The news comes courtesy of Empire Online, about a movie that is tentatively titled The Messenger. The film will be produced by Mark Gordon, who has The Day After Tomorrow among his producer credits. The script will be written by Oren Moverman (who will also be writing the remake/reimagining of Nicolas Roeg's surreal The Man Who Fell to Earth) and Alessandro Camon, who doesn't have any writing credits, according to IMDB. There are no developments yet on who would be directing this film. Despite the fact the the film is apparently without a script, the story will be about a US army officer whose duty it is to report news of soldiers' deaths to family members. "His job is thrown into questionable ethical territory when he becomes involved with a trooper’s widow," says Empire Online.
You know how at the end of many war films, or films where a war serves as a scene to the story, and at the end there's always that army officer who rings the bell and the wife/mother knows what he has to say before he even opens his mouth? Those scenes where she'll start crying maniacally at the loss of her husband/son, and the officer stands awkwardly in the entrance, saying "There there, I'm sorry ma'am. I truly am"? Well, I guess someone has seen enough of those that they decided it was a good idea to make a whole film about nothing but those kinds of scenes!
I'll be curious to see in which direction the fimmakers choose to go with this story, but I find the subject matter to be extremely bland, and out of context, and I'm guessing the "Iraq War" part will be stapled to the poster as a marketing strategy and nothing but. They should rename this movie to "The Postman 2: Letters from Iraq."
I suppose it isn't a bad thing that Hollywood is trying to address some of life's controversial issues, but I have yet to see a film that tries to directly take a stance as far as the Iraq War is concerned, and to try to show what was (and is) happening in the streets in several Iraqi cities on a daily basis. Bonus points and chocolate cake go to those who try to show what happened at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay.
Dear Hollywood: More substance and less marketing strategy, please.
