I've Seen The Losers and Wanna TALK (SPOILERS!!!!!)

[Caren]

damn it D, you didn't even give me a chance to process the previous post and you hit me with another one! It takes me at the very least a full 24 hours to absorb this stuff.....and that's on a day when my brain isn't exhaused from the extensive responsibilities of rl of which today is not one of them.

[dodger_winslow]

Ha! Well process faster, chica, 'cause I've been waiting since Tuesday to talk about this stuff.

Here, have another cuppa Joe ...


d

[Caren]

I think you were gonna give the the Zoe/Aisha thoughts which I'm dying to hear because I had a lesser opinion of her character as it was played in the movie compared to the books. SO here is one of your prime examples of how I came into the movie with a predetermined opinion of the dynamic between Clay and Aisha and Aisha and the team so when it came to seeing the movie version I was I suppose somewhat disappointed? Or better yet jaded? I think this is one time I have go back and rewatch the film again to get my brain around the softer version of Aisha and then maybe I can accept the changes....and maybe reading YOUR views on that D, it would enlighten me as well.

I fully planned on giving you more to work off of than this lame post but my day got away from me again. That said, please just give it to me......unleash the massive amount of analysis. Yes, it will take me a fewdays to process but why deprive the masses of what is a hot topic right now waiting on me to process...just seems unfair to the rest somehow

[Laura]

I was not sure what to think of Clay being so reserved and quietly in charge. I DID expect him to be a much more dominant leader. He was clearly in charge, but there was a distance in him that I found disturbing. IF the loss of the children bothered him so much, where was the emotion??? He was upset about it, and the fact that the helicopter blew up, but it was so controlled. I knew that the teddy bear tat that Clay got was due to the little boy dying, but it did not come across that he was as upset as I thought it would. Maybe a leader has to be remote with his feelings.

What bothered me the absolute most was that Roque went over to the other side. I had read the first book and half of the second one, but that was awhile ago, and so the betrayal completely took me by surprise. What would motivate Roque to go over to Max's side and go against his fellow soldiers and friends??? I thought there was a genuine bond there, yet he was able to flip without any guilt.

How did Roque benefit from changing sides???? Did he really think that Max would win, and what do you suppose he was promised for his loyalty??? The movie may have stated it, but I was SOOOOO stunned that I missed the reasoning for it all.

I thought that Roque was an intelligent man, yet he was led astray and switched teams without any evidence of being torn about that decision. He was NOT the one who had any family that he wanted to get back to, it appeared he did not have much of a life outside of his being a soldier, yet he was willing to trade it all for Max. WHY?????????

[Caren]

Rogue's motivation was simple, Money. I don't think he wanted anything more than that. Maybe a bit of him sticking it to Clay at the end too...but I think greed was his driving force.

[dodger_winslow]

I disagree. I don't think Roque's primary motivator was money at all.

Roque's primary motivator is that he's DEFINED by the his place in the team and his life as a black ops warrior, (just as Clay is defined by his role as a leader/soldier). Without these things, he has no identity.

And Roque lost the black ops aspect of his identity when the kids came into play, putting Clay's obedience to his own moral code in direct conflict with his leadership obligation to put the survival of his own team above everything but the mission. Because saving those kids was not part of the mission. Saving them was, in fact, antithetical to the mission objective inthat going in to rescue them was not only in direct defiance of orders they, at that time, thought were valid military orders; it was also a court martial worthy breach of military protocol to take the risk of warning "the package" of an impending attack and thus, potentially, allowing him to escape an attack that would otherwise wax his ass to a 100% certainty.

The MISSION is to kill a specific individual. And Clay choosing to go in after those kids? Betrays not only his leadership obligation to the survival of his team above anything except accomplishing the mission objective, it also betrays his soldier's obligation to the mission itself in risking the mission objective period. And both of those betrayals, of the team and of the mission, are choices Clay makes solely in service of his own moral code. His own assessment of right and wrong. He leads his team on a suicide mission that, at best, assures they will all be in some serious do-do with the muckity mucks up the chain of command not because he must, in order to accomplish the mission, but rather because he puts his own personal needs above both the survival of the team and the success of the mission.

