Blowback - S1 Bonus - "Iraqi Horror Picture Show feat. Matt Christman"

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Brendan and Noah survey the underwhelming landscape of Iraq War cinema with special guest Matt Christman. They dissect both Hollywood's hits and flops — neither of which were very good — and recommend very few flicks worth watching.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Going to the CIA and getting to meet different people, certainly being at the building is something that I've always wanted to do. Obviously I knew that they had dedicated their lives to the idea of the agency, but when you actually meet them, these people are a much more diverse group than you would imagine, a much more apolitical group than you would imagine, which is really refreshing. Their job is that they're always trying to do the right thing. There are things that they may feel they don't want to do or feel is not moral to them.

not moral to them, so they will not do that certain aspect of the mission. There's always a different way to find out the information you're trying to get. And I just, again, I was so relieved and sort of honored to be there among a group of people who are so dedicated to the rest of this. Are you in your track suit? Oh, yeah. I noticed you haven't been wearing the track suit I got you for Christmas.

Was that the right size? Did it actually not fit you at all? It's a little small. Oh, damn it. But the thing is, is that this is a full track suit. The black, the red thing. It's like got pants and everything.

Yeah, okay. That's a nice way of saying. up your gift, which... You did not. Shut up. All right. Nice one, Brendan. It's got sexy ladies on it.

What people are on. I thought that's why you'd like it. No, I do. Okay. All right. I'll intro here. Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James.

And I'm Noah Colwyn. And you're with us again in the bonus zone. And if you like the show, if you're enjoying the show, we'll remind you. You can always get access to all 10 episodes and bonus episodes if you sign up to Stitcher Premium. Go to stitcherpremium.com, enter the code blowback for one month, totally free. But this week we're doing something different because we're headed to Tinseltown. It's on Iraq at the cinema with Brendan and Noah.

And we're going to take a look at the world of Iraq War cinema. With us, we have the perfect man for this job, my former colleague and hosts of Chopo Trap House, international bad boy Matthew Christman Let's all go to our lawn bar Let's all go to our lawn bar And have ourselves a surge So let's get right into it

This episode I want to talk about a couple things We got a bunch of movies A bunch of examples of a rock war cinema We're not going to list all of them But we're going to list I think Some of either the most important The most representative or the most bad Which are often the same thing

A couple of them we actually just, we watched together remotely the other day. And then at the end, we're going to mention some movies that came out of the Iraq War extended universe that we actually like. So Matt, you and I have always said that the only real or honest Iraq war drama you could make if you wanted to make a movie, you know, would be one where, you know, you're a regular person living in Iraq. and after the Americans declare war they roll in and these faceless American soldiers shoot a bunch of people you know or kidnap your kid or kill your dad or take prisoners

and you eventually join a local resistance group or terrorist group as the Americans would say and try to kill them and drive them out of your town. Yeah, we make those kind of movies all the time. We're very good at it. Right, but even the most bleeding heart American filmmaker

would probably they were never going to make that movie either because they actually didn't want to take it that far or because they knew it could never get made and then also there's the fact that coming from an American it really wouldn't be earned honestly yes it would actually be pretty

grotesque for Americans to make that movie yeah so that's something that would have to come from outside of America and therefore never have probably the whiff of anything as the exposure of a Hollywood film but unlike the the Vietnam era say, you know, in which we got a lot of pretty good movies coming out of the Vietnam

War, pretty provocative and transgressive in their own way. That didn't happen with Iraq. And what we mainly got was the genre of shoot and cry in which we see soldiers going to war and then coming back and feeling bad about what they did. And shoot and cry, I believe that's a, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's an Israeli term. Yeah, it's the Hebrew phrase is Yorim Vibachim. And it's because, you know, Israel is as an intensely militarized society with mandatory conscription. And, you know, like a hot and cold conflicts with the Palestinians and virtually every other country around it, the country's, like, cinema is actually largely known for its military depictions. And movies featuring Israeli soldiers and their, you know,

psychic trauma is like, you know, you see that the Oscars actually pretty frequently. So it is, like, very much in Israeli, it is a staple of Israeli cinematic culture. Right. But that can graft onto any hyper-militarized country's culture. So in this case, it's Americas. And so a lot of these are shoot and cry in which we see that our boys in uniform have been put through hell, but the actual sufferings or horrors visited upon Iraqis themselves, that's always sort of window dressing, you know, or it just kind of flavors

or seasons the personal suffering and trauma of the individual American soldier. Welcome to Camp Victory. Camp Victory. This was Camp Liberty. Oh, no. They changed that about a week ago. Victory sound better. All right.

On that note, let's get started. The first movie here, The Hurt Locker, 2008. Oscar winner. Oscar winner. Catherine Bigelow. Defeated Avatar, for God's sakes. Directed by Catherine Bigelow. She was already an established director, of course, but this really launched her into, you know, a hyper-acclaimed part of her career.

And she would go on to make Zero Dark 30 with the same writer of Hurt Locker, Mark Bull. We'll talk about that one later. That one was co-directed and written by the CIA. But I watched Hurt Locker again the other day, and it definitely presents itself as, you know, the brutal, honest, gritty confrontation with what war is really like. but it doesn't really try to say anything all that interesting, you know, or provocative about war or the Iraq war in particular. Well, it's like an incredibly apolitical movie in the sense that, like, there, which is what Roger Ebert said about it. And I thought was like pretty spot on. But it's, it's not a movie that like actively engages with anything resembling a political question. In fact, like, it seems to just kind of treat like what Bigelow.

and seems to be mostly interested in is just sort of this vision of war as like a psychological, not even like a trauma, but like almost like a compulsion. Yeah, exactly. That's the closest thing to a point that movie had that I was able to tease out of it when I saw it.

