Hollywood Gets It Wrong Again

Some Iraq, Afghanistan war veterans criticize movie 'Hurt Locker' as inaccurate

If there has been one constant over the past forty odd years that I have observed, it is the continued usurpation of entertainment media by the secular progressives and the social relativists and communists in Hollywood. And it looks like the latest offering from Hollywood addressing the war in Iraq, continues to pursue the same goals and formula of it's predecessors.

Time magazine called "The Hurt Locker" "a near-perfect war film," but Ryan Gallucci, an Iraq war veteran, had to turn the movie off three times, he says, "or else I would have thrown my remote through the television."

So why does the film illicit such gut retching reactions from Iraq veterans? Simply put...the film is just so much more horse hockey and bull chips and anyone who has served in Iraq can immediately see that apparently.

But these departures from reality haven't seemed to stop the film's producer and director from producing this little piece of self edifying dream scape in the hopes that some people will view it as gospel. On the contrary, they seem to have struck a note with their secular hedonist brethren in Hollywood and managed to gain nine academy award nominations for their version of the 'way things ought to be' in Iraq. (AKA "Our version of reality")

Many in the military say "Hurt Locker" is plagued by unforgivable inaccuracies that make the most critically acclaimed Iraq war film to date more a Hollywood fantasy than the searingly realistic rendition that civilians take it for.

To which you might say: It's just a movie and an action flick at that. It's Tinseltown fiction -- an interpretation of war such as "Full Metal Jacket" or "Apocalypse Now." It's supposed to entertain. It's not a documentary, not real life.

But to those who were there, Iraq is real life. And they're very sensitive -- some would say overly so -- when their war is portrayed via a central character who is a reckless rogue.

Hence a rising backlash from people in uniform, such as this response on Rieckhoff's Facebook page from a self-identified Army Airborne Ranger:

"[I]f this movie was based on a war that never existed, I would have nothing to comment about. This movie is not based on a true story, but on a true war, a war in which I have seen my friends killed, a war in which I witnessed my ranger buddy get both his legs blown off. So for Hollywood to glorify this crap is a huge slap in the face to every soldier who's been on the front line."

Those paragraphs sum up the sentiments of the real soldiers who have seen the film and experienced the real life realities of war in Iraq. And from the looks of it, they damn well don't appreciate the approach or the message that this film conveys.

As a Vietnam veteran, I know the feeling. I spent twenty five years slogging through the surreal dream scape world's of Oliver Stone and others and their "interpretations of Vietnam." And in the end, there have only been two films that even remotely approached the reality of the war and the emotion as it occurred in Vietnam for those who served. One such film was directed by Mel Gibson and was titled "We Were Soldiers." The other was titled "Hamburger Hill" directed by John Irvin.

These two films were appreciated by Vietnam veterans? Because neither one attempted to moralize or politicize some anti war director's protester's perspective of the supposed larger philosophical issues of the war (according to their own skewed viewpoint).

As it presently stands, Hollywood seems hell bent once again to follow the same formula covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as they did during the war in Vietnam. To date, there have been approximately six films produced dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to date, not the first one has scored a hit with the public at the box office.

Perhaps the public is far more savvy today than they were over the last thirty years. Perhaps they aren't as willing to plop down their money to see these political diatribes dressed in military camouflage by those in Hollywood with the money and influence to produce them. Perhaps they are just tired of Hollywood venting its collective spleen and turning every script they can lay their hands on, into some must see political thesis of "how and why America and capitalism and Christian values and Americans in general are evil and wrong."

I remember back in 1968 when the film The Green Berets starring John Wayne debuted in the midst of the Vietnam war. There were shouts and screams by the anarchist and anti America left then, but other Americans still went to see the film and enjoyed both the message and the man behind the portrayed image. Later I read where nothing ever bothered John Wayne quite as much as witnessing many of his countrymen turn against him and belittle him for having starred in a film that portrayed American soldiers as something other than baby killers.

In either event, it will be interesting to see how Hollywood fawns over this film, or fails to give it the critical acclaim that so many seem to think that it deserves when the Oscars come out. As there is more than a reasonable reality that the other nominee for nine Oscars (Avatar) may just sweep this year. That will surely piss off a large segment of the Hollywood elite. And it couldn't happen to a better gaggles of people IMO.

As for me? I will get around to seeing the film, once it makes it's way to cable and I don't have to pay to see it. I've done that a lot over the last twenty years and it seems to work well for me as it concerns rebutting these glitzy pieces of tripe that pass for film making these days.