Lack of Trust, Lack of Understanding

It's pretty obvious. No one wants to watch a dumb action movie about America doing ill in the world. And that's how these movies are being marketed - but not on purpose.

The attempt to market Lions for Lambs, The Kingdom, and Rendition is to pose them as smart, world weary, action films that "show both sides," and how America has gone to extraordinary and troublesome measures to ensure our own safety and economic prosperity. They strive to show the underlying hypocrisy of our values vs. our actions. It views America as a capitalistic monolith out of anyone's control. Or at least that's my impression.

Why does no one want to watch these movies? Because at their core is lazy thinking. It's freshman in college, I've just read one book on the Middle East and realized - gee god, we had something to do the the mooj and the shah and the Saudi Royals. All of this chaos might be our own fault, which is crystallized perfectly by the Iraq war.

I am the intended demographic and I don't even want to see the movies. I will because I'm a student of movies and want to see my future competition and the writer of two of the movies is a friend of a friend. But as a lover of action movies and foreign policy enthusiast, I can't get excited about these things. I already got past freshman year in college and don't see these movies as smart. I see them as naive and cheap and lazy. And I don't think they'll be fun, shoot 'em action movies that I love like Die Hard and Predator.