Unclear and Present Danger - The Package

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

In this week’s episode, Jamelle and John talk “The Package,” the 1989 conspiracy thriller from Andrew Davis, and the first of many Andrew Davis movies to come on this podcast. They talk class tensions within the military, the age-old American fear of standing armies and military bureaucracies, the anti-politics inherent in conspiracy theorizing, the role of ideology in shaping the actions of key actors, and how the shadow of the JFK assassination hangs over this movie.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieLinks from the episode!The New York Times frontpage for August 25, 1989.An information page for the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.The Wikipedia entry for “The Day of the Jackal.”The Wikipedia entry for “The Manchurian Candidate.”A little background on Nazis in the Chicago area.

It began in Berlin. A routine assignment for Sergeant John Gallagher. But something went wrong. Now he's in over his head. If he doesn't get some answers, it may be too late for everyone. The package. Welcome to Episode 5 of Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s of the 1990s of the 1990s, A podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade.

I'm Jamel Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. My name is John Gans. I write a column for Gawker and a newsletter called Unpopular Front. And I'm working on a book about American politics in the early 90s. Today we are talking about the package, the 1989 film from Andrew Davis. Andrew Davis is a director with a unfortunately generic name, but he had a pretty great run of thrillers and action movies in the late 80s and 90s before this one, it was above the law, which is like the one or one of two good Seagall movies, and I think Seagull's, Stephen Seagull's debut. This was followed up, the package by Underseed, which is the other good Stephen Seagal

movie. And then there is the fugitive, which is just a classic of 1990s thrillers. He kind of falls off. Yeah, he did that. And once you realize that, once you recognize that he did the fugitive, you're like, oh, okay. His whole thing makes total sense. This whole Chicago guy thing makes total sense. After that, he kind of falls off, although he does do a movie in the beginning of the 2000s, 2002, with Arnold Schwarzenger called Collateral Damage, which I think, depending on how long we end up doing this podcast, John, we were going to watch Collateral Damage. Did collateral damage get pulled from theaters because of 9-11, or am I thinking of a different movie?

I think it was. Yeah. I saw it in theaters. I distinctly remember seeing it because the only thing I remember from the movie is Arnold Schwarzenegger screaming something to the effect of collateral damage. This is collateral damage. If there's an act to the guy. So that's the work of Andrew Davis. The movie was made for a nice $18 million.

It did not do very well. It only grossed about 10 and a half, a little over that. But it did pretty well for itself among critics. Only one review I read was pretty negative. That was the New York Times review, but Roger Ebert was pretty positive. And most of the stuff I saw was pretty positive. And it stars, I don't want to leave this out. It stars Gene Hackney.

who, you know, he's a big guy, but I feel like they really, he's, he's dressed to accentuate the fact that he is a ginormous human being. And Tommy Lee Jones, who has more of a bit part, it isn't a bit part, but he's not really that big a part of the movie. No. The co-star really is Joanna Cassidy as, uh, Gene Hackman's character's, uh, wife. So John, uh, ex-wife or what's the story there? Yeah, that's right. His ex-wife, his ex-wife. So, John, what did you think? Tell me. I had never seen this before, and I've seen Underseach and The Fugitive a million times,

but somehow never caught this one. But what did you think? Well, Jamel, this is actually my second time watching the package. I watched it, and I think that must put me in a very small percentage of the human population that's seen this movie twice. So I watched this movie a couple months ago when I was just like looking for something to watch a couple months ago. I think it was just like streaming for free on Amazon, and I was like, oh, I like this genre, and this looks like it might be interesting. I like the movie.

It's a solid thriller. I think that the second time, I think the first time around, I was like watching it while doing stuff around the house or being on my computer. So maybe the plot, parts of the plot escape me. And I was just kind of watching it more for vibes. And this time I paid more attention. I did enjoy it. I think it's like, you know, a pretty solidly good movie. you know watching it

was just like I cannot imagine and this movie seems so super normal to me in a way because like we grew up with these I mean this is a little I would have been a little young when this came out but it just like

doesn't feel that alien to me maybe because of it the fugitive and stuff like that but I'm just thinking like what this movie would not have been made I cannot imagine a movie like this being made today first of all

the protagonists are older they're not I said that to my wife when you were watching I was like everyone in this is not just middle age but they are like very middle aged right it's like it's so and the subject matter is pretty not not so

heady that an audience couldn't follow but is you know pretty sophisticated for a thriller and I just can't imagine this movie ever being made especially you know that has us with a geopolitical rival and blah so I thought it was interesting in that light I mean you know I wasn't as crazy someone one review I said

I read said this was no way out without sex which I think we're all grateful for but but I think it's actually a little bit better in a movie than no way out not you know maybe as high thriller as clear in present danger

or some of the other words but like a solidly decent movie and like a fun watch and like there it started like at first I was like I have no idea what I'm going to say about it but then some interesting things started to occur to me about the movie so yeah i liked it i did too i it really it to me was very reminiscent of um day of the jackold the 1973 thriller about the attempted assassination of charles de gall yeah um and there's obviously sort of j fk assassination sort of vibes with all of this but we'll get to that in just a moment

before we have to look at the new york times home page for the day this movie was released New York Times front page. I keep on saying homepage because, you know, the internet, but this is a front page. This movie was released on Friday, August 25th, 1989. This is not on the page, but some things worth noting is that a couple years before there was a big arms control treaty. In this movie, it's sort of precipitating thing as an armed control treaty. But the front page for the New York Times in this day, is, to my eyes, pretty anodyne. There's drug traffickers in Columbia, start a counterattack. There's a note about the stock market. This one in the bottom left of the page, Black Youth is killed by whites. Brooklyn attack is called racial.

