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Revolver is a Guy Ritchie film you've likely never heard of.  And there are reasons for this.  Firstly, it bombed at the Box Office.  Secondly, it appears to be yet another tiresome con-man with a heart of gold getting one up on his enemies crime film.  And thirdly, it stars Jason "can't do accents" Statham, best known for the "so bad they're good" Crank films, and lead actor in a variety of B-films where the ability to speak with a low voice and convincingly hit people is rated above acting skills.

(Note: spoilers abound)


However, only the first one of these is really accurate.  Revolver is far from your average crime thriller, in fact, it's not really about crime at all.

The first suggestion this film might be more than it appears is in the opening credits.  As Statham is being marched out of prison, we see a number of quotes appear on the screen.  The first reads:

"The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look" – Julius Caesar, 75 B.C.

The second is:

"The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent."  - Fundamentals of Chess, 1883

The third reads:

"The first rule of business, protect your investment" – Etiquette of the Banker, 1775

The fourth and final one is:

"There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy" – Machiavelli, 1502

As Statham's character, Jake Green, walks out of prison, we hear him narrating, musing on his time in prison.  He says "in every game and con, there is always an opponent and there is always a victim.  The trick is to know when you're the latter, so you can become the former."
The scene then shifts, and it is two years later.  Green has a crew together, and they are driving towards a casino.  One of the crew asks him if he thinks this is a good idea.  He says to Green that he already has more money than he can ever spend, and all he ever thinks about is getting more.   However, Green replies that "he" owes both himself and the man he is talking to, and now he has to pay.  It is apparently a "natural law, cause and effect."

Dorothy Macha, "Mr D.", the corrupt casino owner, forces Green and his crew to come upstairs and gamble against him at their table.  Before getting into the lift though, Green's character has a little internal monologue where he wonders about taking the stairs instead.  He doesn't like enclosed spaces, and says "why should a man do what he doesn't want to do?  There is always a choice."  He eventually takes the lift, however. 

He shows some signs of nervousness as he rides up, but makes it up to Macha's suite without issue.  At the table, Macha tells him there is one question which drives all human actions, and the more someone invests in it, the more powerful they will become.  The question, according to Macha is "what's in it for me?"  Macha goes on to tell Green he is a man who "needs a master, an employee".  He says he will happily remind Green of his place, the "position nature chose for him", which contrasts well against Statham's claim that his revenge here is merely natural law.

After winning, Green leaves.  One of Macha's men says to Green that Macha would appreciate it if he came back to the table.  Green says he hasn't finished with Macha yet, but turns to leave.  On the way out, a man interrupts Mr Green and tells him he is in trouble.  He gives him a card, then goes back to talking on the phone.  Green hesitates in front of the lift and decides instead to take the stairs.  Walking through the doors, he looks at the card as if puzzled, then collapses, falling down the stairwell.  The movie quickly cuts to the man who gave him the card, smoking a cigar, then back to Green.  The card says "take the elevator".

(more to come)

As with LMNO-PI, there will be cameos.  I actually have no clue where I am going with this, beyond more dakka and rule of cool, so it should be an interesting trip.

Pwnd.

Of course, even sociopaths are useful, if you give them a shove in the right direction, and run away really fast.

The Discordian Art of War sounds like it'll be something I won't want to spread for fear of empowering my enemy. AND THAT'S A GOOD THING.

I'm thinking I might have to write two versions of that.  The Art of War parody version, and the "how to actually fuck someone up badly" version.

Jenne, Reagan did use it, but I believe it was a saying from Tsarist Russia, which was of course a notoriously paranoid culture (as you would be too, if you'd been invaded and subjugated by the Mongols, while western powers took advantage of your weakness to pick off neighbouring pieces of real estate.  I've been reading on the history of the Golden Horde, and I'm starting to think Ivan the Terrible may have been too forgiving) .

I'm sorry, but do you even HAVE to ask that?

We're DISCORDIANS. If you don't know what our answer to that will be, either I need to stop generalizing and presuming, or you're pretty dense.

Stop assuming.  Or I'll have to assume you're pretty dense.

