This is a real movie

So I'm looking at the cover, thinking "1999...Tobey Maguire? JEWEL?? Oh man, this is going to be cheese all the way through... but it was Ang Lee's name that finally sold me on the picture, and MAN was I surprised what it did to me. I can't think of too many movies like it - one with protagonists so wreathed in shadow and made cold through killing, both on the field of battle where there morals aren't so solid, and most shockingly, killing done in a fairly casual, cold-blooded manner to people who, on the scale of that awful conflict, were little more than innocent bystanders to the slaughter. Maguire's character surprised me most - in the 00's, something started to happen in many mainstream films; a certain... toughness? a more calloused, greyer area. Like movies used to be in the "Dirty Harry" vein, I suppose. Anyway, this was NOT the fashion in the 1990's. Movie protagonists, when faced with the kind of irredeemable actions on display here, made stands. They fought back at the atrocities (and racism...! Maguire, while of course he made friends with the Holt character, said *beep* about a dozen times.) of this crazy world.

But the world is so seldom made of heroes and stands and big speeches and all that schlocky, soapy nonsense. This was a surprisingly tough movie - especially damning was the scene where, I'm sorry, but it's the parlance of the film, *beep* Scalps are nothing but stakes in a poker game when cash was unavailable. It's hard to look at, but so was that whole god awful crusade.