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bobtodrick
Reviews
The Wall (2017)
The Last Two Minutes Ruined It
Up until the last 2 minutes it was only a bad film. I imagine it was supposed to be mix of a psychological thriller as well as an anti-war diatribe. The conversation back and forth between the two main characters was obviously supposed to make the viewer question why someone would go to fight a war in a far off land. But there was still enough to keep ones interest, even if the premise was far fetched and a lot of things just weren't real..for one thing most sniper teams are supposed to check in on a regular basis, and snipers go through rigorous psychological training and wouldn't 'crack' under pressure as quickly as the main character did. As I said...passable entertainment until the last two minutes...at which point the ending was so fantastical as to make it ridiculous...yet there were a couple of outcomes the director could have used that would have been somewhat believable. I don't say this often...but the last two minutes left me feeling that I had wasted an hour and a half of my life.
Dirty Wars (2013)
A little too much 'fiction' for my tastes.
Just another anti-American diatribe. Do you really expect that a Taliban or Al Qaeda member is going to admit it on camera to a western journalist who is obviously sympathetic to their cause? In the first scenario, wherein the Afghani police chief is killed...which Mr. Scahill says proves they were innocent...he was a police chief for goodness sakes. I guess Mr. Scahill has missed all the occasions in the news where members of the Afghan National Police have murdered either other legitimate police or ISAF personnel. Also, when interviewing the Yemeni sheik the filmmaker claims that three years before the interview (2011) there were no Al Qaeda in Yemen. Doesn't jive with the very well respected Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who in his book 'Taliban' (considered to be the best book on the subject) claims that Al Qaeda was in Yemen in the years just prior to 9/11. But hey...he does state his film is a blend of fact and 'fiction'.