The Gambler (2014)

THE GAMBLER         C+                  

USA  (111 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  Rupert Wyatt                       Official site

A wish fulfillment fantasy flick that is oddly intriguing, considering the film largely accentuates the tragic consequences of gambling gone wrong, where the lead character is a train wreck simultaneously happening on several tracks, as every blissful moment of winning is followed by days, weeks, and perhaps even a lifetime of regret.  As a result, the film has a sinking ship feeling about it, with Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) as the central figure that seemingly can’t help himself, a man drowning in gambling debt who sees his only way out as borrowing even larger sums of money, who has a predilection for doubling huge bets, momentarily compiling enormous sums, until he bets it all and eventually loses everything.  A remake of a 1974 James Toback script by the same name, the earlier film starring James Caan, which was itself a loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s 1867 novella by the same name.  So who should choose to rewrite the story?  None other than William Monahan, the Academy Award winning writer of Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED (2006), his only Oscar as a director, which was a rewrite of a Hong Kong gangster film, Andy Lau’s INTERNAL AFFAIRS (2002).  Suffice it to say this is largely a writer’s exercise, as Bennett’s character is a loathsome, know-it-all bastard who routinely stands up to gangsters and lowlifes while moonlighting as a college literature professor where he literally excoriates his students, discouraging them from even trying, suggesting if they’re not geniuses or in possession of some unique and remarkable gift, they shouldn’t waste their time attempting to be floundering writers, as they simply don’t have the talent for it.  The existential dilemma that he finds himself in with his own life becomes the standard mantra in his classroom, where as one student points out all his lectures come down to the question of “To be, or not to be.”  One might assume his bleak, fatalistic outlook comes from his gambling addiction, but then what is the driving motive behind his addiction?  As the professor bemoans the fact in his classroom that students aspire to such unrealistic dreams, suggesting they need to get more realistic, one might think this same advice could be applied to himself, as gambling seems like a means to escape having to face his own essential real-life problems.          

Despite Wahlberg’s study of both college professors and gamblers in preparation for the role, he seems woefully detached and unconcerned, perhaps even miscast, as his personalized lecture hall philosophizing would never be condoned in an actual university, but feels more appropriate in front of a group of recovering addicts, as they’re actually in search of answers to the kinds of questions he’s posing, which rarely have anything to do with actual literature.  His fascination with the best and brightest of his students, Amy (Brie Larson, much too nice, similarly miscast), singling her out in front of the classroom, identifying her as the only student with a natural flair for writing, whose talent is head over heels above all the rest who he claims have no potential whatsoever, actually showing contempt for the other students, is not only professionally inappropriate, but qualifies as excessively cruel and discouraging treatment towards the other students and would likely be grounds for immediate dismissal, if not a lawsuit.  It’s curious that this director, whose previous film was RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011), would be so blind to this illusory portrayal.  As the professor then enters into an inappropriate relationship with that aforementioned gifted student, Amy, who also moonlights as a casino waitress, so has seen the man in the throes of action, she witnesses his world spiral out of control.  Like Warren Beatty in Arthur Penn’s Mickey One (1965) or Ben Gazzara in Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), one night, in a matter of hours, Jim Bennett is down a quarter of a million dollars to the casino owner Mister Lee (Alvin Ing), borrowing another $50,000 on the spot from a loan shark lurking around the tables who preys on the desperate impulses of gamblers just like him, Neville Baraka (the dangerously terrific Michael Kenneth Williams), instantly sizing him up, “I think you’re the kind of guy who likes to lose.”  With the money due to both within a week, with no conceivable means of paying either one back without borrowing more, we begin to think this guy operates with a death wish.  And if Amy, the student, is so smart, with her future so bright and the world supposedly at her feet, what is her interest in such a self-loathing downer of a guy who has no conceivable idea of respect for himself or anyone else?      