This is the Howard Beach attack. No, this is not the Howard Beach attack. Oh, no. Oh, no, this is a different one. This is a different one. This is why I don't really recognize it. I know this story. Yeah.

Can you say more about it? I don't know about this. Yeah. Let me just take a closer look here. But this is so, yeah. So basically this story was that some young black guys car broke down. Oh, no, they had come to the neighborhood to look for a used car. And then they were chased and attacked by a group of,

of Italians in in Bensonhurst and I think one of them was chased into traffic if I'm not mistaken oh no I'm sorry I've got this all mixed up a 60 year old black youth was shot to death Wednesday night and attack by 10 to 30 white teenagers in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn the white C30 said we're lying in wait for black or Hispanic youths they thought we're dating a white neighborhood girl but the victim was not involved with the girl the police said and had come to the

predominantly white neighborhood with three black friends to look at a used car. But I would say it's interesting that I made a mistake because this wasn't that uncommon at the time. There was another attack, which I hinted at, the Howard Beach attack. And there were this section of Brooklyn, which now is Russian-American, but then was Italian-American, you know, was infamous for these kind of racial mob attacks. And the politics of these things were really fraught at the time because, you know, a lot of people would demagogue about this. There were lots of talk radio demigogy that would sort of end up blaming the victims of these attacks, and David Duke's political career was starting now, and he often would

try to insert himself into these incidents. So it's in a way, you know, suggestive of a lot of racial politics that are still with us. and, you know, haven't really totally been resolved. But, yeah. Interesting. Interesting. It's always crazy to me how late these things are, right?

Sort of the late 80s, you don't think of racial mop attacks happening in the 80s, but there you go. Well, they get, they get, they're more ideologically complicated because of all of the, all of the propaganda and, public you know debate i suppose you could say about them where it's like oh was it really racial like who's really to blame here and then these these issues get muddied but they're you know just yeah you can see it in the headline brooklyn attack is called racial but i mean it was a racist attack yeah so yeah that's an interesting time i was really interested to see and i think this one's super relevant to the movie is this uh poland's parliament uhlexa solidarity premier i mean we're really getting to the end of the cold war here and uh this was um you know poland's first uh non-communist

prime minister since the since the war um which i think was part of a you know a demand that solidarity the the anti-communist union uh put on the government they've they acceded to uh so we're really coming to the end Poland had just gotten its independence pretty shortly before then, not immediately, but within the last... Well, it was independent, but they had, the Soviet Union had sort of just stopped threatening the Eastern Bloc countries with military intervention, which I think before, yeah. Right, right. So that was pretty recent, but that brings us right into the movie, which sort of deals with this, deals very explicitly with the end of the Cold War and the end of, or the beginning of the end of the end. the hostilities between the United States and the Soviet Union, I will quickly read a short plot synopsis. Here, I will say that if you have not seen the movie, you should see the movie. I rented it off of iTunes. It may still be on Amazon Prime, but you can find it,

you know, either for free somehow or spend a couple dollars on iTunes or Amazon or whatnot and check it out. It's a nice breezy watch too, you know. I have two kids, which means that my, you know, my hours are very strange, but it's a perfect length for starting at 7.30 and ending, you know, by 9.30 so you can go to bed. Or in my case, so I can play Metroid for an hour before I go to bed. So here's the synopsis. Experience Green Beret Sergeant Johnny Gallagher, who's played by Gene Hackman, is escorting a prisoner, airborne ranger Thomas Boyette, back to the U.S., but Boyette escapes and Gallagher must risk life and limb to catch him. But yet, played by Tommy Lee Jones.

And here I will, of course, say that you should just watch this movie before you go any further with this podcast. It's available on iTunes for a couple dollars. It's an easy watch. Not too long either. A sub-two-hour movie, which is a godsend these days. I'll say also that this plot synopsis doesn't really reflect what is in the movie all that much. This is not much of a cat-mouse-chaise kind of movie. movie, Boyette's escape is part of the overall plot, but not nearly the focus of the thing.

