Monday, January 19, 2009

In Praise of Paul Blart (Updated, January 21)


It's funny, 'cause it's true: Paul Blart, the unarmed mall security guard hero of the new film, is a more suitable exemplar of the "protect and serve" ethic than the government's armed enforcement agents.


When tyrants rule, jesters often boldly tell truths that falter on the lips of fear-plagued philosophers. Perhaps this explains why, amid the consolidation of a totalitarian Homeland Security State, it fell to Kevin James, gifted comic actor, mixed martial arts fan, and cinematic role model for economy-sized American men, to put into play the notion that we would be better off doing away with government police forces outright, and entrusting security to private citizens and entrepreneurs.



James co-wrote, co-produced, and stars in the new movie Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a modestly produced family comedy whose immense opening weekend success (it took in something north of $34 million, or nearly twice what the studio expected) surprised everyone but the viewing public. Dismissed by most professional critics but warmly reviewed by paying customers, the film displays every indication of becoming the sleeper hit of Hollywood's post-Christmas discard season.


I earnestly hope the film generates a wave of positive word-of-mouth, not only because it is a nearly ideal family film -- genuinely funny and engaging, wholesome without being insipid -- but also because it is gently subversive in promoting the idea that the increasingly militarized government law enforcement system is at best useless.


The audience meets the titular protagonist during fitness trials for applicants to the New Jersey State Police Academy. Short, chubby and visibly on the cusp of middle age, Blart is surprisingly athletic, blowing through the obstacle course with confidence where younger, less motivated applicants falter. But Blart falls just a few feet short of his objective as he is immobilized by a hypoglycemic blackout -- a condition that will plague him throughout the story.


Like many of us whose gravitational profile is less than optimal, Blart has an unfortunate habit of treating food as a refuge from life's indecencies. A single parent to an adorable child (the mother, an illegal immigrant, abandoned father and daughter once her foothold in the U.S. was secure), Blart works long hours as a mall security guard (he prefers the term "security officer," but
allows that there is some controversy over the proper designation).




Customer service:
In a scene from earlier in the film, Officer Blart takes a moment to help a small shopper with a problem.




Owing to his girth, his habit of patrolling while mounted on a Segway-style personal transporter, and -- let's be candid -- his job, Blart endures what sometimes seems like an incessant onslaught of demeaning, even emasculating moments. But he remains cheerful, helpful, and generous, doing whatever he can to make things easier for the paying customers.



While he speaks often about protecting the safety of mall patrons and merchants, it's clear from his actions that he understands the importance of facilitating commerce. Unfortunately, Blart aspires to be a state trooper, which might explain some of the mistakes he makes early in the film -- such as threatening to issue a "speeding citation" to a senior citizen in a motorized wheelchair, or to make a "citizen's arrest" of a turbulent woman at Victoria's Secret.


The latter incident ends with the woman -- whose size and body composition are similar to Blart's -- thrashing the hapless security guard, not because Blart is unable to handle her but because he simply will not, under any circumstances, assault a woman.


The civilized self-restraint displayed by this fictional security guard contrasts very well with the documented behavior of too many real-life government police hooligans.



He's scared, but he's not running away: Officer Blart conducts a recon of the hostage site (left), and leads several pursuing robbers into an ambush (below, right).


While making his rounds just prior to Thanksgiving, Blart has what movie people call a "meet cute" with a pretty wig merchant named Amy, but the romantic possibilities initially appear to be stymied by developments I won't describe here.


When "Black Friday" -- the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest retail shopping day of the year -- rolls around, Blart is at his post, helping the gears of commerce turn smoothly. A video arcade proprietor, eager to go to the bank before it closes down, asks Blart to "mind the store" briefly. Blart is thus lost in the aural jungle of video game noises when a crack team of armed robbers shut down the mall, drive out the paying customers, and seize hostages at the bank -- including Amy.


When the cops arrive, their tentative and by-the-books effort to enter the mall is quickly repulsed. The police contact Blart, tell him about the hostage situation, and urge him to join them behind a secure perimeter. As he reaches the exit, Blart espies something that forces him back inside: Amy's 1965 Ford Mustang.


Blart doesn't know exactly what he will do, but he's not about to leave Amy in the hands of the criminals. So, in violation of the Prime Directive for government police -- "officer" safety uber alles -- Blart screws up his courage to a sticking place, downs the contents of a Pixie Stick to ward off hypoglycemia, and heads back into the mall to confront the evildoers.


