CIA

One Flight Stand (American Made review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

Criminal activity always seems oh so sexy, doesn’t it dear readers? But I swear it isn’t until the bitter end of the barrel that the people who live this way become regretful of their actions. A tale as old as time, but an entertaining one nonetheless.

 

American Made (2017)

Cast: Tom Cruise, Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Caleb Landry Jones, Alejandro Edda, Mauricio Mejia, Fredy Yate Escobar
Director: Doug Liman
released on blu-ray January 2, 2018
******** 8/10

IMDB: 7.2
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%, Audience Score 79%
The Guardian: ***/*****

Doug Liman is an American director and producer. He’s made Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Jumper, and The Wall, but he is best known for Swingers, Go, The Bourne Identity, Fair Game, and Edge of Tomorrow – because those last five movies are good and the others are just eh. Friends with Jon Favreau, he made Swingers for $250,000 and it made $4.4 million, launching the careers of its actors and Liman.

He also shot that commercial for Nike of Tiger Woods bouncing a ball on his club repeatedly before driving it. Just so you know that he is capable of both brilliance and drivel, he also made the garbage fire starring Hayden Christensen, known simply as Jumper.

Thankfully American Made is an excellent film.

Courtesy of Wikipedia…

In the late 1970s, Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), a pilot for commercial airline TWA, is contacted by CIA case officer, calling himself Monty Schafer (Domhnall Gleeson). He asks Seal to fly clandestine reconnaissance missions for the CIA over Central America using a small plane with cameras installed.

Later in the 1970s, Schafer asks Seal to start acting as a courier between the CIA and General Noriega (Alberto Ospino) in Panama. During a mission, the Medellín Cartel picks Seal up and asks him to fly cocaine on his return flights to the United States. Seal accepts and starts flying the cartel’s cocaine to Louisiana. The CIA turns a blind eye to the drug smuggling, but the DEA tracks Seal down. To avoid the authorities, Schafer moves Seal and his family to a remote town in Arkansas called Mena.

Later, Schafer asks Seal to run guns to the Nicaraguan Contras based in Honduras, Central America. Seal soon realizes that the Contras are not serious about the war and starts trading the guns to the cartel. The CIA set up a Contra training base in Mena and Seal flies the Contras in, but many of them escape as soon as they arrive.

Seal’s freeloading brother-in-law JB (Caleb Landry Jones) moves in, needing a job. Eventually, he starts stealing money from the Seals and is caught by Sheriff Downing (Jesse Plemons) with a briefcase full of laundered cash and is arrested. Seal gives him money and a plane ticket to Bora Bora so he can leave. JB demands weekly cash and insults Lucy. Barry tries to chase him but JB’s car explodes; it is implied Jorge Ochoa (Alejandro Edda) had JB’s car rigged with explosives, killing him so that he would not snitch.

Eventually, the CIA shuts the program down and abandons Seal, who is arrested by the FBI, DEA, ATF and Arkansas State Police simultaneously. Seal escapes prosecution by making a deal with the White House, which wants evidence the Sandinistas are drug traffickers. They ask Seal to get photos that tie the Medellín Cartel to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. Seal manages to get the pictures, but the White House releases them as propaganda against the Sandinistas. Seal is prominently shown in the pictures, which leads to his arrest, and to the cartel plotting revenge.

Seal is convicted but given a light sentence, 1,000 hours community service for the Salvation Army. Moving from motel to motel fails as a way of remaining in hiding because the community service is performed at the same building every night. Assassins sent by Pablo Escobar (Mauricio Mejia) and the cartel easily locate Seal and kill him; the CIA then destroys all documentation and other evidence to avoid being implicated in drug smuggling. But in spite of this Herculean effort at covering everything up the CIA still becomes embroiled in the infamous Iran–Contra affair.

This is not a film of historical accuracy, the real Barry Seal was an obese man, who got his start smuggling marijuana and eventually upgrading to cocaine with the Medellin Cartel. He was not kidnapped by the Cartel, and he didn’t meet them in person until many years later, and he definitely didn’t crash land in suburbia. But that doesn’t stop if from being incredibly entertaining and well crafted to emulate the life that Seal led.

Tom Cruise always oozes charm, but this film just might be one of his better performances in the past couple of years. Yes he does great things in the Mission Impossible franchise, but something about working Liman gets that right mix of crazy and fun (read: Edge of Tomorrow). It’s a movie about drugs, guns, and a soldier of fortune, and it all works with the handycam voiceovers Seal supplies.

Pros: It looks like it was filmed in the 1980s, and the cheeriness of the film helps offset the grim nature of it’s subject matter, and the eventual death of Seal. Bonus points for Domhnall Gleeson and Sarah Wright as supporting cast, they do everything to elevate Cruise and play off him perfectly.

Cons: The peril that Barry Seal faced running drugs and guns never truly seems real on the screen, you don’t believe he’s in danger, until he actually is. Pablo Escobar doesn’t seem that scary either, and we all know better.

Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes

Points of Interest: The man Barry speaks to in the hallway is George W. Bush, son of Vice President George W. H. Bush.. The title originally began filming under the title Mena. No one actually takes any cocaine in the movie, unless you count Tom Cruise wearing it after the crash.

