Politically incorrect film reviews – A Lincoln convertible

Robert Henderson

Main cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader,  David Strathairn, Peter McRobbie, Lee Pace (There is a very extensive cast, but Day-Lewis is so dominant in terms of screen time that the main cast could have been him alone)

Director Stephen Spielberg

Running time: 150 minutes

What is the most damning word  that can be applied to a film? I suspect  it is dull. That is the word for Lincoln.  Too many characters, too much poorly orchestrated verbal  scrummaging in Congress, an avalanche of posturing earnestness and  a good deal of ham acting -  yes, that’s you James Spader I am particularly wincing at for your  Republican fixer William N. Bilbo and you Tommy Lee Jones for your painfully  ridiculous abolitionist Thaddeus  Stephens, a man unable to open his mouth without engaging in abuse.   The only performance of any note is that of Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln.

If there was ever an actor capable of single-handedly rescuing an  indifferent film  it is Day-Lewis. He did it magnificently in Gangs of New York with his riveting performance as Bill the Butcher.  The man does his level best here and in truth is a pretty convincing Lincoln, but  the film is so generally  flaccid, overly wordy and positively cartoonish in its representation of the debate over the Amendment to abolish slavery  that he cannot obscure its seriously disabling weaknesses.  Day-Lewis is also handicapped by the character of Lincoln which is devious while he maintains a façade  of reasonableness. It is too quiet, too restrained  a personality  to rescue  a poor film by obliterating the mediocrity around him, especially one of this length.

To those considerable weaknesses  can be added the film’s  gross dishonesty in representing Lincoln’s position on   slavery and blacks generally. This misrepresentation is made simple by restricting  the action in the film to a few months at the very fag end of the American  Civil War  during which the 13^th  Amendment to the US  Constitution abolishing slavery was brought to the House of Representatives, debated and eventually passed.  The short time span allowed Lincoln’s earlier equivocal and changing positions on the relative importance of abolishing slavery and respecting state rights and  for modern liberals his distinctly embarrassing views on blacks to be almost entirely hidden from view.

What did  Lincoln’s think of slavery?  He was very much the Lincoln convertible, with different messages, often subtly different, for various audiences and political circumstances.  But there is a clear line to be followed in his thought.  There is no reason to believe that he did not find the institution obnoxious in the abstract  and the actual mistreatment of slaves distressing. But the fact that Lincoln was distressed  when  for example, he saw blacks being transported chained – a story repeated in the film – did  not mean he thought of blacks as the equals of whites or wanted them to have full legal equality with whites. Here he is putting his views unambiguously in 1858:

“I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes – nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter-marry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality, and in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race.” (ABRAHAM LINCOLN, in his debate with Senator Douglas at Quincy, IL, on Oct. 13, 1858 and quoted in Abraham Lincoln – Complete Works, published by The Century Co., 1894, Vol. I, page 273).

Lincoln’s belief that white and black could not live in equality led him to be an advocate of colonisation, which in this context meant  the transfer of blacks in the USA to other parts of the world , especially Liberia in West Africa.  He had doubts of the practicality for  in the Douglas debates   we find him saying “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia,—to their own native land. But a moment’s reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this, in the long run, its sudden execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough in the world to carry them there in many times ten days.

But if that is not the answer Lincoln has no ready solution for he goes on to say:

What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough to me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if, indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot be safely disregarded. We cannot, then, make them equals. It does seem to me that systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted; but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.” ( http://www.bartleby.com/251/12.html).

Despite his concerns at the practicality of colonisation, Lincoln was still promoting the idea during his presidency. He mentioned it in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 and created  a special office to oversee the process of colonisation under the control of the Rev. James Mitchell of Indiana and established a Bureau of Emigration.

Lincoln’s feelings towards slaves are suggestive of those  of  the man who sees animals being cruelly treated and wishes for the mistreatment to stop. Those feelings do not signify  that the animals  would be welcome round and about the homes of the pitying onlooker merely that the onlooker wished the mistreatment to stop.

Then there is the question of priorities. When he became president Lincoln had no hesitation in making clear his first concern was the preservation the Union. He did this in his first inaugural presidential address on March 4, 1861 when he offered no objection to the pending Corwin Amendment which ran “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” ( Volume 12 of the Statutes at Large at page 251).

This would have effectively made the abolition of slavery by Congress impossible by reserving the power to be a  free or slave state to the individual states Lincoln said this at his inauguration:

 ”I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” (http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html)

Well into the war Lincoln was unequivocal about the priority of the ends for which the war was fought, the primary end being the preservation of the Union:

“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free…” Lincoln, Abraham. “Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862″. In Miller, Marion Mills. Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln. Current Literature. Retrieved 2011-01-24.

The film’s presentation of the pro and anti-abolition arguments  will ring a bell with anyone who is familiar with the BBC’s idea of balance.  The pro-slavers are allowed to say something but they are always outnumbered and are never allowed the last word. Moreover, the fact that Day-Lewis’ Lincoln takes up so much of the screen time allotted to argument that any other voice is lost in the general babble of an overloaded cast.  Interestingly, the pro-slavers in the film engaged in argument  while the abolitionists readily turned to crude abuse. This is very reminiscent of the way modern liberals behave in real life (see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/the-liberal-bigot/).   There is also the gaping hole of a virtually absent Confederate voice, not so much to give  the pro-slavery arguments  but those of the  state rights versus federal powers conflict.

Perhaps the most telling facet of the film is the depiction of the double dealing of Lincoln and his fellow Republicans. Opponents of the amendment are shamelessly bribed with offers of government jobs with the full approval of Lincoln  who also engages in a piece of gross dishonesty by delaying the arrival of a peace delegation from the Confederacy  to ensure the Amendment passes.  This also requires him to give a lawyer’s evasion to the question  of whether such a peace delegation exists by answering that he knows of no such delegation in Washington rather than saying he knew of no peace delegation.    All of this skulduggery is portrayed as a legitimate means to an end, which of course,  is the besetting sin of liberals today who eagerly embrace any enormity provided it is intended to move some part of the world towards their nirvana of unalloyed political correctness.  The problem with such dishonesty and is that even if it gains the immediate object –which often it does not – it invariably has a corrosive effect on political trust .  Even today there are still the lingering resentments in the states of the Confederacy over their treatment after the war during the reconstruction era.

In the end the question has to be asked, was the abolition of slavery as it was done worth 600,000 dead and many more injured, often hideously?  What was the greater good, no civil war and the retention of slavery for a time or the immediate abolition of slavery bought at the costs of  huge numbers of  killed and maimed ?  It might seem a simple calculus to us today  because slavery to us is self-evidently beyond the Pale,  but in mid 19^th century America things looked very different, just as they have looked very different to every society which has had a form of legal servitude, which includes most societies in most times and places with servitude ranging from full blown chattel slavery through serfdom to indentured labour.  It is also worth bearing in mind that the free poor in the vast majority of societies throughout history have in practice been in a de facto servile position because of their material circumstances and  the general imbalance of power between employer and employed. Indeed, the iconic  English  abolitionist William Wilberforce  was much taunted with the fact that while he made a great uproar about slaves he bore with equanimity the abject poverty of many of his countrymen.

The abolition of US slavery was reckless in its execution  because it was  made without compensation (with the exception of  Washington DC)  to slave owners  and was  not staggered over several years.  The British abolition of slavery in British colonies used both devices (the British taxpayer expended the then colossal sum of £20 million in compensation which represented two fifths of the annual British budget) and, though far from an easy transition, it did remove both the problem of the ruination of a very large part of the colonial economy (the slave related part) and provide the wherewithal for the now ex-slave owners to continue their various economic enterprises by paying wages and to make the necessary practical adjustments .  It also brought time for the transition from slave to wage-earner to be psychologically absorbed.  Slavery is the ultimate form of institutionalisation .  A man or woman born to  slavery and  knowing nothing but servitude may find themselves disorientated when suddenly freed even if they have long dreamt of freedom, just as long-term prisoners or mental patients  often do when released. That had benefits for both slave owners and slaves because it was preferable to the sudden disorganised shock of immediate and uncompensated

Had Congress arranged to compensate the slave owners at an honest price and staggered the ending of slavery there is good reason to believe the Civil War could have been avoided and slavery ended within a relatively short period of time. As it was the abolition as it stood made a mess of slave owning states economies, left the freed slaves in a precarious position to be subject to Jim Crow laws and segregation for nearly  a century and often the recipients of the practice of convict leasing whereby convicts  were effectively sold to private contractors for a set period of time.

