The Great Raid

[phanatic]

Saw The Great Raid yesterday.

I was actually fairly impressed. I thought the bits leading up to the raid dragged a bit, there was this big subplot taking up about half the screen time about Maggie Utinsky's smuggling ring, which was just distracting.

The rest was very well done. The raid itself was excellent, very accurate, with the

Comments

[obifu]

Excellent news, I was a bit worried about some of the buzz on The Great Raid, based on some reviews. I really enjoyed the book Ghost Soldiers, so I'm glad they got it right. The details on the Filipino Guerrillas and the truthful presentation of the Japanese brutality towards POWs was excellent. Glad to see the movie didn't mess it up.

On the Hiroshima point, do you think we can defeat the Islamic Jhadists without nuking Mecca?

[phanatic]

There's an excellent scene where the Japanese at the bridge the Filipinos are holding get desperate and banzai-charge.

Right into the interlocked fields of fire of two watercooledBrowning .30s.

On the Hiroshima point, do you think we can defeat the Islamic Jhadists without nuking Mecca?

You know, that would be an excellent experiment, but I'm not sure I want to see it carried out. On one hand, the hajj is one of the seven pillars, if you don't do it, your salvation is in doubt. And on the other hand, Islam is very fatalist, so if Mecca and that big meteor vanish in a ball of nuclear plasma, well, obviously Allah wanted it to happen that way. But on the gripping hand, that sure could be a lot of really pissed-off (justifiably so, too) Muslims.

[a_motley_fool]

I thought there were five pillars, unless you've added stoneing women and jihad to the list.

[phanatic]

Or I confused it with Buddhism. Or something.

[damonbradl]

Not being a history or a religion person to any extent, I once asked a friend to describe why everyone is so worked up over Mecca and Israel and whatnot.

At the end of that discussion, I joked that it seemed like the only thing to do that even approached a solution would be to nuke it all and let things work themselves out in the aftermath. I also joke that the same should be done for places like, oh, say, Newark NJ, and, increasingly, Camden, though they should wait until whoever's playing at the Tweeter Center bail out. Unless it's the DMB.

I think I'm joking but sometimes I'm not so sure. Melting people is horrifying, but certain ways of life are more so.

[betternewthings]

nuking mecca will do nothing to the five percent of the muslims that wish to kill us, and really piss off the other ninety five percent that desperately want to get green cards.

nuking riyadh and tehran, on the other hand, could be a good idea.