I really like political films, films that highlight a worthy debate or challenge your ideas. But I think there’s two types – political thrillers which often have action scenes and world altering consequences, and political commentaries which are dialogue heavy and only have personal considerations.

‘Lions for Lambs’ is option two.

It’s written very well, brings out a number of issues and considerations and the 3 plot strands are all engaging. But even though one of the strands follows two injured soldiers running out of time behind enemy lines, there doesn’t seem a sense of urgency or suspense. Maybe it’s Robert Redfords directing, the editing or use of music but the three stories (as thought provoking and challenging as they are) seem to just run flat near the end.

Meryl Streep is spot on as an exprienced yet conflicted journalist, Tom Cruise turns his hitman from ‘Collateral’ into a politician and Robert Redford fits well as the college political science proffesor. But none of them really seemed pushed to their limit.

However, this is a film that doesn’t ask for big emotional climaxes, it asks for realastic, in-depth, on screen debates between intelligent characters for 10 minutes at a time. And I guess, although it’s a different ask of an actor, it’s still just as taxing and skillful to deliver.

Overall, the acting is solid and the issues are big, numerous and worthy of being explored. If anything, I think this film tries to introduce people to the complexities of the world we live in and then challenge them to do something about it. I know it worked that way for me.

If you’re in the mood to be open and think about things, this is really good. If you just want to switch off, see things explode and be taken on a ride, this isn’t the film for it. 3/5 stars.

Parental Advisory
Although there is no sex, nudity or gratuitous violence, the rating is deserved because of strong language and graphic injury. Having said that, the swearing isn’t as frequent and perverse as you would normally find in a 15 rating.

As you have may have guessed from incredibly witty title to day I will be looking at the wonderful Men Who Stare At Goats.  Anyone with a phobia of goats should probably stop reading now as everything is about to get slightly agricultural.  That is not because the film is about goat herders and their wonderfully exciting lives sitting in the rain under a tent made out of misery.  Instead the film goes on an exciting path that I will treat you to in full in just a second.  I want to send out my apologies once again.  I have still not recovered from my life threatening case of man flu and am hoping to move off of my own life saving treatment (paracetamol) in the next few days.  This will lead to a whole new round of FilmWipe and my ever increasing Everest of a challenge to write 365 film reviews in a year.  Frankly, I have got about as much hope of achieving this as Richard Blackwood has of becoming the British Will Smith.  We all remember the coffee enema Richard and we all know where your future lies.  Collecting your weekly food ration from Bow job centre along with an extra side of syphilis thanks to all the bumming your going to have to do in order to earn enough money to pay someone to watch the betamax tapes of when you were vaguely famous.  Every day you’re not on television is a day that millions of people can sleep at night knowing that they were not driven to attempting suicide.

Anyway back to the film.  The film is about Bob Wilton (Ewan Mcgregor) a small town reporter who thinks he has the perfect life.  However, after a chance interview with a man who claims to have been trained to by the army to use his brain so that he has psychic abilities. Shortly after this Bob’s life falls apart. His wife leaves him which sparks his journey to Kuwait in order to gain an exclusive on the Iraq War.   Here he meets Lyn Cassady who reveals himself to be one of the key figures in this psychic army.  Together they go on an adventure across Iraq to complete an undefined mission in a hostile country.

The film is derived from a story written by the wonderfully bazaar mind of Jon Ronson.  He has gone for a strange but highly entertaining take on the Iraq war and manages to make a number of criticisms of the failings of the British and American invasions without turning it into a pandering demeaning festival of unintelligible drivel like Lions for Lambs.

The film itself is a treat.  The acting is absolutely superb.  George Clooney steals the show from start to finish.  Rarely has an actor clearly relished a role as much as Mr Clooney has done with this.  His portrayal of Lyn Cassady is undoubtedly one of the cinematic highlights of 2009.  He manages to mix the strange, disillusional, psychotic and authoritative with an effortless charm that carries the film from start to finish.  He also manages to drag Ewan McGregor kicking and screaming into giving a performance worthy of an actor of his unquestionable talent.

I will freely admit that I can easily lose interest in Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey.  This may partiallly be caused by their strange double act in K-Pax or (and this is purely for Bridges) his performance in Arlington Road made me want him to be involved in a fatal accident.  However, Bridges certainly redeemed himself in my eyes with his performance.  He is actually enjoyable to watch.  You forget the wilderness years where highlights included the lukewarm Seabiscuit and the equally unenjoyable The Moguls. Spacey on the other hand is someone I have always revered and thought a great deal of even if I have loathed many of his performances (Superman Returns and The Life of David Gale). It is difficult to see if he has managed to put his acting back into first gear or if he still stuck in reverse (Current highlights include adverts for airlines, seriously they are better than his film acting).  However, he is enjoyable to watch and should be celebrated as the creepy American who controls so much of British theatre.

Plaudits really need to be given to director Grant Heslov.  He successfully managed to keep a film which has the potential to be strange and annoying to be sharp witty and highly poignant (As well as being slightly strange).

Overall I recommend this to anyone, apart from goats.  Although if you are watching a film with a goat I think it is time to attach a pipe to the exhaust of your car, put the other end of the pipe in through the passenger window, close all other doors and windows, and sit back and relax as you speed away to a painless suicide.

8/10 Goatastic

Robert Redford se tornou aquilo que Hollywood costuma chamar um “realizador”. Além de excelente ator, desde a década de 1960, tornou-se diretor e produtor. Sua maior obra, talvez, seja manter o Sundance Festival, o maior festival de cinema alternativo dos EUA e que já lançou filmes como “Sexo, Mentiras e Videotape” (Sex, Lies and Videotape, 1989, Steven Soderbergh), Cães de Aluguel (Reservoir Dogs, 1992, Quentin Tarantino), El Mariachi (1992, Robert Rodriguez), A Bruxa de Blair (The Blair Witch Project, 1999, Daniel Myrick e Eduardo Sanchez), Obrigado Por Fumar (Thank You For Smoking, 2006, Jason Reitman). Jogos Mortais (Saw, 2004, James Wan) e Pequena Miss Sunshine (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006, Jonathan Dayton e Valerie Feris), entre outros. Alguns diretores como Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith e Steven Soderbergh apareceram para o mundo no Sundance Festival. Só o Sundance Festival já seria uma justificativa para reverenciar o Robert Redford, que estimula a criatividade e a inovação numa indústria cada vez mais burra e repetitiva, mas além disso ele ainda é um excelente ator. Hoje em dia um daqueles que escolhe papeis. Redford já foi indicado ao Oscar como ator (por Golpe de Mestre (The Sting), 1973) e já o ganhou como diretor (por Gente Como a Gente (Ordinary People), 1980).

“Leões e Cordeiros” (Lions for Lambs, 2007) foi produzido, dirigido e estrelado por Redford, e foi o meu filme de sábado. Foi um que me escapuliu quando estava nos cinemas, então restou o Telecine Premium. O filme trata, em primeiro plano, da intervenção militar norte-americana no Afeganistão em três frentes diferentes: na primeira delas Jasper Irving (um Tom Cruise bem digno), um senador com pretensões eleitorais maiores entre os democratas, chama a experiente repórter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep, como sempre impecável), que apostou nele anos atrás para supostamente explicar para ela, em primeira mão, uma nova estratégia militar no Afeganistão. Na segunda frente o professor universitário Stephen Malley (Redford) tenta motivar um aluno (Todd Hayes, bem interpretado por Andrew Garfield) brilhante, porém desiludido com o “sistema” a voltar a frequentar as aulas de ciência política. Malley usa como exemplo dois estudantes que, indo contra as orientações do próprio professor, alistaram-se no exército para servir no Afeganistão. Uma missão desses estudantes executando a estratégia propagandeada por Irving é a terceira frente do filme e a que faz as costuras entre as outras duas.

O filme saiu em 2007 e criou, nos EUA, um debate muito grande por ser um filme supostamente “liberal” (com toda a conotação que esse termo tem por lá). Redford sempre teria sido um “liberal” e o personagem “conservador” do filme, o histriônico Irving de Cruise, seria uma “caricatura de conservador como os liberais os vêem”. Independente do debate sobre a guerra o filme, na minha opinião, é sobre dúvida e crença. Destacam-se aí dois personagens. A repórter de Meryl Streep e o estudante de Andrew Garfield. Os dois são céticos e resistem às tentativas de Irving e Malley, respectivamente, de engajá-los nas suas respectivas causas. O filme, nesse sentido, não é conclusivo. Tanto não é que, ao final do filme, não temos certeza se o estudante voltará a frequentar as aulas ou se a repórter escreverá um texto engajádo como quer o senador ou um denunciando-o. Nesse sentido Redford parece empurrar a escolha para o espectador, como que perguntando “e você, o que faria?”. A única dúvida que não fica, para Redford, é quanto a guerra. Os dois personagens que vão à guerra e o seu final trágico (e principalmente a maneira como ele ocorre) nos dão a certeza disso.

Um filme de diálogos longos e planos fechados. Um filme pesado e de reflexão. Mas um bom filme. Eu gostei, pelo menos. Nenhum dos atores deixa a peteca cair e a mão de Redford na direção é precisa, cortando cada uma das tramas no momento correto e não fazendo com que o filme pareça uma colcha de retalhos. A desejar, mais uma vez, a tradução do título. “Lions for Lambs” dá uma ideia de leões para cordeiros, ou ainda leões a serviço de cordeiros, que é como a citação aparece numa das falas do professor Malley. “Leões e Cordeiros”, na tradução, perde a relação de subordinação, onde os leões são os soldados e os cordeiros os comandantes. Enfim, talvez eu me preocupe demais com essa questão dos títulos…

Well for one trial weekend we are visiting my mild schizophrenia.  I had originally thought about pretending t interview the celebrities in a hilarious article which everyone would enjoy.  However after seeking legal (and lets face it after this mad turn a doctor would be more appropriate) I have decided we will profile some of films more interesting characters giving an honest and frank opinion on there careers and the work they have produced.  I will also point out that this is not going to be a dull chronological overview it will just be a mixture of points.  So sit back, relax and discover all about the crazy scientologist and brilliant actor that is Tom Cruise.

