclusively to deceive otherwise fine young men.”
“Oh, the other thing is, try to make this movie hip. Cast young, attractive stars to hide the fact that your vision of the world actually dates from the Vietnam era, and hasn’t been altered even slightly. Introduce as few complexities as possible into the scenario - just make sure that America looks bad. We know the movie won’t gross squat domestically, but it’ll sure rake it in overseas!”
After giving this pitch, I then saw this trailer apple.com for Jarhead and realized that - shazzaam! - someone had already beaten me to the punch!
libertyfilmfestival.com |
