Tag: Samuel L. Jackson

The Incredibles (2004)

The Incredibles swing into action in this brilliant superhero-action-comedy

Director: Brad Bird

Cast: Craig T. Nelson (Bob Parr/Mr Incredible), Holly Hunter (Helen Parr/Elastigirl), Sarah Vowell (Violet Parr), Spencer Fox (Dash Parr), Samuel L Jackson (Lucius Best/Frozone), Jason Lee (Buddy Pine/Syndrome), Brad Bird (Eda Mode), Elizabeth Pena (Mirage), Wallace Shawn (Gilbert Huph)

In a world awash with superheroes, what if they were suddenly found legally responsible for all the destruction and chaos that surrounds their battles to save the world? If it suddenly became illegal to be a superhero? That’s exactly the world that spins out in The Incredibles: one where secret identities aren’t just a matter of choice, they are legally enforced by a government?

After all superheroes are banned, because clearing up the legal after-effects of the heroics is just too damn expensive, they retire into “ordinary life”. Fifteen years later, Bob Parr aka Mr Incredible (Craig T Nelson), is working in a dead-end job for a tight-fisted insurance company, whose values are the antithesis of his own, and moonlights, doing small superhero acts where he can. Meanwhile his wife Helen aka Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) raises their children, who have their own super-powers. One day Bob is contacted by a secret government agency to re-start his superhero work, and he jumps at the chance – but quickly finds he’s in over his head.

The Incredibles is pretty much a perfect film. I think it might just be one of the finest films Pixar has produced (and that is saying a lot). It’s not just a brilliant family comedy, it’s also a superb action adventure. In fact, its super-hero action is so well done, it trumps nearly any live-action film you can think of. Brad Bird pulls it together with aplomb and gives the film its own brilliantly distinctive visual style, a jazzy 1960s look with cool angles and heightened reality backgrounds. It’s terrific. And it’s really, really funny.

Just the very idea of superheroes being sued is funny. A series of newspaper headlines early in the film covers everything from train crash survivors suing for trauma, to a hero with x-ray vision being accused of being a peeping tom. From there the film has huge fun with superhero tropes –it’s just inherently funny to see these god-like heroes going through the tedious 9-to-5 and school runs the rest of us need to put up with. Throw in plenty of hilarious sight gags, plus some brilliant comic diversions (not least a brilliant monologue on cape-based disasters, that really pays off at the film’s end) and you’ll not stop laughing even after umpteen viewings.

It also balances all the humour and super-heroics with very real-world problems. It’s an animated family comedy that looks at the impact of a male mid-life crisis on family dynamics, and the impact that a distant, disengaged father can have on his children. Not the usual Disney content is it? Bob Parr is a frustrated, bored man, who feels trapped by missing the excitement and drama of his youth. He wants to recapture his glory days, but is overwhelmingly worried about whether, frankly, he’s up to it any more. He’s overweight, out of shape and past his best.

It’s also funny that Bob’s midlife crisis expresses itself in listening to police scanners, and roping best friend Lucius (a put-upon Samuel L Jackson) into carrying out acts of derring-do on the sly. “Just for once, can’t we just go bowling” Lucius complains. Not that it stops Lucius from throwing down later on in the action (after a brilliant “Where’s my super suit?” argument with his wife).

Poor Bob. Compared to Helen’s intelligent resolve and strength of mind, he’s also emotionally under-developed and unable to articulate his feelings. If you’d like to criticise the film you could say that it falls very much into the standard clichéd family structure (father is the breadwinner who feels trapped, mother is at home being a domestic hero), but the film gets past it because it always pulls itself up when it feels like its heading that way – even if it needs someone like Edna Mode to literally slap Elastigirl around the face and tell her to pull herself together.

And you have to give a pass to a film that has such empathy for its characters, not least the two kids. A cripplingly shy, moody teenage girl whose power to become invisible – no wonder she’s too shy to talk to boys. A hyperactive boy, whose power expresses itself in raw speed. These two kids feel really real, and the relationship (and loving rivalry with each other) really works. It’s clear the family bonds between the four are very strong.

