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mathiaswce
Reviews
911: In Plane Site (2004)
Interesting thoughts mixed with conspiracy mumbo jumbo
I saw this film a while ago and I must say that I was impressed the first run. However, after checking the facts myself I could see that most of the controversial points made in this movie could be easily refuted.
I do believe that the whole truth about the events of 9/11 is yet to be unraveled, but this movie does its best to divert doubters from the real issues.
I would recommend to see the "9/11 Press for truth" documentary, see the "Why We Fight" documentary and read John K. Cooleys book "Unholy Wars" instead of watching this poorly researched movie.
The 911 Truth movement needs more peer review and less ranting conspiracy theorists. However, this movie is not utterly useless, if nothing else it raises important questions that drives you to pursuing the facts for yourself. So if you have an hour and a half to spare, see it and make up your own mind. Do NOT take my word for it.
It is when we stop asking questions that the real trouble begins.
According to many, this has already happened.
Loose Change: Second Edition (2005)
US government not willing to kill its own people?
I agree with several of the critics here that some of the allegations in this movie are preposterous. However, many of the people that has given the film such bad reviews seems to be the same danish guy over and over again. I cannot be a coincidence that several guys with danish sounding usernames have commented on the same movies in quite a number of incarnations.
The claim made by most critics is that the US government has high morals enough not to kill any of its own citizens. Even though many thousands US soldiers died in WW2, 58 000 US troops died in Vietnam, a number of US troops are still dying in Afghanistan and Iraq as we speak.
These are people, human beings, US citizens that dies because of decisions made by the US government. Inevitable you might say, but nothing is inevitable. Ever.
There are endless records where governments deceive their own population in order to mass support behind a war. It has been true in Nazi-Germany, in the U.K., in France during WW2, in Rwanda, Congo, Burma/Myanmar...
Check out Operation Northwoods and make up your own mind. It's on Wikipedia. Check out Operation Ajax, the CIA assisted coup in Chile 1973, the Iran-Contras deal, Nurse Nayirah in Gulf War I, the genocide that didn't take place in former Yugoslavia.
All which directly or indirectly have taken American lives. Do not think that you are spared.
As far as the movie goes, it is poorly referenced, some of the truths told are complete nonsense or exaggerations, but there are still things that DO NOT ADD UP in the official story.
I hope that you will watch this movie and make up your own mind. We learn from history that we have not learned from history. Sometimes the ignorance must stop, even in the greatest democracy of them all, selfrighteous pads on the back or not.
Equilibrium (2002)
Brave New World meets Fahrenheit 911.. oops 451
In a not so distant future, so much civil unrest has broken out that it causes the Third World War. Exactly how this WW III has broken out is not discussed in the film. Probably it is some country in the so called Axis of Evil that has developed a nuclear warhead and started the war. The US never starts a nuclear war, except in WW II (although it has about 15000 warheads), it only finishes it. Perhaps it started as a pre-emptive attack or some simulated enemy attack like in the Tonkin bay in 1964.
However, in the aftermath of this supposedly nuclear war, the rulers of the rising society have decreed that no such event should ever happen again (as they did after WWII) and administers a drug to eradicate all human emotions to end the anger and rage that threaten to devour the world. The result is an emotionless, drone like, media controlled society where everything even remotely cultural and emotionally stirring like records, books and paintings, should be destroyed. It has almost too much resemblance to George Orwell's '1984', Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' with a twist of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' and the likes.
This movie asks a lot of relevant questions about the present society that most users on this site live in. Rhetorically it seems to hold a black and white view that communism and dictatorship by nature creates all evil in the world, and that the occidental notion of democracy by the same logic is the sole Good counterweight to this evil. This is depicted by clips of Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein with the complete absence of Eisenhower (the only world leader yet to deploy the nuclear bomb, twice) and Adolf Hitler who were both democratically elected. If this is a pointer to Kurt Wimmer's lack of historical knowledge or just a general view of the American public, is hard to say. But history has always been written by the winners and not the defeated.
To make a film where the actors are not allowed to show any emotion is a difficult task, and here mr. Wimmer shoots wide of the target. In one scene, when the leader of the society known as The Father, makes a speech on a large television screen in front of the masses, he receives a standing ovation much like a State of the Nation speech from George W. Bush. The fact that this is taking place should hint of some sort of emotional backdrop, even though the standing ovation is as uncalled for as the eleven ones in the last SotN-speech. In another scene, the character Brandt (Taye Diggs) gets very worked up and gives an emotional response although his character is supposed to have no feelings. In this sense, the movie fails on its very concepts, the drone-like existence of such a society that is depicted in this movie is just not worth watching if one does not make some adjustments. Therefore, it all becomes rather unbelievable, because regardless how wooden an actor is, he/she can never rid him/herself of all types of emotion.
If one does not view this as a mindless action movie, because it is very possible to do that just as with 'Starship Troopers', 'Equilibrium' might just make you think about the society we live in today, with its media fixation, leader worshiping and mind control. However, one should probably read one of the books previously mentioned to get a more elaborate, comprehensible view instead of watching this compressed, Disneyfied blunt ripoff.
The action sequences are really worth watching, it contains less stringfighting than most and the actors actually stay on the ground for most of the time. Another plus is that the cars used in this future run on gas rather than some hydrogen-derivate, electricity or God-forbid nuclear power. A future where Halliburton, Occidental, ChevronTexaco, Shell and the others would loosen its grip of the world is just plain naïve.
As of this writing, the rating of this movie is 7.7 out of ten. I would rate it about 4.5 myself. The idea in the script is self-contradictory, but it may pass as a decent action movie if one is not too picky.