And I just always think it's funny when there's a plot synopsis that kind of misleads you to what this movie is actually about. And what this movie is about, as we alluded to, is it concerns a plot by senior intelligence officers in the Soviet and American High Command to assassinate a plot to assassinate a plot to assassinate the general secretary of the Communist Party in order to stop the signing of an arms control agreement that would, the movie suggests, would sort of radically reduce the nuclear stockpiles of both countries and effectively bring it in to the Cold War. Yeah, there's a, there's a collusion going on between the, the evil deep state of the Soviet Union

and the evil deep state of the United States, which is kind of a weird reverse utopian thing going on um i i think like you know what this movie the plot is a little bit like a movie that we're going to get to very soon star trek what is it for the undiscovered country star trek six the undiscovered country which is a cold war allegory but has like a similar thing where the cleanons and the federation are section conservative elements of both uh governments are plotting to persist the war and this is just like you know there's a political plot to extend the Cold War and to try not to end the Cold War, which I think is an interesting kind of fantasy to think about, like, you know, where we're putting the blame for the continuation

of the Cold War, like, are there people who's in whose interest it would be in to continue the Cold War? So I was, like, kind of tickled by that watching it. Yeah, I mean, the movie seems the basic idea behind the movie or the basic conceit seems to be the the old hat, right, that the military industrial complex will never let a conflict actually end. And so in this, in the world of the package, you have, you know, two peace-loving leaders or two leaders who want to achieve peace in at least a portion of the military establishment that is against that, although not for, I mean, I think if this movie, funny enough, I think it had this movie been made in the middle of the 90s, it would have been

sort of like industrialists. But here it seems to be, it is an ideological belief that you need nuclear conflict or the fear of nuclear conflict to actually prevent, you know, an outright war breaking out between the Soviet Union and the United States. That's what's motivating both sets of military officers, or at least that's what's, that's the most you get about their motivations during the course of the movie and what's interesting to me about this movie is like the main character so like we're introduced to the main character because he's like he's a very low he's a sergeant he's like a very low ranking guy it's jean hackman very you know reeds blue collar on the screen and is like um he kind of solves this conspiracy without much help uh from anybody

and his only help comes from his ex who's another kind of middling military official and a Chicago cop I mean the movie goes from Berlin and it ends up in Chicago a Chicago cop who he was in Vietnam with played by Dennis Franz who's like you know your classic Chicago white ethnic guy

he's like Croatian or something for 20 years if you needed a Chicago cop you just got tennis fronts right exactly so the the movie is like very much like the plot is undone by those below it's it's very un like it's very class wise like you know the the jagrion movies are very bourgeois because he's like an academic and he's got a beautiful house on the on the chesapeake bay and like this is like the heroes in this movie are pretty working class which i thought is interesting, which is also very unlike no way out where, you know, we're in this high-powered glitzy Washington world. There's nothing glitzy going on in, in the package. It's like

takes place along the bottom, motels, you know, barracks, back alleys, barracks. It's, it's so, I thought that was kind of interesting. And I wonder if it kind of prefigured, I mean, I might be reading into this a little bit. But, you know, there was a new, there was a sort of a populist moment starting to occur at this time as a, you know, partially as a backlash to the Reagan years, but partially as a product of it. And I wonder if this movie kind of like hints at that changing zeitgeist a little bit where its characters are sort of more down to earth than in some of the other thrillers we watched. No, I think that's, I think that's right. I mean, it's, it's conspicuous how, how we're moved from elite society this whole pot is.

that the most we get of anything higher ranking are these occasional meetings of the principles for this arms control agreement. But otherwise, we are spending our time with the lower rungs of military, the lower rungs of civilian society. I mean, even, you know, for the typical American in 1989, no one's tape, a few people are taking transatlantic flights and you do get one transatlantic flight in this movie but it is in the it's in like the cargo hold of a military plane like it's it's very um it's very pedestrian Tommy lee jones's character is reading it looks like is that a nudie mag i just assumed it was a nudie magazine because like he just this character seems like the kind of guy who would casually read a

playboy or hustler but but he's like kind of he's kind of gives this weird like it almost left wing anti-patriotic like lecture to to uh gene hackman's thing about like u.s. imperial he turns out to be a bad guy but he's just super cynical but it's interesting they like code him as being like this guy is like a dissident about American foreign policy but he's also like a villain who's working for this evil special forces who are uh you know making that foreign policy continue but but Gallagher is like he's really guys almost like no politics like he's very very simple politics he's just like presented as patriotic like not stupid or sappy but he's just like that everyone's like golly are you're real

patriot or something like that and like he's very unassuming as a character but just kind of instinctively does the right thing and and and you know through the diligent application of you know his his long-earned talents as a non-commissioned officer you know solves a plot to you know continue the Cold War and assassinate the president So it's like a victory for unsophisticated people. One thing, I mean, one thing the movie touches on in that regard is sort of the tension that does exist, right, within the military between officers and enlisted people. Which it kind of, you see very early on. So what, you know, what happens?