This is, of course, what makes Clay a great leader (and a great man, and a great character). And it is also exactly why the whole team follows him through the gates of hell without hesitation or complaint, pursuing their new mission --- CLAY's mission --- to rescue those kids as fervently as they pursue any mission, and with an equal disregard to their own individual safety should that safety require them to act in a way that would endanger either the mission objective or their fellow team members. Not because the military orders them to, but rather because Clay orders them to, and Clay is their leader, and they trust him implicitly at least in part because his ethical/moral code is so strongly defined that he can't consider NOT going in after those kids for the sole reason, which he articulates later to Zoe as we had to go back in because it was the right thing to do.

So with that all put in perspective, consider Roque's perspective here. He is defined by 2 things: his membership in the team and his identity as a soldier. And Clay risks the team to accomplish a non-mission objective, and he makes them outlaws to their own government in ways that assure none of them will ever be soldiers again. This is NOT okay with Roque, but he deals with it because this is the hand he's playing. And in the bigger scheme of things? His position as part of the team is more important to him than his identity as a soldier, so as long as the team is intact, and he is still a part of it, he still has an identity. The fact that this is no longer a sanctioned military black ops team? Is somewhat semantics for Roque because black ops, by definition, are the guys the government disavows when what they do under orders becomes politically disadvantageous. So for Roque? As long as the team is still together (which it is, their technical status as soldiers or civilians notwithstanding), and they still have a mission (getting home), he's good. Not happy. But good in an "I won't frag Clay for betraying everything that's important to me in service of his own moral code" way.

And this is where Clay's obsession with Max gets between he and Roque. Because Clay's obsession with getting Max? Is the same thing as rescuing the kids. Getting Max isn't the mission. Getting HOME is the mission. But Clay is already showing indications that he views getting Max as "the right thing to do" in a way that is going to drive him to sacrifice the mission objective of getting home in order to pursue Max in service of his own moral code. And likewise, because of who Max is and the almost nil odds they would have of "getting Max" and also surviving, Clay is also indicating that he is considering leading the team on another suicide mission not to secure the mission objective, but rather to do the right thing.

This is a HUGE problem for Roque, and Roque confronts him on it. In the street in Bolivia, "You're losing the team, Clay." And Clay says no, I'm not, they'll follow me, I'm their leader. So Roque clarifies "Well you're losing me." As in, you are considering doing things that will have the kind of consequences we slicked by in our rescue of the children, those consequences being things I cannot live with: the destruction of the team, the sacrifice of the mission objective. And you are considering this not based on what is best for the team, or on what we must do to achieve the mission, but rather because you and you alone have decided that "getting Max" must be done because it is the right thing to do.

And when Roque tells Clay this -- you're losing ME ... even if the TEAM will follow you to their own destruction, I won't --- Clay pulls rank on him. Roque calls him Col. And Clay returns with a very pointed "Captain." He is telling Roque you will do what I order you to do because I outrank you. And he is telling Roque this at a time when Roque is trying to communicate that what Clay is doing in regards to Max is not what anyone on the team signed up to do. So Clay is going rogue on them, and Roque is beginning to think that, for the good of the team, he might have to lead a revolt against Clay.

So step with me to when Roque tells Clay when he contacted Max. After they found out that Aisha was the drug lord's daughter. THAT was the straw that broke the camel's back for Roque.

It is not money; it is betrayal. It is identity. Roque MUST be part of a team for him to exist in his own mind. And Clay has taken this outsider to the team and brought her inside and let her betray them. Clay has sinned in a way Roque cannot forgive. Clay has not only put his own moral code above the safety of his team and the success of the true mission; he has put a woman and an outsider above those things, too.

This is when Roque realizes Clay is going to destroy the team. The team Roque loves will no longer exist, even if some of the individuals he cares about survive the destruction. And this is going to happen not because accomplishing the mission objective requires it, but rather because Clay has fallen so far away from what the team leader must be (in Roque's assessment, if not the assessment of the rest of the team) that he is not only willing to put his own moral code above team and mission, he's become incapable of discerning friends from enemies, and so corrupted by his own carnal needs that he's let this outsider come into the team and destroy it from within.

This is the point in the movie where First Officer Kirk would be relieving Captain Spock of duty based on Spock being demonstrably unfit for command.