We will start of with what is in my opinion Tom Cruises best performance is performance in the now infamous Risky Business.  The film follows Mr Cruise as young Joel Goodsen.  He is left to look after his parents house when they go away.  He breaks his fathers Porsche and has to turn the family home into a brothel in order to earn enough money to pay for the repairs.  While this is Cruise when he is young it is still his best performance bar none.  You believe the character and his situation (something that you cannot always see in Cruise films) and you can see that there is a star in the making.  His on  screen chemistry with Rebecca De Mornay is brilliant and surely set cruise off on a pat of playing the dashing male lead for the rest of his career.

We will pick up cruises thrill of  a career at the Mission Impossible Trilogy.  I am actually a big fan of all three film.  It was the money that he made from the first two films that gave him complete freedom to go and do the things he wanted (i.e. appearing in Magnolia and buying his own film studio).  Cruise plays Ethan Hunt a secret agent working for the IMF (Not the international monetary fund as I initially thought).  I won’t give you a breakdown of all his roles in each film.  However, the first one stand out as he thrust into a position where he is accused of being a rogue agent who tried to steal a list of spy names to sell to another organisation.  The film is a masterpiece and surely illustrates that Brian De Palma was back on form (this has probably given him the freedom to pump mediocre films ever since).  Cruise struts around the screen with all the confidence of a classic Hollywood star and is certainly a film not to be missed

Fans of FilmWipe know that I struggle to keep saying nice things for too long.  While i good say that cruise was also excellent in Valkyerie (which is excellent) I would rather talk about some of his horrible performances.

Eyes Wide Shut is the worst film i have ever seen in my life.  Frankly i am not suprised that Stanley Kubrick died after making it.  I would have felt like killing myself after making that rubbish (he did not kill himself but i would have).  Nicole Kidman is terrible.  Tom Cruise is so bad i actually felt like getting sand paper and rubbing it against my eyes until I had removed all possibility of being able to see rubbish like that ever again.  I am sure Kubrisk sat very uncomfortably during those films.  The worst bit is undoubtedly the satanic orgy he finds himself in.  In no way to believe that Tom Cruise’s character is at an orgy.  Instead i do believe the dirty dog Tom Cruise is looking at all naked women and is using a mask to hide his dirty looks.

Lions for Lambs was his other horrible film.  Cruise is bad and the film is bad, even the presence of Meryll Streep can’t make it ok.

Overall Tom cruise is a great actor.  I have pulled some of his best performances.  And have picked out his worst.  Tell me if you agree leave a comment letting me know if you agree with my best and worst of  Tom Cruise.

Well due to unforeseen circumstances we are unable to bring you the review for the Aki Kurasmaki classic (fans need to pay attention next week for a trio of his films). So tonight we are going to look at the films coming up over the next month.  We will point out the ones to watch and the potential stinkers coming up on the horizon.  Reading this review might feel like a death march to Siberia for some of you, but hopefully it willbe a useful guide of what to look out for.  So sit back, relax, put your eyes in (if they’re glass) and plan your next month at the cinema.

Big River Man – This is a documentary about a big fat Slovenian Martin Strel as he attempts to swim the amazon.  This has been called the longest swim of all time.  While the film has garnered many good reviews and has been well received appears to have been well received by audiences it is not a classic and is likely to be a documentary that will bring momentary enjoyment but will leave little impression.  This ideal for anyone who likes BBC3 documentary’s or anything from channel 5s range of shock docs.

Fish Tank – The most exciting British film since Atonement.  Fish Tank follows the life of Mia an inner city UK teen who has come from a home destroyed by alcohol.  The film shows the grime of life in some parts of Britain and on paper seems the modern day version of Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. This should be watched by anyone who has half a brain and wants to watch an intelligent exciting film that offers a view of Britain many thought had been eradicated many years a go.  Check the blog at the weekend to see the review in full.

Hurt Locker – The films follows a group of bomb disposal experts who are working in Iraq.  It follows a team who have a new commanding officer.  He descends them into an unexpected world causing a tale spin of events which effect all of the characters.  On paper this sounds a relatively standard anti Iraq film reaching the lows of the horrible Tom Cruise epic Lions for Lambs. The film is a more interesting and more exciting attack on the American Invasion and on war generally.  This is definitely be watched by those who were against and probably a group of men who have got a brain greater than the size of an acorn (this is due to the fact there is plenty of action mixed with interesting points).     Check the blog at the weekend to see the review in full.

Love Happens – Aaron Eckhart and Jennifer Aniston play two people with difficult pasts who develop an attraction for one another.  Frankly this film looks as exciting as lukewarm water.  Aniston (who is not a film actress) looks as if she is going to play another beige character in a beige film.  Her performance is uninteresting and should be avoided at all costs.  Eckhart is an OK actor and will probably put in a performance that will make Aniston look as good as genital warts. This film should be watched by anyone in the mood for a chick flick and a group suicide.

Up – An exciting animated film about a retired balloon sales man who decides to travel around South America by attaching loads of balloons to his home.  He is joined by a small boy who stows himself in the house before he leaves. The film advocates the importance of the grand parent role in a child’s life.  The film is fun an exciting an accessible for even the greatest film snob.

The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

Gangs and Rites of Passage; false gun toting, Confederate flag waving patriotism; going off to some chosen university where the petty Rites of Passage are all about getting drunk, learning about sex and cheering with a herd of lemmings who share the passion for some local football team or national football team; We made it, we managed to hide ourselves within the herd of all those surging human instincts; or generally feeling that we are young and immortal with abounding energy to deplete our life forces and rebuild them, after our hangovers, with a quick nap, allows us, from around 17 to 22 to wake up every day and face the trials of life as if we had an adult heart and soul.

But the numbers in every single instance, without exception, is that by 18.6 years or 19 years, the Moon that marked a point, a unique point and position where you were born, returns once more to the exact spot from whence you entered life and took your first star fixed breath. At 19 years of age we are ready for the most intimate window of blessing in a whisper, that our Angels have waited to share with us.

But just at this point, when we are still unsure of our thinking, our understanding of ourselves as spiritual beings, confused by the ghetto, the false patriotism that is spouted by military recruiters and the lies of the church and the failed insights of priests and community and congregations alike, at this sensitive point in our biographies, we are least likely to pay heed to the faint and potent indicators that our Angels have kept sacred for just this moment in our incarnation.

We can mostly recognize that our parents education has 100% failed to even comprehend the rhythms that lie in every human biography, these so called adults who are supposed to prepare the ground for you, well they have never even bothered to concern themselves with the universal details of each human biography. For it is with everyone, without exception, females and males alike that at around about 19 the moon’s first node opens the first flickering light that illuminates the inner world of what you sought to become and what you seek to learn in this earthly incarnation.

The meeting with this inner direction that applies only to you and your biography will come back every 19 years. The nineteenth, thirty-eighth, fifty-seventh, and seventy-sixth years ahead will find you reviewing with your Angel the entire pattern, mistakes and choices that you made in life. It all starts, the first lap of our long journey starts at approximately 19 years of age with our Angel attempting to create a moment in the turmoil of life that opens the eyes of our soul.

Each and every biography has the same numerical patterns and each of these patterns must unfold in each and every biography. The individual events will appear differently with each individual, but the profound lessons arrive on everyone’s doorsteps. I am focusing on only one specific event horizon, around the 19th year, because this is really the hardest and this is the one that sets us off in directions where we can lose our humanity or recover our humanity only later, or send us off on a Forest Gump/Parsifal adventure where we discover the magnificent divine wisdom of the world all by accident.

“The Fool is seemingly oblivious to much of life, is often naive, invariably wide eyed and innocent at much of life’s travails, and is someone clearly in dire need of divine protection. And in this respect, the Fool receives it… on a continual basis!

“For example, if Forest Gump is our model, then the Fool is the archetype of an individual honored by several U. S. Presidents, spectacularly successful in both war and in business enterprises, recipient of the benefits of both a loving mother and true, lasting friendships, and overall someone who really does quite well for himself.

“Other representations of the Fool include: 1) Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn ambling along the Mississippi River, carrying their belongings in makeshift satchels — both out to find high adventure and learn life’s lesson first hand, 2) the prodigal son in pursuit of the phenomenon of living, 3) an innocent Parsifal seeking redemption in the Quest for the Holy Grail, while experiencing all the positives and negatives the world has to offer, and/or 4) the wandering prince and minstrel, experiencing the slings and arrows of those who don’t respect or even trust any wandering individual, prince or not. The Fool is the quality in each of us that stirs at the thought of adventure and responds eagerly even to the hint of a new challenge. The Fool wanders in where others fear to go.”

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

Ignorant or inexperienced individuals get involved in situations that wiser persons would avoid, as in I’ve never heard this symphony and here I am conducting it: well fools rush in where angels fear to tread. It is the opening prelude to our own living gigantic biographical symphony and we are asked to conduct it without ever having grasped the rhythms and patterns in the laws of biography or the laws of music.

We are suddenly thrust in as the conductors and it feels like everyone is watching, the curtain has gone up and here I stand naked, revealed and winging it. Starting with this delicate 18 to 21 year window of our already started lifetime, well we don’t have a clue and our parents have no clue as to what our own little Beethoven symphony will be like. It will have strong dramatic parts, elated and soaring crescendos and cadences, it will have holy uplifting phrases and thundering drums. It will be our own biographies and there is a score and a tonal model for each and every biography just as there are precise laws of music.

Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread
And so I come to you my love
My heart above my head
Fools rush in, where wise men never go
But wise men never fall in love
So how are they to know
When we met, I felt my life begin
So open up your heart and let
This fool rush in

But one of the least prepared regions of the biography appears to be where the blind parents and community and nation, throw our young people to the wolves and cannot consciously, with awareness and alertness, assist the 19 year old and the 20 year old to listen to the highest indications that our unique and sacred Angels will offer us as windows into our own potential. Potentials that we may not have guessed yet or are still waiting to hear… But the indicators are there.

Our own Angels and our higher soul spirit Being will hover around the 19 year old and 20 year old and any of those faint glimmerings will be overwhelmed in the tangle of materialistic intentions of the the parents, the immature and deluded patriotism of relatives and friends and the empty phrases from politicians and meaningless limp mumblings from our local churches. This unsorted out mess is all that makes up the clump of uncooked chaotic cookie dough we call ourselves at 19.

Yet from this entire tangled mess of family and community relationships, we gather our little bag of experience and rush head long into the oncoming traffic. Nothing wakes us up more to our navigational potentials as our own immediate impacts with catastrophic and unyielding reality.

Pregnancy, DUI’s military discipline or our own lack of direction assail us. And, we have to listen very carefully, but we won’t, but we have to listen carefully to the clues as to our own unique and singular direction. We have to listen very carefully from 17 to 20 and watch for the beginnings of our own signs and wonders. These signs and wonders of our own will slowly become our navigational indicators through many of life’s trials.

Sometimes chance and synchronicity or coincidence will throw us a life line and at other times we deliberately have chosen the stubborn, bull headed path of learning everything the hard way. We won’t accept any faint intuitions and insights unless we are sure of the fact that we deserved, earned and won them and soon, before long we find that life is not fair and the undeserving steal and rob from the deserving. But we won’t listen to the little inner voice that speaks to us of how we screw things up all by ourselves. No, we want it the hard way, instead of the miraculous mercurial rich and personal meaning that awakens in our magical intuitions, we want the arbitrary human intellect.

Women have a better capacity for gaining and following the quick mercurial meanings and insights than most men. Women are wired to understand certain sensitive intuitions and nuances that literally blow right by men. Men need to become poets and musicians so that some kind of music can filter into the density of their hearts and weave light patterns, weave mercury’s intuitions through and through so that the tiny slumbering soul can feel intimate meanings, the way women normally can.

And in the long run we learn that our Angel’s are woven of this mercurial substance of synchronicity, music and intimate patterns of coincidence. This is how we learn the language of the stars in the working of events that happen directly to us and with us but we are too dull to receive the event and open ourselves with rich reflection of thought and communion to our emotions.

It is hard to learn the wisdom of tears and cherish the glow and warmth of laughter that is not mockery. In the long run we see rhythms and patterns weaving clearly within each human biography and they are based on real numbers and real Time points as we grow older. But it all stands before us as a confounded riddle of the Sphinx at 19.

Certainly there will be a teacher or a boss or a coach or an adult or a friend who truly can hear or is near hearing the real whispering of what the higher intentions are of why we truly sought for our life on earth. They are rare but they are there as part of our intimate guides through the chaos of this 19 to 21 year taffy pull of the soul.

If no deep impression comes to us, it means we weren’t listening or we drowned out the intimate sensitivity with mountains of superficial distractions in order not to hear and prove to ourselves that there are no intimate secrets, rather it is all just a ball of meaningless nothings. Existential nihilism in a pretty package of tattoos and flesh.

But none of our sought for answers are going to be merely handed to anyone because at 19 we have gotten used to having everything being handed to us without having to struggle down to the core of our beings to discern our own individual Moral Sovereignty. And that strange term, our Moral Sovereignty is the real life long struggle that is gonna lead us forward through the heights of success and the depths of despair. Our Moral Sovereignty gives us the right to be spiritual beings among other spiritual beings like ourselves.

Moral Sovereignty

“I had not thought about the seriousness of what I was doing when I walked into that recruitment center. Bill Clinton was in office at the time, and his belligerency had always been confined to invading only the most obscure and irrelevant countries in the world in a dilettantish (albeit deadly) fashion. It never occurred to me when I told the recruiter that I wanted to enlist that I was essentially giving my consent to go fight in a future decade-long guerrilla war in a tribal wasteland or to go fight in an urban free-for-all in the desert.

“That’s what really troubled me when I thought about how very close I had come to joining the military; the realization that I would have had to go to war whether I thought it was just or not. I would have voluntarily put myself in a position where other people – people I had never met – would have been able to tell me when and under what circumstances I would have to board a plane or a ship to go kill other people I had never met. And to top things off, those people I had never met who would have the right to tell me when to kill were politicians – the very same slippery scoundrels I had heard lying to me with a straight face my entire life. It was truly bone chilling to realize how close I came to surrendering my moral sovereignty to people I not only didn’t know, but in whom I had no trust to begin with.

“To surrender the ability to decide when and under what circumstances a man will kill other human beings is a serious matter – one that ought not to be taken lightly or entered into as though he is signing a car lease. Indeed, the decision to kill is the most serious moral decision a man can make in his life, which is precisely why he ought not to surrender the decision to anyone under any circumstances. The decision to kill ought not to be surrendered to a man’s wife, to his mother, or to his brother – and it especially ought not to be surrendered to the most mendacious creatures to walk the face of the Earth: politicians. If a man finds himself in a position where he must kill in order to protect himself or his family, he will know what decision he must make, but to kill other human beings just because a politician says so is the height of moral recklessness and irresponsibility.”

It is one thing to grasp slowly the power of Time and the unfolding of Time in ourselves and everyone else, but it is even more critical and imperative to locate the typical and powerful experiences that surround each and every soul as they encounter for the first time, in their own lives, the details and forces that swamp our emotions and rush to rob us of our Moral Sovereignty. Knowing what robs us of our Moral Sovereignty and knowing what it feels like when we have been touched by the Moral Sovereignty at the core of our I AM, at the core of our immortal soul, is learning to cherish shattering, and illuminating inner certainty. This is what our Angel and Higher Being grants us for reclaiming ourselves as Spiritual Beings on the Physical plane.

We derive great pleasure from experiencing the emotional exhilaration of highs and lows on our own little emotional adolescent roller coasters. This constant dysfunctional drama appears to us to be the essence of life. The Big Bong game. Everyone who thrives on being the center of their own and others emotional drama, constantly attract more and more crisis to their being and they become addicted to needing constant depressions and elations just to feel alive and not bored, all the while dragging everyone else into their self created storm tornadoes orbit. We become self-proclaimed petty drama queens requiring constant attention to fill our emptiness.

At this point we see everyone around us who live for the gossip, the trivia, feeding like swollen vampires on the Main Stream Media circus and current trendy comic horror shows and developing cults of fan worship because they cannot find their own Moral Sovereignty and their own moral compass so they suck off pre-packaged pulp fictions.

We certainly have not been schooled in the reality of how our own Angel’s hover over this delicate period between 18 and 21 because they are on assignment to us, and work in conjunction with and for our higher beings and our star. The very Moon that we carry with us as part of our own biology and biographies, triggers the gateway open at approximately 19 years of age for an intimate meeting. Nobody ever bothered to tell you that there is such a thing as a window into the Angelic world, that opens for a brief period in this age range and opens again and again every 18.6 to 19 years through our entire life path did they?

The Moon Node is the point where the Moon intersects the path of the Sun. Every month the Moon crosses the path of the Sun once on the way up-North Node and once on the way down-South Node. It takes about 18½ years for the Moon Node to return to its birth position. Rudolf Steiner stated that the days and especially the nights around the Moon Node return are the most important ones of our life and that at this time there is a thinning of the vale between the physical and spiritual world.

At 18.6 years our lives have now truly begun and we love to play catch up with how we daringly dive into new emotional and physical challenges and how we extricate or blame everyone else and circumstances when we can’t extricate ourselves from events and are forced to face jail time or having killed someone in a highway accident or got someone pregnant or ended up in a strange country with our limbs blown off, all may or may not happen, but our own uncharted emotional centers have certainly steered us into this. Because we had never heard, never even comprehended such a Freedom nor a complicated concept such as our individual Moral Sovereignty. We could never have guessed that Moral Sovereignty is the central core to the ongoing riddle of Freedom and our Angels.

At the core of the soul is a still eye in the storm that can hear and can listen and can comprehend when suddenly there is some sense of great compassion that seems to well up from nowhere, when suddenly we hear some depth and wisdom in our midst though everyone mocks it. We seem like utter fools if we attempt to follow the path of sincerity against the callousness of the petty cliques of our precarious popularity. Do we know what a true friend really is?

Our normal reaction to any stumbling attempts at truth or depth would be self mockery and envelop ourselves and others in the dumb dull dead zone where everything is mere trivia and tweets and truth is not allowed in to spoil the party. We are in the habit of dealing out sarcasm because it is beyond rare to have anyone insist or see in such delicate ideal moments, a whispered hint from our own Angels who have carried us through countless incarnations through our progress on earth.

Such whispered deep regions of the soul are tender and uncomfortable but we seek them in our most intimate and tender moments in our lovers eyes. Yet it is all around us, from children to the aged, these tender waves of endearments. They float everywhere in around and through us, but we can’t recognize them because they aren’t always tagged and redirected to our own petty selfish gratifications.

Human love and grace burble up and gurgle out everywhere like leaks in a sponge when you press the water out. We just fail to admire it and live for it and cherish it when we see it. Our Angels have such inexhaustible nurturing forces all around them and they stream it towards us at all times.

What it really means, this culmination up to our 19th year and every 19 years on into the future, our thirty-eighth, fifty-seventh, and seventy-sixth years reveals something you were never ever taught to recognize or gain any firm educational insight from. The sad educational reality is that none of those around you ever bothered to search deep enough or grasp human life with the depth of truth and sincerity required for glimpses into how our human biography has clear foundational and literal starry patterns woven into it.

