Sneak Previews

The broad outlines of a movie about Iraq I'd like to see, from VDH:

... the American military, after four years of hard fighting in Iraq, is strained, its equipment wearing out. America's finest citizens, fighting for an idealistic cause that has still not been well explained to the American people, continue to be killed by horrific murderers.

Lost in all this confusion over Iraq is the fact that about 160,000 gifted American soldiers are trying to help rebuild an entire civilization socially, politically and economically -- and defeat killers in their midst who will murder far beyond Iraq if not stopped.

The movie about Iraq we'll be getting instead:

A Hollywood producer is developing a project based on a U.S. journalist's struggle to save the life of her interpreter in Iraq.

While on assignment in the war-torn country in 2003, McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Hannah Allam was accompanied by an interpreter, Ban Sarhan. When Iraqi insurgents discovered that Sarhan was working for a U.S. media company, they murdered her husband, 4-year-old daughter and mother-in-law.

Allam, unable to get assistance from the U.S. government to protect Sarhan and her infant son, set out on her own to smuggle the two out of the country, an endeavor that proved successful.

The project will be developed by TV producer Bonnie Garvin ("The Killing Yard"), who learned of the story from an article in Glamour magazine, and acquired the rights to Allam's story.

If the tragic facts of that story are true, no doubt some dramatic possibilities are available. But, amid the continuing torrent of Hollywood movies with the narrow, destructive focus of Iraq as needless tragedy, do we really need another? Any chance in Hades this thing will find wide audience appeal or come close to making a profit? Questions like these never seem to dim the green light when it comes to a good anti-war picture these days.