We’re in another cycle where if seems like half of low-budget Hollywood is trying to make a pseudo-pacifist statement about the military-industrial complex. This time around, all the soldiers are broken heroes, pawns suffering the toll of toxic masculinity and/or politics and/or late-stage capitalism. Ironically, these are mostly action films that devolve into the trusty gun porn known to make Hollywood producers rich. Chris Pine produces and stars in “The Contractor” (2022) as a wounded warrior who takes a mercenary job to try to make ends meet for his family. What happens? See above. Kiefer Sutherland is the bad guy.
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Finally, toward the end of “Zoolander 2” (2016), I laughed out loud. I don’t know whether it was that particular gag or just the absurdity of the whole thing that finally got to me. This movie is stupid. It knows it’s stupid. It knows that you know it’s stupid. It wasn’t trying not to be stupid. In fact, because it knows that you know it’s stupid, it doubled down on stupid until stupid became absurd and I laughed out loud. Just like the original, there’s dopey male models and world-saving hijinks. Thank god Penelope Cruz has a sense of humor.
“A Few Good Men” (1992) is a pretty good courtroom drama made special by some unique flourishes: it takes place around a military court martial and features Demi Moore with her original face and Tom Cruise with his original brain. Best of all, it stars Jack Nicholson in a scenery-chewing performance as a hard-ass Marine colonel who gets to say awesome lines. He promises to piss in somebody’s dead skull – and you believe he would do it. Because every morning, he eats breakfast 300 yards from 4,000 Cubans that are trained to kill him. You need him on that wall.
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