Stone's "W." Not Letter Perfect

It's hard enough for a filmmaker to rake a historic figure over the coals while he is still in power and the story is still unfolding.

It's even more difficult when you leave gaping holes in the story that both undermine your point and lend ammunition to that figure’s defenders.
Oliver Stone’s "W." is meant to convey that George W. Bush is a lightweight who stumbled his way into the White House and misled the country. That’s not a hard thesis to sustain, and Stone makes an impressive effort in the re-enactments of cabinet meetings and other sessions in which the decision to invade Iraq was mulled and ultimately approved.
He also shows fairness to Bush, and good insight, by meaningfully depicting how becoming a Born-Again Christian turned the future president’s life around and transformed him from a boozing slacker who owed much of his life to his father’s string-pulling to a self-motivated force-to-be-reckoned with. At one point, a preacher tells the young Bush, soon to become governor of Texas, to treat everyone he meets "as if they were going to be dead at 12 o’clock" and show them unconditional love.

But depicting the life and presidency of George W. Bush with no reference at all to the protracted Florida legal battle that put him in office, which can either be described as his narrow victory or the misappropriation of the White House, depending on your perspective, is very much like depicting World War II with no reference to Pearl Harbor.
How Bush got into office and the shadow those events cast over his tenure is essential to understanding the Bush presidency. So is his more successful 2004 re-election and the "swift-boat" attacks on John Kerry that allowed him to finally outshine his father by winning the second term denied the old man.
Hurricane Katrina and the infamous "heck of a job, Brownie" reaction of the bumbling administration are also too pivotal to be excluded. True, there is only so much you can cram into a two-hour film, but Stone in two separate scenes shows the president choking on a pretzel –- as if that reflects more on his stewardship than the political purging of federal prosecutors, the Valerie Plame CIA leak or the disastrous and ill-fated nomination of his counsel, Harriet Myers, to the Supreme Court.
As it is, Stone’s film – evidently rushed for release before Election Day— wastes brilliant performances by nearly all the actors involved, particularly James Brolin (above) in the lead role and Richard Dreyfus as Dick Cheney, on an uneven film that toggles between farce and critical biopic. Once scene that has Bush and his inner circle, the most powerful men and woman in America wandering around Bush’s Crawford ranch, having lost their way – ostensibly a metaphor for the administration’s direction – looks like a late night TV skit with well-costumed and made-up actors trying their best to look foolish. Condoleezza Rice,as portrayed by Thandie Newton, comes across as particularly moronic, saying little in most scenes, sometimes simply repeating what others say, and usually coming across as completely intimidated by the men around her, an evasion (perhaps kind) of her pivotal role as Bush’s top foreign policy advisor. Colin Powell is portrayed more generously by Jeffrey Wright a the principled man in the room who ultimately caves in to the inevitable and supports the war at the UN.
Bush defenders will rightfully note that this film creates the misimpression that the Iraq war immediately undid the Bush presidency, if not Bush himself (in a dream sequence he is seen squaring off with his scornful father, who calls the war a "fiasco," an affirmation of his longstanding disapproval) without regard to two significant facts.
First, Bush was handily re-elected at a point where the war was it its deadliest, a year after his ridiculous "mission accomplished" aircraft carrier stunt. Secondly, the 2007 troop surge, rebuffed by Democrats and other critics as further escalation of a losing war, has earned Bush bragging rights, having drastically reduced the number of American casualties and stabilized Iraq to the point that a phased, victorious withdrawal is no longer a pipe dream.
Some say Stone was too kind to the president, considering his known left-wing bent. But what’s evident is that he was unfair to himself, cranking out a restrained and muddled effort that teases us with the possibility of a better, more illuminating film.

