I saw this movie last night at the fundraiser I had organised.
It was quite interesting. I have read enough of the reviews to understand where the manipulation lies in the film, and there is manipulation there. Probably the most blatant is the shot of George Bush at that elite dinner party, about the haves and have-mores - if my memory serves, that was at a National Press Club fundraiser where everyone was saying stuff like that, it wasn't a speech to the Republican Party. (That said, it was still pretty funny.)
Despite the problems with the film, it is worth seeing. Not because of the plot - not the direct plot anyway. I don't have much time for people who think the Bushes and the Bin Ladens are conspiring together.
What I did like was the personalisation of war: it was a good movie to remind you that wars kill real people, and the leaders who order the wars - and their families - are never on the line. That's a powerful statement about power and how it works.
The other interesting point was that war is working people fighting each other, at the bidding of the fat cats. The United States armed services are predominantly people we might call 'white trash' and Latin-American and Black Americans; the poorest and most deprived communities provide most of the troops for the Empire's wars. This has always been the case in every empire, but in something which calls itself a democracy is pretty chilling.
Ironically, such people join the armed forces because they're often the only way out of the poverty and lack of life chances they have. The scenes with the two Marines recruiting in Flint, Michigan were spinetinglingly creepy. And having gotten out of poverty through this great institution, they are then sent off to kill other people rather like themselves.
I don't like blood either, so the shots of people injured or killed were not too great. They had to be there though, as part of the personalisation thing. Some people seem capable of believing that the "enemy" aren't people - well they are, and watching them die helps remind you of that.
It was a pretty subdued crowd who came out. But definitely worth seeing.
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