U.S. Marshals

0:00We've got one prisoner on account of four, Mark Roberts. A daring escape, a cross-country manhound. No one had seen anything like it. I have. All right, gentlemen. We're going to divide up the search every house, hospital, hotel, back road, and back water for Mr. Mark J. Roberts. Yes! For San Gerard and his team of US marshals. Do you ever make a fugitive arrest before? Yeah, I'm not about you. Nothing is what it seems. I've got to find out who the hell Mark Roberts really is. X-US Marine Special Forces, X-C-I-A Black Ops. All right, heads up. No one can be trusted. I got set up from the word go. This is a ruthless killer who committed murder and called blood. Because this time, the fugitive, they're chasing. Give me a hand. I'd like to listen to you explain why your ruthless assassin keeps going out of his way and let people live. The government spies who knows too much. You're the great Sam Gerard. Yes, I am.

1:00And you always have to win. Yes, I do. Come and be gentle. Get out from here and face me! Get! I'm going to have to shoot me. Where's these knives? Fallen! Capricorn! Turn around! Want to cut? We're on the producers of the fugitive US marshals. It's still at large. She's on. It's dangerous. What do you intend to do? Catch him. Hello and welcome to unclear and present danger of the podcast about the political and military

2:00thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jamal Buie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I think I still write a column for the nation. No, I haven't written it a while. I'm not sure if they're renewing me. I write the sub-stack newsletter on popular front and I also am the author of One the clock broke. A con man conspiracists and how America cracked up in the early 1990s which is available in paper back wherever good books are sold. Check out the book. It's very good. If you are a new listener, the book is very relevant to the subject of this podcast or general remit of the podcast. And while I'm shilling things, let me say at the top, check out our Patreon, unclear and present a Patreon.com slash unclear pod where in addition to doing a twice monthly show about the political and military thrillers of the Cold War era and we're about to embark on kind of a Vietnam war

3:03series that we also do a weekly politics show where we just talk about the week and events. And so I'll say after we finish recording this episode, we'll be talking about the American and Israeli war in Iran. So if you want to hear about that, you should pop over to the Patreon and sign up. Okay, on this week's episode of unclear and present danger, we are discussing the 1998 film US Marshals, a sequel to Andrew Davis's classic film, The Fugitive. US Marshals is directed by Stuart Baird, a English director, still living, still working, who was a film editor for most of his or through most of his career. Films edited include The Omen, Superman, 1979. A great little science picture picture that no one's seeing called Outland, Lady Hawk, and he was also second unit director for that film. Leap the weapon and leap the weapon to Tango and Cash, the last Boy Scout demolition

4:09man, which is covered on the podcast executive decision, which we covered on this podcast. And he also directed and Star Trek, Nemesis, the film he also directed. And Nemesis, he so edits, he was, he edited the film back in 2021. But Nemesis appears to be his last film as a director because it's bad. And this movie is bad. And executive decisions, I mean, I like it, but it's kind of bad. So you get three bites at the apple, I think, and then, and then you're done. But direct most to it, Baird, written by John Pogue. This is his first, his first film we wrote, actually, first film we got first, early's first script. He has a story credit for it. And it stars Tommy Lee Jones as deputy senior deputy US Marshal Samuel Gerard, who we meet, we met in the future to famously Wesley Snipes as the future to in this film, Robert Downey Jr., a very young and kind of like sedate.

5:12I mean, this makes sense. He was getting a word drug addiction, sedate Robert Downey Jr. Joe Pantoliano or Joey Pants for short, Kate Nelligan and Irene Jacob. We had a decently sized blockbuster budget, 45 million, did okay, the box office, 102 million, very clearly people wanted to go see this because it was a sequel to the fugitive. A really quick plot synopsis. So the movie begins and we see two diplomatic security service agents killed during an exchange in a parking garage. The murders are caught on the security camera, but the killer escapes with the files. Months later, a sandwich Gerard in his team captures and fugitives in Chicago. Around the same time, a tow truck driver played by Wesley Snipes named Mark Warren is injured in auto accident and arrested for possession of an illegal handgun. Imagine that back when having a gun was legal.

6:12Not a thing anymore. He's arrested for possession, but a fingerprint check reveals that he is actually a fugitive from the law, Mark Roberts, wanted for a double homicide in New York. He is set to be transferred back to New York. Gerard is also on this flight. But a prisoner attempts to kill him with an improvised firearm causing the plane to basically begin to deteriorate a hole is blown up in the set of the plane. The plane crashes. Gerard is able to save himself and many prisoners and other agents there. But Roberts escapes. And so thus begins the hunt. I got to say by this point, we're 30 minutes into the movie. It's like this could have been five minutes. It's impossible not to compare this to the fugitive.