The path of destruction only escalates from there, as Bennett comes from an aristocratic family of wealth and it’s only a matter of time before he visits the matriarch of the family jewels, none other than Jessica Lange as his mother.  She has no interest in feeding his habit, knowing how helpless he is to his own weaknesses, yet when she learns that the loan sharks will likely come after her and the entire family if the debt is not paid, so she hands over the entire amount needed to cover his debt.  While the sensible thing to do would be to pay the money, Bennett is not wired that way, convinced that his lucky strike is the next roll of the dice.  At the same time, he pays a visit to Frank (John Goodman), yet another gangster loan shark who’s aware of his entire situation and has little to think over, as the man has nothing to offer that’s not already in hock.  Nonetheless, it’s a desperate game they play, and play it they must, where in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden he writes, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  What is called resignation is confirmed desperation…A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”  Growth or wisdom remain an open question by the end of this film, which hardly qualifies as a film with any real insight.  While this may be to gamblers what David Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH (1991) is to drug addicts, as both are hard corps depictions of the lurid and enticing world that addicts themselves are trying to avoid.  Ultimately this will not go down as one of the better gambling movies, or even stand up to the original 1974 version where a much more intensely gripping James Caan originates the expression, “I’m not going to lose it.  I’m going to gamble it.”  As unrealistically as this film turns out, the director shows he truly has no conception of a gambler’s addiction, where this fantasy happy ending may as well be one of those pipe dreams that all the drunks commiserate over in Eugene O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH (1960).  Much better films about gambling would include Robert Rossen’s masterful THE HUSTLER (1961), which depicts gambling as a gritty vocation with immense personal risks and costs, Norman Jewison’s THE CINCINNATI KID (1965), with a brilliant cast and an amazing final scene, Robert Altman’s California Split (1974), that takes us through a lengthy marathon of various 1970’s gambling tables while searching for that magical run, only to end in a devastating numbness and emptiness, a deflated weariness of the soul with no joy or agony because someone won or lost, but utter exhaustion because the dreamed about run is finally over, and Mike Hodges’ novel take in CROUPIER (1998), the rare gambling film to be seen from the perspective of the dealer, showing a completely unglamorized view of being caught up in the same dreary world day in and day out, forced to witness the losers over and over again, where the sheer monotony leaves him in a similar state of captivity as the players.   

Inside Llewyn Davis

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS                 B      
USA  France  (105 mi)  2012  d:  Joel and Ethan Coen             Official site

An oddly melancholic film set in the early Greenwich Village folk music era of 1961, when musicians with guitars played at coffee shops and folk clubs, mostly singing traditional folk songs set to their own arrangements, where some are still overly clean cut, like holdovers from the 50’s, while others click with the audience, developing an instant rapport, while a few like Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) hold their audiences pretty much in contempt, thinking they know squat about music, as they listen to such crappy musical groups that are all copying the songs and style of more successful groups.  While Llewyn is able to give heartfelt performances, where there are many songs sprinkled throughout the film that reek of soulful authenticity, he doesn’t have the overriding trust in himself or the needed ambition to get him over the hump.  Described by Ethan Coen as “An odyssey where the main character doesn’t go anywhere,” Llewyn is constantly in motion, but it feels like he’s moving in circles where he remains stuck in a state of suspended animation, constantly trying to get into somebody’s door, where a recurring motif is looking for a sofa to sleep on for the night.  With no place to call home, he’s constantly lugging his guitar around with him on the subway, hoping to catch a lucky break somewhere.  When we meet his agent Mel (Jerry Grayson, in his last role before he died earlier this year), we know immediately that this guy isn’t getting him anywhere, yet he sticks with him, perhaps only because Mel is perceived to be somebody “in the business.”  Perhaps it’s no accident that the Coen brothers grew up outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, about three hours from Hibbing, Minnesota where a young Bob Dylan grew up as Robert Zimmerman.  Both moved to New York City to eventual fame and fortune, but this film imagines someone who wasn’t so fortunate.  The question the movie asks is if the 60’s era conservatism is all that interesting, as it’s been completely overshadowed by the late decade’s more violent Vietnam anti-war protest movements that ushered in a new focus on Civil Rights, Global Ecology, and the Women’s movements.  This film takes place before Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, during the idealism of a new era from newly elected President Kennedy, the first Catholic to win the White House, with a youthful vigor and fashionable wife that swept the nation, whose era of Camelot was considered a visionary time filled with a promise for the future. 

While this has a familiar ring with David Chase’s Not Fade Away (2012), teenage kids from Jersey forming a rock ‘n’ roll band in the late 60’s playing covers of songs admired by the Rolling Stones, where they were confident they would hit it big, but never did, much to their personal dismay.  Dylan describes the difference between rock ‘n’ roll and folk music in a Cameron Crowe interview contained in the liner notes to the 1985 multi-album Biograph:

The thing about rock ‘n’ roll is that for me anyway it wasn’t enough ... There were great catch-phrases and driving pulse rhythms ... but the songs weren’t serious or didn’t reflect life in a realistic way.  I knew that when I got into folk music, it was more of a serious type of thing.  The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.

