If you like David Mamet movies, I think you’ll like this. If you don’t probably not because the characters are still kind of wooden and don’t really talk or act like real people talk or act. Its more forgiveable in this one, though, because the people are all secret service, and that style seems more appopriate.
The plot is convoluted but logical. The pacing is perfect.
You keep guessing where its going to go, and sometimes you’re right and sometimes wrong. It takes a couple turns in unexpected directions at just the right times.
And, it didn’t have twists just for the sake of it, which I might say about “Heist”.
It didn’t have the humor of some other Mamet movies, but it still delivered some great lines.
See if you can catch it. I think it just played its last night in Baltimore, though, which is why I finally caught it.
I saw, thought it was prety darn good. Stylish in its own way.
That said, I had two problems: (minor spoilers, really)
Right at the start there’s a scene where these top-notch marines (apparently) are training to enter special forces. First of all, there are no Marine SpecOps. It goes againt their code, command, and style. Second, while the rough training is surely realistic, they don’t, IIRC, have specialist knife-fighters on staff to teach people how to fight like that. If you have to fight with a knife, you are already dead. Lastly, I’m pretty sure that no SpecOps program forces cadets to fight each other at random to “pass”. Specifically, they chose two random people ata a time and made them fight each other in a hand to hand match until one of them couldn’t walk out.
They would NEVER do this. It would destroy cameraderie and is essentially luck of the draw. What if you get one guy who made be a tough, dedicated soldier and another who may be equally tough and dedicated and happens to be a black belt or wrestler? Moreover, melee combat went out with the invention of the revolver, much less machine guns, assault rifles, and sniper weapons. Its simply not that important.
At the very end they obliquely attempt to tie it to current events, ebven though none of the charcaters really have anything to do with them. Sort of pointless.
Well, it’s not a documentary. The only point of this was to establish them as an “elite fighting force”. For all I care, they could have called them Seals, Green Berets, Commandos, Delta Force, Rangers, or the Monchichis.
Not sure what you mean. They showed the leaders on TV lying to cover up what they were doing, but I don’t think they were trying to tie it into anything going on today. The whole movie the leaders were lying to cover things up – that was just a plot point. And, if anything, you could draw more parallels to Clinton than Bush.
I’m sure it won’t bother people who aren’t familiar with the subject, but if you do, it makes it all a little less real. Sort of like Lawyers trying to watch Law and Order -it’s hard to just relax. Its still a good movie.
Fair enough. For some reason, it seemed as if trying to give aditional motive was almost gratuitous.
I liked it a lot, too, though I would agree with how Macy’s little speech at the end made it sound a bit like it was trying to make parallels with today (“Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you realize the state the world is in and why we need to stay in power?”–paraphrase).
Still, it was leagues better than Heist, The Spanish Prisoner or State and Main, and it was refreshing to see some new faces speaking Mametese, all of whom redeem themselves quite nicely. The pacing was tight and the storytelling lean & economical, without any gratuitous "twist"ing. Really well done.
Agreed - not the least of which was Val Kilmer - easily the best performance I’ve seen him give since Tombstone.
When the newscast reported the president’s daughter as found dead, I knew it was a cover story, but figured it was a plant to keep the kidnappers from knowing who they had. So I thought Kilmer’s character was in on the deception. I was quite nonplussed to see him in the next scene at the supply house, picking up paint. Surely he was still on the case! It took some exposition there to get me back up to speed with the plot.
I like David Mamet’s movies, but I don’t expect too much plausibility from them. I think what I found hardest to believe was that
the Secret Service would reassign the entire detail protecting the President’s daughter, leaving her unguarded, in order to facilitate the President’s philandering.
(Although in fact, I don’t think the word “President” was ever used.)
Yes, there are and there have been for some time. The Marines have a unit called MEU SOC, or Marine Expeditionary Unit, Special Operations Capable, which they have used for special forces through the years. They also have Force Recon, which is a sort of equivalent to the Army Rangers. What the Marines have NOT had until recently is a special forces unit that they wanted to place under the joint Special Operations Command, or SOCOM. This didn’t mean they had no special forces, it just meant they weren’t funded under SOCOM. However, recently the Marines have decided to create a special operations unit to function under the aegis of SOCOM, so not only do the Marines have special operations units, they also have a newly created special operations unit that works alongside the SEALs, Army Special Forces, the 160 SOAR (the Nightstalkers) and Delta Force.
Yes. I realized that it was a cover as well, supposedly to trick the kidnappers. But then, when Kilmer was off it, I thought that they were trying to throw a mole (Kilmer, the black guy, someone else?) off the scent.
It kept you guessing all along, but like I said, good pacing – it didn’t linger too long anywhere, or throw in more twists just for the sake of it.
I liked it when Kilmer was trying to get the black guy to listen to him and he says: “Set your motherfucker to ‘receive’” – a good Mamet line.
I didn’t think they were trying to trick the kidnappers, rather that they arranged the kidnapping all along to get her out of town and protect the re-election bid. We’re relying on what Val Kilmer saw and the fact that we think he’s in on everything and if that’s all called into question…I am assuming part of that is that the SS killed the guy who was supposed to be watching her, rather than it being suicide?
I can’t really agree with your take here. If they were willing to leave her “for dead” basically, as a sex slave, and they were willing to put a story out to the press that she was dead, why not just kill her originally instead of leaving all the messy details around?
I think they called in the secret service, LEGITIMATELY, when she went missing. Maybe it was just an innocent reason. When it dawned on everyone what happened and they were planning the Dubai extraction strategy, THEN they concocted the “dead on a boat” story and left her for dead. They thought Kilmer would buy it, and he did. But the black guy had the earring and saw the sign so he knew the “boat story” was bullshit.
I figured the SS guy was killed just because he knew he had been taken off the girl to watch the president and they didn’t need that knowledge out there. She used that opportunity to get out of the dorm and go to the “Black Light”.
In retrospect, they weren’t trying to trick the kidnappers. They were trying to trick Val Kilmer but while viewing the film, that’s what the ruse appeared to be.