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It's Sunday November the 6 around 12:13PM and

Vancouver Welcomes the Suck

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Filmgoers turned out in force to see Sam Mendes Gulf War I film, "Jarhead" this weekend. Vancouverites seem to be following the trend at packed Tinsletown screenings too. The film is projected to make $28.7 million this weekend according to Box Office Mojo.

Compared to the situation on the ground in Iraq since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, this movie, harkening back to the post Cold War hangover period couldn't be more jarring. Pardon the pun. As one review describes it, this film - and that war - was, "'Waiting for Godot' with oil field fires". Even the idea of 1990's Operation Dessert Storm seems so wildly different. The 500,000 troops on the ground, the comical almost non-war aspect. Certainly the humor of the film goes a long way, and Sam Mendes is truly a brilliant director, but there is something missing. Try reading Robert Kaplan's current book Imperial Grunts about the U.S. Special Forces and how they operate around the world and you get a completely different picture of the suck (Check out a bit of it from The Atlantic and you'll get my point).

But with all that, it's worth seeing. You can already imagine that the films based on the last 3 years of fighting around the globe and it will be nothing like Jarhead. In fact as Rob Rainer notes, "Despite all the heavy artistic artillery Mendes has brought to bear, his movie isn't all that far removed conceptually from "Top Gun" - which was also about military men itching for a chance to rock 'n' roll."

Posted by Jackson Murphy | Link | Comments (0)

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