ph-16

It is somewhat unfair to compare Alfie 2004 with the original Alfie 1996. However, when the remake adds very little to the original then the comparison has to be made. The 1966 film was written by the Irish writer Bill Naughton and set in swinging London. Alfie was a truly original man, an original character at the time. The new Alfie is nothing novel but rather a half-hearted kickback to the good old sexist days.

I think the greatest difference in the remake is that whilst Bill Naughton's original work still forms the basis of the story, co-writers Charles Shyer and Elaine Pope have been brought in. Shyer is author of such American slushy films as Father of the Bride, Baby Boom, Irreconcilable Differences and Private Benjamin. Pope on the other hand has written for Seinfeld. With these two contributing you end up with a rather fascicle American, politically correct, bite less movie which leaves you with half a smile a lot of the time.

Jude Law as Alfie works well but it would have been good to have made him a little angrier, rather like the Michael Caine character. Marisa Tomei and Susan Sarandon both ply nice characters but unfortunately, the other support characters have little substance and, yet again, no bite. For instance, Sienna Miller is simply a dizzy blond and I neither felt sorry nor angry for her: she is boring. Nia Long plays the politically correct African American (read black) woman who Alfie gets pregnant but who again has little power to her performance. Is she angry, distraught, vaguely upset? It is hard to know.

In the original the supporting cast included: Shelley Winters, Millicent Martin, Jane Asher, Shirley Anne Field, Eleanor Bron, Denholm Elliott, Alfie Bass and Graham Stark. Unfortunately, there are no actors with such gravitas in the 2004 remake.

To be quite honest, I was bored by this film. The reason for my boredom was the fact that the film was incredibly partial and preached to me non-stop. The film is a documentary of a real-life bus hijack that happened in Rio in 2000.

The film was imaginatively put together but I felt that it was incredibly unsophisticated and expected the audience to take whatever they were given as being true. The bus hijacker was made out to be a victim of society. We were shown many images of how awful the Brazilian prisons are and how tough street life for Brazilian children is.

I do not doubt either of these contentions. However, as the hijacker experienced both street-life and prison life, we are told that his decline into petty crime and eventually hi-jacking is both a product of his childhood and inevitable.

To support this claim we are given evidence by professionals such as sociologists. We are also continually fed claims by his family and social worker that he was not a killer and that he only killed when the police rushed him. I totally agree that the police handled the hijacking very poorly but I do not buy the idea that the hijacker was a victim and that the deaths were fault of the police.

This is not the way to make a convincing argument or to make a documentary.

This documentary is about Robert Strange McNamara, the Secretary of Defence for Kennedy and Johnson and therefore the Secretary who took the US into the war in Vietnam. The film is essentially an interview with McNamara which is punctuated with archive footage of the war and other events that McNamara is talking about.

It is expertly directed by Errol Morris who has made a few similar movies although not that many. McNamara tells his story under eleven headings. These headings form sections into which the film is organised and take the format of 'things that the ex-politician (now in his mid eighties) has learnt".

This provides a good and well structured presentation of the Secretaries point of view. However, as McNamara chooses the sections and the lessons he has learnt, and coupled with the fact that there is no, or incredibly little, critical commentary or probing questions. This is the films great weakness as it therefore presents a very partisan view of the war and its causes and gives McNamara an extremely easy ride through the turbulent history of the period. McNamara is allowed to make sweeping statements about the reasons for the war, for instance, and his and Johnson's role in this with no questioning. Furthermore, when the going gets a little tough he simply backs off.

Even with these caveats I enjoyed the film. However, I do wish that some of the events McNamara simply glosses over, such as the US's claim that their boats were attacked by boats from Vietnam, had been gone into with a little more depth. Other important issues, for instance the Pentagon Papers and the role of the Rand Corporation, simply were never mentioned. Furthermore, whilst it is intimated that the US did not have to bomb Japan with nuclear bombs to end the war, this is not un-packed or explored. Neither is the fact that the US is the only nation to use atomic weapons in anger.

McNamara is an accomplished politician and former head of Ford. As such, the history he provides will inevitable be partial and to a large extent untrue. He is allowed to get away with murder, literally, due to the lack of investigative journalism. I have come to the conclusion that America simply does not have hard hitting investigative journalism. This film is a good example as are the films of Michael Moore. These movies are great entertainment and are very high on shock value. However, they do not take the issues to there logical conclusion and they do not push the question to the people who could answer them: Americans really need to see Newsnight on the BBC or listen to Radio 4 to see how this is done much better. Even so, it is very interesting to see this film.