Been wanting to watch this movie for awhile. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t too impress with it given that I had high expectations of the movie. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was good, but I don’t think it’s really telling a story more than just stringing a sequence of random events together which really didn’t have a beginning nor an end.
Officiate Site
IMDb: 7.2/10 (13,725 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 73% / Average Rating: 7/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Spoilers: (Show)
So the story sorta has 4 simultaneous storylines.
One involves a economics advisor who tries to persuade the Emir what the best solution to handle things are. They were throwing a party and he brought his family along, since it was his son’s birthday. Somehow, his son gets electrocuted to death in the swimming pool (is that possible? a lot of voltage has to be going through the swimming pool, I’d assume). Somehow this lands him his offer and he’s like “$75,000 for my son. How much for my other one?” Anyway, he becomes the advisor of the son of the Emir who hopes to bring good things to his country, but the Americans are always interfering. Like when they decided to give the project to the highest bidder and when the Chinese took the highest bid, the American media was calling them terrorists and communists. Meanwhile, Americans have begun chatting with the 2nd son (I’m guessing 1st born is not always the next in line to become king). The 2nd son was much more ambitious, and didn’t really think much of his people, but the Americans gaurantees he’ll become the next Emir in exchange for cooperation of course. This ended up with the death of the 1st prince.
That brings in our 2nd storyline. A CIA agent messed up a mission and lost a missile. He was later reassigned to kill the 1st prince, but somehow his intelligence was incorrect and his inside source betrayed him and started to torture him trying to find out who he was working for. It was actually that the torturer mentioned methods used by the Chinese to torture Falung Gong, forcing them to recant their belief. He keeps on listing them until he gets to the part where they pulled out fingernails, which was exactly what he did. I won’t get into the details on how he escaped death, but after he was released, the FBI begins to do an investigation on him and the CIA basically shuts him out as if they never knew him. I think at the end he was trying to warn the 1st prince, but who knew that both he and the prince went KABOOM!
The missing missile comes back into the story and you learn about suicide bombers and the teachings of anti-western culture. This seemed like the reenactment of the fishing boat bombing the U.S. battleship, but I don’t think the ship they bombed this time was a battleship. Looked more like an oil tanker.
The final story line involves the Amercians who are trying to take control of the oil in the middle east. 2 major oil companies had recently merged (I’m guessing similar to Exxon and Mobil), but there was an investigation into if any foul playing went on. Indeed there was, but even government was into this as they really need a few scapegoats, because they also believed this to be in the best interest of the country.
As the quote says: Corruption is government intrustion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That’s Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm! Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the street. Corruption is why we win.
