 murder and violence in popular movies on Netflix and that matter on prime. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Text, the movie show, and George Kasin and me, we get together a couple of weeks and review a movie. This movie is different than the movies that we have reviewed over the past several months. The movies generally that we have reviewed are on a high level. They're educational movies, they're historical movies, even documentaries or docudramas. This one is a very popular movie. This one's moving up the charts. This one is what people really like to watch, whether they're right in that taste or not. This is called The Gray Man starring Ryan Gosling. And George and I have watched this with some trepidation because we knew going in that it was full of murder and violence. And all the regular plots that you see, only a handful of plots among all of those movies in Netflix and prime, this falls in the center of the channel for all those plots. But George, can you give us a handle on what was going on, or at least ostensibly what was going on in this movie? He's not the main protagonist by Ryan Gosling. And he was in jail. We'll get into why he was in jail. And a CIA operative comes to him and gives him an opportunity to be released from jail. He's willing to work for the CIA undercover. To do assassinations, and that's basically what his role is, to assassinate our enemies around the world. So lo and behold, he takes the opportunity. And they make him the Gray Man, which means he no longer has his identities sort of gray. Everything's fake. His identities fake, and where he's living, they conceal, and all that. It's for CIA operatives, you know, they don't want to reveal this real name or anything. So as this goes on, it seems that there's this, all these reptilian people working for the CIA, which I can get into the bigger picture, why I'm unhappy with the kind of movies today. And so, yeah. And for some reason, he's in a special unit that is Fitzroy that recruited him, set up. And this new guy, Macmillan, comes in. And he's really been killing him. He wants to get rid of that whole unit. So one by one has been killed off. And he has this Ryan Gosling character go and kill off one of the others. Certain defeat squad, right? Six of them. So he kills him. And then he realizes that they're, you know, that they're out to kill him. There's this female woman agent, very pretty agent that's working. That's Anna Amos. She is really beautiful. And the scene after the jail scene, I think was in Singapore. And he's in a club and she comes up and she looks weird outfit. I don't know, it's a part of the outfit. She looks like a silly outfit. And she's communicating with them. And initially you don't realize that she's another CIA agent. But, and then this movie gets into a lot of sort of some plots with this Roy's that has been included as these brother and sister-in-law passed away and he sort of near people. You know, he's the young girl around 12. And, and then when this actually finds out that Fitzroy probably knows where the Ryan Gosling character is, right? He's kidnapped the young girl and holds her hostage so that Fitzroy will feel what he knows about the mayor city. So they torture him and pull out his veil. You're just listing the elements of this Pulp Fiction kind of, you know, generic plot. Okay, CIA, murder, assassination, rogue CIA, rogue CIA agents. Kidnapping, violence, torture. Some of the best violence, if you ever want to say that about violence, violence is never best. But some of the best violence in recent movie them, the way things blow up. I don't know how they do that. It must be special effects. I mean, in most extraordinary car chases and violent collisions and explosions. I mean, if you like violence, you'll really like this movie. And I think the American, the American public likes violence. In fact, it's a global public that likes violence. And in the end, you know, Brian Gosling gets into, you know, the final fight, right? He's about to be killed, but he's saved instead. And he prevails and the villain is killed instead. I mean, it's Pulp Fiction. You can take the elements of the plot of this movie and move them around. And they exist in all of these movies. It's only how well you do it, how violence the violence is. And the dialogue, I must say, the dialogue is really, really good. That's what attracted me. I always listen to the dialogue. And when they're making these quick, you know, punchy jokes and, you know, ironic remarks, I say, wow, this is good. And it was good, right on through. But the problem which we should talk about is, you know, what have we got here anyway? Is this the world that we live in where people spend, you know, enormous amounts of time watching this Pulp Fiction kind of stuff? Pulp violence with the same plot elements, one movie after the other. And the only question is, how big can you make the explosion? And, you know, that's the public taste. But it's not as simple as that, George, because, you know, fact and fiction often get confused in the mind of the viewer. And it's almost as if we're celebrating assassins. We're celebrating rogue CIA, we're celebrating an intelligence agency that we should trust. We're losing trust somehow. Because, you