There's a summit that's happening in Berlin. And at the summit, and this is where the movie gets a little bit opaque about what. happening plot-wise. But what I believe happens is that the American and Soviet officials who want to continue the Cold War come to an agreement about what they're going to do, and then one general, one American general, like, isn't going to sign on. So they have him assassinated. And Gallagher's unit happens upon the wrecked car that the general is in and gets into a firefight with the assassins. One of his men dies and obviously the general dies. And when he's being debriefed later on, one of the evil intelligence officers played by John Hurd, who you will

likely recognize from home alone as the dad, but who had a very, you know, robust career playing kind of scumbags. Yeah, he's got a face for it. Yeah, yeah. His home alone role. is sort of like a face turn for him as an actor. But John Hurd is like dressing him down and saying, you know, this is, you, you messed up. You weren't diligent enough. You weren't careful enough. And it's sort of in an interaction between the two, you have like this very explicit tension between, you know, enlisted soldiers and officers.

And it's made explicit. I mean, he even, Hackman's character even says. something to give the fact of, you know, I don't trust people like you. Right. Well, with good reason it turns. Right, right, with good reason, it turns out. Well, there's a great deal of, like, animosity, not hatred, but there's class tension in a way between non-commissioned officers and officers. I mean, a lot of people, enlisted people that I've met in the army, have expressed to me, including my grandfather, it was actually a sergeant in the war, expressed to me a lot of disdain for officers and, you know, kind of viewing them as arrogant and sometimes incompetent

and, yeah. We have that element of the movie, kind of this class tension, but the movie itself, I mean, it's very, it's very focused on its plot, on unraveling the plot. There's not even really that much character work, and so I thought it'd be, I thought it'd be interesting just to talk about what I think is kind of the thing that stands out to the most to me about this movie, this movie featuring middle-aged people foiling a plot to stop the assassination of the president or the general secretary. It's sort of like this, you know, what if we could rerun the JFK assassination and stop it? That's what sticks out to me. Not the

least because, right, like Tommy Lee Jones's character is sort of like a Lee Harvey Oswald type, a trained sniper who is, you know, disillusioned with America. There is this intricate plot involving, you know, local law enforcement in this, in the case of this movie, neo-Nazis, but, you know, Oliver Stone's JFK, which we will watch, and relatively soon, actually, it. You have a similar, you know, you have a similar set of actors high and low organizations plotting to kill JFK. And this movie really does seem like this. You know, what if we could rerun? What if we could rerun November, 1963 again? And this time, stop it. Stop it before, you know, it goes off. What's interesting to me about this movie and then JFK and then some of the other

movies I mentioned was this conspirator which makes it kind of populist in a way like this conspiratorial belief that there is a hidden group that it's not there's no structural reason there's no you know bigger forces there's just a hidden group of bad guys and decent people can take them out and like if decent people apply themselves unglamorous people the salt to the earth people then you know these problems will be fixed. I think it's really attractive political mythology for Americans, which is just like, you know, this ordinary

guy can stop it and that could be you. And it's also an attractive fantasy to be like if it weren't for certain people who were not really constrained by anything except the presence of a few bad people. You know, there's a I think that's like the deep state is

like ideal is like one at one time really terrifying but also like really simplified things. It's just like oh well there's like you know 10 or 20 really bad people and you know if you got rid of them and we arrested them and we throw and both liberals and conservatives engage in this like if we just got rid of these people all of our problems would go away you know we just need to get rid of the bad actors in the government and I think this movie definitely participates like a little bit in that belief it's also interesting to me that like and I think this is where I'm going

to start to get a little speculative like I did with hunt for in October about like hidden socialism in socialism in the movie it's interesting that they rescue this not the u.s. president but the soviet premier or the general secretary who is supposed to be gorbachev i think it's instructive to remember like the hopes for gorbachev because now he's like a really diminished figure because of what happened after the fall of the soviet union but like he was a very exciting popular figure and like in the west too and among western leftists and liberals because Because there was a hope. I was reading a bunch of articles about glass-nosed and Tarashoika.

And, like, the critics call this, like, a glass-nosed movie. You know, some kind of right-wing critics kind of disdainfully put it as a glass-nosed movie. Where it's, like, you know, Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union, there was a lot of hope among left-winger, social Democrats, and liberals, that, you know, the Soviet Union was going to keep socialism, going to do some market reforms, but, democratize and and like in that was a real belief and now in retrospect and I read you know a Soviet dissidents article a kind of left-wing Soviet socialist dissident who kind of had this sort of hopes for for that change too so it wasn't just the West's prediction this was something felt by a lot of people so I think it's like interesting to remember the hopes for the perestroika and Glasnosed period because now we look at the post-Soviet time with its

nationalism, its new autocracies as being so dark and kind of predetermined to turn out that way. But I think that hopes in the West for post-Soviet Russia or post-authoritarian or post-one-party state, Russia that would still be the Soviet Union, still be socialist, but democratized, like that existed. And that was a real potential people thought was going to happen. And I think this movie in a way is like, it's funny that they like, they rescue Gorbache. as the last hope of peace rather than rescue the U.S. president, who I guess would be Bush at this period.