There is no question that from the opening number in the Gaslight Café, “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” (Daniel Rossen version) Daniel Rossen - Hang Me, Oh Hang Me (Dave Van Ronk cover) YouTube (3:22), Llewyn is a very talented young man, more authentic and not so much a copycat as the other groups seen, but as we soon learn, he has major character flaws that alienate him from just about everybody.  Opening and closing at the same point, the film is a brief flashback in time representing the travails of a few harrowing days in the life of folksinger Llewyn Davis.  While the film is a time capsule of the era, where the Coens love to make authentic period pieces, what’s missing performance-wise are the Beat poets that often introduce the music in the early 60’s, and the beginnings of free form jazz from musicians like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, often playing in the nearby Village Vanguard.  But it is Dave Van Ronk's 2005 memoir Mayor of MacDougal Street that inspired the Coen Brothers' latest film, as he performed in GreenwichVillage for five decades beginning in the 50’s, where three of his songs are heard, and the title comes from Van Ronk’s 1963 album Inside Dave Van Ronk.  Other autobiographical Van Ronk tidbits making their way into the film are spending time in the Merchant Marines (as did Jack Kerouac), taking a trip to Chicago to unsuccessfully audition for owner/manager Albert Grossman at the Gate of Horn, refusing to join a Peter, Paul, and Mary-style folk trio, and complaining to his record company that he was so broke he couldn’t afford a winter coat.  But Van Ronk was more of an established musician, where according to Elijah Wald, who co-wrote the memoirs, “People slept on his couch — he didn't sleep on theirs. And the reason Dave became who he was in the Village was the way he welcomed anyone who cared about the music.  Llewyn is clearly not that guy.”

While authenticity is paramount, the Coens love to get the details right, including the placement of Van Ronk’s collection of primitive art from New Guinea and the Pacific Northwest into the homes of some of Llewyn’s wealthier academic friends.  Especially significant is the film’s setting in the dead of winter, somewhat reminiscent of the 1963 cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, where Dylan’s presence lurks in the shadows, as he transformed the folk scene’s focus from traditional songs to original compositions, leaving performers like Llewyn out in the cold.  What was more interesting to the Coens was the period that came just before this happened, where there were so many more that *didn’t* make it in the music business.  The film is an unsparing look at one such performer who, unlike many of his contemporaries, can’t overcome his character flaws and remake himself in the image of someone else.  Instead he’s stuck with who he is, a somewhat gloomy guy with a flair for bad taste that eventually ticks off everyone he meets.  Often beleaguered at his status at the bottom of the food chain, where despite his talent, he has nothing to show for it, where he’s forced to live a hand-to-mouth existence, yet he feels he deserves better.  To his credit, his sincerity is something he wears proudly on his lapel, but he chooses to lead a miserable life, continually forcing others to contend with his misfortune.  The problem with the film is Llewyn is a particularly loathsome character, where there’s little emotional connection to what happens to him.  He fails to establish even basic level relationships with friends and family, leaving him a loner, unable to pull himself out of his predicament.  Onscreen throughout the entire picture, it’s one of the more extensive character developments in any recent Coen brothers movie.  It’s only when he takes a road trip to Chicago that we learn a portion of his past that continues to haunt him, that leaves him feeling like damaged goods, where he can’t help but repeat the same mistakes from the past, which only further isolates him.    

