LOS ANGELES: Encouraged by widespread opposition to the conflict in Iraq, Hollywood filmmakers are preparing to unleash an unprecedented wave of war movies on cinema-goers.
In a notable break with the past – where anti-war films were released several years after the conflict in question – a whole new genre has been created even while US troops remain on the front lines of the War on Terror.
The release in the United States next month of In the Valley of Elah , a gritty drama from Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis about the murder of an Iraq war veteran, signals the start of the onslaught.
The film is one of several that is going to test the willingness of movie-goers to embrace dramas about sensitive subjects such as post 9/11 security and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Several upcoming films follow the plight of Iraq war veterans. After In the Valley of Elah, Grace is Gone, starring John Cusack, which earned glowing reviews at the Sundance Film Festival, is due for release in October.
The movie tells the story of a man whose wife is killed during service in Iraq and the challenges his family faces.
Cusack has said his desire to make the film was born out of anger at the decision by the Pentagon to ban publication of photos showing flag-draped coffins returning from battlefields.
I feel that people will be interested in seeing the story of the human cost of this war. Not just in terms of the soldiers fighting, but the civilian leadership, Cusack said.
Other films on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader issues of post-9/11 security include November s Robert Redford-directed Lions for Lambs, starring Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep, Brian De Palma s Redacted and Gavin Hood s Rendition.
Rendition stars Reese Witherspoon as the wife of an Egyptian-born chemical engineer who is arrested without charge and whisked off to a secret detention facility to be quizzed by the CIA.
The spate of films will continue through 2008, with Kimberly Peirce s Stop Loss, about a veteran who refuses to return to Iraq due out in March, as well as The Hurt Locker, which recently began filming in Jordan and Iraq.
Darrell West, an expert in politics and the mass media at Brown University, told AFP that the spate of films was a reflection of widespread unpopularity with the war in Iraq.
Anti-war movies are coming out now because public opinion has crystallized against the war, professor West said.
It s safe for Hollywood to make these kinds of movies without risking much of a backlash. There s always a risk when you make an anti-war movie in the middle of the war that people are going to be ticked off.
But now, with two-thirds of Americans thinking that the war in Iraq was a mistake, it s the perfect time to release these kinds of movies.
There s been a tremendous change in American public opinion over the last two years.
In 2004, Bush was re-elected based on the war on terrorism but now the administration is seen as having mangled foreign policy and put the country into a mess. So it s safe to take on the administration in a way that it would not have been two or three years ago.
Mark Boal, who wrote the script for The Hurt Locker, said films could present a view of the Iraq war not found in other mainstream media.
We wanted to show the kinds of things that soldiers go through that you can t see on CNN, and I don t mean that in a censorship-conspiracy way, he told the Hollywood Reporter. I just mean the news doesn t actually put photographers in with units that are this elite.
Most war movies don t come out until the war was over … It s really exciting for me, coming out of the world of journalism, to have a movie come out about a conflict while the conflict is still going on.
Although the Vietnam War spawned a series of classic films such as Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon, they did not appear in cinemas until years after the end of the 1975 conflict.
Lew Harris, the editor of Movies.com, attributed the fact that films about Iraq were being released while the war was raging to a more politicized Hollywood.
Hollywood s much more political now and less afraid to speak out, Harris told AFP. The filmmakers and actors themselves are far more politicized than they were in the 1960s.
There is a much greater frustration now about the war because so many people are against it and yet it just keeps going on.
But Harris warned that the success of the films would ultimately hinge on their ability to entertain.
I think if it s good entertainment and the actors are good then they will be successful, Harris warned.
But if a film looks like something where the audience is going to be hit on the head with messages then they won t.