Patrick Swayze gives a very stark example for us to remember his destiny by because from The nineteenth, to the thirty-eighth, and finally to his tragic death at fifty-seven years Patrick Swayze hit every mark the moon and our Angel has to offer. At 19 Patrick met the woman he would love for his entire life, until his death, all through the Hollywood romps and mayhem, Lisa Niemi. At 19 that unique person from which mighty love stories are crafted came into Swayze’s life.

In 1990 the eternal love story, the film, “Ghost” is released and Patrick made the film in his thirty-eighth year. This is the middle of his destiny. Patrick is given three Angelic windows. At the middle window of his incarnation, he makes the potently directed higher spiritual message film, “Ghost”. This mid-point opens vast opportunities and also reveals the amazing biographical forces that cut short his life at fifty-seven years of age.

At each point Patrick met with potent forces of love in the depths of the world. At 19 the love of his life; At 38 a powerful Angelic tale, about the higher love that exists in TIME; At 57 he closes the brilliant illumination he shed that allowed him to reveal some of the secrets people refuse to even contemplate, but our Angels certainly contemplate. That is that there is a Life after death and that human beings are immortal, eternal beings who participate in vast complex layers of reality along with our Angels. Our Angels live in the direct biographical score and symphony of our destinies. They are the ones that allow the invisible to surface up from the depths of our being. This is not taught in school. These things are not prepared or outlined for our immature comprehension, so we stumble blindly into destiny events that with any amount of understood preparation or illumination, may have given us clearer choices.

Carl Jung went through a region of his psyche that normal people and education are terrified to admit exists. All that Jung experienced privately he hid in a book called his Red Book. Jung entered this dark forest at his second Moon node, at 38 years old. “…in 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.” Finally this hidden RED BOOK of Carl Jung’s is about to be published. Where we can see clearly that below the surface of psychology there is a vast spiritual part of our nature which is never addressed. Carl Jung was called into this region by his own higher nature. If he was to stand before humanity and pursue the depth of spiritual experiences, his Angel let him have a few to see how he felt about it. The infamous RED BOOK of Jung’s reveals vast unexplored areas of the human psyche.

Emanuel Swedenborg 1688 to 1772 was a brilliant scientist until his 57th year. “His studies of man in works on the animal kingdom, the human brain, and psychology were published before 1747, when he resigned his post and gave himself to the contemplation of spiritual matters, especially to the work of making clear to mankind the true inner doctrines of the divine Word as he claimed that they were revealed to him by direct insight into the spiritual world after “heaven was opened” to him in 1745. Visions and communication with spirits and angels…” Here Swedenborg leaps into a totally different world of insight after having made a brilliant and solid reputation for himself in the non-mystical sciences. Swedenborg has all his windows thrown open at the time of his 57th year. The latent forces of his inner biography burst forth and turned this sober and down to earth thinker and practical scientist into a human being who talked directly to the Angels in the planetary spheres.

Exceptions to the Rule

Joan of Arc was 19 years old when she was burned at the stake. ” at her execution in Rouen, France she was 19. Her life dates were 1412-1431.”  Grasping something clearly in biography is understanding exactly when Joan of Arc was absorbed into the arms of her Angelic companions at the age of 19. In Joan of Arc’s case, we can clearly examine that Joan of Arc experienced the mighty forces of her spiritual mission with France, as a preliminary reality in the womb of her mother where Joan experienced the Holy Nights, just before she was born on Jan 6, Epiphany.

This is the exception to the rule, please don’t try this at home kids, it still meant that the Angelic world, which we encounter in slow biographical rhythms, was in Joan of Arc’s case brought to a 19 years on Earth conclusion in a fiery process that was laced with all of the deceptions and torments and lies that would normally have to be faced in the length of the entire biography.  Joan of Arc met all of them in one fell swoop, in a deed that served the Archangels and every future soul who would speak the French language who were yet unborn but destined to experience karma in France, all this was placed on a young girl’s shoulders by 19.  This was a unique and special circumstance brought about in cooperation between the Etheric Christ and Michael the Archangel. This is the reverse of that which is the normal pattern of biography and cannot be sought abstractly but must come about due to divine intentions placed into an individual soul.

So in order to think through the difference in a normal biography, Joan’s biography presents us with a  reversal of arriving at 19 and completing a powerful merging with one’s Angel. In an abnormal sense, Joan of Arc arrived at 19 and finished and completed her spiritual task in life. This differs from the normal biographical patterning where we start our ripening and maturing process, our individualization, at 19 and continue at intervals of  our thirty-eighth, fifty-seventh, and seventy-sixth years.

Joan completed and was embraced by her Angel and the Angelic world in a horrific and a mighty fire process of the Soul and Spirit.  The difference is that Joan of Arc was already destined, prepared, and  had chosen to intervene and do something that changed the entire Language and Archangel community and was spear headed by the Archangel Michael to penetrate the specific will substance of Joan of Arc.

Yet from our first baby teeth, to acquiring our own first grader teeth, to later when we gain puberty, all along the path, our biology and our intimate stars unfold our biographies until we approach our first moon node at approximately 18/19 years. We all follow the same rhythm patterns through the years and the only difference is to what depth and what self understanding we are able to grasp the lessons that we are being handed. The rule is that we have sought all the lessons that will come towards us. We have sought these very unique events that will impact us at specific moments in time.

These Moon incursions where our Angels come close to us, have long since disappeared from even a snickering of lip service. Nobody cares. Materialism rules and the science of ourselves as Spiritual Beings along with our higher family, the Angel community, has vanished from any sincere considerations.

Every 19 years our own little personal windows open up “…reflecting the synchrony between cosmic patterns and the rhythms active in the unconscious self. Thus the outer cosmos is synchronized with one’s own time organism, which was karmically composed during one’s pre-birth descent through the spirit and soul worlds. We can therefore expect such points to be strongly flavored by our karmic purposes.

“Moon nodes are points where the future breaks into the present; they can be quite dramatic….. A glance at the span between 18 and 19 shows that many young people experience a breakthrough – the meeting of an idea, or ideal, or special person – or experience a loss. The first complete node may well reveal the emergence of an altered sense of self that is a higher octave…” of the soul than previously experienced in our normal family settings.

Now for a typical experience of where we stand as we come through the Angel oracle of our 19th to 21st year, we stand at the threshold of becoming university students and pressured from all points including from within ourselves to make something of ourselves or fall into our own 24 hour stupid stupor of fun and frolic like we never had before.

One of the brief best challenges to this segment of life is the film, “Lions for Lambs“. Yes force yourself to really recognize the real stern challenges and choices that will now propel you into your untracked and untapped life and before you have even managed to recover from your 12th hangover in a month, you will find that life and destiny and your stupor will propel you toward the dawn of your character.

Disposing of our character and hiding in the herd are presented in “Lions for Lambs” by a significant teacher played by Robert Redford. Look at the experiences presented in this film very carefully because the sobering truths are part of our standard Rites of Passage during this portion of our biographies.

“There are two primary arguments that are being debated in the film. Argument A is presented by Senator Jasper Irving (played by Tom Cruise) who wants to initiate a new plan of long term sustainability in the Middle East with the highly visible American troops lingering around. The experienced television journalist Janine Roth (played by Meryl Streep) compares his plan to that of the Roman Empire, but he disagrees with her assessment.

“Argument B is presented by collegiate professor Dr. Stephen Malley who is trying to convince an underachieving student that the future of the country rests in the hands of the next generation. In his argument he presents the true fact that a large portion of the volunteers that join the ranks of the American military are recruits from the lower economic classes and the American ghettos. Within the same breath he points out the fact of complacency from the privileged youth, such as the underachieving student, who feels comfortable with his current status in life and doesn’t feel obliged to take a strong stand for his personal beliefs. In both arguments there are two players who are either arguing for his or her side or trying to disprove the argument of their opponent.”

Hierarchical Rank Domain
Angels – Individuals
Archangels – Folk
Archai – Time Periods
Exusiai and above – Forces and Kingdoms of Nature

The Nineteen-Year Cycle

“The 19-year cycle can also be extremely significant. The nineteenth, thirty-eighth, fifty-seventh, and seventy-sixth years bring to many individuals challenges of reorientation of their outlook on life and of their responses to basic factors in their personality. The Moon’s nodes’ cycle lasts 18.6 years and the Metonic cycle of New Moons’ recurrence at the same point of the zodiac lasts 19 years; thus, the close of the nineteenth, thirty-eighth, etc., years is crucial in terms of the soli-lunar factors — that is, of the basic direction of the flow of life energies.”

Ages 9-Fold Being Planet Characteristics Outer Manifestations
0-7 Physical body Moon Will Change of Teeth
7-14 Etheric body Mercury Intelligence Puberty
14-21 Astral body Venus Love Adulthood
21-28 Sentient Soul \
28-35 Intelligence Soul — Sun Selfhood (Ego)
35-42 Consciousness Soul /
42-49 Spirit Self Mars Speech
49-56 Life Spirit Jupiter Thought
56-63 Spirit Man Saturn Memory

Nobody expects anyone to easily digest the reality that there is a profound pattern underlying the biographical events of our lives. Certainly at 19 we have had hardly one impressive parent, guardian or friend who opened for us any kind of curious preparation for our unfolding life path.

The fact is, that we probably wouldn’t have listened anyways even if someone or some event had given us a clue. The fact that from every different direction in education no one ever sets the foundations of a vast ordered and deep universe around us that is not some arbitrary alien zone of god awful accidents and lunacy, is the ultimate testimony to the shallowness and cowardliness of the entire educational system.

At 19 rebellion is in order. And we have had no training in understanding and hearing just exactly what we are listening for or exactly what we have a full right to rebel against. But it certainly has to do with society robbing us of the Moral Sovereignty of our rights as Spiritual Beings, because education by and large basically forces that idea clean out of the curriculum.

