Ten Years On

Ten years ago today I was on holiday with my husband. We were broke so we'd got a cheapo deal to Tunisia. The hotel was basic, the food was dire, but it was our first anniversary on the 16th so we wanted to do something special to commemorate it. We had only been there a day or two when, passing through the TV area, a gathered crowd caught our attention. We stopped and joined their number just as the second plane hit the world trade centre.

I will never forget that day. I cannot forget the moment that I recognised the structural damage and stresses on the Twin Towers and muttered those immortal words: "Those buildings are going to come down." It has left me with a strange sort of guilt that I can't quite explain and it's a guilt that still makes my blood run a little cold. Even now, ten years later, whenever I see footage of the attack, or even just see images of the Towers in movies and on TV, I am transported back to that day and it still causes a lump to rise in my throat and a tear to form in my eye. I feel that same sense of powerlessness and there's a weight that rests on my heart for the thousands of people who lost their lives, and the families that had to carry on without them.

After we returned home from that holiday, I remember writing about the tragedy. I wrote about how it made me feel and about my hopes for the future. Everyone was already saying that this event was a game changer; I hoped that would be the case. I hoped that the scale of the tragedy would make terrorism (on any level) so unthinkable, that innocents would never again have to die in the name of a cause they were not connected to. I also hoped that the reaction of the Western World would be mighty and that it would be etched in the memories of foreign nations forever so they would know not to mess with us again. But I desperately wanted it to be the right response, one that was reasonable and measured and one that punished those responsible rather than the innocent.

What we hope for so rarely comes to fruition.

But there's still time.

As we look back and remember where we were and how we felt and as we remember the innocents that died, and the wider impact of those deaths, lets not forget the time between now and then, the good that has come out of 9/11, and also the evil. As we remember the 2,977 victims of that day, we should also remember the thousands that have lost their lives or suffered injury since then as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let us also think of the terrible things that happen every day, from events that have a national impact like the 7/7 bombings or the recent riots, to the things that you don't always hear about like robberies, assaults and rapes. For the sake of the victims of 9/11, let us take our anger, our outrage and our fear and turn it into something more productive. Let's live our lives in a way that makes our world a better place; the only way that will happen is if we choose to be compassionate, considerate and thoughtful towards each other.

The Expendables: Junk Food for a Saturday Night

Saturday nights are made for movies, but not just any old movies; Saturday nights are made for big hairy exploding movies filled with testosterone and car chases and gun fights and gorgeous, improbably clothed women (and equally gorgeous and improbably clothed men). Saturday night movies should be the equivalent of McDonald's: lacking in substance and a little bit bad for you but delicious nonetheless. The Expendables was a movie we never quite got around to seeing at the box office, but the trailer promised everything you might expect from a Saturday night 'junk-food' type movie. So last weekend, we settled down to watch.
What a colossal disappointment.

When writer, David Callaham, sat down with Sylvester Stallone to write about The Expendables - a team of daring do-gooder mercenaries - cast by a veritable galaxy of heavyweight action stars, it must have sounded like a great proposition; it certainly sounded like it to me. Alongside Sly, the movie cast includes Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, the Governator, kung-fu-king (yep, that's right) Jet Li and Brit favourite Jason Statham. With that much muscle, grit and man-stink about, how could it fail to please?

Unfortunately it is all too obvious what this film is all about, and it isn't the expulsion of a corrupt general and sadistic drug lord from a small island community. It pains me to say it, but this movie is nothing more than a vehicle for a bunch of aging superheroes, coming to the end of their careers and desperate to be a big box office draw once again. Characters are incidental and the plot is staler than week old bread. It seems that Callaham and Stallone failed to realise that no matter how ear-throbbing and eye-popping the explosions or how convoluted and well choreographed the fight scenes might be, they are a poor substitute for well developed and well written characters and drama.

When I think of the best action movies ever made, I think of films like Armageddon, Terminator 2, Die Hard, Mission Impossible, Top Gun, Indiana Jones and Speed. It's by no-means an exhaustive list. What these titles have in common are compelling characters and genuine conflict. I can easily believe that Sarah Conner and John McClane live beyond the confines of the Terminator and Die Hard movies, but I can barely remember the names of the characters in The Expendables, never mind believe they are bigger than the scenes they're in. The drama is equally contrived and the result is that it is disconnected from the characters rather than driven by them.

And they're making a sequel.

I can only hope that The Expendables 2 burns in development hell forever or that it finds itself a more skilled writer. Ken Kaufman, co-writer on Space Cowboys, is currently associated with the project, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be one of those rare occasions when a sequel improves upon the original. It can't be much worse.

The Expendables is out on DVD and Blu-ray now and The Expendables 2 is currently in pre-production, with an anticipated box office release date in late summer 2012.