Upstream - S2E1: Syriana

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

It's finally here, after much fanfare and buildup: Season 2 of KJB starts off not with a bang, but with a knowing hmm as we kick off the Cerebral Hour Syriana is potentially the best depiction of spy work we have covered, and it's serious themes lead us to a very thoughtful and introspective discussion of western intervention- and also Mark Strong is here in what i can only describe as 'Arab Face' Find bonus episodes at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond     *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond  

It's in America's interest to do business overseas Hello and welcome to another episode of co-James Bond. I am Alice called-Dalk Ellie, joining me as ever, our Abigail Sawn and Devon. Hello. We watched, we watched Seriana. This was my pick to try and sort of round out the Jason Bonds with some contemporary global war and terror. I say contemporary, it's 2006, with some global war on terror, terror gritty realistic spy movie making It's time to begin the cerebral hour. I'm afraid so I'm drunk on power What the thing is that now that you've unleashed the prospect of Alice and Alice's on the world

I've kind of I've taken a little bit too far and now I'm just gonna make you watch films that I think have a lot to say about too far and now I'm just going to make you watch films that I think have a lot to say about. Capitalism and society. Yes. I just heard a drop of those two things. I last made a swatch of film that's actually really good and I very much enjoyed, which is kind of a novel experience for this podcast. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. Normally, we like, it's just about like, calm and shit, but this is actually like kind of good. Oh, you just thought it's going to be known. Calm in this episode? Do you really think that I would let you get through a whole episode without getting a drop of Matt Damon saying? So that when you finally wake up,

they will have sucked you dry. I think it's cross-matten. Oh. I'm piped. SAKE! I just said it was the cerebral hour. The cerebral hour, the cerebral hour begins now. So we begin by immediately passing the, did you get a fake muayzin test?

Yes. Well, we hear the scariest noise to an American audience in 2005. Yes, the Azzan begins with a tug a tug bear, as opposed to just a guy who they've hired to go like, mm-hmm, it's the real thing. It's got the Warner Bros logo, and over it is the sound of them whizzing, and I wrote in Shilah soon, every movie aired at this time.

Soon, every movie will begin like this, regardless of content. That's right, that's right. But so we begin by... We're in the desert. We're watching a bunch of Kaffirla laborers fight for work. They're getting in a fist fight over who gets to get on the bus

because there's that many jobs available and there's more of them than there is work. In particular, two who we will go on to see the adventures of throughout the film are Seem and his dad. And I need to immediately activate Devon mode. Yes. Because I would like to talk about a very strong cinematic choice this film makes right here in the first scene. Go off. Which is that Seem and his dad look down the barrel of the lens. They look down the camera, which is something that like you and his dad look down the barrel of the lens. They look down the camera, which is something that like, you, or you, it doesn't happen at any other point throughout the film, it's like a very, very strong choice.

And it's a really nice moment to like establish their humanity. And we've seen a lot of films where like crowds of non-white people are like portrayed as an obstacle or it's like, they're like potentially dangerous. but here they look down the lens and like they're looking back at the audience just as we are watching them so too will they watch us. And it really really like in the first two minutes sets off with him of like everyone involved in this has like a common humanity. It's just such a good choice when I thought it was like fuck me that's good. Yeah and it's it starts off with with your with your proletarians, right,

with your workers, with your people who are dispossessed and part of the reason why it's compelling to me to use the azan, it's the azan for fudge. It's early, it's the sun isn't even up yet. That's the first shot of the movie, it's this big sunrise. And all of these guys sort of fist fighting in the twilight because there's, you know, that's the only way

that they get to work. But so we leave them for a minute, having sort of foregrounded that as our stakes here. And we go to Terran, we go to a house party where we immediately run straight into a guy. Oh yeah. So there's a type of guy, I'm most familiar with him as a Euro guy, right?

It's the type of German guy who is like listening to pounding techno and says things like Duj, Dajen Vibes, since total ausgefucked. He's been the gone out loud or whatever. His name is Errasch. It actually literally have a drop of him going exactly the same but in Farsi. But that I'm porcise, he's got two omelets, liquid MVMA, so she can eat it. And he's the guy? Yeah, I think it's just kind of party.

It's actually Kaven Novak, in a sort of very... Yeah, yeah, he's one of the guys from Four Lions in this kind of... And I'm like, oh shit, like that's the dumb guy from Four Lions. It's really good, he's like underutilised in this movie. He's talking to Bob Bons, who is George Clooney. What? Looking deliberately like shit,

he's like this sort of heavy, scruffy, so weird, George Clooney. Slava shit, George Clooney. Yeah, yeah. He's in this sort of linen suit that is one continuous wrinkle that goes all the way around. And these guys know each other.

They're asking after George Clooney's kids, but what they want to do is an arm steel. That's what he's there for. And you get these interesting shots where you have all of these people are drinking, they're doing liquid MDMA. You've got a shot of a woman leaving the house party, kicking off her heels, putting on sensible shoes and putting her shadoron. But at the same time, the arms dealers want to wait until after prayer before they do their arms deal. And it's like this has more depth, more empathy for different ways of living as a Muslim,

than almost any other Hollywood movie sort of made by and for largely white people. Oh, yeah, 100% In particular like I think I think about these arms dealer brothers one of them is in sort of Vindicating a long-held joke of mine about sort of Middle Eastern defense rookie went one of them is literally wearing a DNG belt the whole time. Yes, I'm. But they have this sort of like self-conscious, ironic sort of into mind and big, you as a relationship with their religion and their culture that I really, really find compelling.

It's really nice that actually because there are a couple of reviews I read of this, which kind of said, oh, all the Muslim characters are a couple of reviews I read of this, which kind of said, oh, all the Muslim characters in this are like fundamentalists and extremists, and it's a really bad, I'm like, actually, like in the first three minutes, we see some guys who are a lot more casual about it, who are still like bad guys, but it is actually quite nuanced. But anyway, George Clooney sells this guy to rocket launchers. Yes, st at Stinger missiles.

Guided missiles to shoot down aircraft. Well, he has this little guidance chip for them. And he's surprised to find that they are actually buying two instead of one. He thought it was just going to be them. And he switches the guidance computer for, we know not what yet, and goes into a backroom where he immediately gets a gun put in his face.

Yes, by another guy. Because one of them goes with the guy, yeah, one of them goes with the guy that he was he arrived at and the other one goes and he's like, well, well, where's the second one going? And his contact is like, why do you care? Yeah. Just an arm's doing that. Why do you care about, but hey, yeah, we, if you're a cop, you have to tell me. We immediately meet another guy who will continue to come back with a male kid as Muhammad Sheikh Aghiza, who is this fundamentalist and he's so good. He's so good about this whole right, this whole movie because when we meet him here, the first shot we see of him is him putting a gun in George Clooney's face. Yes, and he's wearing it out of his speaking Arabic.

He's speaking Egyptian Arabic specifically, which is how a Clooney's like able to identify and has Egyptian. And we see George Cleans' two traits as a spy, the two things that make him good at his job, which are a facility for languages and there's pre-tunational ability to stay calm. Those are the only things that he has going for him. He's not suave. He's not even that clever, no.

He's not a fight, but he's like, he remains very calm and he speaks a lot of languages. And so with the gun in his face, he insults the guy in Farsi, thus sort of demonstrating that he doesn't speak Farsi. And he's not around him. Yeah, because by the way, George Clooney works for CIA. Yes, which we intuit as he leaves the scene and one of the stinginess I want just the one

that he switched the guidance chip on just explodes kills to people, the armstealer and the guy who was leaving with. And we immediately post that shot post the thing killing the the Arash and his brother, we cut to Christopher Plumber literally trimming a bush like he's cutting the heads off several plants. Very, very constant gardener, isn't it? It's symbolic. There's a lot of that kind of thing in this. There's a lot of that kind of like symbolic cuts in this film. It's so good. And speaking of which, Christopher Plumber Blober, a fucking guy I love to see.