If  the abolition of slavery been peacefully accomplished it would also have had the great benefit of leaving state rights and powers unsavaged by the  gross violations of the Constitution which Lincoln perpetrated during the war with his proclamations made as commander-in-chief which included the suspension of Habeas Corpus and his ignoring of rulings by the Supreme Court.   (http://www.civilwarhome.com/pulito.htm). Interestingly, the question of legality of his proclamations was addressed at some length by Lincoln in the film,  although primarily in the context of the legality of his Emancipation Proclamation.

It should be  very difficult for any person without a political axe to grind to come away from the film without seeing Lincoln as a slippery hypocrite with no regard for the truth.  Needless to say in these PC times  you would not guess it from the reviews. The  critics have generally grovelled before the film’s prime politically correct subject matter. The review by  Rupert Christianson  of the  Daily Telegraph (a Tory newspaper) gives a taste of the tone in the British media:   “I cannot vouch for the movie’s historical accuracy – so much about Lincoln remains contested – but, without resorting to pomposity or sentimentality, Spielberg has built the story into a stirring drama of dilemma worthy of Racine or Schiller… The word that came to my mind as I left the cinema is an unfashionable one: noble. This is a noble film, about noble people. Quentin Tarantino doesn’t do noble.” ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/baftas/9857721/Baftas-2013-Spielbergs-Noble-Achievement.html).

Should you go and see this film?  Well, if you do, visit  it in a spirit of inquiry into exactly how blatant in their bias the politically correct  can be when  producing what can only be described as unashamed  propaganda. Talking of modern liberals, the film  has provided me with some amusement. Discussing it with the politically correct  in Britain it is remarkable how many believe Lincoln to have been a Democrat and the opponents of slavery in the film to have all been Republicans. It is a treat to watch their credulous little faces drop when I tell them the truth.

Politically incorrect film reviews – Django Unchained

Robert Henderson

Main cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington,  Samuel L. Jackson

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Running time  165 minutes

Even by Tarantino’s standards this is an extraordinarily self-indulgent film, both in terms of his fixation with  disproportionate  violence only tenuously related to plot and with  his one-dimensional  representation  of slavery. This portrayal  is unambiguously cruel and, as with almost  every film about American  slavery, set against the background of a palatial  plantation.   American slavery was vastly more nuanced than that, with single slaves being owned by a master or mistress;  free blacks owning slaves; slaves working for commercial and  industrial enterprises; slaves employed in fieldwork and mining.  The most favoured in terms of their treatment were probably house servants in the larger  establishments. [1]

Slave owners being human beings it is reasonable to assume that the treatment of slaves would have varied greatly, from the indulgent to the use of the slave simply as an object to be worked or abused as the slave owner wished. Even at the base level of slaves as considered simply as  property,  the idea that slave owners would be routinely physically abusing their slaves to the point of greatly reducing their value or losing the value completely by killing them makes little sense because slaves were expensive.  The growth of the black population generally and of slaves in particular supports this view.  It is estimated that approximately 645, 000 slaves were shipped  to the territory which eventually formed the USA [2] The 1860 US census shows  a  total population of 31,443,321 with 3,953,761 slaves and 488,283 free blacks, 251,000 of which were in the slave-owning states.[3]

The plot is a straight forward revenge drama. Dr King Schultz  (Christoph Waltz) a German dentist turned bounty hunter seeks out a couple of slave traders (the Speck Brothers )  who are transporting some slaves.  Schultz wants to buy a slave from a particular plantation off them because the slave can identify three brothers who have a large bounty on their heads.   The Speck brothers  do not wish to trade, guns are drawn and a shootout ensues killing one of the brothers and trapping another under his horse with a broken leg.  Scultz, a pedant  for the  legal form but  not the spirit of the law throughout the film, makes out a bill of sale for the slave he wants, leaves this with some money with the surviving Speck brother and releases the other slaves with a suggestion that they kill the surviving Speck and head north to the non-slave states.  The slaves duly oblige Schultz.

The slave Schultz obtains is Django (Jamie Foxx).  Django is a failed runaway who was caught  trying to escape with his wife  Broomhilda Von Shaft (Kerry Washington). As a consequence the pair of them are deliberately sold separately at auction and separated. Consequently Django does not know where his wife is.  Schultz strikes a deal with Django: join me as a partner in bounty hunting until the spring and I will help you find your lost wife.   Django agrees.  Much of the  rest of the film is taken up with Schultz and Django scheming to kill people for the bounty on their heads, killing people such people and killing people to revenge Django and by extension his fellow slaves.  Eventually Broomhilda is tracked down to a huge  plantation owned by Calvin Candy (Di Caprio) and   Schultz and Django lay a scheme to persuade Candy to sell her to them.

The character of Schultz is morally absurd. He is a bounty hunter for whom the words “captured dead or alive” have only one meaning: dead.   The concept of innocent till proven guilty is redundant because he kills simply on the issue of a warrant for someone’s arrest  and he never makes even a token attempt to take them alive. Hence,  Schultz’s  frequently made claim that he is only killing those who have committed serious crimes does not stand up to moral scrutiny. He could be killing an innocent man as easily as a criminal. Yet this immoral  character postures throughout the film as a morally superior being because he disapproves of slavery. Moreover, this supposed dislike for slavery does seem somewhat flexible.  To promote the end of purchasing Broomhilda,  Schultz (and Django)   watch without complaint a slave brutally killed in what is termed Mandigo fighting, that is , no-holds barred fighting between two slaves,  and a runaway slave ripped to shreds by dogs.   Schultz’s  final pc flourish occurs when  he behaves in a maniacally egotistical   way after  Django and he have  achieved their aim of buying Broomhilda from  the slaveowner Candy. All  he has to do to seal the deal is shake Candy’s hand.  Schultz refuses, shoots Candy and then dies in the farcical  “shoot ‘em up” sequence which follows.

The Eponymous Django (Jamie Foxx) , an actor whose screen presence exudes a dismal surliness at the best of times  is ridiculous in a different way.  He adopts an aggressive  and insolent attitude towards Candy and his associates, behaviour  which even as a free black it is wildly improbable would have been tolerated by a man as rich and powerful as Candy.   Nor is it readily imaginable  that he would have been allowed to dine with Candy and his family. His acting range recalls Dorothy Parker’s put down of  Katharine Hepburn: “She  delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.”

The two performances worth watching are DiCaprio’s malevolent plantation owner Calvin Candy and Samuel Jack’s privileged slave Stephen, part Uriah Heap, part licensed court jester,  part smart operator and wholly Uncle Tom.   Candy has something of the unwonted and disconcerting  charm of Ralph Fiennes as the Concentration Camp commandant  Amon Göth in Schindler’s List,  being capable of Southern  courtesy at one moment and gross cruelty the next.

Tarantino is continuing what he did in Inglourious Basterds . In his earlier films the themes and characters were simply violent and immoral. Inglourious Basterds changed that. Taratino suddenly decided he wanted to morally posture, in that instance by adopting the position that any mistreatment of Germans, Nazi or otherwise,  was justified in WW2 because of the Nazi mistreatment of Jews.   Consequently the film’s gang of Americans in Nazi-occupied Europe were allowed to engage in any violent  horror, for example, killing someone by sledgehammering them to death, on the pretext that it was reasonable because they were killing Nazis.  Even if that had been true it would not have given the characters  the  moral high ground  because brutality is simply  brutality when it involves killing defenceless men in a cruel fashion. But  Inglorious Basterds did not confine themselves to killing card-carrying Nazis: ordinary Germans, for example,  conscripted Wermacht soldiers,  were killed gratuitously and cruelly.    In Django unchained Tarantino substitutes slavery for the Nazi’s reatment of the Jews.  A comment made by Django early on  encapsulates the director’s intention:   “Killing white folks and  getting paid for it: what’s not to like?”  (Try to imagine a white character in any film saying “Killing black folks and getting paid for it: what’s not to like?”   Difficult  going on impossible isn’t it? )

The problem with this is that most white Americans of the time were not slave owners of any sort .   But just as the moral restraints in Inglourious Basterds were loosened to include any German regardless of whether they had perpetrated any atrocity or even whether they were Nazi party members, so were the moral restraints removed on what might be done to whites of any status in Django Unchained.