NYPD Vs. EDPs, Again

You'll likely be hearing a lot more in coming weeks about the death of Iman Morales , especially since the police captain who gave the order that led to his death, evidently deeply distraught, has tragically taken his own life.
The events that led to these two men's deaths began on Sept. 24 when a mentally ill Morales, naked and brandishing a long fluorescent light bulb, climbed onto a fire escape and later atop a storefront gate. Lt. Michael Pigott, an Emergency Services Unit acting commander, eventually ordered another officer to fire a Taser at Morales, causing him to freeze up and fall to his death, head-first. What the cops involved thought would happen to Morales, precariously perched 10 feet up, as 5,00o volts surged through his body is anyone's guess.
The case brings to mind two other cases involving emotionally disturbed persons (EDPs) that ended fatally. In 1984, Eleanor Bumpurs, a woman facing eviction from her Bronx apartment, brandished a kitchen knife and threatened to throw lye at housing workers. In a struggle with police, she was shot to death with a 12-guage shotgun.
Fifteen years later, Gidone Busch faced more than a half-dozen cops outside his apartment in Borough Park, Brooklyn, after neighbors complained that he was walking around naked and acting strangely. The cops barged into his apartment, then pepper sprayed him, and when he charged outside angrily, gunned him down as he brandished a small household hammer.
In the Bumpurs case one officer was tried and acquitted of manslaughter and the city eventually paid her family $200,000 in a civil settlement. In the Busch case, no criminal charges were brought and four officers were found not liable in a civil action in 2003. However, a judge later threw out that verdict, saying the cops' testimony was suspect. There has yet to be a settlement or a motion for a new trial.
What all three cases have in common is their unnecessary outcome. In all cases, no one but the EDP was threatened (the cops' argument that they felt endangered by Busch's hammer was given short shrift by the trial judge, Sterling Johnson.)
The NYPD always promises to review procedures to avoid repetition of these kind of incidents. But one thing should be painfully obvious even to those of us with no police training or intensive knowledge of procedure: Cops who respond to EDP incidents need to know how best to cool these situations down rather than exacerbate them.
"All they had to do was leave my brother alone," Glenn Busch, Gidone's brother told me during the trial. "He wasn't threatening anyone." NYPD instructional videos shown during the trial clearly showed that the cops involved disregarded their own training by failing to contain the situation while waiting for more experienced personnel to arrive.
Morales' deaths suggests the NYPD has learned nothing in the nine years since.

Return Of The Intrepid

As I watched the refurbished USS Interpid glide back into its berth today, its deck lined with former crew members, I thought about how much of a relic from a bygone era is this World War II vintage aircraft carrier.
At the height of her service, the Intrepid sustained massive casualties in battles with the Japanese, most of them from kamikaze attacks that nearly sunk the ship. So its crew was tasked not only with projecting America’s power against our enemies but also with fighting for their very existence. Without question, the ship lived up to its name and paid for it in blood and fire.
Today’s carriers, easily twice the size, and other naval ships have little to worry about in terms of their own survival, making the Navy probably the safest branch of service. This is not only because, Russia notwithstanding, few other countries have anything nearly as powerful in the water, but because electronic early warning surveillance, precision-guided missile technology and long-range fighter craft ensure that any threat to a naval craft can easily be neutralized miles before it comes within striking distance.
One recent exception was the terrorist strike on the cruiser USS Cole, the result of a sneak attack by a civilian craft in what was supposed to be a friendly port. That mistake surely won’t happen again anytime soon.
Other than that, despite the fact that our ships are fully involved in combat operations, nearly all naval casualties these days happen in accidents, like the infamous gunnery explosion on the USS Iowa or the undersea crash that nearly sank the USS San Francisco, a nuclear submarine.
That makes the bravery of the men who served aboard and kept the Intrepid afloat during numerous battles that much more striking. It was not just a matter of being brave and staying at your post under the most horrible conditions but also having both the skill and determination to defeat the enemy.
The private foundation that turned Intrepid into a museum raised and spent about $120 million to refurbish the ship.
Even with the above in mind, I have mixed feelings about this. That there are more urgent uses for that kind of money goes without saying.
But there is also the point raised today by the inevitable protestors. Is this musuem glorifying the sacrifice of the people who served, or military power and war itself?
What message are we sending to the thousands of children who will visit on school and family outings? That war is cool?
Whether they served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam or Iraq, thousands of veterans could tell those kids there is nothing cool about it. Soldiers die, often in gruesome, painful ways, and so do civilians. Many come back with limbs or other pieces of themselves missing, and most are haunted by memories of trauma they will never shake. While they can rightfully look back on those experiences as the proudest of their lives, few would care to relive them.
According to the leaflets handed out by the few dozen protestors, who noted that the ship’s return to its museum port coincided with Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, the Interpid is”a celebration of military adventurism over diplomacy” and a “blatant indoctrination of school children” and a “military recruitment vehicle.”
I approached one of those protestors and said I partially agreed, and was uncomfortable with deceiving children into thinking that war is all about cruising around on a big ship with cool planes, even in these days when few sailors do get killed.
At the same time, I said, there has never been a greater need for a strong military, well equipped with the best in both firepower and manpower. You can’t be a lamb in a world of wolves.
Or a Gandhi in a world of Bin Ladens.
It will be a great day when navy ships, bombers and tanks can be melted down to build playgrounds and school buses. But that day is probably centuries, and numerous military victories away.
When she shrugged and walked off, in the shadow of that great ship, I knew that both of us were good Americans for speaking our mind. But it was the men on that ship, and the ones at sea, in the air and on land today, who made the conversation possible.