Upstream - S3E14.5: Rules of Engagement [PREVIEW]

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, how y'all doing? It's me, former president of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton. Seeing us in the events of this film, you're about to hear disgust occur during the timeframe of my presidency. I wanted to take the opportunity to set the record straight on how my administration would have handled this highly sensitive and charged situation in reality. So let me be clear, fuck them troops. I mean, fuck these guys. You know what I'm saying. I hit the big red button on your cold open. I'm so sorry. Don't worry about it.

Starting point is 00:00:48 More important thing here is where's the after party? Where are you all going to be after this? I'm going to bed after this. Don't tell Hillary I'm here. Hillary don't got to know. Hello and welcome to another episode of Co-James Bond. I am November Cali. I am joined as always by my friends Abigail Thorne and Devon. Hey. How you doing? And most of all by former president of the United States of America, Bill Clinton being played here. I can't believe we got him. Yeah. Being played here by Kady, operator of the Twitter account WarTakes and friend of the show. KD, how's it going?

Starting point is 00:01:25 KD I watched this film. KD So well then. KD Yeah. We brought you back on from A Few Good Men because I thought it has been a hot minute since we've seen a military courtroom drama. And this is the thing. KD We wanted to do A Few good men too. Some worse men. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:01:47 No good men. A few rubbish men actually. Well, I watch a few good men if it was given a fun academy. Yeah, exactly. What if a few good men, right? The ways in which it says lawyers are like also troops and the troops have to be, you know, kind of like respectful and going to court is kind of like going to war. What if it took all of that and we had a kind of like right-wing grievance movie that's like,

Starting point is 00:02:09 no, fuck you, what if the troops did nothing wrong ever? But I do want to say by way of apology that you have now been boxed in here, like, in the same way as the like, Tom and Dermot. Anytime trash future happens and we get like we get Nish on to talk about politicians books in the same time as in the same way that we get Tom and Demi on to talk about spy kids. You're the military courtroom movie correspondent now and I'm so sorry. Yep.

Starting point is 00:02:38 This, this, this is fine. You know, I accept this circumstance for the time being and revenge will be executed at a time and place in my choosing that it will not be revealed for national security reasons. Beautiful. You think you're okay with it now? Wait until we get you back on to see Hart's War with Colin Farrell and Bruce Willis. Honestly, I feel like that's going to be a better movie than this. Yeah. So the thing is, like, I completely got this movie wrong because I really enjoyed it until the last five minutes, right? Because I completely misunderstood what it was doing. Oh, we'll get into this. Well, it's very confused with itself for a while. It goes back and forth about what it wants to be, and then it firmly lands on exactly what November described it as.

Starting point is 00:03:20 Yeah. Yeah. We have a sort of like theory about this that we'll get into but the movie is rules of engagement Which is a 2000 movies pre 9-11 if you can believe it which is weird for how reactionary it is It is strongly post 9-11 vibes for a pre 9-11 movie. Yeah, very like ahead of the curve What did they know when they were making a movie one of the earliest movies that's been about 9-11. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this, some like Soviet Afghan war movies. You know, it's not a long list. But so we begin in Vietnam. And I have to apologize, by the way. I don't have drops for this one because I thought I was going to be recording on location from Dome and then due to some like scheduling conflicts, you know, Abbey's in California.

Starting point is 00:04:07 I was going to be in an undisclosed secure location. Extremely secure. Yeah. I was going to be so fucking secure in the undisclosed location, you know? That's a shame. I know. I am broadcasting from Los Angeles, from Hollywood right now. In fact, it's good shit.

Starting point is 00:04:24 Tinseltown! Yeah, baby! I don't have drops from this movie. What I do have are drops from other movies. And I feel like the wind and the lion covers most of what's going to be what we're going to talk about in this movie. So just in case, you know, I've got Sean Connery saying Islam.

Starting point is 00:04:43 And that's going to prop up here and there. Islam. But first though. How could we possibly talk about Islam when we start in Vietnam? Hmm. Vietnam. It was one of America's wars.

Starting point is 00:04:55 And since this is from a story written by Jim Webb, the US senator who was a Marine in Vietnam. Oh, wow. Yeah, you better believe they're doing the right thing. That explains a lot. Yes. Yeah. Story written by Jim Webb, adapted for screenplay by Stephen Gagan, who I probably been starting to name, who also I believe wrote one of your

Starting point is 00:05:17 favorite films in the show, Siriana. I love Siriana. Yes. Yeah. He, this is the guy who wrote Siriana And I, there's a real gulf between these two things. And I think we're going to try and reconcile that later on. Yeah. For real. Golf war. Yeah. So Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones are marine lieutenants in Vietnam. They have not

Starting point is 00:05:39 figured out de-aging technology yet. So these are... They just look real old. They just try to show you Tommy Lee Jones as a little as possible. Yeah. They've kind of got Samuel L. Jackson in a kind of like skincare routine to make him look younger. They've kind of like smiths and Vaseline on the lens to convey that this is the past and it doesn't really work. Yeah. TLJ and SLJ are north of the DMZ fighting the VC, trying not to get KIA. Yeah. And they're just sort of like, I have described it here as ambling about a fairly jungulous landscape, which is nothing. Oh, jungulous is a great word. Yeah. It's one that I made up for this.

