Reviews

This film is one of the most perplexing pieces of propaganda ever made. This film despite many of its characters is a pro-occupation film from an ultra liberal hedonist Tel Aviv centric viewpoint. Part of the propaganda designed to paint Israel as a legitimate democracy albeit one with some problems. The latter is not admitted in most of the output of said campaign. This is wear this film succeeds and exceeds beyond all others. We love the characters, I loved the characters it is hard not to. We stand with them in the face of nastier bigoted Israelis. We root for them and we believe we are also rooting for the film and its purpose. Only the film does not reveal its purpose its true vile and disgusting message until the end. A message that is designed manipulate the audience onto the side of the Apartheid bigots.

This film came out in 2005/2006 cycle.

There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2003 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2004 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2005 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2006 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2007 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2008 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2009 There were NO suicide bombings in Tel Aviv in 2010.

The idea that a sensitive and enlightened educated young Palestinian secular gay man would turn suicide bomber on a dime is total bull and a disgusting piece of bigotry.

My friend Jim wrote this and I totally agree in fact I go further I say this is a powerful call to revolt and an American movie would defend the corporate mouthpiece.

THE NEW PROTOCOL a review by James Neeley. October 26 2009.

Could the New Protocol be made in the United States? Could a movie be made with such an overt political ending stand a chance in a country that needs a hero, sex scenes , lots of guns, one liners, hidden conspiracies and the constant reaffirmation that we are still the "good guys? I think not.

Now Thomas Vincent would find an audience for this movie in America, bigger than an art house audience and smaller than latest torture porn of the Saw franchise. (Franchise not my word, but the current word of choice by the industry for describing these products). We are not complete idiots yet, although we are well on our way.

The movie begins in sub-Saharan Africa with two Europeans bringing vaccines to the local citizens, as ominous dark music grows in the back ground, and a bar code reader beeps with each reading of a bracelet as the children are vaccinated. The bracelet is much like the ones put on my children in the hospital where they were born, although for very different reasons. It was a sound I knew but couldn't place. One child, one bar code.

The question of a hero, in the New Protocol. Raoul Kraft, newly divorced, a hands on foreman with a logging company learns of his sons death in a car accident, questions the official line and is drawn into an action filled movie. So far this movie could be playing on any number of tiny screens at the local mega-plex. He teams up with Diane who recently lost her husband, who had a heart attack, after taking an approved drug. Get a large popcorn and refill the drink. He helps her, and she helps him. Mutually empathy, maybe and mutual selfishness, that too, both have lost someone they love.

No sex scene though, no embrace after the chase, no falling in love, no falling into bed. No wasted film time, no nude scene controversy. In American movies that is the cue that personal love will conquer all problems, if the couple is happy the world will follow. When Diane does kiss Raoul, it is from pure human compassion. They both need something, but it is not each other.

Now for the villains, are they Louise Verneuil and Pleynel?

The audience is conditioned to the evil corporate monster, looking out from the top floor, the conspiracy hidden through murders, threats and payoffs. A naive assistant, a file down loaded as a key is inserted into the door. A bad apple in an all American apple pie. The system itself can not possible be tainted or bad, just the current leadership. They write the fine print we don't read.

Are the the multi-nationals the villains? If you can get the right laws passed, you will not need to break them. There are no hidden conspiracies because no laws are being broken. If you want treatment check here on the release, otherwise go elsewhere. Remember its a free-market.

Are they a public scared to death of getting old, depressed, anxiety ridden, over weight, stressed out, under sexed, over sexed?

We know, deep down we have it better because others have it worse. The market is the velvet glove of the army said Arundhati Roy. But I don't believe that some boomer needs to get an erection until he's 70. I do believe world health takes priority. If you ask the people in churches, grange halls, community groups, non-profits, around dinner tables, you'd get the same response.

If The New Protocol was made in the United States, the villain would have been a rogue corporatist. He would be the benefactor, not the share holders. He would have covered up the mistake. And it would be a mistake, not a five year growth plan. The proper authorities would finally believe Kraft at the last minute, the villain led away in handcuffs. Kraft wrapped in a blanket. His ex wife would be waiting for him, the lights of a police car engulfing them.

But it was not. There will be no sequel.

When Pleynel tried to pacify Raoul with her presentation. And it was a sales presentation, without power point but the same intention. The intention to sell Raoul something he doesn't believe. He believes, because he wants to, needs to. But that handshake he sees on the hotel TV screen. That handshake that says we're all on the same page. We are not.

I liked the ending. It was true.

The hero, if we can call him that, is handcuffed, his son took a placebo, and so do we everyday when we think we are not part of the problem.

The film is very good not as great as it could be if the director had completed certain key moments and use digital techniques to illuminate things. But overall it is very good and deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. His film-making style is like a very good 1980's TV Movie a bit plain but solid and very watchable. No cinematic auteur just a good rock-steady hand of a director. It suffers sometimes from budget limitations but at those points they cut to real-life news footage to make up for what their low budget could not afford to create. So with some limitations and some criticisms of lost opportunities I still say well done and it is worth buying either on DVD or BD. For me a simple addition could have made all the difference. They do have infamous footage of the CEO of STARBUCKS talking while attending a basketball game about the fact that his store(s) in SEATTLE has had its windows smashed and cannot do business that he describes as "an injustice" at this point the director/film should have used clever digital graphics to illuminate the truth about the STARBUCKS model. That at the point in history at which STARBUCKS had convinced the consumers to pay more for a cup of coffee than they had paid at any time in history in both numerical and value real-terms price/cost...the price being paid to the Third World peasant farmers who grow the coffee beans had reached the ALL-TIME lowest price in real-terms in the history of the coffee market. The failure of the director to juxtapose that fact with the CEO's audacious use of the phrase "injustice" boggles my mind. That simple fact would have explained so clearly to the audience what the protesters in the movie were fighting for and about. That in real terms the growers were better paid back in the 70's when a cup of coffee was 50cents (or less) than in the Clintonite 90's when a cup of STARBUCKS could be as much as $6:50. Boiling down the WTO issues to that could have been a great help for those people watching the film who don't know this stuff. So on that score the director missed an opportunity. As I say though over-all the film is very good and well worth getting the DVD.

I find it deeply disturbing that so many people writing on the message board could show so much callous insensitivity toward the characters. I also find it horrifying that these Americans with a so-called democratic education should have such hate for immigrants, love for authoritarianism and no mental distinction between normal immigration procedure and the Gitmo-isation of Homeland Security internment. According to these people "illegal immigrants" should be treated as "terrorists" with no due process no lawyer no appeal no access to their families nor their families to them. No matter their positive contribution to society or the dangers they face if deported. Sadly Obama seems to be maintaining this complex we have yet to see any change on this. Just remember that a hundred years ago people travelled around the world without even a passport. One cannot overstate how less free the world has become. As for the movie story the point should be obvious the American is a man with a stale life that is given new purpose and feeling by the people who come into his life. Without these new people he would have continued a life of the undead until death itself.