War Movies: Then And Now

During the 1940′s, the government Office of War Information declared the Hollywood movie business, an essential industry. Why? Because the Office Of War Information recognized that Hollywood was playing an essential role in war propaganda during WWll.

Between 1942, and 1945, more than 1/3 of the movies released concerned some aspect of the war, and appealed to American patriotism. Some of the better known movies included Casablanca, Lifeboat, Above Suspicion, Notorious, Wake Island, and Guadalcanal Diary. These movies served not only to entertain, but to keep moral high.

That was then. This is now.

Being the strapping patriot sort of folks that they are, the Hollywood left is gearing up to release a bunch of anti-military movies that portray veterans of the Iraq war as deranged psychopaths, screwed up by an “unjust” war.

From the The New York Times:

“In the Valley of Elah,” is the story about the five soldiers who, home from Iraq, went out for a night of drinking near Fort Benning, GA. Before the night was over, one of them, Specialist Richard R. Davis, was dead of at least 33 stab wounds, his body doused with lighter fluid and burned.

Well, that sounds like a real lifter upper. But that’s not all:

In “Grace Is Gone,” due in October from the Weinstein Company, John Cusack and two daughters struggle with the loss of a wife and mother who is killed on duty.

And…

Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss,” set for release in March by Paramount, meanwhile, casts Ryan Phillippe as a veteran who defies an order that would send him back to Iraq.

And…

In October, for example, New Line Cinema will release “Rendition,” in which Reese Witherspoon plays a woman whose Egyptian-born husband is snared by a runaway counterterrorism apparatus.

And…

Paul Greengrass, the director of “The Bourne Ultimatum,” in which the bad guys belong to a similar rogue unit, is adapting Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s book about the Green Zone in Baghdad, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” for Universal Pictures.

And…

Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” focusing on an Army squad that persecutes an Iraqi family, is to be released in December by Magnolia Pictures.

And…

And Sony Pictures is developing a film based on the story of Richard A. Clarke, the former national security official and Bush administration critic.

If you’re waiting for a war movie about the evils of radical Islam , you’ll just have to keep waiting.

It looks to me like Hollywood is still producing war propaganda films.

It’s just that this time, the propaganda isn’t meant to help our side.

UPDATES:

bmac weighs in here.

Ace says there’s a new movie out about terrorists who are actually Muslim. Muslim terrorists? Wow, who’d a thunk it?

Still waiting to see if the Westerners in the movie  are worse than the terrorists. We’ll see, we’ll see.

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