How is Channing Tatum in this movie? I had never heard of the guy before seeing him in this trailer, and he wasn’t on my radar at all until he was cast as Duke in next year’s G.I. Joe movie (based on the action figures, comic books, and cartoons). The actor looked like some generic young pretty-boy to me, but he is cast as the ultimate gung-ho military badass in what promises to be a big-budget jingoistic action extravaganza, kind of like Team America: World Police played completely straight.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt from *Stop Loss * is cast in *G.I. Joe * as well, but I already know he is a fantastic actor.
He’s very good. I hadn’t been keeping up with the GI Joe movie and so hadn’t heard that he was cast. He’ll be good in it. Looks-wise, he has the required chiseled jaw and all-American macho features and swagger necessary. But he’s a good actor too. His character is a gung-ho bad ass, who comes home all puffed up and proud, getting stinking drunk and looking for fights (including with his girlfriend, the Abby Cornish character).
That sounds like a stereotype and it is, but he plays it better than that. He’s truly confused as to why his best friend Brandon (Ryan Phillippe) wouldn’t want to go back. You’re conflicted about him. You don’t like that he hit his girlfriend, but you feel sorry for him when he has a hard time coping being back. Even with the swagger and hitting, he seems like he could be a decent guy at the core, one who could be a good, solid man once he’s shed his youthful bravado and processed his war experiences. You want to like him, but he signs up again for another tour based on the promise that he’ll get to go to sniper school this time. He’s a No-Gray-Areas person. He doesn’t understand what he doesn’t understand, and doesn’t have much interest in understanding what he doesn’t understand. And he sure doesn’t understand Brandon. He makes you shudder sometimes, but you can’t hate him. All those conflicting emotions about a supporting character tells me that the actor behind the character has something going on deeper than you might expect. I was impressed by him.
Definitely. His character isn’t fleshed out enough, IMO, but I was deeply moved by him. He’s the one least able to handle what he went through.
The one many will probably be most impressed by is Victor Rasuk as Rico. He comes back in the worst shape of all, but rises above it all through his attitude. A very inspiring character, but not sickeningly so. I got to meet Victor once, so maybe I’m biased. He was in a terrific little movie called Raising Victor Vargas back in 2002. I saw a sneak preview, and Victor, the director Peter Sollett, and his co-star Judy Marte were there for a Q&A. Nice folks.
[QUOTE=Equipoise]
The filmmaker, Kimberly Pierce (Boy’s Don’t Cry) isn’t a “liberal Hollywood bystander” (as I heard her called, among other things). Her brother served in Iraq<snip>
She’s not a bystander because her brother went to Iraq? :dubious:
Hmm, I could see where this movie would be just as disturbing to left-wingers, because it would remind them that many of the soldiers in Iraq are careerists who signed up long before Bush became president and who would have liked to get out, but couldn’t. Due to the Stop Loss policy.
You’d think that would make it harder for certain Americans to wish death on American soldiers. It doesn’t seem to, though.
Admittedly, we were all informed of the possibility of stop loss when we enlisted. It is not a secret. It’s just that when you enlist under a peacetime president like Bill Clinton, and your country has gone a few years without an unjustified war, you don’t believe that anybody like Bush could end up being president or that America will let him get away with his unending war of glory.
Well, I think the movie (if the reasoning described in the trailer is true) is already infuriating, and I’m one of those rare breeds: A liberal Iraq War veteran (and I did not then and do not now think we ever should have gone into Iraq).
I recently got out of the Army after 5 years of active duty and a year and a half in the National Guard, and I was stop lossed for the last 8 months of my Active Army career.
What infuriates me is that the reason given in the trailer as the whole premise for the film is NOT Stop Loss! Stop Loss is when your contract is extended due to a deployment of your unit (small or large). So, let’s say you’re slated to change station or get off active duty, or leave your reserve unit, and your unit is notified for deployment (even if you are not). You are in ‘stop loss’ until they return and recover, even if your contract is up. So, if you were supposed to get out next month, you now may have to deploy with your unit and wait until after the deployment to get out.
Stop loss is not…you just redeployed from Iraq, and now they want you back. Get back on a plane. It sounds to me (again, having not seen the film) like this is much more like an involuntary recall from the Individual Ready Reserve after the Soldier has served his time and left the Army. That’s NOT Stop Loss. It’s just annoying.
As to the overtones in the film, I’m OK with that, simply because my time in the Army taught me a lot about how the Army things of its people. At the lower levels (Company, Battalion), the leaders do (usually) truly care about their soldiers. They try everything to make their families get through deployments well, they try and do what’s best for them and their careers. I know I certainly tried my best to care for my Soldiers when I was a company commander. And I’m sure that the higher level leaders to actually care about casualties and the like, and I’m sure there are many, many exceptions to my next statement, but I saw a lot of this:
At the higher levels, though, you become a number, and I saw far too many instances where people where completely shafted simply because some person somewhere had no common sense.