Only for Roque, the team is already destroyed. The unit they once were, the team that defined him in his own mind, no longer exists. Which means? It's every man for himself. Because Roque's loyalty is to the TEAM, not to the INDIVIDUALS of the team. And Clay's gonna destroy the team. He's going to get them all killed, and they're gonna let him do it. So Roque's done. He cuts a deal. Switches teams. But not for money. Not out of competition with Clay. But rather because he MUST be part of a team to keep his identity, and his team is now destroyed in his eyes. Fractured beyond repair. A shatter of individuals who will, at best, go their different ways now. Pooch going home to his wife and unborn kid. Jensen going home to coach his niece's soccer team. Oscar doing whatever it is Oscar does, and Clay, his best friend, his leader, his commanding officer, choosing a woman over him and the team and the mission.

But while his team is destroyed beyond reconstruction, Max and Holt still have a team, and they're willing to put him in charge of it. Granted, it's a team of mercs, and their governmental structure is foundationed on the accumulation of wealth, but hey, that's semantics (and even the semantics of how that differs from the US government is a little grey). What matters is that he'll be a black ops soldier again, part of a team again, only working for Max instead of the government. And the one thing he knows beyond all doubt? Max will never decide to "do the right thing" at the cost of the mission objective. And he will never let a woman crawl inside his pants and drag the whole team down from winners to losers.

This is why Roque betrays the team. Not money. Not even power. But rather, identity. He needs to be part of a team, and that team has to be a winner. He can't live with being a loser.

And in what, for Roque, constitutes paying his respects at the grave of the fallen team he once considered his family, he tries to save both Jensen and Pooch from getting killed off Clay's failure as their leader. He gives them logical reasons not to go on the mission that will be their last. You have family. Go home. Clay and I can do this alone. And as I mentioned a couple posts back, in saying this without including Cougar in either choice he presents, he's leaving Cougar to act however Cougar chooses to act. He's giving Cougar the same choice he made when he decided to contact Max in order to survive rather than sticking with Clay and going down with the ship. He's telling Cougar: survive with Pooch and Jensen by choosing the objective over Clay OR choose Clay over the mission objective and die with him.

But he's not giving Clay that choice. In Roque's eyes, Clay has to die. One way or another, Clay's gonna get fragged for what he's done to Roque's team. To his family. To his identity. Because in Roque's mind, he didn't betray those things, Clay destroyed them. And he destroyed them by betraying them in ways a soldier is not allowed to betray his brothers in arms.

Clay put his own needs above achieving the mission objective. And he put his own needs above the survival of the team. He's consorting with the enemy, and letting his own thirst for vengeance against Max drive him to lead his team on a suicide mission just like he did in Bolivia. And in Roque's judgement? The only justice for that catastrophic failure of leadership on Clay's part is fragging him. And making sure he knows, before he dies, exactly who betrayed him to his greatest enemy and why.

THAT's what motivates Roque to betray the team, IMO. And in it's own elegant way, Roque's motivation in that betrayal mirrors Clay's motivations as they relate to Max. Because Roque's need for vengeance against Clay to punish Clay for his sins against the team (again, in Roque's perception, if not in the team's perception)? Is EXACTLY what Roque considers the ultimate betrayal in Clay being willing to sacrifice the team to get his vengeance against Max, to punish Max for his sins against the innocent.

For we have seen the enemy, and they are us.

Dodger

[dodger_winslow]

I was not sure what to think of Clay being so reserved and quietly in charge. I DID expect him to be a much more dominant leader. He was clearly in charge, but there was a distance in him that I found disturbing. IF the loss of the children bothered him so much, where was the emotion??? He was upset about it, and the fact that the helicopter blew up, but it was so controlled. I knew that the teddy bear tat that Clay got was due to the little boy dying, but it did not come across that he was as upset as I thought it would. Maybe a leader has to be remote with his feelings.

For me, Laura, that was a large part of the power of Jeff's portrayal of Clay. What you're interpreting as distance from his feelings is what I view to be the very crux of Jeff's unique and stunning capacity to portray men like John Winchester and Eddie Blake and Franklin Clay so convincingly that, as aware as I am that Jeff is playing them, I forget that Jeff is playing them. Forget they are being played at all. Forget they aren't real, mistake them as flesh-and-blood individuals rather than characters. And that's something only the best actors can accomplish, and even most of those (the best actors) can't accomplish it with men as subtle and emotionally combustive-and-yet-contained as John and Clay.

