Ripped From the Headlines
Fresh off of the Warner Bros. version of an MCU “theme park ride” movie, Shazam star Zachary Levi is set to star with Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch in a movie whose plot is one we’ve seen countless times in the last decade and a half.
From the trades:
Prisoner 760 is a true-life legal drama being directed by Kevin Macdonald. Billed as a fight for survival against impossible odds, 760 tells the true tale of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a man who was captured by the U.S. government and held for years without charge or trial.
Slahi finds unlikely allies in defense attorneys Nancy Hollander and her associate Teri Duncan, being played by Foster and Woodley, respectively, who desperately pursue justice. They are aided by a military prosecutor named Lt. Stuart Couch (Cumberbatch).
Levi will play an old friend of the prosecutor’s, a federal agent by the name of Neil Buckland.
So, basically, a Law and Order episode blown up to film like proportions.
America Sucks
When plucky reporting meets Progressive activism, you get this story.
Multiple times.
As if people in the middle of the United States aren’t already aware of the presence of Guantanamo Bay, the prison there, or the War on Terror we’ve committed to waging until the end of this century.
From the trades:
The movie adapts Guantánamo Diary, the New York Times best-selling memoir that Slahi wrote while still imprisoned. The script is written by Michael Bronner, a former 60 Minutes producer who has worked with Paul Greengrass on the filmmaker’s true-life big-screen stories United 93, Green Zone and Captain Phillips. Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani (The Informer) made revisions.
Which begs the question: If he was imprisoned in Guantanamo, and America is so unjust that it was a fight for survival, why did Slahi get writing materials and the ability to publish a NY Times best selling memoir from?
What Are We to Make of This?
Prisoner 760 will go in the pile of films that audiences not made of journalists, Progressive activists, and anti-war protestors have never seen.
This pile of films includes anything from Michael Moore, films that go directly to streaming, and films that were made about this topic during President Barack Obama’s eight years.
Blessedly, though, it appears that Cumberbatch, Levi, and Foster area getting dramatic roles amid a cinema world dominated by Marvel superhero fare, failed sci-fi epics, and smaller roles for older actors and actresses in films sent directly to streaming services.
