Two movies that want to be serious but really aren’t…
Boys of Abu Ghraib…By far the more successful of the two but that isn’t saying much. It follows a soldier who becomes a new guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and the movie does an admirable job of showing both sides of how that prison became such a mess. Our young guard starts off idealistic and disgusted at what he sees, and the most interesting thing in the movie is how he winds up not all that different than the callous guy who trained him. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a clunky and uneven film, but it does a good job of visualizing how today’s solution to the problem is tomorrow’s part of the problem. Grade: C+
A Stranger in Paradise…This movie is terrible and all the worse because it is actually about something interesting (an investment bank being used to clean cash for the Thai mob, showing how crime is now a global enterprise as much as anything else) but it’s all in the execution and if this film were a person it would barely know how to tie its shoes. Grade: D