<nettime> The Patriot

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Under 17 audiences cannot see this movie without their parents, 
but that doesn't prevent some sharp under seventeen marksmen to 
take their first kills. Their dad comforts them later: you did no 
wrong. And one of them replies: I actually enjoyed it. There is a 
time when duty calls and when even local priests take up arms.

Human Rights Watch could write a report thicker than about 
Bosnia, writing about an alphabet soup of war crimes and 
unspeakable atrocities committed in this movie: forced 
displacement, attacks against civilian targets, the use of siege 
warfare, the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force, pillage 
and destruction of villages and cultural objects, summary 
executions, mutilation, hostage-holding, obstruction of 
humanitarian relief and attacks on relief personnel, arbitrary killings 
- you name it. The abuses were committed by both sides. And one 
side did it because the other side did it. This definitely is a movie 
about revenge (Mel Gibson made a career of playing heroes who do 
revenge, and he is very, very, very good at that - next role: Naser 
Oric in "The Srebrenica"). By the end of the movie everybody is 
relieved to see the villain die, we would just want it to be more 
slowly and more painful.

I just hope KFOR would have some of its personnel at hand when 
movie would be shown in Prishtina - otherwise, if you need to make 
a comment in the theater, please refrain from using any Slavic 
language.

Happy Independence Day!

ivo

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