Posted by Kissm yarse on January 29, 2001 at
11:46:24:
Hey, did you all know what Mel Gibson's next Hollywood blockbuster is going to be? Well, I hear it's going to be another historic masterpiece on the same high level at Braveheart and The Patriot.
Now, this new movie is written, produced, directed and stars Mel Gibson (he also handles the catering). It will be entirely original and not just a new version of any of his earlier movies. In keeping with Gibson's truly professional approach to all his movie making, this new blockbuster will be absolutely faithful to contemporary details and attitudes and stick ccurately to the historical reality.
Gibson is so concerned with getting it right, this new movie will show the whole picture and not deliberately leave out huge chunks of the reality for the sake of emotionally manipulating the audience over to his cause. It's going to be called 'The Vietnamese Patriot'.
Mel starts off as a poor Vietnamese farmer called Mel-Chu in a beautiful, idyllic, peaceful little Vietnamese village. With a dead wife, stiff 'n' stinking as a result of swine fever and fourteen saintly children to raise on nothing but rotten rice, Mel passes his days happily running his farm with the help of his inexplicably merry black slaves. Err, sorry! I mean paid free black workers, not slaves at all. After all, I guess that would be a little too uncomfortable for the audience to bear.
The movie starts with merry old Mel, making creaky, wooden rocking chairs, that always collapse in a particularly hilarious fashion when he sits on them in front of his kids. But suddenly, his making_collapsible_chairs_for_light_comic_relief days are over once and for all when the main protagonist, the United States of America, invades Vietnam and tries to lay down martial law at the point of a gun!
Mel, being the reluctant hero and intending the cinema audience to see him as a poor, innocent victim of evil Yankee aggression forced into acts of genocide, puts aside his Russian built AK-47 assault rifle with removable grenade launcher and refuses to fight! This pacifist attitude really annoys his son, who promptly signs up to the Vietnamese army. Enter the entirely despicable Americans.
One day a column of America troops arrives in Mel's village, headed by the dastardly American Colonel Ravington. Now, just to prove how black hearted and thoroughly evil Ravington is, he's given a monocle and a big, black, starched, handlebar moustache to twiddle in a suitably demonic fashion while committing his ghastly atrocities against the poor, innocent, Vietnamese civilians.
What follows is a general massacre, where Mel's remaining children, his cute little pet puppy, a dozen assorted old people, twenty elderly nuns, Mother Teresa and the Pope himself are herded into a local temple and roasted to death for the fun of it! To finish the job, Ravington burns their village down. Well, it never actually happened in real life, but Mel stuck it in anyway for melodramatic effect and to justify his bloody revenge later in the movie. And anyway, Ravington's guttural laughing at the civilians' demise is terrible. Doesn't this just prove that the British are the followers of the anti-Christ?
Okay, now Mel is really mad, and you don't want Mel made mad, believe me! Putting aside his sandles and grass hat, he leaps into action! Single-handedly, he takes on and slaughters 200 American marines, armed with artillery and tanks, in an unnecessarily gratuitous, gory, bloodbath with nothing more than a toothpick.
Is Mel satisfied at his revenge? No way! The American soldiers, being a politically correct enemy, can now be exterminated in vast numbers with complete impunity and peace of mind for all the Vietnamese. After all, they're always the bad guys, whereas Mel and his thugs are oh so good. In traditional Hollywood fashion, the good guys are whiter than white and the bad guys are blacker than black.
So, Mel and his rag-tag army of misfits and honourable scum start a cleverly organised guerilla campaign against the ugly Ravington (did I mention that Ravington has a nasty scar on his face, just to make him look even more evil) and his surprising ineffective American soldiers, who are only capable of marching in rigid formation like brainless automatons. Mel continually springs cunningly executed ambushes on the American's supply trains, while the bewildered Yankee troops just stumble around in confused circles trying to catch him. They never do, of course, as Mel just melts into the paddy fields undetected by the American forces, earning him the respectful nickname of the "Aussie Bastard', Err, I mean the 'Paddy Field Ghost'.
After a number of predictable guerrilla attacks, that totally thwart, enrage and confuse Ravington and his bemused G.I.s, Mel and his band organise a massive battle to decide the war once and for all. While Mel's bunch of untrained civilian volunteers sends the professional, veteran US army packing in style, Gibson wages personal war against Ravington himself in a another slow motion sword and pistol duel that takes Hollywood's latest offering to new lows of tedium and unbelievability. In real life the Vietnam war lasted more than a decade, but Gibson's movie version condenses it down to one month, so nobody ages at all!
Needless to say, once the nasty Ravington is despatched and justice has been done, Gibson frees the whole of Vietnam from the Yankee scourge forever. Once this magnificent feat is achieved, handsome Mel goes home and impregnates his sister in a some sort of ghastly, incestuous relationship movie subplot. All the while, knuckling down to forcing his poor negroes to rebuild his home at the painful end of a whip. A task they readily undertake, despite the fact that they'll have to wait another 80 years for their freedom. A fact that is conveniently passed over by the movie.
The movie ends with Mel and assorted, nondescript extras celebrating around a big campfire. In a dodgy scene full of clichés, reminiscent of that bit in the Ewok village at the end of Return of the Jedi, Mel and his smarmy friends drink, eat and cheer while talking about the bright future and energetically waving around a menacing looking, man skewering flag. The film then ends with a stirring, epic sounding soundtrack over the credits by John Williams. A soundtrack layered on so thickly by Mel in post production, it's as sickly as a tin of extra rich treacle with extra sugar smothered on a treacle pudding.
Well, I'm sure that this'll be the big hit of 2001 that Mel intends it to be. Millions of ignorant people will flock to their local cinemas to watch Gibson's latest clash with the forces of evil. More importantly, they'll believe it as absolute fact, because it's in a big movie. Then these hordes of ignorant people will go on the internet and lecture the minority of educated people that this crap is absolutely accurate and true to the reality.
What! What do you mean it never happened like that in real life and this movie unfairly demonises your country? Oh for god sake, stop moaning, IT'S ONLY A MOVIE!