Another guy I love to see in the movies. And Turing like Kramer to the floor. And immediately thereafter, another guy I love to see in a movie, Jeffrey fucking right. Jeffrey, right. There is the thing this podcast has made me too soft on actors, right? I love them. I used to watch a movie and be like, oh no, this old cunt again. And now I watch a film and I'm like, oh there's a song I love to watch a movie and be like, oh, not this old cant again. And now I watch a film and I'm like,

oh, that's the one I love to see. That's a character actor. I've been brainwashed here. There's the fucking leader of the greybeards from Hothgoth. That's fucking Commissioner Gordon of Batman. So Christopher Plummer is the, the founding partner of a very large sort of beltway law firm who has got Jeffrey Wright his sort of young apprentice in. His name is Bennett Holiday.

Series of incredible names in this film, but they all fit because every American has this kind of name. That's true. He's overseeing the law firm is like handling the merger of these two huge oil corporations, Exxon and Moba, sorry, Connex and Kylene. It's time to start the Kylene. Because they're making, because they're making a killing. Do you get it? Some of the names in there, like the chairman of Connex's Killing is called Mr. Janus. Like, do he, because he's two-faced, do you get it? Leeland Janus.

Another name, a la. Leeland Janus. So he's instructing Jeffrey Wright to help audit this deal, to help go through smoothly on the basis that, and this is the most, I am evil thing you can say. I have a flock of sheep who think they're lions. Maybe you're a lion, everyone thinks is a sheep. You can't go around saying shit like that.

He does keep saying shit like this throughout the whole movie. He gets called out on it later by Clooney. So you have W, you are a sheep farmer. I have a flock of sheep. So... You are a sheep farmer. I have a flock of sheep. So you must learn to master the Thumb, Jeffrey. Right. So we go to the the Bordroom. The first of a handful of Bordroom scenes, but we see Jeffrey Riders working for the sort of the junior partner in this law firm,

like Sydney Barrett. To handle the merger between these, everyone in this fucking board room is so perfectly cast. We have another guy we've seen before. We've got Chris Cooper, one of the many Brian coxers. Yes, he's back hacked tap bypass. But every single person in this board room looks like they could completely seriously deliver the line gentlemen. Oh yeah. And I would be like yes, I believe this. All of the oil men seem to are a little bit like cigar chewing. Oh, true. I think it's one of

the weaker points of this movie. But we see the sort of difference between Connex, which is Leland Janus' company, which is like relatively more professional and restrained, and Kylene, which is run by Chris Cooper and it's this like shit kicking Texan kind of vibe. In particular, Kylene have the rights to drill for oil and Kazakhstan, which Konex really, really want because they lost a contract to the Chinese government, I think. And then I fuck, we really want Kazakhstan's oil. Yes, there is a theory that Roger Ebert of all people suggest in his review of this movie, which is that there is an unspoken plot point. This is a lie that the oil is not being drilled, that the oil is, in fact, Chinese and is just being shipped sort of through, round the back to the US this way, which I'm not sure how I'm not sure, for any way. That's what the stakes are of

the merger. And Jeffrey Wright is like, we kind of get the vibe that he's being brought on to make this merger seem squeaky clean to the Department of Justice, because the government are going to want to like look at this merger and make sure it's not violating any unjust laws. Yes. Because the one thing that both Connex and Kalina agree on is that it is impossible to do business and oil without corruption. There's a bit later on that I'm going to have to like, I'll just put it now because these boardroom scenes are essentially the same scene, but it's a fantastic bit from both Jeffrey Wright and Chris Cooper, where he just goes, is

illegal to offer gifts, money, the promise of money or anything of value to influence foreign officials. Is it? It's just like, yeah, okay, sure. It's a great line where Chris Cooper has, says, you know, the foreign corrupt practices act I keep a copy take to the side of the inside of my head So at this point we have to we have to meet another another character to which I can only say Jesus Christ it's Jason born

Matt Damon his Brian Woodman Brian Woodman Another lad I'm just seeing boys Brian Woodman. Brian Woodman. Brian Woodman. Oh, another lad. I'm just seeing boys. What are they like? Another guy that we like? Yeah, yeah.

He's like a financial analyst in Geneva. He's a young family. He has a wife and two children. And he goes to the office every day and he like gets on TV to be interviewed as a talking head where he says things like, well, if the price of oil goes up, that's bad unless it's good. Yeah. And he's sort of like kind of unfulfilled doing this. Yeah, we see, we get to see some nice scenes of Matt Damon

with his family, which is nice. Yeah, it's nice. He has two young kids. I'm gonna have something to say later on about the way this movie uses children and it's sterile, but this is like children alone. He has a crystals ass wife, to which I say hello. Amanda Pete.

Yep. Hello. Hello. She's not blind, but hello. And so he goes to work and he gets an invitation to a party in Marbella being thrown by the Emir of a fictional country. Yeah, there it's Saudi Arabia. Shmoudish Maraibia.

Yeah, and his boss is like, yeah, go, take the kids. They love kids. It's great. That's in Spain. That's the party something in Spain. I should point out, all there's like four plot threads in this movie. They all interwee very in a very complex way.

So there's going to be a lot of going back and forth. Don't worry about it. Yes. Yeah. And the vibe is that when he gets to this party with the EME and Matt Damon can like, you know, maybe make him kind of a business position like, hey, you know, our firm, we're going to help you like, you know, make money, which you already have. Exactly. So he sort of reluctantly goes, he reluctantly agrees to go to the party. At which point we get back to Wasim? Yeah, Wasim and his father who are finding out that they have been put out of work. Yes, because the economy has been shut down, it's been part of the merger, who has,

they've been laid off, but the company's been what's been providing them like food and lodgings and immigration support. Yeah, it's a Kaffala. It's a Kaffala system. Yeah. So they hold your passport. You are only in the country by virtue of your employment. Now that you don't have that employment, you have two weeks to fuck off or to get a work permit for some other job. Essentially, the point of this, as a few scenes we'd like to talk about, but was he's looking for work,

but he doesn't speak particularly good Arabic, a friend of his, who I... That's Faruk. Faruk of course, suggests that they join a madraser to learn Arabic. Yeah, not just to learn Arabic, but also because they have food. Like, there's this scene when, like, after they get laid off,

where some of the other workers are drinking and they're climbing this huge electric pylon, and there's sort of omnipresent in the background of this is this hum. And one of them even makes fun of what seemed for being frightened of it. And I love this, because again, it's not subtle, right? The guy fucking trimming the roses, same thing.

Like, these workers are surrounded by great and terrible power. But yeah, no, it's not subtle, but I still really like it. Well, seems father gives a really nice monologue about how when he was a kid, there was like a future to look forward to. There were like mountains in the distance and what seems like, I don't really have,

the implication is that he's like, I don't really have, the implication is that he's like, I don't really have a future to look forward to. It might as well do a couple of received scenes on the track, but we see that he's looking, he tries to get a work permit and the police beat the shit out of him. And then he joins the Madrasa, he's like learning, Arabic, he likes makes a few friends there

and we'll check in with him later on. George Clooney is still, he's still pissed off about this fucking missile. Yes, and he comes back to the US. Shann about the missile to everyone who listened and everyone's going, shut the fuck up. Yeah, the thing about the CIA is there's a lot of internal politics and the vibe with George Clooney is that he's a field guy, he doesn't do that, he doesn't know how to do that. And so he ends up writing a lot of these memos going, hey, there's a stinker

mess, I was just gone missing off the back of this shit. Exactly the kind of memos that sort of went out before 9-11 and got covered up for exactly the same sort of reasons of sort of like ask covering. And so the CIA's decision to try and like shut him up is to kick him upwards to promote him. And in order to do that, they get him an opportunity to give a briefing to a thinly veiled Condoleezza rice, right? Where all he has to do is he has to sit there, toe the line, and keep his mouth shut. And so she asks him about Iran, and she has this incredible hubris, which I really like.

It's about Iraq, right? But it's sort of like, this is one of those things. We've come out in 2005. This is exactly the sort of level of prescience that anyone that high up in the federal government had about foreign policy. India's now our ally, Russia's now.I. even China will be in L.I. Everybody between Morocco and Pakistan is the problem. What the hell?

Uh, no. So she says like, do you think Iran can be made secular and westernized? Yes, with a sort of heavily... Yeah, yeah, yeah. We see that she is not like working for, but is definitely being influenced by a bunch of dudes called the committee to liberate Iran, who is just like oil guys.

