THE BUTTHURT SQUAD: Tricky Zwick

Ok, because I'm a douchebag with way too much time on my hands, I actually follow the careers of film directors, even the crappy ones. One thing I've always been butthurt about is the fact that the best action directors, who arguably have the greatest command over the craft of filmmaking due to the complexity of their work, are the most consistently ignored. Ever heard of John McTiernan or Martin Campbell? Two of the finest directors of the 80s and 90s, and yet few except for the most depraved cinephiles have ever even heard of them. Yeah, I'm butthurt about this, but what I really want to talk about today is an exceptionally talented action director who has received some recognition (at least on the circuit of bullshit movie awards) but who I also honestly believe is a racist idiot and an enemy of mankind. That man is Edward Zwick.

He produced three films during the 2000s: The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and Defiance. All three of these films espouse a deep respect for a culture that has been recently oppressed by white people. Unfortunately, all three were directed by a white supremacist. Ok, ok, maybe Zwick doesn't actually realize how racist his films are, but does that really make it any better?

The Last Samurai is probably the most obvious. We've got Tom Cruise, the uber-caucasian golden child (at least until L. Ron Hubbard turned him into a raving psychopath) coming to Japan post-Meiji Restoration and instantly becoming the most awesome Samurai in the history of awesome. Seriously, he hacks their combat style in about thirty seconds, killing one of their best warriors with a broken flagpole! Paralyzed by fear and awe, they accept this white uber-slayer into their ranks and he quickly becomes their greatest warrior. In the final battle, he alone survives, despite being shot with the same bullets that kill every other samurai on the field. I guess those puny Japanese bullets weren't enough to take down a white guy, they certainly did the job on all his Asian compatriots though. In the final and most insulting scene, he returns home to his hot Japanese girlfriend (the widow of the aforementioned idiot he killed with the flagpole, like four days ago!) and she smiles as she sees him crest the ridge alone. Yes, that's right, she's happy to see him. Alone. Every other fucking person she has ever known is dead, but that hot white guy who's been sticking it to her with his big American penis is still breathing, so everything's hunky fucking dory! I mean seriously, how awesome could the Samurai be, if as this movie shows, any drunken Union officer can come in and become the best Samurai who ever lived in a matter of days! Ken Watanabe's awesome performance aside, this movie proclaims its love for Japanese culture shortly before taking a huge steaming dump on it.

That's right, bitch.

Next up is Blood Diamond, set in Sierra Leone, a place where "it's not bling-bling, it's bling-BANG!" Yes, Leonardo DiCaprio got a fucking Oscar nomination for a role that included that line. What. The fuck. Basically he's a totally awesome mercenary who kills anyone who gets in his way. When a couple African soldiers approach him midway through the film, he disarms and kills them with comical ease. Zwick is an amazing director of action, but he just can't help himself when it comes to making his white, pretty boy leads into hyper-efficient killing machines.

Why is this black guy standing so close to me?

Possibly the most egregious is Defiance, a WWII film Zwick made to dispute the idea that European Jews were submissive and compliant victims during the Holocaust. It uses the true story of the Bielski rebels (albeit with massive, fuckwin action sequence-type modifications) to promote this concept -- badly. First off, he cast this dude as the face of his grassroots Jewish resistance:

...yeah.

I mean, seriously, Daniel Craig? Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, coldly brutal and single-minded Daniel fucking Craig??? I think I saw this guy gassing Jews last Tuesday! Oh, and if that weren't bad enough, he surrounds his ubermensch protagonist with what looks like the supporting cast from Fiddler on the Roof, only even more pathetic. Seriously, these guys spend so much time kvetching and crying and grovelling that they can barely scrape a meal together. If not for our badass Aryan posterboy, they wouldn't have lasted thirty seconds against the Germans. So, basically, Zwick is saying that if the Jews weren't so...Jewish, then none of them would've died in the Holocaust. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this was the opposite of what he intended with the film, but still, I think we've established a running theme here. This guy just can't help himself.

Most recently, Zwick took a break from his racist epics to make Love And Other Drugs starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. I haven't seen it yet, but since I'm a huge fan of Ms. Hathaway's boobs, it's definitely on my to do list. Here are a couple stills from the film: