bad "anti-war" movies

November 19, 2007

News this week out of Hollywood is that “anti-war” movies aren’t doing well at the box office. The question is, are they not doing well because they have anti-war themes, because they’re just bad movies, or both?

Four movies that attempt to show negative consequences of US involvement in Iraq are currently playing in theaters. Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs is a disjointed trilogy that’s more a series of lectures than a movie. Brian De Palma’s Redacted is about the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Iraqi girl by US soldiers. Gavin Hood’s Rendition is about the rendition and torture of a terrorist suspect. Paul Haggis’, In The Valley of Elah, is about a father’s search for his son who comes back from Iraq messed up and gets murdered.

Redacted only premiered on November 17, so it's too early to know what it will take in at the box office. But it's the most controversial and most anti-war of the four movies. Few Americans are expected to go see it. Some movie theaters won’t even show it.

I haven’t seen any of these movies, and I don’t intend to, but judging from numerous reviews and the poor box office receipts, they either fail to sufficiently entertain, inform, or uplift moviegoers. Everyone is entitled to their own judgment, of course. If and when you see any of these movies you may disagree. But I’m not surprised these movies aren’t doing well.

It’s hard enough to get people to pay nine or ten dollars for a ticket to see a movie. It’s a lot harder to get them to spend that much to see what they regularly see and hear about in the news media or what they’ve seen many times before. The issues central to Lions for Lambs, Redacted, and Rendition have been covered by the news media ad nauseum. Coming home from war screwed up and getting murdered was a common theme of Vietnam War ear war-movies.

People don’t generally go to the movies to reinforce or challenge their political views. They go to the movies to be entertained and, frequently, to escape the news. They don’t want to be lectured or depressed. 

Granted, it’s difficult to make any movie about a war the final outcome of which is still unknown. Most good war movies about America's last several wars weren’t made until the wars themselves were “in the can,” a term referring to the metal container used to store movie film.

Movies that deal with war-related issues like rape, torture, the politics and effects of war on individuals are less likely to stir controversy when viewed in the perspective of history, not current events.

There’s nothing wrong with attempting to show the negative consequences of war, even when the war is still ongoing. Most good war movies do that. But when contemporaneous movies deal with the subjects these four movies do, good storytelling and a fair amount of objectivity is absolutely essential if you want to attract the broadest audience possible.

What’s most important in Hollywood is the bottom line. Movie investors and producers are out to make money, lots of it. They don’t like to take risks. Unfortunately, people who invest in and produce movies may be good businesspeople, but they don’t always have the best instincts about what the public wants.  That’s why sequels are so common and why when something works everyone tries to copy it. That’s why I suspect there’s more political motive in these films than some may be willing to admit.

There was a time in Hollywood, not all that long ago, when most movies cost a few million dollars to make and profits were proportionate. While the blockbuster has been around since talkies were introduced, not every movie was expected to be one. 

Today movies routinely cost over $100 million to produce and make several hundred million in worldwide release. Few investors want to put their money in a movie that’s only going to gross a few million dollars.

Either the people who made these four movies grossly misjudged the movie going public or they were more interested in the message than the money. While these four movies may do much better with foreign audiences than they’re doing with domestic ones, they still aren’t likely to make large profits unless one of them wins an Academy Award or a Golden Globe. In today’s Hollywood anything’s possible. 

There’s been a lot of talk about these movies on the conservative talk-show circuit recently. Redacted in particular has drawn a lot of fire. Many believe a movie like this will only fuel our enemy’s anti-US propaganda and could even cost American warriors their lives. If any of this happens it will be most unfortunate. But we live in a free country, and men and women in uniform die to defend the right of people to make movies like this.

To answer the question I posed at the outset, I suspect that these movies aren’t doing well at the box office both because they have anti-war themes and because they aren’t very good movies. It’s difficult to determine which is the more powerful reason.

As much as some try and make the connection, Iraq isn't Vietnam. American attitudes about the troops are a lot different than they were 20 and 30 years ago. And as much as Hollywood has tried to substitute special effects and other things for good storytelling, Americans still expect a good story when the go to the movies. In any event, it will be very interesting to see how many more movies like this Hollywood turns out.