Some truly insane. Yes, yeah, yeah. Also, I'd like to just, I forgot to do this, but I also need to shout another person, I fucking love to see baby, the other Davis, let's fucking go, always a pleasure. Yeah, clearly supposed to sit there and say, like, absolutely, we can bring democracy

to the people of Iran, like we can do it. But it's then he's like, it's kind of complicated. You can't just like force them to do this. It's like a whole fucking country full of people. And like, also, we've like fucked up there a lot. And she's like, I don't like hearing this fuck you. Yeah, the way it's presented, the way it's presented is, it's important to the president.

It's important to his foreign policy agenda, whoever that might be, that there is a sort of demographic upswell in Iran, that Iranians are all under 30, they're all using Twitter and they're okay. Yeah, they're all being gay with each other and therefore, as a consequence, they will overthrow the Islamic Republic. And George Duhnone gets up there and he's kind of like, you see him trying to like bite it back and try and be a company man for a second, but he's like, he can't do it. And he has this quite incisive analysis where he's like, yeah, okay,

they let young people like march in the street and they put a few satellite dishes up. And the next day, they ban 15 newspapers. They're not like the control, the system of control is still there, and it's not being given up lightly. But that is, that is an impolitic thing to say. He gets in trouble for this. We don't really kind of know what kind yet. He goes to have lunch with his son, his fail son, Robbie. Yes.

I really like this scene. There's so many little details in this movie, which't in themselves subtle but which you could miss one of which is that his his shitty kid is talking about the car that he's gonna need for college and the whole time that he's talking it's not showing him it showing the cooks in the kitchen making his food it's good and and when they when they bring the food to the table Bob Bob, George Clooney, is the only one who thanks the waitress, this shithee kid does not. Yeah, but his son is frustrated with him,

both his parents are in the CIA. They're like long since divorced. He feels very isolated. And he says, both of my parents are professional liars. And you do, you sympathize a little bit. But this is mostly just sort of to give you some sort of, some background on Bob and why his, all of his shit is falling apart as well,

because he looks like it. Speaking of people who are estranged from their children, Matt Damon's about to have a very nasty ass. Yeah, Damon has a negative life experience. Yeah, yeah, we see that he goes to the party in Spain. Arriving in a fucking minivan in between all of these like Rose, yeah, yeah, and we see we see King Salman. It's weird to see a movie made about him. Yeah, he's going to stay lucid forever. He's like in a wheelchair. He's like

ailing, but he's not, you know, seen on the way that someone very quickly was. He's the immea and he has two sons who will get to know a little bit more later on. One of them is kind of like the elder one is like quite sharp, Prince Nazear, and then the younger Prince is like a bit thick. Prince Meshal, yes. So the Woodman's go to this party. They're sort of like idly racist like his wife says. Aaron's seen very family oriented and then goes. Is that racist? It's a bit like that. It goes a little bit.

Yeah, kind of it. So it's my day with his careful whitetail. That was the drop I wanted. That is funny. Anyway. And he makes his pitch to the Amir's guys. He makes his business deals pitch. And the Amir's guys are like, yeah. And it's kind of a joke, right?

They send out a couple of assistants into the hallway. And they're like, oh, sorry, the Amir can't see, but we'll hear you, pitch. And it's sort of the penny drops that they mean now in the hallway. And he kind of has to take a second to, like, collect himself that goes terribly. It's like, it's nicely acted this way. It's a bit of a bit of a jaminous error, really, like, in a scene while. His son, one of his sons is getting bullied

and is getting bullied around reluctance to get in the swimming pool. And this is the son who's like, I don't want to take his shirt off because he's transgender. Yeah, well, wow, I mean, I did wonder because this is the son who's like I don't want to take his shirt off because he's transgender Yeah, well, I mean I did wonder because this is the son who's like smaller and more effeminate and is like literally called a sissy by the other kids So yeah, no, it's it's interesting

Could transition have saved her Because she jumps in the pool and because of a a broken pool light I'm not sure whether this can really happen and if it does, I'm not going to do something again. But it's electrocuted to death. Yes, yeah. And, you know, both parents, of course, horribly traumatized Matt Damon, like, fishes him out of the pool. There's a curious little thing here that in 2005,

CPR wasn't like a cultural mainstay yet, so nobody quite knows to do it. Yeah, because they're both just sort of holding this kid and going, uh, it's like, you could do, there's like things that you could do right now, but it would maybe help. I love the way they, they, uh, film the death while execution of this child, um, which is that you see the broken light in the pool with the sparks and you see the kid about to jump in. And then it cuts to another part of the, another area of the party where Matt Damon is, and all the lights in the party just flicker for a second, so it doesn't show you.

But it just implies and you're like, oh fuck. I really like that, I like that a lot. Because I think if you tried to show it, it would be quite, it would be like a little shit to see, you know? I don't think it would be easy to actually. But that gives it a really impressive effect. Also, one of the Amir's sons, the oldest son, as the, yeah, played by, of course,

fucking absolute last Alexander Siddig, another guy that I adore seeing. That's a fantastic job. That's a truly fantastic job, but there's a, you get several shots, but make it very, very clear that he's the one who's actually thinking about anything. Because while you're mere and his younger son are just like showing these, these Chinese

delegates. Fucking with a remote control. Like fucking the VCR player and be like, look at this shit, isn't this cool? He's like, he's like writing, he's reading the documents and he notes for the Chinese people that have learned Arabic. Is the only one who acknowledges that, which is a little something. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up because I would have forgotten otherwise and I think it's important to a point I'm going to make later.

So when we see we're seeing getting beaten up by the police in the line of immigration, this is that we then do one of these paradigms because then we cut to the sun of Matt Damon's funeral and the funeral of Matt Damon's son. And it's grammatically questioned. But yeah, it's doing these lovely paradigms again like the children, the next generation are suffering. It's some great work. And like we see that Matt Damon's remaining sun has nightmares and also that like Matt Damon is really irritable at work now because of this. Yeah, it's just really beautiful. We see that the Emmy's men are like trying to contact him and he is like clearly pushing them off because you can't deal with it. But we also get some, we get some Bennett scenes.

First of all, we see, we see his father who is like a serious alcoholic, is just around. And Ben has this contempt for him that is like, it's so well done because you know that it's like born of long experience. Like when he sees his father sort of like almost passed out on his front porch, he's not even surprised. And he just sort of like picks him up and he carries him in. And this whole sort of contempt, because this goes on throughout the whole movie, you get lots of scenes with that with Bennett's father. He doesn't really ever say anything either,

but he has so much contempt for his son and for what he does too. There's this moment where he's like, he's sobering up a little bit and Bennett tells him, you know, don't smoke in my house. He lights up anyway, and he's looking at this like, the wall full of, you know, merger shit, and he just, the expression on this face

is just sort of, totemic, it's really good. There's also, we also get a whole bunch of scenes where Jeffie Wright is interacting with his higher ups at the law firm, and they're like, they call him boy, and they like make him play squash in an all-white court and have like a fancy lunch in a room like full of all white people. Christopher Plumber does pointedly does not shake his hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is also instance number two because Bennett has lunch with Sydney, his boss. And this is instance number two of the guy you're supposed to sympathize with is the only one at the table who says thank you to the waiter.

So, yeah, but Bennett ends up having this sort of unwilling meeting with the justice department. And the justice department's role in this movie, I really like it. It's really ambiguous. But the US attorney talks to me, he says, there's no way that a deal like this could possibly be clean. It just can't be. It's a corrupt industry. They have to be some corrupt practices.

But you've got to give us somebody. Like, yeah. Yeah. And either you're there to like be incompetent or you're there to like give us someone. And what's really interesting is he plants this seed for Bennett, where he's like, oh, your Sydney Barrett's protégé, you must be what, the fifth, sixth of those I've seen. And they keep changing and he just stays there. And it's just this beautiful little sort of like moment of implanting, that seed of doubt

there. And I think, in fact, the next scene is him being forced to place squash with Sydney and it's like all white caught sweating. But Brian, Brian does eventually take the offer. He does go out to a name of country redacted. And he makes some sort of judgments on the society having been in it for a second, which are racist, they're embittered, they're orientalists, but there are sort of perceptive moments there. So he says like, you know, the women are like walking five feet behind the man, the men are all wearing these white robes. And he sort of, as he sees at the point of this is to say, I don't have to work, it's hot, I couldn't work in this. And in this sort of like, this great line that really sets up sort of like his own parochialism,

he says, I'd like to see them play baseball. It's perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's fun. But he meets Prince Naseer and the elder prince, who says, basically, we're gonna give you the deal that you wanted. That's kind of like, sorry, that your child died in my pool.

