Zero Dark Thirty... WTF?

[cthulu2016]

I have a fairly good opinion of Katheryn Bigelow (loved Hurt Locker, liked Point Break, etc..) and enjoy "procedural" movies. Expected a taut and engaging high quality production.

And it probably is a taut and engaging high quality production if you can get past the first 20-30 minutes..

Myself, I turned it off after awhile because if I wanted to watch torture porn I'd watch Passion of the Christ or Game of Thrones... something where the torturing party is not the US government.

I assume it is fairly realistic in its settings, and I must say that watching some people in a filthy garage somewhere torture a guy over months or years (with a lot of sadistic patter so creepy that you expect "it puts the lotion on its skin&quot I was not thinking about the CIA.

I was thinking about Ariel Castro.

And that may have been exactly what I was supposed to be thinking. I am not saying Katheryn Bigelow failed at anything. I'd have to watch the whole film to judge anything. I am just saying that I have never seen less sympathetic "good guys" in a movie then the first however many minutes of that film.

When we talk about "techniques" of interogation it's quite clincical. But the Bush-era protocols were the sort of (relativly ineffective) torture where the subject's personality is broken down largely by the emotional sadism of the interogator.

And watching sadism in manner is quite a different thing from thinking about "stress positions." A smug, contemptuous, paternalistic sadist cannot be a sympathetic figure, in a film. Nor can someone watching such with professional equanimity.

I don't doubt that it is an accomplished and intelligent film, but I just wasn't in the mood for hearing, "When you lie to me, I hurt you" fifty times.

I'll probably watch it all the way through someday. But yesterday wasn't the day.

[Bonobo]

1. I thought Hurt Locker sucked big time too. nt

[cthulu2016]

4. I thought Hurt Locker was among the more chillingly anti-war films I've seen

The guy doesn't return to Iraq out of patriotism. He returns to Iraq because having been in Iraq he can no longer function in real life, and he goes there hoping to die of his adrenaline addiction.

He tells his little son that being in Iraq is the only thing he loves. And his inability to handle the wealth of choices of breakfast cereal really said something.

IMO.

[90-percent]

2. Didn't see it

But, wasn't the premise that torture is good if the USA does it?

I still consider torture a war crime that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, or what's left of it.

That's one of the things we have to remember, the oligarchs are really good at turning the formerly illegal into perfectly legal.

-90% Jimmy

[Octafish]

3. Your tax dollars at work.

While it hasn't gotten the press it deserves, torture is as American as apple pie.

Here's background from Vietnam (violently graphic image at the top of article)

http://www.vice.com/read/vietnam-and-the-mere-gook-rule?utm_source=vicefbus

[leveymg]

5. The US Army was waterboarding in the Philippines in 1902.

We joined the Club, to the amusement of the other Imperial Powers.
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[Octafish]

6. Geebush!

The white man's burden, wot?