Shit rocked, thanks @JealousCactus for the recommend.
It's a satire about filibuster William Walker, a mercenary who couped Nicaragua in the 1850s on behalf of robber-baron Cornelius Vanderbilt and installed himself as head-of-state.
The joke is he's portrayed as a credulous, unhinged fanatic who, despite his piety and Enlightenment worship, commands a band of deranged hillbilly psychos who approximate the Glanton Gang from Blood Meridian. Reagan's fuckery in Nicaragua is never far from the subtext of any scene, and this becomes more overt as the film progresses.
It's straight enough that if you're not in on the joke it just plays as weird. A lot of the subtle line reads are only funny if you come in knowing Manifest Destiny is a genocidal ideology and those who sought to further it were among history's most psychotic villains despite erudite speech and clothing.
Interestingly this seems to have baffled some critics, which is why it has a 47% Rotten Tomatoes score. Case in point, see Roger Ebert's thumbs-down review. He may be a lib but he's not dumb, but he lets his cognitive dissonance slip a few times here:
He does indeed survive several vicious gunfights, although the movie makes him such a reptilian character that we would shoot him ourselves, if we could.
this movie is apparently intended as a comedy or a satire. I write "apparently" because, if it is a comedy, it has no laughs, and if a satire, no target.
supporting characters read Time, Newsweek and People, and puff on Marlboros. Why? To show that it's all a joke, perhaps, or that today's headlines are the same as yesterday's, or that the press has always had it all wrong about Nicaragua, or that Alex Cox is a clever lad.
Anyone's free to not like the film without having to be accused of "not getting it" of course, but to watch this and not understand what the target of the satire even is is pretty revealing.
Anyhow, great flick, highly recommend. As you were comrades :sankara-salute:
Excellent film. Walker spouts bland liberty loving platitudes as he invades countries, orchestrates coups and reinstates slavery.
The scene near the beginning where he just walks through the invasion, no longer a person but the embodiment of American Manifest Destiny, is tremendous and serves to drive home the scale of the success of the Sandinistas a century later in successfully resisting American Imperialism.
Just downloaded it and will probably watch it tonight.
"I'm still not clear on what exactly are your aims." "The ends justify the means." "What are the ends?" "I can't remember."
With the guys buried up to their necks in sand while dude smokes a Malboro and sips on a Coke was probably my favorite scene.
Also Odo's recurring bit where he screams in pain from his injured arm until it eventually gets blown off.
It took me a couple scenes to figure it out, I've seen him in a few other shows where he wasn't covered in prosthetic makeup.
Wild thing is in Burn! Brando literally also plays William Walker! Burn! is a great film too, but more serious - very clearly made by an Italian Marxist instead of a Br*t radlib. :parenti: contrasted it favourably with Ghandi as a film that actually explains the why of imperialism, instead of just the what.
I actually thought Burn was the best depiction of English people in cinema. It was a very clear depiction of the way the British state has historically thought and operated
