> its politics, but it's more than that. It was light
> for a war movie, but the film takes place after
> the war had ended.
I saw it, and, yeah, I'd have to say it's an argument for humanitarian intervention. The driving force of its plot was that the war *was* about oil but *should have been* about deposing Hussein, and Clooney's character only wonders what the war was about before finding his (personal) mission as a soldier in recovering Mark Wahlberg from the clutches of the Republican Group and getting the Iraqi insurgents to the Iranian border. (By the way -- I recall reading some months back in The Nation and/or on STRATFOR that the State Dept's official policy was now to support deposing the current Iraqi gov't and to seek a reapproachment with Iran. Anyone else recall this or have more details?)
It seems the culture industry (pardon my Adorno-ese) can't criticize something without pandering to it at the same time. Sure, _Three Kings_ told us that the Gulf War was about oil and not ideals and ridiculed anti-Arab sentiments, but it also gave us a nice little story of some maverick soldiers who did give in to their better natures and who got to kill a bunch of bad Arabs while saving some good Arabs (gee, why couldn't the good Arab with a speaking part have been a Shiite instead of somebody w/an MBA from Bowling Green?), thus redeeming what was indeed a war for oil, and satisfying those anti-Arab sentiments by showing lots of bad Arabs eating righteous US lead. So while I'm happy to read it made your centrist aquaintance squirm, we've got to be honest -- _Grand Illusion_ it ain't. -- Curtiss, who has to admit he got a kick out of the scene where Jonze, Wahlberg, and Ice Cube were skeet shooting footballs while Clooney blasted the "Cum Sanctum Spiritu" from Bach's B minor mass, even if the idea behind it was lifted from _Apocalypse Now_. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com