Comments on: HE can’t handle the truth

By: Matthew Belinkie

Matthew Belinkie — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:21:54 +0000

@Gab – I agree that Jessep’s whole speech makes more SENSE metaphorically. But in the movie, he gives it on the stand, defending a very specific action he took, and in that context it makes almost NO sense. It’s actually a LOT like Al Pacino’s big Scent of a Woman speech, which I wrote about in January:
http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/01/08/the-ethics-of-scent-of-a-woman/
The speech is so much fun, you don’t even notice that it’s not very convincing or appropriate.

I’m wondering if Sorkin would have rather set the Code Red in an actual combat zone, had one existed at the time. It would make Jessep’s big speech more logical. But it would ALSO make Jessep less of an unlikable guy.

Anyway G-dog, thanks for reading.

By: Gab

Gab — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:50:10 +0000

I find it fascinating (and totally racist) that the incident at Ft. Hood is being discussed as potential terrorist activity because the perpetrator was Muslim, but the perpetrator in Florida was totally just a disgruntled employee… This is probably not the place to talk about that, but I just had to let it out.

But, back to the article, I didn’t see (the entirety of) this movie until 2000-something, and by then, I already knew Guantanimo Bay wasn’t really all that dangerous- so if taken literally, Jessep did sound rather stupid/ outlandish to me. If you take Jessep’s statements metaphorically, though, they are still pretty strong and accurate. If you ignore that he’s talking about Guantanimo itself and think of “that wall” as a general term for any kind of demarcation between hostile territory and a U.S. base or friendly territory, it’s hard to say he’s totally wrong. And I wonder if that is what Sorkin was going for in the first place

By: stokes

stokes — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 07:45:55 +0000

@Pete: Well, they’re as dangerous as public schools or post offices, that’s for sure. And I’m not sure that equating Nidal Hassan with Santiago makes a whole lot of sense, if that’s what you were going for.

By: fenzel

fenzel — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:29:12 +0000

The timing of this post with regards to today’s events is really unfortunate.

Guess military bases can be dangerous places even when they are safely in friendly territory – and that unstable soldiers can also be dangerous.