Those battles are quite something by the way. Helped a great deal by Michael Giacciano’s terrific score – inspired by half a dozen 1960s and 70s spy and action franchises – these scenes are dynamic and electric. Brad Bird shoots the film like a real action film, and packs it with some brilliant humour. This is easily the most thrilling children’s animated film you’ll never see. Its action is a mixture of pure Bond and superhero thrills. And while some scenes are just plain grippingly cool to watch – is it a surpise that Syndrome geeks out? – others are a perfect balance between drama and action. A sequence with Helen piloting a jet, targeted by missiles, demanding Violet create a forcefield around the jet, and then desperately making a shield around the children using her own body is both stirring and moving (who can’t empathise with a child who feels they have let their parent down?).

The film also has an imaginative and fun spin on the standard super-villain in Syndrome and a decent mystery thriller that unfolds especially well over the film. Throw in plenty of small moments – many of them supplied by Brad Bird’s brilliantly voiced cameo as costume designer Enda Mode (a wonderful pastiche of Edith Head) – and you’ve got a gem for all ages. The entire cast is excellent – Craig T Nelson and Holly Hunter in particular are superb. The Incredibles ticks so many boxes I hardly know where to begin. Want a brilliant animation? Check. Want a hilarious superhero parody? Check. Want a family comedy? Check. Want a thrilling action film? Check. This film delivers on so many levels it should have a PhD. It’s simply sublime film making and story-telling. It’s hard to beat.

The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

The Legend of Tarzan: The King of the Jungle takes on the MCU style. And loses.

Director: David Yates

Cast: Alexander Skarsgård (Tarzan/John Clayton III), Margot Robbie (Jane Porter Clayton), Samuel L. Jackson (George Washington Williams), Christoph Waltz (Captain Leon Rom), Djimon Hounsou (Chief Mbonga), Jim Broadbent (Lord Salisbury), Simon Russell Beale (Mr Frum)

Every so often you seriously wonder what the point of a film was. Are movie studios so desperate for a franchise that literally anything that has any kind of name recognition is considered a money-spinning franchise in the waiting? Welcome to the latest feeble attempt to jumpstart an epic franchise: the first (and surely last entry) in the Tarzan-verse.

In the late 1880s, the Belgians are carrying out terrible acts in Africa, spearheaded by ruthless Captain Leon Rom (a painting-by-numbers Christoph Waltz). To get hold of diamonds held by an H Rider Haggard gang of natives, he needs to lure Lord John Clayton III (better known as the legendary Tarzan) back into the jungle. But John (Alexander Skarsgård) has tried to put his life as the King of the Jungle behind him (for reasons never really made clear) and only once his wife Jane (Margot Robbie) is put at risk does he begin to reclaim what he has lost.

Was there any real demand for a Tarzan movie? Perhaps even more to the point, was there any audience for one? Since, I imagine, today most people only on-screen Tarzan viewing experience was watching the Disney animated version, it’s hard to understand who the makers of this film imagined was going to engage with a confused, clichéd movie part dull origins story, intercut with a “rediscovering your roots” plot. And that’s the first of the major errors the film makes.

So determined is the film not to jump straight in with the context of who Tarzan is, that it keeps dribbling away from the actual plot to cram in small (confusing) moments establishing who his parents were, how he met Jane, how they left Africa etc. etc. etc. This stuff is far more interesting than any of the tiresome diamonds / kidnapped wife / White Man Saving Africa nonsense in the main plot, making all the “main” action feel like a sidetrack; not to mention that you’re several flashbacks in before you have any idea how Tarzan has ended up as a stuffed-shirt sitting in a clichéd London, slurping tea with his little finger extended, rather than swinging from vines in the jungle.