That surreal road trip, something of a hilarious satire of Kerouac’s On the Road, where Chicago has never been used to gloomier effect, includes two of the best secondary characters in the film, John Goodman, terrific as always, playing a highbrow jazz aficionado who sarcastically thinks of folk musicians as social misfits that can’t do anything else, while his driver is Garrett Hedlund as Johnny Five, completely silent for the first 800 miles or so until he launches into free form Beat poetry in the middle of the night from behind the wheel.  These two guys add edge, completely lost in their own self-contained worlds, where Llewyn is a nobody in their eyes.  It’s the perfect lead-in for his existential journey to nowhere, having burned all his bridges and alienated everyone around him.  Only familiar with the old songs, where the appeal is drying up even for Llewyn, he’s starting to hate folk music and everything it represents, “If it’s never been new and it never gets old, it’s a folk song,” where he can be heard screaming at one point “I hate fuckin’ folk music!”  When his sister Joy (Jeanine Serralles) asks if he might consider a life outside of folk singing, Llewyn replies, “What, quit?  Just exist?” to which she responds, “Exist?  Is that what we do outside of show business?”  Spending a good portion of the film carrying and/or chasing after a cat named Ulysses, even on the subway, a journey unto itself, expressed in a long and beautiful ride through the heart of New York showing Llewyn lost in thought while the camera captures a reflection of the cat’s ponderous stare in the window, the film has no structured narrative, but simply provides an impressionistic mosaic of all the things Llewyn does wrong, how he blows every opportunity, blaming everyone but himself, alienating all his friends with his abrasive personality, never able to successfully channel his mania for music, where he seems doomed to wander like a Sisyphus character, waiting for a future that never arrives, becoming another one of the classic anti-heroes in the Coen mythology, where over the end credits an uncredited Dave Van Ronk can be heard singing The Late, Great Dave Van Ronk: "Green Green Rocky Road" YouTube (5:54).  Somehow, the film took the second prize with the Grand Prix Award at Cannes.  Unlike O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), which featured a musical soundtrack that lead to a revival of bluegrass country music, folk music is slower and more seriously downbeat, much of it a reflection of the hard years of the Great Depression, where its era 50 years ago *before* the violent student demonstrations of the late 60’s and before the influence of urban hip hop rhythms is not likely to experience a similar rebirth, where the Coen’s parody of the boring verse repetition in “500 Miles” Peter Paul and Mary, 500 Miles YouTube (2:53) with a hootenanny audience obediently singing along suggests it would simply not be tolerated by today’s more restlessly uptempo youth. 

The Big Lebowski

 

THE BIG LEBOWSKI            A-                   

USA  Great Britain  (117 mi)  1998  d:  Joel Coen

 This isn't 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.    —Walter Sobchak (John Goodman)

A zany, constantly inventive, laid back charmer that features witty dialogue, madcap characters, drugs, sex, and plenty of profanity, not to mention terrific use of music that intrudes almost like a Greek chorus as the voice of one’s conscience.  Perhaps the greatest tribute to bowling ever committed to celluloid, this is a film about a perfectly relaxed and ordinary stoner guy, Jeff Bridges known as “The Dude,” who likes to hang out with his friends, drink white Russians and bowl at nights.  However, trouble ensues, interrupting his mellow slacker’s life, when the Dude (aka Jeff Lebowski) gets mistaken for the “big” Lebowski, a high society Lionel Barrymore type who claims to have millions, who apparently owes some gangsters a shitload of money and they’ve come for a collection, showing they mean business by peeing on his rug before they realize it’s a case of mistaken identity.  But clearly irritated by that rug incident, the Dude decides to hit the real Lebowski up for a little replacement rug money, but instead he gets wrapped up in the middle of a kidnapping-gone-wrong caper, as Lebowski’s young porn starlet girlfriend turns up missing.  Wacko Vietnam vet John Goodman plays his best friend Walter, a big man who has an opinion on just about everything, where at least in his view, everything in life is related to Vietnam, usually setting off his hair-trigger temper leading to a stark raving mad rant, but then he tones it back down to fine and mellow.  John Buscemi plays Donny, always late in entering a conversation, where Walter inevitably barks at him:  “Shut the fuck up, Donny.” 

The film is basically a non-stop, run-on conversation between Walter and The Dude, as despite being best friends, they also continually get on each other’s nerves.  There’s actually a cowboy tumbleweed introduction by an offscreen character known as The Stranger (Sam Elliott), who places the setting in Los Angeles and proceeds to deconstruct the whole Raymond Chandler romantic view of the City of Lights, as this dark and constantly frustrating view of the city is meant to be discouraging, where things are never what they seem.  However, from the luminous interior glow of the bowling alleys, you’d think the city cherished bowling as much as they do movie emporiums.  While not a private eye movie, the Dude is thrust into the middle of one volatile situation after another with a myriad of goofball characters that requires a certain amount of self-reflection to continually find his way out of dead ends.  From high flying feminist artist Julianne Moore, real daughter of the “big” Lebowski, who triggers nudist expression, procreation, along with key plot revelations, or John Turturro who has an all-too brief appearance as a trash talking bowler named Jesus Quintana dressed in color coordinated lavender, who goes through sexual gyrations and a good luck kiss as he delivers the ball, to the three Nihilists who are easily the mosty bizarrely dysfunctional kidnapping team, as they continue to demand ransom money even after they’ve lost the kidnapped girl, while suave and debonair Ben Gazzara, porn producer supreme, relies on old-school methods and traditional heavies to get his point across. 

