March 2018 film review part 2

BOMBSHELL (2017) D- Alexandra Dean
Being the life and times of Heddy Lamar, one of the most achingly beautiful stars ever to shine on the silver screen. But make no mistake, this was no airhead bimbo. Her mind brimmed with bright ideas, and when a submarine sank a ship in 1942, drowning over 90 children, she worked out, with a friend, a method for detecting submarines under water. But nobody bought the idea. Or did they? Despite the fact that she never made a dime for her invention, the US navy did indeed use a modified version of her idea, and they continue to use of a form of it to this day.
             Escaping from Germany prior to WW2, there was one thing she couldn’t escape from: her past. Turns out she made a nudie film in Germany, and this came to haunt her. Offered a series of parts that were beneath her, she accepted them to keep her head above water, and as a result her real talent never made it to the screen. Finally, and most tragically of all, she used plastic surgery in a desperate and wholly unsuccessful bid to hold on to her fading beauty.
              An affecting and highly insightful story of promise denied.

A WAR (2015) D- Pilou Lindholm
A Danish commander under fire in Afghanistan (a brilliantl Pilou Asbaek) has one of his men badly injured and must get him out to save his life. There may be civilians in a hut he is attacking in order to effect this, there may not. He takes a gamble and blows it to hell. His man is saved, but the gamble failed. There were civilians in the hut, and they were all killed. Next thing he hears, he’s up on war-crimes charges.
            This is how modern wars are fought. Everything is filmed, every command decision questioned, no matter the incredible stress the participants may be under at the time. Until quite recently, deaths under “friendly fire” or little mistakes where a wedding party is blown up rather than a band of terrorists were just put down to the fortunes of war. No longer. And perhaps that’s a good thing. But I worry that the human beings involved are now cut no slack at all for the incredibly difficult job their governments ask them to do.