He says it in such a, there's such a princely way, like this sort of munificent way, like we're gonna bestow upon your little joke company, this number of dollars, right? And Matt Damon throws it back in his face, which is really, really nice. He has this perfect, perfect line.

Yeah, no, he turns it around on because what he says is. $75 million. So great. It's great, how much for my other kid? And this brutal, brutal silence descends. Yeah. And then he fucking calls the prince out. He's like, look, fuck you.

Your country's a piece of shit. You've economic driven it into the ground. You're running out of oil, like fuck you, you asshole. And then the prince is like, yeah, I know. I know that the economy of my country is a mess. Do you think I don't know that? I don't run it. Believe me, I hope that I will.

Like, and so they kind of bond over this. And the print source says, and by the way, I'll give you 100 million for the other kid. Like, it's good. Yeah, and fuck you too. Yeah, it's really good. And so he says, why don't you just be my energy advisor? And it's like, so they kind of become busy mates.

Yeah, absolutely. Matt Damon Bryan, he sketches in the sand sort of his, he goes, okay, we'll tell me something I don't know. And is something that he doesn't know is, well, why don't you just build a pipeline over land through Iran and trip with your money? This bit does not fucking make sense. Doesn't make sense. Doesn't really go anywhere either, so I wouldn't worry about it.

But it is ridiculous. Every sort of Persian pipeline deal has always fallen apart because of US sanctions is the thing. Unless you can reverse those, Iran doesn't have the ability to run a pipeline, it doesn't have to like gas storage. I can't believe that this podcast leads me to such places that I end up reading about like Iranian natural gas to transport capability, but in a couple of years it's going to be a net importer of gas if the sanctions aren't lifted. So. In another one of these lovely little parallels,

whilst Matt Damon and the Prince are having this conversation, the Prince is doing falconry. And like, you know, and then we cut back to Jeffrey Wright and Chris Cooper, and they are hunting. They're like, it's like for rich people doing shit with animals, it's another really, really nice parallel. But then we need to check back in with George Clooney. Yes

Clooney is like where's the fucking miss guys? I cannot stress enough When are you going to get the missile why aren't you getting the missile now? Hey guys read my last email a missile still not present Yeah, as as per my previous email. Missile, still not present. Yeah, as per my previous email about the missile. Once again, contacting the NHS judge I did, and they come up and miss him. It's really, really, really, really, really, really, missile.

Yeah. And George Cludy is told by his boss to say, Hey, this is like Princeton is the guy. He's a real bad guy. He's really evil. He's almost certainly the guy who funded, like buying this up. He's probably going to miss out. He's probably going to miss out maybe. I don't know, maybe he should go and ask him about it with a gun.

Go to Beirut's where you have been before in the 80s and assassinating him. Another really, another really subtle thing, by the way, is when they mentioned Beirut to him, Bob goes, it's a great city. And both of them assume he's joking. Both of them laugh, the CIA officers that he's talking to. And this is one of the tensions that it sets up is the idea that Bob has gone native, right?

That it's like he has become a bit too fond of these places. It's very, very strange and very threatening. He's gone entirely Japanese. Well, quite. He's gone entirely Lebanese. Oh, no. Um, we, we know, by the way, because we've seen Christopher Plemma,

we've seen Christopher Plemma, Plemma Plemma, we've seen Christopher Plemma meeting with the Plummer. We've seen Christopher Plummer meeting with the young prince being like, do you maybe want to be the king? Like, what if you do? Yeah, what's really funny is they have this meeting where a third guy who is also there just says, can't be tell who's in.

Which I do enjoy. Yeah, that's all he says. That's his one line. They're like smoking cigar and like drinking brandy. It's very like. But Michelle sort of derides Christopher Plummer. He's got like, he calls him the cat's poor of the Saudi princes. And Christopher Fleming reads his entire ass to him. And he goes, well, you know, maybe you could use a bit of a cat's poor because you're,

you suck and you get, you're pathetic. You're a second son who's been overlooked for everything. And you want to be king, but you're too cowardly to even tell me that you want to be. And so that's the sort of the seduction there is. That's him sort of becoming Christopher Plummer's man on the inside. Something else I really quite like is both of the Amir's sons have heavy British accents. These are both like boxbridge grads, which is accurate. Yeah, the younger one is just like, when I was at Oxford, I had a horse. It's like, it's not subtle.

Check it on your blokes. Yeah. So we also have to go back and check in on Waseem and his friend Faruk, who have gone to this madrasas. Yes. And this is a really well put together, Sim. I love this so much. I think it has, it gets into the limitations

of the politics of this movie. But first of all, we see them praying. We see them being spoken to by the Imam, who is this perfect carbon copy of Anwar al-Ala Laki. And I was kind of like wondering halfway through this scene, like, why can I understand this without the subtitles? My Arabic is terrible. Why do I know what they're saying?

And I put together, oh yeah, the reason why is because they're talking to a bunch of migrant laborers who are learning Arabic and so they're talking really slowly and clearly, at one point, they're praying the Imam is like blasting out Al FatiT here like line by line so that they can memorize it and it's just it's really fucking good but the MMO gets this this sort of sermon sorry I don't mean to keep talking. No no god no wait we're doing the ISS on dessert. Oh my god you're doing the ISS on dessert.

L-L-L-L-L-L-MOM. L-L-L-L- these are. Mom. Le-le-le-mom? Mom. Le-mom. I'll fuck it and even realize that. No, you're in Alice's analysis mode. I love this. We're just like in the back of the fucking classroom, looking at each other's webcams. What we get is probably the like clearest and really unseculation of an Islamist ideology that Hollywood has given, which is,

our rulers, all rulers are decadent and corrupt and distant from the people. Living in the modern world is painful. And the pain of living in the modern world will never be solved by a liberal society. The only set of values that can replace it is the Quran. And then it kind of like falls apart of it, because this is all shit that Anwar Al-Alaqeem would have said, right?

But then he says some shit, he would not have said, which a liberal movie would say, which is, the West has failed. Christian theology has failed. That's right. And that to me is, I think, a point of essential narcissism in this movie is this is this is ground that the West can yield right this is something this is a space which the West would or might naturally occupy it's something that might be filled by the Chinese

or whatever else but it's not something to which political Islam, to which Islamism would feel entitled, were it not for that family? And that success, that sort of ability to win hearts and minds, is something that you get by soft power. It's something that you get by making friends with people. It's something you get by speaking the language. And there's always this unspoken sort of terror that the Chinese are doing better than us. And that's why I think the line about, oh, they bother to learn Arabic for this is so important. Is it's that that's the unspoken liberal anxiety of this movie is we aren't doing enough outreach. We don't have enough guys like George Clooney who are willing to like,

the good CIA. Yes, yeah, yeah. We were willing to like engage with that culture in a way that like is, you know, on its own terms and is more conversational, but still advocate for American interests. And that I think is sort of, that is what puts this movie at the start of the trajectory that gets me to what will in turn be my next pick the much darker version of this zero dark.

Absolutely. I mean, I was completely convinced by this guy. Sign me up. Let's go. Yeah, later on, let's just stick with them for a second. Later on, the two of them are playing football and they are caught by the man that we recognize from the very start of this movie, and how much he's a the man who took the second missile. And he's just so genuinely like nice to these kids. He's so open.

And he's so like, oh, my little brother's here. Like, and he plays football with them. Yeah. And it's so funny, right? Because the conversation that they have when they're playing football is about spider-man. It is, yeah. And this is exactly the kind of conversation that you see repudiate every I remember seeing this in like a series of interviews with with Taliban prisoners who are being held by the then Afghan government. It was just like curious mix of bits of very, very hard core Islamism that they had been taught and also an awareness sort of second hand of pop culture, right? Is it just these things exist in the sort of like strange points of cultural exchange?

