I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus, Hollywood – the sea urchins haven’t even started gnawing on that crazy fuck’s corpse, and there’s already movies about his death in the works?” Well, as usual, Hollywood is smarter than you, Dear Reader. Bin Laden is the next Giant Meteor/Comet/Shark-Encephalod Hybrid, and the screenwriters were preparing to bring Osama’s death to life on the big screen even before Bin Laden actually was killed in a hail of Navy SEAL gunfire. (You know, I believe I’ll never tire of typing the phrase “Bin Laden was killed in a hail of Navy SEAL gunfire”.) At last count, there are at least three films that may be released about American attempts to ensure that Bin Laden ended up dead, killed in a hail of Navy SEAL gunfire. (Ahhhh! So very nice.)
Turns out that Paramount had purchased the film rights to Gary Berntsen’s excellent non-fiction book Jawbreaker ( not to be confused with this movie) which detailed the December 2001 assault on Tora Bora. Bin Laden was believed to have been holed up there, but sadly, he slipped away. Or, rather, was allowed to slip away – Berntsen was the CIA officer in charge of eastern Afghanistan, and in the book he contends that decisions by political and military leaders not to send troops to cover the Afghan/Pakistan border enabled Bin Laden to literally walk out of Afghanistan and take up residence in a swanky Pakistani suburb. So, no, this particular chapter in the War On Terror does not have a happy ending. The film had been tabled, but Oliver Stone had been in talks to direct, and this sounds right up his alley.
Better still, Kathryn Bigelow, who did a bang-up (HEY-YO!) job with The Hurt Locker, has been working with her Hurt Locker collaborator Mark Boal on a film about U.S. Special Forces efforts to find and kill Bin Laden, hail of gunfire, fuck yeah. Joel Edgerton (nerds such as myself will recall that he played Uncle Owen in Star Wars: Episode III and will be starring in the upcoming prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing) is being considered for the film’s lead, as Jeremy Renner is too busy starring in every other action movie currently filming.
Clearly, though, whoever makes the Kill Bin Laden movie will be a contender for that year’s Best Picture/Director Oscar. And right now, one man leads the pack: Corey Feldman, whose eerily prescient movie Operation Belvis Bash finished shooting earlier this year. A comedic take on the War On Terror (think Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, and then smack yourself in the face, because this is Corey Feldman we’re talking about), the film is about a rock musician and a Jewish comedian who get sent to Afghanistan to entertain people and end up battling “Abdul”, the world’s greatest terrorist mastermind, Academy Award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley former WWF wrestler “The Iron Sheik”, who gives a brilliant performance. Also, Frank Stallone has a featured role.
- Frank Stallone, star of stage and screen. Little Known Fact: he’s Sly Stallone’s brother!
So it appears that we’ll be treated to at least two Bin Laden movies. Of course, if you can’t wait that long for some good old-fashioned big-screen jingoism (and if you don’t think we’ll get a Rambo Versus Al Qaeda movie out of all this, I have a moving Martin Luther King quote about refusing to celebrate the death of an enemy I’d like to sell you), you can get some of that this summer with the upcoming Captain America movie. Yeah, I know, it’s set in World War II, Bin Laden’s no Hitler, and HYDRA is not Al Qaeda. But as the trailer below shows, watching Cap do his thing is almost as satisfying as watching Bin Laden being killed in a hail of Navy SEAL gunfire. (Lights cigarette, takes a long and satisfying drag.)
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