And or maybe, you know, this was produced a little earlier in the Reagan era. But yeah, I think that was interesting that like now I think that this has been almost forgotten as a hopeful time. And, you know, like with we were talking about in the New York Times Times, which was a labor union. who was opposed to the communists and so many of these charismatic, intellectual dissidents in the East. And, like, I think there was real hope on the left

that the post-Soviet time was going to revitalize the left and there would be, like, a democratic socialist flowering, and so on and so forth. And that seems really naive, but I think that was real. And I think that the movie kind of weirdly, not to say that there's, like, an explicit or even implicit socialist message in the movie. But I think, like, the combination, of like it's kind of populist notes and it's liberal or left wing hopes about like the end of the Cold War and it's and for Gorbachev I think is kind of interesting and you know I think it's just

a period in time that's been really lost to our consciousness and is for me reading these articles been really fascinating to go back to yeah I mean and just speaking you know speaking to that to your earlier point about sort of the notion that the only thing really keeping keeping us from in some measure of peace and prosperity are this handful of bad actors. In its vision, you have this hopeful Gorbachev like character and the only thing that would be holding him back are, you know, Soviet recalcitrant Soviet officials. There's no sense in the movie really of larger forces, either political or economic or ideological. The closest thing there is to that hint is the fact that the, you know, the cover group,

not the cover group, but the group helping organize the assassination in the United States is a neo-Nazi group. Although interestingly, they have like the aesthetics of a neo-Nazi group, like they're wearing the tan uniforms with the black belts and suspenders, but there's not really any, you know, the rhetoric is kind of like generic, you know, anti-communist rhetoric. And I thought that was an interesting choice not to not to drive home the fact that this is a this is a neo-Nazi group yeah that was weird like the the Nazi group in the movie which is like he so they this is one of these plot points that is interminable to explain but so the guy that Tommy Lee Jones is impersonating these this this group sends the real person to infiltrate this neo-Nazi group to become the

for the assassination and this neo-Nazi group is like you know sort of not like the Nazis actually were at this period because like I mean obviously Nazis are anti-communist but in general American far right and Nazi groups are generally pretty I don't want to say doveish but definitely isolationist in their politics and I don't think would have really inserted themselves into a Soviet arms treaty kind of conversation. So they're not really, and they have a picture of Hitler in their hall, but they also have a picture of Patton. So their ideology is a little.

They have a crossed out picture of Lincoln, too, which I thought was pretty funny. Right, right. To make that clear who they are. But I thought the inclusion of Nazis in the movie, so, you know, often I, we talk about this movie, like, there's all these, like, weird little ideological. myth themes and things from history kind of colliding and moving around. I thought the movie, you know, you've got to include Nazis because they're bad guys and they're the classic movie bad guy, but they're kind of like a tool of some other

thing here. They're not the primary protagonist. It's interesting at the beginning of the movie, the first shot of the movie, and I noticed it the first time, was the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin, you know, where, you know, it starts in East Berlin. and the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin, you know, which commemorates, you know, the defeat of the Nazis in World War II, and was like the last time there was a United States Soviet alliance, democratic, let's say, roughly democratic states against fascism. And I just thought it was interesting that it began on that note of, you know, obviously that's like a very striking and imposing image that might not have that much content to it.

It's just like a great, a great starting image. But I was like, yeah, it's like, it's really, it's really interesting that they, like, not, again, it's the same thing where I think there's, there's, like, there's parts of Hunford October that, like, show the Soviet Union's potential to be, like, a great civilizational force, even though it's showing it kind of ironically. And I was like, okay, they start with the war, they start with the Soviet War Memorial. the movie implies on two different levels it implies a soviet and u.s. detaunt an evil one there's like the evil alliance of the soviet army and the american army working in but then there's this good version of of soviet u.s cooperation happening on the on the political level so it's kind of imagines these both like sort of utopian re-approachment of the of the soviet union in the States, both, you know, happening in a good way and also kind of happening in this darker way, but shows them definitely like these two societies is just kind of wanting to get closer to each other. And yeah, the inclusion of Nazis is just like, okay, this is keeping, like, Nazis are great villains. And it's just like keeping the movie, like, I think is this like really key

about this time. It's like, who are the enemies, who are the baddies? right what what how are we orienting our society and i think that the movie is just basically trying to associate militarism in both societies with fascism um and said and and also just but saying like these petty fascists are sort of the tools of the grand fascists behind a scene um so yeah i think it's like interesting that it's like trying to use trying to use the old i don't framework of anti-fascism as a kind of background to suggest its new politics of hoping for peace between the Soviet Union and the United States. It's like this history still kind of is sending shockwaves into the movie.

Right, right. The other thing I wanted to just note about the inclusion of not. Nazis. It's the only time where there's a note of what would actually come in the wake of the Soviet Union, which as we've talked about before, is this resurgent nationalism. That in the United States, the Nazi group is, you know, it's coded as hyper-nationalistic. And that is the basis for the opposition to the end of the war. But other than that, other than that, I mean, that's the closest thing really to an explicit ideological note in this movie, which is interesting because it's a movie that is about geopolitics, but, you know, posits this very kind of constrained world of what matters in geopolitics.

And that makes an interesting contrast with something like the Hunt for Red October or Patriot games where you do have, like ideology plays a part in those Tom Clancy. movies. And I read a review of this that called it sort of like, or maybe this was just a, like, a review from a viewer. I was just like perusing, you know, crowdsource movie review sites. But someone called it like a, like a, the book Tom Clancy never wrote, but like what's missing in this, I mean, there are there are Tom Clancy elements to this specifically in, um, Gene Hackman's character as this sort of gruff, you know, manly man. Um, but what is, is missing is sort of any note of of, of ideology of, you know, larger forces, larger ideas beyond what you can honestly, what you can honestly describe as a self-interested

desire of these military officers to keep the Cold War going, right? Right. For no other reason than for them just to continue having something to do. Some bureaucratic importance. Right, right. Like bureaucratic inertia, being the thing that is driving. their opposition to armed control.

Again, a populist note. Right, right, right, right. Well, okay, the one ideological note that I can kind of pull out of this is it's anti-anti-communism because, like, another reference we should make here is to, I think it's John Frankenheimer, and I think reviewers the two

is John Frankenheimer is the Manchorean candidate. Yeah. Which is also, you know, centers on this kind of assassination plot kind of movie and infiltration and and the the conceit of that movie is that the kind of McCarthyite anti-communism crude McCarthyite anti-communism and this is just I'm just going to say it's just a bald-faced liberal fantasy crude McCarthy at anti-communism is actually an evil communist plot right right like is McCarthyism is the real infiltration of the communist and in this movie this hyper anti-communist far-right group, these Nazis, are actually like the cat's paw

of this dark alliance between the Soviet, you know, security state and the American security state. So it's like, how I would say it was just like, and it really emphasizes, as you mentioned, the anti-communism of the Nazis and associates Nazism and anti-communism very closely, which is something that, you know, we left-wingers will do. But there, yeah, so I would say the only ideological suspicion it has is saying, like, watch out for anybody with an ideological message. So it's saying, like, well, actually anti-communism is just to help these military brass guys stay in power. It's not a real ideological program. So there is a little bit of anti-communism, But again, it kind of caches it.

As you said, it kind of caches out into the operative problem is not the Nazis. The Nazis are a minor actor. It's not like, oh, there's Nazis hidden in the security state. It's like, no, the security state is bad. They're using Nazis as patsies or kind of pawns in their, you know, attempt to hold on to power. And anti-communism is as a thing. So, yeah, it caches out into this kind of non-political world of bureaucratic. actors and everything else is kind of a shadow play of that. So, yeah, there is a, there is a

sense where it's like moving towards a post-ideological world or an end of history world. The, I mean, the suspicion of the security state that is very much a part of this movie is, I mean, this is a 1989 film, so sort of a little bit outside of our range for this podcast, But I think what makes it relevant to movies that we will watch later on is this suspicion of the security state. And the suspicion of the worry, the fear about what the military industrial complex, what the military bureaucracy will do in the absence of a direct conflict or, you know, the looming fear of a direct conflict like the Cold War. that I think one of the fears of the era that we see in so many of these movies, and here I'm thinking of another Gene Hackman movie, Enemy of the State, is this idea, right, that we've built both sides, right?

It built this massive military machine, this massive military bureaucracy. And in the absence of any kind of direct threat, it sort of is just idling. And so what happens with this idling military, military machine. And in this movie, you know, what happens is that some of the members of it attempt to keep everything going, to jumpstart, right, the conflict. But you can, it's not hard to see how, that's hard to see other variations on this basic idea. And we will, we'll come to those other variations on this idea.

But this is, this is sort of the first, not the first time you see it, but this is, for this podcast, the first time we're really going to see it. And it's, It is to me, it is an interesting note because it resonates in the present as well. You know, we are still kind of deep into the war on terror, even with the recent resolution, too strong of a war, the recent just end of the conflict in Afghanistan, or at least American involvement, a direct American involvement. But this sense, right, that like we have this massive military machine and what are we going to do

it if there aren't, if there isn't like a big threat to confront, I think still provokes a good amount of anxiety in Americans. And I'll say it's not, you know, my particular historical interest is the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And it's not, you know, Americans have always had this, this fear, this paranoia, this conspiracyism about exactly this thing, about what militaries do when there isn't a direct threat to confront. You know, anyone who made their way through grade school civics knows that the framers were afraid of standing armies, but they're afraid of standing armies less because they thought they might seize power and more because they thought that idle soldiers just aren't,

aren't our bad news for everyone. And I think that is a, that is a, a persistent fear in the American psyche that you can very clearly see in this movie. And that is, you know, part of the, I think the cultural landscape of the entire 1990s where it is simultaneously this period. And we've talked about this. We'll continue talking talking about this simultaneously a period of triumph. Like, look, we won. And also a period of, okay, we won. Now, what do we do with all this stuff? We accumulated in the effort. to win. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a big social problem. I mean, these movies, a lot of the anxiety about these things, you know, didn't ever put their finger on the actual social problems,