I only saw it in theater when it came out when I was younger was that it was some sort of commentary on the way that Americans process wore like through spectacle and the way that like the guy played by Jeremy Renner is sort of subconsciously reenacting movies because that's like how he understands like what he's supposed to be doing there

and then there's the pretty facile thing about war being a drug and him being addicted to it but it's it's it's very standard in that it is lazily focused on like the psychological terrain of the troop yes like as an abstract concept i mean that's the thing that we're definitely going to return to is this idea of also like having this trauma, having these experiences, and then choosing in these movies so frequently, it seems, to go back to war. Hold on, I got a woman and a kid, 200 yards out, moving towards the country. Yeah, she's got a grenade. She's got RKG rushing grenades.

She's saying to the kid? You say a woman in the kid. The possibly even more iconic movie than the Hurt Locker, and Matt and I did an episode about this a long time ago on Chappo is, of course, American Sniper. Oh, yeah. 2014, Clint Eastwood directing, Bradley Cooper stars in it

as Chris Kyle, the everyone's favorite master sniper. And I guess, you know, it's a film about what he did over there and then his struggle

to, I don't know, reintegrate into society after. Not really. It's more a struggle with that he can't be there all the time

killing all of the Iraqis. I actually, I mean, I hated American sniper when I saw, And I still think that, you know, as a political thing, it is a rancid and awful and reifies all the worst lies about the war in Iraq. But having seen Richard Jewell, which I think is actually brilliant, and I think he's trying to do similar things to American sniper, I realize that American sniper might not have been this malevolent. It might have just been a failure.

Basically, Eastwood pick the wrong guy to make a movie about it. because Chris Kyle was a psychopath I mean the guy bragged about how he lied repeatedly if he had well I mean beyond the fact

that he was a compulsive liar who made up shit like shooting people from the roof of the Superdome and killing killing would be carjackers in a gas station and then the cops show up

and they just let him go because he's like a special operative or something to but I mean in his book he claimed to shoot more people when he was down in the competition for like most confirmed kills among the other seal snipers.

I mean, that's just admitting to being a serial killer. And I think whatever Eastwood's trying to do with, and I think he does it way more successfully with Richard Jewel, to investigate like male expectations in America and like how masculinity is sort of performed and like the limitations of that and how it's like really only allowed for certain people in certain places. most interesting thing that could have been about American sniper, but it just gets drowned out by just the

high level, high volume political operation that that movie is a part of. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, let's be on we know Clint Eastwood is a Republican dumb ass. Yeah, but he's not like a warmonger is the thing. No. Like you remember his big deal when he talked to the

to the, talk, famously talked to the chair at the RNC in 2020. was about Obama not getting out of Afghanistan. Yeah, well, but I mean, at that point, anything that Obama was doing was bad de facto. But even if Clint Eastwood is a anti-war conservative, that's a certain type of anti-war thing

where, you know, you don't want to waste any more valuable American life for these savages over there. Well, it all breaks, it all stems from a fundamental inability to extend humanity to Middle Easterners. Yeah, where the neocon desire to invade and dominate, It was based on a dehumanizing paternalism. The old school conservative desire to get out was based on an America First style. Yeah, like the closest thing the anti-war sentiment you get in American sniper is these people aren't worth it.

Yeah, exactly. Like it accepts as a fact that they're doing some sort of job of building a nation there and not dismantling one on purpose, which is what they actually did. Right. And that says they don't deserve our largesse because they're not civilized enough. Correct. What do you think you're doing here, Miller? You're off reservation for a reason. What is it?

I came here to find weapons and save lives. It's a little more complicated than that. Well, not to me. It isn't. Next up, Green Zone, 2010. Green Zone, my favorite episode of 30 Rock. It is, this one's an interesting one to me. Noah and I watched it not so long ago.

It's basically Jason Bourne goes to Iraq because it's directed by Paul Green. Grass who did Born Supremacy and stars Matt Damon. Matt Damon plays a military officer on the ground in Iraq who's hunting for the WMD. We've invaded and we've occupied it. Now we're hunting for the weapons. But he's not finding any because they lied. They lied. And he begins to unravel a big conspiracy, the conspiracy of how we got into Iraq. And that sounds like a decent action, you know, anti-war movie. But the problem is, is that This movie wants to tell you the truth about how we were lied into Iraq. But to spice it up and sex up the action content, it invents a fake conspiracy that is not based in reality where this general gave us the bad intel and we wanted to like, we promised that he'd be put in charge after and then Matt Damon has to hunt the general and that kill him but also fight the government.

And it's like, it's, none of that is real. None of that's true, as you know, from listening to the show. So it's this attempt to tell the truth about how we got lied into a war with a fake, with a fake answer. And that would actually be cool and interesting if it was satirical, but it's played completely earnest, which is a very odd project to me. It's so funny about it, this is that it was ostensibly based on the book, Imperial Life and the Emerald Cities. Yes, by Reggiein Chandra Sakeron. Yes, and that book is about the absurd bureaucratic situation where you had a bunch of Heritage Foundation teenagers

trying to recreate the Iraqi state from scratch. And I remember when I heard that book was being adapted. I assumed it was going to be some Alexander Payne type thing, or like Mike Judge, like a lot of fluorescent lights and lanyards and just these absurd conversations happening. you know with like fucking car bombs going off in the background but and but as soon as paul greengrass got involved that kind of went out the window because it had to be an action movie

and so the what so it really does tell you the green so is a good example of how of how art really is incompatible with mainstream where with uh with with like politics uh and specifically how like Hollywood tropes sort of demolish any intent you might have because Jesus Christ

you watch that movie do you really come away thinking about the horrible lies that went into the war in Iraq? I mean it's an action film yeah it's just it's just he's shooting Iraqis basically yeah it's just like they're the lying Iraqis I guess or something

