- Goya
- “This Is the Truth”
While bedbound for a couple of days, I watched chunks of movies I’d never heard of. One was a quickie 2005 version of War of the Worlds that resolves the crisis in humanity’s favor when the aliens all die of rabies. The others had big Hollywood budgets and plots ripped from the headlines, which is to say they were paranoid Washington thrillers.
Safe House finds a senior CIA official played by Sam Shepard hinting to his idealistic young minion (Ryan Reynolds) that the missing File That Would Reveal Everything should just stay missing: “People don’t want the truth anymore, Matt. It’s too messy. It keeps them up nights.”
And in Absolute Power, Clint Eastwood corners the Billionaire Behind the President (E.G. Marshall) and asks him if he has the stomach to hear the truth about what really happened the night his beautiful young second wife met a grisly death. (Rough sex with the priapic president (Gene Hackman) led to her fighting back and the Secret Service shooting her dead.) I wasn’t quick enough to write down the dialogue for that one.