in my opinion, which is that, you know, even by 1989, there were such a drawdown. I mean, you know, there was such a big drawdown of arms needed by the U.S. because it was clear the Soviet threat was, you know, serious or real thing, that this led to, you know, contribute. to the massive wave of deindustrialization that we saw in the country. So, like, the costs of ending the coal, you know, it's very, it's all well and good to say, you know, oh, let's, let's turn swords to plowshares and, and, you know, and, and, and, and wars and our security status. But, I mean, a huge basis of our employment structure in our society was predicated on the continued existence of, of, you know, this kind of, uh, Cold War,

machine and the military industrial complex still exists i mean there are plenty of people profit of it but it doesn't have the same sort of extension of general welfare to the society that did in the world war two or the cold war so the sorts of people that this movie valorizes um would have you know very had much had relatives who who who lost their jobs and uh you know in in you know that when the aerospace and the naval industries kind of got got down you know less funding after the cold war so it's like this transformation has been really traumatic but perhaps not in the way these movies imagine it's not that the military wanted to keep it going it's that they've been able to just be fine without having all of this massive industrial production so we have the

worst of both worlds. We have the continuation of, you know, this sort of unaccountable national security bureaucracy, which nobody really likes, except for the members of it. And not the kind of welfare state of industrial production that it did, it created in the, in the Cold War. So the other thing I want to say about the movie is like, yeah, it's, okay, so there's an anti-militarism here, but there is, in a way, when you, when you're talking about, like the fear of standing armies the there's something about this like there's this populist militarism of like non-commissioned officers and like the low ranks being like the salt of the earth which is not I'm not going to say it's fascist but it has a Bonapartist sort of

redolence because it's like you know Hitler was a corporal and they hit Napoleon was it was a was an officer his entirely went but he's like you know. It was called the little corporal because it was sort of unassuming, you know, heirs on the battlefield. And it's just like this celebration, like the celebration of like the grunt or the non-commissioned officer is a kind of militarism of its own, which is, you know, more, more populace, but not necessarily without its problems. And I think like the movie is like his job, this guy Gallagher's job, he's a part of

this machine, this war machine. He's had a military career. He was in Vietnam. Like, he's been part of the Cold War, and now he's the person who's letting the Cold War end. He's sort of acting not. I mean, I think that's sort of what the evil characters imply in certain speeches they give to him that if he was acting in his self-interest, he would allow their plot

to go through because, you know, they see the way the world actually works, and his idealism is going to be his own undoing. Right. Tommy Lee Jones calls him a mercenary for the country he was born in. Right. I mean, there's, there's, to the note about the economics of all of this, that Tommy Lee Jones speech he gives in the plane, which might be like kind of the most interesting piece of dialogue in the whole movie, he tells the story about how his father, I think this is after he called Gene Hackman's character mercenary, he says, you know, my father owned this shop and, you know, it's patriotic and put the flag up every day. And when he died, we have to take out loans to pay for his burial. And so it's sort of this bitterness about. the ways in which patriotism is never, is rarely ever paid back with economic security or with any kind of, um, with any of them that could sustain a decent life, but it sort of is used and exploited, um, comes through in Tommy Lee Jones's character's speech. And you can kind of

imagine a version of this movie that is a bit less of a plotty thriller and more of a, um, much more of kind of like a little period piece that does focus on um the way that working people either as um you know factory workers in the actual industrial machine or as you know grunts in the army um are are are have are done a disservice both by the cold war but also their livelihoods are tied to its ongoing, it's the ongoing conflict. And so you would have in this kind of different version of this movie, you might even have like internal conflict in a character like Gallagher, who in who in this movie doesn't really seem to derive much of his identity from the fact that he, you know, has been a U.S. soldier. It's not really clear that he's special forces.

It feels like kind of implied, but not really, but this elite U.S. soldier who has been, you know, fighting for, fighting for Uncle Sam in conflict after conflict from Vietnam to... I thought it was implied the opposite kind of like he was like a normie soldier and the other guys, like the elite, all the special forces guys were evil. Like he was like, he's part of a little special detachment to protect the, yeah. Right. I mean, it said that he was, he's part of the rescue mission in Iran to rescue the hostages. Oh, right, right, right, right. So it seems to any, one of the characters he meets who helps him out, who, I mean, just in terms of kind of cool movies and cool moments in the movie, this guy, he's a, he's like, another green beret, which is like elite, you know, elite elite unit within the army, help smuggle Gene Hackman's character out of the barracks where it's in their house arrest. And then when they're trying to save his ex-wife from these guys who I feel like are deliberately presented to be sort of like, you know, Latin American, you know, special forces types who are who have been roped into this or brought into this.

