Movies

Details

War Made Easy
Directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp
Opens March 14, Quad Cinema

Related Content

• Moleskine Introduces Actual, Non-Electronic Recipe Journal
  March 15, 2010
• AT&T Seems to Stop iPhone Sales in New York; Apple May Be Planning New Version That Actually Works As Phone
  December 28, 2009
• Nightmares Before Halloween 3: iPhone Costume
  October 27, 2009
• Breaking! iPhone Nude App Disabled
  June 25, 2009
• Major Lazer Video for "Hold the Line" Does in Fact Have Lasers In It
  May 29, 2009

More About

• Norman Solomon
• Loretta Alper
• Jeremy Earp
• Apple iPhone

Share

With so many overlapping agendas between political critiques like Why We Fight, Outfoxed, No End in Sight, and this—Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp's adaptation of media critic Norman Solomon's 2005 book by the same name—it's surprising that nobody has yet made an epically depressing mash-up entitled Why We're Fucked With No End in Sight. As a stand-alone thesis, War Made Easy may seem the least revelatory of the lot to any progressive-minded, mildly informed adult, though it should be mandatory viewing for students: In the last half-century, our "democratic" government has sold war to the American people as if it were a shiny new iPhone, only the ad campaigns have been filled with misinformation—an ongoing deception that the so-called liberal media has left unchallenged. Solomon draws sharp parallels between the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the invasion of Iraq; he also pokes holes in the fallacies of "smart bombs" and other sophisticated war toys (civilians made up 10 percent of the casualties in World War I; in Iraq, they make up 90 percent) and illustrates the cowardly complicity of the press. The doc is sobering, straightforward, and a bit drab, but to the participants' credit, it's also an entirely nonpartisan endeavor. Good luck telling that to the right once they hear the film is narrated by Sean Penn.