THE INTERVIEW ANGERS NORTH KOREA AND EXPOSES HOLLYWOOD FOOLISHNESS
Freaky behind the scenes, Dave Skylark (played by James Franco) has an interview program on television, produced by Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen). At the beginning of The Interview, rap star Eminem admits on the program that he is gay, and Rob Lowe takes off his wig to show that he is nearly bald. One day they learn that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) considers their program one of his two best-watched American TV programs (the other is The Big Bang Theory). Skylark decides that they should interview Kim to increase ratings, and the leader agrees. CIA agents get wind of the impending interview and persuade Skylark and Rapoport to poison Kim, as a faction of more moderate North Koreans will then take over. So the duo fly to Pyongyang, where they are greeted by Agent Sook (Diane Bang), who tries to dispel the rumor that millions are starving by taking him past a fat kid in front of a well-stocked supermarket. But Skylark loses the poison, embedded in a stick of gum, when an inspecting guard unexpectedly checks out the gum, though the CIA sends a replacement by jet delivery for Rapoport to retrieve. Soon, Skylark finds Kim to be an affable, delightful person who also loves booze and sex. But after the guard dies during a banquet, Skylark likes Kim too much to go ahead with the assassination until Kim shows another side of his personality during a drinking party and Skylark discovers that the supermarket is a Potemkin store. Meanwhile, Rapoport has sex with Sook, who has arranged their visit and admits that Kim is a monster but advises against murder, preferring to show Kim as a man, not a god, through the interview. The interview begins with Kim doing an excellent job of answering the tough political questions until Skylark asks more personal questions, and the rest of the film defies belief. Directors, producers, and script writers, clearly unaware why Thailand bans the musical The King and I and the film Anna and the King, expose their ignorance of how such a zany film, written in incredibly poor taste, would be received. Indeed, the film is an unwitting parody of politically naïve Hollywood. MH
AN EXTRAORDINARY ATHLETE SURVIVES AS A POW OF JAPAN IN UNBROKEN
Louis Zamperini (played by Jack O’Connell) learns how to endure, first as a boy picked on for being Italian, then as a runner who wins in the 1938 Olympics, next as a life raft survivor of an airplane crash in the middle of the Pacific for 47 days, and finally as a Japanese prisoner of war. Similar to this year’s The Railway Man, the film graphically displays Japan’s war crimes in treating POWs, contrary to the Geneva Convention of 1929, which Tokyo never ratified. (Due to Japanese POW camp experiences, many more war crimes were identified in the Third Geneva Convention of 1949.) Based on Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, the film focuses on brutal treatment administered by Mutsushiro Watanabe (Takamasa Ishihara), who was later accused of war crimes and later released without trial, as the military occupation of Japan realized the need to erase bitter feelings when the Cold War began. Observers of the film will be surprised that Zamperini survived all the brutality and suffering but will be heartened on learning that he returned to Japan to befriend Japanese and even played a role during the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 at age 80. However, Watanabe refused to see Zamperini (doubtless out of shame for his repeated misconduct). The Political Film Society has nominated Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, for best film on human rights of 2014. MH