The strippers get ready to rock!

Deep, dark and whitewashed.

33 men trapped in a mine, arguing over food, water, and who gets to negotiate the book deal.

THE 33, a dramatization of the Chilean mine disaster of 2010, is a dichotomy of empathy and outrage. The pendulum swings hard both ways; firstly at the outrage of a mining corporation that would think so little of its most precious assets – its human workers – that it would not even erect ladders all the way to the surface from the supposed “safe room”; a company that let its mine reach a state of disrepair well past its supposed warning signs (mirrors mounted in the cracks of the stone, to alert workers of the mountain moving – by the time of the cave-in, all the mirrors were known to be broken for a long period); a company that usually just left trapped men to die, to save on resources…

Then we swing the other way: outrage at the movie itself. THE 33 opens with beautiful, sweeping shots of virgin lands in Chile and Colombia – basically, celebrating the “environment” (you know, that thing it’s politically correct to exalt) – and the flying camera eventually settles on… a mining operation. Wait–what? You mean one of those corporate monsters RAPING the land? What is director Patricia Riggen trying to say? That we need to rape the environment to continue living in luxury? (Oh, I guess we selfish humans can get behind that if we still want our cellphones and computers…) An unintentionally jarring start to a movie that will continue to jar us for all the wrong reasons…

We are in the Atacama Desert in Chile, at a family party populated by South American people. All speaking English. In a Spanish accent. Even before my head can explode trying to gauge the level of disrespect in not allowing these people to speak their own language and use subtitles, suddenly – Juliette Binoche! How powerful was her casting agency to land this role, or, more directly, who did they make this French woman scrotum-fondle to pretend to be Mexican? Speaking English, of course – in a Spanish accent. I really need to trap these filmmakers in a mine disaster.

Antonia Banderas as flamboyant nominal group leader Mario Sepulveda, and Lou Diamond Phillips as foreman Don Lucho are two characters who seem perfectly cast, yet even they speak English in whatever Spanish accent they feel like. Lucho mentions the cracked mirrors to the company boss, who ignores him.

As they drive into the mine opening, the men make the Sign of the Cross to a small statue of Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus guarding the entrance. I guess she kept them safe… I guess she had the power to SAVE them but not enough power to stop the mine from collapsing in the first place? Uhhh…

The mine itself is not a claustrophobic tunnel, or shaft – it’s a gigantic cavern, with multi-levels, with space for many trucks and cranes. Since there is a new guy on the team, the veteran miners get to explain all the areas of the mine for us surface-dwellers – the Machine Shop, the Refuge, the Sweaty Male Bonding Room, the Cinematic Montage Room, etc. We are now 2,300 feet underground. On August 5, 2010. And it’s time to trap some bitches.

Rumbling, tumbling down. During the collapse, we see many men running and screaming. It is not made clear how many are actually down there in these multi-levels. I guess (?) just these 33 guys. Anyway, after showing us this capacious operation, and then the confusion and mayhem of the collapse, I don’t understand how these men accumulated all in one area, with none lost under falling rocks. And some avaricious movie executive watched these men suffocate slowly, while on the phone to Antonio Banderas’s agent to fast-track a movie deal to exploit them no matter the outcome. You KNOW I’m right.

The families gather outside the site, screaming for rescue, the news vultures circle, the company men rhubarb. Everyone speaking English in a Spanish accent. Only one newscaster speaks Spanish with subtitles. Huh? Who let this racist thug through the line? Personal stories capture the imagination of the public – like the guy whose wife and mistress turn up…

Rodrigo Santoro is government guy Laurence Golborne, sent to clean up the mess, either by rescuing the men or providing a good public explanation on why not. That’s why he’s so handsome. The foreman tells Laurence, “I’ve seen 5 collapses in 25 years. You know how many survived? No one.” He is resigned to letting the men die due to company policy.

But being so handsome, Laurence wants to impress Juliette Binoche (whose brother is one of the 33), so goes all Obama Community Organizer and sequesters earth-moving equipment with a Latin-American foreman – Gabriel Byrne. Who the FUCK is casting this film? (And we thought this kind of “whitewashing” only happened during the ‘50s and ‘60s.) Welshman Byrne plays a red-skinned Mexican, and uses an accent that crosses just two inches over into being racist. In that accent he tells us the problems of drilling down the distance of the Empire State Building, the unbreakable diorite slab, the drill deviation factor, that it never goes straight down… amazing facts… amazing accent.