Not only is this a satisfying dramatic choice by the protagonist -- who at this point officially becomes a hero, whatever the outcome -- it also acts as an oblique rebuke to the familiar police approach to hostage situations: Call in the SWAT team, which will take forever establishing a "secure perimeter" while innocent, unarmed people are at the mercy of armed criminals.



















Middle-aged portly guys REPRE-SENT! In a scene straight out of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull or Quantum of Solace, the Blartster takes down a bad guy, sending the two of them crashng through a skylight and hurtling from a lethal height. (Don't worry, their fall is broken in a family-friendly way.)


After Blart decides to rescue the hostages, the film becomes a family-friendly but surprisingly tense palimpsest of Die Hard, as Blart out-thinks, out-maneuvers, and out-fights the robbers, who are a pack of feral X-athletes. "The mind is the only weapon that doesn't need a holster," Blart tells a trainee earlier in the film (who appears later in a somewhat surprising capacity). Blart's mind is whetted to a fine edge by his desire to protect something in which he was fully invested -- the task of protecting a business he valued, a woman with whom he might fall in love, and eventually his daughter, who finds herself among the hostages later in the film.


Describing the film beyond this summary would take us into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that the third act did something I hadn't expected, and was delighted to see: It depicted the utter uselessness of the paramilitary goon squads called SWAT teams in dealing with hostage crises, and actually offered a compelling illustration of the opportunities for corruption presented by militarized law enforcement.


I will spoil one element of the ending: Offered an immediate posting to the New Jersey State Police, Blart turns down government "work" in favor of what he decided is his true calling -- protecting the businesses of the shopping mall and the people who spend their hard-earned money there.

It's true what they say about this guy: Walter Peck, the federal bureaucrat villain from Ghostbusters.


It was that final development that elevated Paul Blart: Mall Cop onto my list of vital anti-government films. That list includes Ghostbusters, whose villain, Walter Peck, was a bureaucratic eunuch employed by the EPA, and The Simpsons Movie, in which the villain is the entire federal government, as embodied by a deranged corporatist named Russ Cargill ("Sir, I'm afraid you've gone mad with power," cavils an underling, to which Cargill replies that it's boring to go mad without power, since "no one listens to you"), who heads the EPA.


In a less worthy film, Blart would have accepted a government job as a due "reward" for his heroism, thereby graduating from mere private sector work into the exalted realm of official coercion. This is the payoff for which audience expectations had been prepared -- and having the character decline it is a pretty bold statement, albeit probably an unintended one, about the superiority of commerce and private means of security and dispute-settlement.


Other delicious touches season this unexpectedly tasty cinematic offering. The swaggering, gravel-voiced SWAT commander, who shoulders everyone aside and militarizes the hostage stand-off, is revealed to be a middle-aged, unreformed High School bully -- and then something even more unsavory. Given recent scandals in New Jersey involving both corrupt and inept SWAT teams, this depiction is likely to resonate with at least some residents of the Garden State.


Hey, stay safe, guys: Heroic (ahem) SWAT operators visit a Hooter's on the way back from arduous duty in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans.


Paul Blart: Mall Cop is co-produced by Kevin James and Adam Sandler, who have a lot to atone for after inflicting I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry upon the public. They've made a solid downpayment by creating this delightful film, which is both terrifically entertaining and commendable for finding the dignity and even heroism in a private security job that is easily mocked but in principle superior to the state's alternative.


Rather than permitting the State -- the enemy of all human prosperity and social progress -- to monopolize and militarize security functions, we should be dis-establishing government police mechanisms as rapidly as possible and relying on private means (beginning with ubquitous civilian firearms ownership) to provide security for persons and property.


Alas, in the real world we're forced to inhabit, Officer Blart would either be shoved aside by, or assimilated into, some militarized monstrosity like the corporatist (which is to say fascist) police force that patrols Oakland's BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system. The BART police earned tragic notoriety on New Year's Day owing to the unprovoked lethal shooting of Oscar Grant III, a helpless, unarmed, cooperative young man who was face-down and surrounded by police on a subway platform.

***



***

This homicide -- merely the most recent in a string of needless killings by Oakland's BART police, a "public-private police partnership" in the worst sense of the expression -- provided a horrifying reminder that the murderous tactics and official corruption common in government law enforcement quickly infect any nominally private entity seduced into such a "partnership."