well it's it's also like they're doing like it's like it's doing all the same like ripped from the headlines like SVU shit where like uh the all like this is all a scheme to help prop up like a u.s uh like you know like puppet politician who resembles uh like ayadalawi who was then the like inter like like head of the right he was the interim prime minister and it just doesn't like it's it's obviously all very um it's all very stupid and poorly uh conceived a couple of things i remember about green zone one there's a judy miller character played by i think amy ryan and in the beginning it's like

real life where she was responsible for publishing all of the junk intelligence but then at the end when matt damon gets the secret flash drive of evil war crimes he leaks it to the judy miller character so that she can go write it up and get the exclusive it's like why would the why the fuck would you give yeah it's so it's so funny the the the the hot spicy intel that reveals the to that person. Well, that's part of what, like, the tropes of these kind of movies are all about finding the bad apples, finding the bad actors within systems that are being, that are worthy and are being actually defended by the hero. Yes. Because it's the bad people within it that are making the bad decisions and doing the evil, and you've got to get them out. All these movies

are twisted into a bad apple story. There's never really an institution that is bad. It's always some rogue guy, like Greg Keneer. Which really does not convey the Iraq war deal. It's sort of the opposite, really. Yeah. And speaking of that, though, there's a CIA guy. The CIA is the hero of the movie, funnily enough. And it's Brendan Gleason with his Irish accent in the CIA, which I like...

Well, that's always Brendan Gleason. Yeah. He's like Liam Neeson and he has never successfully conveyed an American accent in any film, no matter where he's supposed to be. fucking Churchill, probably with an Irish accent, particularly grotes. You know what? That would have been an own, and I would have respected him if he did that. Because honestly, any Irish guy who plays Churchill, I'm like, oh, what the hell, you're a cuck. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're cucked. Unless you give Churchill an accent. He unleashed the black and tans on you, for God's sake, show some self-respect, although nothing will beat. This is a total tangent we can cut it, but nothing will beat the indignity of Richard Harris playing Oliver Cromwell. I know, I know. That is, when we were talking with the, with the Judy Miller thing, The same reporter that does all the bad reporting gets the big scroop at the end. I know she's going to do the good report? It reminds me, do you remember when we interviewed Tim when we had Idecker on the show? And he said he was watching Homeland.

And it's a show where all five people who are important to the world security are in the same block and all know each other. There's just five people at any given moment who are doing the main thing that's happening. And they all have each other's phone number. On a mission to find the facts. The vice president has received a report concerning the purchase of materials. to build nuclear weapons. We need to get in close. They turned to her husband for answers.

It is my opinion. A sale that size could not have happened. I have teams in the field. They're all saying the same thing. But when the truth was made public... What do you think the White House wants to hear, huh? There was no nuclear program. You need to change the story.

They made her pay the price. Valerie, your name is in the paper. This is your CIA agent. This might have been the worst one that we had... From now on, we're talking. about ones that we've watched. We Google hung out the other day and watched a couple of these. This one might have been the worst.

Fair game. 2010, directed by Doug Lyman, who did Swingers and... And Born Identity. And Born Identity, yeah. Because Greengrass did the sequels to Born Identity, right? Yes, correct. Lyman did the first one. This was a movie

dramatizing the Valerie Plame affair, and I believe on our show, we mentioned it very much in passing, because the Valerie Plame Affair was frankly one of the most overexposed and over-emphasized elements of the liberal account of the Iraq War. It was the first Russia Gate. Yes, we'll get to that. Which is why anyone who lived through that era should have been immunized events ever caring about it,

which means that anyone over the age of like 30 who cared about Rushagate, it's like, do you, what happens to your brain every night? Do all the wrinkles you get just pop back? Like a fucking Tupperware container? Yeah, like a stress ball. Yeah. But for those who were too young, maybe, let's recap the Valerie Plame affair, because we'll be summarizing the movie by doing it. Valerie Plame, played by Naomi Watts in the movie, was an American CIA agent, and she

was a power couple with a former U.S. ambassador to Niger, who's played by Sean Penn in the movie, Joseph Wilson. And after we invaded, Joseph Wilson blew the whistle in the New York Times on the Bush administration. saying, I was ambassador in Niger. Saddam definitely was not looking for uranium there, which was the accusation. In retaliation for blowing the whistle, Dick Cheney and his monster squad

leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent and blew her cover. And it was a big scandal. And the Libs loved it because these were two patriots who were being harassed and put in danger by the unpatriotic Bush administration. What did you guys think of fair game? Woo! Rollercoaster.

ride of excitement. The thing that most struck me about about Fair Game is it came out in 2010, right? Yeah. That makes it the single most inessential film ever made. I saw the sequel, the 10 year later sequel to Zombie Land, like a week before, and I remember

thinking, this did not need to be made. I cannot think of any movie. And then I saw this and I was like, I'm sorry Zombie Land, too. Because specifically, the reason this is in Central, Inessential is because for the libs who make up the audience for thing like this, like when a guy like Bush is president and now when a guy like Trump is president, like your aesthetic preferences are for things that like get you mildly outraged. Like that's based, that's like the, that's the emotion you're chasing with your, with your entertainment of choice is getting riled about the awful president who you're so mad at. Righteous indignation. Righteous indignation.

