But he quotes Empire Strikes Back, which came out in '80. I'm not nitpicking, but that's something you can easily look up.
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The Iranian Hostage Crisis lasted exactly 444 days. It ended right when President Reagan was being sworn in on January 20, 1981. I remember President Reagan telling the crowd about the release of the hostages and how excited everyone was at that moment. I watched it on TV and had chills when Reagan spoke those words. The Iranians were scared to death of Reagan. They knew he would kick ass if necessary to get our hostages back. This film also intimated that the older brother was going to war in the Iranian situation, which we never did. President Carter tried a failed rescue attempt with helicopters that crashed in the desert before even reaching Tehran a year earlier, but we never went to actual war against Iran. The reference to the Falkland Island War was a real goof. That was fought in 1982 and we were not involved in that conflict. Argentina vs. the U.K. only. Also, this film played songs from the early 70s constantly. It was supposed to be 1979, not 1972. I was a young man in 79 and the music they played was definitely NOT on the radio back then.
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Also the Falkland war was mentionned 1982
shareYes, and Scott says the house Mickey is planning to build looks like the Falcon Millennium soon after Jimmy tells Brenda that he might be deployed to the Falklands. By that point I figured they were going for an "era" feel more than a realistic or accurate time period.
Just panties. What else do I need?
well according to wikipiedia it is set in 79, I agree maybe it is an era thing
it is also discussed here re Falkolands issue
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0363780/board/nest/157663487?p=1 by filmzz (Fri Feb 19 2010 19:04:47) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
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Good movie but a major mistake was the messed up timeline. The Iranian hostage crises started in 1979 and the Falklands war started in 1982. They kept talking about the fear his brother has fighting in the Falklands which was between the British and Argentina. A more realistic situation would have been him being nervous about being sent to fight in Iran which was a real concern at the time.
By the way, the USA never sent troops into Iran although there was a flop of a rescue mission.
Falklands
by Corner_House_guest (Mon Jul 5 2010 04:23:05) Ignore this User | Report Abuse
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There was a stand off in 1978 when sabre rattling speeches by the junta in Buenos Aires made the UK deploy submarines in the South Atlantic and make sure the Argentines got to know. This wouldnt have been a topic of conversation on Long Island though.
SPOILERS
Although it turns out Jimmy will not be in the frontline as he is a communications specialist, so he may have been stringing his family along mentioning the ongoing dispute betwen UK and Argentina
For a film set in 1979, they also play an lot of music from the early '70s such as Freda Payne's "Band of Gold." Certainly people were still listening to music from a decade ago in 1979, but the soundtrack of this film sounds rather ambiguous to me.
shareThe music is all mid-70s with Daniel by Elton John going back even further.
shareThe music and the news clips kept me confused. I was born in 1959, so I was seventeen in 1976, and this music was familiar to me but the Iran hostage crisis happened later, after I graduated. There was no "classic rock" then, of course, and the songs in the film were not all from the same time period as they should have been, in my opinion. If the music was trying to be true to a specific time-frame, the rock music choices would have been within a very narrow range. Just like now, when a song fell off the charts it was basically over and rarely played again - usually by request. Do they even do that on the radio anymore? I don't listen to music on the radio - used to be A.M. radio back in the day.
Even so, I loved the movie. I can always find something wrong with a movie, but I was able to kind of squint my eyes and ignore the weirdness of the poor research done prior to the film. It didn't take away from the rest of the film, really.
It was set in the late 1970s but the screenwriter needs some history lessons.
Its that man again!!
The movie takes place from 1979 - 1980. The goof is that The Empire Strikes Back did not come out until the summer of 1980. The end of the movie does not look like summer....
But I do not believe that the Falklands reference is a goof. Instead, I don't think that you should believe Jimmy. Instead, keep track of his lies in the movie:
1) The mother mentions that she thought he was coming next month, but there he is home again sooner than expected.
2) The younger brother asks if he needs to have his hands registered as deadly weapons and the older brother tells him that the service 'takes care of that.'
3) They generally talk about the older son leaving soon to be deployed and the mother mentions that he is suddenly leaving on Tuesday now.
4) The younger brother thinks Jimmy carries a weapon, but the older brother basically says "you assumed, I said nothing"
5) The mother says that she will see Jimmy before he goes, he agrees, but he tells his younger brother that he is leaving now.
My take is that the older son was always more onto the dysfunction in his parent's marriage and lies his way to escape it every chance he gets. He even warns his younger brother to go to college on the other side of the country...
He is much like the 'unreliable narrator' in fiction and you should not always believe him. The older brother (IMHO) knew about Argentina being taken over in 1976, the British protests of 1977, the 'whispers' in the armed forces that this might become something and used it as his story to skip town for months on end.