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.

What Robert Altman did for Vietnam with M*A*S*H, Stephen Surjik (director)and Larry Gelbart (writer) do to modern media corporations with Weapons of Mass Distraction.

If anyone wants to know how the mega rich owners of big corporations are "screwing the little guy" and getting away with it, then you HAVE to watch this movie. The film uses biting satirical comic writing to deliver its message about how money and media power dominates the political process to the detriment of all but a very few people at the top. Imagine the screenplay being written by Voltaire or Jonathan Swift. Gabriel Byrne and Ben Kingsley's performances as the two greedy media moguls who will do anything, no matter how sleazy or illegal, to get their way, are brilliant. Jeffrey Tambor is fantastic as Byrne's personal assistant whose morals are as ambiguous as his sexuality.

A wonderful film, a savage attack on what happens when too much power is vested in the hands of too few. Watch it and wince.

I rented this film because Ben Kinsley is was of my favorite actors of the present time. I thought the acting was funny and smart, the dialogue delicious, and the humour extremely dark. It's not the best film or television movie ever made, but it was entertaining and kept my interest. I wouldn't recommend this film to everyone, but it was one of the brightest and most refreashing films I've seen from HBO.

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.

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.