By Jason Apuzzo. Isn’t this funny, as well as satisfying. In a head-to-head comparison of their opening weekend totals (see here and here), Angelina Jolie’s pro-American, anti-communist Salt beat Sly Stallone’s CIA-trashing/women-waterboarding The Expendables by the slender margin of $36 million (Salt) to $35 million (Expendables).
Fabulous.
In box office terms, that means that Sly Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Steve Austin and a nasty storyline weren’t worth quite as much as Angelina Jolie and a little patriotism.
How refreshing. [And by the way, Salt did that against much tougher competition.]
To celebrate, I’ve picked out one of the tastier pictures of Jolie from the Moscow Salt premiere (there are many). She’s certainly a lot better to look at than Stallone, isn’t she?
If any of you think I enjoy knocking Stallone by the way, I most certainly don’t. But when you trash your own country – and portray our intelligence agents as drug peddling, waterboarding torturers of women – then that’s the treatment you’re going to get here at Libertas. We’re not Hollywood star/celebrity suck-ups here. You can find enough of that on other sites.
I’d like Stallone to explain his depiction of the CIA in The Expendables to the widow of CIA agent and former Atlanta narcotics detective Scott Roberson, who was killed earlier this year in Afghanistan while working for the Agency. [Roberson was one of seven CIA agents killed in the same bomb blast in January.] The timing of his death was deeply tragic; the 39 year-old Roberson never got to meet his child, born in February to his surviving wife Molly, who now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. You can hear more about Roberson’s life here. In its own way, Roberson’s life was a quiet and elegant rebuke to the hateful image Stallone is peddling in his film.
Posted on August 16th, 2010 at 10:38am.
Yes, but was the Expendables anti-American? Anti-CIA movie troupes have been around much longer than the current trend of anti-pro-American action films. Given the choice, I would much rather see a film with one bad, ex-CIA agent than one where the “bad guy” is the American system.
BTW, did you have a problem w/ Clear and Present Danger? That had a working intelligence official as a baddie.
Hell yes it’s anti-American, Hail, to send a movie around the globe right now depicting the CIA as drug dealers and waterboarding torturers! Do I really need to explain that?! Especially when we’re trying to clean out the drug trade in Afghanistan!
You’re blinded by Stallone. If Matt Damon had made a movie with the exact same villain you’d probably be furious.
As far as Clear and Present I’d have to go back and see that one because it’s been a while.
I lost a lot of respect for Stallone here. Why, when every other Hollywood film portrays the CIA as villians, peddle this anti-CIA garbage so blatantly? Where’s the imagination, Sylvester? And the villians waterboard our female protagonist? Are you kidding? Is this a Paul Haggis film? Truth be told, Sylvester (I know he hates that name), wimped out here and should be ashamed!
Great point about Haggis … Eric Roberts’ character could easily have stepped out of In the Valley of Elah.
Yay woman power at the box office! That’s great you pointed this out. Twelve over-hyped action stars with their dumb anti-CIA message couldn’t beat out the opening weekend of “Salt.” Ha ha, that is so funny. I thought “Salt” was great, I just wished there had not so much violence against Jolie’s character at the end. I thought that was kind of overdone. I recommended it to my friends anyway because we never have movies with Commie villains, and when we do, we oughta support them.
Thanks for commenting, Veeki. You can check out our review of Salt here:
https://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/jolie-vs-the-communists-lfm-reviews-salt/
It’s time for a Mitch Rapp franchise!
Or, I’ll just pop in “Hunt for Red October” for the 100th time. The only Alec Baldwin film I can tolerate.
I totally hear you, Paul … although I prefer to think of it as a ‘Fred Thompson movie.’ 🙂
Jolie Slap them Jason! Once again……….Angie’s the biggest Male Star in Hollywood!
Let me tell you … this is not exactly how I thought we’d be spending our summer here at Libertas. I’m as amazed as anybody else.
Of course, the fact that Salt is a better, more coherent film might have something to do with its better results. The Expendables is nearly unwatchable from a shaky-cam, too much closeup action sequence point of view. It’s not clear who is killing whom, although a hell of a lot of folks are dying.
With respect to CIA bashing, The Expendables makes it vigorously clear that the bad guys are rogue agents, not Company men. Besides, is Eric Roberts ever a good guy?
I agree with you on most of that, but I don’t think the clarification on him being a ‘rogue’ agent really helps very much. It’s really just window dressing after the damage has already been done.
Dear Mr. Apuzzo:
It’s sad that you are writing this hagiography of the terrorist organization AKA the CIA, in a film critique. Evidently you’ve never read the well-researched books by William Blum – e.g., “Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”. But then again, perhaps you’re a CIA presstitute? 😉
“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
~ William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, “Derailing Democracy”
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
~ William Casey ~ Director CIA (1981)
For more of Blum’s commentaries and other books, go to http://killinghope.org .
——–
True American patriots DESPISE what the CIA does in our names.
BTW, if you wish to reply to my post, please do so directly (StrivingForJustice @ yahoo.com), as this is the first time I’ve seen this site, and probably I’ll not see it again for a long time, if ever.
For peace and justice,
Sam Bolivar
PS – Google “Tax Resistance Movement”, to see about how to constrict the flow of money to the terrorist US gov’t / CIA / NSA / et al.
‘Sam,’ I’ve approved your comment because I think you’re a hoot! You really write great comic material – you should be doing gags for Dennis Miller.
It’s Dr. Apuzzo, by the way.