The Craft of War

I initially took advantage of my unexpected free friday to go to the Academy and catch a matinee of something entertaining enough, and fitting for a nice discussion afterwards. So I went to see a movie no one in America saw, Warcraft, and my experiences today have assured no one will continue to see it.

The lights dimmed, the coming attractions were shown, and right as the feature presentation titlecard was projected onscreen the entire screen went black. After a tense 45 seconds I realized that this was not some buildup to an epic opening scene, and went down to let the management know that the movie was broen.

A half hour later, and a half hour of me sitting in the aisle next to the projection booth listening to the employees argue with technical support on the telephone, the manager came out and said the movie showing was cancelled.

So i went downstairs and walked into Eye in the Sky, which started at that exact time and I was considering going to see it soon anyway.

Eye in the Sky is a horrifically realistic depiction of our mechanized and detached form of asymmetrical warfare and espionage. Playing out in real-time the movie depicts the buildup to and aftermath of a British led/American executed drone strike on a suspected gathering of terrorists in a suburban Nairobi neighborhood, and the debate over the cost of the collateral murder of civilians caught in the blast radius.

I don't have many jokes to make here, not everything can be about the fantasy and escapism of entertainment, there are times we need a sobering reminder of the bitter reality to keep ourselves grounded.

The movie is excellently cast, Helen Mirren is a commander of a british intelligence unit overseeing the escalation from the capture of a terrorist into the targeted assassination, Aaron Paul delivers a performance of the drone pilot thousands of miles away in a Nevada Air Force base that is nothing short of superb and reminding just how goddamn good of an actor he is, and Alan Rickman in his last performance is the general liaison with the prime minister's cabinet who are watching the strike and constantly passing the buck over whether or not to authorize something that can conceivably kill a lot of innocent people.

On the ground in Nairobi you see the everyday life of a husband and wife and their young daughter who live immediately next to the gathering of targets (humanizing the people that we most often see on our tv screens as just pixels and nothing else), and the tragic set of circumstances that make us wonder who really is the villain in a conflict fought uniformly off a battlefield amongst people who have no say whatever in which side they want to be on.

P.S. It seems really inappropriate to dedicate this to Alan Rickman, like, not that he doesn't deserve remembrance but this is a uniquely poor choice of a "in loving memory of" titlecard at the start of the credits. The tone is all off.

I'll probably see Warcraft soon but i'm not holding my breath since it's such a neutral and completely pointless venture. But you should probably see Eye in the Sky. Everyone should. That orange turd piece of shit motherfucker that i don't even have enough insults for Trump and his 50 million supporters who clamor for taking out the families of combatants with drone strikes should see it, then the exits to the theaters should be barricaded and the theater burned down while the Basterds fire randomly into panicked crowds of Nazi filth below them.

Oh wait life isn't a Quentin Tarantino movie and nothing is just or fair