But we also see this beautiful moment of peer pressure, because this Egyptian, who is, you're sort of your prototypical terrorist facilitator. He's the type of person that the Americans would consider it a winter killer capture. He gets them talking, he talks about like brotherhood and he's very friendly. And Faruk jokingly, he'd like insults, what seems,

he says what seems a virgin. And this guy goes, well, that's good. Zina is a very serious crime, you know, sexual intercourse outside marriage. And just, it's gay. Yeah, exactly. Don't come. And it just flips like that.

It just goes from, yeah, no, we're all friends here, but incidentally. They certainly don't come. You're not. Yeah. Yeah. And we see that was he was like, for who? Cause like, I am also. Yeah, I also don't. I also don't come.

I've never been near the person. I don't know what it looks like. I've got no idea what I'm doing with that prank. Yeah. What's going on? It's a mystery. Yeah. Yeah.

Who knows? Yeah, it's it's so good. How he's able to like turn that around on them. But so Bob goes to Beirut. He's been told that in order to be safe, that he has to clear things with Hezbollah. And so the second he gets out of the airport, he gets in a cabin, is immediately jumped by. He's not going to take a straight to main boy.

Cool. Yeah. Hasan Nasrallah. Well, it's it. Yeah. Basic. Yes. It's not a name, but it is. Yes. Yeah.

One thing that I do really like is in this conversation that he has before he goes with his contact Stan, where he figures out he has to like check it with with as well. So he looks more disheveled than ever. He looks like he hates all the politics and it's seriously. It's like, come on bro, one more hit of fieldwork. I just need one more.

And then I'm called. There's also like a really nice little detail that all the CIA guys that Bob talks. They look like Bob, Fred and Stan. They have like one syllable names. And it's like, has to be later learned. These are not their real names. They're meant to be kind of like generic shit. But anyway, he goes to me in Hezbollah and his struggle we uncritically support on this. That's right. That's right. Absolutely. I've supported them ever since Jeremy Corbyn came round and told me that we had to support our friends

in Hezbollah. I remember to support our friends in Hezbollah. I remember seeing you with the big Hezbollah placard, absolutely. I just think the flag is cool. It's not my fault. Yeah, in order to bring Shia Islam to the people of his, it's great. That's right. He goes to me, Nasserollah, and Nasserollah is a little bit circumspect, but when Bob goes, this is nothing to do with Hasbroly, it's not going to impinge on you at all. I'm here as like a courtesy to ask for the safe passage. Then again, you get the same kind of like, meanificent. So he's like, well, you know,

then, you know, you're welcome as a guest here in Lebanon. Yeah, it's quite cute. So so so Bob then goes to hire a mercenary by the name of Moussawi whom he immediately dead names. Yeah, nonstop. Oh, so let's just discuss Moussawi for a second. Yeah, finally, the metal gear solid noise in my head. We got him. Five of the five born movies we finally got Mark. Real Mark. Rock strong. Rock Mark Strong, brackets real has impacted the movie. And I sat up in my chair like, oh, hang on, because... Mark Strong playing an Arab again.

My man, thinking man's Jason's date, the thing about Mark Strong is that they have for one of a better term, blacked him up for this movie. Now obviously I'm aware that Arabs aren't black, but if I said Arabed him up, you would, there obviously I'm aware that Arabs aren't black, but if I said Arabed him up, you would, it would be a second way or like what? You know what I mean when I say blacked him up? Not strong as an English actor whose parents were Italian and Austrian like, my man is white.

He at least he's not doing an accent like he was in fucking body of lies, but he is that they, like he was in fucking body of lies, but he is, that it's very funny how much he refuses to do an accent. It just sucks like he's from London. What am I? You fucking Beirut, are you? But let's go assassination, is it? Both the like, makeup and tan and the lighting,

they've really, really tried to like darken his skin color. I see. I feel like wearing eyeliner or something. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be.

I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be.

I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. I think you might be. wanted to like the movie enough that I did wonder if the blackface, as brownface, was on purpose. And if the sort of like, if calling him Jimmy was like him writing him about being a converse or something, but no, I think it is just like, I don't even know what it is. But in any case, this guy, Masawi, whom Bob keeps dead naming as a mercenary, and we see that Bob, in his like third trait as a spy, he doesn't do his killing himself, right?

He's not a killer, he's not a fighter. Instead, he is the type of person who can find a guy like this and go to him quite coldly, as he does. And this is going to be in such and such a room in the hotel, take him out, drug him, put him in the front seat of his car, and run a truck into it at 15 hours an hour. And this just goes off totally sort of, and he says this quite la zay. So we then see that they're going to the hotel. They accidentally, because Brian

is there with us here, and they run into Barnes in the lift, and they have this sort of like awkward moment where Barnes, like, yeah, I'm not American. I'm Canadian actually. Yeah, sure. Because Princeton is a season when I was just like, oh, you're like a white guy like you're American. And he's like, no, I'm Canadian and I'm definitely not here to assassinate you. He's like, I'm just out for a rip. But I wouldn't worry. I just go and I do it downstairs for Tim. To be sure. So having having having thus having thus so Bob now reaps. Yeah, you hate to receive, don't you?

Yeah, you hate to receive. You love to attack for your hate to receive. So we see three big Lebanese dudes sneak into the hotel. We see Bob watching the balcony to see what happens when he is grabbed from behind by the three guys and like zipped into a body bag. Because he is about to get William Francis Bucklead and Bayerus. But have a another, a negative personal life experience here. For dead naming his friend, which you know, here's's the thing he did name some when he's about to be tortured to he like mark strong get to and he's like I am going to torture you now and what he fucking chooses to say has this fucking great monologue about torture that he really really loves. We say torture method number one, water torture can't be asked. Torture method number two, push some shit in your face. I don't want to do that. So I'm just going to pull your finger and I was out with flyers.

One water dungeon. And I was like, I started getting flashbacks to Zelda games. I was like, Oh God, no, please. I'm going to fight dark George cleaning. I thought you were calling him dark strong, which is strong. So he does have one insist of line, because the Chinese do this on Falun Gong monks to get them to recant their beliefs. It says monks or whatever. Yeah, monks or whatever. He's really half-arsing this.

If you have no beliefs, do recant then why? Yeah, you have nothing. I can't get anything out of you except information. I am going to torture you now and with the one thing he gets to say to this guy, George Clooney, fucking turf brain activated, fucking dead names him again and just goes, come on Jimmy, you're not one of those Quran thoughts. It's such a birth. He goes, come on Jimmy, you're not one of those Karan Thaw. To which Mark Strong goes, my name is Masawi and then pulls his fingernail off.

Mark Strong gets to say, my name is Masawi, like three times in this movie. It's like his, I'm going to check the perimeter. But yeah, he pulls a couple of his fingernails out. And because again, we see the George Clooney's deal is that he stays very calm. He doesn't tell him anything. And so- He's even really scream all that much.

No, and so much so. He's like, okay, fine, I'm just going to behead you. Would you know, I turn the volume down and put subtitles on because I was squeamish, it's going to shit. Malino baby, it's fine. There is a bit where he pulls his finger now out and he looks at the things pulled out, he's like, oh, yeah, he goes, oh, gross.

And I try to wipe it off the glippers on the table, which I do quite a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's about to be headman at this point. He is saved by the intervention of Hezbollah, who fully just send an imam to be like, stop it. Like fucking Avengers assemble, Hezbollah shows up and you're like, yeah!

Duh, duh, duh, duh, they come through a portal, like. You read this in like a synopsis and you say like, Hezbollah intervenes to save him. You might imagine like five guys who they can, kill everybody. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,s kill everybody. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Haspilar is really very good. It's really funny. It's really good. It also represents a better understanding of Haspilar than a lot of shit does. They're very often portrayed as this cat's poor veron. That's sometimes true, but there are limits. And if they want to tell the Iranians, because that is who Masawe has betrayed Bob Forrest, the Iranians, if they want to tell them to fuck off, then they will, within reason. And they want to tell them to fuck off, then they will

within reason. And there's certainly instances where they're like, no, we're not going to be a party to that. I mean, in the British media, Hasblare portrayed the fucking aliens from War of the World. It's basically it, because of all of the armed groups in the Middle East and the Levant specifically, I would say they're probably one of the least psychotic and by far most competent. It's not to say they're good guys or it's definitely not nice guys, but there's a pragmatism there which I think is reflected very well in this movie that you can find yourself with these strange bad fellows. Oh absolutely. Yeah. A pragmatism to the movie.

strange bedfellows. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. A pragmatism to the movie. Not. Yeah. To be clear, we do like the anti-Semitism back. So we go back to the CIA where we find out that Misawi, they can't do anything about him, he's just gone. But he has video and his audio of Bob calling for the hit on Nasir. And therefore, what they have to do is totally unsentimentally, just burn Bob's entire career. Oh yeah, we're gonna disavow Bob now. Yeah. We see his boss be like, yeah, he's under investigation for, I don't know, you fill in the blanks.

