G.I. JESUS

By
Shannon Onstot
Community Relations Manager
KUNV 91.5 FM
University of Nevada Las Vegas
email: smonstot@yahoo.com


 

 

The winner of the 2006 Grand Jury prize at CineVegas has opened in select theaters, and it addresses two very hot topics in the U.S. This film takes the subjects of illegal immigration and the war in Iraq, and mashes them together to create a very human and well-written screenplay.

The film opens on an airplane headed back to America from Iraq. Jesus (Joe Arquette) is one of the passengers (no, not that Jesus…it’s pronounced hey-zeus) and has just finished his six months of duty in the war. He returns to his wife, the gorgeous “Dominican Princess” Claudia (Patricia Mota) and his young daughter Marina (Telana Lynum). Everything seems like it’s back to normal, and Jesus swears to Claudia that he’ll never leave again, and that he’ll definitely never go back to Iraq.

After a few days, Jesus begins noticing strange things happening around him. He begins seeing a man named Mohammed who follows him around and seems to know him but Jesus has no idea who he is. The disturbing part is, he later realizes, is that no one else can see him. He knows that something is not right in his mind, but Jesus decides that ignoring it might make it go away. The fact that one of his fellow soldiers has just been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder doesn’t help matters much, and he gets more and more paranoid with each passing day.

The whole point of Jesus working so hard in the military and leaving his family is so that he can become a legal U.S. citizen. He and his family immigrated to get away from their lives in Mexico, and are living in a trailer so that they can save money and send their daughter to a relatively good school. So when Jesus finds out he is being redeployed to Iraq in two weeks, he does everything he can to avoid it but still hold on to the chance of becoming a legal citizen. Because he saved a Colonel’s son from dying in Iraq, the Colonel protects him, gives him money, and offers him a very lucrative, but very top-secret way to serve his time in the military, but prevent being in Iraq again.

The Colonel’s suggestion and Jesus’ impending research and contemplation over this mission leads to some of the film’s boldest statements about the war, and about world corporations in general. Jesus finds out that Pepsi-Cola is providing money for weapons, and the military funds operations through some very illegal and risky missions. He also begins suspecting that his wife is having an affair, so he becomes even more agitated, paranoid and angry. Plus, he can’t shake Mohammed, and he obviously has to deal with a huge amount of remorse and guilt over killing people while he was serving.

I think that writers were touching on some very interesting ideas and definitely tried to bring attention to the seedy underbelly of funding national protection, but they could have taken it one step further. The way they presented ideas made them seem uninformed. None of the statements made in the film were very original, and these ideas are talked about in the media every single day. If the writer/director (Carl Colpaert) had presented an idea or opinion I’d never heard before, maybe the movie would have stood out to me more, or made a bigger impact.

As far as technical merit of the film went, I thought it was well done for a low budget production. There was a very interesting use of night vision, where footage from actual night battles in Iraq would be used, and they would transition into everyday situations in Jesus’ life, but remain in night vision. A lot of the news footage was obviously very graphic, but it provided the most powerful part of the plot and made the strange things happening to Jesus seem more realistic and frightening. Some of the camerawork was really shaky, and that was distracting at certain points, but otherwise it was well put together.

Overall, the film was very well written and the resolution made everything come together. While I was lost throughout much of the film, the ending really solidified Jesus’ worries and came to a good conclusion. A lot of the acting was stiff, and certain characters, especially Claudia, always seemed to be stumbling over their words. I think this film could have been a lot more powerful if it had made some bolder, more informed statements, but there were still some interesting ideas presented at a time when the war in Iraq is under extremely close scrutiny.