But this other Green Bray runs over one of them with a truck. It's a pretty good hit. I mean, as a connoisseur of people getting hit by cars and movies, it was a pretty good. Yeah, I remember this scene. Yeah, there are fun action scenes in this movie if you're curious. No, I mean, and that's, you know, as we as we wrap up this discussion, it is worth saying if the movie is very entertaining to watch. I mean, it is, it is very much kind of like a twist and turns intricate kind of thriller. and Andrew Davis every, you know, like a clock gives you your requisite gunfights and chases that

keep you interested. So, um, and the script is not stupid. No, the script is not stupid at all. I mean, it's sort of, uh, these, these movies often have very stupid scripts. Um, uh, but this one, this one really seems to work and it's entirely internally consistent, right? Like every single loose end is tied up. That's true. At the end of the film. Um, you never really left with any anything that has not been resolved. And I know people on the internet hate that, so that'll be good for them. Let's wrap this up. Last thoughts.

Last thoughts on the package. Yeah, this is a pretty solidly entertaining, a good movie that you could enjoy a couple hours of your life watching it. And it does, you know, I think communicate some of the interesting. cultural and political things going on at the time, I think it requires maybe a little bit more deep reading than the, it's like, I think in other movies, like everything's just exploding on the surface, all the kind of ideological stories that's trying to tell. I think this movie kind of requires a little bit of a closer look, but is still, you know, I think pretty interesting

and I enjoyed it. And, you know, I'm not going to watch it again. I think twice was enough, but it's not that good, but I liked it. Yeah, I mean, I will probably end up watching this again at some point. But it's not, I mean, it's not nearly as watchable as something like the fugitive, which is just, I mean, it's just Harrison Ford operating like at the height of his middle-aged powers. And it's not, I don't think it's as compellingly watchable as something like under siege, which is what follows this. which is just kind of, it's sort of just a bug nuts movie with lots of crazy set pieces and, you know, Tommy Lee Jones and what's his name, Gary Busey, also just giving, you know, classic crazy person performances.

Yeah. But it's still very enjoyable, still worth watching. And I think it does say at least something explicitly about the kinds of anxieties about the end of the Cold War. that were bubbling up in the late 80s and the kind of speaking to some of the longstanding fears that Americans have had about their military establishment of fears that are still sort of ongoing even ongoing in the president that we even saw with the end of the war in Afghanistan right sort of the there's a lot of I think dismay among among many observers particularly in the left at how You saw the permanent Washington establishment of journalists and of pundits and of so and so forth to turn kind of sharply against ending the war in Afghanistan, not out of any sense of the U.S.'s

interest, but really out of kind of an ideological belief that the United States should be using its military whenever it can be. And the kind of the discourse around the withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think, you know, if you paid attention to that and if you read up about that, you would find similar themes in this, in this movie. I think that's a super interesting comment. And I think it actually points to the limitations of the political consciousness of movies like this is that it's not a fucking conspiracy.

It's a complete worldview that is publicly held and publicly, you know, professed day by day. And, you know, this is not like, oh, there are people ploying. to keep this going. A huge section of where society is not, is not plotting to keep going, believes it should be going, and they're getting constant messages that it should be kept going. So I think, like, the hope that it's just, oh, there's a few people

that are the problem is not really true. It's an entire hegemonic discourse. I don't know if you want to say that about these kinds of issues. No, I think that's right. And I think that Americans who seem to be unusually

allergic to thinking in terms of like systems and structures. It's all people. Right. It's all, it's all, you know, plucky individuals at all times. I think Americans in particular have a hard time dealing with something like that.

That there, you know, there is, there is such a thing as ideology. It does actually shape how people understand the world in profound ways. And you don't need any conspiracies to explain it. All you need is, sort of an understanding of people's, you know, relationship to the, to the system as a

whole. Yeah. Yeah. Say that again. So before before, before the Marxism seeps in anymore, let's let's let's wrap up. That is our show. If you are not a subscriber to unclear and present danger, please subscribe. We are available on iTunes, Spotify, Sitcher Radio, Google Podcasts, and wherever else podcasts are found that if you subscribe, please leave a rating and review. It does help people find the show, and I appreciate reading them. They're usually pretty friendly, so keep on leaving them, please. You can reach out to both of us on Twitter. I'm at Jay Bowie. John, you are... I'm at Lionel underscore trolling. episodes come out every other Friday or about every other Thursday night Friday morning so we'll see you

in two weeks and as I say that I have no idea what our next movie is going to be it's going to be our first movie of the new year I think it is the Russia House but let me let me check our master list here but I'm reasonably sure that it is the Russia House no it is not the Russia House we have We have a couple of movies before then. Our next film, it's John Frankenheimer's film, The Fourth War, a Cold War drama about two gung-ho border commanders who carry out their own private war against each other on the German Czechoslovakia border. I never heard of that one. Yeah, it seems super interesting. So that's next, and that will be our first film of the new year.

And with that, let me say thank you to everyone who has subscribed and listened to this podcast. We're both really happy about the reception it's gotten and really appreciate those of you who are tuning in. So please stay with us. We'll be going through. There's way more of these movies. And I think anyone, even I realized at the time when I started making a list of them. So thank you for sticking with us. And I hope you will continue sticking with us as we make our way through this genre in its related films.

For John Gans, I am Jamel Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We'll see you next time. You know,