With surrealistic Busby Berkeley bowling dream images that occasionally flood the screen to the music of Kenny Rodgers and the First Edition singing “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” Big Lebowski Dream Part - YouTube (3:18), including a bowling ball-cam that only sees out of the rotating holes as it rolls down the lane, the pace of the film is pure anarchy where anything goes, where the Dude just goes with the flow, ocasionally arguing with Walter over each other’s strange interpretations, but each new set of circumstances is central to the film having the feel of a mysterious road movie, where the Dude’s car gets a workout following one ridiculous journey after another.  Like an apparition, The Stranger shows up in the middle of a bowling sequence, expanding on his narrative observations directly to the camera even as the Dude is embroiled in his next adventure, where he’s heard near the end proclaiming “The Dude abides.”  John Goodman, however, is the true revelation in this film, as he’s just a giant lug of a man who insists on being the Dude’s right hand protection, a guy who lays it all on the line out of true friendship wherever he goes, where he’s just as likely to fuck things up as save the day.  But what matters is that they’re a team, where the ultimate insult is to threaten quitting the bowling team.  To these guys, that’s heresy.  An exquisitely heartfelt live performance of Townes Van Zandt singing “Dead Flowers” Townes van zandt - Dead Flowers - YouTube (4:48) brings down the curtain to the final end credits.  This is the Coens delivering sheer lunacy.  

Argo

ARGO             B-                   

USA  (120 mi)  2012  ‘Scope  d:  Ben Affleck              Official site

Every one of Affleck’s three directed films have contained a contrived and heavy handed plot twist which dramatically elevate the theatrical material, where the viewer must suspend belief as the direction instead goes for Hollywood melodrama, oversaturating the screen with a kind of hyper-tense reality that exists only in fiction, where he simply takes poetic license to supercharge his movies.  Some may find the amped up suspense entertaining, where he often matches it with excellent musical choices, such as Dire Straits and Led Zeppelin here, but there’s also an underlying deceit going on in the relationship with viewers, where the director is not being straightforward or honest, as instead he’s exaggerating for the Hollywood cinematic effect he’s looking for.  It’s this manipulative dishonesty that some might find suspect, as it taints his prodigal talents as a director.    

Affleck’s exaggerated lie here is the Americanization of history, as told through a Hollywood perspective, using the familiar tagline, based by real events.  Focusing on a story as if it is an American example of heroism and courage, left out in the process is the heroism and courage of the Canadian Embassy who secretly sheltered the Americans for 79 days, at great risk to themselves, and helped them escape, where Ken Taylor, the Canadian Ambassador, received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor, in 1981.  The Hollywood version, of course, credits the CIA, but according to President Ronald Reagan in his medal award speech to Taylor, Remarks on Presenting the Congressional Gold Medal to Kenneth ...  “The Canadian Government in Ottawa and the Embassy began the ingenious preparations for an escape. The Canadian Government agreed to issue fictitious passports to the Americans. The Canadian Embassy staff began making flights in and out of Tehran to establish a travel pattern and to learn airport procedures.”  Canada was praised in the American press at the time, where Canadian flags were flown all over the United States, and songs were even written thanking Canada, but former Ambassador Taylor was incensed when he saw the movie premiere at the Toronto Film festival, where Ben Affleck stars as a heroic CIA agent responsible for facilitating the escape of six Americans from Iran during the same period as the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 where 52 hostages were held for 444 days, when in reality it was just as much the Canadian Ambassador who enabled the escape, viewing the original movie postscript that suggests the citations he received were unwarranted due to the CIA’s clandestine efforts.  Meeting with Affleck afterwards, the postscript was changed (Ben Affleck Changes 'Argo' to appease ex-diplomat) to note the CIA “complemented efforts by the Canadian Embassy,” but Affleck remains the sole Hollywood American hero.  It is exactly this kind of blur of truth and fiction that passes for the truth nowadays, literally revising history to suit American jingoist purposes.  When viewed in this light, this is little more than the continued shamelessness of using movies to present a mythical view of the American West with the Hollywood cavalry riding to the rescue.  One can imagine Mad magazine having a field day doing a satiric slant on this depiction. 