Military men (particularly black ops) don't respond to stress the way most do, and their emotional construct must be such that they don't feel/consider/fret over most of the collateral damage they inflict by virtue of doing their job the way it has to be done. If you'll recall, in one of the many, many, many toss-off brilliant details in the film, the cartel guys come out the door with guns on the girls in bikinis, and Clay, being the charmer he is, after removing the immediate danger to them, winks at them with a flirty "ladies" while they run off shrieking.

You remember that scene?

Now place it in the emotional context of the man Clay really is by remembering that Clay is only there to save the kids. Those girls in bikinis who appear to be nothing more than girls who are at a party on a rich man's estate? Those girls who aren't much older than the kids he's there to save, and who Clay took a half a moment to save from the bad guys who had guns on them? Those girls he winked at with a charming "Ladies" before going inside to get the kid he's after? Clay's already killed those girls. He killed them the moment he called in the air strike on the estate. He didn't come in to save them. They are collateral damage to his mission, and he's fine with that. Totally innocent teenagers at their uncle's pool party or molls for the cartel enforcers, he doesn't give a shit. Those girls are NOTHING to him. And every single one of them died when that bomb hit the compound. Just as Clay knew they would when he winked at them and said "Ladies."

THIS is the man Clay is. He is black ops to the BONE. The biggest suspension of disbelief required by the whole movie (including the flaming Dukati flipping over his head and into the jet winshield) is that Clay would go in after those kids in the first place, risking the mission objective and leading his team on a suicide mission. Because no black ops guy would ever actually do something like that. If he were capable of doing that? He wouldn't be in black ops at all, let alone a Colonel in charge of his own team. But you suspend your disbelief on that point because the whole point of telling a story is to tell the story, and this story is about American soldiers, and American soldiers don't kill kids. Period. Even when they do. They don't. Because they're American soldiers, dammit, and John Wayne simply does not DO shit like that. So in order to tell this story, and in order to be told this story, you must suspend your disbelief that a black ops team leader would risk his mission and his team to go in after a bunch of kids he doesn't know simply because they are kids.

And part of the power of both the story they are telling and the character they are portraying Clay to be is that while they ask you to suspend your disbelief on this point, they don't ask you to suspend it enough to think he'd also be driven to get those girls he winks at out of the kill zone. They don't point it out that he killed them by failing to save them, and he is so morally and emotionally indifferent to the reality of that fact that he can flirt with them four minutes before he ends them. But they do leave it there for you to see if you are watching. Because this is the man Clay is. He's black ops. He's wearing the black suit because, despite being the hero of the story, he is also the guy in the black hat. He's the archangel Gabriel who will burn the eyes right out of your head for daring to look upon him in his full glory not because you are wicked or you deserve it, but rather because he is a fucking archangel and has much bigger big-picture concerns than whether or not you get your eyes burned out of your head because you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking at the wrong guy.

And the power of Jeff's portrayal of this character? Starts really early on in the first scene. He cares that there are kids on site. He tries to call off the mission based on their presence, but his request is denied. He tries to sabotage the success of the mission, but fails. He throws the chain of command out the window and starts swinging his own stick in his own yard in an effort to stop this atrocity from happening, and again fails. These are all choices that require no suspension of disbelief to believe that a black ops Col might do this. They are all within the realm of believable behavior for a man of Clay's training and background and moral construct, and Jeff plays them that way.

Then you get to a place where you start having to suspend your disbelief, but they only ask you to do it in terms of how important he considers those kids in the kill zone. If Clay was indeed capable of caring as much about those kids getting killed simply because they are kids? Then everything he does in trying to save those kids is utterly believable. So the only suspension the movie asks of you is in believing that Clay would care that much about the kids getting killed on his watch. So you believe that, and you do so both because that is part of the pact you make in going to the movie in the first place -- you tell me a story, and I will do everything I can, within reason, to buy into the story you are telling me -- and because Jeff makes you WANT to believe it. So you believe it. And you're off.

