Clint Eastwood Makes Good Movies

The impressive films directed by Clint Eastwood, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima”, expose the often unheard of parts of the Pacific offensive during World War II. Each film tells the story from the point of view of either the Americans or the Japanese as they fight each other during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Helmed by Clint Eastwood, the stories are unabashedly honest from both sides. History tells us that Americans are the good guys and the Japanese are the bad guys, but these movies showcase that's not the case. This has been done before, and the concept is not new, but these movies do a really good job of showing the human side of war.

In “Letters to Iwo Jima”, the main protagonist Saigo just wants to get home safely to his family and his journey was harrowing. It was frustrating that the American soldiers and Japanese officers made his efforts next to impossible. The Americans were bent on decimating "the enemy," while the beaten Japanese field officers ordered their men to kill themselves rather than be "dishonored" by being caught.

In “Flags of Our Fathers”, American soldiers violated human rights because it was convenient for them. The traditional view from World War II is that the Americans are good guys, but they committed war crimes just as the “bad guys” did as well. Now, the severity of war crimes was different, but mistreatment is mistreatment. America did not do horrific "medical research" on our enemies, but cruel treatment was common on both sides. This honest look at this issue was well executed by Eastwood.

Although a difficult pair of movies to watch, they show the need for the humane treatment of people during war. It seemed as if Eastwood flipped stereotypes on their head- the bad guys were the Americans and the good guys were the Japanese. Hats off to him for boldly exploring alternation views to a historically and popularly held conception of how World War II really was!

Being “A Man Apart”- Spoiler!

The fairly predictable “A Man Apart” shows a little grittiness, a tough but sensitive Vin Diesel, and lots of action. The story plays like a textbook script- a cop brings down the leader of a drug cartel, the new leader “El Diablo” sends hit men to take him out, his wife is killed, and our intrepid cop goes on the rampaging revenge path. He breaks a few skulls and rules along the way, and then has a final showdown with the new leader and blows him away. Wait. No he doesn’t!

This is where a Season 1 of “24”ending would feel most natural. Diesel cathartically killing the man who was responsible for the death of his wife would have been the predictable Hollywood ending. Diesel has the means and the “moral right” to exact his revenge. Armed, he finds El Diablo in a Mexican village sipping on a margarita or whatever. You think he’s going to grab his gun, point, and pull the trigger.

Instead, Diesel lets his law enforcing buddies surround El Diablo and arrest him. This is a surprising ending in a world and culture that values revenge. We want to see the bad guy go down, to “get what he deserves.” And yes, criminals deserve justice for sure. But at the hands of a lone avenger, a vigilante? There are laws against such actions. Everyone is lawfully guaranteed a trial. If guilty, any criminal is allowed due process, sentenced, and given punishment in accordance with crimes committed. Usually in Hollywood, the hero dispatches the bad guy, dispatching as well the rights of the due process guaranteed by law.

“Children of Men” Save the World

The premise of “Children of Men” is pretty ingenious. In an apocalyptic future in which no woman can get pregnant, the world is in chaos. The youngest person alive is a celebrity. No cause is found for this bizarre phenomenon. The end draws near. Suddenly, a young woman is found to be pregnant. If people knew about this, there would be riots. So, in secrecy, she is shuttled off to a mysterious island so that scientists can find out why she's pregnant. The movie spans this transport of the pregnant woman to a place of safety. There is a major biblical parallel; a helpless baby born in a dark world and the sacrifice it took to ensure the safety of mother and child by the protagonist. The movie really played up the idea that the birth of a baby was a scientific impossibility.

What the premise says about our world is up for debate. I had a conversation with a man on a train one time about M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening," a movie we both disliked. However, I was given a new perspective on the movie that may translate to "Children of Men," I suppose. In Night's movie, plants start releasing a neurotoxin that causes people to dramatically commit suicide. The "point" of this is that we are killing ourselves by killing the planet, kind of like global warming but on a much more personal and dramatic level. Is the point of "Children of Men" that we as a human race are so antagonistic to each other that we are rendering the race sterile? Are we killing ourselves out of existence? Genocide, civil war, fighting over resources, religious fanaticism- are all these the possible cause of human extinction?

It’s an interesting allegory used at times in films for such purposes. If death is what we do, than death is what we’ll get. It’s sort of the reversal of Chaos Theory as explained in Jurassic Park. Instead of “life finding a way,” we find that “death finds a way.” We’ve been entrusted to take care of an earth. We have a moral responsibility to treat life as sacred. How are we doing on those fronts? The writer of “Children of Men” may have something quite provocative to say about that.

Let’s Go “Good Will Hunting”

Einstein once said that, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Will Hunting (Matt Damon), an Einsteinian genius, is nevertheless a fish who is trying to climb a tree in “Good Will Hunting”. Although he knows his mind makes him a mathematical powerhouse, he is the epitome of a self-sabotager. Those around him, especially the MIT professors who envy his ability to solve mathematical theorems with ease, wonder why Will wants to throw it all away to live in a seedy south Boston neighborhood and work as a laborer.

Will is smart, and not just with numbers. His incredible wit is matched by his sarcastic attitude about everything. Instead of dealing with any personal issue he’s confronted with, he’ll throw out all kinds of facts and cynical philosophy to avoid the personal introspection needed to answer the question. His brutal honesty about how he’s feeling and thinking is extreme, and the walls he’s built up are high and thick. The average psychologist is not a good fit for him, and he knows and exploits this to their utter exasperation. It takes an equally strong personality to counter Will’s verbal attacks, and Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) is just that man. Matching expletive with expletive, the two verbally duke it out like the street brawlers they grew up as.

Will’s defensiveness is hiding his wounds, and he doesn’t even know it. It takes Sean’s style of in-his-face therapy to eventually get Will to begin to tear down his walls, to admit his pain. It’s only then that Will sees the bigger picture, and that he was stuck in an endless, self-destructive cycle that kept him from the fulfilling life that he wanted. He finally realized that he was a fish meant to swim in the water, not scale a tree.