remay1

This film does a very good job of laying out the case for Divine intervention.... At least for these kids and their teachers. There is a very important screen near the end of the film which declares words to the effect that: "-There are hostage situations that don't result in any miraculous events, and don't work out well for the victims. We don't know why."

This clearly states the editorial view of the producers of the movie. In effect, they are saying: "In this school hostage situation we had miracles. At Sandy Hook, not so much." I very much appreciated the effort not to try and make a case for inevitable Divine intervention. It doesn't always happen. Instead, they were content to let the events, and testimony of the children, speak for themselves without any ham-fisted preaching.

The movies is compelling, well-shot, well-acted and gripping in its portrayal of lunacy run rampant in the persons of the villain and his equally mentally challenged wife. It states the facts as they occurred and then let's you draw your own conclusions as to the very small chance that all the factors that seemingly came together were the result of mere happenstance, or as the title implies... A miracle! After watching the movie, it's hard not to go with the latter. Well worth watching. Deserves a much wider screening. Hopefully it will get it.

About three minutes in, I had to run out in the Lobby to check what movie I was seeing. I thought I had purchased ticket for a Sherlock Holmes movie. You know. Sherlock Holmes - the genius detective who used his superior brain power to outwit villains of every stripe? But what I was seeing was Sam Spade. Somehow he got transported back to 19th century London and was persuading the bad guys with an astonishing array of knuckle sandwiches, knives and pistols. And the movie just continued in this vein - with Holmes punching it out with assorted thugs, including, I kid you not, Irish toughs who gather in cattle pens at the stockyard and stage fights for a purse. Who was this Holmes impersonator I wondered? I immediately riffled though my A Conan Doyle Complete Serlock Holmes books, and, much to my surprise, was able to find at least two episodes where Holmes talks about using the martial arts to subdue nefarious foes. He is also portrayed in the books as an expert swordsman. However, scenes with Holmes actually deploying fisticuffs apparently don't occur in the books at all.

So the movie producers and writers have modernized the current Holmes to make him more appealing to the "cage fighter" generation. I guess I can forgive them for that. It did make the movie more exciting than the "snail's-pace" action we got in all of the Basil Rathbone oeuvres from the thirties. In those, Holmes relied almost exclusively on his wits. However this movie used the violence as a plot vehicle too much in my opinion. I do miss Basil, even though his stereotyped version of Holmes also doesn't appear in the books. No deerstalker hat for example. It's not in the book. This movie also captures the tortured, opium-addicted, nature of Holmes quite well. That is mostly missing from the Rathbone movies.

Okay, overall this was a good movie, albeit a bit too rough, too little polish, too much bare-knuckles for my tastes. Go see it though. Holmes with wit - and grit to spare.

Ah yes, the notion of the Noble Savage. It is a very romantic notion. One that has been portrayed over and over again for centuries and has become the virtual gospel truth for all leftists: The indigenous culture is always superior.

While this is a gratuitous assertion, it none-the-less seems to find immediate acceptance in otherwise rational people, such as college professors, philosophers, and now - movie audiences. Like most gratuitous assertions, under the rules of logic, it could be equally gratuitously dismissed: The native culture is almost never superior to the conquering culture. The American and Australian Aborigines, the stone-age peoples of Borneo or Africa were not superior to the prevailing European, Asian or even Middle Eastern cultures that overtook them, in any measurable way, except in the non-quantifiable asserted "quality" of their inter-personal relationships within their own society, and, to any objective observer, their primitive cultures were vastly inferior. The truth is - they lived short, brutal, disease-ridden, hunger-plagued lives.

Anyway, the movie was swell: Lots of gee whiz computer generated special effects, animations, loud (My daughter sums it up correctly. We pay the extra to feel our seats shake.) battle scenes, the obligatory oh-so-evil corporate and military types facing off with the unbelievably noble, loin-cloth-wearing, practitioners of a tree dwelling culture. The blatant anti-capitalist, anti-military bias of the movie wasn't so swell, and nearly ruined the experience.

Outside of the ham-fisted political message, it was a good ride; well worth the price of admission.