7:13But the fugitive takes 10 minutes to set up the chase. You get a five minute montage of the murder and the trial and the conviction and all of that. It does not take very long. And then you're immediately on the bus to the prison. And then the bus gets overturned. He escapes and boom, 15 minutes in. You know the score. And this just like takes its fucking time. You we meet same Gerard in like a chicken costume. It's very silly. In any case, that sets up the hunt. Gerard is joined by federal agents. Including one played by Robert Henry Jr. Who say their colleagues were killed by Roberts. And so they are going to try to chase him down. What follows, I'm afraid to say, and then the other character here is Robert's girlfriend.

8:15Whose name is see whose name is Marie. Who is sort of helping him out always believes in him that kind of thing. Okay. So what follows next is somewhat convoluted. Roberts is did kill two people. So he himself is a former CIA agent or some kind of special operative. Yeah. He's a CIA special activities division guy and former marine recon guy. Yes. And he is being set up by someone to frame him basically for treason. Yeah. So he is trying to clear his name by finding the agents he believes are responsible for framing him. So he's he's doing this Gerard in this team or tracking or chasing him down there.

9:20Then as a shootout in the cemetery with this Chinese secret service agent or someone. Yeah. Who is trying to kill Roberts. I suppose to silence him. Yeah. Because they are stealing secrets. Right. They are stealing secrets. So this chase continues. There's a climactic kind of climactic chase where one of Gerard agents is shot and killed. Kind of the young guy who Gerard likes which makes Gerard furious. And he hunts down Roberts believing that Roberts killed the agent. I'm sorry. Snipes actually is Mark Sheridan. Right. So he's got three names in the movie. Yeah. Three names. Yeah. So Gerard and Royce who is the Robert and the junior character are determined to kill Sheridan. Let me track them down to a ridership freighter ship board bound for Canada.

10:24They struggle. Sheridan almost kills Gerard but doesn't and then Sheridan is shot by Royce. Gerard realizes that the gun that was used to shoot his teammate was actually Royce's gun. And that Royce in fact was the real mole in the agency who is in lead with the Chinese government and Royce frame Sheridan. And so the movie ends with Sheridan in the hospital. Royce about to kill him Gerard confronting them Gerard killing Royce and all as well it ends well. That's the movie. This takes 90 minutes to unfold after that initial 30 minute beginning and it's very convoluted and it's not good. Okay. Okay. That is US Marshals. The film what oh tagline for US Marshals real quick. The cop who won't stop is back but this time he's chasing down a lot more than a fugitive. I think the tagline should have been damn.

11:26Tommy Lee Jones is ripped his hell. We get like a shirtless scene of Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah. We're not. Wesley. Not yeah. We get no. Wesley. No tank top. No tank top. Oddly unsexualized. Tommy Lee Jones. You're like, show off this guy's bod. The film was released on March 6, 1998. So let's check out the New York Times for that day. Okay. What do we got here? Well, there's the first little tidbits of Lewinsky scandal that we've had I think on our podcast. Clinton reported to call secretary main tie to intern testimony by president. His account of an arms length. That's right. Arms like relationship pushes curry into inquiry spotlight. In his deposition defending himself against a mess a sexual misconduct lawsuit. President Clinton repeatedly portrayed his secretary Betty Curry and not himself as the principal who dealt with Monica S. Lewinsky.

12:26The former White House intern said lawyers who have refuted a transcript of the president's testimony. By the president's account, it was Miss Mrs. Curry, who mainly dealt with Miss Lewinsky. Initiated suggestions about gifts and employment opportunities for her. According to details of the president's private deposition on January 17th. To lawyers for Paula Corbin Jones. Is there something you were trying to ask me about the president suddenly acquired of his interrogators? According to one lawyer as they brought up the role of Miss Lewinsky at the White House and focused increasingly on a sexual relationship that Mr. Clinton denied having. Well, we all know that that wasn't true. And finally enough, Clinton was just testifying again, but this time to Congress about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which had a very interesting moment. It was a clip where Clinton's lawyer was very competent, obviously. And they were trying to ask Clinton, do you think Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide? And Clinton really gave that answer a lot of thought before he answered, let his lawyer do a lot of talk for him.

