Not every straight to DVD movie deserves that distinction – but some end up right where they belong.
Finally caught up with “Unthinkable,” the Samuel L. Jackson thriller about a terrorist looking to wipe three U.S. cities off the map. Jackson plays a man who makes Jack Bauer look like a wuss when it comes to “coerced interrogation.”
The film skipped theaters entirely and is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
My Big Hollywood review tells the full story – suffice to say the film’s clunky storytelling likely doomed it from the start.
One scribe is using the film’s DVD debut to paint an inaccurate picture of why it couldn’t earn a theatrical release.
Toronto Sun columnist Bruce Kirkland lumped “Unthinkable” in with Iraq War film flops, saying audiences just aren’t eager to see movies about terrorism:
There is a commercial distaste for Iraq War and terrorist-themed films, especially in U.S. cinemas. The public has reality fatigue.
Wrong-o.
The fact is, studios haven’t given us many terrorism-themed films, and when they have they’ve done fairly well at the box office.
Perhaps the grosses for “Vantage Point” ($72 million) and “The Kingdom” ($47 million) never appeared on Kirkland’s monitor. Even a relative dud like “From Paris with Love” managed to haul in $24 million, a far better bounty than the anti-Iraq War films “Lions for Lambs” ($15 million) and “In the Valley of Elah” ($6.7 million) combined.
It’s frustrating that the Hollywood system won’t take a chance showing audiences films where heroes fight back against terrorists, yet continue to trot out one Iraq War film after another even though nearly every entry has bombed commercially.
That doesn’t forgive the flaws in “Unthinkable,” but it’s a reminder of an industry skittish about the biggest threat to the modern world.
Related posts:
on 
on 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
“From Paris With Love” was an immensely entertaining flick for those of us who like action movies that portray the USA as the heroes. I believe it failed at the box office to be a huge hit because the critics and the press in general gave it the “finger” because of the storyline of “muslim terrorists bad, USA good”. I highly recommend the film if you’ve not seen it. Travolta chews up the scenery like mad.
We have liberal agenda fatigue.
Don’t care for the political red tape. Saw the movie…last year gave neeson the instant bad mo’ fo’ of the year and am now giving it to Jackson for 2010. Terrorists deserve everything they get!