Escapism of the cinema Rise of the mercs and a race to the bottom
Might as well tell you now: I am nowhere near high-brow enough to wax poetic on the Oscars, so this column has nothing to do with the Oscars or its nominees or winners, who are probably currently clutching the mini-golden bodies of Emilio “El Indio” Fernandez as I type.
While many of you are lucky enough to enjoy the freedom away from the shackles of a desk in your own office, in irony of ironies, as someone that is tasked with figuring out how to cover as much news from the Imperial Valley as humanly possible with a small staff, I don’t actually get a chance to get out much.
My only guilty pleasure these days is attending our local Cinemark. (I have nothing against The Movies in Imperial, Cinemark just has seats which are slightly more, shall way say, “Fluffy friendly.”) Much like books were for me as a child, movies are my escape these days; the most stressed I am the more likely you’ll catch me at the latest showing of certain movies I deem worthy of my precocious time (that was purposeful).
This past week – as I’m sure many of you may have surmised – I was in need of stress relief, so in addition to going to church a couple times during the week (the 10th being the 7th anniversary of my father’s death from cancer), while many of you were enjoying the California Mid-Winter Fair or NAF’s Air Show (I was working), by some small sets of miracles I was able to complete editings relatively quickly and make the latest showings of my three mind-distractors for last week: Creed III, Cocaine Bear, and Jesus Revolution.
The week leading up to the release of Creed III, I was able to squeeze in a couple rentals of Creed and Creed II on streaming at home, and I was pleasantly surprised by both of the non-Rocky-centered Rocky-esque
Iam definitely a product of the great American melting pot, but on both sides of the family, a Scots-Irish ancestry is prominent.
(Some distant cousin with too much time on his hands traced my mother’s maternal grandmother’s line back to 1557 in Ireland. But come to think of it, if the distant cousin also had too much Guinness beer in his hands while researching genealogy, the family history may only go back to last August in Antarctica instead. No wonder we’ve never had any reunions.)
I hope that Saint Patrick’s Day survives well into the future, but I see trends that may make for an unrecognizable celebration within a few decades.
Let’s be realistic. The whole “saint” idea will become increasingly problematic as the secularization of culture continues. Someday soon we may celebrate Celtic/Gaelic culture by spotlighting Patrick the Guy with the Really Outstanding Social Credit Score.
Oops. Did I say “guy?” I forgot that “Hollywood Reporter” says the reboot calls for the hero to be Patricia. And, remaining scrupulously faithful to the source material, she and her kick-butt sisters import snakes into Ireland!
The coveted four-leaf clover may not be such a rare commodity in the future. If we don’t get train derailments and toxic spills under control, movies. I already knew from Black Panther that Michael B. Jordan was a good actor, but something about Hollywood’s incessant redo’s of classic movies really irks me; not so much the call for “diversity” in its thinly veiled racial politics which usually becomes tokenism, but I think more the lack of originality of filmmakers and the Hollywood cash-grab that is “let’s redo something we know people like, but change it enough that it should appeal to ‘ broader audiences.’”
Regardless, Creed and Creed II, I would say, are great. Each captured the same underdog-story feel of the original Rocky movies very well, while also including Sylvester Stallone to tie it back to the originals, which was smart. Creed III … not so much. While I applaud Jordan’s acting, directing and most of his choices as a filmmaker in the movie, something was missing, and it wasn’t just Balboa. The rivalry between Adonis and his boyhood big brother-type was lacking in that it didn’t have the same fire as Creed the no-name versus all odds (Creed I) or Creed vs. Drago’s son (Creed II). Jonathan Majors is also a great actor, but something about his movements are a bit odd to me, not just as an on-screen boxer but in general.
Jesus Revolution was a pretty good movie. It was a little less tame than your average “Christian movie,” and of course, being a journalist I fell for the hook of having it be told, at least in part, by a magazine writer. My biggest qualm was not the acting nor the drug trips, nor the various turns of drama, but the old saw within certain Chriswe could wind up with abundant four-leaf clovers, two-headed leprechauns, unending river dances (“I’m not dancing – my legs are having violent spasms!”), etcetera.
Speaking of leprechauns, those fabled pots o’ gold will doubtless get a makeover. (“Cast iron pots of gold? That’s so irresponsible! We’re going with biodegradable paper pots of gold! That will make sure – begorrah, no one told me it was going to rain! The gold is washing away and me Lucky Charms are getting soggy!”)
Persistent water shortages could make those dye-the-river-green events like Chicago’s a thing of the past. (“Hey, I dug out the color wheel from the city’s old aluminum Christmas tree. Let’s shine it on this endangered wetland over here. Is everybody having fun?”)
Diehard Anthony Fauci fans may cause trouble for seasonal clothing vendors. Millions of perfectly wearable festive shirts will need to be replaced with ones emblazoned with the message “Kiss My Mask, I’m Irish – and Septuple-Vaccinated and Doing A Pub Crawl on Stilts.”