Case in point: My unit deployed to Afghanistan when I had 8 months left (which then was extended to 17 months for stop loss). I had just come back from OIF, so I was slated for the rear detachment, and I stayed in Germany. We had a rather large mission in Germany, so only half the unit could deploy at one time. Anyway, there were two NCOs, both high quality, who ran our ammunition office. One was an E-7 who had just arrived at the unit, and had just spent 15 months in Iraq with the 101st Airborne. The other was an E6(P), who was slated to get his E-7 within a month. He had never deployed in his life and really, really wanted to go. The Iraq vet wanted to spend some time with his family. My BC took the E7 even when both said they’d rather it be the other way, simply because he ‘wanted and E-7.’ Nevermind that the E-6(P) had worked in that office for 3 years and knew that position better than the E-7.
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of this movie. Maybe it’s because I don’t listen to conservative talk show hosts. Which makes me wonder why the OP does.
The trailer has been in showing in theaters for the last month, the commercials have been airing on TV and the poster is in theater lobbies. This is a major Hollywood film by a very well-respected director and starring talented actors. Anyone who sees more than a couple of films in the theater a month will have head of this film. It’s not the next “Indiana Jones” film, but it is reasonably well promoted. The OP saw it in a free promotional screening - one organized by the movie studio to get people talking about the film. They succeeded.
I don’t find a damn thing about conservative political philosophy selfish, care to elaborate? (leaving out social conservatism, which still isn’t really screamingly selfish, it’s just screamingly stupid) Difficulty factor: your answer has to deal with actual conservative principles and not revolve around bashing the Republican party in general or George Bush in particular, neither one of them is particularly conservative right now.
I’ve tried to bring up this point a few times, always without success. I think that non-conservatives just don’t get it that we believe in conservative principles because we believe they are best for all people, especially poor people, who need help the most. For instance, lower capital gains taxes,… people invest in new industry,… lots of jobs created,… lots more opportunity for lower level workers. They really think we’re all just selfish pricks who don’t want to pay our fair share.
But you can tell it’s depicted wrong just by the trailer…how? Actually, what you said should happen is what DOES happen in the movie. His unit is being sent back so he’s stop lossed to go back with them.
While I’m sure there are any number of things that soldiers could nitpick over once they see the movie (including one real eye-roller that even I, a civilian, know wouldn’t fly in the military but that had to be done for dramatic purposes), she had a big team of former soldiers who had served in Iraq to help her try and keep things real. For instance, all of the actors portraying soldiers had to go to a boot camp.
Thank you for the information and for your service to the country.
If to you “left-winger” = “neocon” (that is, the extreme factions of both sides) then you’re probably right. But if “left-winger” = “liberal” (encompassing all of us) then you’re dead wrong. I certainly couldn’t speak for everybody on “my side” but I know that I, for one, have no problem with career or even non-career military soldiers. Or indeed, the military itself. Hell, the book I’m reading right now is by and about Chuck Yeager, a career military man.
What the fuck? Who but the most brain-damaged, asshole zealot would “wish death on American soldiers”?? Sure they’re out there, but they make up a minuscule percentage of “the left” and we don’t claim 'em as our own any more than we claim nutcases like Lyndon LaRouche.
I thought it was clear. She’s not someone who spouts off without having any personal connection whatsoever, a mere bystander. The Iraq war personally affected her family and she had first-hand experience with what it’s like for the families left behind, and how being a soldier in wartime affects someone close to her. So, why did you pick on that? What was this about anyway? Do you think she shouldn’t have made a movie unless she had done a tour herself?
That’s understandable if you don’t go to movies much or watch much TV. As gaffa said, it’s well-known already to those who go to the movies a lot. In fact, the trailer has been playing in the theaters so long that I even asked Kimberly Pierce if the movie had been delayed. She said no, but they started running trailers early to build awareness. Posters and stand-ups are on display in the theater lobby that we attend. I don’t watch TV so I don’t know about TV ads but I’ll take his word that they’re running. For now, they’re probably running mostly on the younger-skewing channels, but I’m sure they have a campaign to reach a wider audience ready for the very near future. The movie is due to be released on March 28.
As far as I know, conservative talk show hosts have NOT (yet) said a word about this movie. Ignorant idiots on OTHER message boards are all over it though. I was ranting about them.
I don’t. I would poke my eyeballs out with a flaming spatula before I’d listen to a conservative talk show host.
It’s true I saw it at a promotional screening held at Doc Films at the University of Chicago (Kimberly Pierce is an alumni), but I’m not a studio shill or anything. I think it’s worth seeing but it’s just a good movie, not a great movie. I had some problems with it (though nothing to do with it being about the military or the plot in general, mine were more structural and music-related). I mostly think it’s worthwhile because it’s about a policy that few Americans have heard about but that affects a lot of lives, but I like it more because it marks the return of Kimberly Pierce than because of the movie itself.
But reality doesn’t work like that. Lower capital gains taxes? Existing industries invest in machinery to replace labor, or export the job to another country where labor is cheaper. Technology is always getting cheaper, labor is always getting more expensive, and any business owner is going to try to minimize costs.
The part that gets me is why anyone who doesn’t have to pay any capital gains tax would support a conservative political agenda. “Greed by proxy” is the best I can come up with.
I wasn’t going to name names, but of course I’m referring to Der Trihs and the various buddies who chime in to defend his death wish on American soldiers. Their names escape me right now.
Well, I very very rarely read political threads anymore, so I wasn’t aware. There was no need to bring it into this thread. I certainly don’t condone that point of view. It’s sick.