Yeah, like he's gone off the books. Like we knew nothing about this guy. He's fucking lost it. We do, like Bob does make it back to the USA, but he's now under investigation. And like we see him go, we see him go and like speak to his friend Fred, who again has a family of children.

And we see him be like, why am I under investigation Fred? And Fred's like, look dude, I gotta talk to him or you're canceled. You're canceled. Yeah, you're canceled on Twitter.com. I've got to unfollow. I'm sorry.

That's right. I just liked some of his posts. I didn't know that he killed two people and they're on a rogue operation. Well, you know, I'm sure there's at least one left to ship, as you ask. This is the point at which I've run out of notes, by the way. I just started watching the movie at this point, so I'm turning my phone off. This is the point where my final note is Americans love to wear a huge suit shirt. Everybody in this movie is wearing a huge shirt. There's one shot right where in the same scene where Matt Damon goes, you know, how much for the other

kid, you think he's wearing a normal suit for that whole thing? Until there's one wide shot, which I really want us to make the episode out. If it isn't Mark's drawing. I'd be Mark's drawing. Where it just reveals that he's wearing the widest leg suit pants I've ever seen. It's so... They're all wearing normal jackets, but you take it off and the suit is just... The yellow is the shirt is massive. It's phenomenal.

Love it. I'll get into it. We might as well wrap up Bob. So he's in the position he needs to be in for the finale. So he goes to meet Christopher Plummer. That's right. You have a great little scene. We have a great scene because Christopher Plummer tells him on this town you're innocent

until you're investigated. And Bob calls him on his bullshit. He's like, you must have got some miles out of the little aphorisms that like gives the listen of the sense of the law being written as you hear it. And then he drops the real shit on him. I have a flock of sheep. He drops the real shit on him and the real shit could in a worse movie have been the takin' speech. But instead, he's so regretful and so tired that when he delivers

it, this is like weird hum in the background from the fucking bug zapper in the restaurant too. So he just like, he sits there in the shitty cafe and he tells them If anything happens to me or my family, an accident, an accusation, anything and first your son will disappear, his body will never be found, then your wife, her body will never be found either. Now this is guaranteed. Then whatever is the most dangerous thing that you do in your life, it might be flying in a small plane. I'd be walking to the bank. You'll be killed. It's really fucking good. It's good. It's the thing. It's because it's Christopher Palmer behind

the investigation. Is that why he does this? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I thought so. It's just checking him. Yeah. Um, anyway, then we need to position, uh, Jeffrey Wright in this. Um, so Jeffrey Wright discovers that the merger between Connacks and Killing probably is going to be a little bit dodgy. There's a bunch of like dodgy payments somewhere like somebody's accepted a bribe. It's a detail, it's not important.

And but anyway, uh, their plan all along was to like drop one of the executives in the show. Oh my God. And I like get him arrested for corruption. He'll do a couple of years in jail and then get out and they have a big trust. Yeah, to limited hang out. Yeah, it's good. And the guy they pick is a Danny Dalton who is playing by Tim Blight Nelson and he gets like one scene where he it's bizarre they just stood on a ramp so the whole thing is slightly angled and Oh God and Jeffrey Wright is like above him so you see the power imbalance and this guy is just like wearing again the biggest serve I've ever seen my fucking life is just going corruption is cool. It's good

I enjoyed it. Why is this a fucking crymole of a sudden and like Jeffrey says nothing For the entire I have he in the fucking Focon leg horn accent we have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it corruption is our protection Corruption keeps us safe and warm Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the street Yeah, he basically like is saying like I love corruption. I spread it on my toast It's great and then I cool you should probably like hang you out for this then all right We've picked the right guy to fucking take the fall then haven't we?

Also, he's yelling this in public Yeah He's yelling this in public. Yeah, I know. He's like prejudice the case again. People walking past. So then, then, then, Jeffrey Wright goes, goes on a run. He goes on a jog, um, wearing like two layers of clothes. They're every fucking American. They, they don't know how to not wear a t-shirt

under what they've got on. So this guy is like, he's jogging and he's got a t-shirt on under a tank top. What are you doing? Yeah, maybe, is that just an American skin? Is that just what they're like? I don't know. I've never seen one in real life.

So the US attorney then, like, drives out to him and the very sinister looking like Lincoln, town, car with the tinted windows. And they have this conversation. And Jeffrey Wright, he's told that they need another body, right? They need another person. I didn't immediately realize that this is the problem of justice, like, really got fun in my knees out running.

I thought this is just somebody like propositioning. He's like, hey, looking good, you're welcome for a ride. There's a really important bit in this, where Jeffery Wright goes, you could do this through the courts, but they'll fight you the whole way. They'll fight dirty. They'll go to your boss, the person who appointed your boss, the person who appointed your boss as wife, and you'll get the same result as now, but for like, for hundreds of millions of dollars. And he says, this, this incredible line, this is the hardest you're ever going to hit them. And you know it.

And I just, I wonder how much in the history of like any kind of corporate regulation or accountability has been stymied by that idea. And it might even be fucking true. I believe it's a horribly bleak thing to believe. The Department of Justice say it's not, Dalton's not enough, Timothy Dalton's not enough. We need another, we need another body. And so Jeffrey Wright kind of like stitches up the junior partner in the law firm.

It's like somebody very big at the law firm. Like he's like immediate boss. He stitches up his boss. He stitches up Sydney. Yeah, and what we get is a kind of like legal all about Eve, right? Where the implication is he's just gonna become him and then the next guy is gonna do the same to him

and this is just this ongoing cycle. Like Roman emperors. Yeah, meanwhile, we got a check in with Nassir, who has been dispossessed of his birth, right? The king goes and gives his heirdom to Michelle instead, which causes Nassir to plot a coup, and we get this weird, weird, weird, weird, weird speech, right? Where he says all of the things that he wants to do. I want to create a parliament. I want to give women he wants to do. I want to create a parliament. I want to give women the right to vote.

I want an independent judiciary. I want to start a petroleum exchange in the Middle East. Cut the speculators out of the business. Why are the major oil exchanges in London and New York anyway? And all this is a recurring theme. We haven't really talked about this much, but all of Nassir and Brian's conversations are about infrastructure,

or they're about efficiency, or they're about the free market. He accepted the Chinese bid because it was high in. And as such, he's sort of absolutely a liberalizing figure. All of the reforms that he wants to make are liberal ones because he wants to do the free market more fairly and more efficiently. I'm not sure how I feel about this, right? Because off the back of this, he gets compared by various characters to Muhammad Nwastadir, to Atatuk. There's our no one compares him to NASA, given that he's talking about like recentering where where oils play happens. But at the same time, I think this is a product of the movie's very limited vision. I think this is the most radical thing it can imagine.

Yeah. He's a liberal for better and worse. Yeah. Yeah. And the for better here is that it's accidentally making the point that even that is enough to get you killed. Yes, even that is radical. Yeah Yeah, because he says I can't do these reforms. I can't do the free market thing and give the United States preferential treatment every time Like if China makes me a better offer I'm gonna go with the better offer because then I can help more people And then he says but if I even try and do that a little bit the US president calls my father up and then all of a sudden I'm I'm not in her in the kingdom anymore because they're gonna give it to somebody else who allows the US to build military bases and like will give the US oil contracts every time. Yeah, soft power, having those conversations.

Matt Damon's like, my wife is leaving me, they took everything from me, they took my family, really, my wife. His family leaves him and goes back to the US. What's also really funny is that like because country that is not named is Saudi Arabia, Nassir, Nassir, Nassir is a friend of the pods. Mohammed bin Sal. Close personal friend of me. Mohammed, come on the show. Mohammed Salman, liberalizing force. Personal friend of David Cameron.

