Thursday, November 13, 2008

Late Show

While channel surfing the other night, DH came across a war movie that neither of us had seen. I have to admit, I am sort of addicted to war movies, having watched some of those old WWII era films with my dad when I was a kid. There was a time I probably could have repeated the dialog for "The Enemy Below." This war movie we hadn't seen was "The Great Raid" a 2005 flick starring Benjamin Bratt and Joseph Fiennes. If you haven't seen it rent it, it was great. The story and substory are the US raid on the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. The prisoners held there were survivors of the Bataan death march, who were either too ill or too old to be of any use to their Japanese captors. The sub story revolves around Margaret Utinsky, who worked for the Red Cross under an assumed passport. Her story parts from the truth, in that her husband was one of the soldiers captured and sent on the Bataan death march, he survived that to die in 1942 in a POW camp. Miss U as she was known worked with the Filipino underground to smuggle drugs to the POWs in Cabanatuan and other camps. She was arrested, tortured, and I won't tell you any more. It was a great movie, based on a real event and for me that is always a winner in a film.

What disturbed me, greatly, were the commercials during this film. I understand the target audience is probably men in the 60+ range, but some of those commercials were scary. Especially the vacuum therapy. They showed the equipment and all I could think of was some cheap guy trying a vacuum cleaner hose instead. Then there were various products to "extend" the enjoyment. I don't see commercials like these on HGTV, that is for darn sure!

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