The other  serious difficulty with the film is  the violence. Violence is a necessary  and interesting part of film-making when it serves a dramatic purpose. Let it become a gorefest and it is pornography.  In  Django Unchained  it moves into the positively  cartoonish with killings which are not only incontinent in motivation but often  look completely unconvincing:  the worst example is the shooting of Candy’s sister when a single shot lifts her into the air and through a door in the manner of a pantomime fairy being lifted off the  stage.  All this becomes at first boring then irritating.

The film has been criticised for its free use of nigger.  Tarantino has a record of his characters using the word , although never with  anything like the fluency as happens here where it is used several hundred times. It is used freely by black as well as white characters. Bearing in mind the film is set in slaving country and much of the action takes place on plantations, Tarantino is probably being realistic in putting it into the film.  However, when did realism ever trouble him? Certainly not in the film as a whole with a KKK-style  slapstick scene inserted into the pre-Bellum South long before the KKK was created and the acceptance of wildly insolent behaviour by Django or his wearing of modern sunglasses for most of the film.    Could it be that Tarantino puts nigger  in simply for the thrill of playing the enfant terrible? Or perhaps he simply wants to have his pc and non-pc cake at the same time.

Although an offshoot of Blaxploitation films, both the 1975 film Mandingo and its sequel Drum were  much more finessed in their treatment of the relationships between slaves owners and their slaves. Although there was violence and harsh treatment shown it was not incessant or grossly improbable. There was  also some attempt to place behaviour in context . This last  is completely missing in Django Unchained.  For example, Stephen is shot in cold blood by Django for being an Uncle Tom after being told by Django to remain after other slaves are escape unharmed because Stephen is “exactly where he belongs  ”.  That  we are all prisoners to a large degree of where our birth places us and humans being humans will develop relationships even where the relationship may seem tainted by the disparity in power between those involved is unexamined.

Should you go and see the film? Well, Di Caprio and Jackson’s performances are well worth seeing. Just don’t expect  Gone with the wind.

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[1] http://elliotlakenews.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/blacks-owning-black-slaves/

[2] b Stephen D. Behrendt, David Richardson, and David Eltis, W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, Harvard University. Based on “records for 27,233 voyages that set out to obtain slaves for the Americas”. Stephen Behrendt (1999). “Transatlantic Slave Trade”. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books. ISBN 0-465-00071-1.

[3] .   http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1860a-02.pdf

Politically incorrect film reviews – God Bless America

Robert Henderson

Main Cast

Joel Murray as Frank Murdoch

Tara Lynne Barr as Roxanne “Roxy” Harmon

Directed by  Bobcat Goldthwait

This is a very confused film . At one level it is a shoot ‘em up murderfest, on another  a road movie, on a third a political polemic.  There are elements of Michael Douglas in Falling Down, Bonnie and Clyde and a Michael Moore documentary.

There are only two characters of significance: Joel Murray (Bill Murray’s brother)  is Frank Murdoch and  Tara Lynne Barr is  Roxanne “Roxy” Harmon. Murdoch is an insurance salesman in late middle age  who is nauseated by modern America.  He loathes the vacuity of thought and purpose he sees in those around him, the absence of good manners,  the sexualisation of children and the vulgarity and  casual  cruelty of reality shows ? (His particular TV hatred is a reality show  American Superstarz where a  hopeless singer named Steven Clark (Aris Alvarado) is made an object of fun by the judges and the audience . Eventually Clark tries but fails to commit suicide). Murdoch  summarises his feelings to  a work colleague “Why have a civilisation if we are not interested in being civilised any more?”

All of those sentiments could be ascribed to someone of the political right, as could the character’s  liking for guns and his readiness and delight in using them.  But on top of all this raw and understandable emotion  is piled a thick grey curtain of political correctness which oozes over the film as oil floats on water. Apart from liking guns, having no scruples about killing  and generally disapproving of modern American life and culture,  Murdoch also has a hatred of the politically incorrect who  have the temerity to disapprove of homosexuals,  mass immigration and  abortion and support the neo-cons in their warmongering or  the  Tea Party in their small state agenda. As he  puts it, “I am not afraid of immigrants and people with vaginas”.

Murdoch’s life is messy. He is separated from his wife and daughter and  lives in a cheap flat with the next-door-neighbour –from-hell  whose particular source of provocation is a baby who never seems to stop crying. Murdoch  fantasises about killing the child and the father by spectacularly blowing them away with a heavyweight gun Arnold Schwarzenegger  would have been happy to tote in one of his more extreme roles.    His ex-wife panders to their daughter who is a shrieking ingrate, much like the first person he kills,  Chloe(Maddie Hasson),  the daughter  of a family taking part in a fly-on-the-wall  reality show .

Murdoch  loses his job summarily as, ironically,  he becomes a victim of  the political correctness which he embraces . He has sent flowers to the home of a receptionist who works for the same company and this is treated as sexual harassment.  He  is also told (wrongly)  by his doctor that he is dying of a brain tumour.  With these  burdens upon him Murdoch decides  to commit suicide, but decides to murder Chloe first after watching an episode of her  reality show when her behaviour is ungrateful with knobs on, behaviour  which in Murdoch’s eyes makes her worthy of death.    He  first attempts  to burn her to death  by handcuffing her to the steering wheel   of her car and then shoving a burning wick made of paper  into the petrol tank – note the very cruel intended death – and when this  fails  through his laughable incompetence,  he shoots the girl.

At this point  Roxy Harmon appears. She is a 16-year-old classmate of  Chloe . Her character is  teen psychopath mixed with winning ingénue. Having seen Murdoch kill the Chloe she squeals with delight and attaches herself to him. After he has threatened suicide she persuades Murdoch not to do it because the media would  depict him as a stalker who killed the girl because of a sexual obsession rather than  a pain-in-the-neck deserving death .  Roxy also suggests that they kill Chloe’s parents because they are also worthless.  They do this and Roxy then persuades Murdoch  to take her with him on a killing spree by  feeding him with false story about coming from a deprived and abusive family comprised of a  drug addict mother and rapist step-father. Murdoch agrees to let her come along   on the understanding that  they only kill people who deserve it, the classic modern liberal’s understanding of justice, that is, punish anyone who disagrees with us.

The pair go on a  killing spree the motives for which range from the childlike temper tantrum of  killing of a man who double parks, teenagers  in a cinema who talk, throw popcorn and use their mobile phones to the adolescent ideologically inspired murder of a right wing  broadcaster.

Eventually Murdoch learns that his doctor had made a mistake  and that he does not have a brain tumour. Cheered by this news, Murdoch plans to escape to France with Roxy and start a new life.  Before this plan can be put into action he is propositioned by a man who thinks he is Roxy’s pimp. Depressed again by this encounter he returns to his motel room and sees Roxy’s parents making a plea for her to come home. Far from being from a dysfunctional family, Roxy comes from a staid middle class family with money.  Murdoch is dismayed further at the disjunction between reality and his liberal fantasy about rescuing Roxy from a non-pc  home. He relieves his feeling by beating to death the man who thought he was Roxy’s pimp.

Murdoch then decides to make a grand statement by deciding to hijack  Superstarz  to both say what he thinks of modern America in general and the expose what he perceives to be the mistreatment of   Steven Clark  in particular. This involves him buying some heavyweight weaponry from a shady  gun dealer (Mike Tristano). The scene  involves startlingly hard-core political incorrectness  with Tristano engaging in some most unusual sales spiel  such as  “Put this 357 magnum….to the back of some n****r’s head and all you are going to see is some pink mist“;  “Walther P38. German. Who knows how to kill people better than German, right? You’re not a Jew are you Frank?;  “AK47 . When you absolutely have to positively waste every mother f**ker in the room accept no substitute …. ”  It’s a spray and spray weapon and what’s better than that right?”

During this scene Murdoch’s face is deepening ever further into the peculiarly ghastly rictus grimace mixed with sickly grin  which modern liberals adopt when  having to listen to anything which treads heavily on their pc dreams.  (The scene can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN5KRvfo-AA&feature=related).  This is interesting because left-liberal directors seem to get a particular thrill out of creating scenes of intense political incorrectness. It is almost as if, not being able to readily find such rich fare in real life,  they have to provide an ersatz substitute to persuade themselves that non-pc demons really do exist. Or perhaps they simply enjoy the thrill of the illicit.

