- LOS ANGELES - US troops
cornered
in Somalia, a US pilot down over Bosnia, 450 US soldiers hemmed in by
enemies
in Vietnam: These are Hollywood's quick answer to the public's hunger for
war movies while the real thing rages in Afghanistan.
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- John Moore's "Behind Enemy Lines" will hit
movie screens on Friday, the first in a series of war flicks Hollywood
has been busily producing since the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan
began October 7. Based on the story of real-life US pilot Scott O'Grady,
who was shot down over Bosnia on June 2, 1995, "Behind Enemy
Lines"
was originally scheduled for release in spring 2002, until Washington's
unexpected war on terrorism convinced 20th Century Fox studios
otherwise.
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- "We screened the picture and audiences were
cheering,
and we said, my goodness, we shouldn't be so nervous for this subject
matter
because people seem to love it -- and we opted to push it up," the
distributor's president, Bruce Snyder, told AFP. Movies with
terrorist-related
themes, on the other hand, suffered the opposite fate after the shocking
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"Collateral
Damage," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, was promptly
shelved.
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- "After September 11, it is very difficult to tell
what works and what doesn't work; the world has changed so considerably
and we couldn't really tell whether this kind of subject matter would
play,"
Snyder said. The movie executive said the studio at first also considered
delaying the release of "Behind Enemy Lines," which he described
as "very heroic and patriotic." Similarly, Sony Pictures opted
for the early release of Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down," which
tells the story of the 1993 US military fiasco in Somalia that cost the
lives of 18 US servicemen.
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- Initially scheduled for release in March 2002,
"Black
Hawk Down" will hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York in late
December,
and in the rest of the country in January. "We saw the film in October
and we were able to get it ready by January, and we felt this was the best
place for the film," said Mai Joyce of Revolution Studios, which
bankrolled
the 90-million-dollar production distributed by Sony.
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- "It's definitely a heroic tale, a tale of these
boys sent in this UN mission, and it's a tale of the heroism of these
individuals
and what they had to go through," Joyce said. The UN-led humanitarian
relief mission in 1993 in war-torn and hunger-ridden Somalia turned into
a nightmare when some US troops dropped out of Black Hawk helicopters to
seek and capture warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. Two choppers were downed
and the soldiers came under enemy fire. "Black Hawk Down" and
"Behind Enemy Lines" are only the beginning.
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- Hollywood is preparing a veritable avalanche of war
movies
for next year. They include "We Were Soldiers," a Hollywood
rendition
of Vietnam's Ia Drang battle, starring Mel Gibson; and "Hart's
War"
and "Windtalkers," both set in World War II. "We Were
Soldiers"
was scheduled for release in the summer of 2002, but Paramount Pictures
thought it best to move it up to March.
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