know, the old Italian phrase, which I always harken back to is, Repetitio Mater Studiorum, repetition is the mother of study. So if I give you hundreds of movies, all extolling the virtues of assassins and bad guys, and extolling the virtues of a rogue intelligence community that kills its own for no reason, that only has, you know, dark agendas, anti-democratic agendas, after a while you begin to believe that. By saying it's not true, I'm just saying that people must, they hear it so often, they must start believing it. And so we are educating them in these fundamental points about violence is good and our intelligence community is bad. This is, this was the most expensive special effects movie that was ever done. So that's, that's why all those, all that violence looks so good is because they spent a lot of money on special effects, police cars getting blown up and all this stuff, right? But getting back to the bigger picture that Jay has told me. Look around what's going on in this country right now. Look over the last few years. How many shootings, these young kids getting up shooting people, right? And, and, and, and also adults, you know, Las Vegas. I mean, I sent Jay an email, you know, to me. I had Jewish relatives that are getting very close to what the hell's going on with these killings, right? Pittsburgh, you know, the temple there and then Highland Park, my nephew's relatives getting killed. And then you got that thing in Texas that kid that in the schools, Sandy Hook. We are inculcating our citizenry to believe that whatever goes on in these movies. That it's not real. So then when you have people in our society who are, who have issues, mental issues, right? They go out and they, they want to have their, their power of fame. So they go and they kill people. But we've anesthetized our public toward what's really going on, you know. I mean, you and I were raised Jay in a different era. I mean, yes, there was violence, there were wars and stuff like that. But a lot of the movies in the 40s and 50s were very pleasant. You know, you had some that talked about real issues like custom. But, and that was still uplifting, you know, I mean, but these movies for me. Horrible. It's horrible because what we're anesthetizing those in our society and we've discussed this before. We're borderline personalities and we all have issues. I mean, I mean, my life I've been shitted out a lot, but I'm not going to go out and shoot people, you know. So, so I mean, I mean, we need to look at what we're doing as good as this movie is right and it's an excellent movie in terms of all the different things you check off, you know, but these kind of movies. There's a real conundrum no George and that's this. It's the First Amendment. You know, if they want to make a movie like that, who's going to stop them. There's no, there's no agency I can think of not public or private. That'll say, you know, we know you're making a lot of money. You spent a lot of money on these explosions, you're making a lot of money by people who want to see, you know, a bigger explosion than ever before. And you got to stop now. It's too, it's too disruptive to our society. It's too suggestive to those, you know, 18 and 19 year old kids who have no other input and who buy into the violence as a positive thing. And who exactly is going to enforce that rule. So what you have is at least these, there's a number of cable channel movies. There's the whole movie, you know, distribution industry that makes more money with violent movies. I'm sorry, that's the way it is. But at the same time, it's erosive to our, you know, our national social fabric. And so, how do we stop this, George? I mean, let's assume that all right thinking people agreed with exactly what you said. I make your president. Okay, for a day, your president, what are you going to do about it? I would talk to Congress, talk to Nancy. Soon as we're going to be Adam Schiff, who I love, hopefully. She's a problem. And then Chuck Schumer and get the Congress and the president agree that there's a real problem. And it's being all the industry, you know, film industry people. You know, you know, you're really doing a bad thing for America by having these kind of things and look what's happening. Look around the country, all these people getting killed, little kids, great school kids getting killed, people, you know, minding their own business and a religious ceremony getting killed. So we've got to do, you know, let's start focusing more. What do you do? What do you do, though? I mean, some movies are at the far end of the spectrum. This may be one of them. And other movies, just a little violence, you know, hop along Cassidy kind of violence. It's not nearly as offensive or destructive. But what are you going to do? How are you going to make that decision? You know, in the past, they used to rate movies, right? You know, and the ratings still exist. They changed, but they still exist. And I wonder if there ought to be a rating around violence, too. Don't let your eight-year-old kid watch this stuff. Eight-year-old kids are watching this stuff all around the country, the world. And those eight-year-old kids, by the time they're 18, they have seen hundreds of these movies, and