The final action is in the American Superstarz  studio where Murdoch and Roxy are re-united and blast all and sundry before being riddled in a manner suggestive of both Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde.  Before this happens Murdoch suffers the fate of all modern liberals of being mugged by disagreeable reality.  Steven Clark  tells him that the reason he had attempted suicide was not because of the ridicule but because he feared he was going top be dropped by the show.  Murdoch responds by shooting him in the manner of a five-year-old throwing a tantrum.

Murray is extremely good as Murdoch, giving him at first a querulous anger which dissolves into the persona of a confident killer as the film progresses. (He is surprisingly adept at the hit-man element of the film). Tara Lynne Barr is engaging in a Goldie Hawn sort of way as Roxy. I suspect she will make a substantial career in comedy.

This is a watchable film in its own right, but it is also worth viewing because Murdoch encapsulates the modern liberal character: part young child, part adolescent, religiously  mouthing politically correct platitudes whilst casually removing those who irritate him Murdoch’s desire to control what people do and say is simply a desire to control. The fact that a large part of his agenda could be espoused by the Right is irrelevant. It is the control which matters..  Like all those who are captured by an ideology,  the politically correct really only want to make the world in their own image at best and at worst, like the Party in 1984, the only object of their  power is the exercise of power itself.

Politically incorrect film reviews – The Sweeney

Main cast Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Damian Lewis, Hayley Atwell and Steven Mackintosh.

Robert Henderson

The latest filmic incarnation of the 1970s TV series the Sweeney is  a serious mess. (For those unfamiliar with the  TV series, the Sweeney is rhyming slang for the  Flying  Squad  = Sweeney Todd – an elite (London) Metropolitan Police unit dealing with armed robberies and other serious  armed  crime).  The film, as with the TV series, is built around the operational head of the Flying Squad Detective Inspector Jack Regan (Ray Winstone) and his second in command Detective Sergeant  George Carter (Ben Drew).

The action is removed from the 1970s  to  the  world   of the modern Metropolitan police.   This time shift  alone makes the  film utterly implausible, because the  routine mistreatment of villains and suspects in the film  would simply be impossible in the present day world of taped interviews and all too pervasive recording equipment. An officer might get away with it   once if he was dealing today with a villain who had reason to keep quiet about the abuse  but not over and over again. Nor will you find suspects being routinely interviewed without a lawyer. The extent of the violence, especially the frequent gun fights, adds to the absurdity.  If the  film had  remained set in  the 1970s, the audience might just have swallowed the mistreatment of suspects  just as they did with  the TV series Life on Mars, a  recent TV police drama set in the 1970s, although the extensive use of guns would still have seemed ludicrous because even today the British police use guns on a remarkably small number of occasions a year and did so even less in the 1970s.

But the updating of the film is not the most glaring  implausibility of the film.  This is an equal opportunities production . Whereas  in the 1970s TV series and the two original film spin-offs the Flying Squad was  resolutely white and male,  here it is crammed to the gunnels with , yes you’ve guessed it, blacks and women. (There is a double pc score in two cases because  two of the women are black).    Even in the  achingly  politically correct modern London police force you would be startled to the point of a cardiac arrest to find that  half the staff  in an elite unit like the Flying Squad were either black or female.  Just  to put the pc cherry on the cake, Carter is given a black stepson.

As so often happens with the inclusion of black characters in modern  films, they are utterly peripheral.  The pc quota has been filled and the pc gods placated. The white  women with one exception  are also non-entities.  The exception is Nancy (Hayley Attwell) .  She is the wife of  an officer Ivan Lewis  (Steven Mackintosh) from the Met’s internal affairs division who is investigating the misbehaviour of the Flying Squad. Nancy is  also Regan’s mistress despite being half his age.   To prove that women really are equal  to men we see her roughing up suspects  (very unconvincingly), punching villains, shooting guns and finally, just to show a female character can do the lot, getting killed in a gunfight.

The political correctness of the film, primarily feminism in this case, sits very queasily  with the non-pc nature of  Regan and the Flying Squad. The film is trying to have its 1970s era cake while trying to stuff a 2012 politically correct tart into its mouth at the same time.

There are other serious problems. The film  is built around  a  tiresomely improbable and convoluted plot based on the revenge  to be exacted by a villain Allen (Paul Anderson)  who was “nicked” by Regan years before and sent down for a long stretch.

Then there is the relationship between  Regan and Carter which was central to the success of the TV series and earlier films, with Regan as the erratic  DI and Carter as the person who regularly covered for him.    This film also puts  the relationship between Reagan and Carter at the centre of the action. The problem is the  relationship does not work.  John Thaw, who played Regan in his earlier incarnation, was nothing like such as blunt instrument of an actor  as Winstone  and Dennis Waterman as the original Carter had a much larger and intrusive personality to project than Drew, whose default  expression in the film was a near catatonic  God ,I’m being so cool.  They both offered far more scope for  a complex meeting of personalities.  Winstone and Drew just do not gel as a pair.   Perhaps most damaging  to the  relationship   is the loss of the considerable  humour between Regan and Carter which existed in the original Sweeney. The original also had a good deal of genuinely funny interplay between the Flying Squad as a whole.  That has gone as well,  with vulgarity  mistaken for  humour in the 2012 version.  The considerable screen-time devoted to the Regan/Nancy affair, which is embarrassingly unconvincing, also weakens the Regan/Carter  interaction.

The only enjoyable thing in the film is Winstone’s Regan sounding off in his 1,000 decibel way against his bosses, villains and anyone else who gets in his way.  Then his considerable screen presence  momentarily blots out the general failure of the film. The rest of the cast  are strangely insipid,  including both Regan’s boss Frank Haskins (Damian Lewis) and  Steven Mackintosh as the internal affairs investigator.

Should you go and see the film?  All I will say is older Sweeney fans should resist the temptation .  Keep your dreams.

Politically incorrect film reviews – The Millennium Trilogy

Robert Henderson

The girl with the dragon tattoo – the original and the US-remake

The girl who played with fire

The girl who stirred the hornets’ nest

These are the films made to date from  Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.   I review them  in one fell swoop because there is only one reason to see them if you wish to be diverted  - and it is a very compelling one – the charismatic performance of  Noomi  Rapace as Lisbeth Salander in the three Swedish originals.  More of that later.

There is another less palatable reason to watch the films. They  are monuments to the grip that political correctness generally has on Sweden  and the peculiar place that feminism occupies in Sweden and Scandinavia generally.

The plots, such as they are, revolve around the type of fantasies the politically correct relish: we have the  remnants and descendants of a  Swedish Nazi group, one of whom, Martin Vanger,   engages in the rape and occult murder of women  as his father did before him;  the abusive and dishonest  machinations of  big business  as represented by billionaire financier Hans-Erik Wennerström; paedophilia amongst the rich and powerful  and  a dash of  security services mischief involving one-time Soviets agents, one of whom is Lisbeth’s father, Alexander Zalachenko.  There is even a Frankenstein monster of sorts, a man who cannot feel pain (Ronald Niedermann Lisbeth’s half-brother) .  In short, the storylines  are verging on the absurd.

Amongst these fantastic scenarios  Mikael Blomkvist, journalist and publisher at Millennium magazine,  weaves his investigative way as he seeks to  ruin Wennerstrom,  solve the mystery of a missing woman belonging to the Nazi-tainted Vanger family and expose sex-trafficking of minors, much of this being done through conversations of excruciating exercises in  political correctness with his fellow Millennium journos .

During the course of the three films Lisbeth   is variously forced to provide fellatio, anally raped,  shot and savagely beaten,  with  much of the mayhem being engineered by her father,  half-brother and her state provided  guardian – she is encumbered by the last because of her violent and disturbed past which has seen her spend much time in what in less politically correct times would be called lunatic asylums. Lisbeth  in return engages in much violence and other criminality, almost all of it directed at men.   This aspect of the films satisfies the feminist ideals of all men being potentially violent abusers of women and the ability of women  to strike back against their abusers.