The film assumes a level of Tarzan-legend knowledge in its audience I sincerely doubt most viewers had, and the lag while you wait to catch up through the flashbacks is frustrating. The final product is a confused mess with no clear vision about what film it actually wanted to be. If it film wants to deal with the legend, why not just do that – and if it wants to introduce the origins, why doesn’t it just do that? Instead it’s neither one thing nor the other.

Mixed in with some feeble, faux superhero heroics is some clumsy post-colonial criticism of the Belgians’ terrible Congo record, but it goes nowhere in particular. A week on from watching it, I can’t remember what it was about at all. Stuff sort of happens, and there is a vague idea Tarzan is trying to save the Congo, but the film never kicks into gear. Events happen without any real narrative thrust – our heroes and villains literally meander down a river towards no-where in particular. It doesn’t help that almost every narrative beat in the film is completely predictable – this is the epitome of safe, uninspired film-making and storytelling, as if everything has been carefully honed in focus groups and committees.

A large part of the problem is Skarsgård’s lifeless performance in the lead role. Clearly bulging muscles and decent features were all the part really required, because there’s nothing in the way of character. He’s supposed to be a man who has lost touch with his past, confused and ashamed about his background. The film is building towards his emotional acceptance that his gorilla mother was his true mother. It’s a viable, if not especially original, plot – but it falls flat, simply because Skarsgård just isn’t interesting enough. His stilted performance conveys no inner pain or turmoil. Who cares who his mother was? Skarsgård doesn’t seem to, and neither did I.

It doesn’t help that all the rest of the actors (I mean all of them) are more interesting, eye catching presences. Jackson and Waltz are such seasoned pros they invest their paper-thin characters with their own charisma, though each of them could do what they are asked to here standing on their heads. Margot Robbie is actually rather radiant as Jane – even though she is never much more than a (defiant) damsel-in-distress.

The Legend of Tarzan is, at best, okay. It’s desperate to turn Tarzan into some sort of all-action superman, a competitor for the Marvel universe. But it focuses so much on trying to fill out the backstory and beef up the action that it fails to make a film with any characters in it we really care about. Instead this is the blandest, B-movie cornpuff you are likely to see and so instantly forgettable you’ll barely remember each scene as you watch it. It’s enjoyable enough but totally unsurprising, uninspired and fundamentally totally forgettable.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

The Avengers Assemble to take on robotic villain Ultron

Director: Joss Whedon

Cast: Robert Downey Jnr (Tony Stark), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (Bruce Banner), Chris Evans (Captain Steve Rogers), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff), Jeremy Renner (Clint “Hawkeye” Barton), James Spader (Ultron), Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury), Don Cheadle (James Rhodes), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Pietro Maximoff), Elisabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff), Paul Bettany (JARVIS/Vision), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson), Hayey Atwell (Peggy Carter), Idris Elba (Heimdell), Stellan Skarsgard (Erik Selvig), Thomas Kretschmann (Baron von Strucker), Linda Cardellini (Laura Barton)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: with the wrong director, it can be top a heavy mess, but Whedon showed with the first Avengers film that the right writer/director can weave the competing plotlines into a story that win overs an audience and leave them thrilled and entertained. His problem here was repeating that trick with the sequel.

After (it seems) finally defeating HYDRA, the Avengers relax at last – little knowing that Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jnr) is using multi-film-macguffin Loki’s staff to explore the possibility of creating an intelligent army of robots to defend the Earth. Instead, he creates Ultron (James Spader), a deeply flawed robotic version of his own personality, who grows to believe the best way to save the world is to wipe out mankind. Time for the Avengers to saddle up once more!

The greatest nemesis the Avengers faced here was that the first of these superhero smackdown films (2011’s Avengers Assemble) was far better than anyone had a right to expect. It was witty and had a plausible script, a very good villain in Tom Hiddleston (much missed here), and a winning structure that saw our heroes initially far apart and later drawn together into a family. On top of that, it gave all the jaw-dropping action and geeky thrills of watching iconic characters fighting together (in every sense of the word) that the fans expected. It worked so well that, consciously or not, Whedon ended up imitating it its structure here.

