Fiction?
I really enjoyed The Bourne Ultimatum last night. Looking at Rotten Tomatoes I see that it has a collective score of 94%, so I’m not the only one. However, most reviewers seem to have missed perhaps one of the most interesting things with the film (the Onion AV Club being an exception): in this movie the CIA kidnaps people in broad daylight in London and assassinates American citzens and a British journalist. Such cynicism and paranoia about the government should be particularly noteworthy and have everyone talking. Except no one is (the NY Time’s good review focuses on the film’s emotional landscape), because the CIA has done all the things the CIA does in this movie, from kidnapping people in Italy to holding American citizens without trial to unethical psychological experiments. To my knowledge the CIA hasn’t deliberately killed American citizens in the last few decades, but I’m sure that’s just because we don’t know about it.
So why the silence? Why are not viewers outraged at this movie CIA? I don’t think people are blind, but rather, they are all too aware of that the details of what they are seeing is fiction but the fundamental reality is not. In the last seven years people have become inured to all these horrible actions, accepting the soothing lies that seek to defend them and afraid to stand up for principles. The movie ends on a high note that I’m sure we’ll never see in real life, with a senior official blowing the wistle and the high level officers responsible (including the head of the CIA) carted off to jail. What does it say about our country when there’s more justice in the movies?