The male characters who are not wearing the feminist version of black hats are required to behave towards  female characters with an insipid subordination.   Mikael Blomkvist must be the most uninspiring male lead in films,  an almost entirely  non-action man.  Even when he  does eventually become involved in action he is the victim.   Not so much an anti-hero but an anti-heroic.

There is also political correctness of an insidious nature.   About halfway through The Girl with the Dragon tattoo a suspicion began to form,  with The girl who played with fire the suspicion became a certainly and The  Girl who stirred the hornet’s nest merely provided confirmation of the certainty: women perform the same role in Swedish films that blacks  routinely perform in Hollywood productions. They are the formal authority figures, the lawyers,    the judges, and , God help us, the  leader of a police Swat team, are women.

In short, this is the hardcore feminist fantasy made flesh with men portrayed either as potential rapists and abusers of women generally (the title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in Swedish is Män som hatar kvinnor–literally–men who hate women) or timid, one dimensional wimps who not only   bow down before the dictates of political correctness,  but who have become feminised by decades of feminist propaganda and political intervention to enforce the mentality.  All very interesting when one reflects on the author of the 2011 Norwegian killing spree Anders Breivik’s complaint about the feminised nature of Norwegian society. On the evidence of  these films the same could be said of Sweden.

The films are saved by a single great performance. Orson Welles does this in Citizen Kane when even that fine actor Joseph Cotton is reduced to a cypher;   Gangs of New York are saved by Daniel Day-Lewis’s Bill the Butcher;  Drive is held together solely by Ryan Gosling’s startling  talent for violence.   Noomi  Rapace  does it with the character of Lisbeth Salmander , a young woman  who is set apart, whether by a disturbed  past or innate qualities, from other people. Her behaviour is autistic. She cannot readily connect with people or understand  the normal rules of  social engagement.  At the same time she is highly intelligent and immensely resourceful.  The consequence is that  she combines heroic self-sufficiency with  a terrible vulnerability . A man playing such a role probably would not be sympathetic but an attractive young woman is.

There is another quality Lisbeth has which is immensely  magnetic.   It is her will to action. There is something  heroic about a character who  meets circumstances head on and instead of dithering or running away from trouble simply responds with action.  Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill part I are other prime examples of such characters.    Her determination and courage is in stark contrast to the vanilla quality of  Blomkvist and his ilk.  When she is removed from the action sequences  (after being  shot  at the end of the second film), the consequence is that the final part of the trilogy is by far the weakest of the three. Lisbeth needs freedom to express herself.

The American remake of The girl with the dragon tattoo is in some ways better than the original, most notably the acting overall  is much stronger – Stellen Skaarsgard is especially good as the serial killer Martin Vanger, mixing an overt affability with an underlying menace.  Rooney Mara captures the self-contained distance and the will to action of the character well,  but  lacks Rapace’s vulnerability. That changes the mood of the film.

Recommended  recent Films

Shame – something of Sidney Carton in the Michael Fassbinder  role, a man of parts who is simply squandering his talent on an empty life.

Rampart – Woody Harrelson plays Dave Brown, a wondrously politically  incorrect cop. Dirty Harry without the ideals.

A Dangerous Method – Worth seeing for Viggo Mortensen’s Freud and Keira Knightley’s sporting of one of the oddest accents ever to hit the screen – she is meant to be Russian, but could come from anywhere in the solar system  for all the accent tells one of her origins.

Politically incorrect film reviews – Ire in Babylon

UK Cinema Release Date: Friday 20th May 2011

Official Site: http://www.fireinbabylon.com

Written and Directed by: Stevan Riley

Starring:  Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Ian Botham, Jeffery Dujon, Colin Croft

Genre: Documentary

Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes (approx.)

Between 1980 and 1995 the West Indies cricket team never lost a series, a most remarkable thing. They did this through discovering a discipline they had never consistently shown before and the development of a bowling attack consisting of three or four genuinely fast bowlers,  a fast bowling  lineage which began in the mid 1970s with Holding, Roberts and Daniel and ended in the mid 1990s with Walsh, Ambrose and Bishop.    Their dominance was aided by the failure of umpires to implement the  cricket law banning persistent short-pitched bowling -  arguably because of a fear of being called racist – but  in truth they were formidable  even without bowling four or five short-pitched balls an over.  The runs scored against the West Indies in their period of dominance were almost certainly the hardest earned in the history of Test cricket (the first Test was played in 1877).

Those with no knowledge of cricket  will have read that paragraph and said, no, not interested.  Let them bear with me for a moment.  It is a film about a sporting side but it is far more than that.  Primarily it is  a masterclass in black victimhood and insecurities in which  cricket takes a distant second place. That explains  why  the film has been greeted with such rapture by British  film critics who are  signed up to the “ol’ whitey bad, black good “ liberal agenda  (for a wide range of quotes  see http://www.fireinbabylon.com/press.html).
The Daily Telegraph’s review is typical: “Director Stevan Riley’s joyous and uplifting film is a celebration of a sporting triumph and all its implications for black politics and culture.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/8524438/Fire-in-Babylon-review.html)

The director  Stevan Riley made no bones about the purpose of the film: “a story of freedom, independence and black pride through bat and ball”. (http://www.channel4.com/news/fire-in-babylon-what-lessons-for-west-indies-cricket-now).   The result is a film which is an unrestrained act of pro-black  propaganda,   with whites and England  painted as the colonial oppressors and the Asian populations of the West Indies relegated to the role of non-persons.  Within this context,  the West Indies team of the late 1970s to the mid 1990s is portrayed as a vehicle for the political consciousness of the newly independent West Indian countries; a means by which the black West Indian population  (but not the white or Asian West Indians) could assert  themselves and show themselves to be able to compete with and dominate  their  old colonial masters.

Those not familiar with cricket in general or West Indies cricket in particular will require some background.  The West Indies is not a nation state. Rather it is a collection of British ex-colonies in the Caribbean  (Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados being the main islands) plus one on the South American continent (Guyana).  Cricket is the only thing which brings them formally together.

The history of West Indies cricket is a mirror of the racial and ethnic tensions  in the ex-colonies.  The team until the 1970s  was a mix of whites, blacks and Asians (mainly those who had ancestors who came from the Sub-continent).   Until 1960 the West Indies cricket team (known as the Windies) was always captained by a white man, apart from the odd match where injury or other absence of resulted in no  suitable white player  being available.

Throughout the period of white captains there was a growing restlessness amongst black West Indians for a black captain. After the appointment of the first  black man ,  Frank Worrell,  to the (regular)  captaincy in  1960,   the  participation  of  white and   Asian  players  steadily  diminished  – in the case of whites it might be truer to  say effectively  ended.  Geoffrey Greenidge was  the last  white   player to represent the West Indies (in 1972) before Brendon Nash appeared in  2008 (and he was a white Australian who qualified for the West Indies through his mother), while   no Asians were chosen between  Larry Gomes’  final appearance   in 1986 and Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s debut in 1994.  This left a side entirely composed of black West Indians.   In the late 1980s the Windies Captain Viv Richards  proudly described his side as “a team of Africans”.

There is no mention in the film of this exclusion of whites and Asians from the Windies side during their period of dominance, nor Viv Richard’s celebration of the fact that he was leading  an all  black side.   This is scarcely surprising because those interviewed in the film are all black and the interviewer did not ask awkward  questions.   Famous white cricketers and commentators such as Geoff Boycott , Ian Botham and Jeff Thompson who had played against the Windies during their period of dominance   were interviewed by the director,  but strangely not a single interview of a white man conducted for the film  appeared in the film. Tellingly, white faces were almost  absent from the film  except for the action shots. Ditto Asians.   Instead the film was packed with interviews with  West Indian cricketers and  commentators who had either played in or seen the Windies at their height , and film or commentary of black West Indian   celebrities such as Bob Marley,  Bunny Wailer, Lord Short Shirt, Burning Spear  (no, I  am not making the names up) and Gregory Isaacs who happily mixed with players such as Viv Richards.

A  deep-rooted black paranoia shows itself in the interpretation as patronising of white attitudes and responses which are at worst neutral and at best complimentary.  The  description “Calypso cricket” by whites  is interpreted  as  meaning that West Indian sides play in an attractive but brittle and unthinking way. In reality it was simply a bit of lazy labelling by journalists and broadcasters  without any intent to patronise or insult.