That said, with Argo: Too Good To Be True, Because It Isn’t, Affleck largely draws from the accounts of Antonio Mendez’s 1999 memoir, The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA, events that were kept classified until President Clinton declassified them in 1997, and Joshuah Bearman’s 2007 article from Wired magazine (Wired article).  Affleck plays Mendez, who won the CIA's Intelligence Star of Valor for his role in engineering the escape of six Americans from Tehran in 1980, and the film is largely based from his self-serving viewpoint.  The irony, of course, is that it was the CIA’s idea to invent a Hollywood style escape, using a fictitious movie company scouting locations for a sci-fi movie in Tehran, using an actual script and drawing storyboards, where the six Americans were given fake Canadian passports, suggesting they are all part of a Canadian movie production team scouting Iranian locations before all leaving the country shortly afterwards.  The U.S. government was knee deep in a state of demoralization and utter paralysis during the hostage crisis, as there was little they could do to counter the negative publicity of Americans being held hostage and gas prices suddenly skyrocketing, as if the perpetrators were actually being financially rewarded for this outrageous act.  But there is jubilation in the streets of Iran and the seeds of revolution, as they get rid of the Shah, an iron-handed tyrannical despot who was installed by the CIA in 1953 at the American Embassy against a democratically elected, but Soviet backed Prime Minister, so their liberty is gained, at least in their eyes, by standing up to the “Great Satan.”  Traitors and collaborators are strung up on the streets as a message to citizens that the last vestiges of the old ways have been severed and a new day has begun.  The real untold story, which remains secretly classified to this day, is how newly elected President Ronald Reagan orchestrated an Algiers Accords, which many suspect was an arms for hostages deal with the Iranians, where on the day of his inauguration all the hostages were mysteriously released.  But of course, that history hasn’t been written yet.  So instead we get this smaller version of a feel good story, where Hollywood embellishes the daring American initiative, all but leaving the Canadians silent.  In this topsy turvy world of real intelligence and fabricated identities and scenarios, embellishing the storyline *is* what Hollywood does best, even in its real life spy capers, so watching this movie does produce a bit of an unintended smile.    

Perhaps the best part of the movie is the daring escape sequence, which is another example of the great fictionalization of history, turning it into an homage to DIE HARD (1988), but despite the seemingly overwhelming odds, where every possible obstacle must be overcome and everything that can go wrong does go wrong, all ratcheting up the intense pressure of the moment, that tension was generated with more believability and suspense than the fake film crew’s location inspection.  The team is quickly swallowed up by the streets of Tehran which are literally teeming with hostile demonstrators, where the portrayal of blood curdling anger and hatred all seemingly projected at them is a perfect example of Hollywood hysteria, using stereotypes and demonizing images to depict a near surreal world of fanaticized hatred when they are surrounded by an angry mob, a dreamlike nightmare that is in every respect an unmitigating disaster.  The Arab world (including Arab-Americans) has never recovered from this kind of hostile depiction in the movies, remaining fodder for racial profiling, as they will forever be portrayed as the fanatics, even as there are homegrown American fanatics like Timothy McVeigh, John Allen Muhammad, or Charles Whitman.  It would be hard to imagine an Arab-American love story coming out of the current Hollywood culture, which makes no attempt to understand or appreciate Islamic culture either in television or the movies, reflecting the prevailing hostile culture of the times, much like the 50’s never portrayed gays or blacks or married couples sleeping together on television.  Unfortunately it takes generations before these kinds of negative depictions are overcome.  While it should be understood that the initial security breach in 1979 allowed a swarm of Islamic students and militants to overrun the American Embassy, much like recent events where the American Ambassador to Libya was murdered, where in each situation the nation’s long-term tyrannical leader was deposed in disgrace, where pent-up street turbulence fills the void of an absent leadership or authority, where at least in Iran, that legitimate authority was replaced not by a democratically elected leader, but by a Supreme Leader of Iran, a theocratic leader who is the highest ranking political and religious authority in the land.  Despite the passing of more than 30 years, little is known about the nation of Iran in the United States, or their way of life, even after a long-term military occupation of neighboring Iraq, as nothing but a constant stream of stereotypes and negative depictions are ever seen in the movies or in the newspaper reports.  This film, though thoroughly entertaining, will do nothing to alter that depiction in the eyes of Americans.