We are listening inside the deeds, words, thoughts, emotions for that window that opens our souls up. We partially don’t even believe that any soul opens up and that there is no opening up of the intimacies of the soul because there is no soul.

We get a kick, and a high out of winning, or playing fast paced computer games, but this is not where the intersection of insight and intuition opens the soul up. Sometimes it is a friend or lover, where we feel a tug here or there, but the soul and our direct mainline to our intuition, where thinking, emotion and love tag us, is a capacity that has been allowed to stagnate and suffocate in materialism.

But the jumbled together nonsense of facts and materialism and our sexual drives, are only a small sliver of the whole disordered mess we call our society. Yet we are each of us a unique pivotal portion of the whole development of humanity at large and in particular, the living and loving center of our Angel’s deepest concern.

The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!

We sit, walk, dance, eat, sleep and fart in a potently organized system that includes life after death, reincarnation and a whole new lesson plan that is woven into our very own bodies and biographies. We feel like a mere mass of raw jangling nerves and mood swings, zipping and buzzing flies like thoughts whip through us smelling the dead meat of what education has filled us with.

In the vast world there is a foundational brilliant and encompassing system. We are the chaotic cores that have never been given the navigational maps, nor pointed to what the Freedom of our thinking and Moral Sovereignty means to the gods themselves.

Instead we are given sitcom and media generated immortal vampires, super heroes and historical jumbled lies, that serve the constant brainwashed masses, instead of legitimacy of our own Angels and our own precise biographical indicators. We are tasked to make order out of this mental and emotional turbulence and find our own center of gravity and our own Moral Sovereignty in this tangled chaotic mess of fumbling and failed human frailties. And we are further tasked to find the clues that restore our own spiritual compass.

Our intuition and our spiritual compass, which is part of the package of our TWELVE Cranial Nerves, our pineal gland and our hearts, will serve us to feel our way along precipices and strange paths that have never been trodden, because they are our own unique paths that only we may trod.

Gradually in the silence of the center of our intuition and our Moral Sovereignty we are faced always with the tangible character and texture of choices laced with nuances and laced with potent soul poisoning demons. We are faced with choices laced with potent awakenings to the hearts of others and mostly to the potent ability in ourselves to look into the abyss and complexity of issues to see our own profound souls reflected in the ever changing pool and swirl of both the sucking whirlpool and the illuminating calm clarity of our Angels Eyes

By Rory Reynolds

A LITTLE known Scots actress has landed a big role in a top US detective series – with over 13 million viewers.

Louise Linton beat-off stiff competition from thousands of hopefuls to land a star role in Cold Case – a hit drama that features a team of cops investigating unsolved crimes.

The 28-year-old – who is originally from Edinburgh – is thrilled to be on set already, playing a fighter pilot in the hit drama – which is shown all over the world.

She said: “Cold Case is one of my favourite shows so I was thrilled when I found out that I had got the role.“I had to go back to read at Warner Brothers three times for it before they made their decision.

“For any given role there can be thousands of submissions and the competition is incredibly intense.

“Acting involves a lot of disappointment and requires the ability to swallow your pride and roll with the punches.”

But Louise is no stranger to gritty cops shows – in 2007 she had her first big break with a part in CSI: New York – a hit forensic police drama.

And in the same year she landed a small role in the Tom Cruise blockbuster Lions for Lambs.

Despite her hectic life in Los Angeles, Louise has still found the time to do a journalism degree at Pepperdine University in Malibu, study part time for a degree in law – and marry her legal expert hubby Ronald Richards.

But despite her success in the States, Louise still misses Scotland more than anything.

She added: “Life in Los Angeles is dynamic – but my heart remains in Edinburgh.”

See more of our pictures at our Flickr site and videos at our dedicated channel,  Deadline TV.

I apologize for not updating the past couple of weeks.  Robert Redford (Lions for Lambs) is set to direct a film based on the Lincoln assassination.  The film would center around Mary Surratt, the alleged conspirator along with John Wilkes Booth.

James McAvoy (Wanted) is said to be wanted for the lead role.

Lukas Eggen

Lions for Lambs

Voilà certainement un film dont je ne me souviendrai probablement pas d’avoir vu dans vingt ans, si je me rend là. Pourquoi? Non pas parce que le sujet n’était pas important mais plutôt parce que le film ne fini pas. Quand je dis qu’il ne fini pas c’est que le générique s’affiche à la fin mais l’Histoire comme tel du film de fini pas. On dirait que les auteurs ne savaient pas comment finir.

Le film est visiblement fait par des américains pour des américains pour qu’il se pose individuellement leur rôle et leur motivation concernant la guerre en Afghanistan. On voit deux jeuns à la guerre qui sacrifie leur vie. On voit qu’il venait de l’Université. On voit un professeur à l’Université où ils étaient qui essaie de ramener au travail un étudiant qui se la coule douce parce qu’il pense qu’il a beacoup de potentiel pour changer les choses. Puis on voi une journaliste qu’un sénateur essaie d’embarquer dans un plan de propagande de guerre, etc…Bref, plein de bellles intrigues un peu mais qui n’aboutissent pas trop je trouve.

Je donne 6.5 sur 10.

Lien sur IMDB

2007: Lions for Lambs di Robert Redford

“Leoni per agnelli è la definizione dell’esercito tedesco data da un ufficiale inglese durante la prima guerra: significa combattenti eroici guidati da strateghi irresponsabili” (Tullio Kezich).

Grande lezione di regia, grande lezione di recitazione, assenza di azione e di spettacolarità per privilegiare idee e concetti: sono i caratteri salienti di questo lavoro controcorrente.

Leoni per agnelli ha il coraggio di affrontare tematiche e argomenti che gli Americani poco gradiscono inducendoci a riflettere e a discutere su quanto stia accadendo oggi nel mondo. La “parola” domina incontrastata in poco più di novanta minuti che non permettono allo spettatore la minima distrazione: ogni cosa detta è importante, non un vocabolo più del necessario. Nessuna scena è superflua in Leoni per agnelli: tutto è al servizio dell’intelligenza e dello spirito critico non solo dei realizzatori ma anche, e soprattutto, del pubblico.
Una lucida requisitoria che vede alla sbarra la politica, l’insegnamento, i massmedia.
Un film che è doveroso vedere sia per dibattere su uno dei temi attualmente più vitali sia per dimostrare che un cinema “impegnato” e “impegnativo” è bene accetto.
Robert Redford conferma di essere una delle più profonde personalità del cinema americano, ottimo regista con idee chiare e anticonformiste.
Meryl Streep e Tom Cruise sono da applauso in una performance dalle mille sottigliezze e sfaccettature: una delle prove migliori della loro prestigiosa carriera (i Golden Globe nelle nomination li hanno colpevolmente ignorati, l’Academy ha commesso lo stesso errore).

Da far proprio quanto scritto da la Repubblica:
“…l’operazione compiuta da Redford ha qualcosa di epico: giocare il proprio carisma in un film argomentativo anziché spettacolare, più attento ai valori che alla cassetta, oggi pare roba da fantascienza…Il giorno in cui non ci fosse più posto per film come questo, sarebbe un giorno triste”.

tuttelerecensioni

Regia: Robert Redford
Sceneggiatura: Matthew Michael Carnahan
Cast: Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, Michael Peña, Derek Luke, Peter Berg, Andrew Garfield, John Brently Reynolds, Louise Linton
Fotografia: Philippe Rousselot
Montaggio: Joe Hutshing
Musiche: Mark Isham
Produzione: Andell Entertainment, United Artists, Wildwood Enterprises
Distribuzione: 20th Century Fox
Paese: USA 2007
Genere: Drammatico
Uscita Italia: 21 Dicembre 2007
Uscita USA: 9 Novembre 2007

Sito Italiano
Sito Ufficiale

Trama:
Ispirati dalle parole del dott. Stephen Malley, loro idealista professore di Scienze Politiche alla West Coast University, Arian e Ernest decidono di fare qualcosa di importante e significativo nelle loro vite: si arruolano quindi nell’esercito per unirsi ai combattimenti in Afghanistan. Mentre i due ragazzi devono sopravvivere sul campo di battaglia, il dott. Malley è alle prese con il senso di responsabilità per quanto avvenuto e con un altro suo studente, Todd, che nel suo distacco e nella sua apatia sembra essere l’opposto dei suoi colleghi partiti per la guerra. Nel frattempo a Washington un senatore che ambisce alla Casa Bianca è in procinto di fare rivelazioni bomba ad una giornalista, rivelazioni che potrebbero cambiare il destino di Arian ed Ernest, e di tutti i soldati americani impegnati in Afghanistan.

Note:
“Solo l’America osa ancora fare film come Leoni per agnelli. Solo Robert Redford poteva permettersi di dirigere e interpretare una lunga requisitoria contro la guerra in Iraq (meglio: contro tutto ciò che questa guerra rappresenta)” (Il Messaggero). “Facendo una media fra pregi e difetti, Leoni per agnelli è una pellicola da ammirare per il coraggio di Redford, Streep e Cruise di mettere il loro capitale divistico al servizio della buona causa. Prima di criticare la pagliuzza nell’ occhio altrui, constatiamo la trave nel nostro; e riconosciamo che in Italia un film come questo non è neppure pensabile. Nessuno saprebbe farlo, nessuno vorrebbe produrlo e pochissimi andrebbero a vederlo (Il Corriere della Sera). “…un film impegnato e coinvolgente” (MyMovies).

David Germain –  AP Movie Writer

   Films about the war on terror have not been high on audiences’ must-see list. Yet the makers of the latest, “The Hurt Locker,” hope they have the ingredients that box-office duds about Iraq and Afghanistan have lacked.

   Director Kathryn Bigelow and her colleagues deliver nail-biting tension and a remarkable you-are-there feeling with “The Hurt Locker,” giving viewers a real sense of the lives of bomb-defusing technicians in Baghdad.