Both films open with a piece of shady alien tech: it’s stolen, and our heroes’ noble intentions for its use which backfire. The villain is an outcast with a personal (familial) connection to one of our heroes (Ultron is, to all intents and purposes, Stark’s son). A first attempt to take on the villains ends in chaos as no-one works together, leaving the gang disheartened. Hulk is unleashed, causes chaos and needs to be restrained. A pep talk from Fury perks the gang back up. They head back into a battle over a city, against overwhelming odds, where they finally work together and turn a weapon of mass destruction into their salvation. With some small thematic twists and some adjustments to the plot they are fundamentally the same movie.

This might be connected to the greater studio interference Whedon dealt with. This conflict of visions results in a wonky balance between pay-off from past films and build up to future ones, and several plot lines being poorly developed. Most obviously most of Thor’s sub-plot ended-up on the cutting room floor. What was meant to be a series of revelations about infinity stones turns into essentially Chris Hemsworth sitting in a puddle. Whedon confirmed that the studio instructed he delete either this sequence or the sequence set at Barton’s log cabin (the emotional heart of the movie) so it’s not surprising that this paid the price. Needless to say, not a frame of the terrifically dull and overextended Iron Man vs. Hulk battle was allowed to hit the cutting room floor.

This confused cutting down of ideas is present throughout the movie. Villain Strucker, introduced with fanfare at the end of the last movie, is unceremoniously bumped off off-screen. Andy Serkis pops up to serve as an introduction to a future movie. The creation of Paul Bettany’s Vision is only vaguely explained. Ultron is never really given time (despite a pitch perfect performance of cold smarm from James Spader) for his plans to fall into shape, or for the audience to really understand him as a character. A backstory for Natasha is fitfully sketched out – but with hardly any time to explore it, the final product was so clumsily done that the film drew heavy (unfairly personal) criticism from the Twitterati, claiming Whedon was denouncing any woman choosing not to have children (“I’m a monster” says Natasha remembering her brutal education, which included GBH, murder and her voluntary sterilisation). He clearly isn’t, but as the plotline is rushed, it becomes easier to read an unintended message in it.

The area Whedon does handle well is juggling the huge number of characters he needs to keep tabs on at any one time – with careful plotting and some decent, fleet-footed scripting, he manages to allow each of the heroes a moment in the sun and a chance for the actors to breathe and perform. Those moments where the film takes five and doesn’t worry about the explosions and comic lore are the ones that work best – and also, perhaps, the ones most warmly embraced by the fans (never the best judges of what they think they will like – in advance they would probably have named the bland Iron Man-Hulk battle as the movie’s big sequence).

There’s a reason why most people would probably remember sequences like the party scene, where our heroes playfully take it in turns to lift Thor’s hammer: they feel real and they deal with emotions and friendships that we can understand and relate to, in a way we can’t with a giant robot man hitting a big green guy for no real eason (can you tell I didn’t like that bit?). It’s why the sequence Whedon fought so hard to keep in the film – Barton’s log cabin – feels genuinely rather sweet and moving. These are sequences where our characters behave like human beings, and they are the sequences that make us connect with the film.

Anyway take a look at these two scenes – which is more interesting and engaging? Make up your own mind!

The best Marvel films have always had an eye for the incongruous insertion of our heroes into a real world. And by placing Barton (an empathetic Jeremy Renner) front and centre as the moral cornerstone of the film, contrasting his (albeit well-trained) normality against the Gods he fights with, Whedon allows elements of relatability to anchor the film. Renner makes an awful lot of Barton’s wistful longing for something away from Avenging, while his relationship with his wife (who “fully supports your Avenging”) is one of the first relationships in these films that feels like it could be from a regular movie.

