I WAS GETTING some popcorn and so missed the part of last week’s movie when Howell Raines resigned as executive editor of the New York Times. Not that I was surprised; they’d telegraphed the payoff in the setup scene a couple of weeks before, after Pinch Sulzberger assured Raines he wouldn’t accept his resignation even if offered, which is the equivalent of a character coughing in act one and dying badly in act three. If that’s the best they can come up with, then anyone postponing a bathroom break should run out just as soon as the board of directors offers Pinch its “resounding” vote of confidence. There’ll be just enough time to go and come back before we see him getting whacked. Similar predictability during scenes from the Middle East almost made me demand a refund on the grounds that I remember seeing this “Road Map to Peace” thing 10 years ago, when it was called “The Oslo Accords.” Though the roles have been recast and the dialogue updated, it’s still the same tired plot: Israelis are urged to make peace with people who announce they don’t want peace, and each time a bomber underlines the point by blowing up mothers and children in a café, some State Department official comments that this will only make peace more difficult. Film buffs will also notice the uncanny similarities to “Bridge on the River Kwai,” with Ariel Sharon picking up for Ehud Barak as Alec Guinness, realizing too late that “Oslo” and “Road Map” are code words for “kill all the Jews.” Of course, Yasser Arafat’s performance as Dr. Strangelove always brings down the house. Literally.
Cinematic convention dictated that, during a week in which we discovered more mass graves–some of them filled with bodies of children who’d been buried alive–the mayors of Tokyo (“Godzilla”) and Amity Island (“Jaws”) and every other horror-movie locale assured us that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that therefore the war had been manufactured. It will naturally be satisfying, as it always is, when the monster shows up in the last reel, as it always does, and swallows the naysayers whole.
The French made a cameo in a familiar role that some have criticized for being cliched and stereotypical. A hundred of their crack special-forces troops arrived in the capital of Congo as fierce battles between the warring factions broke out all over the city, killing an uncounted number of innocents. The French, however, never left their barracks. In the words of their commander, Colonel Daniel Vollot, “We are trying to impede the fighting through negotiations. We went between the lines, we spoke to the soldiers, to the leaders, but no one wants to talk, they want to fight.” Except, apparently, the French.
Comic relief, at last, was found in the Martha Stewart perp walk–and the audience really responded. Sure, most moviegoers would’ve preferred Ken Lay in the role of disgraced mogul facing 30 years in the slammer and a hefty fine, but the guys in marketing decided it would be a tough sell. Turns out they were right. And with the box-office appeal cutting across all demographics, they immediately began brainstorming on a sequel. Someone suggested indicting Martha’s assistant, suggesting that she may have shorted Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., after hearing that her boss was going down. Casting, however, killed the deal. A&E had already signed Sharon Stone to play Hillary Clinton.
Joel Engel is an author and journalist in Southern California.
