Mistaking Television for Reality

The opening paragraph of of this Newsweek article (HT Mark Shea) strikes me as ridiculously exaggerated, but... I don't even know what to say about the rest of it. Just wow:

The most influential legal thinker in the development of modern American interrogation policy is not a behavioral psychologist, international lawyer or counterinsurgency expert. Reading both Jane Mayer's stunning "The Dark Side," and Philippe Sands's "Torture Team," it quickly becomes plain that the prime mover of American interrogation doctrine is none other than the star of Fox television's "24," Jack Bauer.

This fictional counterterrorism agent—a man never at a loss for something to do with an electrode—has his fingerprints all over U.S. interrogation policy. As Sands and Mayer tell it, the lawyers designing interrogation techniques cited Bauer more frequently than the Constitution.

According to British lawyer and writer Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantánamo in September 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial interrogation techniques including waterboarding, sexual humiliation and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas." Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief, gushed in a panel discussion on "24" organized by the Heritage Foundation that the show"reflects real life."

Somebody tell me this is fiction. Read the whole thing.

Get Smart Review

So my wife and I saw Get Smart tonight. All around it's more mindless than Smart, but a lot of fun. It does include a fair bit of sexual humor, some skimpy outfits (including a shot of Steve Carell's bare butt), and lots of bloodless violence, but otherwise it's a relatively clean PG-13. There's plenty of action and a good dose of the quirky humor that I loved in the TV show (always a favorite when I used to watch Nick at Night), including a few truly hilarious moments. Steve Carell does a great job in the role of Maxwell Smart, and Anne Hathaway (apart from some excessive eye make-up) balances him well; even Dwane "The Rock" Johnson seems to be enjoying himself.

But my favorite line comes from the terrorists. About half way through, the baddies at KAOS are discussing their plans to nuke Los Angeles and the underling (Shtarker; played by Ken Davitian) says to his superior (Conrad Siegfried; played by Terence Stamp): "Seems a shame to kill all those Hollywood celebrities." Siegfried replies with perfect sarcasm: "Yes, how will we survive without their razor-sharp political commentary?"

At other times, the film seems to forget it's supposed to be a spoof at all and becomes a decent action movie, but just when you start taking it seriously they throw all believability out the window (literally, in several cases). All in all, despite Rottentomatoes only having it at 51%, Robert Ebert gets it right:

It’s funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we’d expect from a new Bond movie.

Good popcorn flick.

[Updated 6:oo am]

[Update 2] Upon further reflection, the plot makes even less sense than I had realized (for instance, dozens of nukes are mentioned, but only one is ever accounted for. The rest are not left as a teaser for a sequal; they are simply forgotten by the end). Ah well, I still enjoyed it.

Todd Hertz at Christianity Today, on the other hand, didn't enjoy it quite as much, but he did point out a good theme that I overlooked:

One interesting thread to the plot is Smart's care for individuals—even if they're employed by KAOS. Often, Smart discusses how our enemies are humans, too. "They do bad things, but that's only what they do—not always who they are," he says. That theme comes to a head in the film's middle when Smart shows that compassion for an individual can truly be mightier than violence.

In fact, the scene to which he refers is a rare treat for an action movie: an attempt to actually love your enemies, to convert or save a villain rather than just to thoughtlessly destroying them. It's played for comic effect, but it ends up being rather central to the film's resolution. Maybe Get Smart isn't so mindless after all....