Word: yemen
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...escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict means that the suicide-bomb attack that killed as many as 17 U.S. armed-forces personnel in Yemen on Thursday is unlikely to be the last. Although it?s far too early to say just who rammed a U.S. destroyer with a rubber dinghy packed full of explosives, it?s relatively safe to assume the attack is not unrelated to the violence currently unfolding in the Palestinian territories. That?s not to imply in any way that the perpetrators were Palestinian - the U.S. has plenty of enemies throughout the Arab world, and its flag...
Under sniper fire during an embassy demonstration in Yemen, a Marine colonel (Samuel L. Jackson) orders his men to shoot at the demonstrators; 83 Yemenis are killed. At the colonel's court martial, his attorney (Tommy Lee Jones) cries bureaucratic cover-up--which the script, from a story by former Navy Secretary James Webb, sees as more damning than the massacre of civilians. The issues demand nuance, not the rhetorical bombast offered in this muddle. It has something to offend every political sensibility but little to offer in thoughtful drama...
...Even to hard-core, pro-army, Yemen-hating moviegoers the film's conclusion will not make sense. Hero or not, the actual evidence and the court case that is portrayed leads no one to expect or rejoice at a verdict of "innocent." Jones' character is not a particularly good lawyer-moreover, the case clearly doesn't hold water against the government's evidence-lying witnesses...
...movie focuses, or at least tries to focus, on the moral dilemmas that Hodges faces. He trusts his friend, but when he visits Yemen to look for evidence, he witnesses first-hand the effects of Childers's attack and is mortified and subsequently falls off the wagon. But this, the one aspect of this movie that could be interesting or thought provoking-that Hodges has to defend a friend who he believes to be guilty-dissipates into thin air. Hodges simply forgets all that he saw in Yemen and vigorously defends his friend. The audience keeps wondering where the moral...
...heroes shouldn't have to stand alone. Besides the film's questionable morals and its self-contradicting characters, it has some wildly unbelievable subplots. For instance, when Hodges goes to Yemen he sees a skinny, one-legged girl on one of those tragic-looking hand-carved crutches. She is adorable, and a perfect figure to represent the suffering Childers caused. That is, the first time we see her. She hobbles around incessantly, silently leading Hodges around. He thinks about her on his trip back. We get another flashback later on and by this point she has gone from a horrifying...