Australians turning out in  great numbers to applaud the West Indies touring party as they toured the streets of Melbourne at the end of the 1960/61 series against Australia was dismissed as Australians being happy to applaud losers (they lost the series 2-1).  In fact, they were being applauded because the series was (1)  thoroughly exciting with the first tied Test in history and (2)  Test cricket was going through a period when it was feared that slow, defensive play was killing the public’s appetitive for the game and the series was seen as a  renaissance of attractive cricket.

The only instance in the film of a white man suggesting that the Windies were chokers was made by  the England captain in the 1976 series between the Windies and England. This was the South African Tony Greig (playing  for England after qualifying residentially) predicting  before the series that the Windies “would grovel”.  Had he made the comment about Australia or an Australian made it about England it would have just been treated for what it was, a bit of “pre-fight” banter. In the film it is treated with an immense  earnestness as if it was the deadliest of insults.

This outrage is very odd because the central  thesis of the film is that until the late 1970s the Windies were a team  which often contained great individuals,  but hich was all too prone to not playing as a team, whether that be because of racial strife (especially under white captains) ,  the difficulties of bring people together from different countries in a representative team or the lingering effects of colonialism which led to an unconscious lack of belief in themselves.  (The alleged weaknesses  were supposedly only cured after Clive Lloyd became captain and  eventually moulded the Windies into a relentless machine for winning. )

This  story is some way adrift from reality. It is untrue that the Windies were a consistently brittle side  before Clive Lloyd became captain. They always had great players and in the space of four years in the  1960s they won two series in England and beat the Australians in the West Indies.  By 1965 they had good claims to be the strongest side in the world.  That they  declined towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s was simply the natural consequence of a great side growing old and losing important players.  In short, it was simply  what any top cricketing  Test side experiences,  peaks and troughs of performance.

One of the most intriguing passages is the series between  Australia and the Windies in 1975/76 when the Australian fast bowlers Lillie and Thompson physically knocked the Windies about so badly that the series was lost 6-1.  That was time when the Windies captain Clive Lloyd decided on playing a three or four man fast bowling attack. In fact, what appears to have been the real turning point was the rebel Packer matches of a few years later. Kerry Packer was an Australian media mogul who signed up (to the horror of the national cricket boards who banned the players from playing Test cricket) many of the best  cricketers in the world, including most of the Australian and West Indies players.

The Packer series began badly for the Windies who folded weakly in an early match. According to the film,  Packer came into Windies dressing room and gave them a tongue-lashing along the lines of improve or you will be on a plane home.  Packer also arranged for then to use a  physiotherapist and fitness trainer by the name of Denis Waite because he was doubtful about their fitness. (http://www.catholicnews-tt.net/joomla/index.php?view=article&catid=49:sports&id=174:sports010209&option=com_content&Itemid=82).  Waite, a white Australian, got them fit and psychologically prepared.  By the end of Packer’s rebel games (they lasted two years) the Windies had started to win relentlessly.  It could be argued that the Windies built their later success on a platform constructed by two white men, Packer and Waite.

The other great  hand-up from ol’ whitey was the decision of the English cricket authorities in 1969 to relax the qualification rules for county cricket, the English domestic first class teams.  This meant that foreign players, including most of the major West Indian cricketers of the period 1970-1995, were able to play regular professional cricket in England. This both gave the Windies players a regular source of income from cricket (something which had never  been readily available before)  and a great deal of experience both of playing and English conditions and culture.

After 1995 the great days were over, although they were still competing for another five years or so as the great old players held the team together. After 2000, the Windies team declined rapidly until it became a pathetic shadow of what it had been only a few years before.  Why did this happen? Perhaps it was this:

“The things that had driven us in the past were no longer important to the newer generation. Black pride and its militancy, the shrugging off of our colonial legacy, Frank Worrell completing the West Indian version of the Jackie Robinson journey, these things have been historically severed” Calypsonian David Rudder on the difference between the 80s and today (http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/483624.html)

If Rudder is correct, that paints a bleak picture of the future of the West Indies not only as cricketers but generally.  What he is saying is that only the mixture of anger and fear left by colonialism is sufficient to energise West Indians.

From a purely cricketing point of view the film offers  many examples of great fast bowlers in action.  Those too young to have watched cricket in the 1970s and 1980s should watch the film and see the  difference between genuine fast bowling and what passes for it  now.  In particularly I was reminded of what a nightmare Jeff Thompson was at his best , not merely one of the fastest  of bowlers, but one with an uncanny knack of getting a ball to rear into a batsman’s face from barely short of a length. Most of the action shots are of batsmen being hit or nearly hit, which is a little unedifying,  but they  do  give  a graphic idea of exactly how much courage and skill is required to face great fast bowling.  The most poignant shots are  those of a 45-year-old Brian Close batting against Holding and Roberts in 1976 before the era of helmets and being repeatedly hit on the body, an assault he met with a remarkable stoicism.

Those wanting  a flavour of the film can click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n57LPYiragE

Politically incorrect film reviews – Gran Torino

 Run time  116 minutes

 Main cast

Clint Eastwood as Walt Kowalski

Bee Vang as Thao Vang Lor, a young Hmong teenager

Ahney Her as Sue Lor, Thao’s older sister

Christopher Carley as Father Janovich

Doua Moua as Fong “Spider”, Thao’s cousin, a Hmong street gang

 Director Clint Eastwood

 At one level Gran Torino is enjoyable as Dirty Harry at 80 for  Clint Eastwood reprises, probably for the last time, the persona which made his career, that of the menacing hard man – has there ever been a more convincing man with a gun on film?  He also looks in much better shape than he has for years and 80 years old or not, hes is still weirdly convincing as the tough guy.

But that is not what is at the heart of the film. Eastwood’s character is a Korean War vet  Walt Kolowski who has spent his working life in skilled manual labour. He lives in a street  in which he is the only white man left, the rest of the street having been colonised by Laotian hill people known as Hmong.  Eastwood starts off by displaying what liberal bigots fondly imagine is racism: he is indignant at having his territory invaded. Yet even in these early scene setting moments he is never what would have been called racist even thirty years ago. He is simply bad tempered and unwilling to engage with his unwanted neighbours.

All of this miraculously changes. He is soon seen rejecting his own children whom he views as being symbols of the soft corruption of traditional American values, although there is precious little justification for this view provided in the film . Then he befriends the Laotian family next door and is almost immediately wondering to himself how it is that he feels he has more in common with  them than he has with  his own family, the pc moral being that the Laotian immigrants have become the inheritors of traditional American values.

The rest of the film builds upon this view as he mentors a young Hmong boy Thao in the ways of the American blue-collar worker including getting him a job. But Thao has a problem: a cousin “Spider” runs a local gang and is constantly badgering Thao to join the gang with a mixture of threats and inducements.

Walt sees that while the gang exists Thao is in danger of being dragged into its sphere. Eventually, in a Christ-like self-sacrificing moment, Walt allows himself to be killed by the gang to save Thao. The gang shoot him dead and are arrested for murder thus removing the threat to Thao’s future. The overall pc moral is that immigrants are good and will continue the American tradition as  soft corrupt white America declines. continue the American tradition as soft corrupt white America declines.

Politically incorrect film reviews – Four Lions

UKCert (UK): 15

Runtime: 101 mins

Directors: Chris Morris

Cast: Adeel Akhtar, Arsher Ali, Kayvan Novak, Nigel Lindsay, Preeya Kalidas, Riz Ahmed

Bafta nominated (2011) for best British film

At the heart of this film lies a terrible cowardice. Four Lions has been promoted as a brave satire on Islamic fundamentalism, but it is the liberal equivalent of a schoolboy testing out a teacher to see how far he can go. Morris has a very good sense of what will be tolerated in these pc times.  

The story is inspired by the London bombings of July 2005, the 7/7 explosions. But instead of exploding bombs on the underground and buses, these terrorists intend to go ballistic during the London Marathon. The film follows their preparations to become suicide bombers and their actual attempt.

The cowardice is seen in the ethnic make up of the wannabe bombers – the Four Lions of the title – and the way they are depicted. One of the bombers Barry ( Nigel Lindsay) is white and English and the others are Asian  - Omar (Riz Ahmed), Waj (Kayvan Novak), Hassan (Arsher Ali). A fourth Asian member of the group Faisal (Adeel Akhtar) blows himself up accidentally before the attack on London. Blacks are conspicuous only by their absence, an omission which I suspect is indicative of an unconscious association of Islam with Asians, especially those of sub-continental origin, in the white liberal mind.

