Movie Review: Chopper

This Friday, Ang Lee's the Hulk will debut at probably well over 3,000 theaters, so I thought I would better acquaint myself with its star, Eric Bana. So I saw Chopper, and I read a bit about Bana. After seeing him portray a rather dour and serious Delta in Black Hawk Down, I would not have imagined that he had come to acting through stand-up comedy. However, having seen Chopper, I find that fact easier to square.

Chopper is not a comedy, but it is very funny. It's essentially a biopic, and one that more closely resembles than any other I can think of. It resembles that film in terms of stylization, a strong central lead character, and the violence and emotional imbalance of that character. It's lead character is Mark "Chopper" Read, a criminal psychopath. Chopper is manipulative, violent, narcissistic, and somewhat foolish. He seems to veer radically between a literal incapacity to feel pain and a childish sensitivity.

I was impressed with Bana's charismatic and unusual acting performance. He manages to make Read a familiar, even likeable, monster. He communicates Read's whiplash moodswings believably and has a distinct physical presence. All of which make him an ideal person to portray the Hulk. It's really quite easy to see what Ang Lee saw in him.

This film is very violent and some people will see it as condoning violence and anti-social behavior, but I think it's an interesting film that asks interesting questions. Chopper is a compelling character, and rather seductive in his immoralty, and this film makes its audience question why this is.

I think it deserves three and a half stars.

Bush's Lips

Among the sins of Bush the Elder that consigned him to one-termdom involved his lips, that they should be read, and that their testimony, concerning taxes, was true. Alas, such testimony was false. And it alienated many people, that Bush could not follow through on his promises, and that they would have to pay New Taxes. However, the fruit of Bush's loins has had greater success in this regard. That is, he has misled, lied, exaggerated, and omitted on numerous occasions and been punished not one iota.

But he is also blessed with circumstances that go beyond mere luck. He has used clever strategies of dishonesty which show his sophistication in the prevaricative arts, or, more likely, the sophistication of his handlers. He has benefitted from an unprecedentedly pliant and receptive media, particularly for the post-Watergate era.

Among his most amazing strategies of dishonesty is one that is quite common among the right wing today- you present things as precisely the opposite of what they are, particularly accusing your enemy of your own crimes. A prime and early example of this is George W. Bush's contention in the presidential debates of 2000 that the Gore tax plan was an example of fuzzy math. I cannot say that Gore's plan was the very model of lucidity, but I can tell you that Bush's was as egregious a case of fuzziness as one of those "creatively" doctored earnings reports, since doctored, from, say Tyco or Worldcom in years past. Its justifications, first that it was the right thing to do with our surpluses, shifted; now, they have been revised to be the jumpstart of our recessed economy. Their magnitude shifted many times. They have been mislabeled as broad-based, rather than primarily benefitting the wealthy. And we were told that that tax cut is the largest we could handle without dipping into the Social security surplus (by the way, we have had two tax cuts passed since then, one quite significant).

Since this example, and many less significant others, I have become inured to this tactic and its cousins. I know to expect a lie each time Bush speaks. But this is unhealthy. Cynicism is unhealthy, but it is also unhealthy to expect Bush to be forthright, sincere, and honest when he and his mouthpieces have so consistently behaved otherwise.

So it was with both shock and unsurprise that I regarded Bush's admonition to supposed revisionist historians who challenge Bush's justifications for the Iraq war. Many of these accused presumably contend that Bush hyped the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. These weapons have not been found in the past few months, and the Bush administration has been backpedalling since then about the volume that may be discovered.
The Bush administration and its more steadfast defenders have also been arguing that the stated reasons for invading Iraq were other than the imminent threat allegedly posed by Saddam's WMDs. However, this is not how I remember it. I remember Colin Powell carrying a vial of anthrax before the UN. I remember being told that Saddam had an enormous stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and that he was hellbent on possessing nukes. I remember being told by the Bush White House that we should act fast before the smoking gun (proving Saddam had illegal WMDS) turned out to be a mushroom cloud.

As far as I can tell, Bush is more the revisionist historian. That he tars others with this label is testament to the Orwellian relationship this administration has with the truth.

However, I am not entirely dismayed by this turn of events. Bush has been dishonest before, and , unfortunately, I have little faith he'll change. However, I think Bush has made a miscalculation. Every time someone talks about Iraqi WMDs, the ignorance that keeps Bush modestly popular dissolves a little. Every time someone talks about Iraqi WMDs is an opportunity for somone to discover that no, WMDs have not been discovered. No, those trailers were not mobile weapons labs. And, gee, Iraq is in chaos. And gee, American soldiers are dying over there. And gee, Saddam Hussein has not been captured. And, hey, Saddam didn't use WMDs on our military. And, hey, if Iraq had weaponized WMDs, why didn't Saddam use them on our forces.

The American public is, by and large, still woefully ignorant of many facts that would make them far less trustful of their Commander in Chief than they are now. I'm not entirely confident enough will see the light in time to boot him from office come November 2004.

But here's to hoping.