| RATING: | 40% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
It is bad enough that this cliché-ridden exercise is weakly-written, directed & acted, but this is a self-contradictory tv-movie tainted throughout with the genetic obsessions and xenophobia of its makers.
The approach to terrorism is the usual shutting-the-stable-door-after-the-horse-has-bolted approach so typical of Western culture. Fatal in politics and, in fiction, produces little more than empty-headed propaganda and woefully-inadequate and one-sided drama with the same latent desire to exacerbate problems rather than prevent them. This latter point is nowhere dramatized although it is crucial to the understanding of the situation presented here.
White man saving the world from the terrorism largely caused by the West is presented as a fairy tale of Whites helping Africa escape the plight Whites caused in the first place. At no point is an African shown helping himself: Africans are somehow incapable of doing this. This would-be hidden agenda is partly obscured by having attractive Black children suffering to allow White emotions to distract from their intellects. (Interestingly, the fictional African country here is subtitled 'Sangala, Africa', but would France be labeled as 'France, Europe'? Here, the Dark Continent remains utterly opaque - at least to Whites.)
The usual straw man argument of claiming torture is necessary to save lives is repeated with no evidence that this is so. Only in the movies, has there ever been a case of a ticking bomb that could only be defused by torturing a suspect almost to death to discover its location before large numbers of innocent bystanders are killed. That such an ahistorical hypothesis is used to justify immorality - without dramatic exegesis - proves the writers’ poverty of imagination and lack of original research. Even the Nazis never used torture for this reason – only to frighten occupied peoples; as a preventive not a cure. (Moreover, there is also, of course, the inevitable phenotypal hypocrisy of advocating torture for the dark-skinned, but resenting it when applied to the light.)
This political agitprop in the guise of entertainment never reveals the enemy’s point of view so necessary to defeating them, so we end-up with meretricious melodrama without an all-important historical or psychological context.
No comments:
Post a Comment