You see the look in his eye when he tells Roque "plenty of time"? That's not "I care so much about those kids that I can't live with myself if they get killed." Instead, that's "I'm an adrenaline junkie and this sounds like my kind of fun ... and I can't live with myself if those kids get killed on my watch." So they're off. Balls to the wall head-on attack to save kids. And they get all but one. But Clay's not a "well, you only lost one" kind of guy. He's a winner. All or nothing. He can't leave that one kid there any more than he can leave all of them or it invalidates his entire reasons for going in to save all of them in the first place.

So he goes after that kid. He flirts with girls in bikinis he's already accepted as collateral damage to his mission without it bothering him in the slightest. He tells the drug dealer, give me the kid and I let you live, knowing the bomb is going to kill the drug dealer no matter what he does. It's a flat out lie, and who cares? He's the bad guy. Your word is only worth as much when given to him as his would be if it was given to you: meaning nothing. The drug dealer puts down the knife, and you kill him anyway.

All that plays like the man Clay is designed to be. Jeff plays it all as if Clay is not bothered for even a passing moment by any of it. He's almost having fun here. He's playing a game, and he's going to win. He's not going to save all the kids but one. He's going to win by saving them all. Period.

And he does. Game over. Bad guy dead. Kids safe. Chopper on the way to the LZ. Load the kids on the chopper. Every fairy tale has a happy ending. Kid being used as a drug mule by a drug cartel is still innocence personified enough to try and give Clay his teddy bear.

And this is where Jeff's flat out stunning instinct for and skill at playing this kind of character really kicks in. Because black ops bad ass adrenaline junkie wet works specialist gets offered a teddy bear? And he gruffs the importance of it off. "No thanks kid," he says with that "I'm a bad ass, but you can see underneath it all that I'm actually touched by this gesture" attitude. "You keep him safe for me." Kid salutes him. Chopper pulls away while badass looks properly badass while still showing just a wee sliver of being touched under all that badass.

Only Jeff doesn't go there. Jeff is down on that kid's level, lookin' him in the eyes, saying, "No, you keep him. You keep him safe for me, okay?" and the man he is, at that moment, in his expression and his eyes and his voice and his posture? Would totally have risked his mission and led his team on a suicide run to save this kid. This specific kid, who he doesn't know at all. And he wouldn't do it because it was the right thing to do. Or the heroic thing to do. Or the scripted thing to do. He would do it because this is that man. The one who doesn't exist. The suspension of disbelief you were asked to make for the sake of buying into the sell proposition of the tickets you purchased to watch this is right there in front of you, on the screen, looking at that kid in a way that you 100% believe with every fiber of your jaded soul.

Here's the magic in movies. Dragons exist. Horses can fly. Pandora has tall blue chicks who can kick your video game avatar's ass. And black ops colonels can look at kids they've never met before like this kid right here, this specific kid, this individual kid is someone he would absolutely risk his mission and his team to save. No doubt about it. You can SEE it right there on the screen, in this man, and that makes it real.

So now the chopper pulls away. Your heroes high five each other in victory. They have won. Saved 'em all. And just as those kids are one step short of living happily ever after, Jason comes surging up out of the lake and snatches their poor, doomed asses out of the boat and drags them under. You can see it coming. Worse still, they can see it coming. These heroes who just risked EVERYTHING to do the right thing for a bunch of kids they don't even know get just enough warning to know what's going to happen to those kids because those kids are one step short of salvation, but also one step beyond their reach to save.

And they lose it all. Boom. Because The Losers can't stop at a mostly-win by leaving those kids there in the jungle now that they're no longer at ground zero of an air strike. No, The Losers had to be The Winners by putting those kids on the chopper in their stead, so when that chopper gets RPGed into oblivion not because the kids are in it, but rather because The Losers are supposed to be in it ...

Game over, man. Game over.

Everything they risked. Everything they sacrificed. Everything they won ... means nothing. Might as well not have bothered. A difference that makes no difference is no difference.

The only difference between sitting on that hill and watching their own jets drop a bomb right on top of those kids and standing there in the jungle watching an RPG blow up the chopper they put those kids on instead of getting on it themselves is that now they're fugitives from the same government they've been working for, been sacrificing everything for, their entire adult lives.

