This Memorial Day, there is one movie in theaters that addresses directly the experiences of veterans. While American families are entertained by the Super Mario Bros. movie, now a billion-dollar proposition worldwide, people who prefer more true-to-life action can see the movie I recommend, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which has barely made any money, even though it’s an exciting, gripping experience, and it’s got a star, Jake Gyllenhaal.
The story is very simple: Gyllenhaal plays special operations Sgt. John Kinley, in charge of a small unit in Afghanistan in 2018, tasked with destroying Taliban IED factories. IEDs accounted for a very large minority of American deaths in recent wars, and there seemed to be no way to stop them. It meant that American troops operated in what the late international relations professor Angelo Codevilla called “replenishing mine fields.”
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