Torn 'twixt love and duty

High Noon

(1952)

A prescient allegory of George W. Bush's unilateral stand against Saddam "Frank Miller" Hussein, necessitated by the cowardice of the townspeople/French.

Another of those films that I used to love, then tired of, then thought it time to revisit. Well, it is a masterfully structured film, no doubt about that, economical almost to a fault, and it minimizes the thespian shortcomings of Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. But the politics, whether applied to appeasement of the Russians, as in '52, or to the neat twenty-first-century updating that writes itself, makes it hard to love.

On the other hand, I can't wait to see W contemptuously throw his badge in the dust and ride off with Laura in their buggy on 20 January.