they have seen tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of gratuitous killings. This has got to have an effect on them. And so maybe they should be rated, and parents should be held responsible or something. I don't know what it is. But, you know, to me, the First Amendment has got to give way to peace and harmony in our time. And money, you know, they're making a lot of money, but, you know, as a vegan, I studied Himalayan, you know, Eastern religions and practicing it. You know, we really are society, we need to get into more of a peaceful kind of existence. And I'm not going to get into some of my own personal things about veganism and how meat the industry has changed. And you used to go out and kill your chicken and eat it now. It's in factory farms. They've got to build some hormones and antibiotics, so it's not real food anymore. But I mean, you know, what we're doing to our society with these violent movies is just horrible. And, you know, this also, this movie was a picture of what goes on. I hope this is not true of what the CIA is all about, but I'm afraid it might... If they repeat it in every movie, after a while, you know, that eight-year-old kid will grow up thinking the CIA has a bunch of robes and murderers, and they kill their own for gratuitous reasons. So somebody really has to say something, but you know, nobody is. You never see a review like this, okay, where they take a movie like The Gray Man and start pulling the wings out of it. Never. So these kids, you know, a lot of kids, a whole generation of kids are beginning to believe that the CIA, especially with Trump's attacks on the intelligence community, right, the deep state, all that, they're beginning to believe that the government is no good and you can't trust the government. The government is a bunch of murderers at the bottom of it. So what do we do? We have to do something, you know. Selling assault weapons certainly accelerates the amount of gratuitous violence in the country and the ability of people who have mental issues to act out. But you know what? Just as important is being trained that assault weapons are good for you, like Vitamin C, that it's okay to get involved in a murderous experience. The violence and bombing and explosions and assassinations are all okay. Which one has more effect on the lives of our generation coming up? It's hard to say that one of them is worse than the other. I think they both contribute to what we see today. These kids who go around with these assault weapons, they think they're the hero in the movie. Or the anti-hero, as the case may be. There's no moral message there. You know, even the bad guys are the good guys and the good guys are often the bad guys. And I guess that's a credit to Hollywood that they can make black into white and white into black and you don't know who's up. But I think we have to... You know the other thing I was going to mention, George, like your impression on this. It seems to me that we're in a competition. The reason the Greyman is so popular, the reason the Greyman is so attractive as a movie, is that its explosions are more expensive. Its assassinations are more brutal. There's more blood and gore and God knows what happens in this movie and others. It's like a competition. You know, next time, the guy who makes the sequel, if you will, a conceptual sequel, to the Greyman is going to have more explosions, more violence, more assassinations, more blood and gore. That's the way you bring the audience in by bettering the guy last time around. By competing, you know, with the violence before. And so each movie, each successful movie is worse than the last. And so it's going to get worse, George. Unless we do something about it. You know, I would really like to see our government agencies, Congress and the president. That being, you know... Well, it's too bad because everybody's blaming, you know, the weapons. And of course, there's a lot of blame there, but they're not blaming the milieu in which our kids are being raised. You know, there was an article in a Washington Post a couple of days ago, and we covered it this morning with Carl Ackerman about how there's a teacher shortage in the country. Well, not only a shortage, there's a decline of the schools in our country. There are states more than others, but generally speaking, a decline. And if you want to countervail on the violence in the movies, the teachers have to be there, and they have to teach, you know, the ethical considerations of living in a democracy. They have to teach civics, they have to teach morality. They have to teach what amorality is and so forth. And if the schools are in decline, the kids aren't getting that. So on the one hand, the guns. On the other hand, the movies. And nothing countervails against the lessons that these kids are getting. I say kids, these kids have been getting these lessons for a long time, 10, 20 years now. We have seen this kind of pulp violence, and it's going to get worse. So we have one or two generations who grown up swimming in it. You know, Jay, I don't know. I haven't, my first master's was the secondary ed in history and I gave up teaching after two years because I was the administration wasn't letting me do the skits. I did the Russian