It's often the case the second-tier management are truly evil fucks.  In fact, they're often picked for exactly that purpose (leaders have to keep their hands relatively clean, whereas these guys often enforce).  That could suggest the Pakistani Army and ISI are double-dealing here, taking out dead wood and keeping the insurgency all fired up.

On the other hand, second-tier extremists often make foolish mistakes.  Look at Zaqawi in Iraq, he was so extreme he turned his own Sunni allies against him.  Fundamentalist intolerance could crack the Neo-Taliban down the lines (since it is a composite group of drug traffickers, Pashto nationalists, smugglers, family-based militant cells and fundamentalist extremists) and force more moderate elements to switch sides, rather like the Anbar tribes did.

Of course though, I wouldn't expect the Pakistani Army to do something which couldn't be read in several dozen different ways.  They're too good at this game for that. 

Yeah, I hadn't read the book before seeing the film either, and I thought it was being set up to end the way it should have, for pretty much the same reasons.  The ending, as it was shown, just didn't make sense.

The "vampires" are actually intelligent beings capable of empathy, and the doctor who we thought was the hero (whom, as you may recall, was abducting and carrying out medical experiments on them) was the real monster.

So long as you're making enough money to still meet all your budgets (and a little bit to spare), it sounds like a sensible option.  The bonus may be nice....but ask yourself if its worth the extra stress, backpain and hours to get it.  If not, go for the new position.

For the same reason the Matrix changed the script so people were being used as batteries (which makes no sense at all) instead of as part of a neural net, and why the ending of I Am Legend was changed to completely miss the point of the novel.

Namely, viewers are morons.  Or, at least, executives think viewers are morons.

Dok Howl - your Cornish ancestry also includes:

Tin mining
The Cornish Pasty (rhymes with 'nasty' not 'tasty)
The almost entirely obsolete Cornish language
General Celtic spaggotry
Inclusion in Arthurian mythology (Tintagel - alleged location of King Arthur's conception)
Land's End
Stone Circles & assorted monoliths
Cream & ice cream

I used to live in Devon, the adjoining county and so spent a lot of time near & in Cornwall.

Also ineffective terrorism.

Where in Devon were you?  Since I'm in Dorset, I probably know it, at least by name.

[Prologue]

Mostly writing this whenever I have writers block for my other (fantasy deconstruction) project.  I'll try and write a post's worth every week though, regardless.

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Prologue

Kutha (modern day Tell Ibrahim), American-occupied Iraq

Professor David Mallowborn looked supremely pleased with himself, and to be honest, this wasn't entirely unjustified.  The discoveries he and his archaeological team had made at the site in the past two months had been nothing short of extraordinary.  In particular, yesterday had been impressive.  Finally managing to breach the central nave of the sunken Ziggurat, they had unearthed a treasure trove of Sumerian artefacts, enough to silence the various critics of this trip from his own department, and more.  That he had surpassed the findings of Hormuzd Rassam, the famous Assyriologist who had spent 4 weeks here in 1881 and had only found broken pots, didn't exactly hurt, either.

He was broken from his self-congratulatory musings as he saw the "sergeant" from BlackRiver Security.  He felt somewhat uncomfortable about having mercenaries, especially ones as infamous as BlackRiver, guarding the dig, but he supposed, it was the lesser of two evils.  They had help pay for the expedition after all, and Iraq could be very dangerous.  Mallowborn remembered his brief time in Baghdad with a shudder.  The explosions, the gunfire by night, armed men everywhere... No, even if BlackRiver did have a reputation for ruthlessness, they were undeniably efficient.  Even the State Department was said to have a contract with them, preferring their security to that provided by the U.S. military.  And he might need that sort of protection here, since not only was Babil Governorate part of the infamous Sunni "Triangle of Death", there were more recent rumours suggesting that Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia had established a base of operations near Al Hillah.