Prior to the advent of cellphone cameras, The BART police had been able to cover up and dismiss four very suspicious lethal shootings. The Grant shooting, however, occurred in the YouTube age, which means that this entirely avoidable killing was added to the large and growing corpus of evidence that police today see themselves as, and behave like, an army of occupation -- and the BART police force's familiar cover-up tactics weren't successful.


Paul Blart: Mall Cop is an exercise in cinematic whimsy. But the need for our society to embrace genuinely private security arrangements is a deadly serious one: The state's armed enforcers are rapidly becoming a caste apart from, and supposedly superior to, the public they supposedly serve. Facile as it may seem to say so, it can properly be said that, where maintaining public order is concerned, we are presented with a choice between Blart and BART.


Update, 1/21 --


David Codrea, who compiles the utterly indispensable War On Guns blog, expresses understandable concerns that Paul Blart: Mall Cop is extolling the value of "unarmed protectors" and peddling the reliably lethal myth that "arms are superfluous when confronting violent evil-doers."


As indicated in the very first caption to the essay above, I do think the character of Paul Blart, the central figure in what is, after all, "an exercise in cinematic whimsy," embodies the "protect and serve" ethic, but this isn't because he's unarmed; it's because he's willing to confront the predators immediately, with whatever he can seize upon as a weapon, rather than huddling behind a heavily armed perimeter, as police generally do in hostage situations, waiting for the overkill factor to be high enough to ensure officer safety.


Firearms are vitally important in dealing with malefactors of all varieties. The most dangerous armed criminals are those employed by the state. This is why I was so struck by the fact that the Blart character actually turns down a chance to join the police (read: occupation) force at the end of the film.


While I reject civilian disarmament with every molecule of my being, I'm willing at least to chew on the notion that civic order would be improved if we were to disarm the police, at least while they're acting in an official capacity. There really is no institutional substitute for the practce of armed self-defense.


A quick personal note --

I want to thank everyone who has suggested names for the Grigg family's newest member, who is scheduled to arrive on or around February 6. Korrin and I are really stumped by this one, and we appreciate both your input and your very generous kind wishes.



On sale now!











Dum spiro, pugno!


27 comments:

gwen said...

Dear Mr. Grigg,

"As he reaches the exit, Blart espies something that forces him back inside: Amy's 1965 Dodge Mustang."

I'm no car expert but shouldn't this be "Ford Mustang"?

And since I'm here - congratulations on baby, and I hope Mama is doing well.

I check in here regularly as I enjoy your writing and I'm interested in your views. Thank you for your work. :)

Anonymous said...

"Federal Crowd Control, 1918. Machine guns in front, modified phalanx. Soldiers on sides assigned to upstairs windows. Wilson feared antiwar riots, losing mind to small strokes." (link: http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SPEC/GAL-BW.htm)

Anonymous said...

"Federal Crowd Control, 1918. Machine guns in front, modified phalanx. Soldiers on sides assigned to upstairs windows. Wilson feared antiwar riots, losing mind to small strokes."

Or this link (sorry, the other one contained a few photos with nudity) : http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SPEC/027.jpg

Anonymous said...

Down with the State!!!!!!! Up with Free Enterprise!!!!!!!!!!
The former the parasite the latter the host

Kevin Wilmeth said...

Mr. Grigg:

I was introduced to your work some months ago by David Codrea at War On Guns, and on the strength of it yours has become my #2 blog read as a result. You have a real gift for words, a firm grasp of history, and the stones to say what matters in a time when such is not welcome. And further, you even do it with class. (If ever you get discouraged that your work is in vain, please know that it is not--it matters.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the piece here on "Blart"; this is precisely the sort of thing that lends depth to an otherwise dreary roll call of topics. Even the most hardened among us still need--and love--to laugh. And with a brand-new daughter myself (5 weeks and even more opinionated than I am), I even have a need to find family-worthy material. :-)

I would hardly have noticed the film otherwise, but I suspect I'll seek it out now. Thank you for the tip, and keep up the resistance. (And congrats on your impending arrival!)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations and best wishes on the upcoming birth. I wouldn't worry too much about the name. As a mother of five children myself (only one of which was "pre-named"), as soon as you see him, his unique personality will inspire an appropriate name. That being said, I like William Wallace Grigg :)

Anonymous said...