But that's only, that only obtains. as long as they're in power. As long as, as soon as Bush left the White House, and certainly as soon as like the whole, like, because this whole deal, at the time, everyone was excited, including dumbass young me because we thought, oh, they're all going to jail

because of this. Like, yeah, Bush got reelected in 2004 even though he lied to start a war that killed half a million people, but, oh, we're going to get him out of technicality. And then it never happened. Scooter Libby got indicted and then never even spent a day in jail. It was all huge waste of everyone's time and attention.

and everyone by 2010 that's pretty clear and more importantly by 2010 you've been two years of Obama when you're in power and you're in a liberal in power you want your entertainment to have like a smug sort of no bless oblige about it because now you're in charge again like that that that angst that powers you when you're watching stuff during the bad presidential administration with that feeling goes away so what exactly Is Fair Game supposed to evoke in its audience? What would anyone get out of it? Just like, oh, remember when we were mad about Bush two years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the movie reflects that sort of lack of purpose because it is probably the most boring movie that we watched. They were all bad.

But it was too well made for it to be funny and, like, bad. But it was also, you know, just a slog. Brutal. But there are some funny things in it just because of how, pedantic it is. Like there's a scene where they're in the kitchen, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. And they're both government operatives. It's the whole premise. But they're talking about, you know, this damn illegal war. And one says to the other over their shoulder. And of course, it requires more than one source to verify an intelligence claim. It's like, yeah, she knows that. She works in the government. And there is a funny scene at the end. It's a lot like the newsroom, Jeff Newsroom scene and the pilot of the newsroom, where their campaign. for their reputation at that point and Sean Penn's having lunch or something

and a lady comes up to him and says I think your wife is a damn liar and he's like, you fucking bitch and then he screams at her for like five minutes. That was pretty funny. And your wife is a traitor and a fantasy. Leave my table. How dare you talk about my wife? You don't know her. You don't

know me. Now leave now. Very nice. You gentlemen should know you're having lunch with a traitor. Oh, please don't. Please do. Did you hear the way that this man does? Shame on. you you call yourself a reporter shame on you you're nothing but a self promoting hack but um yeah just not very good some interesting people popped up roy from the office

i think you said that popped up also scooter liby is played by the guy who plays the shitty cop with the bad hair uh the sheriff the bad sheriff yeah from justified um yeah because wasn't it her name actually leaked by chaney's dude well no i mean i mean a couple people leaked it at once because Richard Armitage, who is Powell's deputy. Powell's guy. Powell's guy. He considered like one of the good guys. Yeah.

But I don't know. Like he was sort of pushing against the invasion. Yeah. Also, we haven't, we forgot to mention this in the entirety of our of our main episodes, but possibly the most disturbing thing that I discovered in our research that to my knowledge has not been reported on is that Richard Armadage is the grandfather of young Sheldon. Oh. the actor who plays young

Sheldon, I think his name is like Ian Armitage That's that's Richard Armitage's grandson And it goes deeper than you think people So read you know I have the documents I've seen the documents folks Okay and these are demons Gobblins scum

The bodies in the floor Signed up thinking I was going over there Take my country Everything turned out so different than we thought Next up, stop loss. Stop loss. Stop loss. 2008. This was an MTV films movie that was supposed to rap with teens about issues like Iraq.

And I guess, you know, you could call it a good example of shoot and cry. No, I don't agree with that. Oh, you think, Homer the Brave is more. They don't cry at all. They only cry because they're getting stop lost. Channing Tatum cries eventually. A little bit. but it's not about like the trauma they experience you're right it's like it's about the trauma but it's really about the idea that they're being

forced to go back all right no no no i have a theory about what the plot of the movie really is wait hold on let me do a basic plot outline we're all getting so riled up about stop it's because it's such a damn provocative film but uh so stop loss was a early mtv films movie to kind of show out of the gate that they could make quality films and whatever expand their brand. And it stars Ryan Philippe, who has a terrible Texan accent. With a shortage of guys in no draft, they're shipping back soldiers who're supposed to be getting out. And Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Abby Cornish. All the guys were in the war together, and now they're home. They're back and they're

telling their war stories, but clearly some of them are, they're not all okay. Ryan Philippe gets stop lost. You got stop lost. I don't think any of us caught the name of Ryan Philippe's character, so we just started calling him stop loss. So stop loss, private stop loss gets stop lost by the military. Brian and Leonard King, yes.

You have orders to report to the First Brigade. Not me. I'm getting out today. You leave on a 22nd, shipping back to Iraq. You've been stop lost. If you don't know what stop loss is, and I'm talking about not the main character stop loss, but the process of getting stop lost.

Stop loss is when you are basically involuntarily committed to go back to continue your tour. You've come home, but you've got to go back. It's also called the more common name for it is the backdoor draft. Yeah, and it's basically... That sounds like a different kind of movie. Find print in your contract

that you sign up and it's, yeah, it's four years, but they have the... It's in there. A lot of people don't realize that when they sign up, that they have the authority to bring you in for another four if they declare, if they think it's necessary. Right. And so

I think at the end of the movie, they told us through the text that comes up at the end, 80,000 troops were stop-lost. I don't know how many of them were tried to defect, but that is what the plot of this movie is, is that stop-loss says, there's no way I'm going to be stop-loss. Hell, though. You're not stop-lossing me. He and his commander shakes his fist in the air and yells,

stop-loss. So he gets in touch with, like, a Jewish lawyer in New York and figures out a way to, like, true. I'm sorry. Is this a movie? Whatever. The movie is, it's not like that. No, it's that guy who looks like Saul Rubenek, but it's not Saul Rubenek. It's that Irish. She calls the lawyer in New York and he's like, oh, listen, listen, Mr. Mr. Lawyer, sir, I'm just a simple country boy and I didn't read the print in my contract and blah, blah, blah. And then they come up with a scheme to get him, like, they come up with the scheme basically to give him a new identity outside of the country. Yeah, but that's at the end of the movie because most of the movie is he's on the run with Abby Cornish who's at you know she's kind of

falling for him over Channing Tatum and uh he's kind of just roaming he's trying to get to the border he's trying to go to Canada yeah yeah it is is it Canada or no Mexico right he's trying to get to a border so he can de-stop Lossify his car gets broken into and then uh he tracks down the the gang members who did it and then he like shoots one of them and calls them Hajie So it's like trying to do that. He's flashing back. Then at the end of the movie, he's at the border. And his mom's there, and Abby Corner, she's basically now his girlfriend is there.

