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THE GREAT, Season 1 (2020)

August 4, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Looking at the trailer, my first impression of THE GREAT, an Amazon Prime series that reimagines the rise of Catherine the Great who deposed her husband and ruled Russia in the 1700s, was it was frivolous fluff that culturally over-modernized history to make it cute and leaned too hard into a social message I basically agree with but didn’t need hitting my head like a hammer. I was very happy to be utterly wrong. It’s damned good.

In the first season, Catherine (Elle Fanning, who grew on me just as the show ended up doing until I admired both) is a maid living in Germany and is excited about her coming betrothal to Peter, Emperor of Russia (played with a weird mix of savage comedy and just enough sympathy by Nicholas Hoult). Arriving at the Russian court, she receives one shock after another as her naive fantasies about being an empress are shattered. Peter is a childish, spoiled buffoon; out of fear, his court is filled with fawning sycophants routinely engaging in depravity out of boredom; and Russia itself is a giant slave state oppressed by the aristocracy and the orthodox church.

Over the course of the season, Catherine hopes she can inspire reforms, only to be regularly frustrated, even as Peter grains a grudging respect for her beyond her being merely a vessel for his heirs. So she begins a plot to depose her husband and take his throne for herself.

The result is fairly light, compressed, even frivolous, a strong first impression that lasts. It could have gone all the way with that and served up a titillating (horny) court drama blending history with contemporary culture for laughs while hammering a feminist message. Instead, THE GREAT’s creators put the work in to make something that is witty, funny, charming, and engaging, a story whose overall message works because the viewer discovers it for themselves. The characters are terrifically drawn and complex, even though they could as easily have been phoned in as caricatures. The show is surprisingly meaty, an exception to my usual binge watching as each episode felt complete, like I’d watched a movie. The pacing is solid, the sets beautiful, and there’s just enough real history to keep it more or less honest in a meta sense. As I watched the first season, delightful surprise turned to grudging respect for the writers and directors and finally to outright admiration. By the end, I was a fan.

Overall, THE GREAT is not particularly demanding, but it is a lot of fun, a rare entertainment that feels light while delivering something far weightier and solid.

Filed Under: HISTORY, MEDIA YOU MIGHT LIKE, Movies & TV, Other History, The Blog

TATTOO ZOO by Paul Avallone

May 10, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Written by Paul Avallone, a veteran who spent more than three years in the Afghanistan War as a Green Beret and then as a civilian embedded journalist, TATTOO ZOO is one of the best if not the best war novel of the War on Terror era.

The novel begins with the Tattoo Zoo, a regular infantry platoon assigned to a combat outpost in a remote valley in Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, traveling in their gun trucks to a village in the Wajma Valley. Their mission is to escort two civilian contractors–a bright, lovable young woman and a sarcastic, experienced former Marine–who will interview the locals. As this is a counter-insurgency war for hearts and minds, these interviews produce intelligence about the battle space’s “human terrain”–the complex culture and tribal relationships that comprise local politics in Afghanistan.

When tragedy strikes, the Zoo finds itself accused of a horrific war crime and then in an even worse situation, trapped by circumstance by an experienced, numerically superior enemy force that is hell bent on their destruction. Can they win, or more to the point, will any of them survive what’s coming?

That’s pretty much the plot, though it hardly scratches the surface of this very long–no, don’t think long, think big–war novel. The first thing that drew me in was the voice, which is wry and playful but doesn’t pat itself on the back. From there, it just builds. We get to know a large cast of characters with some depth, showing the humanity of soldiers, and revealing the motivations and thought process of everybody from grunts in combat to the officers and NCOs who lead them to helo pilots defying orders to help people they don’t even know to the top brass trying to control the story. Not every character is likeable, but they all get their say, they’re all believable, and they all influence the story in some way like pieces that add up to a single chain of events that is really a mosaic of people and small events and decisions. I particularly enjoyed the way the soldiers aren’t cookie cutter heroes or victims or earnest hooah types but real people, some who fit the mold and some who don’t. Over time, Avallone leans on the humanity of his characters, offering a solid story that slowly reveals far more literary aspirations.

As a man who served in Afghanistan, the author has a point of view, though it’s not forced on the reader. Instead, he shows the folly of military counter-insurgency policy by offering up a worst-case scenario in which these policies are used against the Americans along with other tradeoffs. The enemy in this book knows what it’s doing, and it recognizes the battle space includes the American media and high command. Despite this point of view, Avallone gives the other side its full say about why these policies are in place. As a civilian, it made me wonder how the war could be won, with the military simultaneously being tasked with fighting an insurgency but with severe restraint to avoid civilian casualties, putting the soldiers at additional risk and with casualties being inevitable anyway in war, casualties that then prolonged the insurgency. Another theme I found engaging was the conflict between getting ahead in the military and doing the right thing.

