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| Seal Team 6: The Raid on Osama bin Laden – first look review | Seal Team 6: The Raid on Osama bin Laden – first look review |
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| This film is the point at which Harvey Weinstein, exploitation-movie impresario extraordinaire, meets Harvey Weinstein, Democratic big-money donor and activist. On the one hand, Weinstein is working an old grindhouse promotional gambit: riding the publicity coattails of a more prestigious and expensive feature of similar theme or provenance – in this case Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty – and attempting to reach the screens before it, the better to dine, vampirishly, on a percentage of the profits. The Democratic activist in Weinstein, meanwhile, was surely horrified when Columbia delayed the Bigelow picture until after the presidential election, and was damned if his version wasn't going to make some sort of splash before that date. | This film is the point at which Harvey Weinstein, exploitation-movie impresario extraordinaire, meets Harvey Weinstein, Democratic big-money donor and activist. On the one hand, Weinstein is working an old grindhouse promotional gambit: riding the publicity coattails of a more prestigious and expensive feature of similar theme or provenance – in this case Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty – and attempting to reach the screens before it, the better to dine, vampirishly, on a percentage of the profits. The Democratic activist in Weinstein, meanwhile, was surely horrified when Columbia delayed the Bigelow picture until after the presidential election, and was damned if his version wasn't going to make some sort of splash before that date. |
| So here we are. Seal Team 6 could only rate as propaganda in a toxic, Fox News-driven political environment such as obtains at this moment. Forget all that context, however, and you find here a pretty niftily put together platoon-movie, tautly directed by John Stockwell (Blue Crush, Crazy/Beautiful), well cast with familiar second-string TV faces (Boss's Kathleen Robinson, Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez et al, plus the gaunt and reliable William Fichtner). It provides a fairly clear, certainly a very exciting depiction of the raid as it went down, while bolstering the shoot-em-up material with fictionalised backstories for the Seals themselves (the real Team 6 will remain anonymous for life). | So here we are. Seal Team 6 could only rate as propaganda in a toxic, Fox News-driven political environment such as obtains at this moment. Forget all that context, however, and you find here a pretty niftily put together platoon-movie, tautly directed by John Stockwell (Blue Crush, Crazy/Beautiful), well cast with familiar second-string TV faces (Boss's Kathleen Robinson, Six Feet Under's Freddy Rodriguez et al, plus the gaunt and reliable William Fichtner). It provides a fairly clear, certainly a very exciting depiction of the raid as it went down, while bolstering the shoot-em-up material with fictionalised backstories for the Seals themselves (the real Team 6 will remain anonymous for life). |
| The movie demonstrates that we now have a firm, widely agreed-upon visual aesthetic for the Iraq-Afghanistan campaign movies, one distinct from the emerald-green rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of the Vietnam war film. Like everything from FX's short-lived Over There TV series to Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, Seal Team 6 flaunts a narrow palate of sandy, dusty landscapes, camouflage colouring, darkened briefing rooms and barracks, sun-baked Afghan ravines, teeming souks. Much of this is seen through helmet-cams, night-vision goggles, spy-surveillance cameras and the baleful aerial gaze of satellites (the menacing thrum of chopper-blades remains a constant). | The movie demonstrates that we now have a firm, widely agreed-upon visual aesthetic for the Iraq-Afghanistan campaign movies, one distinct from the emerald-green rice paddies and triple-canopy jungles of the Vietnam war film. Like everything from FX's short-lived Over There TV series to Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, Seal Team 6 flaunts a narrow palate of sandy, dusty landscapes, camouflage colouring, darkened briefing rooms and barracks, sun-baked Afghan ravines, teeming souks. Much of this is seen through helmet-cams, night-vision goggles, spy-surveillance cameras and the baleful aerial gaze of satellites (the menacing thrum of chopper-blades remains a constant). |
| For Seal Team 6, though, the dominant influence seems to be Showtime's Homeland, with Kathleen Robinson playing the Carrie Mathieson role as Vivian Hollands, the determined analyst who makes the first smart guess about the house in Abbottabad and puts it under surveillance ("one very tall bearded man, not busy – we call him 'the Pacer' – 12-foot-high walls, 12-13 guards, no phone or internet, all trash burned on-site, all children home-schooled …"). The intelligence meetings feel very similar, the general hum of paranoia and secrecy too; indeed, one street pursuit scene closely – almost exactly – resembles the climax of Homeland season two, episode one (The Smile), but from the perspective of the hunters rather than the prey. | For Seal Team 6, though, the dominant influence seems to be Showtime's Homeland, with Kathleen Robinson playing the Carrie Mathieson role as Vivian Hollands, the determined analyst who makes the first smart guess about the house in Abbottabad and puts it under surveillance ("one very tall bearded man, not busy – we call him 'the Pacer' – 12-foot-high walls, 12-13 guards, no phone or internet, all trash burned on-site, all children home-schooled …"). The intelligence meetings feel very similar, the general hum of paranoia and secrecy too; indeed, one street pursuit scene closely – almost exactly – resembles the climax of Homeland season two, episode one (The Smile), but from the perspective of the hunters rather than the prey. |
| No matter. Seal Team 6 motors along very compellingly with its well-drawn squad of surfer dudes, hot-headed redneck mama's boys and wise-counsel sergeants (the conventional platoon-movie stereotypes), and its good feel for procedure, training and tradecraft, peppered with to-camera testimony from the Seals. The raid itself occupies a nerve-wracking final 20 minutes of stun-grenades, gunfire and the desperate clearing of shooter-filled rooms illuminated only by flashlights. | No matter. Seal Team 6 motors along very compellingly with its well-drawn squad of surfer dudes, hot-headed redneck mama's boys and wise-counsel sergeants (the conventional platoon-movie stereotypes), and its good feel for procedure, training and tradecraft, peppered with to-camera testimony from the Seals. The raid itself occupies a nerve-wracking final 20 minutes of stun-grenades, gunfire and the desperate clearing of shooter-filled rooms illuminated only by flashlights. |
| So is it revenge-porn too? Certainly the camera eats up the brains flying out of Bin Laden's turban [spoiler alert: he dies in the end] but mainly, like the US itself on the day it happened, the movie lingers on a tangible sense of closure, of long-unfinished business finally taken care of – of utter relief. If there is an element of exploitation, it may be in Weinstein's late addition of extra footage of Barack Obama – at the White House correspondents' dinner, and in the situation room – which to my mind looks analogous to a canny exploitation producer's decision to add more nudity to spice up his product. Old showbiz instincts die hard in a man like Weinstein, but sometimes good movies do result. | |
| • Seal Team 6 will be released in UK cinemas on 14 December, under the title Code Name: Geronimo | • Seal Team 6 will be released in UK cinemas on 14 December, under the title Code Name: Geronimo |