It’s strengths like this that Whedon brings to these films. It’s not directorial vision – at heart Whedon is quite a televisual director, using simple camera set-ups without much visual flair. The action the film provides is entertaining enough, but in truth we’ve seen all this super action before, and few of the set pieces are really memorable. Even a few days away I’m struggling to remember them all. Which is not to say they are badly staged at all – they’re just nothing new or special, and in many ways just higher budget developments of things from the first film. Whedon’s real visual strength is in his instinct for a comic beat or sight gag – and the film delivers several of these.

Whedon also crucially forced through (against studio objections) the death of Quicksilver. Marvel strongly urged a cop-out final shot of Quicksilver either in a hospital bed or in recuperation, but Whedon wisely stuck to his guns. It was an important struggle, as it forces a sense of peril into this world and gives the viewer the sense that sometimes things might not always turn out well. This is particularly important, since Stark’s entire plot about his fears would make no sense in a world without stakes or consequences. It also allows Whedon to do some very neat audience misdirection with Barton – how many of us, watching Barton solemnly promise his wife that this will be ‘one last mission’, were expecting him to bite the big one later in the film?

Avengers: Age of Ultron is a compromised film, but still a decent one. It’s not in the top five Marvel films, let alone the top five superhero films, but it’s entertaining, has some decent action – and, above all, Whedon manages to put a bit of heart in heart, enough for us to care about the characters. It’s this factor so many of these films miss out on – and it’s a reason that, while Age of Ultron is flawed, it’s not fatally so, and will continue to entertain for a good many years yet.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

Colin Firth means business in super-violent Bond spoof Kingsman

Director: Matthew Vaughan

Cast: Colin Firth (Harry Hart/Galahad), Samuel L. Jackson (Richmond Valentine), Mark Strong (Merlin), Taron Egerton (Gary “Eggsy” Unwin), Michael Caine (Chester King/Arthur), Sophie Cookson (Roxy Morton), Sofia Boutella (Gazelle), Samantha Womack (Michelle Unwin), Geoff Bell (Dean), Edward Holcroft (Charlie Heskith), Mark Hamill (James Arnold), Jack Davenport (Lancelot)

Okay Kingsmen. I’ll hit a beat later on which explores a major problem I had with this movie, but let’s talk about the rest of the film first shall we?

Firstly, Kingsmen is for the most part rather good fun (even if it is too long). It’s an excitable, teenage-focused riff on James Bond films that throws in ultra-violence and foul language alongside the overblown villains, insane plots and super-spy skills (all themselves amped up to 11). “Eggsy” (Taron Egerton) is a drifting, working-class young man from a council estate who is recruited as a candidate for super-secretive espionage firm “The Kingsmen” by Harry Hart (Colin Firth). Bucking against the system, Eggsy must prove himself against the privileged, public-school types he is competing against for a place. Meanwhile, Hart investigates sinister plans from tech billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), aiming at reshaping the world to fit his own insane ideas.

Kingsmen basically has a teenage sensibility, with a “too cool for school” love for swearing and extreme (if comic book) violence. It deliberately sets itself out as a grimy, modernish, street version of Roger Moore’s Bond movies (at one point, Hart and Valentine even discuss “old spy films” – presumably copyright prevented a namecheck for Britain’s finest). The plot (and the cascade of exploding heads, satellites, sinister cross world signals, world leaders in danger etc.) all have the air of the sort of stupidity you found in Moonraker or The Spy Who Loved Me: the joke being that these fantastical elements have been mixed in with a sweary working-class hero and graphic violence. It has a pop-culture knowingness about it which it just (by the skin of its teeth) manages to prevent becoming too smug or self-satisfied.