Then there’s the action, which was riveting. I felt like I was watching OUTPOST, one of my favorite war movies, again. Avallone’s writing ensures you really care if these guys are going to survive this, and nobody is safe. As the siege wears on, there’s a lot of great shifts in the balance of power and use of tactics to push every edge. As a thriller alone, it’s topnotch stuff, though again it’s far more than that. Another thing I loved was you occasionally see a trope common in war films, like a dying comrade, but Avallone reinvents it by making it real, making it truly matter, and making you feel it.

In the end, yeah, I loved TATTOO ZOO. It really put me as a civilian into the boots of a soldier on the ground in the Forever War, it’s riveting as a thriller, and it goes much further to present a highly nuanced perspective on the war that respects its readers as adults. Highly recommended.

Filed Under: Books, Other History, The Blog

THE NORTHMAN (2022)

May 1, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

Holy cow. That’s it, that’s the review. Okay, there’s more to say, but that’s the gist. We need more films like this.

Directed and co-written by Robert Eggers (THE WITCH, THE LIGHTHOUSE), THE NORTHMAN (2022) is an historical epic roughly based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth, which would go on to inspire Shakespeare to write HAMLET, one of his best known plays. In this story–the basics of which are spelled out neatly in the trailer–a young prince’s father is murdered, the usurper takes his mother as a wife, the prince positions himself for revenge, and then he fights to take it. Along the way, Amleth learns the truth of his childhood and discovers the potential of love after a life built on hatred.

This is a beautifully rendered film steeped in the violence of its era, but with just enough fantasy to make it feel mythic and just enough subversion and modern sensibility to make it relatable to a contemporary audience. Amleth’s life as a viking is hardly sanitized. The vikings made a living through slaughter and theft, and none of it is romanticized other than the rules of honor and familial obligation taught to a young man, which would define his life. The storytelling is plot driven, which is fine as it emphasizes its mythic nature and as the major characters are something of archetypes. The direction is downright artistic, from the gritty world building to the amazing score to the fantasy elements to the use of framing shots to establish the major characters as larger than life figures. The fantasy elements are familiar Norse tropes beautifully portrayed and incorporated in just the right measure, giving Amleth’s quest for vengeance a degree of fate to restore the natural order; in fact, more than anything, this is a story about fate. The actors, hot stars and crusty veterans alike, bring their A game as every one of them chews the scenery. The film clocks at two hours and sixteen minutes but never lags or wavers in its pacing, consistently holding my interest with every scene advancing the plot.

It wasn’t all perfect, as films rarely are. The accents aren’t always convincing, and I wasn’t sure about the casting of Amleth as a young man. I sometimes had difficulty understanding the actors when they growled or whispered lines.

These are honestly quibbles, though. Overall, I loved THE NORTHMAN and recommend it for those okay with violent films. I hope it influences Hollywood to make historical action movies that incorporate but aren’t dominated by a modern sensibility, and make movies that put such an equal strong emphasis on pushing every aspect of production to the limit. It certainly catapulted Eggers from being good to a must-watch director for me.

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Other History, The Blog

THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE by Phil Halton

April 18, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE by Phil Halton, a mullah teaching at a religious school in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet occupation becomes a local hero for standing up to bandits, only to be sucked into using violence as a way to end violence. Along the way, we see his students become fighters. In the local language, the word for “student” is taliban.

The story begins with a mullah (an Islamic scholar), a former Mujahid who fought the Soviets in the Eighties. The Soviets and the reforms they introduced resonated with many people in the cities, but in the more traditional rural areas, the people balked at what they saw as a foreign attempt to change their culture, resulting in an insurgency and brutal response from the Red Army. Now the war’s over, the country is lawless and broken and even more impoverished, and many Mujahideen have resorted to banditry. When local bandits beat and rob one of the mullah’s students, he drives them away, making him a local hero. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself engaging in increasingly complex problems and escalating conflict until he and his students finally see no other path than jihad to make not only their village, but their entire country, a “house of peace.”