“Corned locust and cabbage.” That may not sound like a palate pleaser to you, but dietary transitions accelerated by climate change will create new culinary traditions. Of course, it may take some subtle persuasion. (“You can still have corned beef, but it comes with a side of lectures from tian communities that the Charismatic gifts (1 Cor. 12) are either a manipulative sham, something to be prideful about, or a “spectacle,” as Kelsey Grammer’s character puts it in the movie … as if feeding 5,000-plus, performing healing miracles, casting out demons, or rising from the dead were not seen as “spectacles.” No, I personally would rather not blaspheme the Holy Spirit in that way so as to presume to judge God’s works. Test the spirits, sure, but if the gifts are found to be authentically from God, then what? Holy “fear of the Lord” – which is more a respect for His awesome power and thankfulness for being part of Creation – is the only fear we need have.
Speaking of fear: Cocaine Bear was both scary and hilarious, or at least to me it was. Admittedly though, my sense of humor ranges widely from what can be construed as intelligent (in some circles) to juvenile, and everywhere in between.
Speaking of movies: Remember when I said the FunkoPop avatar in my office is Captain America, leader of the Avengers? He’s morphed into the Avengers: Endgame version of Cap, a bit battered but never backing down. Cap is not afraid of anything, always stands up to bullies no matter the odds, and his moral center is always on-point. In short, I’m not gonna sweat the small stuff.
Lastly, I’d like to comment on how the staff and management of Cinemark are super courteous to me every time I visit, which also puts me at ease and helps make my movie-going experience relaxing ... and no, I don’t think they’re kind solely because I’m a Cinemark Movie Club member. Let’s just keep those restrooms clean guys.
As yes, Jonathan Roumie, I still want that interview with you.
Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. Or you could eat corned locust and cabbage in solitude.” “Pass the locust! I’ll take a shillelagh to the first person who comes between me and a barbecued exoskeleton!”
Will the telling of tall tales remain as a pivotal part of Saint Patrick’s Day? Perhaps, but more likely, certain websites will denounce it as “Fake blarney! Fake blarney!”
I hope you’ll take part in a traditional Saint Patrick’s Day parade while you still can. I’m not sure how much longer government officials will tolerate them, especially in high-taxation states.
“Hey – they’re not stopping at the designated end of the parade route! All the marchers are making a break for the state border! I’ll bet the ingrates are migrating to the low-tax state of Antarctica! Not a state??? Darn those failing schools!”)
Danny Tyree welcomes email responses at tyreetyrades@aol.com and visits to his Facebook fan page “Tyree’s Tyrades.”
The history of mercenary fighters — soldiers for hire who might be disciplined fighters abiding by the rules of engagement or might be plundering freebooters — from ancient Rome to today in Ukraine — is often an ugly, brutal, killers-for-hire story.
For the U.S. armed forces and some of its allies in recent years, most of these contractors fulfilled non-combat roles like providing food services, but the most disturbing trend was companies providing armed contractors in war zones.
What were once called mercenaries were legitimized as ‘ private military security contractors’ or, even more vaguely, PMSCs, and almost no one batted an eye, even after such contractors were found to be operating at protest sites like Standing Rock in the United States.
In places like Iraq and Afghanistan, these companies operated in extremely gray areas of the law, rarely seeming accountable to authorities, whether civilian or military.
Those worried about the possible consequences of bringing for-profit companies into active zones of conflict need only look at the case of the four contractors who were convicted of murdering 14 innocent people in Nisour Square in Baghdad in 2007. It seemed that a legal line had been drawn and some justice served until the previous U.S. president pardoned these former Blackwater employees on his way out the door.
Like mushrooms springing up on a rotting log, PMSCs have gone global, appearing in places like the Sahel region, Sudan and Libya in Africa. In these areas it’s very difficult to monitor their actions or even know who is paying for their services.
As they’ve become more common, we have seen private military forces involved in numerous coup attempts in the Global South. One of the most recent was an almost surreal attempt by clearly deluded Americans from a small firm called Silvercorp to topple the government of Venezuela in May 2020. Reported on by the Associated Press before it even happened, ‘ Operation Gideon’ was brought to an end in part by quick-thinking fishermen who spotted an unusual boat approaching the country’s shore.
It was inevitable that at some point a rival or enemy nation would adopt the use of mercenaries that had already begun to spread widely among U.S. allies, drawing in highly trained recruits from around the world. In Yemen, the UAE’s ground forces were widely reported as being foreigners, especially from Colombia (another country with a large number of PMSCs).
When Russia entered the Syrian civil war on the side of the Assad government in 2015, it brought with it its own PMSC in the form of the Wagner Group. This PMSC not only provides contractors to the Russian government but is said to run influence operations targeting Russia’s rivals and has also reportedly taken control of a gold mine in the Central African Republic, possibly as payment for security services it’s providing that country’s government.
To be sure, the Wagner Group and its leader, Yevgeny Prigrozhin, appear willing to go further than Western PMSCs, even recruiting Russian convicts through pardons for the war in Ukraine. Although Putin’s government has officially stopped the practice, we are seeing the results in the slaughter taking place in the small city of Bakhmut, where the Wagner Group seems to be trying to overwhelm Ukrainians by willingly sacrificing large numbers of their mercs. In the process they are creating a terrifying precedent that others might follow in the future.
The mercenaries of old would often collect at least a part of their pay in pillage, extending the suffering of ordinary people as a result. While they have never fully gone away, their modern revival is troubling to say the least.