Short Takes: "Unstoppable," Wikileaks

"Unstoppable" OOO (Hallows)
Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and peril, and some language.

I took Padre Steve's advise and caught Denzel Washington's latest movie, "Unstoppable."  Fr. Steve's take on it is right on, predictable but enjoyable at the same time. And once again Denzel takes what really is a zero role and makes something out of it.  Take his dialogue and motivation and give it to another actor and you'd get something below the average Lifetime Channel crisis/disease of the week movie.  But in the hands of the Master from Mount Vernon you get an Academy Award caliber performance every time out, and that's no exaggeration.  It's only this material that keeps his performance from getting that type of buzz, not the effort or execution.  In fact I don't know any other actor who is as good in so many bad movies, he simply never phones it in (I didn't like "Training Day," the movie he won the Best Actor for).  And I don't think Unstoppable is a bad movie.  If it gets me squirming in my seat for fear of someone getting squashed by a train, it's doing it's job, and this one did.

Wikileaks

This is not a topic I comment on lightly, because I only know the barest minimum about it.  But since this is the Internet, and the whole point of blogging is to spew opinions without regard to what you actually know, I figured I'd have a go at it.

My general temperament is such that I don't like it when top secret documents are dumped in the middle of Main Street.  Call me what you will, but I just don't like it.  I'm just naive enough to believe that it puts American soldiers and agents in danger.  We know Iran is a menace, we know that China doesn't have our best interest in mind, we know North Korea is run by a whack job and that all these people are doing business with one another, or at least we should know it.  That we're spying on one another, and that even friendly nations snoop around each others' medicine cabinets shouldn't be a big surprise.  We know, or should know, that we live in a dangerous world.  Is knowing every detail really going to help us or the diplomatic process make the world safer?

Few people know this, but in 1903 the US and Germany were on the verge of war over Venezuela.  Our South American neighbor defaulted on big loans to Germany, England and Italy, and the Europeans called them on it.  We invoked the Monroe Doctrine, sending ships of our own to the area to counter a German blockade.  Diplomacy eventually won the day and war was averted, but how close we actually came to open conflict wasn't known until decades later when many of the diplomatic cables were made public.  It's all debatable, but I wonder if things would have ended the same if every communique between the parties had been printed in the newspaper the next day?  Some of the Wikileaks documents contain the personal feelings of the diplomats themselves.  Does it help the diplomatic process knowing that some attache thinks Hamid Karzai is a moron?  In 1903 would things have gone smoother if some cable was made public saying that Theodore Roosevelt really though the Kaiser was a megalomaniacal dunce?

All that said, as I understand it, it's the government's responsibility to keep secrets secret.  I could be wrong (and anyone who know for sure can let me know) but I think it's against the law for a government employee, for instance, to leak top secret info, but not for the press or some other branch of the media, new or old, to publicize it.  So I'm not really angry at this Julian Assange guy for doing the same thing others have done in the past, but on a much larger scale.  Do I like it? No, I really don't.  But unless you can prove he's on the payroll of some government or terrorist organization I don't want to see him put in jail either. And if governments are hacking his site, or sabotaging his operation he shouldn't cry.  He decided to play in the big leagues, and should know that the play gets rough.