Dear Will,

These fat, porcine, and neuronally challenged bullies, needing guns and the ability to brazenly murder us on a whim in order to give them their sense of arrogant superiority over us, will never be curbed until they are forced to respect the public will of we the people as being MORE POWERFUL than they are.

To that end, I suggest that ever more meek submission on our part will not suffice. Waving placards in front of police HQ will not suffice. Filing lawsuits, which must, if successful, be paid with the tax money extorted from the very public which suffers at their hands, will not suffice. Church memorial services and the tears of bereaved families will not suffice.

Their minds will remain fossilized in filth and their hearts frozen in arrogant hatred of their fellow human beings.

I suggest that perhaps a dozen or two Murrah-Building-style demolitions of police headquarters in various aggrieved jurisdictions would send a powerful message - the only one they would understand - to these thugs, that their own survival depends on their treating the people who pay their salaries with more respect.

Other actions of a similar but more viciously personal nature, similar to those popularized in Vietnam by the Viet Cong, would also serve to instill abject terror and respect for their self-chosen enemy in their unimaginative and ugly little minds.

Once upon a time, they confined their vile predations to poor blacks. Today, as you have illustrated time and again on this blog, even middle-class whites are discovering the true nature of these filthy walking dog-turds calling themselves "law enforcement" and "public servants."

It is up to them. If they continue in their thuggery and murder, they can only blame themselves for whatever just fate might befall them at the hands of enraged mobs wielding kitchen knives, scissors, and tire irons. It WILL come to that some day, if they continue down their chosen path.

Yours in expectation,
Lemuel Gulliver.

Anonymous said...

Dear Will,

Here is one of our handsomely blond and Germanic "public servants" extolling the humane marvels of the taser. Strike me dead, but he is the spitting image of the monster Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler's chillingly sadistic deputy in the Nazi SS. A good lesson in how Satan can appear outwardly beautiful and wholesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEABEFR-dgg&NR=1

And here is a story of a Missouri teenager, 16 years old and looking to be all of 120 pounds, who accidentally fell 35 feet from a highway overpass onto the shoulder below, and broke his back and his foot. When police arrived, because, they said, he was "unresponsive and incoherent," they tasered him 19 times. Yes, nineteen times. I suppose, had he been already dead, they might have tasered him 750 times to try and make him "responsive and coherent." I guess the police in Amerikka fancy themselves as students of Herr Doktor Frankenstein* - revive the injured and dying with high-voltage electroshock therapy.

*(Or perhaps, Herr Doktor Josef Mengele.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo6UwNu7QJ0&feature=related

The police claimed this kid with a broken back was trying to get up and wander into traffic, so, practising medicine without a license, and "for his own safety," they tasered him. Nineteen times. Right. They also said that the unarmed, unconscious 16-year-old kid with the broken back was shouting "Shoot cops, shoot, kill cops" and they feared for their lives.

Right. I'll buy that. And I'll also buy any bridges the Missouri police want to sell me. And I'm sure he was tasered, not by the police at all, but by the Easter Bunny.

Lying, filthy, motherf***ing sacks of dogshit. I thirst. I yearn. I wish, please, for only one boon from a just God - I wish I could get to watch them spend eternity writhing and scorching in the utmost depths of Hell, while Satan crushes their bones slowly and slowly, for eons, in his blood-soaked jaws.

No, I take that back. It would be too kind a fate.

Sequel: The kid DID survive - thanks to the resilience of youth, but he cannot remember, after being tasered nineteen times, what happened to him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evh-RL6yERI&NR=1

Yours in rage,
Lemuel Gulliver.

Anonymous said...

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the comedian and actor Kevin James was a former college fullback who possessed 4.75 speed in the 40 before blowing out a knee. I'm thinking he played for Syracuse.

Thomas More said...

Thanks for the review. I wouldn't have invested time in the movie except for your recommendation. Nice change of pace!

liberranter said...

Lemuel Gulliver said:

These fat, porcine, and neuronally challenged bullies, needing guns and the ability to brazenly murder us on a whim in order to give them their sense of arrogant superiority over us, will never be curbed until they are forced to respect the public will of we the people as being MORE POWERFUL than they are.

