Recent Comments
Re: “The "C+ At Best" Team”
"I thought making the bad guys the military contractors was kind of a cop out, like: "hey, the American military ain’t so bad! It’s just those damn rogue operatives!" Who are, of course, in cahoots with that other set of rogue American operatives, the (boo! hiss!) CIA. It didn’t really strike me as a courageous form of criticism."
I thought so too for much of the movie, only to find that the last part does inject some sting into the criticism.
Because note how in the "good army as opposed to evil cia/contractors" reading, general Morrison (alongside Hannibal) comes to personify the former side. Morrison is the dutiful, responsible general who protects soldiers who just want to get the job done (the A-team) while the greedy and/or malevolent non-Army vultures are circling around his head.
And because the character of Morrison is set up to be that kind of signifier, the big revelation in Frankfurt throws a huge wrench into this reading of the movie.
On top of that, the fact that even after successfully completing a mission that should have exonerated them the A-Team is framed all over, can be read as another indictment of the institution of the military. Sure, this is an ending that was really forced on the movie by the original series which put huge emphasis on the "renegade" aspect (and no doubt also by the sequel potential), but that doesn't make it any less significant in the here and now. The urge to change that ending into something more wholesomely pro-military is felt hovering over the movie, I think, like it has been hovering over all of Hollywood especially since 9/11.
For me, therefore, the best political parts of the movie are encapsulated in Murdock's last big line: "They burned us again, Hannibal. We trusted the system and it turned on us." Arguably the sanest and clear-eyed insight uttered in the whole thing, how appropriate that it was delivered by a man that the military institution had branded insane.
Re: “The "C+ At Best" Team”
"I thought making the bad guys the military contractors was kind of a cop out, like: "hey, the American military ain’t so bad! It’s just those damn rogue operatives!" Who are, of course, in cahoots with that other set of rogue American operatives, the (boo! hiss!) CIA. It didn’t really strike me as a courageous form of criticism."
I thought so too for much of the movie, only to find that the last part does inject some sting into the criticism.
Because note how in the "good army as opposed to evil cia/contractors" reading, general Morrison (alongside Hannibal) comes to personify the former side. Morrison is the dutiful, responsible general who protects soldiers who just want to get the job done (the A-team) while the greedy and/or malevolent non-Army vultures are circling around his head.
And because the character of Morrison is set up to be that kind of signifier, the big revelation in Frankfurt throws a huge wrench into this reading of the movie.
On top of that, the fact that even after successfully completing a mission that should have exonerated them the A-Team is framed all over, can be read as another indictment of the institution of the military. Sure, this is an ending that was really forced on the movie by the original series which put huge emphasis on the "renegade" aspect (and no doubt also by the sequel potential), but that doesn't make it any less significant in the here and now. The urge to change that ending into something more wholesomely pro-military is felt hovering over the movie, I think, like it has been hovering over all of Hollywood especially since 9/11.
For me, therefore, the best political parts of the movie are encapsulated in Murdock's last big line: "They burned us again, Hannibal. We trusted the system and it turned on us." Arguably the sanest and clear-eyed insight uttered in the whole thing, how appropriate that it was delivered by a man that the military institution had branded insane.
