Movie watching

written 9-20:

Morgan and I watched a movie last night called Tears of the Sun. It’s a Bruce Willis action-thriller movie where he saves a bunch of Nigerian people from being killed by rebels staging a coup (including the rightful president’s son). At one point, they’re all marching through the jungle to where helicopters can pick them up, and he discovers that the enemy is closing in on them, tipped off by someone in their own group with a radio. After killing the rat he makes the announcement, “Why would anybody want to transmit our position? Transmit our position to over 300 Nigerian soldiers who ran all night to get within an hour and a half of where we are now?” Without pausing, he goes on to interrogate the group, all in a military-like monotone, and then leaves them. English is not the first language of these Nigerians, so I look over at Morgan and say, “How does he know they understand?!” He had apparently been thinking the same exact thing, and replies, “I know! Where are the blank stares?!” recognizing the more realistic response such an audience would have to a complicated speech in a foreign language. We laughed at our teacher-ness, and after a couple more exchanges about how he should have emphasized the fact that they would die in an hour and a half if they didn’t move quickly, proceeded to mercilessly bash the rest of the movie. What a great Saturday night.