Aloha

And Who Lies About Prison Conditions

There is an alternate reality out there where the movies are subtly different. In that world, no one makes a movie like “Aloha”, which exists as a testament to the bankability and talent of Cameron Crowe. In this alternate reality, we’d know that Crowe was coming off “We Bought A Zoo”, a for-hire gig he jumped on late, stinging from the response to “Elizabethtown”. Hardly the pedigree for someone who wants to film a movie, a rom-com, about the Armed Forces in Hawaii. Also in this alternate universe, Bradley Cooper is still an also-ran of a leading man, largely because of performances like this.

To his credit, “Aloha” is Cooper’s second time in recent memory playing a soldier, following “American Sniper”. Cooper certainly seems to have done his research, illustrating how most career members of the Armed Forces are, unfortunately, boring, inarticulate and single-minded. Clint Eastwood confidently foregrounded that in “American Sniper”, but Crowe feels as if he’s trying to hide it. “Sniper” was a dour drama. “Aloha” is meant to recapture the aw-shucks positivity of stuff like Crowe’s “Jerry Maguire”. All you can do is bounce other actors against the straight man like tennis balls against the wall.

Cooper’s Brian Gilchrist is a retired pilot now on an American Goodwill tour of Hawaii. He’s working with Carson Welch (Bill Murray, literally just waltzing through), a billionaire who wants to use Hawaiian lands for a space center meant to, most likely, aid military operations. The locals are immediately skeptical, but Gilchrist has a secret weapon. Allison Ng, a loquacious young private, is being used to charm the locals due to her partial Hawaiian ancestry. Somehow this passes muster, given that “partial Hawaiian ancestry” means she’s played by Emma Stone. Was this role written for a Hawaiian actress, and the compromise was to keep shaving her down from “half-Hawaiian” to “a quarter” to “only kinda sorta vaguely” so they could get Stone in the movie? Did they really fill this movie with a bunch of actual Hawaiian actors only for the production to stand Emma Stone next to them and claim, “Same”? Is it mean to suggest that not only is Stone wrong for the role, culturally, but that she is comically unsuited for the role? This was ten years ago, and I know there was a dialogue about it, but did the right people learn the right lessons?

Anyway, the problems with the movie aren’t limited to racism or colorism or cultural ignorance. Obviously, Cooper and Stone are going to hook up – Stone’s Ng comes on extremely strong in the way male screenwriters wish women would, and eventually she breaks down his defenses. He isn’t troubled by the fact he’s still in close proximity to his ex-wife (Rachel McAdams, thankless), who has now married another pilot (John Krasinski, whatever). No, in fact, he’s hiding a big secret from Ng, and it largely has to do with the fact he is, like many soldiers, heavily compromised.

The question Crowe’s rather naive story asks is, can someone who has linked arms with the military industrial complex truly redeem himself and find love? Which is a modern Capra-style question, one that Crowe has no interest in ever seriously interrogating. It’s a fantasy, in other words, the idea that a, say, Karl Rove could stop being Karl Rove with the love of a good (white!) woman. Geopolitical relations have complexified over the decades, but Crowe’s glass of flavorless vanilla he calls a movie assumes we’re still the same people at heart, and so what if we have a little blood – actual, still-warm blood – on our hands? To his credit, Cooper seems to be playing the First Act version of the character, less so the arc – you don’t buy that this guy could change, but you do buy him as someone who, in the battlefield, has killed more than a few foreigners, maybe civilians, and has no interest in talking about it.

None of the rest of the cast seems like they’re in the same movie. Danny McBride shows up, but mostly to tamp down his charisma in a partially-serious toadie role. Murray, miscast as a tech guru (he seems more like Bill Murray on another Bill Murray vacation), clashes with another superior, Alec Baldwin, the latter playing his angry General as a sketch character. Stone, despite her misplacement here, at least brings a little live-wire energy to her scenes with Cooper, but he’s so dead behind the eyes here she might as well be straddling an Easter Island head. The score is by Jonsi, which is largely pleasant stuff coming from a member of Sigur Ros, but it’s not nearly as adventurous as his work on the otherwise-pedestrian “We Bought A Zoo”.

“Aloha” apparently went through several title changes, which makes sense given the scattershot politics and insipid plotting of this particular film. The loaded cast couldn’t convince anyone to go see the movie upon its release. I admit, when I was in prison, I saw the ads, noticed the Hawaiian setting and, back then, thought, I’d LOVE to be in the theater watching this green, moist, tropical movie. Somehow, when you have your freedom, actually watching this movie in 95 degree weather, as I recently did, isn’t the treat I expected. “Aloha” was a considerable box office flop: upon its release a decade ago, audiences instead subjected themselves to “San Andreas”. Well, some of them. I assume most stayed home and read a book.

For the record, I’d like to push back against an ongoing narrative that’s happening, which is people speaking up about the cruelty of prison (particularly under this administration) and Republican politicians pushing back and praising harsh conditions. We saw it months ago, when Kilmar Abrego Garcia was set up with a fake margarita drink when chatting with a visiting lawmaker, a phony photo op transparently stage-managed by corrupt officials that nonetheless was parroted as fact by many Republicans, for no gain other than to help the administration save face for kidnapping an innocent man “by accident”, as per their own words.

We’re seeing it again in Florida at the embarrassingly-named Alligator Alcatraz. The stories are legion, of lackluster food, poor living conditions, and absent legal access. What should be telling is the stark partisan divide regarding who wishes to speak of the conditions and who wants to excuse or lie about them. One lawmaker in the above link claimed the beds at one center were more comfortable than the ones he had at home. This was Republican State Senator Blaise Ingoglia, by the way, who, between you and me, is so far beyond contempt that he might as well buy real estate on the moon for that embarrassing, feeble lie. I never laid on a mattress that felt better than a bunch of fistfuls of foam, all twisted and intertwined before being stuffed into a sack. And, in comparison to Alligator Alcatraz, they treated me well. Whenever you can, push back against the lies, because I can tell you firsthand that they are clearly lies.