I originally started by calling this a review, and I’ll still classify this under Reviews, but it isn’t really. As we all know, reviewers always bring their baggage to everything they’re reviewing, so rather than just let you guess where I’m coming from, I’m stripping off all that crap and letting you know straight off.

There is so much already written about the movie, both the original and the re-make with Keanu Reeves, that I won’t belabour the issues here. Essentially, it boils down to Original – Good, Remake – Bad. And that’s fine with me.

(However, as a parent, can I just say that both characters — Jennifer Connelly as Helen Benson, and Jaden Smith as Jacob — riled the hell out of me? A supposed parent casually handing over a child to someone else when the government come for her? Leaving a child alone in a car while she goes looking for the alien in a crowded public transport hub? Letting the child leave the car to go to the toilet in McDonalds by himself? It was as if there was Some Big Point to be made regarding human relationships but, until we got to that part of the script, it was really irrelevant how the step-mother and step-son interacted, or even where they were. All in all, this part of the movie was very badly handled.)

But, moving right along, it occurs to me that this movie could only have been made by a First World power. Think about it. We have a less-developed civilisation. A more advanced civilisation comes along and says that the primitives have trashed the place. They’re going to instill their version of justice, but the primitives are not to know how. It’s enough just to know that the advanced civilisation is, um, advanced. The advanced civilisation starts a “surge” of metal locusts. Then they seem to change their mind and leave, removing the only way that the primitives have of, say, sustaining their health care system and general infrastructure. You’re on your own. Go on, impress us. And if anything else happens, it’s Your Fault. Even though we didn’t tell you how to do it better. (And what was with the James Hong character? How did a so-called “assignment” like that make any kind of sense?) Even though we didn’t exactly explain what we were doing to you in the first place. Even though we’re supposedly sooooo advanced. We’ll just do what we want to do, leave when we want to leave, deliberately leave you in a state of abject poverty, and then expect you to develop a fully functioning Western democracy oops, I mean fully functioning environmentally sensitive civilisation for your entire planet.

Yeah right. The movie was made in 2008, which means it was thought up in the middle of Bush’s neocon regime. And it got me thinking. You’d think that there are no two populations further apart than a military neocon think-tank, and a bunch of liberal film-makers in Hollywood, right? And yet the movie seems to exemplify every hare-brained scheme the United States has indulged in in recent years, from Somalia to Iraq to Afghanistan, to (now) Pakistan. Why is that? Was the director/screenwriter a mate of Wolfowitz? Were there military advisors involved? Or is there some common thread in the American psyche? I’m open to suggestions here.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE: Maria Zannini has a gift voucher for “A Pirate’s Passion” up for grabs at her site. All you have to do is comment here sometime before Saturday (9 May) noon, US Central time. (Thanks Maria!) I’ll have something up for Pirate myself next week. Ah, it’s nice to have friends.