Compare that fictional group with the reality of Islamic terrorism in the UK. No native white Muslim has been convicted of actually trying to bomb any target within or outside Britain’s border or perpetrated a successful attack. Those who have died in a successful suicide attack or been apprehended during an attempt have been either Asian or black – one of the 7/7 bombers – Jermaine Johnson was black , as was the “shoe bomber” Robert Reid who failed to explode a bomb on a plane bound for the USA.

The purpose of making one of the bombers white and English is clear: to defuse the us- and-them nature of Islamic terrorism, the message of the character being that Islamic terrorism is not a matter of race or ethnicity,  but of belief and that such terrorists can be drawn from any part of the population, including those who are unequivocally indigenous. However, this effect is somewhat lessened by the failure to include a black amongst the bombers,

Having slanted the story through the ethnicity of the characters, Morris then reduces the seriousness of the subject matter to a Keystone Cops burlesque by making the bombers appear terminally stupid and grotesquely incompetent.

The white convert Barry is essentially a football hooligan who has found a new interest (Islam) and transferred his desire for mayhem to that. He is constantly belligerent in the most asinine way suggesting amongst other things that the group bomb the local mosque to politicize “their Islamic brothers”.

Of the Asian characters , Waj is the type who in real life would be described as having learning difficulties and the others are just routinely thick or  naïve. The nearest any of them come to normality is the group leader Omar who has a wife and child.  

Their incompetence is relentless. They all seem incapable of simply living independent lives, let alone organizing a co-ordinated suicide bomb attack. Whether they are at a training camp in Pakistan , testing out bombs in Br itain or engaged in the attack on the London Marathon they make slapstick errors. They move explosives and Faisal trips over and accidentally sets off a bomb which kills him. Omar and Waj go to terrorist training camp in Pakistan and fire a rocket at what they presume is the enemy. The “enemy” turns out to be some of their fellow Islamic terrorists whose numbers are considerably trimmed by the resulting explosion, which also brings enemy drones in to attack the camp.

When they finally go to London to explode their bombs, they manage to do so but in the most farcical fashion. Hassan loses his nerve and goes to hand himself into the police only to be blown up remotely by Barry using a phone.  Barry then fights with Omar  to prevent him contacting Waj  because Omar is going to tell Waj not to kill himself. To prevent this   Barry swallows Omar’s SIM card. This makes  Barry begin to choke. A  passer-by seeing him choking begins the Heimlich maneuver on Barry and whilst doing this sets off  Barry’s bomb.  And so it goes on . Omar gets hold of another phone and attempts to talk Waj into giving himself up , but the line is lost as the police charge the kebab shop Waj has retreated to where he takes hostages. Waj panics and detonates his bomb . Finally, Omar in despair, goes into a chemist shop and explodes his bomb.  

This representation of the bombers as fools and incompetents is dangerous. It implies that such people are so idiotic that the threat they represent is, in the larger scheme of things, negligible. Not only that, but the film says look, only really stupid and inadequate people with an incompetence bordering on cretinism would engage in this type of activity.

The problem with this message is that the 7/7 bombers did manage to carry out a coordinated attack on London,. They had the wit to construct effective bombs (even the bombers in the film were given that ability which rather clashed with their general incompetence ) and the organizational abilities and discipline to carry out the bombing. Four Lions is attempting to do with Islamic terrorists what  was done with Hitler, represent the object of danger as a figure of fun.  That is a dangerous thing to do because it sanitises the enemy.

If Morris had wanted to make a truly courageous and honest film about Muslim terrorists in Britain, he would have left the indigenous population out of it, had a mixed group of Asians and blacks as the bombers,  shown the terrorists as something more able than blundering blockheads and, most importantly,  included in the screenplay the type of fanatical hatred of this country and its people which can be found on so many Islamic websites and not only on those sites commonly viewed as extremist.

Politically incorrect film reviews – Machete

Director: Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez  104mins  Released 2010

Starring: Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Steven Seagal, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan , Michelle Rodriguez,

This is a shameful film for any American actor to have agree to appear in.  Reviewers have generally given it a panning simply on the grounds of its general cinematic  incompetence, with a few of the  more “sophisticated” hacks  speaking knowingly about  it being a spoof on B movies  which builds upon the Grindhouse double bill  (Planet Terror and Death Proof ) Rodrigues made with Quentin Tarantino a few years ago. The reality is that it is simply an artistic  mess .  But none of this is the reason why it is shameful.  That distinction rests on the fact that the film is an unabashed propaganda vehicle for mass Mexican immigration into the USA which rams home in an excruciating  gross fashion  the message white unhyphenated  Americans BAD, Latino immigrants GOOD.  I would like to say Goebbels would have been proud of it,  but sadly I cannot because he would never have made anything so bluntly crass in its message.

The plot is liberal agitprop at its most over-excitable. Robert De Niro is  Texas  Senator John McLaughlin who is campaigning against illegal Mexican immigration and for the construction of a  barrier across the USA to prevent easy  illegal immigration.  He likes nothing better than to spend time riding out with a group of border-enforcing vigilantes  led by Don Johnson as Von Jackson. Early in the film  McLaughlin shoots dead  a female “wetback” with relish and just to make sure the message of his unequivocal  evil strikes home,  the woman is pregnant.

On the other side of the immigration argument is a one-time Mexican government agent (Danny Trejo as Machete Cortez) has his wife  and daughter  murdered by a drug baron (Steven Seagal  as Rogelio Torrez) whilst on duty.  This sends  him on the run and we next  meet him living in Texas illegally whilst  trying to eke a living as a day-labourer. 

 Machete is approached by  a man who unbeknown to him is the Senator’s spin doctor (Jeff Fahey as Michael Booth) as well as being a corrupt businessman. Booth offers  Machete $150,000 dollars to shoot McClaughlin,  saying he wanted him dead because McClaughlin  is all for sending illegal Mexican immigrants back home  and that would ruin the economy of Texas which it is claimed is dependent on illegal Mexican labour.   Machete is dubious but reluctantly agrees after Booth threatens to set US immigration on him.

 But it is a set-up. Just as Machete is preparing to shoot the Senator  a shot rings out and  Mclaughlin collapses  with a leg wound.  The non-fatal shooting has been arranged by Booth to gain the Senator support  by portraying a Mexican immigrant (Machete) as the would-be assassin.   However, Machete evades capture and  then goes on the run committing ever greater mayhem as he goes, stopping only to donate  his $150,000 to  the leader of  Mexican group devoted to smuggling Mexican immigrants into the USA (played by Michelle Rodriguez ) who variously goes by the names  Luz or Shé and runs her operation from a fast food van.(I am not making this up, honest!)

As Machete  weaves his shambolically violent way  through the film his  brother, a catholic priest played by  Cheech Marin, is killed by Booth  by crucifying him to the cross in his church. This  prompts  Machete to kidnap Booth’s wife and daughter April  (played by Lindsay Lohan in the least demanding “starring” role ever)  and Luz shoots dead  Booth as he attempts to find them.  The final stages of the action if it can be so dignified has Machete, Luz  and co engaging in a fight with the border vigilantes and (natch) routing them. In an heroically laboured piece of dramatic irony ,  Senator McLaughlin escapes, but is shot dead  the remains of the  vigilante group  who mistake him for a Mexican.

A US immigration officer Sartana Rivera (Jessica Alba )  of Mexican origins pops up throughout the action  and moves during the course of the film from being accused of being a  renegade helping the gringos who is  hunting Machete  to a supporter of Luz’s organisation who gives  Machete illegally obtained papers legalising his position in the USA.

That all sounds pretty silly doesn’t it? I dare say if Rodrigues was  challenged over the one-eyed portrayal of illegal immigration as  good and resistance to it as evil  he would try to shrug off it off by saying he was being ironic or merely spoofing B movies.  But that will not wash. There is the clearest of political messages being sent .   That message was immigrants have the right to come to the USA regardless of what Americans think. Indeed, it goes further than that: it says to stop them coming is criminal and only the vicious racist would dream of doing so. To reinforce this point ceaselessly,  every anti-immigrant character from McLaughlin to the humblest vigilante is portrayed  as  either having no redeeming feature or ,as is the case with Sartana Rivera, as someone seeing the light and switching their allegiance to the immigrants’  cause. Those who are pro-immigrant  throughout are presented as being without moral blemish.

