Free Men: A Movie Review of a 9/11 Related Film

Free Men A Film Review

Recently it has been reported that the New York City Police in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency has been spying on Muslims in New York City and surrounding states. The French film Free Men (Les Hommes Libres) covers this exact topic in an historical sense. A brief synopsis of the film from Netflix states: Getting by selling black market goods in Nazi-occupied Paris, a young Algerian immigrant is arrested and made to become a police spy. But when his activities expose him to a beautiful Arab Jewish singer, his loyalties soon change. The film elucidates the fact that spying on Muslims, and get this, is a Gestapo technique, well them and the Schutzstaffel, the SS. But that's OK, right? Right? I also recently watched yet another Nazi movie and the director's mise en scene to promote the horror of the German Occupation of France was to use water-boarding as a torture technique, imagine that. In his play Hamlet, Shakespeare evinces the importance of Art and Drama by the statement: "The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." Is Free Men then an allegory for today's political climate? It certainly seems so. The plot of this movie should be very familiar to any awake American. According to the associated press these same Gestapo techniques are alive in The United States today: "AP's investigation has revealed that the NYPD dispatched undercover officers into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program. Police also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing." While Top Critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a high rating (and they hate everything) I found the film to lack edginess and dramatic tension. Yet despite my feelings about the films limitations I highly recommend it; I got a brilliant history lesson from it.

This film is available for Instant Viewing on Netflix

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1699185/

Rotten Tomatoes: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/free_men/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Men-Tahar-Rahim/dp/B006G2FK6U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355434432&sr=8-1&keywords=free+men