THIS is the Clay we watch for the rest of the movie. This man who not only snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at the cost of all those innocent lives, but who also led his team, who followed him without question because they trust him without reservation, right into the mouth of their own annihilation.

And he did it all for nothing. He lost everything, took everything away from the people most important to him, his team, for nothing. It's all his fault. The weight of every choice made is his. He led them to this. And now he's got absolutely no way to save them from it.

And just like it did with John Winchester, that level of loss and despair and emotional annihilation put Clay to the kind of rage that will drive him after Max with the same kind of fevor John pursued Azazel. And for the same reasons ... to protect his kids, and to get revenge for what Max took from those kids, and from him.

Which I'm sure is part of the reason I love this movie so madly, deeply and truly. Because Jeff? Plays the John Winchester archetype like no one else can. And that's the basic design of Franklin Clay, too.

The press harps and harps and harps on how similar The Comedian and Clay must be because both were born in the comic genre, both are career military men, both are black ops capable of great violence with little or no apparent emotional and/or moral backlash, and both laugh in the face of darkness. And they (the press) totally miss the whole fucking point in doing so. The Comedian couldn't be more different than Clay. While Clay is a brother born of a different mother to John Winchester.

And just as the undercurrent of inexpressible grief and rage drove John Winchester like gasoline in an engine on the road of get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way biblical vengeance, so does it equally drive Clay down that same dark road.

Which brings me back to how Jeff plays Clay as anything BUT (IMO, at least) a distant man of remote emotions, or a less-than-dominant leader. Quite to the contrary, I feel Jeff captures a stillness to Clay's command style that's a bright-red-on-a-poison-frog level warning to the wary of who will take you out fastest if you are stupid enough to fuck with him. He commands the team so absolutely and effectively that they run head first into suicide mission after suicide mission because he points them that direction and says "go." They trust him that much. The follow him that completely. And they do so even after what happened in Bolivia.

And equally, Jeff captures the substratum of pure, ferocious rage that drives someone to the extremes of vengeance to which he is willing to go in the name of punishing Max. And he equally captures that rage in how it blinds Clay to the potential for disaster this vengeance represents not only for himself, but also for those he leads into the breach behind him, not because they have any particular drive to go there on their own, but rather because they trust him enough to follow him through the gates of hell, come what may as a consequence to choosing to do so.

And he does all that while managing to play the rest of Clay's character moments with the casual charm and ease of someone who is mostly reasonable and productive but for the glaring blind spot he has on the subject of Max.

And he also plays the guarded vulnerability Clay displays when it comes to Aisha with a beautiful, deft confidence. Does Clay go for her because she has a fine ass? Maybe that's part of it on some level, but if the fine ass was the preponderance of the attraction between them, Clay'd not be willing to stick a stake in Aisha's throat in that initial fight scene as that final pose clearly shows that he is. And he'd also not be up and shooting to kill right alongside his men while she dives for the tub after he finds out she's been lying to him about who she is and what her real agenda is. No, Clay connects with Aisha because Aisha is as driven by rage and starving for the taste of vengeance as he is. He can sense that about her, just as she can sense it about him, and that commonality between them is really the only relief either one of them can feel from inside the darkness they've become off embracing the level of hatred they share for Max.

And that desperation for relief translates so well to the screen, I think. It comes off almost like a physical hunger, particularly in the scene where Aisha just walks into his room and jumps him without ever saying so much as howdy, boo, or fuck me, baby. Both Jeff and Zoe fairly simmer with the intensity of the barely contained heat and violence their respective characters personify very time they come within touching distance of one another, and that heat fuckin ignites the love scenes between them that, but for the chemistry and emotional intensity both are playing as the driving force behind their characters' mutual attraction, might otherwise play much more vanilla than they do for how little skin and anatomical detail is actually anted up to a visual display.

So no. When it comes to Jeff portrayal of Clay both as a man and as a leader, the performance I saw of the character I saw in the movie I saw didn't have much quiet to it so much as it had a whole bunch of subtle, intense, emotionally charged still. And as far as I'm concerned, the power of a dangerous still is always going to be much harder to do and do well than any level of gruff, tough badassery as is the far more familiar fare of traditional action movies ... thus why Robert DeNiro and Russ Crowe get Oscars while Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger get hokey one-liners and big SFX budgets.

