Yes, the funniest parts of the whole film (which isn't a funny film at all), but they're cheap, easy laughs. How clever is it to have a badly-cropped picture of GWB, his head filling the frame of the picture, with the stars 'n' stripes glimpsed behind him? Not very clever.
But on to the REAL problem with the movie, and you basically cover it yourself: it's hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys... except for the American soldiers who toss two teenagers over a bridge for the hell of it, killing one. WHY did they? They weren't drunk. They weren't threatened. They weren't pulling a prank. There was no motivation, and no hesitation either. No one tried to stop it, no one tried to fish the teenagers out. It was like this happened every day there, and was no big deal. Completely unbelieveable and ridiculous to make the soldiers out as goonish idiots. I'm no flag-waver, but I'm bright enough to know that's not what's going on over there as a matter of course.
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Hasson01
17 years ago
I agree with ya Dash, even if it's based off of actual occurrences, no one truly knew the circumstances or what really happened. All they did was make conjecture of the character of these soldiers and portrayed the outright barbarianism of men in war. Most of that brutish juvenile delinquency was elaborated on only on the US soldiers. You can see it easily whenever they speak.
Aside from the film misrepresenting many of the soldiers, or rather sacrificing their integrity for the sake of the story, I found the movie to be well-paced, well-acted, and had a decent score to it.
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nyjack
17 years ago
I think that was the point of the movie: does the concept of "good guys vs bad guys" make sense in this setting? Possibly the only good guys were the father who is murdered and the photographer who is shot during the final battle. That's "The Situation": it's a holy mess in the country. As to the soldiers: it's a commonplace to hear them refer to the inhabitants of the country as "hajis." That we don't recognize this as an ethnic slur shows we don't really care all that much for the people we're allegedly trying to save. For the bridge incident, it's a dramatic incident necessary to get the movie up and running; to think that all US soldiers are completely innocent, especially in a situation where they have no clear direction, motivation, or end-goal, is naive. The war is eminently corruptible of anyone involved in it: which is the point of the movie.
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