That's fucking right. It's this sort of people still thought this about MBS in 2006. And it's far later than that. People, people like some people still absolutely find people who still believe this. I'm sure he's going to do those liberal reforms any day now. He's going to give women right to vote. I mean, I've got the clock set. It's coming up any second now, baby.

What's really funny and what I think really strikes at the heart of this movie is that it is able to identify the ability to talk about reform and not do it as a sort of cynical ploy when it happens in Iran, right? That's in the text. That's something that George Clooney says. You can let people march in the streets in the next day. You close in the text. That's something that George Clooney said. You can let people march in the streets in the next day. You close down the newspapers and that would like four people into thinking that you're a liberalizer, you're a modernizer, you're a former. But not when you apply it to Saudi Arabia, then you are fully in the tank for a noble, altruistic, royal governor of a country.

And it's so, so funny because this is... Oh, I'm a liberal king, fuck off. Yes, yeah. And so inevitably this movie has taken a massive L when... I wanna give women the right to vote. Yeah, I wanna be clear. Not sure what they're voting for.

Not for the head of state, appreciate. No, no, no. I wanna give women the right to vote on a ballot paper that has one box. And of course, the real MBS turns out to be much closer to the evil brother, Prince Michelle, who is just like perfectly content to continue the authoritarianism. Anyway, Matt Damon, his wife having left him is like, well, fuck it, I'm going gonna stay in our named country.

And we're gonna have a cook. He's fucking like live tweeting the coup. Like he's on the phone while they're all getting in the car. He's like, yeah, we're doing it. We're going to a palace right now. Let's go boys. Like, we've got the generals, like,

we're gonna interrupt the crowning of the younger brother. And we're gonna have, we're gonna, we're gonna fucking do this. The younger brother is being crowned with the United States as like thumbs up. He says, he, he assembles his like, who guys? And what are the things made you do that? Is, yeah, is nobody will stand up to the Americans when a country has 5% of the world's

population, but 50% of the military spending, the persuasive powers of that country are on the decline. And that is a fucking solid sister cast, Madeline Albright has lying. Yeah, it feels fucking weird to come out of him. Why isn't America doing diplomacy anymore? Also way more than 50%, like significantly more, the fucking LAPD is 50%. So at this point, we're now setting up for the day anymore, the fucking LAPD is 50% I think. So at this point, we're now setting up for the day anymore,

the last half hour. Which is like, I think- Everyone's in that place, everyone's going together. As the revolutionaries, as the coup boys, their main man all get in the car, we see- Well, the revolutionaries, it's a convoy of range. Yeah, I forgot the name of the word coup and just said that it was revolution,

which is not the same fucking thing at all Especially when done by a prince But fucking yeah, they look at the car and one of his bodyguards just like quietly fix on the phone is like yes And a fucking silver Range Rover You kill that guy right now I'll kill this motherfucker right now And and because this movie has heard of drone strikes, which is prestient, right? Like it's earlier in the timeline than they became sort of very embedded in the popular

consciousness. That's how they try to kill him. I didn't know about that. I didn't know about that. I think it leaves maybe too many fingerprints. I think you just have somebody shoot them in the back of the head a couple of times. But in any case, what you get is Bob arrives in the country and tries to intercept the convoy to warn them. Brian is struck by a sudden moment of need for his family and empathy. When he sees

the prince's family, he's like, oh, you should sit in the car with him. Yeah, with your young child, he's in the shot. Again, we're going to say in the car with him. Yeah, sure. And I'll go with your young child who's in the shot. Again, I was gonna say something about children, my drone. Yes, yeah, yeah. And so Bob arrives, tries to warn him and everybody except Brian pretty much is immediately killed by the drone strike. Now, I,

we see that the CIA guys like kind of realize that Bob is there and like quite sadly like press the button to kill a old colleague. It's like it's kind of a sad moment. I'm like slowly clicking the drone strike on H-Bomber guys. Just take him out. It's like oh man. Yeah. Ah sorry. You come off for that episode. And they clear out they clear out his old office, and they're like, ah, he was good. We killed it.

This isn't funny, but it is funny. Why the common voice stops in the first place is, look, I have a flock of sheep. Oh, fuck, he literally does. I have a flock of sheep. I go, it's admittedly. I found it to be a little bit like laying on the good king act a little too much. He's not even bothered. He's like, oh, the beddewine always

have the right of way. Yeah, okay, fine. But this bit doesn't really capture the horror of a drone strike. And I think, you know, what could, but if you're gonna use the gore, I think now will be a good place to do it. Also, as this is happening, the oil guys are all in their tuxedos like celebrating like, I am an oil man. Like, they're having a party. Yeah, it's really good. So like we get them like all standing up on a plaudig and we hear the sound of the applause as we then like,

cut to the smoke and twisted wreckage of these cars. And it's like, ah, I get it. And then we have a bit of a problem, which is I feel like the movie has at this point forgotten about cars. And it's like, ah, I get it. And then we have a bit of a problem, which is, I feel like the movie has at this point forgotten about Worseem and Farouk, right? It's been setting them up as, you know, being radicalized, being trained to be terrorists.

They have this did other Stingem Missile Launcher. And then after all of this has happened, in a way that doesn't really tie in with the plot, that they commit a suicide attack, on a boat using a sting and missile, which is a weird combination, and they blurped a conx, Colleen, Hanke. There's a little bit of ambiguity.

One of the things that I kind of appreciated thinking about is the possibility that Nassia could have financed this, since it does ultimately harm his enemies. I thought that's where they were going with it. Yeah, and they did not. It just isn't really. But when they are killed, you hear audio from Wasseem's

martyrdom video that he's recorded, which is very severe and very austere. But it's interlace with them taking stuff out of Bob's office and Brian Conkhamter's family. And it's talking about different kinds of martyrdom and different kinds of rebirth. And I thought that was really clever.

Yes. And as Matt Damon is returning home to his children, we get the line from that video where we seem says the next world is the true life. So he's, he's like, I've been hinting at this. The film uses children a lot, like even some of the incidental characters, like the other CIA agents,

when we see them, they're like getting out of a car with their young families. Chris Cooper has some kids like doing like a pool party in the background of one scene, like everyone's got fucking kids. At one point somebody asks Jeffrey, like, hey, like what's corruption man like? And he's like, oh, he's got a wife and kids.

Like, everybody's got fucking kids. And like, they're everybody's exceuse for why they're doing what they're doing. Like, I've got to like provide for my family. I've got to look out for my career. But ultimately, they're just like props. They are just the excuse. But what I like about this film

is the way that it shows us like all of this shit, like actually hurts the next generation a lot. We'll see him hugs his father goodbye and then goes and fucking martyrs himself against an oil tanker. And it does nothing at all. The prince disease, child, is just incinerated by the drone strike. The way that this film uses children to hit home the emotional messages. He's really, really effective, especially when the plot on the politics is so complicated

and cutty, such that even our summary of it has like simplified it and made it easier to understand. Like, the emotional core of it is really, really good. It's really, it's a really smart observation. And there's one thing that I'd add to. Yeah, call me Abby and Alice. That's right. God, I don't know.

There's one thing that I'd add, which is, so, so Jeffrey Wright, been a holiday, he doesn't have children. Well, he has his father and the sort of, the spiritual bankruptcy of their mutual contempt and sort of like stuntedness is such that the last shot of the movie is him picking his drunk father up off the front porch and bring him indoors and closing the door. And it's this even extends to that because as the sun he is still paying the price for the elder generations like fucking mess.

Yes. Now that's a theme, baby. The sins of the fathers will be visited upon the child. I've got I don't have a full thought ever in my life, but I've got like two fifths of one here, which I was thinking about throughout watching it, because this movie has people speaking in English, and Arabic, and Erdo, and Farsi,

like it's got a shitload of fucking languages. And so it has these sort of baked in subtitles on the bottom of the screen every so often. And when a movie has these, it's really fascinating to see what it doesn't, doesn't feel requires translation for the audience. Because like, there are scenes where there are multiple people speaking, Farsi, and like it translates two or three phrases, and the rest is just sort of, it says something, right, pardon the fucking pun. It's, the audio is being used to convey an effect rather than to convey meaning, which is interesting to me. Yeah, it's vibes. Anyway, that's two thirds of what,

if you have the final third, please message me. Perhaps the final third can be discovered using our science-based rating system. Perhaps. Because this is a main night episode, so we have to give this a scum system. We call it the scum system. The scum system. Yeah. So someone, someone, yeah, has some messages because of my complaint that we have no way to talk about homophobia in the scum system. Someone messages us to say we should just call it the scum system. And just in certain age, I'm not doing the connery voice. We were talked about homophobia and the cultural and sensitivity because gay culture is a culture.