Dodger

[Tink922]

Heh....this is kind of like listening to Siskel and Ebert!!!! I can't wait until next weekend to see the movie!!! But, since we all know I'm just a 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' kind of girl, I'll just enjoy you're reviews until then. I can't imagine I'm giving it a 'thumbs down', anyway, it's just the suspense of seeing Jeff on the BIG screen that's killing me.

[dodger_winslow]

Oh, and Caren --- something I wanted to add about Roque and Clay's mirrored relationship earlier (yeah, I know, boggles the mind that I can write THAT much and still have something to add, doesn't it? What can I say? I wasn't fuckin joshing when I said I wanted to TALK about his movie, dammit! ) ...

I made a point in there somewhere (or I think I did, or I meant to) about Roque being DEFINED by the his place in the team and his life as a black ops warrior just as Clay is defined by his role as a leader and a soldier ... something (on Clay's side of the coin) that is put to evidence by Roque's statement about the Colonel being so much a soldier that without being a soldier, he was lost. The point I intended to make as a follow up to that statement, but that got pushed back far enough that I forgot to actually make it, is that while both of them are defined by their military identities, it's important to note --- particularly in the service of the mirroring of relationships I keep bringing up --- that Roque is defined by the WARRIOR aspect of being a soldier while Clay is defined by the SOLDIER aspect of being a warrior.

And by that, I mean this: Roque doesn't give a flying fuck about the mission objective the way a soldier does. Rather, he cares about winning the conflict the way a warrior does. He cares about beating the other guy in the game of war, with the measure of who wins and who loses being who accomplishes their mission object or who stops someone from accomplishing their mission objective.

While Clay, on the other hand, does care about the mission objective exactly the way a soldier does. Despite Roque's accusation to the contrary when he knocks Clay out of the plane and onto his back on the tarmac (ouch! BTW ... bet that left a mark!), it isn't Clay who can't stand to lose, it is Roque. Textbook perfect example of projecting your own motivations onto someone else. Clay wants to achieve his mission objective -- punishing Max --- while Roque wants only to win, something he defines as beating Clay.

So with that in mind, I want to re-visit my comments about Clay's "betrayal" of the mission objective by going into the compound after the kids, thus risking the success of the mission by alerting their target to the fact that he is a target in such a way as might result in the target escaping something he otherwise wouldn't know was there to be escaped. This is a choice I think Roque, as a warrior driven to WIN, views as Clay betraying the mission objective inthat Clay is giving their opponent the advantage of a head's up on the impending, thus risking that the target will beat the team by escaping rather than the team beating the target by successfully eliminating him, as is their mission objective.

The point I failed to make earlier is that I don't think CLAY viewed it as a betrayal of the mission objective so much as he considered it a relatively small risk to that objective that was justifiable in taking, considering the consequences of not taking it, and given that an on-site leader is always charged with choices of this ilk whenever missions take a step off their path of intended progression, as missions will inevitably do at times.

That's what "Operational Control" is all about.

The intended progression of Skippy's raid on Max's mainframe is to be in and out without interacting with building security. That intended progression takes a step off the path when the secretary, rather than being indifferent to Jensen's push-in tactics as they assumed she would be, calls in security and security responds quickly enough -- again, not likely what they assume will happen even if security is called -- to catch Jensen in the act. At this point, Jensen improvises an immediate clearing action before telling Clay, the operational control expert, that he needs an exit from an unanticipated and unfortunate turn of events. When Clay tells him to head to the other side of the building and he'll be covered there, Clay is doing what Clay does best: implementing a plan B the ilk of which he always has in his back pocket in case plan A goes sour.

In order for the whole psychic soldier shtick to work, Cougar must already be in place in his nest across the street BEFORE Jensen has to abort plan A. This is Clay's job as operational control. It's his JOB in the team, other than being the team leader, to have a plan B already in place and ready to execute should plan A hit a bump in the road. And he does. He has an alternate exit for Jensen pre-arranged to achieve the mission objective without attrition to his team.

