Propaganda can be 100% true, and remain propaganda. Up until recent history, our nation leaders knew this. Which is why there was limited censorship during previous conflicts. I assume you would not be surprised to know that a lot of information about previous wars were witheld from the public until after the conflict was resolved.
It is difficult under the best of circumstances to remain resolve in the face of hardship. War is a cruel and bloody business. People die, people are wounded, people are traumatized by war. Propaganda uses this to make emotional arguments that are designed to weaken the resovle of the civilian population.
There is a time and place for this type of movie. The time is after the war, not during.
Our culture, our way of life is under attack from both outside and inside. Where are the movies that support our efforts in this war? Only half the story is being told.
M*A*S*H (the movie, and the TV program) came out during the Viet Nam war. It had one message, war is hell and we can not win. I do not know how many young minds were influenced by the Movie or the TV show, but advertisers spend billions of dollars each year to convince us to buy their product so is it so far off to assume some were convince war is never the right solution.
What I am saying is that we live in a Republic and it is within the power of the people to surrender (via their elected represenitives) to an enemy, I just want to make sure the people understand the consequences of surrender.
Hollywood, the main stream media, our culture in total is only telling us the bad things about war and none of the good.
The good you may ask is that we remain alive and free.
‘Stop-Loss’ tries to tackle anti-war/pro-soldier paradox
By Craig Outhier, Get Out
March 27, 2008
As a battle-tested Iraq war hero who cuts and runs when Uncle Sam invites him back for more, Ryan Phillippe embodies the progressive protest-politics of Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss.” It’s anti-war but pro-soldier; love the player, hate the game.
Unfortunately, the anti-war/pro-soldier paradox is one that rings much truer in real life — plastered on pickets, shouted from street corners — than it does in Peirce’s meandering and uncertain drama. The filmmaker makes a gallant effort to speak on behalf of the modern American fighting man, but her own protests drown it out.
Like Peirce’s haunting and expertly proportioned debut feature, “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999), her latest movie profiles a child of the American heartland pushed to the fringe.
Phillippe (“Breach”) plays Sgt. Brandon King, a Texas good ol’ boy who returns from a hellish tour of duty to proud parents (Linda Emond and Ciaran Hinds) and a parade through the middle of town. Sure, Brandon is happy to receive his Purple Heart and Bronze Star, but his primary concerns are folksy. The smell of onions on the highway.
Tasty barbecue.
More to the point, Brandon is dealing with imminent civilian life in a much healthier fashion than his reservist squadmates, several of whom are also close childhood friends. Steve (Channing Tatum from “Step Up”) is so jacked up that he digs a “Ranger grave” in his front yard and sleeps in it. Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt from “Brick”) can’t stop hitting the bottle.
Which makes it somewhat jarring when Brandon — informed by his commanding officer (Timothy Olyphant) that he will be forcibly redeployed to Iraq under the government’s controversial “stop-loss” policy — immediately loses his cool and goes AWOL. Huh? Even-tempered, duty-bound Brandon? Due to Phillippe’s famously suck-cheeked acting style or Peirce’s episodic screenplay (co-written with journalist Mark Richard), we never get a sign.
Now a fugitive, Brandon hits the road with his best friend’s fiancee (Abbie Cornish) and makes a beeline for, of all places, Washington, D.C., to plead his case with a U.S. senator. There will be encounters along the way — a visit with a maimed comrade (Victor Rasuk from “Lords of Dogtown”); a run-in with a fellow deserter who’s also “layin’ low,” in the parlance of the underground — all of which feel vaguely counterfeit, like supporting paragraphs for a thesis, not natural progressions in Brandon’s story.
What’s more, Peirce’s romantic depiction of macho soldier bonding feels a bit overstated, like somebody waxing poetic about a foreign city they’ve never visited. Naturally, Brandon and one of his buddies have to duke it out on the grave of a buddy. Es muy macho, no?
REVIEW
‘Stop Loss’
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Channing Tatum, Abbie Cornish
Behind the scenes: Directed by Kimberly Peirce, from a script by Peirce and Mark Richard
Rating: R (graphic violence and pervasive profanity), 103 minutes
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Grade: C