This movie despite being largely fictional does contain a very heavy amount of fact. Despite the fact that the names have been changed, you have a reporter from a respectable media institute who made false claims, a country who went to war on those claims without concrete verification, and highly stationed bureaucrats who don't listen to what those on the ground - who are actually competent and know what they are doing - are telling them. That's a fairly accurate description of the Iraq War. It's no surprise that this movie has been so derided by American critics and labelled as anti-American; like all good fiction, it shows up the flaws in its contextual situation through a woven story - it actually criticises a country which until now as labelled all criticism against it as "against the principles of freedom".
No wonder one critic actually called this movie "slander". It shows up the ineptitude in America's handling of a prolonged situation of conflict that is still causing thousands of unnecessary deaths on both sides, and a broken country brought to anarchy that still has not healed despite America's promises of liberation and democracy - YMMV whether tyranny in the form of a Stalin-istic dictator is better than pure anarchy. The only thing that this movie didn't mention was that the prolonged conflict in the Middle East is actively encouraging jihadists and those who now have a forum to preach their mutated perspective on the Qur'an. You may have noticed by now my bias on this subject, but I'm not the only one.
The one thing this movie does which no one on either side of the "American/Allies-Iraq war" debate can deny is that it shows clearly that now it is too late to pull out. The damage is already done, and the only way to try to make any future that isn't filled with disaster is to stick it through to the end. And I think that this is really the message that this film shows by the end credits: no matter how America and the rest of the world got involved, we're there now, and we're stuck until we figure things out.
Film An American movie for an American audience?
This movie despite being largely fictional does contain a very heavy amount of fact. Despite the fact that the names have been changed, you have a reporter from a respectable media institute who made false claims, a country who went to war on those claims without concrete verification, and highly stationed bureaucrats who don't listen to what those on the ground - who are actually competent and know what they are doing - are telling them. That's a fairly accurate description of the Iraq War. It's no surprise that this movie has been so derided by American critics and labelled as anti-American; like all good fiction, it shows up the flaws in its contextual situation through a woven story - it actually criticises a country which until now as labelled all criticism against it as "against the principles of freedom".
No wonder one critic actually called this movie "slander". It shows up the ineptitude in America's handling of a prolonged situation of conflict that is still causing thousands of unnecessary deaths on both sides, and a broken country brought to anarchy that still has not healed despite America's promises of liberation and democracy - YMMV whether tyranny in the form of a Stalin-istic dictator is better than pure anarchy. The only thing that this movie didn't mention was that the prolonged conflict in the Middle East is actively encouraging jihadists and those who now have a forum to preach their mutated perspective on the Qur'an. You may have noticed by now my bias on this subject, but I'm not the only one.
The one thing this movie does which no one on either side of the "American/Allies-Iraq war" debate can deny is that it shows clearly that now it is too late to pull out. The damage is already done, and the only way to try to make any future that isn't filled with disaster is to stick it through to the end. And I think that this is really the message that this film shows by the end credits: no matter how America and the rest of the world got involved, we're there now, and we're stuck until we figure things out.
I'm not the only non-American out there who thought it was high time this movie was made. This film is most certainly Anvilicious, and those anvils most definitely needed to be dropped.