Too true. Unfortunately, the Amoricon public, or perhaps more accurately, a sufficient number thereof who are members of a sufficiently powerful and politically influential demographic, have not suffered the unearned barbarism of these thugscum vermin. Until this starts happening on a recurring basis (i.e., a rash of white yuppie "soccer moms" from the 'burbs begin suffering police brutality) and unless said Amoricon demographic group responds by heavily arming itself and returning fire wherever and whenever possible, I seriously doubt that anything will change.

To that end, I suggest that ever more meek submission on our part will not suffice...Their minds will remain fossilized in filth and their hearts frozen in arrogant hatred of their fellow human beings...I suggest that perhaps a dozen or two Murrah-Building-style demolitions of police headquarters in various aggrieved jurisdictions would send a powerful message - the only one they would understand - to these thugs, that their own survival depends on their treating the people who pay their salaries with more respect.

In principle I'm inclined to agree with this tactic. Although as a libertarian I am loath to consider being the first to initiate aggressive violence, a case can easily be made that it is they who have already initiated aggressive violence AGAINST US and that any such retaliatory measures would be in self-defense.

OTOH, there is always the issue of proportionality to consider, as well as concern for any innocent victims, the people so casually dismissed by these thugscum swine as "collateral damage." The Murrah Building bombing resulted in a hideous death toll of innocents, namely small children in the building's day care center, as well as citizen customers (many no doubt unwilling)of the various federal bureaucracies operating inside the building.

Finally, I'm not sure that a repeat of OKC would do anything in the near term other than precipitate something on the order of another Oradeur-sur-Glane (http://www.oradour.info) or Lidice (http://www.lidice-memorial.cz), as our Overlords' Protectors begin to see themselves as under seige by the occupied citizenry.

Anonymous said...

Will,

Do you consider "The Matrix" to be one of the best anti-government films out there. Sure, it isn't wholesome family entertainment, but I think its stark depiction of a fantasy world inhabited by a sleeping, unaware population makes a powerful and masterful statement against the powers that be. It's also pretty exciting and masterfully written. Consider:

1. Billions of people plugged into the matrix, leaving out their lives as if all is well and unaware of the true nature of their reality.

2. The red pill, which signfies those who are ready to accept the truth; and the blue pill, made for those who are accept unconditionally their existence.

3. Agents. Nuff said.

4. Morpheus' training session with Neo, which is loaded with references to our suppressive government. He describes people who are dependent on the Matrix and will fight to protect it; the mind has a hard time letting go after being fooled for so long; and many more.

Terrific movie that's better when viewed from an anti-government point of view.

Kevin Wilmeth said...

I'm with liberranter on this one. I share the nagging suspicion that the thugocrats are deliberately baiting us into some sort of incendiary action.

The state violated the ZAP long ago, and continues unprovoked aggressions against its own citizens by the second today. So, by a strict standard, return fire is certainly morally defensible, even now. (It would be a pretty easy task to argue that Jefferson and company would probably have "returned attentions" well before now.)

But I don't think we're in a position where such acts of retribution would yield anything positive, and I am CERTAIN that the enemy has plenty of staff on point just waiting to claim the moral high ground (this being, of course, a marketing strategy having nothing whatever to do with morality) if any of us are imprudent to do anything in cold blood. (And then there are days in which I cannot decide whether our reticence in this, after so many years of open attack, is a hallmark of humanity or lunacy. I like to, er, "cling" to the former.)

It's the "cold blood" thing that will get us in trouble. The answer to rape is not gathering a posse to hunt down the attacker after the fact, as powerful as such motivations may be. The answer, of course, is two rounds to the center of mass, delivered in direct response to an offer of violence, by the intended victim. This not only makes the point with the minimum of ethical ambiguity, but it simultaneously illustrates a viable and sustainable solution.

So it is with the onslaught of the police state. Sadly, I fear that the fight may yet come to our doors, no matter what we might do to try and avoid it. (The state thugs seem hellbent on taking all peaceable options off the table. They are not interested in restoring our sovereignty, and they are not asking.) In the meantime, we should stay focused and remember that cold-blood vigilantism does not win hearts the way that hot-blood defense of hearth and home does.

Anonymous said...

Violence is only acceptable against an active threat to one's life and property. One may not perpetrate violence on those who had nothing to do with an atrocity in order to make a political statement. That's terrorism. Leave that barbarism to the State.

-Sans Authoritas

Anonymous said...