It’s playful but shallow, and that’s where the movie struggles to maintain a perfect level of escapism, but if you can ignore the historical inaccuracies, and many won’t even bother to look into it, then you’ll very likely enjoy yourself watching this flick. It’s a period piece that sets a good standard for what a late summer blockbuster should look like.

theories Summarized

In short, yes I think you should watch American Made. Tom Cruise still has lots of star power to offer when he gets handed the right roles, and Doug Liman does an excellent job recreating the world leading up to the Iran-Contra scandal.

And for even more fun… you should watch my solo Watch Culture video review of The LEGO Batman Movie! I’ve got lots of love for this movie from 2017… so much so that I did both a blog post and then came back for the video version. Check it out! And don’t forget to leave a comment, subscribe and share!

I’ll see you tomorrow with my first School Of Thoughts post (formerly known as Wisdom Wednesdays).

Tim!

Something Is Leaking (Snowden review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

There have been dozens of spy films over the years, and the sub-genre is strongly associated with the Jame Bond franchise to be sure, but what do you say to a film that is not your typical gun wielding action hero?

Films like The Lives of Others and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy come to mind, but I bet you wouldn’t expect a biopic to fit the bill, now would you?

 

 

 

Snowden (2016)

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Rhys Ifans, Shailene Woodley, Tom Wilkinson
Director: Oliver Stone
released on blu-ray December 27, 2016
******** 8/10

snowden_movie_poster__2015__by_nabilstevieg-d8kd87l

IMDB: 7.4
Rotten Tomatoes: 61%, Audience Score 73%
The Guardian: ****/*****

 

Oliver Stone is an academy awarding winning writer, director and producer. Known for his tendency to focus on American political issues, Stone is something of a controversial director. He has directed Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven & Earth, Wall Street (and its sequel), The Doors, JFK, Nixon, and W. Snowden is his latest film and maintains the pace for addressing difficult subject material.

Snowden is based on a a series of books called The Snowden Files by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus by Anatoly Kucherena. It has received mixed reviews and is a box office disappointment, only grossing $34 million worldwide on a budget of $40 million.

Based on the story of Edward Snowden, former computer professional for the CIA and former contractor for the United States government. Snowden is a whistleblower that leaked classified information from the NSA in 2013 without any authorization. He has revealed that the US and European governments had been working with telecommunications companies to run global surveillance and without any knowledge from the general public.

The movie opens with Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meeting in Hong Kong with documentarian Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo) and journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto). They discuss releasing the classified NSA information which Snowden has stored in a Rubik’s Cube.

As the movie progresses we see a series of flashbacks of Snowden’s time in the US army, his administrative discharge over a fractured tibia, application for a position with the Central Intelligence Agency, and what he learns working with his employers.

Corbin O’Brian (Rhys Ifans) decides to take him on, and Snowden is educated in the ways of cyber warfare. He learns about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which circumvents the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. citizens by allowing warrant requests to be approved by a panel of judges that were appointed by the chief justice. During this time Snowden also meets Lindsay Mills over a dating website (Shailene Woodley), they hit it off, though they have different belief systems. Snowden’s first post is in Geneva Snowden where he begins to question the ethics of what they do. After his superior tries to force a DUI on a target of theirs, Snowden resigns the CIA.

Taking a position with the NSA in Japan, Snowden builds backup program of Middle East data called Epic Shelter. He slowly learns that other countries are employing similar practices, and working together on a global surveillance program. The stress of this knowledge and the job leads to a breakup with Mills.

A few months later, leaves this job and returns to Maryland to reconcile with Mills and he take a position consulting for the CIA. During a hunting trip, O’Brian asks for Snowden’s help counterattacking Chinese hackers. Snowden becomes epileptic, and Mills moves with him to Hawaii for his health, while Snowden works on this new post. Snowden learns that Epic Shelter has been repurposed to assist U.S. drones in launching lethal strikes against terror suspects in Afghanistan.

Snowden reaches his breaking point and smuggles a microSD card out of The Tunnel via the previously mentioned Rubik’s Cube. He asks Mills to fly home and contacts Poitras and Greenwald for a meet. With the help of Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), the information is disseminated to the press, and leaked over other channels as well. The three journalists help Snowden to be smuggled out of Hong Kong. However, the U.S. Government revokes his passport, forcing him to remain in Moscow. The Russian government grants him asylum and Mills joins him.

Snowden continues his to fight right now.

Pros: Gordon-Levitt communicates Snowden’s crisis of ethics well, and the supporting cast all aid in the progress of the story. It’s clear that Oliver Stone is in reverence of Edward Snowden.

Cons: The template of the action-thriller takes away from the message, and the way the story unfolds is far to safe for the subject matter at hand.

Runtime:  2 hours 14 minutes

Points of Interest: To ensure the screenplay was not hacked or leaked, Oliver Stone wrote it on single computer without internet connectivity. Oliver Stone also visited the real Edward Snowden after filming to show him a cut of the film.

