Oddly enough, the Washington Post movie reviewer wasn't crazy about it. No surprise there -- no women, no gay characters, the military is presented as competent, dedicated and committed to duty, honor, country and their fellow warriors. I spent a good number of years as a journalist, and I never met a movie reviewer who understood or liked the military. When I lived in South Carolina, the reviewer at The State, Columbia's newspaper, found it beyond belief that everyone in the Marine Corps knew that Clint Eastwood's character was nicknamed "Gunny." The fact that all gunnery sergeants are called gunny the world over never occurred to her. And yeah, she hated the movie.
On first reading, I thought The Post puke didn't hate the movie, just didn't like it much. I re-read the review today to double check a quote, and yeah, he hated it. One and a half stars is hate, right? The only thing he liked was an Afghan character at the end of the movie, saying, "Now there’s a guy I would have gladly watched a whole movie about." And, of course, he couldn't stop himself while looking for flaws from taking a dig that revealed his ignorance. In one of his "criticisms" of the movie, saying of the Navy Seals portrayed, "Inexplicably, they wear no helmets." That's because the special warfare troops almost never wear helmets. I suppose that passes for movie criticism if you don't like or understand the subject matter and are desperate to find fault.
The reviewer immediately lost all credibility with me, so I went and saw the movie anyway. Glad I did. Not doing a review here, per se, but I will do a recommendation: go see it. Extremely well-done, and excellent performances all around. Mrs. Wolves was surprised by Mark Wahlberg, who is a solid actor and did a great job here.
So go see it. Worth the time and money.
No comments:
Post a Comment