   They also tell a story from today’s volunteer-military point of view, following troops who chose to go to war, the story stripped of U.S. foreign-policy critiques that made such recent war films as “Rendition,”"Lions for Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah” sound preachy.

   “There’s no hidden political agenda in this,” said Jeremy Renner, who stars in “The Hurt Locker” as an ace bomb technician whose rash approach to the job alarms the other two members of his team (Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty). “We were all adamant that we wanted to tell a pretty accurate account of this interesting job, and pretty much, that’s it.”

   Bigelow, who has directed big action thrillers such as Keanu Reeves’”Point Break” and Harrison Ford’s “K-19: The Widowmaker,” takes a close and claustrophobic approach here. Shot in a documentary style using handheld cameras, the film is remarkably effective at putting the audience in the heart of the suspense that goes with inching up to a bomb.

   Renner stars as Sgt. William James, who takes over the team of Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Geraghty) after their beloved leader is killed in a blast. James is the opposite of his by-the-book predecessor, a cowboy so confident in his skills that he flaunts safety protocols, leaving Sanborn and Eldridge in fear of their lives.

The actors prepared for the roles by going through bomb technician training at Fort Irwin in California. Wearing a protective suit of steel and Kevlar weighing as much as 100 pounds, one of the exercises he had to practice was to move a stack of paper clips one at time to another pile 15 feet away.

   Based on journalist and screenwriter Marc Boal’s experiences with a bomb unit in Iraq, “The Hurt Locker” was shot in Jordan, some scenes filmed within a few miles of the Iraqi border.

   To keep things real, Bigelow shot one sequence without telling Renner exactly where the movie prop crew had planted the bomb he was to defuse. He had to march in and carefully sift through the scene the way a real bomb technician would have, the cameras capturing all his moves.

   “Part of the opportunity of keeping this piece reportorial and raw and visceral and immediate is putting you, the audience, where the reporter was and where the soldier might be,” Bigelow said.

   The film has drawn raves from critics since it debuted at key film festivals last year. Summit Entertainment snapped it up for U.S. distribution, seeing commercial potential in “The Hurt Locker” despite audience apathy for earlier war-on-terror tales that included “Redacted,”"Stop-Loss” and “Grace Is Gone.”

Summit is starting the film out in limited release of just four theaters, then rolling it out to more cinemas over the next month. Can the film succeed where other terrorism-themed movies have failed?

“I’m just a filmmaker, so it’s hard for me to take that kind of temperature reading,” Bigelow said. “I certainly think that there’s an intersection of entertainment and substance, meaning you’ve got a film that’s a real nail-biter.”

I have never reviewed a moving propaganda before, but I thought since I watch it all, why not tap in.

Lions for Lambs is a very interesting attempt to rationalize going to war against two countries whose leaders decided to bite the hand that fed it.  First against Osama Bin Laden, then Saddam Hussein.  The only true words in the entire movie were, “Rome is burning”.

I don’t mind being called a “conspiracy theorist”, because, first, I concluded there was a conspiracy and second, theory is based on scientific observation and experiment.

You may not agree, but 9/11 was prepared for, allowed and cleanly executed.  The twin towers and the adjacent buildings were felled by demolition by the incumbent powers to incite Americans to war.  Doing so did not require a large group of people, just a small backroom fraternity.  Let’s call them the Fight Club.

This set up things for the attack of Afghanistan, followed by the really big lie:  The incessent repetition, and little more, of weapons of mass destruction paranoia until the country was psychotic enough to attack Iraq.  It wasn’t a war on terror.  It was a war based on terror.

So, six years later, we have Lions for Lambs.  With Meryl Streep doing her trademark crying jag, this time for all the American cannon fodder in the middle east.   The rationale of continuing the offensive?  World War against China whose allies are the Al Quaeda in Pakistan, the Iranians, North Korea.  The new Axis.  This is all sprinkled in amongst a call to raise an American civilian army little different than the pre-war force in Nazi Germany building the Autobahns and marching in formation with shovels.

Obama is currently changing the American legal system systematically to create a judicial system for future crime using the moniker “Rule of Law”.

America is preparing for war.  They are preparing to put a general into the next Republican Presidential seat or an actor called Tom Cruise.

Hey, young America, grab your shovels, the Long Marchers are on their way.

Nicht aufgeben.

Man mag von Til Schweiger halten, was man will, ihm jedoch vorzuwerfen, sich auf bewährten Erfolgsmustern auszuruhen, wäre schlichter Unsinn. Am liebsten wechselt er die Genres, so oft es geht. Dass seine darstellerischen Fähigkeiten begrenzt sind: geschenkt. Dass er einem außerhalb der Leinwand ganz schön auf die Nerven gehen kann: unbestritten. In beidem unterscheidet er sich allerdings auch nur unerheblich von der Mehrzahl seiner amerikanischen Kollegen. Was er jedoch ebenso mit ihnen teilt, wenn auch auf hiesige Verhältnisse reduziert, sind die alles entscheidenden Starqualitäten, die er sich – und das muss man einfach anerkennen – mit einiger Anstrengung über mittlerweile fast zwei Jahrzehnte hinweg fleißig erarbeitet hat. Will man unbedingt einen Vergleich anstellen, so ähnelt er von allen Hollywood-Überlebenskünstlern am ehesten Tom Cruise. Frühzeitig mit einem Erfolgsfilm auf ein bestimmtes Image festgelegt („Manta, Manta“ vs. „Top Gun“), jahrelang um schauspielerische Anerkennung gerungen (zum Beispiel „Bastard“ vs. „Eyes Wide Shut“), dabei selber ins Produktionsgeschäft eingestiegen, um die eigene Karriere gezielter kontrollieren zu können („Knockin´ on Heaven´s Door“ vs. „Mission: Impossible“) und schließlich trotz karrieretechnischer Tiefschläge („One Way“ vs. „Lions for Lambs“) immer noch obenauf. Und so stehen beide nicht zu Unrecht auf der Leinwand auch dann noch im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit, wenn jedes andere Ensemblemitglied ihnen darstellerisch weit überlegen ist. Das sieht in Matthias Emckes Regiedebüt „Phantomschmerz“ nicht anders aus, und es ist alleine Schweiger zuzurechnen, dass dieses leise Drama viel größer wirkt als es eigentlich ist.

Man nimmt nichts vorweg, wenn man sagt, dass in dieser Geschichte trotz immenser Schicksalslast am Ende alles gut wird, denn dafür sorgt der Film schon selber. „Dies ist meine Geschichte“, schreibt Schweigers Figur mit elegantem Füller auf ein Blatt Papier, und aus dem Off spricht er es nach – in einem Duktus, der nicht klarer von Optimismus und Lebenswille handeln könnte. Bald schon erfährt man, dass er eigentlich nie mehr schreiben wollte und weiß deshalb: Am Schluss wird Marc auch diese Krise überwinden. Marc, das ist ein echter Taugenichts. Eine gescheiterte Ehe, nicht in der Lage, für längere Zeit einen Job zu halten, mit den Alimenten ständig im Rückstand und auch sonst immer knapp bei Kasse. Andererseits kann man ihm natürlich nicht wirklich böse sein, denn immerhin bemüht er sich, verkauft sogar sein geliebtes Auto, um Ex-Frau und Kind (Schweigers Tochter Luna) nicht im Stich zu lassen, erheitert seine Umgebung mit absurden Tierfabeln und bringt auch mit dem dümmsten Spruch noch soviel Charme auf, dass er nie alleine ins Bett muss. Marc ist aber vor allem leidenschaftlicher Radfahrer, und umso tragischer geraten die Folgen eines Verkehrsunfall für ihn: Um sein Leben zu retten, muss er der Amputation seines linken Beins zustimmen. Fortan wird er von quälenden Schmerzattacken heimgesucht, die ihn mit aller Macht daran erinnern, dass sein Leben nie mehr so sein wird, wie es einmal war. Doch statt aufzugeben, entwickelt Marc nach einer langen Phase der Verzweiflung die Kraft, sein Leben in den Griff zu bekommen und zu erkennen, was ihn im Innersten wirklich ausmacht.

„Ende“, möchte man hinzufügen, denn im Grunde klingt das alles verdächtig nach dem Plot eines Groschenromans. Ist es in gewissem Sinne auch, doch das tut nichts zur Sache. Die Geschichte ist denkbar einfach und tausendfach erzählt. Dass „Phantomschmerz“ dennoch keine Klischeeveranstaltung geworden ist, liegt vor allem an der großen Behutsamkeit, mit der Autor und Regisseur Emcke seinen Film und dessen Figuren angegangen ist. Das mag in erster Linie damit zu tun haben, dass er trotz einer Reihe dramaturgischer Freiheiten im Kern das Schicksal seines Freundes Stephen Sumner nacherzählt. Über die End Credits hinweg gibt es eine Reihe Fotos von ihm zu sehen, und im Film übernimmt er zudem die Funktion von Schweigers Body Double.

Die Übergänge zwischen fiktionaler Überhöhung und realem Vorbild sind relativ fließend, lassen sich aber auch nicht gänzlich verleugnen. Und das hat durchaus sein Gutes, denn es bewahrt den Film davor, am Respekt vor der zugrundeliegenden Geschichte zu ersticken. Wie groß die Gefahr ist, wird besonders exemplarisch an Oliver Stones „Born on the Fourth of July“ nachvollziehbar (sinnigerweise ausgerechnet mit Tom Cruise). Der Regisseur ließ es sich im Nachhinein nicht nehmen, das reale Vorbild Ron Kovic wie eine Waffe vor sich herzutragen und alle Kritik an seinem Film auf diese Weise einfach wegzubügeln. Wem Stones getreue Widergabe des realen Schicksals nicht gefiel, musste sich (zumindest implizit) den Vorwurf gefallen lassen, Kovic nicht ernst zu nehmen.