And Lemuel, police officers are paid with taxes. Money coerced at gunpoint or the threat thereof. The common street thug doesn't respect you when he takes the contents of your wallet at gunpoint. Why on earth do you think a badgethug will respect you?

-Sans Authoritas

Anonymous said...

Baby Name Comment! With the deadly state of our Nation, I believe Tabitha would be pertinent. May we, the Christian Church, raise a Nation from the dead...as was Tabitha by Peter.

Anonymous said...

May your upcoming delivery be special in all the right ways! I humbly suggest the name Asher for your new son. "Asher Grigg" has a nice sound - and meaning - to it.

Anonymous said...

Don't you think that maybe we should be infiltrating their ranks via volunteer "police auxiliary" groups so that we can keep an eye on their movements and equipment. Maybe a ride-around situation. Maybe a little sabotage say vinegar on the tazzer batteries. I don't believe that they are intelligent enough to spot a spy. They would think that you were trying to help. Heck we could even have a bake sale.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr. Grigg,

Evidently you enjoy movies as much as I do. Like you, I frequently compare real live with screen fiction. As soon as I heard about Mall Cop I wanted to see it, and your review clinches it. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to wait for it on DVD.

Dave - Erstwhile Urban Wanderer

Anonymous said...

nemesis boy or girl.

Anonymous said...

There is something noble in private security. People hired to protect private property and in some cases lives. Yet, the corporate media casts the security guard as inept, bumbling, frail, senile, slumbering, slothful and even corrupt. Yet I would take a security guard any day over 100 cops. For the security guard works for tp protect, while a cop serves to loot and oppress.

liberranter said...

Slightly off topic, one of my fellow CopWatch members posted this link in the forum today:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/MYSTERIOUS-PRISON-BUSES-IN-by-Ellen-Brown-090122-266.html

HORRIFYING, to say the least, especially if it's happening in one's own backyard.

Back closer to topic:

Fascist Nation, I fully agree with you that private security is indeed a noble profession, so long as it is genuinely private, for the protection of genuinely private property. Unfortunately, the sheeple have been hypnotized into believing that "private security" is defined by the Wackenhut goons described in the article to which I've linked above, a system of hired thugs paid with stolen tax money through dummy state corporations to terrorize citizens on public property. Until this misconception can be corrected, the "Paul Blart" image will probably prevail, with the profession continuing to be filled with dregs-of-society employees that a minimum wage job of this sort naturally attracts in consonance with market forces. (BTW, I've never understood the logic behind paying armored car drivers and guards something near minimum wage for guarding thousands or millions of dollars worth of money or precious metals. This would seem to be an open display of the premium one REALLY puts on the security of the assets being guarded.)

Anonymous said...

Friends,

Re. the issue of private security firms, these can be good, since they have to obey the law as ordinary citizens and respect the obligation to obey the law of those who are hiring them.

However a problem arises when this private security is hired by the state and acquires by proxy the state's "immunity from prosecution." Witness, in our day, the aptly named Blackwater, (the plumber's term for untreated sewage, vs. graywater, the water you wash and bathe with) and, in earlier days, the Nazi SS, which was a private militarized security force of the Nazi Party.

The SS was not funded via state budgets of the Reich, or within the German military budget. It funded itself privately by running the concentration camps, renting out therefrom slave labor to German corporations, and looting the property of those it deported to the camps. Altogether an extremely profitable private enterprise - the largest self-employed gang of armed robbers and murderers in history.

The Holocaust was only possible because a political party made itself synonymous with the State, and thereafter changed laws and waged war to suit itself. This, to my jaundiced eye, is exactly what the Republican Party has been attempting to do in America for the past 28 years. Don't count them down and out just yet.

We need to beware of "private" state-or-party-owned and state-or-party-rented and thus legally unaccountable "security" entities.

Yours sincerely,
Lemuel Gulliver.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the recommendation. I probably would've passed this movie by, at least in the theaters, if not for your review.

Another surprisingly good (and anti-oppressive government) film that I saw recently was "The Astronaut Farmer". It's also very family friendly.

Anonymous said...

William - you may want to take a look at this:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-na-airline-felonies20-2009jan20,0,28578.story

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the review. Now I know I must see this film!

William N. Grigg said...

Really, Sam? You're that upset over the lack of "spolier warnings" in a review of a three-year-old film?

Am I to take from your description that you're formerly patriotic?