13:28And he said, I like, I forget his answer, but it was very politic and lawyerly. Like I have no reason to believe he didn't or something like that. Can I say that I go back and forth on this myself? I watched a bunch of documentaries about Epstein and what came across to me is, I mean, this is obvious. He's just like an insane narcissist. So it actually makes a total lot of sense to me that he would kill himself just like logically that makes a lot of sense. I don't think it's like a lot of meaning beyond what he was doing and once he was not able to do it, why would he live? That's my kind of feeling about it, but then there's a lot of suspicious shit. Yeah. Like they're like, oh, we turned off the like, we don't know what happened in the foot, you know, like there's a lot of weird. Oh, yeah, those guards fell asleep or they were disciplined. It was a lot of very strange things. I mean, I think you could split the difference and say that maybe they were indifferent to the possibility that he'd kill himself.

14:32Yeah. Yeah, I think that could just be the general incompetence of the fads. Yeah. But I don't know. We may never know. We may never know if Jeffrey Epstein was guilty or not. Sorry to interrupt, please, please. Yeah. Busy Sri Lankan intersection shattered by bus bombing. At least 32, there's a large photo here. 32 people were killed in hundreds hurt when a bus carrying strap and I'll pack bombs exploded outside of crowd station. Train station Columbus Sri Lanka's capital. This was absolutely done by the Tamil Tigers. The insurgent group that controlled parts of Sri Lanka until not too long ago when the central government launched a campaign to reconquer it. Let's see. If you listen to MIA back in the 2000s, you will have heard of the Tamil Tigers. Yeah, her father was a prominent Tamil tiger. I believe.

15:32New Serbia fighting recalls Bosnia war. Serbia sent helicopter gunships and armored personnel carriers against Albanian separatists in the south, leaving 22 dead and some sea parallels and Kosovo province to the actions of Serbian forces during the Bosnian war. An Albanian political leader said massacres were carried out. Yeah, so not long after this two, there would be another NATO intervention this time in Kosovo. Wow, this is interesting tiny little item here. New role for Jesse Jackson. Since the start of the fear over monogales as gluinsky, President Clinton and his family have frequently turned to the Baptist minister of a private sessions of prayers. In hush tones in the intersect of the White House president, Clinton's new spiritual advisor said he offered counsel that is steeped as much in practical politics as in the Bible. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut and don't panic. The president at the center of the scandal that may be sound advice, but it comes from a lucky source. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson. This is a man who wants condone Bill Clinton is Machiavelling.

16:32Machiavelling and having a character flaw. And Mr. Clinton in turn fumed that Mr. Jackson was double crossing and backstabbing. Well, actually it wasn't in turn because Clinton said those things about Jackson before. Jackson said those things about Clinton. He was caught saying that on a hot mic when he believed that Jackson had endorsed Harkin, which didn't actually happen. The Machiavelling stuff and the character flaw stuff came after the sister soldier incident. But interesting that Clinton would turn to Jesse Jackson who, you know, he kind of ended his political career from a certain perspective. I mean, during this period, Clinton is really turning to the black community for support to bolster himself. This is around the time that I think it was about Tony Morrison, who called Clinton the first black president in terms of being kind of like sexualized and, you know, accused and everything. Not like the best take, but understand someone understandable given the circumstances.

17:38Yeah, Tony, a good line. Many good lines, maybe not to the best purpose in that one. Let's see, yeah, gun battles and Serbia race fear of another Bosnian. We looked at that. Giuliani fundraiser points to running for higher office. It never worked out for him. Anything else to look interesting to you? No, I mean, I guess there's China to prime economic pump with math, the math, mammoth building outlay. Yeah, that was during the Asian tiger crash. Right. And they kind of just did a big spending program. Okay. Okay, let's go. All right. So, US Marshalls, I had never seen this before. So, surprisingly, it never walks this. That I've seen you had. So, yeah, what, I mean, what did you think, John? It's not great. It's not great, but it's like, it's serviceable. It's like not. I, it's too long. It's got some good action sequences. But like, the characters are not.

18:39Wait, first I have a racial theory I want to run by you. Yes. Do you think that they made Wesley Snipes' white love interest, French, because that was a safer way to have him involved with a white woman? I, you know, I, I do not know anything about what the casting directors were thinking, but that, it makes sense to me. I was, I was struck by the fact that his love interest was white. Like, that's actually quite unusual for, for the period. But yeah, if she's not American, if she's one of those French. Yeah, exactly. Then a good, a good red blooded American can't get too mad about it. Yeah, no, I think it was a little bit. There was a little bit of decision making there. Because we've seen other movies with Wesley Snipes where he does not pointedly have a white love interest. Okay, so my racial theory sounds plausible.