Did you know that Luke Harding is a Guardian journalist and that former editor Alan Rusbridger makes a cameo in the film? When I first watched this movie in theatres I was worried that The Guardian might come out with a biased review of the film, but I was pleasantly surprised. The highlights of the film definitely came in performances by Gordon-Levitt, Woodley, and Ifans, but this is a story that asks a question we cannot ignore, and it hits the mark.

This biopic is an excellent exploration into the sub-genre and a strong urging to deal with issues of security, secrecy and privacy as they continue to evolve in our globalized world. Snowden might not be for everyone, and it is likely biased towards the viewpoint of its protagonist, but the topic is essential. And that’s all the theories I’ve got for now.

Tim!

Welcome To Americana (American Ultra review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

What do you know about mind control dear readers? Daresay I say it, but I hope the answer is nothing.

Not because your minds have been wiped, but because it’s a really weird and controversial topic and I’d rather stay away from conspiracy theories if I can help it. But they are theories… So maybe I will write about them sometime.

Anyway, today’s Theatrical Tuesday entry is about mind control. But is the movie worth watching or should you forget I ever shared it with you?

 

 

 

American Ultra (2015)
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton
Director: Nima Nourizadeh
released on blu-ray November 24, 2015
******* 7/10

AmUltra_ Poster

IMDB: 6.1
Rotten Tomatoes: 44%, Audience Score 48%
The Guardian: **/*****

From the guy that brought you Project X and literally nothing else so far. Nima Nourizadeh is a fairly green Iranian-British director. Before he he made Project X (and American Ultra) he made music videos for Dizzee Rascal, Pink Grease, Franz Ferdinand, Bat for Lashes, Santigold, Hot Chip, Yelle and Lily Allen.

Interestingly enough I think directing music videos helped him get his first gig (Project X) which was a giant party movie, and in turn this movie, which is a stoner/action movie. It’s all about proper transitions, dear readers.

But what is the story about?

Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is in a holding cell, waiting to be interrogated. A man enters, while another watches and Mike experiences flashbacks of the past few days.

Cut back to Mike in West Virginia with his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). He had planned a trip to Hawaii where he was going to propose, but they missed the flight because he was having a panic attack in the bathroom. Coming back from the airport, they are stopped by the local sheriff, who has a longstanding relationship with Mike.

He then returns to his job at the local convenience store, which is incredibly dull.

Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) is a CIA agent reviewing files  that is interrupted by former assistant Petey Douglas (Tony Hale). She receives a scrambled phone call saying “Tough Guy” is moving in on the “Little Man”. She confronts Adrian Yates (Topher Grace) because he is responsible for Mike and a program she made called Ultra. Yates says Mike needs to be terminated and mocks Victoria before kicking her out of his office.

Mike and Phoebe getting high on the hood of his car while they watch a tow truck and several cops remove a crashed car from a tree. Mike starts to cry because he believes the tree stopped the beautiful car and that he represents the tree while Phoebe is the car. She tells him that is not true.

The next day, Mike meets his drugdealer Rose (John Leguizamo) to pick up fireworks in order to propose to Phoebe.

Back at the convenience store, working a night shift, Victoria approaches Mike and speaks code to him. He looks confused, and she leaves. When Mike goes outside to smoke he sees two guys with his car. He confronts them and they pull knives. Instinctively Mike reacts by throwing hot soup at one attacker and stabs the other guy in the neck with a spoon. He then shoots both of them. He calls Phoebe, who comes over in time for the sheriff to stop by and arrest them both.

Yates realizes that Victoria has “activated” Mike. He orders two Tough Guy agents, Crane (Monique Ganderton) and Laugher (Walton Goggins) to eliminate Mike and Phoebe, and locks down the town. The agents kill all the police but Mike and Phoebe escape the firefight. Just as they are leaving Crane throws a grenade, but Mike catches it, and throws it back, blowing up the station. 

The couple go back to the store. But Mike freaks out, and Phoebe calms him, while his is happening a bag blows onto Mike’s car, setting off an explosion. They stare in disbelief.

 

Stop! Hammer Time. But seriously, I don’t want to give you any more plot.

Pros: I continue to think that Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg work well as an on-screen couple and look forward to seeing them in the new Woody Allen pic. Topher Grace and Connie Britton also played well off of each other. The cinematography and pacing were also excellent.

Cons: It doesn’t quite reach that level of absurdity, violence, and comedy that would have made it a 9 or a 10. We needed a little more of everything.

Runtime: 96 minutes

Points of Interest: The movie is a reference to the MK Ultra program that the CIA develop to combine American and German information about the subject of mind control. This is the second movie that Kristen Stewart and Eisenberg made that has a character potentially go into anaphylactic shock.

If you’ve never heard of MK Ultra, and your interest is piqued, give it a shot. If you’ve never heard of MK Ultra, and your interest is piqued, give it a shot. If you’ve never heard of American Ultra… It’s a fun movie, give it a shot.

 

 

 

What were we going on about again? Oh right mind control.

What do you know about mind control dear readers? Daresay I say it, but I hope the answer is nothing. Till next time!

Tim!