Weapons of Mass Distraction

The writer Larry Gelbart has to be one of the greatest talents of several generations.

Why isn't he a household name?

Check his CV - and if you're over 35 you'll have been entertained by his narrative, his humour, his wit. He's tickled you. And at the same time made you think.

That's when you should get an Oscar. When you can make someone laugh and think at the same time. That's really good writing. Really good thinking.

Thanks for being a really good thinker Larry.

Weapons of Mass Distraction proves to be an inconsequential mess of loose plot points and unanswered questions. In what was initially supposed to be a satire, it only gets lost in it's web of lurid, superfluous, irrelevant occurrences.

Two billionares rival over ownership of a famous American football team. That's what we understand from the blurb. Unfortunately, the references to that are just so vague that it is somewhat of a sub-plot. There really is no plot. It goes nowhere!

On one end of the spectrum we have Robert Altman's fine satire "The Player", focusing on big business and movies. On the other end of the spectrum we have this.

Combine this: helicopter accident, closet gay businessman, jewish holocaust surviver, appendage enlargement, trans-gender wife and adulterous cable repairman newly fired. That's precisely what the film is!

It's awful. One out of ten.

Weapons of Mass Destraction is about men without souls or, if they had souls, they lost them along the way while on their quest for more wealth and power. Corporate titans Lionel Powers (Gabriel Byrne) and Julian Messenger (Ben Kingsley) are fighting over a pro-football team, but the object of their struggle is irrelevant. What is relevant are the despicable things they are willing to do to each other to get want what they want.

Of course, one of the reasons why they can engage in blackmail and smear campaigns has a lot to do with the fact that there are very few characters in the film who have any morality. I won't spoil the twists and turns. Suffice to say, the powers that be engage in extra-marital affairs, rape, child molestation, murder, blackmail and bribery. The screenwriters were even able to introduce the holocaust at one point. It is hard to sympathize with people like that, even when they suffer. This is largely because this film is about horrible people, but also because the characters themselves are reduced -- ironically because of their great success in the corporate world -- to beasts with impulses. Lionel's relations with his wife are characterized almost solely by lust, rather than any true affection. Only Jerry Pascoe (Chris Mulkey), the hapless worker who was recently laid off, possesses any humanity, though his morality falls by the wayside by the end of the film.

Yet in spite of the emptiness of the main characters or maybe because of it, I had a perverse fascination with Powers and Messenger's struggle as it unfolded. Part of it was my interest in watching naked ambition and sheer determination on screen. At one point, Messenger told Powers I survived Adolf Hitler and therefore I could survive you. Lionel responded, "I will try not to disappoint you." As it turned out, Messenger had it better under the Fuhrer.

The other main character in this film is, of course, the media. The media is probably even more despicable than the characters, which says a lot. It focuses almost exclusively on sex scandals, car chases, petty murders and like, and ignores anything with substance, meaning or sophistication. Perhaps, Lionel Powers and Julian Messenger are, in some respects, parodies of the media and advertising.

So what do I think of the film? It is not a great film. Unlike Visconti's "The Damned," which is also about moral decay, "Weapons of Mass Distractions" lacks the sophistication that would make its characters fascinating, which is the only way to compensate for our lack of sympathy with them. In fact, stupidity, selfishness and base impulses -- the qualities that are more common in children -- are the only things driving this film, which is really not enough. It is not an optimistic picture, because we are witnessing people living in hell on earth, which makes the church that Powers visits with his wife rather ironic. But it's still an interesting film in a perverse sort of way. It makes fun of sensationalism, but it also uses it to great effect to keep people watching. In many ways, "Weapons of Mass Destruction" reminds me of the fascination one gets looking at the sensational (and false) stories on the front cover of the national inquirer or the Globe. Perhaps in the end, the film is not about Powers and Messenger, but about ourselves. It tells us something about ourselves.

This movie has a brilliant, intelligent script (starting with the title!) which makes a very interesting connection between the famous Renaissance Princes and present day Media Moghuls. I will check out other movies based on scripts by Larry Gelbard as soon as I can!

Remember the Borgias, the Medicis, the Viscontis, the Sforzas and all those other guys who came from nowhere and rose up to seats of great power and founded lasting dynasties in Renaissance Italy? Those so called Condottieri were brutal and ruthless, yes, but they also furthered the arts and sciences. Maybe they did it solely for their own glory, but in the end the larger community could profit from the result. This came to my mind when I watched Weapons of Mass Distraction.

Lionel Powers and Julian Messenger are two testosterone driven characters who rose out of the gutter to establish international media empires. In the movie they are contesting for the ownership of a football team. They both don't really need it, they just have this constant urge to confirm their potency to themselves. A game of power and betrayal unfolds which becomes more wicked as it reaches deeper an deeper in to the hidden corners of different people's biographies. The electronic media is used to discredit and destroy anyone who could stand in the way of the «big boys». And no quarter is given.

Despite of all the modern gadgets, it becomes quite clear that it is a timeless story that is told here. Almost every character seems to be a reflection of court life in past centuries: there are crown princes, jesters, courtisans etc. etc. Thanks to the mass media these characters zap through real and virtual space until it is impossible to tell the one from the other and truths multiply - but all remains profoundly human.

There are direct references to the Renaissance age - to me it seems I detected gestures and postures who come out of paintings of the period. Then there is Powers' family crypt, where the big man retires to in times of distress ... The two big guys are contrasted by a small guy, a «peasant» who is at the mercy of those who wield power. His outlook on life is in its entirety conditioned by TV - but whose is not? - and you feel that Weapons of Mass Distraction is a movie about a post democratic society.

Gabriel Byrne and even more so Ben Kingsley are fabulous in the leading parts, so is Chris Mulkey who plays the «peasant» very convincingly. Also memorable are Jeffrey Tambor as the really sleazy adjutant and Paul Mazursky as the owner of a potency clinic. Ladies play second fiddle throughout but several of them are very pretty. The jokes are generally coarse but intelligent and well placed in the story. The most memorable moment is the the owner of the potency clinic explaining the different kinds of enlargments he has to offer for the male sexual organ - it's very detalled and really not very appetizing!

Friends of Architecture watch out. It seemed to me that Julian Messenger's office was installed in Louis I. Kahn's famous Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. If my guess is right, they did not use those wonderful spaces very well.

Insomnia was acting up late one night and I started channel surfing and happened on this flick on Cinemax ... there was only about thirty minutes left of the movie but even at that point it SUCKED me right in.

It's a great flick to watch on a Sunday afternoon - watch it closely. Gabriel Byrne and Ben Kingsley are excellent. I think this was the first movie I saw Jason Lee appear in.

The multiple stories coinciding into one single story of rich scumbags tearing into other's lives for their own gain.

Illeana Douglas's character (and her husband) ... their story ... the secret histories of the rich scumbags ... a lot going on in this movie ...

HIGHLY recommend it.