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Infamous (Movie Review)
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by rick grant rickgrant01@comcast.net
B+ Rated R 93 min
British filmmaker Gabriel Range wrote and directed this anti-Bush mockumentary that imagines, what-if President Bush was assassinated in 2007. Some years later, the case, although officially closed, is clearly open to debate because of law enforcement’s rush to judgement to find the killer which took the pressure off them.
The film is pieced together from fake news coverage that is so real, if someone happened to see it without knowing it was fiction, they would assume these events were happening in real time. It’s a cautionary tale of how the America Government can apply the Patriot Act, which was recently ratified into law. The film shows the consequences of allowing the U.S .Government law enforcement agencies to hold suspects without representation and without due process as long as they are suspected of being enemy combatants.
In this case, President Bush is shot by a sniper as he came out of a tightly controlled and secure event, only to be gunned down on the street. The film has the look and feel of a CNN Presents documentary, showing all sides of the assassination and its aftermath. The faux scenario shows the Homeland Security agents and the FBI rounding up likely suspects who fit certain profiles and interrogating them without Miranda rights. This dragnet is based on surveillance tapes of the building and its surrounding area just before and after the assassination.
Of course, the scenario reveals that the Homeland Security agencies zeroed in on a Middle Eastern man who went to an al Queda training camp and was seen exiting the building. He had almost imperceptible traces of GSR (Gun Shot Residue) on his coat and a partial finger print from the window where the shot was fired with a questionable match. He was the perfect suspect–the designated scapegoat.
Range uses the same news gathering techniques in his fake documentary as CNN to spin the news to get the ratings. There are the endless talking heads–consultants speculating ad nauseam on unconfirmed facts and the anchors dramatizing the events surrounding the assassination, with its own logo and music. Range portrays the slick production of fluid situations that creates a public frenzy for any morsel of news on the crisis. Of course, in this imagined crisis, the assassin shot the wrong guy. Double dealing Dick Cheney takes over as President, which is a far worse scenario than just letting Bush fade away in 2008.
Like in all the presidential assassinations, the “lone gunman theory” is the one the Feds go with, which makes their job much easier. The film is a provocative what-if scenario that mocks the 24 hour news organizations. More significantly, the movie trashes the Patriot Act as a major setback in our civil rights. It gives Homeland Security carte blanch to create suspects with very little evidence. It’s a dark and scary vision of our near future.
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