The name of one of the actors, Mens-sana Tamakloe, may be some kind of joke but nothing else is. It's a serious study of two splinter groups -- one Afghani and one English -- trying to kill each other in London.
It's very different from the usual action movie, the kind we've become accustomed to over the years, in which the heroes are the same and the villains differ in nationality or religion only as the Zeitgeist demands -- first Germans, then Soviets, then after a bit of confusion (the Mafia and the drug lords) some kind of swarthy terrorists of uncertain ancestry.
Here the terrorists, as we call them, are not faceless heavies. Abhin Galeya is the principal Afghan activist. He's clean cut and handsome and thoroughly British. But he feels he's been treated unfairly by his adopted country. He reads about "the Pakis" in the press. And he's converted to extremism in his response by a jovial recruiter who introduces himself by quoting Clint Eastwood's departing lines in "Unforgiven" -- "Don't nobody follow me or I'll come back and burn your houses down." Yet the recruiter lives in a delusional world in which every suicide bomber is a "martyr" and will see all his dead family in Paradise. At any rate it seems delusional to me, although I can understand others' believing it, unless the beliefs are used as an excuse for violence. We've had quite enough of that lately.
On the other side, tracking them down before they can blow up Harrod's or someplace, the way the IRA did, is a covert and unacknowledged British team of two, led by an older, scruffier, and slightly lumpier Sean Bean. Bean is motivated mainly by the fact that his wife died in a terrorist incident. The British team is pretty ruthless. They don't mind shooting guys in the back or teasing them a bit before letting them have it. But then neither do the Afghans.
Recent psychological studies have shown that compassion is real but is limited in extent. It depends on how closely the sufferer resembles you, physically and culturally. Anyone capable of pity for the whole miserable human race is a rara avis. As for elephant and rhinoceroses, forget it. Poison them for their ivory or their horns.
It's a bleak picture, with villainy at the top of both secret organizations. There are mix ups with the wrong people being murdered. Anyone who wants to avoid being provoked into thinking about issues like violence and tribal allegiances, should avoid the movie.
It's very different from the usual action movie, the kind we've become accustomed to over the years, in which the heroes are the same and the villains differ in nationality or religion only as the Zeitgeist demands -- first Germans, then Soviets, then after a bit of confusion (the Mafia and the drug lords) some kind of swarthy terrorists of uncertain ancestry.
Here the terrorists, as we call them, are not faceless heavies. Abhin Galeya is the principal Afghan activist. He's clean cut and handsome and thoroughly British. But he feels he's been treated unfairly by his adopted country. He reads about "the Pakis" in the press. And he's converted to extremism in his response by a jovial recruiter who introduces himself by quoting Clint Eastwood's departing lines in "Unforgiven" -- "Don't nobody follow me or I'll come back and burn your houses down." Yet the recruiter lives in a delusional world in which every suicide bomber is a "martyr" and will see all his dead family in Paradise. At any rate it seems delusional to me, although I can understand others' believing it, unless the beliefs are used as an excuse for violence. We've had quite enough of that lately.
On the other side, tracking them down before they can blow up Harrod's or someplace, the way the IRA did, is a covert and unacknowledged British team of two, led by an older, scruffier, and slightly lumpier Sean Bean. Bean is motivated mainly by the fact that his wife died in a terrorist incident. The British team is pretty ruthless. They don't mind shooting guys in the back or teasing them a bit before letting them have it. But then neither do the Afghans.
Recent psychological studies have shown that compassion is real but is limited in extent. It depends on how closely the sufferer resembles you, physically and culturally. Anyone capable of pity for the whole miserable human race is a rara avis. As for elephant and rhinoceroses, forget it. Poison them for their ivory or their horns.
It's a bleak picture, with villainy at the top of both secret organizations. There are mix ups with the wrong people being murdered. Anyone who wants to avoid being provoked into thinking about issues like violence and tribal allegiances, should avoid the movie.