In Marvel’s “Captain America: the first avenger” released this July, Steve Rogers is a weakling who never gives up his dream of joining the Army and go fight Nazis, despite the bullying and poor medical reviews. His character’s trajectory is pretty much told in the trailer: Rogers volunteers for a secret Army program to enhance his strength and reflexes by placing him in a waffle-maker and bombarding him with rays.
Watch Captain America’s trailer here:
Voila, instant super-soldier, ready to kick nemesis Red Skull und his minions in the keister.
A little over 40 years ago, another super hero was making less waves, off screen at least. Written and directed by American expat William Klein, “Mr. Freedom” is an interesting satire and counter-point to “Captain America”, which Klein made in his adopted country of France.
Uh-oh, you’re already sensing where this is going…
“Mr. Freedom” begins when the Cold War was hot, and opens with the Watts riots in L.A.
Freedom (John Abbey) changes from his Sheriff’s uniform into his Mr. Freedom suit, a weird assemblage of football and cricket gear (special relationship?) with foam biceps and pecs in red, white and blue of course. On the door is a wanted poster of JFK, for treason.
Freedom comes crashing through the kitchen window of a black family in the ghetto, kicks food and dishes off the table and ‘plugs’ them with his .45s before leaving the way he came. See, in his world, the greatest threat to America comes from the Reds and the Blacks.
Next, Freedom is seen walking into the Freedom HQ, dressed in civvies: black suit, cowboy boots, Stetson and bolo tie.
He presses the button for the top floor, above all other floors bearing corporations’ names: Alcoa, General Electric, etc. All the way to Dr. Freedom’s (Donald Pleasance) office, where the doctor lays out his next mission: save France from the commie double-threat of Russian super-villain Moujik Man (Philippe Noiret) and Chinese super-villain Red Chinaman (an inflatable dragon).
Come to think of it, even the leader of the French, Super Frenchman, is an inflatable figure, and Moujik Man is wearing an inflatable red suit. Hmmm…
And other than Freedom’s costume, the other characters are unsurprisingly wearing red and black while vying for influence in the land of Stendhal.
Things don’t go well, since as Dr’ Freedom wisely observed: “let me tell you about the French. They are 50 million mixed-up, sniveling crybabies who haven’t stood on their two feet since Napoleon, and that wasn’t yesterday. And Napoleon wasn’t even French. […]So the French are the white man’s burden. OUR burden. We’ve had to carry them through two world wars already, and we’re damn well gonna have to carry them through the next.”
As France refuses to bend to Mr. Freedom’s will and take him seriously, he is forced to destroy the country in order to save it.
This particular scene offers a good glimpse of Mr. Freedom’s universe, as he visits the U.S. Consulate:
When it finally opened in theaters, “Mr. Freedom” came under fire from all sides (which I hope Klein wears as a kind of badge of honor: he succeeded in pissing off everyone, as this type of film should).
We’ve seen examples of social-political satire in more recent years with Verhoeven’s “Robocop” and “Starship Troopers”, although not quite as brash as Klein’s film.
Which makes it all the more interesting maybe to introduce a third film: “four lions” (2010, UK). This time we are introduced to three Pakistani and a British convert to Islam, plotting some kind of attack on British soil.
Anything would do, really, so long as they strike a blow for Islam, but the problem is that none are all too bright.
Omar (Riz Ahmed) and Waj (Kayvan Novak), who confuses easily and follows Omar’s lead, go to a training camp in Pakistan but promptly make a proper mess of it, pissing off the jihadists by firing an anti-aircraft missile at an American drone without checking which way they should point the weapon, instead taking out Osama Bin Laden’s camp in the valley below.
As soon as they return to England, Omar and Waj pretend to have received accelerated training and been assigned a mission by OBL himself. By now, the irascible convert Barry (Nigel Lindsay) has recruited a middle-class wannabe-jihadist named Hassan (Arsher Ali). Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), the anxiety riddled bomb-maker of the group, continues to experiment with alternate methods of “delivery” by attaching bomblets to crows with poor results.
Faisal would wear an explosive vest himself, but worries about what would happen to his father who recently took to eating newspapers… As they resume their meetings, Omar and Barry begin butting heads again about everything from strategy to tactics, especially as Barry lays out his plan to bomb a mosque. Barry sees this as a means to spur the more moderate muslims to join the jihad. Omar completely rejects this as he wants to get to heaven by killing infidels, and by the way his wife and son are very supportive of this as well. After their plans are compromised by Hassan who invited the neighbor in their flat, surrounded by bomb making materials, the gang decides to move to a safer location.
Unfortunately, running around with bags of his homemade explosives in broad daylight proves too much for Faisal’s nerves: running through a field, he trips over a sheep and blows up. Afterwards comes a scene typical of the film’s humor as the group tries to decide whether Faisal died a martyr and will go to heaven or not. Omar points out the futility of it: he tripped over a sheep! But Barry, always thinking outside the box, counters with the fact that since the sheep was also killed, Faisal did disrupt the infidels’ food supply and therefore died a martyr for jihad..!
Eventually they all settle on Omar’s suggestion: they will participate in the London marathon wearing costumes for charity which will conceal their explosive vests. Will they succeed? In bits and pieces, perhaps.
