"A similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war"

[Miles Archer]

'American Sniper' Is Almost Too Dumb to Criticize
Almost.
By Matt Taibbi | January 21, 2015

The thing is, the mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried.

No one expected 20 minutes of backstory about the failed WMD search, Abu Ghraib, or the myriad other American atrocities and quick-trigger bombings that helped fuel the rise of ISIL and other groups.

But to turn the Iraq war into a saccharine, almost PG-rated two-hour cinematic diversion about a killing machine with a heart of gold (is there any film theme more perfectly 2015-America than that?) who slowly, very slowly, starts to feel bad after shooting enough women and children – Gump notwithstanding, that was a hard one to see coming.

Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the president who got us into the war in question.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-criticize-20150121

[Paladin]

1. Taibbi nails it, as usual. (nt)

[azmom]

2. Thinking of going to the movies

To see Selma. The Trailer to American Sniper made me want to vomit.