Yes, but I do feel that to be something of a bandaid. I think that, whatever. Whatever, whatever. The homophobia against me by refusing to allow me to talk about it, I'll talk about it in the fucking episode. It comes out of nowhere. That's right. So, smarm cultural and sensitivity, unbroadged Violence and Misogyny.

I know about SMARM. And how about SMARM? We should change what the S's. I don't want SMARM me anymore. That was such a specific thing. What is the movie ever like jacking itself off? Does it ever have any lines that it's really, really proud of? Like, that was...

Self-congratulation. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a vibe, I think. We're just kind of wider, Scott. That line yeah, that's kind of a vibe, I think. We're just kind of widest, come. That line about, like, over on the decline, is like, there's a couple of lines that are very, like, movie-fuck-a-d-life. So it stands for Stranger, right,

which is when the movie sits on its hand for long enough that it can jack itself off. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think there's a couple, I think, it's sort of the blinders of of its own liberalism where it's like Why is it America doing soft power anymore? I think I think those count as smart to me. Mm-hmm. How do you feel about a two I would even go as well as a one yeah, I'd say okay No cultural

It's a tip you must excuse this rather odd mixture of styles, but I refuse to go entirely Lebanese. Yes. Why? Why did they do that to Mark Strong? Yeah, it could have cast an Iranian actor. Like, they did really well at casting. Like, fucking comic actors. Like, my mind is half Italian.

For some reason, we need Mark Strong for this. What? Mark Strong. Oh, I can't remember the two Islam. I think my argument is I think Mark Strong just loves to do this. He does, he does. I... Yeah, you mentioned...

Body of life. At least he doesn't do a fucking accent this time. Um, God. He's like, he's like, birthday was like, Mark is just Safi's strong earlier. Sorry. Mark's just, sorry. I'm gonna write that on the fucking.

I'm just gonna pause here to investigate Mark's just Safi's strong body. Oh yeah. It's not far off. It's Marco Gisempi's sauce earlier. That's the shit I would call a personification of Italy and a fucking anime. Yeah, my man is Italian. Okay, so there's that...

Mark says... Sorry, carry on. That, um, Sorry, carry on. Brought in says some very racist things, but they make sense for his character. They're not like sympathetic. They're like, he has become embittered because he blames these people for like killing his child. I think also the way that the film really emphasizes the humanity of its like non-American characters. Yes.

It's really, really, really fucking good. And also, we see, especially through the use of the cinematic parallels that like, even when the characters, like, all the characters that kind of have the same foibles and same flaws, it's not really like, it's a movie that kind of like repudiates race as a technology of categorization. Um, except... Except in all the monster... Yes! It's weird like all the cultural and sensitive is a concentrated... It's like just a walking avatar.

He's sort of... Do you know what a... do you know what a sinnyter is? I'm like... You know what a scummyter is? It's Mark's strong. He's sort of do you know that you're a sinny to his You know the scummy to his it's much strong So I would say three yeah, three yeah like the whole fucking Westieman for rookstroy line is such such like a genuinely heartfelt rendition of people getting radicalized it's hard to to really, well, I mean, obviously we're all free of us. Let's be clear, our very white.

So if this is inaccurate and racist, sorry. Careful, whitey. Whoops. But three. Three. It was good. It's good by the standards of the movies that we tend to watch. I'll say that.

And that seems like a safe statement. Unprovoked violence? Fuck, that adds a whole new level of tension to me trying to figure out what I think. Fuck, okay, well, that's not a thought. Yeah, all of the violence that we see is that, like, I'm provoked is like, explicitly a bad thing, right? Well, Bob is still the good CIA agent, despite the fact that we see him murder a couple of people. Yeah, that's true.

That's true, fuck you're right. Yeah, he does like outright explode, too, man. He explodes those guys in that dark shank of Annabelle's. Yes. Oh, like moral center of the movie, like the first thing. Which by the way, later on is confirmed that those two guys were like Iranian intelligence. Yeah. And he knew that that was the case.

So like, it's not great. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, hard to have a movie about a bunch of white guys in the middle east without some unprovoked violence. I think it's to have a movie about a bunch of white guys in the middle east without some unprovoked violence. I think it's definitely going to be something. But it's violence that the movie treats Bob's violence just like at best fine. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, too. Misogyny, I think it suffers from a lack of female characters. Yeah, Matt Damon's wife has fuck all to do besides wife. Yeah, and Nag. So the character even have a name? No, I think she does, but in the subtitles, she's credited as mum, which I was like, oh, she's very seldom called, what?

Julie, her name is Julie, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I was, had sort of of brief moments of perception like the girl leaving the party at the beginning that I wish it had, you know, had more useful. Women can be evil too. Just let them be. Come on. That's right. That's right. Where are the women? I'm always saying this. Like, Nessia has a wife, but like for a supposed like, you know, a liberator of women, she gets to do fuck all other than stand up. Yeah, fair point. Yeah. I didn't realize the other wife. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, she gets blown up. Yeah, that's why. Yeah, she also gets blown up. Not great. Pretty hard. Yeah, it's a kind of it's a misogyny of a mission rather than commission. That's true. It is sort of curious the extent to which it is like willing to talk about the most

in the world, the Middle East's misogyny, but from this position of its social issue, its a box to get ticked. It's up there with like having a parliament, right? The sort of the quality of it is less important than whether or not it like fits with the presidential agenda like Iran does. Yeah, also, and I guess it's like, oh, the idea that, oh, we'll have a parliament and that'll fix it like rather than actually there are, you know, some specific kinds of oppression that women feel, like as a sex class that we do need to deal with like that, specifically

like women's problems. Like trans women and bathrooms. We need sex based rights. I want to do three. Yeah, I would say three, I think also because it reflects a kind of sensibility that reflect a kind of sensibility that when the US engaged in it, sort of like liberalizing projects in Iraq and Afghanistan when it bothered to do them, I think it took the same kind of attitude towards women's rights there as it did here, which is, it's important to do this.

So say we've done it, say we've done it, and you know, it'll be done. And obviously this did not do much to change any of the sort of underlying cultural phenomena going on there. So if you're a woman listening to this podcast inside of your area, right in. Yeah.

Yeah. If you're a woman listening to this podcast, I do. How's it going? How's it going? It's just been good. This is the first three episodes that we're going to send to actors, agents, if we want to get

them on. It's very serious and analogical. I'm genuinely, but I'm very proud of this episode thus far. I was so, so worried that I would be like unable to like form this into a cohesive whole. I certainly couldn't have done that without without the two of you. So thank you for that. Where does this leave, where does this leave Sireana and our patented scum spectrum? That's a total score of nine, which is pretty respectable,

not quite as good as a view to a kill. That's right. The thing about a view to a kill is that it has much more to say about the like global oil trade and misogyny and things of this. Yeah, it's a lot of sayback. That's true. I find the future that indispensable. Well, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot safer. And I have blimps. That's true. I find the computer that indispensable. Well. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Who's turn is it the next time? I believe it's your turn next, Evan. Yeah. So I'm picking the next one. The next. The next.

Oh, nice. I think I have a film in mind. Based on my track record, it's probably going to be a lot worse than I remember it being. But you'll find out what that is in two weeks, this is. It's delightful. And the next bonus episode is also classified. So we believe that we will have a bonus episode

by the time it goes out. No worry. Whatever it is, don't worry. Whatever it is, we'll see you you next thing. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the first episode of Kill James Bond season two. Our power limiters are off. We can do whatever we please. So, come back in exactly two weeks time for the next episode, which is breach 2017. But if that is simply too long for you to wait, then don't fucking worry about it, because it is fucking... yeah. Anqu quit of forgiveness so going up on the bonus and free feed simultaneously

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