Recommended. A slice of life type movie about a young firefighter. What is so interesting about this powerful homage to the heroism of firefighters (and by extension in my mind, police) is that it is not a strong story, but it is still riveting and interesting from beginning to end. It’s plot is a rather unoriginal story of the rookie firefighter joining a firehouse, falling in love, marrying, having kids, and facing the ultimate fire of his life. Somewhat episodic, riveting nonetheless. No conspiracy, no criminal element like in Backdraft, just an everyday hero. But it is very loving about family and yet the tension of that value with the value of risking one’s life to save others. It ends with a huge firefighter funeral, that although it does not refer to 9/11 at all, it certainly evoked such powerful gratitude and emotion in my heart for those heros who saved lives on that fateful day, while losing their own. It shows the humanity of these men, with all their faults and fun, but doesn’t degenerate into negativity like Dark Blue did for cops, or unqualified worship either. It’s about time we had an honoring yet balanced movie. And it has a surprise non-Hollywood ending that totally threw me. What I love about this is that it starts with the hero, played by Joqauin Phoenix, facing certain doom trapped in a huge burning building, and then the entire movie is a flashback of his life, which pretty much embodies the notion of having your life flash before you when facing death. I loved that about it. We need to think more about death, because it forces us to examine our lives, what is so important to us, what we are wasting time on, and so forth. The firefighting episodes throughout were just realistic yet interesting, no fantastic FX or impossible feats of firemen leaping 20 feet to safety and all the typical outrageous action stunts that Hollywood thinks we need to be satisfied. How refreshing. What I did not like about the movie is a couple of things. First of all, yet another movie that deals with death and the meaning of life and it totally ignores God. This disingenuiness is multiplied by the fact that the only reference to religion at all is the mention that most of them are Catholic and then they play a funny “confession” prank on the newbies. No Problem there. We all have fun. But then not a single other reference to God is made throughout the entire film, as if these men do not think about God when facing death, as if God is not relevant to Catholics. Look, God becomes relevant to atheists when facing death. This is a sad and deep lacking in the souls of the moviemakers that makes them try to ignore the real spiritual side of this job of heros. Another major weakness is in the lack of character arc in the hero. Actually, the lack of much of any motivation at all. We see him brood a lot, we see him struggle with his wife about wanting to take on more danger in his job in order to save lives, while she argues for the need to stay alive for his family, his children. Okay, good setup, but we never learn WHY he wants so badly to save lives. Throughout, he is a pretty two dimensional character, while the secondary character, the Captain, played By John Travolta, has more revelation than the hero. Though even here, it is not enough, we learn that the Captain follows in a line of firefighters in his family. Okay, that gives us a little understanding of where he is coming from, but nothing about the hero. So he remains too aloof and mysterious throughout the story. Someone that it is too hard to identify with because we don’t know WHY he does anything. Too unclear. But overall, great movie that elevates family, love, sacrifice, loving friendship and the heroism of firefighting.

