Saturday, November 10, 2007

 

Left Wing Anti-War Movies Flop

Recent movies portraying Iraq are flopping
"Rendition," a drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal about the CIA's policy of outsourcing interrogation of terror suspects, has taken just under 10 million dollars at the box office, a disastrous return.

Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis's latest film "In the Valley of Elah," about a father investigating the death of his son in Iraq, earned favorable reviews but less than seven million dollars following its release in September.

Even the action-packed "The Kingdom," starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, fell well below its 70 million budget with around 47 million dollars in ticket sales.
I attribute this to the phenomena that many left wing Hollowwood types believe that once they become rich and famous because of their looks, and sometimes acting ability, their intelligence and insight grows geometrically. These Hollowwood types also believe that the public will gladly pay good money to watch their indoctrination films. They were wrong.

Comments:
Having watched "the Kingdom" I would describe that movie in many ways, but "left-wing anti-war" is not one of them.

It was more of a wonky flick for those of us who have followed the War on Terror and Middle Eastern politics since before it was American pop-culture to do so. It didn't really make any overt political statement (like Rendition and Lions for Lambs) and was more a snapshot of a terror investigation.

If anyone is thinking about overt politicisms, they're thinking about the intro montage (which was brilliantly done), but that was just a cinematic timeline of US - Saudi history. If anyone's worrying about that intro being too politically overt, then they haven't been reading the same history I have over the last 20 years.

Oh yeah, and it had more real movie tension than action-packitude.

Very good thriller, but the American audience can get most of their investigation dramas from network television and syndication on TNT, A&E and USA.
 
As much as the war message, whatever it may be, I think the movies flopped because the movies don't fit the movie going demographics very well. (I checked this out some after posting this.)

The largest, and most frequent movie goers are the 12-24 year olds. Being familiar with the 11-18 year olds of this group because of my kids, they and their friends could care less about a movie like these. Horror movies and teen comedies are their fare.

But I don't know anyone whose has talked about seeing any of these movies. I see only 3-4 movies a year at the theater and avoid the preachy ones like the plague. I simply want entertainment. I get more preachiness than I can handle from my liberal siblings.

Congrats to the Bulldogs on their victory over Auburn. Glad they didn't play like that against Tennessee.
 
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