Tyler Rihn

It’s good. It is your classic journo-p8rn war film. It’s funny the directors of these kind of movies don’t ever seem to see underlying entitlement in the voyeurism of being a “journalist”. All the journo characters’ families are nowhere near the actual conflict zone and -are from ostensibly privileged backgrounds. They start from fine dining in New York, pontificating on a war they have not fought in or have any true convictions about. The whole world view displayed by these characters plays right into Hunter Thompson’s view of the press. This hypocrisy seems totally lost on the directors and writers of this film, which is one of the reasons it fails to hit home as much as it should, despite being a potentially compelling storyline. Reporters aggrandizing themselves as somehow more important than the actual combatants of such a tragic romance as civil war is quintessentially the issue with modern journalism— they see themselves as the main characters, as more important than the story or the people they are covering. And yet the Director seems completely incapable of grappling with that dichotomy or even being self-aware enough to see it. It also fails to address the political nature of press. And just acts like these guys are some sort of super UN that everywhere they go combatants are going to be fine with them being there and they’re funded by Santa Claus or something. The underlying theme that the “left-wingers” are the good guys is obvious, and only obscured poorly through a contrived plot device in the “alliance” of Cali/Florida/Texas as the rebels. You take that out it’s pretty obvious with this movie about. Very entertaining though.