Not really recommended. I was mildly and happily surprised that this movie about mind control and politics starring the mighty Denzel Washington was not another thinly veiled political agitprop. The filmmakers did a great job of displaying a U.S. Presidential election without showing any parties and without making the good guys or bad guys obviously either of the parties. In fact, they set up characters as almost combinations of both parties. The guy who is running for president has an agenda called “compassionate vigilance” much akin to Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” but this same character also brags and crows on about how “I’ve faced the enemy on the battlefield,” just like a John Kerry. But I must say, the candidate, Raymond Shaw, played well by Liev Shrieber, and his controlling Lady Macbeth mother, played by Meryl Streep, are wittingly or unwittingly, dramatized to be more like Democrats or liberals. The dirty rotten, scheming, controlling socialist mother is unavoidably a replicant of Hillary Clinton, down to the hairdo and look. I heard they tried to recut the movie so she wouldn’t be as much like her. Also, Shaw’s unnamed party talks about easily winning the East Coast and California, but not holding onto the Southern states, obvious strengths and weaknesses of the Dems. Interestingly, Mother Hillary Streep is concerned all about medical care and says a line to an enemy trying to stop her, “I will bury you,” that I just could not help but connect with the Hillary ideological bedfellow Nikita Kruschev’s famous line to Kennedy that “we will bury you!” This movie did an interesting take on the Cold War scenario. Rather than the typical clichéd controlling fascist or Big Brother government being the villain, in this movie, it is the evil multinational corporations that transcend politics altogether. I see some good and some bad in this. I think that there is plenty of danger and heartless evil intent behind many corporations concerned with profit unhindered by morality. This is undeniably real. And this is certainly a more realistic concern for our world than the fantastic fiction of an empire-building America. Couple problems: 1) It may encourage a more neo-Marxist distortion of social theory that reduces all power issues to class warfare and exploitation by capitalist corporations. I only say this, not because I believe the movie intends such imbalanced perspective but because the current milieu in which we now find ourselves has made a certain fashion of Marxist envy and resentiment, as the French would say, and Nietzsche would elucidate and Michael Moore would mangle and bastardize. That irrational hatred for anyone better off than you are. 2) I think the movie’s plot suffers because of this. For the whole point of putting the Global Conglomerate’s man into office by assassinating the newly elected president, is not really spelled out beyond having a man in their control who “runs the country.” Yeah, but why? What do they really want to do? What’s the real goal of having their man in there? They never really say, which makes the story a bit unsatisfying. Also, I see a moral failing with the film. At the end, when the bad guys are caught and Denzel assassinates the Vice President and his mother instead, we are all supposed to say it’s okay cause the mother was evil, and the good guy was brainwashed. But the problem is that the VP gives Denzel a strong look at the end that tells him and us that he does remember, that there is a small part of him deep down that they can’t control, which hints at Denzel to kill them, not the innocent president. But see, if there is that ultimate untouchable part of our will that cannot be controlled, then Denzel did not kill under mind control but under his free will to do so. Which makes him a murderer, and of a good guy!! After all, the VP shows he is not a total puppet and foils the big bad corporation’s goal. Also, the Feds go back into security cameras and retouch Denzel’s pictures to look like another assassin from out of the country. They do this to save Denzel from paying for his own crime. Again, it is supposed to be okay cause he was manipulated by the One World Company. But consider the moral issues involved in this. If it’s okay for the government to lie and break the law in order to get the bad guys, then what is stop them from breaking the law when they think you and I are guilty? This is exactly the kind of thing that critics of the Patriot Act are wringing their hands about. If we allow the government to suspend civil liberties at any time, even to catch the bad guys, then how can we stop them when they suspend our civil liberties when we are not criminals? Power without moral restrictions always leads to more power and injustice and tyranny. And that’s not a movie, folks. That’s reality.

Not really recommended. This movie sequel to The Bourne Identity, was a good popcorn type movie, but it is the closest thing I have seen to a movie without a plot that I have just about ever seen. It’s one long chase scene with a plot that seemed very incidental. The bad guys, led by an inside CIA head frame Bourne for a murder as a diversion for stealing dirty money earmarked for oil investment – I think. Whatever. So you may argue, yeah, but that’s all it’s supposed to be is an action chase movie. Yeah, well, the first movie had all that and then some. It was about identity and discovering evil one had participating in and repenting from it. And what about the Fugitive? Another pure chase film that had a very relevant medical subplot to it. Just cause it’s an action movie does not give you the right to be a stupid action movie. The best action films are ones that carry some greater or higher theme to them, like family love (Die Hard) or justice and atrocities (Tears of the Sun). They can do it. The filmmakers are just lazy or have empty lives themselves if they don’t put in the effort to give an action story a transcendent meaning. Okay, there is one attempt to do so in The Bourne Supremecy, but it is way too minor and played down. Bourne, still affected by his amnesia from the first movie, discovers his first hit he ever did. He then goes to the daughter of the man and woman he killed and tells her he’s sorry. Yeah, that’s about it. It’s so understated that I just thought, “You scumbag. It’s like you just told her so she would know the truth, not because you were repentant and deeply sorrowful.” It’s like he just made her life worse and ground it in with no redemption for her or himself. It was a token “I’m sorry” rather than a deep soul stirring cry from the heart. Action without redemption or transcendence is really just boring.