By Chad Groening and Jenni Parker
A pro-military advocacy organization is calling on patriotic Americans to boycott a controversial film that is being released today.
The Freedom Alliance calls the new movie Buffalo Soldiers “a despicable portrait” of U.S. Army life. President Tom Kilgannon says the release by Disney subsidiary Miramax is another example of how the Hollywood left wants to paint America’s military in a bad light.
“This movie depicts American soldiers as drug runners and thieves, which is contrary to the bravery and dedication we’re witnessing today as our fighting men and women serve in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the globe,” he says.
According to Hollywood.com, Miramax originally acquired the film September 10, 2001, at the Toronto Film Festival, but postponed its release after the events of 9-11, and has since then repeatedly held it back.
“The movie has been delayed five times already, which tells you that the studio knows that it depicts our men and women in uniform in a negative way, and there’s no market for that kind of treatment of our heroes in America today,” the Alliance spokesman says.
He explains that the movie’s title adds further insult to injury because the real Buffalo Soldiers were African American soldiers who served bravely in the Union Army during the Civil War and the exploration and settlement of the West. Kilgannon says 186,000 African American troops served and 38,000 were killed in the Civil War, and 18 of them received the Medal of Honor. Native Americans along the frontier gave these fighting men the nickname “Buffalo Soldiers” as a term of honor and respect. But sadly, the eponymous Miramax film shames rather than honors the nation’s military legacy.
“This movie is not only denigrating those soldiers who are fighting today, it is besmirching the memory of the first African Americans who served in the United States military,” Kilgannon says.
According to the trade publication Variety, the Australian director of Buffalo Soldiers voiced his views on the military during a post-screening discussion at the Sundance Film Festival, and one audience member became so angry that he threw a bottle at the filmmaker. Though it is being peddled as a satire, the film’s humor obviously escapes some viewers and fails to mask its message of contempt.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press).