And he's going across, but then it's a hard cut. And then the final scene is him going back to Iraq. He would rather go to Iraq than Mexico. Because I think he says... That was exactly the joke I was going to make. I think the idea is that he is suffering from PTSD and that going back won't help it. You know, that's basically the idea is that he needs, he needs to be home and he needs maybe some therapy or something. He doesn't need to get stop lost.

It came out the same year as Hurt Locker, so it's very much in vogue for this to be the trajectory. And the one thing that it has very, that's emblematic of a lot of these Iraq war films is because they were very afraid to directly criticize the war effort for fear of saying that you don't support the troops. so they would find specific things about the war that were unjust or incompetent to criticize which I guess I mean honestly it just feels like it just feels like self-congratulation at that point and like if you watch this movie the main takeaway of the thing is the main injustice

of the Iraq war was not lying to kill a million people it was stop-lossing some guys that was the real crime of was doing stop losses most represented by stop loss the hero and Pierce made the movie she wrote the movie

she her initial Kimberly Pierce her big breakout role or like her big breakout film was directing Boys Don't Cry and then she didn't make another movie for a long time and like she did a lot of

there was a very big stop loss had it was a box office flop but it got a very big press cycle and like if you just Google the movie in the name of any publication they probably had an interview with Pierce and you know one of the one of the ones that with it that I remember is that she talks a lot about like you know how her brother was in the military and she wanted to write a movie that really reflected the experience of veterans and because she felt that like they were marginalized or whatever and that she couldn't you know she wanted to make you know like she wanted to make like another kind of like issue movie like in the same way the boys don't cry was hey kids there's a thing going around called stop loss I mean yeah well so this is you know there's a lot of things things on MTV that are dope.

I'll tell you what isn't dope. Stop loss. Well, and that's sort of like how this came to it. And it feels like very transparent that this was written. And she, you know, very actively ran away from describing it as an anti-war movie.

Because she instead talks about it as that like, this is an authentic movie. This is a movie that's actually about the experiences of, you know, soldiers. And it's fucking real and it's raw. And honestly, like, you know, like you guys are pussy. for not being able to handle it.

Just me. Just saying you can't handle this raw shit that the troops are feeling. I'm me. Yeah, I think stop loss is a good example of that approach, which was really common. But with none of the budget of Hurt Locker and none of the acting ability,

I mean, Channing Tatum was fine. You know, I like Channing Tatum. But I kept waiting for him to dance a little bit and just break out some dances and it never happened in the film. I would like to know what happened to you. Is it after you? Stay with me.

Stay with me. You treat a patient. You're supposed to feel something. Well, I don't feel anything. Stop feeling sorry for your time. You're just like over there. Are you against the war in principle or because I was part of it? Both.

All right. Last in our little sampler here, and the last one we watched, was probably my favorite that we watched. It was called Home of the Brave. This was a classic stinker when it came out in terms of obviously being a bomb and also being just brutally bad. And the reason that I say that this is more,

to me, evocative of the shoot and cry that stop loss is because there is literally a scene in this movie where 50 Cent, who plays a troupe who in the beginning of the film accidentally shoots a woman in a hijab during a home incursion, the film inner lays

slow motion footage of him shooting the woman in Iraq with his close-up face at his therapy session while he's crying. So he's actually crying about the shooting.

Let's back up. You're right, that is emblematic of Homo the Brave. It was directed by Irwin Winkler and he was a kind of a legend

in Hollywood as a producer. He produced some of the, you know, Elvis Presley movies and then produced Rocky and I heard they shoot, or I heard they paint horses. They shoot horses, don't they? I heard you paint horses. To look like zebras. But this was his directorial effort. I don't know how many movies he directed before this, but he clearly thought I'm in old age and I need to make my anti-war movie that makes a bold statement before I die. So much like stop loss, and much like uh hurt locker this begins with a bunch of guys as soldiers in iraq and um i almost said

ryan philippe because these are starting to bleed into each other but there's one an actor i don't remember no it's you don't remember him because i looked at his wikipedia and he was in literally nothing else okay i'm going to call him soldier man and he is our main character along with 50 cent chad michael murray uh jessica beale and sam jackson they are all in iraqqq at the start of the movie. And they only have a couple of days left before they go home. They, much like the first scene of stop loss,

they all get lured into an alleyway and get ambushed. Soldier Man watches Chad Michael Murray die, and he was his best friend. So for the rest of the movie, Soldier Man is tortured over how he couldn't save his friend. 50 Cent, as Matt just said, first wastes an unarmed woman

and then falls and breaks his ass. He breaks his ass. They're running, and then he falls, and he lands on his ass and he goes, ah, and he screams my ass, and he's broken his ass. He broke his damn ass. And so they're experiencing their trauma,

and then nearby, like they're not part of the same unit. Jessica Beale is a maintenance unit. She gets blown up and by a kid who was eating a lollipop so she didn't shoot him, but then it turns out she should have shot him. He not only had the lollipop, but he also had a phone that detonated the bomb. And she loses her hand.

and Samuel Jackson plays a doctor, a military doctor, and he's saving her in real time in Iraq. All these characters go back home except for Chad Michael Murray, RIP, and the rest of the movie is them failing to acclimate back into civilian life. So let's attempt to go through these different subplots because the movie is very, very bad. It clearly did not get that much of a budget, but let's see here. Soldier Man wants to be a cop.