Revolution skit. They weren't happy with that. I wanted to get the kids right into that whole thing with their repute and all that. But so what you're saying is that teachers, that article is true that teachers don't want to teach. They get into other fields like I went to planning. You know, so bottom line is, we are living in a fixed society. There's a lot of issues nationally domestically and internationally that we've got to really work on. And, you know, getting back to the whole thing we first discussed, you know, Iraq, Iran, CIA, we we brought down the shot. We got rid of Saddam and then what would there was a vacuum and look what filled the back. But we, there's some real issues and you know, I really think we have to have a change, you know, I'm, I don't know if you want to say but I'm an Elizabeth Warren and Bernie person, you know, we've got to, we've got to make some changes. We've got to be more tentative to both domestically and internationally. What we're doing, you know, what is the result of, of, of doing things the standard way, you know, same old same old right. So I couldn't agree with that, you know, any assault weapon. If you really want an assault weapon, you can get it on the black market, you know, even if we restrict assault weapons. The thing to do is to try to as well is to change the mentality of our young people. And of our adults, you know, to think that what goes on in these movies that they can go out and have their days. They have same, you know, and a lot of these killers, they're sort of suicidal so they're trying to get themselves killed and so they figured they'll go out in a blaze and glory. And we've got some real issues in this country. And as you said, they're not being addressed at all. And I got major problems with Hollywood, you know, as well. Well, the other, the other lesson these movies teach you is that modern medical science can fix you up. And so you get shot, for example, or terrible things happen to you. And the doctors can patch you up and you're out back in a day or two. That's not exactly what happens. That didn't happen in Uvaldi. It didn't happen in any of these massacres. They died. And it was nothing that anybody could do for them. And that's the way it's going to increase. You know, the same kind of competition I spoke of in the movies repeats itself in the massacres. Just like these guys want to kill more people. They want to have weapons that will kill more people. And there's this whole body and clawing mentality. Yeah, we condemn them. Yeah, we shake our fists at them and we shoot them, maybe kill them, maybe put them in jail for the rest of their lives. But like Bonnie and Clive, there's a certain, you know, a certain anti hero thing with them. And they get off on that. They want to be anti heroes. They want the world to take note. There was a time when the press was very careful never to mention the name of an assailant, you know, somebody who shot up a bunch of people. I think they're sloppy about that now and we usually hear the name. But a lot of these guys are in it to be famous. They're in it to have their name on the media. And there's got to be something we can do in that regard too. I know everybody wants to know what happened in Uvaldi. Everybody wants to know that. And the media is there covering it. Great detail for days and weeks and months to come. And that somehow is counterproductive. And because if you keep, you know, making it a news story, you're also making it a cause celeb for the ones with mental distress. I mean, mental issues. So, I don't know. It's like the media has to be more restrained, maybe. It has been in the past, but it's not restrained now. Jay, how realistic if you, after watching this movie, the great Ryan Gosper and that other Anadar must. I mean, they got out of so many situations and they're always the ones who win, you know, they're right in front of death. And then he gets hurt and then they put, as you said, they put it back together. That is totally unrealistic that in so many different situations that they're going to, they're going to come out clean. And the enemy is going to, is going to die. That's just total BS, right? So these, these, these young kids or whoever, they got this, they get the wrong impression. I mean, we've got to do, the stitches got to be stopped. We've got to put, we've got to tell Hollywood, you know, make movies that are not like this, because as you said, they're going to get worse and more expensive, because bottom line is they're making money. I mean, they should be making movies that are educational and that send a helpful message of some kind. Movies that have an art to them, not just the violence, it's, it's, it's, that's what they taught me in school. They cut the corners and get right to the bottom line, which is not the kind of movie, not the kind of art we want to have. A great nation deserves great art. This is not great art. Sorry. Not at all. So this is, it creates a problem for us to review the movie and, and to apply, you know, ratings to it, George. If you reviewed it on the basis of, you know, the, the pyro techniques should have to give it a, you know, a high mark. If you reviewed it on the basis of the, of the fast and witty dialogue, same thing. You