The men have food and water for 3 days for 30 people. By the light of their helmet lamps, they assign Mario (Banderas) the food monitor, and apportion it out in smaller and smaller rations as the days drag by. By 12 days, there is nothing left. How did these guys survive for 69 days?! We are privy to their escape attempts, arguments, breakdowns – including a contention over who would hire an author to co-write a book upon their escape and who should reap the rewards of such product. (They would agree on author Hector Tobar, whose account this movie is based on, and equal royalty shares.) But it is truly amazing how 33 men held their sanity in that distressing entombment, not one of them going stir crazy or murderous or eating-my-arm insane!

Welsh-Irish character actor Bob Gunton is Mexican President Piñera (didn’t Tim Robbins escape from his jail by digging a mine shaft and swimming through shit?); he employs an accent just to the point of not sounding racist, playing the situation for political gain. And James Brolin appears out of nowhere as one of the drillers, and by now, the racism is so sharp and diamond-edged, they should mount it on the end of the drill bit and GIT ‘R DONE.

“Yes, I can do some kind of South American accent
if you pay me.”

We hear the failed attempts from the miners’ perspective; the noise of the drill above them, the fading crunch as it deviates to the side… After 16 days, Mexican Byrne gives up “They had food for 3 days. It’s 100 degrees down there. It’s like a tomb.” But the handsome guy rallies everyone and hooray, the drills are fired up again… It makes us wonder at the motivation of the company who rescued the 33. Profit? Ethics? Religion? For the love of Man? Why did the company drill past their point of believing the men had enough resources to survive? That’s empirical data. After 20 days, they were going to be bringing up corpses. Who was funding this company? Who reimbursed the expenses after the 69 days of labor? Whatever the underlying reasons, the fact is – it got done, and that in itself is tear-welling, perceiving this as humanity helping the “least” of us (these men were common laborers, not famous or rich). In the final telling it was humanity at its best.

Before the rescue, an initial drill hole was used to send down supplies and communication devices to the 33. Then a little capsule is rigged and each man is brought up one at a time, a 15 minute slow ride through solid rock. What a thought! As we saw on those news broadcasts, when the effervescent “Super Mario” Sepulveda is freed, he woiks the crowd in a Chilean chant.

While we see the real life 33 during the end credits, now gathered again in brotherhood and survivorship, pondering on humanity at its best, we can’t help that pendulum swinging one last time towards humanity at its worst – the corporation responsible for the negligence in almost killing these men goes completely unpunished. As does the casting agency.

END

Gutless Under Cliché.

Yes, I know it’s trying to be inspiring and heroic and poignant, but COURAGE UNDER FIRE is one of the most blatantly gutless movies ever made. About a soldier investigating whether a downed female United States helicopter pilot in Desert Storm deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor. So I ask you: in which universe will America ever make a movie where a Medal of Honor is investigated and NOT awarded?

So it’s a foregone conclusion – all the mystery and mayhem and maybes are simply wasting our time more than the actual war this story was set in – as it leads inexorably to the melodramatic military funeral, the flags, saluting, tears of the family, proud shiny buttons and white gloves, the flyover with one plane breaking formation, and that bilious, bleating orchestra swell. And the Medal. The End. Cry me a river; cry me a patently meaningless award, military swine.

Then the coda: the investigating soldier visits pilot’s grave, salutes grave, tiny flag, voiceover of dead pilot to American Pie Mom and Dad, talking of the Big Push and hero hero hero hero hero hero another blithering orchestra swell I’m going to vomit…

Denzel Washington is the investigating soldier, with demons of his own. (Well, they’re not really demons; they’re roiling stabs of conscience he feels for stupidly shooting one of his own tanks during a skirmish, killing his own men in the hilariously black euphemism “friendly fire,” and then having the military cover-up his blunder.) And whenever he has visions of that po’ boy he fricasseed in that tank (Mmm! Soldierboy, the other white meat!), he heads straight for the alcohol… uh, cos he’s a hero, see.

