Debbie Schlussel loves the new movie thriller Vantage Point:
Hollywood is finally giving us true terrorists who are unsympathetic. Hollywood is finally giving us good guys who are good and bad guys who are Islamic terrorists without an excuse or any redeeming value.
In "Vantage Point," out [last] Friday, the terrorists are Islamic, and they are evil, cold-blooded killers. Finally, Hollywood is giving us "truth-in-terrorism." And it's an exciting thriller.
Boy was I ever wrong about "Vantage Point." And boy am I glad I was. As readers will recall, I wrote on this site that the trailer for this movie made it look like this was, yet again, another movie in which Muslims were not actually the terrorists, but good and victimized people mistaken for terrorists--yet another movie in which the Westerners are the bad guys.
But it was the exact opposite. The President (William Hurt) and the U.S. Secret Service Agent (Dennis Quaid) who is the hero in this movie are, without reservation, the good guys. The terrorists are Muslim and they are the bad guys. There is nothing presented in this movie to justify the mass carnage they produce.
There's much more about the movie and its plot at the link. Schlussel criticizes it for taking too long to get going, but, like a roller coaster, once it climbs to the top the rest of the ride is an adrenalin rush. Here's the trailer:
Actually, this isn't the first good movie to treat terrorism in a realistic fashion. If you can't wait for Vantage Point try The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman. It, too, is very good and very believable though it is R-rated so you might not want to sit down to it with the children.
But Schlussel's point is well-taken. So many movies and shows like 24 sacrifice credibility by adopting the politically correct but totally implausible story line that terrorists are disaffected Europeans, CIA renegades, or corporate megalomaniacs motivated by little more than revenge or greed. That may have worked in the 1970s when European terrorism was a serious problem, or in a movie about Ireland's "troubles", but the intelligent viewer simply loses interest in any movie today about global terrorism that features non-Muslims in the role of the terrorist.
It's as if we're being asked to ignore what everyone knows to be true and believe that the naked emperor is actually arrayed in fine raiment simply for the sake of not offending the very people who are trying to kill us. The Kingdom doesn't do this and neither, apparently, does Vantage Point.
RLC