I mention all this because it is the perfect illustration of who Clay is, in his identity as a soldier, in addition to the team leader. As a soldier, he is not concerned with winning so much as he is concerned with achieving the mission objective simply because it is the mission objective. This is a subtle difference between the "fuck the mission objective in theory, all I'm interested in is WINNING" that defines Roque as more warrior than soldier, but it is an important one. And because Clay is SO defined by being a soldier that he is lost when he is stripped of being a soldier, and because the movie offers such tangible proof that Clay is as exceptional an operations control operative as Cougar is a sniper with the whole "Jensen needs and exit" sequence, I'm thinking there's no way Clay goes into that compound without a plan B to eliminate the target in his back pocket.

Because this particular plan B is very likely an improvised-on-the-spot plan B (them having no reason to assume kids would show up, thus requiring them to have a "we're going into the compound" contingency plan even if Clay did have other contingency plans for other problems that might arise), there's no real reason for Clay to share that plan B with Roque unless Roque is part of the implementation of that plan B. So just because Roque doesn't realize Clay has a plan B and therefore assumes Clay is betraying the mission objective in order to save the kids doesn't mean that Clay doesn't have a plan B.

To the contrary, in fact, the way it plays out, Clay does have a plan B, it's just a plan that only requires himself to execute, so he's the only one who knows about it.

Need to know protocols as implemented in an emergency improvisation where virtually no planning time dictates that each team member must do their own job without worrying about how anyone else is doing their job. And it's Clay's job to have a plan B.

So his Plan B, which proves him out to NOT have betrayed the mission objective, being too much defined by being a soldier to ever betray the mission objective as compared to simply improvising a Plan B to accomplish it, is to eliminate the target the old fashioned way. Yes, we're going to be warning him that there's an imminent attack in a way that might mean he is capable of escaping that attack, so plan B is shoot him in the head yourself so he doesn't escape. Because that? Pretty much eliminates any risk that the mission objective won't be achieved even if the end result is 100% attrition of your team in trying to rescue the kids, too.

So in that context? The drug lord putting down the knife and surrendering the kid so he's no longer a threat to that kid? That should have freed Clay up to grab the kid and skedaddle. That would be the logical thing for Clay to do, particularly with him knowing there's an air strike only minutes out, and his entire team is going to be caught in the kill zone if he doesn't rondevous with them on time because they will not leave him behind.

But Clay doesn't do that. Even knowing that so much as a moment's extra delay might mean 100% attrition for his team, Clay doesn't grab the kid and skedaddle when the drug lord puts down the knife because for a man who defines himself a soldier, the only thing that comes before your team's survival is accomplishing the mission objective.

So Clay accomplishes the mission objective. He takes the time to execute someone he has just seen lay down his weapon, who is no longer a threat to either him or the boy, and who will almost certainly be killed in the air strike. Because as a man who defines himself a soldier first, last and always? Clay can't take the risk that the target might escape. No matter how slim that chance might be, he can't take it because to take it is to risk betraying the mission objective. And Clay will not betray the mission objective. Not for his own survival. Not for his team's survival. And not for the kids' survival.

Because first, last and always, he defines himself a soldier.

The mission objective comes first. Everything else comes second. So Clay does his job as operational control. He implements Plan B. He shoots the unarmed target in the head himself, after having said he wouldn't do as much if the boy was released, and he does so to verify beyond any doubt that the mission is accomplished. The target is eliminated, even if the time it takes him to do as muchmeans his entire team and the children are killed.

So that's the point I intended to make about Roque and Clay mirroring one another as characters, with Roque defining himself a team member first and a warrior second while Clay defines himself a soldier first and a team member second. And why Roque might feel Clay betrayed the mission objective, but since the team escaped and is still intact, he's still one of The Losers, abeit the one who most resents Clay for his leadership turning them from The Winners into The Losers. While the truth is that Clay did NOT betray the mission objective, but as the leader of the team, and as someone who bears the guilt of feeling he has led that team to ruin for nothing, he doesn't justify or explain his orders in Bolivia, he focuses on stealing his team's lives back for them and getting revenge on Max for what Max did to the kids.

Kids he was willing to sacrifice his team to save, just as he is willing to sacrifice his team to get vengeance on Max.

Dodger

[dodger_winslow]

Heh....this is kind of like listening to Siskel and Ebert!!!!

Oh, no. Siskel and Ebert are MUCH more concise than I. Particularly Siskel ... you know, him being dead and all ...

Dodger