This is partly because it is so well made. The violence and fighting are rather well done in their overblown, excessive excitement. Vaughan shoots it with a loving camera, revelling in the dynamism and speed of his agents (and their ruthless efficiency) in a way that’s very hard not to find entertaining. Some interesting music choices also add an ironic commentary to the killing. Vaughan’s also to be commended for spotting the potential for ass-kicking super-spy in Colin Firth (even if Firth himself probably plays the whole film marginally too seriously). The film’s main set piece a jaw-droppingly violent but slickly made fight sequence in a church is probably the only thing it will be remembered for in ten years time – but is certainly worth remembering. The fighting is fun to watch – it’s a shame it’s not married with a wittier script, as if the wit of the visuals couldn’t be carried across to the dialogue in case we got bored.

Vaughan’s script also wants to fight the corner of the working class – although saying that, since every other working class character in the film except for Eggsy and his Mum are criminals, wannabe gangsters or thugs, it could just as well be fighting the corner of the “deserving poor”. Some rather obvious notes are hit during Eggsy’s training as he clashes with the chinless wonders that populate the Kingsmen candidates. It would perhaps work better if Eggsy himself was a more engaging and sympathetic lead – but as it is, the parts of the film without Firth (and Strong as a Scottish, grumpy Q) do drag a bit, which is unfortunate when your film is already over two hours long. It’s hardly Saturday Night and Sunday Morning but it pushes through its Pygmalion-plot line reasonably well.

For the most part, Kingsmen is stupid, teenage fun. It takes place in a spoof James Bond world of huge bases in mountains and plans to destroy the world that can only be foiled by dynamic acrobatic fighting. If you were a male teenager watching this it would probably be your favourite film ever. It’s probably a little too knowing and isn’t really as charming as it really needs to be to work really well, but it’s entertaining enough. I was happy to leave it like that. And then this happens quite late on in the film:

Now it’s important to remember when watching this, that the video contains all the interactions in the movie between these two characters. Now I suppose you could just say it’s a smutty joke that, like the rest of the movie, takes the elements of a Bond movie (“Keeping the British end up sir!”) and amps them up to 11. But it’s cruder and (in my opinion) too clumsy and sexist for that. Not only that, but it’s the sort of exploitative, sexualised rubbish that makes you suddenly address the entire film’s attitude towards women.

The film has five female speaking roles (at a push). Each of these roles fills a specific stereotyped, trope-based function. One is a victim in an abusive relationship (the mother). Another is a standard “hot action chick” (the villain’s henchperson). Another exists solely to die early on. The character in the clip only exists to provide the hero with anal sex as a reward. None of these characters serve any purpose in themselves, other than how they relate to the male characters of the movie. All of them to varying degrees require protection from a man, or exist purely to service his needs. The cliché of a physically-strong-but-still-really-hot woman being created in place of an actual character is so tired, I’ll just leave it here as I can’t be bothered to type up why this isn’t a good balance.

That leaves Roxy, Eggsy’s fellow candidate. On paper, Roxy is a strong female role – only of course she isn’t. There is the standard hand wave that she is “the best in the class” during training – but she’s also established as the only candidate to have a genuine fear (of heights) that she has to be coaxed through by the hero. Her role in the conclusion is conquering this phobia again. The subtle implication is that Eggsy to some degree sacrifices coming top of the class himself to support Roxy.

I’m sure this is all po-faced political correctness and I’m being the sort of humourless prig sitting among the “20% of offended people” Matthew Vaughn said should basically get a sense of humour. But I mean, come on. The last shot of the film is a woman’s naked bottom rearing towards the camera. And yes I know, I know, I know it’s all riffing on Bond films but at least there the heroine was a presence throughout the film. I actually would have much less of a problem if these two characters had spent at least some time throughout the film together – but jumping straight to anal sex? It’s too much. It also seems to be fighting battles of the 1960s. Overt class consciousness from the rich is terrible – but women? Nope they’re just there for the sexier times.

Leaving everything else aside, it’s not that funny a joke. It’s such a terrible joke it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. So what’s otherwise a decent, fun film chooses to end with its lead character invited to perform anal sex by a complete stranger. And how a film ends tells us something about the film we’ve just watched – and for Kingsmen it’s not good.