Wenn Emcke also eine ziemlich märchenhafte Liebesgeschichte einflechtet, die im Wesentlichen erfunden ist, rettet er seinen Film damit vor dem Absturz ins Weinerliche. Darüber hinaus gelingt ihm auf diese Weise eine bemerkenswerte dramaturgische Zweiteilung, die es dem Zuschauer erlaubt, die Welt von Marc nach dessen Unfall selber auch mit ganz anderen Augen zu sehen und der Figur so viel näher zu kommen als vor dem Schicksalsschlag. Bis dahin ist „Phantomschmerz“ nämlich vermeintlicher Weise auf dem besten Weg, sich lückenlos in die Riege gewohnter Schweiger-Romanzen einzureihen. In gewissem Sinne nutzt Emcke die Filmographie seines Hauptdarstellers also gar nicht einmal so ungeschickt, um das Publikum eine Weile in gutem Glauben zu lassen. Dabei ist es ganz egal, ob man den Film völlig unvorbereitet anschaut oder bereits um Marcs Schicksalsschlag weiß (letzteres ist ohnehin die Regel). Nur zu gerne lässt man sich fallen und für eine Weile wider besseren Wissens täuschen, wenn Schweigers sympathischer Hallodri sich in einer Romanze mit der unwiderstehlichen Nika verliert (und wer könnte ihm das beim Anblick von Jana Pallaskes sensationellen Beatrice-Dalle-Pornolippen verdenken?).

Umso schmerzhafter wird der Bruch, wenn die Geschichte kippt. Emcke bleibt aber auch hier zurückhaltend und nutzt nicht die Gelegenheit für ausgedehnte Gefühlsduselei – eine Gefahr, der die meisten anderen mit großer Sicherheit nur allzu leicht verfallen wären. Besonders hoch anzurechnen ist ihm aber, dass er nicht davor zurückweicht, auch schwierige Momente in Szene zu setzen. Wenn Marc aus dem künstlichen Koma geholt werden muss, damit er – eine rechtliche Notwendigkeit – der Amputation zustimmen kann, zeigt der Film das ohne Beschönigung und wird damit für einen Augenblick nicht wenig bedrückend. Emcke hätte es sich leicht machen und diese Wendung einfach aussparen können, aber das wird ihm der Respekt seinem Freund gegenüber zurecht verboten haben. Stipe Erceg, der Marcs besten Freund spielt, trägt zudem viel dazu bei, dass diese Sequenz in der nötigen Balance bleibt und nicht ins Rührselige abgleitet.

Emcke und Schweiger leisten mit „Phantomschmerz“ vielleicht auch ein bisschen Abbitte für den albernen Rollstuhlhumor aus „Wo ist Fred?“, ihrem zweiten von bisher (mit „Judas Kiss“) insgesamt drei gemeinsamen Filmen. Gerade aus dieser Perspektive ist es zu begrüßen, dass es trotz aller Ernsthaftigkeit vor allem der leise Humor der Hauptfigur ist, der „Phantomschmerz“ davor bewahrt, ein belehrendes Motivationsdrama zu werden. Bestechend geraten die Bilder des Vietnamesen Ngo The Chau, der hier seine bisher beste Arbeit abliefert und den Film optisch weit über das gängige Niveau hiesiger Kinoproduktionen hebt.

Artikel © 2009 Thomas Lenz. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Filmplakat / Fotos: Warner Bros Entertainment GmbH

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Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep deliver “three knockout performances” (Vue Weekly) in this powerful story about how the decision makers at the top affect American soldiers on the ground half a world away.

An idealistic professor (Redford), a charismatic U.S. Senator (Cruise) and a probing TV journalist (Streep) have opposing viewpoints about the actions of our nation and the attitudes of its citizens. But the human consequences of war become chillingly clear for two of the professor’s former students, who find themselves trapped behind enemy lines, fighting for freedom… and their very lives.

The considerable authority of Robert Redford pulls some heavyweight talent into Lions for Lambs, a rare Hollywood foray into flat-out political filmmaking. Three dramas, all connected, play out simultaneously during the same hour: On a mountainside in Afghanistan, two U.S. soldiers (Michael Pena and Derek Luke) find themselves stranded during a new military surge; on Capitol Hill, a Republican senator (Tom Cruise) tries to sell the new strategy to a seasoned reporter (Meryl Streep); and in California, a professor (Redford) tries to light the fire of commitment in an increasingly apathetic college student (Andrew Garfield). Director Redford cuts back and forth amongst these arenas, a gambit which thankfully obscures how weak the one non-talkfest (the Afghanistan segment) really is. You can tell Redford and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan put their juice in the debate between Cruise and Streep, which summarizes Right and Left views on the Middle Eastern wars, and does so reasonably lucidly–although there is little here that would surprise anyone who has looked into the subject. The college section suggests Redford’s belief that there are lots of people, distracted by tabloid culture and self-centeredness, who haven’t looked into the subject. So he lectures us about it, sounding suspiciously like an old geezer remembering the good old days. If this film had been released in 2004, it might at least have bucked majority opinion, but coming out in fall of 2007, it already felt like old news. –Robert Horton

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Fredag: Kos med kjæresten. Var blant annet ute på sparktur, noe som førte til at jeg fortsatt har vondt i ryggen. Haff. Også kjøpte vi Lions for lambs filmen (med Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep osv), men ettersom klokka ble nesten 11 før vi fikk satt oss i sofaen med noe som kjentes ut som en halv kilo smågodis, bestemte vi oss for å spare den. Fikk ta-bort-sminken-servietter i kalendergave, noe jeg sårt trengte.

(dette bildet er da ikke fra lørdag, men fra en sommerkveld som ble litt kaldere enn vi hadde forventet)

Lørdag: Våknet til en tid som i mine øyne er altfor tidlig på en fridag (09.30) av at Erik gjorde ett eller annet. Husker ikke helt hva det var, men heldigvis lagde han ikke noe sugemerke på meg denne gangen. Utover dagen fikk jeg handlet inn til kveldens store begivenhet, nemlig jentejulebordet vårt Det ble kjempekoselig, og alle var faktisk der! Om man ser bort fra at Mia og Therese var en time for sene da ;p

Søndag: Vært kjempeflink og vaska rommet mitt + badet. Har også bestilt den siste julegava til Erik, så nå er jeg snart ferdig med julegavehandlinga it feels good!
I kalendergave i dag  fikk jeg filmen The Jane Austen book club, og et rødt julelys som var innmari søtt Filmen var forøvrig også veldig søt.
Nåå sitter jeg i den nye sofaen, ser på finalen av Robinson, og hører på at katten vår snorker.

Har dere hatt en fin helg?

Quick review: Not as bad as I expected after some pretty rough reviews, but still not great. The Kingdom is written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and like Lions for Lambs (which he also wrote) it lacks any real depth and relies on cliche stereotypes, especially when it comes to the relationships between the American FBI agents and the Saudi police.

Nothing great, but a watchable “who done it,” political thriller.

Rating: B-

Spion gegen Spion.

Mit einem der bekanntesten Täuschungsmanöver der modernen Kriegsführung hatten die Briten das Deutsche Oberkommando 1943 davon überzeugen können, dass die alliierte Invasion Südeuropas vermeintlicher Weise nicht dort stattfinden würde, wo sie allgemein erwartet wurde. Die Idee dahinter war ebenso einfach wie genial: Geheime, aber eben gefälschte Dokumente zur Invasion fanden sich bei der Leiche eines hohen Mitgliedes der Königlichen Marine. Als offensichtliches Opfer eines Flugzeugabsturzes wurde der tote Körper an der spanischen Küste angespült, und die lokalen Autoritäten hatten nichts Eiligeres zu tun, als die Deutsche Abwehr über ihren Fund zu informieren. Dass dahinter ein clever ausgearbeiteter Plan stand, begriff man jedoch erst, als es schon zu spät war. Nachdem 1953 ein Spionageroman unter dem Titel „Operation Heartbreak“ erschienen war, der das Täuschungsmanöver ziemlich genau nachzeichnete, ohne dass der Autor jedoch offiziell Kenntnis davon gehabt hatte, entschied man sich zähneknirschend zur Veröffentlichung der tatsächlichen Hintergründe. „The man who never was“ (dt. „Der Mann, den es nie gab”), verfasst von einem der maßgeblich an der Aktion beteiligten Offiziere, avancierte quasi über Nacht zum Bestseller und lieferte die Vorlage für die gleichnamige Verfilmung von Robert Neame aus dem Jahr 1956. Die Titelähnlichkeit zu Ridley Scotts Spionagethriller – und zwar ausschließlich in der deutschen Fassung – kommt nicht von ungefähr. David Ignatius hatte das Manöver der Briten zum strategischen Auslöser seines Romans gewählt und den „Body of Lies“ eines fiktiven CIA-Agenten mit Informationen ausgestattet, die ihn als Undercover-Mitglied von Al Qaeda auswiesen, um eine konkurrierende Terrororganisation aus der Reserve zu locken. Von diesem Motiv ist im Film schlichtweg rein gar nichts übrig geblieben, und umso aberwitziger muss einem vor allem der deutsche Titel erscheinen. „Der Mann, der niemals lebte“ ist dort nämlich quicklebendig.