The depiction  of Americans taking the immigrants’ side is a prime propaganda theme throughout. Not only does Sartana betray her duty as a US immigration officer, but doctors and nurses at a hospital are shown to be part of Luz’s group,  and one of the security men at Michael  Booth’s house suddenly gets the urge to say about illegal Mexicans that  “We let them into our homes, we entrust our children to them but we say they shouldn’t be here. It’s crazy”.   His fellow security men agree. Well, of course, the “we” here is not the “we” referred to by the security man.  He means the entire population,   but the “we” who make the decisions are the haves not the have-nots.   The latter are in reality fiercely opposed to such immigration and are the ones who have to bear the consequences of the immigration through competition for jobs and houses, higher taxes for welfare and the general misery of either having to live in the invaded areas or move out.

But to tar anti-immigration proponents with the racism brush is not enough for Rodrigues.  Michael Booth is presented as the immoral face of business. He supports  the idea of the anti-immigrant barrier not because he is against immigration but because such a barrier would allow the flow of  illegal immigrants to continue by making it possible for the likes of him to control  by controlling the entry points.   There would still be illegals but they would have to pay more to get into the USA.

The saddest thing about the film is Robert De Niro.  He has for all too long  been turning up in films  primarily to collect his pay packet. Here there is no primarily about it.  In easily the worst performance of his career, the awfulness of his acting is only mitigated by being placed against the  backdrop of a cast producing even more embarrassing fare.

What would have been an interesting film  on the subject of mass Mexican  immigration into the US?  How about one which showed it for what it is, an insidious form of conquest, with those resisting it being seen as patriots defending their territory , the immigrants as invaders and those Americans who supported and facilitated the immigration as traitors?  Somehow I doubt whether that film will get made any time soon.

Politically incorrect film reviews – Made in Dagenham

Made in Dagenham

General release 2010

Directed by Nigel Cole.

Main cast:  Sally Hawkins,  Bob Hoskins, Kenneth Cranham, Miranda Richardson,  Rosamund Pike, Jamie Winston, Andrea Riseborough and Geraldine James.

This is a piece of childishly crude feminist propaganda, a fact which has (sigh) inevitably  guaranteed it glowing reviews in the mainstream British media.    The film, based on a true event, is set in 1968 with the machinists at the Dagenham Ford factory (all women) up in arms at being downgraded to  unskilled which provokes them to strike.  They may have been justified in their anger, but the film is so one-eyed in its portrayal of the argument for equal pay that it has all the veracity of a Tom and Jerry cartoon, with the male characters in the role of Tom and the women cast  as Jerry.  British listeners to the BBC Radio 4 serial The Archers will have a good idea of how the men are portrayed, as weak  or  moronic bastards.   Their roles call for very little change of facial expression as all that is required are looks of bafflement, anger ,  fear and condescension.  

Sally Hawkins as the shop steward Rita O’Grady is marginally less irritating than she was as Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky in which she carried cheerfulness to the point of imbecility, but to balance this slight relief  her character of  Rita  is even more unbelievable.  She  begins as a neurotically nervous cockney factory hand who transmogrifies overnight,   in heroically unconvincing fashion, into  the leader of the women after their original shop steward  Connie  (Geraldine James)   becomes terminally distracted by her personal  life.  (This involves a tiresome sub-plot revolving round Connie and her husband  George (Roger Lloyd-Pack) who is, yes,  you have guessed it, useless because of his experiences in bombers in the war, the feminist sub-text being the suffering of women lumbered with a man )

With the exception of  the union convener  Albert Passingham (Bob Hoskins), the men routinely behave in a male chauvinist fashion along the lines of “don’t you worry your pretty little head about it”.  As for Albert, he  might best be described as a Quisling in the feminist cause. It is one thing to believe in equal pay, quite another to be indecently gleeful when the machinists’ strike brings the entire Ford factory to a halt and puts thousands of men out of work.

Miranda Richardson as Barbara Castle has the most cringeworthy scenes, either  humiliating two of her senior civil servants (played by Joseph Kloska and Miles Jupp) who literally cower before her,  fraternising  in sisterly solidarity with the Dagenham women’s representatives  or haranguing  Harold Wilson (a rather feeble effort by John Sessions).

There are  modern feminist stereotypes gratuitously thrown in for good measure.  Andrea Riseborough plays a promiscuous girl who is taking the same view of sex as men (and thus becoming in feministspeak empowered) and Jamie Winstone is a wannabe model  who eventually has to choose between Ford giving her a break into modelling and remaining true to the strikers. Guess which she chooses. Yes, that’s right, it’s support the strikers and go back to machining after the strike is over.  Thus sisterly solidarity is verified.

The working class male is not spared parody or lecturing.  Rita’s husband  Eddie (Daniel Mays) is besieged with clichés as he is shown struggling with household chores while Rita is off on union business. He is also a target for stern feminist lectures.  He tells Rita he is not happy with her going off on union business all the time. He is accused of trying to keep her in her place.  He has the  temerity to suggest  that it might not be all for the best  that the factory has been brought to halt by the machinists strike putting thousands of male breadwinners out of work. He is told  sternly that he is being unreasonable.  At his wit’s end, Eddie makes  a heartfelt  inarticulate  plea to Rita  by pointing out that he  is a good husband who works,   doesn’t go out on the booze, beat the children or hit her.  This provokes a short  denunciation worthy of a Soviet  commissar as  his wife shrieks that  such behaviour should be the male  norm. Rita then heads  off on yet another union trip. The saga ends with Eddie making a Maoist-style confession of fault as he  catches up with her as she addresses the TUC conference.

Monty Taylor (Kenneth Cranham)  as an old-style union fixer, a man  in favour of compromise and perhaps complicity with management ,  and all too fond of his expenses. He is cast firmly in the role as the enemy within the feminist camp for not being rigidly aggressive and unreasonable. As he dealt in moral  greys rather than blacks and whites, he did bear a vague resemblance to a real human being.  It was by far the best performance in the film.

Unambiguously   risible is the relationship between Rita and Lisa  (Rosamund Pike) the wife of the managing director of Ford in Britain Peter Hopkins (Rupert Graves). Lisa is decidedly posh and wealthy, yet strangely her son  goes to the same school as Rita’s boy, which is where they meet. Not only that , but the two women rapidly form a mutual admiration society  with Lisa at one point  arriving on Rita’s council flat doorstep to assure her that having obtained a first in history from Oxford ,  she had always wanted to know from someone who was making history (in this case Rita) what it was like to make history.  (I must confess I could not stifle a guffaw at this point).

Poor Lisa is also subjected to  a second scene which could only provoke derision. Ford of America send over an executive (Richard Schiff as Robert Tooley)  to sort things out. Tooley goes to dinner at the Hopkins’ house  where he is treated to a lecture by Lisa about the iniquity of Ford’s treatment of the machinists.  Her husband Peter unsurprisingly shuffles her off to the kitchen to stop her talking. This is portrayed as an outrageous side-lining of Lisa as having nothing useful to say because she as a woman. Any normal human being would interpret as a man  not wanting his wife to queer his pitch with his boss.

What the film failed to address  in any meaningful fashion  was the social circumstances  of the time.  This was an age before it was thought reasonable for women to be single mothers or for a man and a woman to set up home without being married. The norm was for couples to be married with the man as the breadwinner. If the woman worked it was a bonus but not considered essential. That being so it was quite reasonable for the men in the film to believe that the prime good was for the male wage to be put before that of the female.   Yet when this idea was raised by the odd character in the film it was treated as absurd. In 1968 it was the norm.  There was no conception within the film that in the social circumstances of the time the men might have had a point. These were working class people who relied on their pay just to survive from Monday to Monday. Nor was there  an attempt to reflect on  what 40 years of feminism  have wrought; no  questioning of whether women with children working  would be a be a long term good or the fact that we now have a world in which it is impossible for large swathes of the population not to be able to afford to have a family life without the woman working.  

A shame that a strong cast was wasted on such ludicrous stuff.