In a new film from UK-based Borough Productions, the President of the United States is gunned down in cold blood. Kennedy? Nope. McKinley? Of course not. Lincoln? Try George W. Bush.
It is always dangerous to rate things before you’ve seen them, lest you fall into the Mark Twain trap: “A classic is a book which everyone praises but nobody reads.” In this case, the film D.O.A.P. is a movie which I haven’t seen but that I know will be transparent political garbage. If you are told that there is urine in your cornflakes, you don’t need a spoonful to tell you what it will taste like.
According to the production company, the docudrama’s thinly veiled title stands for Death of a President. The year is 2007, and a sniper kills the Commander in Chief after he gives a speech at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. The Evening Standard says the film “looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its ‘War on Terror.’” Note the quotation marks that are being used more and more as the war on terror goes on.
At the top of the movie’s description on the Toronto Film Festival’s website (where else would this film premiere?), you will find that the film has two languages. English and Arabic. It is 93 minutes long. It is filmed in HD video. It’s written by Gabriel Range, a British guy.
I read that description briefly, then went down the page to find what I was looking for. It didn’t take me long. Knowing a film of this nature would be utterly predictable, I found the words xenophobia and civil liberties. In the Standard's rundown I found the words Syrian-born and wrongly.
‘Nuff said. Let me sum up the film for you and take bets on whether or not I am wrong:
Mostly hand held. Some black and white. President Bush rolls up to the hotel. There’s protesters lining the streets. An old speech is used. A digital magic moment follows, where he gets his head blown off. The cops and Secret Service look for the killer, grab an innocent man of Arabic ancestry, and rake him over the coals. The public goes bananas, accosting Muslims in the street. Various inserts of bogus news programs are used, showing how much we in the West will jump to conclusions and commit a pogrom against innocent people because of their race. War is declared on Pick-an-Axis-of-Evil-Country. But ta-da! In the end, it was a white guy with a right-wing political agenda that pulled the trigger. Whoops, the murder of the President had nothing to do with the “War on Terror” after all. The Syrian guy is off the hook. The United States looks bad, again. Slowly pull back from a shocked and embarrassed nation as the credits roll.
Writing on the TFF website, Noah Cowan makes a couple of statements that clearly define the naïve and self-destructive nature of filmmakers today. He begins with a laugh: “The film is never a personal attack on the President.”
Oh?
Let’s ask Theo Van Gogh whether or not assassination is a personal attack. You might not know him because his demise didn’t get the angry protest treatment. He was the Dutch filmmaker who was slaughtered in the street by an Islamic fascist for making a 10-minute movie criticizing Islam's mistreatment of Muslim women. His killer shot him eight times, slit his throat, and left two knives buried in his chest, one to pin down a five-page note of propoganda, the other just for kicks. Pretty personal stuff. Yet according to imams everywhere, a cartoon drawing is more offensive than a bullet. What’s worse, the vast majority of today’s media agree with them, refusing to show the cartoons in their pages. These will be the same publications that will run serious reviews of a phony documentary that details the murder of a sitting President.
Cowan goes on to say that the film merely wants to explore the consequences of Bush’s policies and actions. The consequences being the President getting shot, and white America acting like racist buffoons. It is highly doubtful that the other consequences will be mentioned: girls going to school in Iraq, women not having their fingernails pulled out in Afghanistan, children not being orphaned because they’re Kurdish, Libya saying to hell with WMD, so forth.
When are filmmakers going to get around to making a movie about the good guys (that’s us, by the way) that will say something good about them?
Even United 93 couldn’t bring itself to show the terrorists as murderous thugs. Sure, they shouted and raved for a couple of minutes of screentime, but if you watch the movie closely, the plane is the villain and the terrorists and passengers are more or less along for the ride. There is no moral judgment made in the film. Both sides are nervous about crashing, the difference being the terrorists are nervous about crashing on target. As Roger Ebert put it in one of his less-than-stellar moments: "The film doesn't depict the terrorists as villains. It has no need to. Like everyone else in the movie they are people of ordinary appearance, going about their business. United 93 is incomparably more powerful because it depicts all of its characters as people trapped in an inexorable progress toward tragedy." Er, no, Roger. I suppose one trapped group of people aboard that plane was 'progressing' towards tragedy. The other group was freely choosing to commit one of the biggest mass murders in history.
Stone’s World Trade Center is as warmhearted as it can get, but again, the terrorists are an afterthought. Once the buildings come down, there isn’t much more to say about them. Cut out the first fifteen minutes and the movie might as well have been called Earthquake 2. It is interesting to note that Stone's film was considered uncontrovertial because it didn't take a swipe at the US government. The thought that he would take a swipe at the terrorists was never predicted because it never entered anyone's head that he would do so. In the end, he did neither, and was praised for the middle of the road approach.
The outrage over D.O.A.P. will be minimal, hiding behind the free speech clause that went on vacation for the Mohammed cartoons. Someday, maybe, a brave filmmaker will make an Iwo Jima type film about this period in world history. When that happens, that soon to be forgotten filmmaker had better watch out.
Just ask Theo Van Gogh.
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