When he’s asked to investigate whether Captain Karen Walden (Meg Ryan) is worthy of receiving the Medal of Honor for “courage under fire,” the story ends right there. Of course she’s deserving of it. She’s the first female officer recommended, she’s regarded as a hero for sacrificing her life for her men–and she’s Meg Ryan. As if the movie would go to all the trouble setting up her heroism and feminism and Ryanism and NOT award her the medal.

And every cliché in the military lexicon is thrown at us like grenades lobbed into foxholes:

• the tragic family that Denzel has to leave behind to “do his duty for his country” and investigate this chick; make that tragic “perfect” family–with four kids, none of them fight or scream or whine, his wife is totally supportive, no one is on drugs or getting pregnant or having affairs… yawn;
• Denzel is damaged goods, investigating soldiers who are damaged goods;
• Meg’s selflessness, the care for her boys, the tough love, the noble leader, the smart tactician–who was she? William Wallace or Jesus Christ?;
• the novice (Matt Damon), the toughguy (Lou Diamond Phillips), the hero-worshipper (Tim Guinee) and all the other bumboys under her command, like the Benetton passengers of SPEED;
• the hospitalized guy (Seth Gilliam) whose seen one battle too many;
• the military cover-up (common practice, we must assume, for all those dolts who lose their heads in firefights, only rarely exposed as public disgrace like Pat Tillman’s incident);
• everyone’s got Movie PTSD.

Denzel wants to find out “what really happened,” so COURAGE is constructed like a RASHOMON for rednecks, as we see all the alternate flashbacks with a coy Walden, an indecisive Walden and a butch Walden barking orders and trying not to look like a sex object. Not one of the scenarios is ambiguous about her Hero status — no matter if she threw Iraqi babies at walls or defunded the G.I. Bill. If we can call football players heroes, and people who jumped from the Twin Towers heroes, then this chopper pilot must be a shoo-in, so I ask again: what compels viewers to spend 120 minutes pretending there’s any doubt?

Denzel visits Walden’s helicopter bumboys, who all give differing accounts of My Night In The Desert With Captain Walden. Diamond Phillips claims he was the toughguy, as he lies and plies himself with alcohol and commits suicide (cos he’s a hero!); Damon claims Walden was a strategic hardnose, as he admits to being a junkie and afraid to go flying again (cos he’s a hero!); Guinee relates how Walden sacrificed herself for them, even as he reveals how she got them shot down by taking another pass at an Iraqi tank when she could have flown away–cognitive dissonance rules!–while constantly telling his wife to shutup for calling Walden butch (cos he’s a hero!); while Seth Gilliam pounds his medication to numb himself out of the running as a reputable eyewitness (cos he’s a hero, see!).

What’s in it for her bumboys to report that she was a coward? Nothing. But saying she was a HERO makes them vicarious heroes alongside her. Ooo-rah!

And here’s a note to all you military wardogs whose first reaction is to Spock-chop me for “disrespecting” you (such heroes, fighting for my right to have a differing opinion in a free country!): When are you going to realize your own government, who pays you hypocritical lip service, regards you with even less respect than I do? I just consider you deluded and egotistical and sometimes uneducated, while they consider you cannon fodder!

It’s the United States government that fools you into getting your asses shot off for them in the first place; it’s the United States government that refuses you and your family financial benefits when you return from war; it’s the United States government that stop-losses you, reneging on your stipulated leave time, over and over and over again; it’s the United States government that cuts your medical funding; it’s the United States government that evicts your family, that lies about friendly fire, that doesn’t provide armor for you or your vehicles; it’s the United States government that kicks you out for being gay after you’ve dedicated your life to them; it’s the United States government that supposedly trains you for PTSD and then all of you return from war with PTSD (Who are the assholes? You, who are either failing your training, or the government who are failing to train you properly?).

Is that what you bitches call “respect”?

Under fire from your own government, it’s about time you showed some real Courage Under Fire and tell them where to shove it next time they want to exploit you for political gain. That is, unless you really are as dumb as they consider you to be.

Ooo-rah!

END