Despite his reservations about mercenaries, he got on well with their sergeant though.  He seemed a bright and affable young man, who had taken quite an interest in their findings.  He had explained, somewhat sheepishly, that he'd always had an interest in ancient history, and had paid rapt attention to the work that Mallowborn's team had undertaken. 
"Evening, Eddie" he said.  The man nodded, before pulling up a crate to sit on. 
"Evening doctor" he replied, "how goes the work?"
"Pretty good.  It seems that the account of the city in the Shalmaneser Obelisk and Bible is correct.  When we breached the inner sanctum of the Ziggurat, we discovered artefacts related to the worship of Nergal."
"He was that creepy god you were telling me about, right?  The god of fire and disease and the underworld, yeah?"
"That's correct" said the professor, pleased he had remembered.  "Though of course he was associated with other things, like war, for example", he said, thinking again of Baghdad.  Noontime and the summer solstice, too."
"Still sounds fucked up to me.  Why would anyone want to worship something like that?"
"My best guess is to prevent the destructive aspects of his power's being turned on them."
"I guess" replied the sergeant, sounding unconvinced.  "Is there anything more to get out of the temple then?"
"Not really.  There might be other sites nearby, but as far as I can tell, we're done with the Ziggurat."
"Good" said the mercenary, as he swung up a pistol he had kept concealed behind his leg, and fired a shot into the professor's forehead. 

Mallowborn didn't even have the time to look surprised as the bullet ripped through his brain.  Whatever words he had been about to say died on his lips, and he slumped then toppled out of his chair.  Eddie looked at him a moment, then got up and pulled out his radio.  "The professor is dead.  Kill the rest of his team and secure the artefacts for transport."
"Understood, sir" a voice crackled back.  "What should we do with the bodies?"
"We can dump then in the Tigris, once we're back in Baghdad.  No-one's going to notice a few more bodies floating down there nowadays.  Make sure they're unrecognizable first."
"Of course, sir.  Over and out."
"Over and out", he replied.  Eddie glanced again at the professor's corpse.  "Sorry about that, doctor.  But there are bigger issues than your vanity at stake here."  He glanced up at the brilliant night sky of Iraq, with the stars shining down, and went to work.

Can't believe I'm the only one to have noticed a potentially massive shift in Pakistani strategy, but maybe I have.

First thing is first: Rigi, the ISI asset, Taliban trained leader of the Jundullah terrorist group, is caught under mysterious circumstances and bundled off to Tehran for infinite rounds of "answer the question or get a red hot iron up your rectum".  That the Iranians knew the passport he was flying on (a passport allegedly given to him by either American officials in Afghanistan or corrupt Afghani officials) makes it even more likely that someone grassed on him.

Then, Pakistan catches half the Quetta Shura, the command cell for the Afghani Taliban, in under a week. 

Then, Pakistan's top military officer says he has no qualms about India helping out in Afghanistan, so long as Kabul doesn't gravitate towards New Delhi, and issues a not very thinly veiled threat to the Taliban that Pakistan is going to shop around for new clients in the region if they don't start jumping when the High Command says "jump".

And all this happens in the space of four days.  It's like some bizarre outbreak of regional cooperation against dipshits is going down.

Watching Glenn Beck purposefully miss the point or misunderstand the theories he purports to subscribe to is constantly fascinating. 

For instance, he has a real gripe with equality of any sort.  Now, most advocates of capitalism, for example, advocate it because they think it is the most equitable and moral economic system, all things considered.  Yes there will be measures of difference, but by and large, capitalism will make everyone wealthier (via trickle-down, philantrophy, whatever) and improve everyone's lives.

Glenn Beck, on the other hand, is the sort of person who would agree with critics of capitalism that it isn't equitable or moral, but then go on to endorse it anyway, since inequality is the goal.  Anything that even aims at some sort of fairness or balance is suspect and must be destroyed.

That's what marks him out to me as a purposeful tool, rather than an idiot who drank too much kool aid.  I've noticed this with a few others, like Limbaugh as well.  In fact, I think I might be basing the above example on something I heard Limbaugh say.  It seems utterly bizarre to me that you can get people to go along with such a premise, but I suppose if you put them in a position of relative power in this future schema (ie give them someone to pound on), then you can get people to go along with just about anything.