No, no, he doesn't want to be a cop. Oh, he doesn't really want to be a cop, but his dad wants him to be a cop. He is struggling with, like, the fact that, like, his, his, like, boy died. His dad who works, who we believe, like, works in an auto garage and we, and, and, but, like, it's never, like, and it's played by, um, uh,

uh, isn't he played by Karen Hines or my, this one? No, you're thinking of stop loss. Stop loss his dad is played by Karen Hines. fucking damn it these movies yeah these two movies these really blended together and we didn't even watch them on the same day you're right that is stop loss his dad but say but say karen hynes it doesn't matter who the fuck here but like soldier man um is like he wants to be a cop but he doesn't god damn it he doesn't want to be a cop he doesn't want to be a cop but his dad keeps saying him like oh you know i hooked you up down at the station you know they'll give you a different

day for the exam just go in whenever you're ready and he's like ah no i don't want to i don't want to do that, like, or maybe, like, fine, I'll do it. It's a law enforcement community. And he's just like, he's like all fucked up about it. And he's not really his struggle for the rest of the movie. I mean, it's not like, it kind of just takes a back seat, right? And it becomes, he becomes kind of like a springboard up until the very end when he makes a fateful decision.

Yeah, his plot becomes subservient to everyone else. But I just remembered that Christina Richie is in this movie. She's the widow of Chad Michael Murray and she begins like a meaningful commiseration sort of dynamic with Soldier Man but then we never see her again. So Soldier Man is in the background. His main function, let's go to the 50 cent plot here

because 50 Cent comes back home. He broke his ass in Iraq and he's not doing so good and I think there's a scene where like he's hitting, he's trying to get some woman to go out with him maybe someone he had a relationship with before but she doesn't want to. And then he ends up. up taking that woman hostage

and doing a hostage situation and Ryan Philippe, shit, it's not Ryan Philippe, it's Soldier Man. Stop Lost, Jr. Okay, Soldier Man shows up and talks him down, but then for no reason, 50 cents says, he's like, all right, so drop the gun, we can all go home.

And then 50 says, I like my gun. I'm not going to drop the gun, but I am going to get up and walk out. But then he not only doesn't drop his gun, he stands up and then keeps pointing the gun at Soldier Man so all of the police snipers smoke his ass and he dies and then the hostages inside of the place that he took don't run out screaming for some reason they stay sitting still even they stay there watching his friend grieve over this man who kidnapped them and wanted to

possibly kill them 50 cent was not a good actor in it and it is unclear why he was in the movie at all given that his character really doesn't have anything to do except that one's I mean, it is, like, pretty funny that, like, I mean, you know, you bring in 50 cent into this movie to help market it or whatever. And what you end up writing for him in the plot is that he breaks his ass in Iraq and he takes a bunch of hostages and then gets shot because he... And kills an innocent woman. Yeah, and he kills an innocent woman. Like, pretty good. Yeah, it rules.

Okay, we have to talk now about the Jessica Beal character because it's, it's... It's problematic. In the first scene, we see her hanging with all the other guys in the base in Iraq. And Matt, you had read a review about this earlier, so you knew to look out for this. But there is a shot in which she's shooting hoops, outdoor hoops. Outdoor summer hoops. And there's a slow-mo close-up of her hand shooting the ball. And it is foreshadowing.

It's a cinematic artistic technique. It's pretty deep because five minutes later, the child with a lollipop that she should have killed blows her up and she loses her hand in the war. Okay. So then they're all back home and her individual arc begins and there's a shot of her, a scene of her.

She has a prosthetic hand now and she's trying to button her jacket. it, and she can't do it because she's not used to her new prosthetic. And it's a little obvious, and you're like, oh, okay, we get it, you know, but you're thinking this is going to be something humming along in the background of her readjusting to life, or, you know, like a shot like this is going to serve its purpose. Very next scene. Her career at home is gym teacher, and she's walking on to the basketball court or whatever, and she has a bunch of stuff, and she drops it.

because of her hand next scene she's making dinner or something for her kid and then she drops something because of her hand next scene she's at the doctor's office and the doctor's like recommending some new treatment or or technology or therapy or something she hands her a brochure jessica bill drops the brochure because of her hand and it just becomes clear that her entire story. Her arc in the eyes of this movie, in this filmmaker, the script is just her not being

able to do things because of her hand. It's, needless to say, two-dimensional. It's offensive. The only other part of her story is that she's broken up with her boyfriend because she's changed now that she's back from Iraq, but he doesn't want

to break up and there's tension, and he confronts her. And she says, look, it's over. And he says, I guess it only takes one good hand to push someone away. Yes. Also, parenthetically, the boyfriend looks like a penis in a hat. Yes. He's like a very disturbing, like very pale grub-like man.

He looks like who's the guy in Reanimator, Jeffrey Combs? Yeah. He looks like him. Totally hairless, Jeffrey Combs. He looks like him in From Beyond when he's lost. all of his hair, has the pineal gland coming out of his head. And at the very end, her storyline is wrapped up because she gets laid

and everything's basically fine after that. Yeah. She gets a new boyfriend and then she's fine. That leaves us with Sam Jackson's story, which is my favorite story in the anthology. He begins the movie, kind of the most grounded of anybody because, you know, he's a doctor and he's got a good life at home that he's returning to. but there's a couple scenes early on

where he's sort of zoning out during family gatherings or friends or whatever and they establish that he has some tension with his son who's you know kind of acting out but that's all sort of just in the background until halfway or even three quarters of the way through the movie

he's at dinner with his wife and she just says all of a sudden she says you know you've been drinking a lot more lately and all of a sudden he has an old-fashioned his hand and he's like, I don't care and he slugs it down. And that's just, there's no precursor to that. All they needed was like a shot of him in surgery