Warum genau sich die Drehbuchversion von „Departed“-Autor William Monahan so offensichtlich um diese strategische Idee herumwindet, kann der Film selber kaum beantworten. Vielleicht waren es die technischen Spielereien mit dem Internet, die letztlich den Ausschlag gaben für die gewählte Alternative, doch wirklich schlüssig muss einem das nicht erscheinen. Dass die expliziten Bezüge des Romans zu Al Qaeda außen vor bleiben, mag sich hingegen noch mit einer gewissen Vorsicht erklären lassen, die ein amerikanisches Breitenpublikum nicht mit allzu realen Angstfantasien belasten will, wenn man ihm auf der anderen Seite doch vor allem explosionslastiges Action-Kino liefert. Überhaupt dürfte Scotts Film für eine ganze Weile der letzte großbudgetierte Beitrag auf US-Leinwänden zur Rolle der Amerikaner im mittleren Osten und ihrem Krieg gegen den Terror sein. Die Zuschauer haben das Thema ganz unmissverständlich satt, und während Anfang Oktober die halbe Nation im heilssüchtigen Obama-Fieber umhertaumelte, musste Warner dabei zusehen, wie Disney mit einem verwöhnten Hund und Screen Gems mit einem lachhaft günstigen Zombie-Virus unangestrengt an Scotts aufwendig produziertem Anti-Terror-Feldzug vorbeimarschierten. Schon zuvor gab der Filmemacher der amerikanischen Kriegspolitik die Schuld am Desinteresse des Publikums für vergleichbare Stoffe – vermutlich ahnend, dass es seiner Produktion nicht viel besser ergehen würde als etwa „Lions for lambs“, „Rendition“ oder „In the Valley of Elah“.

Zumindest belegt „Body of Lies / Der Mann, der niemals lebte“ aber in aller Deutlichkeit, dass sich derzeit mit Starkino alleine kein Publikumserfolg erzielen lässt. Die Kombination DiCaprio / Crowe ist dabei für einen Film, der vor allem mit seinen Explosionen wirbt (deren prozentualer Anteil in den Trailern nebenbei weitaus größer ausfällt als im eigentlichen Film), wenig optimal. Überhaupt hat die Kinosaison 2008 gezeigt, dass Namen für den Erfolg amerikanischer Großproduktionen im echten Sinne Schall und Rauch sind. Einzig der Sonderfall von Heath Ledger trug das Seine zum Fabelerfolg von „The Dark Knight“ bei, aber auch das hatte nur sehr wenig mit den Starqualitäten des Darstellers zu tun. Beispiele wie „Cloverfield“, „Quarantine“ oder auch „Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist“ zeigen, dass geschicktes Marketing und die Rekrutierung von Teenie-Idolen für die große Leinwand gute Alternativen zum überteuerten Starsystem bieten.

Das Problem von Scotts Film ist aber auch noch ganz anderer Natur und hat sicherlich einiges zur lauwarmen Mundpropaganda beigetragen. Die Story ist einigermaßen kompliziert, und bis man einen echten Einstieg geschafft hat, ist fast schon ein Drittel des Films gelaufen. Die Figuren laden nicht unbedingt zur verstärkten Identifikation ein, und selbst wenn DiCaprios Undercover-Agent zunehmende Sympathiewerte entwickelt, reicht das bei weitem nicht aus, um sich auch Sorgen um dessen Schicksal zu machen – zumal sein Leben bis fast zum Schluss nur sehr eingeschränkt in Gefahr ist. Russell Crowes Schreibtischtäter hingegen ist nahezu so gesichtslos in seiner Fokussierung auf die Errettung der Zivilisation mit allen Mitteln, dass er noch nicht einmal zum Hassobjekt taugt. Die faszinierendste Gestalt hingegen, der undurchschaubare jordanische Geheimdienstchef Hani, beunruhigend elegant und gefährlich interpretiert von Mark Strong, bleibt zu sehr Nebenfigur, als dass er die Leerstellen der anderen Charaktere ausgleichen könnte.

Das alles macht „Body of Lies / Der Mann, der niemals lebte“ natürlich nicht zu einem schlechten Film. Ganz sicher aber taugt er nicht zur entspannten Unterhaltungslektüre, und das ist für eine derart teure Produktion natürlich keine gute Ausgangslage. Wie so oft ist Scott überzeugend darin, seine Figuren bei ihrem Tun zu beobachten und die multikausalen Konstellationen aufzuzeigen, unter denen sie operieren, und über die sie – auch gegen alle Wahrscheinlichkeit – die Oberhand gewinnen müssen, um zu überleben. Nicht anders ist es hier: Roger Ferris (DiCaprio) leistet für die CIA in etwa das, wofür der MI6 seinem Spitzenagenten mit Tötungslizenz so manchen Fauxpas gerne durchgehen lässt – den bedingungslosen Einsatz vor Ort und gerne auch direkt in der Höhle des Löwen. Als Drahtzieher im Hintergrund fungiert der nicht weniger kompromisslose Ed Hoffman (Crowe), ein Stratege an der Heimatfront, für den die eigenen Männer auf feindlichem Boden nicht mehr sind als potentielle Bauernopfer für den Erhalt der zivilen Freiheit. Um den Urhebern einer neuen Terrorwelle auf die Spur zu kommen, machen beide gemeinsame Sache mit dem jordanischen Geheimdienst. Schnell jedoch kollidieren die unbedingten Werte des monarchistischen Verbündeten mit den taktischen Lügengebäuden amerikanischer Spionagepolitik und werden für Ferris zur gefährlichen Zerreißprobe.

Scotts Output hat in den letzten Jahren erheblich an Fahrt zugelegt, und mittlerweile liefert er wie Woody Allen pro Jahr einen Film ab (von den zahlreichen Produzentenjobs, die er nebenbei noch abwickelt, ganz zu schweigen). Als Handwerker kann er das auch gut leisten, künstlerisch allerdings bleibt die Originalität dabei durchaus auch mal auf der Strecke. Von einer wirklich eigenen Bildsprache ist in diesem Film jedenfalls nur wenig zu spüren, und Scott verlässt sich vielmehr auf Bewährtes. Dagegen ist nichts einzuwenden, hält „Body of Lies“ aber merklich davon ab, länger als einen Kinobesuch im Gedächtnis zu bleiben. Ähnliches gilt für die Leistungen der beiden Hauptdarsteller, wobei Crowe entgegen allen Marketings eigentlich nicht mehr verkörpert als eine Nebenfigur. Zentrum des Films ist Roger Ferris, und DiCaprio legt ihn mit einer recht schlüssigen Mischung aus Verbissenheit und wachsendem Überdruss an. Je mehr sich Ferris in seinem eigenen, berufsbedingten Lügengeflecht verfängt und dabei Menschen auf der Strecke lassen muss, die ihm von Mal zu Mal mehr bedeuten, umso geringer wird die professionelle Gelassenheit, mit der sein Darsteller ihn ausstattet. Crowe hingegen gönnt seiner Figur keine Nuancen. Ed Hoffman ist nach vorbestimmten Koordinaten ausgerichtet, und die ändern sich nicht. Allerdings kann man beim Zusehen auch durchaus den Verdacht bekommen, Crowes Vorbereitung auf seine Rolle hätte einzig und allein in sichtbarer Gewichtszunahme bestanden. Ansonsten scheint er jedenfalls auf Autopilot geschaltet zu haben.

Überhaupt bedarf der Film offensichtlich einer Reihe auffälliger Hilfsmittel, um seinen Figuren ihre Individualität zu geben. Im Falle von Hoffman etwa reicht das CIA-Gehalt entweder nicht für eine Brille mit Gleitsichtgläsern, oder aber Crowe und Scott fanden es passend (oder charakteristisch?), ihn sein Gegenüber permanent über den oberen Brillenrand hinweg ansehen zu lassen. Das fällt einem aber erst auf, wenn es zu nerven beginnt. Offensichtlicher dagegen – und auch wenigstens praktisch erklärt – scheint er mit seinem Headset verwachsen zu sein, das ihn jederzeit mit Ferris in Verbindung bringt, und mit dem er problemlos seine Kinder in die Schule bringen und zugleich Exekutionen beauftragen kann. Überhaupt, wer sich immer noch fragt, warum James Bond inzwischen keine lustigen Technik-Gadgets mehr mit sich herumschleppt – hier kann er die Antwort finden: Die Fiktion ist offenbar einfach zu sehr von der Realität eingeholt worden, als dass Bonds einstmals unvorstellbare Spielzeuge noch irgendjemandem mehr als ein müdes Lächeln entlocken könnten. Und so sieht die Überwachungszentrale beim CIA mit all den unbemannten Luftfahrzeugen, die jeden Fleck auf dem Globus jederzeit überwachen können, auch nicht wesentlich anders aus als M´s Büro in „Quantum of Solace“.

Warum Ferris allerdings bei jeder Gelegenheit wie halbverdurstet Kaffee oder Tee trinken muss, bleibt wohl ein Geheimnis der Macher (und es liegt nicht an der Hitze im mittleren Osten, denn auf heimatlichem Boden sieht es nicht anders aus). Wer beim Zusehen irgendwann beginnt, darauf zu achten, wird Schwierigkeiten haben, sich auf den Rest des Films zu konzentrieren. Dabei sind manche Bildfolgen zu allem Überfluss so knapp montiert, dass DiCaprio die Tasse, aus der er gerade erst getrunken hat, für den Zuschauer unmittelbar schon wieder zum Mund führt. Sinn macht das keinen.

Was bleibt, ist der Eindruck eines handwerklich solide gemachten Spionagethrillers, der sich davor hütet, allzu politisch zu werden, gleichzeitig aber auch seinen Figuren nicht nahe genug kommt, um echte Identifikationsprozesse in Gang zu setzen. Erst als sich Ferris in die – im Roman so nicht vorhandene – Krankenschwester Aisha verliebt (in Gestalt der hierzulande noch unbekannten iranischen Schauspielerin Golshifteh Farahani), entwickelt die Figur merkliche Sympathiewerte, schießt aber dann auch zugleich so dermaßen übers Ziel hinaus, dass sie einem direkt wieder fremd wird. Für einen Blockbuster jedenfalls, erst recht im Jahr der Comics und Superhelden, ist das alles einfach zu wenig Mainstream. Aber vielleicht liegt darin ja auch gerade die Stärke dieses Films.

Artikel © 2008 Thomas Lenz. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Filmplakat: Warner Bros. Entertainment GmbH

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