The Interview
starring James Franco, Seth Rogan, Diana Bang, Lizzy Caplan and Randall Park
screenplay by Dan Sterling
directed by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg
Rating: ◊◊◊◊◊
This movie has an interesting history that makes it worth watching, even though I think it’s mostly crap. The history is this: released in 2014, this film about a fictitious American TV show’s interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. It upset the North Koreans so much that they seemed ready to start a war over it! North Korea is a silly, little, weak, irrelevant country. But it has nuclear weapons. So with its arsenal it relies on pompous posturing and plethoric and bombastic rhetoric to get its way - basically throwing a childish tantrum, which it does regularly. In 2014, North Korea was in the midst of a program of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile tests - missiles that could/can reach the U.S. Pacific coast. Hence, there was a lot of tension in those days. Japan was particularly upset because the North Koreans were firing ballistic missiles into the Pacific Ocean directly over Japan!! Then along came these American comedy writers and actors to mock North Korea and the whole nuclear missile business, because that’s what American comedians do - they mock the powerful. Mocking the powerful and somewhat deflating them is what American audiences want. It’s the American way. But it’s not the North Korean way. The controversy was so bad that the film’s initial release was postponed to avoid further antagonizing the North.
James Franco plays Dave Skylark, host of an entertainment interview/talk show, Skylark Tonight. Seth Rogan is his producer, Aaron Rapaport. Aaron is troubled that his career is merely a silly talk show and not the heady peak of network news broadcasting. He is planning to leave the show when a chance to do serious journalism suddenly falls in his lap. In the midst of a tense international situation with North Korea Aaron learns that Skylark Tonight is actually one of the Dear Leader Kim’s favorite shows. (In his youth, Kim Jong-un was educated at private schools in Switzerland, so he is really quite familiar with the West, and is a big NBA fan.) Dave and Aaron hatch the idea of interviewing Kim. But how to contact the North Korean government to set it up? North Korea and the U.S. have no official diplomatic relations. A tentative inquiry is made through the North Korean Olympic Committee office, and bingo!! Aaron’s telephone message is answered and a meeting with Kim is set up in Pyongyang.
That’s when Dave and Aaron are approached by the CIA with a plan to assassinate Kim with poison - slow-acting poison that can be delivered by handshake, through his skin. First, the two are terrified. Then they vacillate: first, they’re with the plan; then they meet Kim and they’re not with the plan. Then Aaron is with the plan but Dave is against it. It goes back and forth like this. Kim tries to manipulate Dave, because an interview like this on an American TV show is a great propaganda opportunity. It’s easy to manipulate Dave, because he’s an idiot. Not your regular run-of-the-mill idiot, but a prize-winning moron! But Dave soon realizes he’s been manipulated. He resents it and decides to go through with the plan. But the poison plan is no good, because they wasted the equipment supplied by the CIA. So, the two make up their own plan off the cuff with the help of a sexy female dissident. There’s a lot of shooting and caper-like folly. The story is a capricious escapade. Kim is eventually killed, but then Dave and Aaron still have to escape the country.
Killing Kim does not neutralize the North’s threat, however. It only destabilizes a nuclear power. This sort of short-sighted planning is typically American, and so my favorite lines from the film are these:
“How many times can America make the same mistake?”
“As many as it takes.”
These days, it seems like America tries to conduct its wars as if they were movies. Then they’re upset when their wars fail to resolve themselves like their war movies regularly do. Reality is not a movie, and military operations never go exactly to plan.
I didn’t like the film because it overflows with adolescent humor. That kind of humor is supposed to tell us what kind of people Dave and Aaron are. In addition, Seth Rogan is not my favorite guy - almost as annoying as Seth McFarlane! The two Seths are both a couple of jacktwits. But I could be wrong.