or whatever, you know, between surgeries and taking a slug. They don't do it. So then for the rest of the movie that remains, he's a raging alcoholic. And he, on Thanksgiving, the final scene with him is on Thanksgiving. He drives home drunk

and invites like the yard workers in to have Thanksgiving. And then on a dime he looks over and his son has a lip a lip piercing and he immediately grabs his son and throws him on the Thanksgiving table and rips the lip piercing out of his son's face. He mutilates his son's face. And then the son is bloody and screaming and Sam Jackson runs upstairs and gets a gun and then his wife comes in and says, please don't kill yourself. And then he doesn't. Which also, let's be clear. So your husband has just

lift the ring out of your son's face. He runs upstairs and grabs a gun. The idea that he was like the immediate focus that it was like, oh, he's going to kill himself and not much more plausibly that he was about to murder his whole family. Yeah. So the ending is Soldier Man is talking over a montage, and we see Jessica Beale at a soccer game,

like a kid's soccer game. And she's attending with her new boyfriend that gives her life complete meaning. and it's the soccer game of Samuel Jackson's son and after the game there's all the problems between him and his son are gone now everything's fine. Yeah, everything's

fine now and people just needed they needed a chance to heal. Yeah, but I mean especially the kid he really needed a chance to heal yeah his lip. But then it fades to black and there is a quote from Machiavelli

that is really the font is too big and It just looked bad. Such so Machiavelli. It's really, really, really bad. And that ends, and so ends home of the brain. But that is so much, that was so much more interesting

and entertaining a movie than anything else that we encountered. Yeah, because it was, it was schlock. It was shot like a, like a comedy movie. Well, it's a hallmark movie is, like, it's a hallmark movie. Yeah, it's just the color grading and the flat lighting. It all just looked like.

You just wish it would go off the rails more, because at the end, everything always, everyone just has a hug, and they cry and then they're fine. There's a couple more stray observations about Home of the Brave as we close out on it. This one's a little nerdy, but, you know, Noah and I just did a podcast about the history

of the Iraq War, cut us a break. There's an Iraqi translator telling the American soldiers about, like, Iraqi history. And he says, yeah, our revolution in 1956. And I was like, it was 1958. The Iraqi guy just got his own revolution wrong. And then Matt spiked up and said, well, hey, maybe their schools are as bad as ours.

But then there are gratuitous shots of Sam Jackson making out with his hot wife throughout the film. He loves making out with his hot wife. I really can't stress gratuitous enough. The scene is basically over every single time. And then he says, all right, come here, baby. And then it's like 12 seconds of them vigorously necking. Then there's a scene where Soldier Man now works as a ticket guy in a movie theater. And Jessica Beale goes to see a movie and they start chatting because they were both over there.

And then they're having a chat about, you know, like being among civilians again. And she says, I quote, everyone over here is sipping their frappuccinos from Starbucks. Oh, driving their gas-guzzling SUVs is the first line. Yes, that's another one. And you're just thinking, wow, what are they trying to get at here? Well, they're trying to say that there is a alienation between people who have served in the military, especially actively during a war zone and civilians. And that's true.

but it's also a very well-worn dichotomy. And also, that's about the most, that's the most like clip art version of that distinction. It's like they bought that off of the Getty Image website. Going to the CIA and getting to meet different people, certainly being at the building is something that I've always wanted to do. I think another thing we should keep in mind while we're talking about this for listeners who may not be aware,

the CIA and the Defense Department in particular have a long history of working with Hollywood in order to present in cinema a favorable portrait of the military. It's not even always a pro-war message, but definitely a pro-military message. And basically what happens is in order to get access to accurate military locations or hardware or representations in general from the script you need to play ball and you need to make script alterations that they ask for there have been characters that have been changed plot points that have been changed because they need to make sure that if they're helping out that the military is being presented in a favorable way that's why you know with america we don't need a old-fashioned style censorship uh entity you know that you think of in in authoritarian

countries is because we do the censoring during the production so we don't have to ban it or uh you know cut it up after. So that was not true of the Hurt Locker, for example, but it was true in the follow-up that both Mark Bull and Catherine Bigelow did, Zero Dark 30. And not just

war movies. I mean, the Transformers movies are like an industry for the Pentagon in and of themselves. They show off all the new hardware. You say we don't need an F-35? What if the Decepticons show up? Yeah. I'd hate to imagine what if the Decepticons got a hold of the F-35?

Oh, yeah. What destruction they could wreak with it. So began the war. A war that ravaged our planet until it was consumed by death. And the cube was lost to the far reaches of space. All right. So as we close out here, let's mention a couple of movies about Iraq that we actually like. And by all means, if we have missed any good movies about the Iraq War, we're talking mostly about American ones.

and there must there might be you know good good foreign film or two out there about it although I've seen a couple and I didn't weren't that good uh drop us the line get in touch at blowback pod at gmail.com and uh maybe we'll watch them but for now let's talk about these two one of them is i think a really good movie and the other is maybe not a great movie but it is compelling and misunderstood and and uh maligned the first is the guest Can I help you? Mrs. Peterson? Yes.

My name is David. Mrs. Peterson, I, uh, I knew your son, Caleb. I was when he died. Came out 2014, the same year as American sniper. And full disclosure, it was written by a buddy of mine, Simon Barrett. Matt, I think you know Simon too. Matt, tell us about the guest. Yeah, so it's about a family whose son has killed in her.

