I get it. Militaries the world over make PR films. One cannot hold this fare up to higher standards of art. It is, literally, propaganda. One cannot expect an American film, produced by, or in coordination with, the US military machine to be some sort of expose into the military-industrial complex. It is up to private filmmakers to make movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon. The military itself will make films like Top Gun, which is getting a sequel this year after 34 years. So effective was the movie in what marketing types call brand activation that the US Navy placed recruitment booths right in the theatres. Young men walked out, high on the movie they had just seen, saw the booths and the smiling recruitment officers, and signed right up. In Pakistan, where recruitment figures, at either the officer level or the soldier level, are in no danger by a stretch, the military’s audio-visual fare is left to projecting the institution’s image. One ...
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