Conservative Hollywood?
by David Franke

Conservatives too often take an oversimplified line on Hollywood that divides the world into "us versus them" and " Hollywood versus America." It's easy to see how much of the confusion arises when you look at the silly policy platitudes and sillier lives of so many Tinseltown actors and actresses. Take a deeper look at the movies that come out of Hollywood, however, and the picture is not so one-sided.

After all, actors and actresses don't run Hollywood, though many of them think they should (and that may be the source of much of their anger directed against "capitalism," middle class values, and such). They are really only highly paid temporary employees. The corporations that employ them are pretty agnostic in their convictions, and have no intentional desire to write off the majority of their American audience. And I suspect Hollywood harbors more than a few closet conservative, libertarian, and just plain contrarian writers whose personal views would drive Barbara Streisand up the wall if she weren't already perched on top of it.

I'm not talking here about the impact "The Passion of The Christ" has had on the movie studios -- plenty has been written about that elsewhere. I'm talking about movies with no obvious agenda other than to tell a good story that will bring in the crowds. I saw three such movies this summer which not only kept me enthralled but also pleased, rather than repelled, my moral sensibilities. Who would have expected that from an alien horror story, a comic book caricature, and a drama about boxing (which I personally detest)? You should see them before they leave the big screen.

One more thought before I play amateur film critic. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't approach these movies like a Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute policy wonk. I'm personally resigned to the fact that the only "perfect" movie I will ever see will be one where I've written the script and maintained creative control over its production, and that ain't going to happen. So, instead I just look for a good story and for the major moral themes that the audience will take home with them, consciously or not.

Steven Spielberg does it again. I think Clint Eastwood is the greatest dramatic director of our time, taut and minimalist, but Spielberg is our greatest storytelling director. Even a second-rate Spielberg film, like this one, rises far above the non-Spielbergian universe.

Be forewarned, though, that "War of the Worlds" is not a Spielberg little-kiddie movie. Its aliens have none of the cutesiness of "ET," and their war machines -- 200-foot-tall tripods -- are horrifying, especially as they first emerge from their sleeper-cell lairs, whether from under the streets of Bayonne, New Jersey, or from under Long Island Sound. Death and carnage is everywhere, and is not camouflaged. Spielberg has managed to combine the Holocaust with 9-11, a fast-evaporating world in which we are all Jews and the terrorists are aliens.

The big lesson here? All you've got is family. The veneer of civilization is indeed paper thin, and your only real hope for survival during a catastrophe lies with those closest to you.

The person who learns this lesson (and we through him) is Ray Ferrier, played by Tom Cruise, a divorced crane operator on the New Jersey docks who gets stuck caring for the kids on the very weekend that the aliens strike. It's obvious from the get-go that neither his son nor his daughter will be giving him a "World's Best Dad" T-shirt for his next birthday, but that's before the lightning storm. Cruise gives a believable portrayal of a self-absorbed drifter who can't accept his responsibilities as a father and husband, but under extreme pressure learns to think of others beside himself.

What keeps this from being a first-rate Spielberg film are the many reality gaps. After you leave the theater, you'll be asking all sorts of questions about the plot. But that's after your stomach muscles have relaxed to something near normal, and you have emerged to the outside world and confirmed that it still exists. Inside the darkened theater you'll be too absorbed and too scared to worry about the small stuff.

"Batman Begins" is an amazing cultural phenomenon: a comic book series turned into a movie that makes you think about, and ponder, core issues underlying civilized society. For this we can thank director Christopher Nolan, whose previous movies "Memento" and "Insomnia" also forced you to think about -- rather than just react to -- what was happening on the screen.

Maybe the nerds are right: comic books really are serious stuff.

Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, superbly played by Christian Bale, is a billionaire devoted to the public good, contemptuous of liberal sentimentality (criminals are just misunderstood and need to be put into therapy), yet compassionate. One of the underlying themes is how he comes to champion the rule of law rather than vigilantism, even though he must often operate outside the law. As I watched this movie, I couldn't help but speculate: What if Steve Forbes had gone to a ninja training school instead of wasting his time at Princeton or whatever? Don't laugh. Both Batman and Steve Forbes could be spending their time making more bucks, but instead they are battling bureaucracies while trying to make the public stand up and fight for its rights.

Partly because of this billionaire-as-hero theme, "Batman Begins" is all the buzz on Randian and libertarian sites. But really it should excite conservatives too. The central theme is that good people have to stand up for what's right, not just gripe, or the bad guys will win out.

If you've seen any of the previous Batman movies, don't let that put you off from seeing this one. It has been described as a prequel to the others -- the movie that delves into Batman's beginnings, and explains how and why he became what he became. But it's also a reinvention of the whole Batman concept. There's more than enough jazzy action for adults, if not for the kids, but at its core this is a movie about ideas and character development, story over spectacle. Because it is as much a philosophical movie as an action movie, it's one of the most surprising cinematic events of our time.

Starkly put, "Cinderella Man" is one of the best conservative films of all time. How else can you explain that both Pat Buchanan and John Podhoretz love it?

Directed by Ron Howard, this is an I-love-America epic. As I watched, enthralled, I thought about how Ronald Reagan and John Wayne had this ability to bring me to tears with their evocation of what America should be. When you leave the movie theater, you once again face reality. But for a glorious 144 minutes, you can dream the dream that motivated our immigrant ancestors.

"Cinderella Man" is the true story of James Braddock, heavyweight boxing champion of the world from 1935 to 1938, played with Oscar-contending aplomb by Russell Crowe. (Everyone in this movie deserves Oscar consideration -- it's that good.) Braddock gained the nickname "Cinderella Man" because of his fairytale rise from poverty to the championship in the depths of the Great Depression.

"Cinderella Man" has been a disappointment at the box office, to put it mildly. I suspect that's because few people have an idea what it's really about. Boxing is just the framework; the real story is about the love of a husband and wife, the love of family, character, determination, love of country. Yet a chick flick this is not. It's brutally honest -- the boxing scenes are not for the squeamish. This is a film that should appeal to real men and real women alike. No more Venus-Mars division. Not when you're in the middle of the Depression and the survival of your family is at stake. Wife Mae (played by Renee Zellweger), gives up her opposition to his fighting the sadistic current champion, Max Baer, and says

"You're the bulldog of Bergen, the pride of New Jersey, you're everybody's hope,

you're the kid's hero and the champion of my heart"

...and if you can watch that and not be moved, I don't want to know you.

This is a movie set in the depths of the Great Depression and yet there isn't a liberal sentiment in it, which is amazing in itself. When Braddock's oldest son steals a sausage from a butcher to feed the family, he doesn't punish him or justify his action. He explains why stealing is wrong and goes with his son to return the sausage. He accepts public assistance only at the point his family is starving, then pays back every penny he received from the government when he gets his first return boxing bout and payment. "This is a great country," he explains when the public finds out, "a country that helps a man when he is in trouble. I thought I should return it."

As Batman fans would say: Wow!

David Franke is coauthor with Richard Viguerie of "America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power" (Bonus Books, 2004).

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