Rock, and they're grieving, and there's a couple of younger, like, teenage girl and a teenage boy, and the parents, and they're all very sad. And then a handsome young man comes to their home, claiming to have been someone who served with their son and who was told to come see them if the son died, and they kind of take him in almost unconsciously as a replacement for their son. And then it's slowly revealed over the course of the film that he is the product of some sort of government like genetic engineering program or something to create

like the ultimate weapon and that eventually he snaps on and he becomes an unstoppable murdering machine. Well I think he's on the whole time, isn't he? Yeah, but he's I think he's like trying, I don't know. I kind of take the beginning of that movie as him like

trying to do something nice but not really being able to do anything other than his programming over. time. Right, right. Yeah, and we are kind of spoiling it, but it's still really worth your time to go see it. Absolutely. It's a great movie. And one thing I like about it is on the political side, although I should say, none of us three here subscribe to the idea that you should only be watching things that validate your particular politics. It's just, you know, good luck living your life that way. But it is a fact that most of these movies that deal with this kind of stuff

are both politically brain dead and also very bad. So to find a good movie that has an interesting point to make is really refreshing. And with the guest, what I mean is that it takes, the monster, you know, is this American foot soldier who's usually responsible for terrorizing people over there, you know, Iraqis or Afghans, and the whole conceit is that you drop him in a small American town and that line between us and them is obliterated, which is pretty great,

especially because it does it explicitly, you know, as framing him as a veteran of the Iraq War who received all of the kind of fawning treatment, both by the family and the town. So check it out. It's also got a good synth wave soundtrack before that was cool. Yes, we're leading edge on that. Everyone copied that for a while.

Yeah. Second film we got here is Southland Tales. My name is Pilot Avalene. And I'm a veteran of the war in Iraq. I'm going to tell you the story of Boxer Santeros and his journey down the road not taken. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. this is the way the world ends

2008 directed by Richard Kelly and Matt you and I talked a long time ago I think when I was still at Chopo about doing something about this Yeah we still haven't done that Written and directed by Richard Kelly who made Donnie Darko in 2001

and then this came out in 2006 and it was his tough sophomore album It was very ambitious it's over-ambitious it doesn't really totally succeed but i think especially the first half is very fun and and compelling well it's the plot is like kind of a mess but i will say the thing that like the movie has and that what i what i've loved about it from the first time i saw it like years ago was that it has like kind of like a hyperbolic version of everything that like the

bush administration was doing you know like the idea of you know of of fingerprinting becoming like the thing that everybody had to use to get into their bank accounts or whatever, like, oh, like the, like, like, wow, we do that now. It doesn't feel like Black Mirror. It feels more like it's kind of, you know, like camp or whatever. Oh, it's very camp. Yeah, it's not, it's not meant like scoldy in that sort of way. And so it was always kind of like, it was very fun to see that kind of hyperbole play out. But the thing is, is that hyperbole also extends to its vision of celebrity and media and, and, and how it deals with the war, especially. But that stuff feels obviously especially

prescient given the whole, you know, present thing. But I will say the stuff that most appealed to me was just this idea, the sense of like hyperbole as a response to the 2000s, which are, you know, portrayed in the movies that we just watched in this very like deadened kind of way. Yeah. Like very like desaturated. There's like no color, no liveliness. Like they're very, it's like a very like dead response to the times.

And Southland Tales is sort of. of in its own way this kind of like altered vision of what that moment actually was like so much else about that movie is terrible and doesn't work but i think it really does kind of like it presents it in a much more honest kind of way uh or at least original listen listen to this cast the rock dwayne johnson in i believe his first real you know acting role sean william scott sarah mchelle Geller, Nora Dunn, Janine Garofalo, Wallace Sean, John LaRquette, John Lovitz, Mandy Moore, Amy Poehler, Miranda Richardson, Will Sassow, Justin Timberlake is actually the narrator. It's packed to the gills. Excuse me, Kevin Smith in old age makeup. What I respect, what I like, what, what sticks with me is

specifically the character of Justin Timberlake and his, the kind of the most memorable scene of that movie. It's just a little mini music video where he lip sinks to the killer song, all these things that I've done. And to me, his portrayal of a veteran dealing with the trauma and guilt of what he'd seen in the war zone, it's the most evocative of the attempts that I have certainly seen out of Iraq to try to do that. All the other ones are, you know, in the full runtime of Home of the Brave or stop loss, You don't give it as much insight into, you know, like the combination of shame and pride and like, you know, masculine insecurity as you did. It's just in that two-minute sequence. Yeah. Timberlake is good in that movie. I think that was also must have been early for his, like, acting ambitions. Yeah.

So, you know, if everyone's quarantined right now, if you got a little bit more free time, hopefully, just pop in this two and a half hour long. bizarre thing. I'm not going to lie, it doesn't all totally add up, but it might still be worth it. It lends out of steam as it goes is the problem. It's like a, it's like a balloon, just sort of it starts off, it's like, I mean, the first thing is a

found footage shot of fucking nuke going off in Texas. That's cool. And then it just sort of like loses all of its energy as it goes, but especially the first half is very engaging. Yeah, watch the first half. And then if you're sufficiently stimulated or intoxicated or whatever, you might finish it.

I do like at the end when Wallace Sean is vogueing. He is a pimp. And pips don't commit suicide. He's the best part of the movie. Yeah. His character's name is Baron von Westphalen, which for the real heads out there gives you some clues about where he stands in the movie's, you know, triangle between the government and the neo-Marxists. Yeah, the neo-Marxists. Yeah, so it's a very silly movie, but I think unfairly maligned.

Yeah. All right. I want to say thanks to Matt for coming on and talking to rock movies with us. Sure. Thank you for having it. And Noah and I will be back next week or whenever you're listening to this next time with another guest and another bonus episode. In the meantime, stay healthy, stay safe, stay frosty. Bye.

Bye. soldier, I've got a soul, but I'm not a soldier.