I found myself eating a chicken teriyaki bowl from Ivy Noodle, watching Behind Enemy Lines today, and I got very worried. I really liked this movie when I first saw it. I thought it portrayed bravery, honor and courage in the face of evil and deception. I even still think those things.
But I never questioned the movie itself. Their was Owen Wilson, stuck behind enemy lines, and we had to get him out. The movie downplays the consequences a lot, though. They make one blatant reference to it, by the French-sounding NATO admiral guy. Then he turns out to be a power-monger or something like that, and his previous, completely valid point that the US ignores everything that is happening around it, is completely written off.
So, logically, I asked myself, WWID? Admittedly a tough call. In saving the pilot, Gene Hackman basically resurrects a war. I think the movie says that is ok b/c it was secretly going on anyway, so no big deal. But let’s it wasn’t. Let’s say, instead, hypothetically, that two soldiers were kidnapped by a terrorist regime in a country neighboring one of our close allies, who will can call Israel for this purpose. Is the attempted rescue of those two worth the guaranteed war and therefor deaths of hundreds more of our citizens? Is it worth putting this hypothetical country back into a civil war and deligitimizing the government that had been (cancel) friendly to us?
I clearly don’t know the answer, nor does anyone else, and that doesn’t worry me. I wonder, though, how many kids, or young adults, have thought about it. I wonder whether that is even a decision to the people who actually make decisions. I wonder whether that (bad movies) gives or helps give us our image worldwide. We sure are thought of as cowboys. Are we?
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