know, and the, and the lighting and the, and the pretty, the pretty heroin on the arm us. And Brian, Ryan Gosling, he was good. If you review it on that basis, in terms of what the people want, what will titillate them. You know, using the, the, the elements of, of a pulp violence, you would have to give it a good, a good rating. But if you, if you look at it, and I think we should, if you look at it, not as the box office hit, not as appealing to people who like violence or who are unformed and need, and need, you know, guidance and get the wrong guidance. If you look at it from the, the national sensibility point, the social sensibility point, you don't rate it the same way. So we have two ratings here. And I suggest that to you. Two ratings. So first, George, let me ask you on a scale of one to 10, make that zero to 10. What would you give it on a technical basis as a movie that is, you know, in line with other movies of our time. 10th. I mean, it's the, the special effects are good. Start the acting is good. The scenery is, you know, it's good. The, the feelings. You know, it's here toward that young girl, you know, kind of protector. You know, it's good. So it's a 10 on, on that scale, on that rating. But then on the other rating, I have, you know, you make your rating on this one. And then I'm going to give the other rating. Go for it. You want to wait, you want to wait for me? Let me wait for you to make yours on this one, on the quality. You have to, I have to say that I'm my view of each one of these things is colored by the other. I would not give it a 10. I can't bring myself to give it a 10. I would give it maybe a seven, which is not my highest rating. And now that I've said that, what would you give it on the rating of socially useful? Zero. Same here, George. Zero. There's no social. No redeeming quality here. And, and the rating that we are giving for the zero applies to not only the gray man, but all of these movies, these pulp violence movies that are, you know, that are we're surrounded by, we're drowning in them. And, and Hollywood should stop making them. If they're going to spend $200 million on a movie like this, they could do a terrific job on a documentary or a documentary drama that teaches you something and gives you a better view of the world. That's how they should spend that money. And if they stop making movies like this one and offer value movies to the public, the public will watch. They will watch. You put, you know, high production values, good looking actors, good dialogue, just a better story. You know, Jay, there's only about 10% of this gray man that's actually dialogue between, you know, good dialogue between Ryan Gosling and the young girl that played Fitzroy, you know, the Denise of Fitzroy. So 90% of this is pure violence. Getting back, you know, I've discussed my own family situation, how my grandfather and his brothers and his, his father, how they were kind of open with the cemetery, you know, they were all taken out into some valley and cut the pieces, their guts were cut out. That was real stuff, you know, and, and, and then the Holocaust, right, and then Rwanda and all this stuff. And I think these kind of movies sensitize the public to what's really going on in Ukraine. I mean, Putin is killing civilians by the hundreds, by the hundreds of thousands of Ukraine. And we get an anesthetize by seeing this stuff. And it's all fantasy. There's, there's something drastically centrally wrong with what Hollywood is producing. And what, and then the repercussions just look around how many shootings, Ubalde and all the other ones I mentioned, right? So we've got a problem. And I think the Congress is, it doesn't want to, you know, reign in Hollywood because it's that we have a free society, you know, but, but I mean, it gets to a point where, you know, they're trying to get rid of assault weapons, you know, and guns. But if you really want a gun, I mean, if you don't kill someone with a gun, you'll be killing with a knife, you know, you realize I just did something. Oh yeah, somebody cut off somebody's hand, you know. Well, the glory or the, the more the viewers like it. I want to see that. And it's tragic. And, and you know, something you said I just want to make one last point. So if you see this kind of movie, and Hollywood is not interested in the reality, for example, of what's happening in Ukraine, then, you know, it diminishes the importance of Ukraine, of that invasion of that violence. And so the whole thing is scrambled. And the public is confused, not only here, but anywhere because these movies have global circulation. And I think it's very bad for the liberal world order and a free society in every country. So this is just as much information technology and anything else. Okay, George, thank you very much. I'm looking forward to our next discussion. I'll try to suggest the movie that is more constructive next time. I think we made our points on this one. It was a good experience to look at the movie, I suppose, and it was a good experience to review the movie. Thank you so much, George. I'm still recovering, so thank you for bearing with me today. It's been about two weeks with this whatever I picked up. Okay, thank you. Thank you, George. Aloha.