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GENRE: Action/ Thriller
CAST: Hillary Swank, Betty Gilpin, Ike Barinholtz, Amy Madigan, Emma Roberts and Ethan Suplee
DIRECTOR: Craig Zobel
PRODUCERS: Damon Lindelof, Jason Blum

Straight up, it was like a grownup version of The Hunger Games. I call it “grownup” on account of the many shining personal examples portrayed by so many of the septuagenarian leaders of our world today – power mongering seniors dealing in their own oddball ways with the ideas of freedom, rebellion and the corrupting nature of power in a 21st century twist of Orwell’s Animal Farm.

It was actually pretty entertaining satire on the current state of (arguably!) the most powerful country on the planet. And there were no gentle veneers to soften the brazen cinematic finger-pointing at the current administration’s many “foibles”. The director went straight for the throat of the Trump electorate and their manifesto of mindless conspiracy theories and misplaced outrage.

It also showed the rather ominous moral turn the liberal Left is capable of taking when push comes to shove: of giving blood thirsty life to Right wing paranoia and grievance.

There is also this bit of limbo that is left swinging gently in the aftermath of all the Quentin Tarantino inspired blood and gore – whether in fact in an ironic twist of fate, the conservative Right was onto something after all, and that there was a concerted Left wing effort to wipe the slate clean of the vocal “red neck” illiterates and take back their country. The ploy lay in whose moral outrage was strong enough to deploy their “Napoleon” (the dicatatorial pig in Animal Farm) as Head of the new America where “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”.

All in all, very neatly edited, quick paced and chockfull of farce.

I’d have rated it at least a 7 on IMDB rather than it’s current 6.5. But then I may just be the small minority who saw the genius comedy in all that blowing out of countless brains and innards while each side tried to morally reason out their respective version of insanity.

De Khudai pe aman