Starting point is 00:06:17 I like it. Yeah. And what they're doing is like the classic task of infantry, which is like, you know, mooching about, right? Wandering around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, saying shit right? Wandering around. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, saying shit like Charlie Echo, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Between the music and the environment, there's some real, we have snake eater at home energy going on here.

Starting point is 00:06:35 I also like that they kind of like a bunch up really closely together so that they can all fit in one shot, which I always appreciate. Dip shit energy going on here, especially Tommy Lee Jones' character. It looks like he's trying to find his car in that mall parking lot and he's lost. He's looking for his keys in Vietnam. Does he see his car somewhere in Vietnam? I did go off.

Starting point is 00:06:57 Oh, damn. I don't have air tags yet. There's just like a sort of 70s model Oldsmobile parked in the middle of the iron triangle. So listen up, Platoon. I've lost my Oldsmobile. We're going to split up and see if we can find it. They do split up. They toss a coin to suggest which one of them goes where. And Tommy Lee Jones takes his platoon of five guys, they walk down a river and Samuel L. Jackson's platoon gets ambushed, they get shot at. And they demonstrate the best possible response to getting shot at, one which the US Marine Corps in this movie does not iterate on at all.

Starting point is 00:07:36 If someone starts shooting at you, you just kind of sit there, you know? And you look around, you go, wow, that's crazy, you know? God, I hope this doesn't hit me. Anyway, So Tommy Lee Jones's squad get ambushed, but Samuel L. Jackson's squad like C, the other half of the Vietcong forces, and they actually attack them first. And Samuel L. Jackson's boys, they managed to overcome the Vietcong position and they take a couple of prisoners, including an officer and his radio operator. Samuel L. Jackson at this point calls them racial slurs.

Starting point is 00:08:05 Yes, he does. And they won't talk to him. They won't give him any information. And so Samuel L. Jackson negotiates in the form of, if you do not call off this ambush of Tommy Lee Jones, I'm going to shoot your radio operator. And the officer like stares him down. Samuel L. Jackson shoots his radio operator. Executes in point-bank range, the man is unarmed. Big Klaxon. War crime number one. Yes.

Starting point is 00:08:29 You know? Time to first war crime, six minutes and 50 seconds. Literally. Murder? Also, when you shoot him, I'm almost certain that his M1911A1 makes an M1 grand ejection ping. Just to like, ping. Embarrassing. Yeah, I'm almost certain. I went back and watched, embarrassing. Yeah, I'm almost certain.

Starting point is 00:08:45 I went back and watched it like three times. I'm almost certain. That's the like, cinema sins ding that happens when you do a war crime in your own conscience. You know? Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones has been wounded. Him and his boys are getting a shit shot out of him.

Starting point is 00:08:58 But eventually this Vietnamese officer does comply and he calls off his boys. And Tommy Lee Jones is the only survivor. Saving one life. Curious thing, in the course of doing this, Samuel L. Jackson is like, if you call them off after I've like shot this guy in front of you, I'm going to let you go. No cap. Exactly. Like on my like word of honor as a Marine officer. As a man who's just committed a war crime.

Starting point is 00:09:23 Yeah. Despite the fact that you're a witness to me committing a war crime, you can just run, you just go, it's fine, I don't give a shit, you know? I will let you go if you promise not to come back later in the movie. Yeah, exactly. Which he does. They rescue Tommy Lee Jones from this river where all of his men have been slaughtered. And... An interesting thing happens here, which is that when the US soldiers get shot, they get some... It's slightly strangely edited, because it's the 2000s, slow-mo close-up deaths, but the Vietnamese soldiers do not. Yep.

Starting point is 00:09:58 Kind of privilege of who gets to be seen to suffer in these things. And the movie will go back and forth on this in interesting ways, that set up a promise to the movie to literally renege on. Absolutely. Oi, that's enough for that. You have to go to patreon.com slash killjamesbond and sign up today for £5 a fucking month. You have to do that if you want to listen to the rest of the episode.

Starting point is 00:10:23 I literally do make these rules, but my hands are tied here. So, sorry.

Upstream - S3E14.5: Rules of Engagement [PREVIEW]

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