Rules of Engagement (2000)

Our heroes “Can’t Handle The Truth!” That’s okay though they don’t need to deal with it

Director: William Friedkin

Cast: Tommy Lee Jones (Col Hays Lawrence “Hodge” Hodges II), Samuel L. Jackson (Col Terry L. Childers), Guy Pearce (Maj Mark Biggs), Ben Kingsley (Ambassador Mourain), Bruce Greenwood (National Security Advisor Bill Sokal), Anne Archer (Mrs. Mourain), Blair Underwood (Capt Lee)

Jones and Jackson together! At least that was the cry at the time for this morally repugnant military courtroom drama. On a mission to rescue an ambassador from an embassy under siege, after a few marines are wounded (three are announced later as KIA), Jackson’s Colonel fires on a crowd of protesting civilians (a scheduled protest that has gone out of hand) killing 83 and wounding dozens more. Horrified, the suits at home decide to put him on trial for murder. Jones is his alcoholic (for plot reasons) lawyer, who tries to uncover the truth around a missing surveillance video which may (or may not) prove the crowd was armed.

This was a film that I think I’ve hated more and more since I watched it. In its defence: Friedkin directs the opening embassy siege well. The siege itself (denounced as racist at the time) comes across as enormously prescient considering the Arab Spring etc that we’ve seen since. Jones is pretty good, I guess, despite looking far too old for the part (he’s only two years younger than his supposed mother!). Jackson does the fireworks that are asked of him. It’s pretty well filmed in general.

Everything else in this film leaves a taste like three-week-old field rations. The courtroom dynamics are boring. The film doesn’t want Jackson to be a villain so repositions Greenwood and Kingsley’s characters as villains. Despite their best efforts, any sane person watching this film could not defend Jackson’s character’s actions here. The logic of the courtroom is ridiculous: a non-existent video tape overrules all other evidence, including a complete lack of bullet holes from guns from the street direction? I suppose you could argue the film wants us to make our own judgement on subjective recollections: but its stirring music and heroic worship of Jackson tell us firmly who we should be believing here. Basically the message seems to be: Embassies are American soil, raise a gun at them and you deserve everything you got coming.

The film tries to stack the decks overwhelmingly in support of its central character, but it just leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. For a start, our hero is cleared on a technicality – “There must be a surveillance tape and that tape might have cleared the Colonel so you should let him off” – that we are meant to cheer, but is in fact exactly the sort of closed ranks, protect-our-own cover-up that the supposedly villainous National Security Adviser denounces in the first place. It’s not even a good argument: all the actual available evidence clearly shows he’s guilty and Jackson even admits it on the witness stand! Ever heard of the Amritsar massacre? It’s a comparable event to this and one of our most shameful colonial actions. On the logic of this film it should be our finest hour.

On top of that, the film asks us to believe that a proportional response to being under fire from gunmen in a crowd full of civilians (including women and children) is to fire automatic weapons directly into the crowd. But that’s fine because Jackson’s character has a dream where he sees the Yemeni civilians all shooting up at him (didn’t see that the first time you showed it Friedkin!) including the photogenic one-legged girl the film has gone back to several times. So you go Samuel! Shoot up that crowd!

I could go on with the wonky morals of this horrible little film. The first thing we see Jackson’s character do on screen was to execute an unarmed prisoner (our hero, ladies and gentlemen!). Naturally the film has to exonerate him for this, so we have the Vietnamese officer who witnessed this turn up at the courtroom and say he would have done the same, then have the two of them tearfully salute each other outside the courtroom. So that’s fine then. It’s just another part of the film’s unpleasant attitude that you can’t even begin to question right or wrong in combat because, man, you weren’t there. Well I’m sorry but that doesn’t wash.

What is the moral of this unpleasant story? Well it seems to be that you can do almost anything you like so long as you can argue you have in someway saved lives (especially if they are American lives). Oh and that by extension, 1 American Marine’s life is worth just about 28 Yemeni lives. Go figure.