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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMel Gibson's New Pro-Police Brutality Movie Is Crazy Racist
Theres arguably nothing the world needs less right now than Force of Nature, a movie starring Mel Gibson and Emile Hirsch as trigger-happy cops with violent pasts and take-no-prisoners attitudes who are tasked with rescuing a Black man, a rookie Latina officer, and a Nazi descendant (and his stolen artwork) from evil Puerto Rican villains during a Category 5 hurricane in San Juan. What would be tasteless retrograde nonsense at any other time resounds during this particular moment in U.S. history as almost cataclysmically tone-deaf and insulting, turning director Michael Polishs thriller (on VOD June 30) into the years most misbegotten venture.
Written by Cory Miller with all the originality and grace of a fortune-cookie prophesy, Force of Nature stars Hirsch as Officer Corrigan, whos ordered by his superiors to leave his security check-in post to scour San Juan for remaining residents, andalong with the aid of newbie Officer Pena (Stephanie Cayo)to transport them to a safety shelter. Corrigan has no real desire to evacuate anyone, since as he tells Pena, trying to do the right thing invariably leads to formal complaints from ungrateful citizens that thwart ones sought-after professional promotions. Hes a jaded white American cop who refuses to learn Spanish and distrusts the locals. If that doesnt make him an immediate embodiment of law-enforcement intolerance, the fact that hes landed in this outpost thanks to a scandalous prior incidentinvolving recklessly firing his weapon and getting an innocent woman killed, which cost him his NYPD detective jobcertainly does, solidifying his standing as a Blue Lives Matter creep interested only in himself and those who look, sound and think like him.
That Corrigan, a protagonist whos previously committed brutality against women, is played by Hirsch, notorious for strangling a Paramount studio executive until she lost consciousness at 2015s Sundance Film Festival, adds an extra layer of grime to Force of Nature. And thats before the sexist, racist, anti-Semitic Gibson appears! The disgraced actor co-stars as Ray, a former cop who, alongside his doctor daughter Troy (Kate Bosworth), lives in the apartment building that Corrigan and Pena wind up at after agreeing to take Griffin (William Catlett)a Black guy involved in a grocery store altercationback to his home to feed his mysteriously ravenous pet. No sooner has he made his on-screen entrance than Gibsons perpetually coughing Ray proclaims, The current PDs full of pussies that care more about liabilities and politics. Minutes later, hes bragging about how, when some individual once called in a fake crime report, only to then snipe responding officers with a BB gun, he took care of the jerkanother ungrateful citizen, amirite?by breaking his fingers.
Force of Nature is a fantasy about misogynistic Caucasian cops (Ray doesnt exactly respond to female authority, Pena quickly learns) with a predilection for using supposedly justifiable extreme force. That alone makes it an objectionable genre exercise. Yet on the heels of 2017s Hurricane Maria tragedy, the materials exploitation of a fictional Puerto Rican hurricane for cheap and contrived white-savior thrills pushes it into the realm of ugliness. Considering that state of affairs, the narratives subsequent rancid turns arent surprising. For example, Griffin confesses that he moved to Puerto Rico after winning a financial settlement against the NYPD for unjust harassment, bought a voracious pet (kept behind locked doors) that hes trained to attack cops, and now feels guilty for taking that blood money in the first place. The suggestion, its clear, is that Black Americans know that police brutality is fake, and that any compensation for it is thus unearned.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mel-gibsons-new-pro-police-brutality-movie-force-of-nature-is-crazy-racist
ProfessorGAC
(64,852 posts)You'd think someone in distribution might have thought this could be a bad time to release it.
johnp3907
(3,730 posts)I couldnt even read the whole piece.
milestogo
(16,829 posts)I can't stand to watch any movie that he is in.
jimfields33
(15,692 posts)They read the scripts before signing on.
kimbutgar
(21,055 posts)I hope this movie bombs.
jimfields33
(15,692 posts)5,000 dollars. Yieks! 2020 will be the year Hollywood makes the least ever at least in movies. Heck even Hamilton is going straight to video. That would have made 200 million in non-pandemic Times.
ibegurpard
(16,685 posts)I'm not a fan of cop movies anyway.
Guilded Lilly
(5,591 posts)whacked crazy racist freak Gibson has anything to do with it, I am not surprised in the least that it sounds completely contemptible.
Wounded Bear
(58,598 posts)the idea that there is a market-no matter how small it might be-for anything he's done in the last 20 years is a disgusting comment on American society.
mitch96
(13,870 posts)He would make uncle Adolph proud...
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The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,587 posts)he once was quite a good actor, and he could have had a great career if he hadn't turned out to be such a nasty, destructive, racist dick. He starred in two of my favorite movies, Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously, both from the early '80s, and now I kind of feel guilty for liking them. But the guy just seems to keep getting worse.