When I first picked up this book, my first thought honestly was, “Somebody actually wrote and published this?” Either it would serve up virtue-signaling drivel denouncing the Taliban’s founders as evil, blah blah, we know already, or it would portray them as real people deserving understanding, an idea I found proverbially ballsy. The author is a Westerner; even if he chose the latter path, could he deny his own innate biases to do such a story justice?

The answers to these questions are yeah, it’s historical fiction about the origin of the Taliban, and yes, the author at least for me did an admirable job presenting it from the point of view of Pashto/Afghan culture. The result is a story about men struggling on a righteous but increasingly bloody path where I found the characters and their mindset both understandable and alien. While the flashpoint of how the Taliban formed is historical, I couldn’t determine via Googling how much of the rest of the novel is historical versus fiction.

The author is Phil Halton, a Canadian Forces officer who served in conflict zones around the world as a soldier and security consultant. He did an amazing job presenting characters who live in a very different world than most Westerners and have a different morality, while being understandable. The mullah, for example, is uncompromising in his pursuit of righteousness, but righteous in this case means fundamentalist observance of Islamic law. To Westerners, that observance sometimes appears noble, other times strange and even brutal, especially to women.

Overall, I enjoyed THIS SHALL BE A HOUSE OF PEACE quite a bit. I admired its courage and aspirations, enjoyed the perspective of historical fiction that tried to tell it like it is without propagandizing either way, and found the narrative of escalating conflict compelling. In the end, I didn’t like the Taliban any better than I do now, which is to say not at all, but I feel like I understand them better with his story that portrays them as real people instead of comic-book villains.

Filed Under: Books, Other History, The Blog

STRIKE Released!

March 11, 2022 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

STRIKE, my new WW2 novel, officially releases today at Amazon!

Written as a follow-up to my WW2 fiction CRASH DIVE and ARMOR, STRIKE is a standalone novel about a dive-bomber pilot serving in the Pacific during the Second World War.

In December 1941, Ensign Harry Hartmann reports for duty at Pearl Harbor. He’s a “nugget,” a dive bomber pilot about to start his first deployment aboard the USS Enterprise.

Hell rains from the skies as the Japanese launch a surprise attack. With the Bombing Six, Harry takes to the skies seeking vengeance and finds himself fighting for his life in breathless, high-speed aerial combat over the Marshall Islands.

After the Doolittle Raid rattles Tokyo, the Imperial Japanese Navy embarks on a bold plan to draw America’s aircraft carriers into the open, where they can be destroyed. Their target: Midway Island. But the Americans have cracked the Japanese codes and have prepared their own trap.

With the call, “Pilots, man your planes,” Harry will join the carrier strikes that aimed to turn the tide of the Pacific War.

STRIKE tells a powerful and exciting story about this pivotal battle—examining courage in the face of impossible odds, the demands of honor, and whether one man can make a difference.

The novel is available as a Kindle eBook and trade paperback. The audio edition is coming soon.

I hope you enjoy the adventure. Thanks for reading!

Filed Under: Books, CRAIG'S WORK, Strike, Submarines & WW2

BAKER BOYS: INSIDE THE SURGE (2010)

December 26, 2021 by Craig DiLouie Leave a Comment

In BAKER BOYS: INSIDE THE SURGE (2010), veteran war cameraman Jon Steele embedded with an infantry company in 3ID deployed in Iraq in 2008 during the strategy called the Surge, where coalition forces ramped up the number of ground troops to destroy the insurgency. This four-part documentary series beautifully portrays the life and mindset of the American soldier.

So often in the media, soldiers are portrayed as gritty, heroic, patriotic grunts or mere numbers in a war story. In fact, it was because of this distrust of embedded journalists that Baker Company did not immediately warm to Steele, believing he was there in the hopes of watching them get blown up for juicy footage, for a good story. He made them a deal, telling them he was willing to do everything they did, even die, if they would talk to him. After a while, they opened up, and Steele was able to get months of footage.

We see the Baker boys go about their duties, providing a procedural story about counter-insurgency, which involved fighting but far more deal-making with American dollars to get the Iraqis to side with the Americans over the insurgents. Between these scenes, the soldiers talk about their mission, how the American public regarded the war, what combat is like, what it’s like to lose friends, what it’s like to be apart from loved ones for long deployments, and plenty more. These are very young men doing one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, and Steele lets them speak for themselves, which makes this documentary so powerful. After a while, you feel start to feel embedded yourself.

I don’t know where you can catch this through any streaming services except YouTube, where I stumbled on it by accident. I found BAKER BOYS powerful, engaging, and moving.

Filed Under: Movies & TV, Other History

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