19:39Yeah, okay. The other thing, the other thing I'll just add to that is that, and we've discussed this in relation to like, Will Smith, especially, the other kind of big black action star of the decade, and to a lesser extent, Denzel, who was doing action movies as well. Snipes, unlike the two of them, was very clearly sexualized. Yeah, sexualized. He was, he was a sex symbol. Everybody was talking about how hot he was. And so the extent to which he's, he's kind of de-sexualized in this, and has his French girlfriend. I think your theory is right, John. Okay. And then, yeah, you know, it's just a very, also like, this script is unbelievably cliched. Like, there were times when I was doing stuff around the house and just listening to the movie. And when you, when you detach the, the script from the visuals, you kind of pick up on the cliches of the movie way more. And it, it's almost cartoonish. Like, he's got his wisecracking team, and like,

20:43it's just, he's rattling off all his orders, about perimeters. And then there's all these, like, stock figures, like, first it starts off in, like, the south, and you have all these Bubba characters. And that's, like, played for laughs, you know, like in the swamp with all these, you know, red necks and so on and so forth. That's played for sn... It's just, like, there's a enormous amount of, like, cheap, uh, tropism in the movie, which makes sense, because it's like a spinoff and a, and a, uh, and a sequel in a way. It's just trying to capitalize on the fact that, that Tommy Lee Jones' character was, like, well-loved and popular. The other thing about it, which is kind of political, I get, well, it's not political, but I, but it's a weird thing. In the 1990s, the US Marshals had, like, a cultural moment. Like, there was this movie. There was obviously the fugitive. Then there was the wider movie Tombstone. But there was also Con air, Tombstone rocks. Um, but, like,

21:45so I don't know what it was about the US Marshals, but I think it had something to do with, like, there was also a neo-Western thing in the 90s. There was some kind of weird US nostalgia, and the Marshals are kind of, like, old America and very, and you can kind of see, and I can kind of begin to dovetail this into the politics, such that they are of the movie, is that you have, like, the Marshals, which is a kind of down home and working class, almost one way to say, part of the US government, and then you have these spies and diplomats and the upper class of the US government, which are inherently untrustworthy. So, I don't know. That's kind of the thought that I had, I don't know, I'm just trying to find a politics in the movie. I think you're right to identify a kind of moment for the Marshals service,

22:46for a kind of federal law enforcement. Both good and bad, right? Like this is a decade of Ruby Ridge and Waco. Right. Also involved Marshals. Right. But then you're right, Con air, I mean, the fugitive, and then beyond Tommy Lee Jones, being just a very charismatic and enjoyable presence in the fugitive, you know, I think you're right to notice how Jones, who is a Texan, who is a thick Texas accent, who is working class coded, even if he's a professional. He's always wearing jeans with his shirt and tie. He, you know, he, when offered, when offered like a fancy, you know, 90s windbreaker, which I got to say, they were like, oh, I got you this ridiculous looking windbreaker. I was like, man, that looks dope as hell. I wear that kind of a Charlotte Hornets style windbreaker. He opts for a t-shirt. He's like very comfortable in a more, again, more blue collar working class environment. And his counterpart is,

23:47Robert Downey Jr.'s character, who isn't just like a fresh faced agent, but he's like, he's, Robert Downey Jr. it's literally a NEPO baby, right? Like literally, yeah. Someone born into privilege. And I think, I think either consciously or not, that this contrast is supposed to be there, like the blue collar jarard and the more white collar and privileged and soft rice. I mean, the thing I would observe, first about the movie, and just like this is just like a script critique, it's actually really strange to me. So this, this movie is about a convoluted and kind of a broke plot involving, you know, counterintelligence and moles and all these things. And this is a sequel to the fugitive, which has a remarkably straightforward plot, right? Like the fugitive is, this guy was wrongly accused, wrongly convicted, and he escapes, and now the marshals have to find him,

24:49and while he's trying to escape, he's trying to prove his innocence, and it's very linear. There's like not really that much going on plot-wise, which is great. It means everything else can kind of shine. And here this plot is so convoluted, and I'm like, why didn't they just, why didn't they just like do, I mean, they were trying to do, I mean, it's a clear name thing, and they can get my, if they're gonna, if you're gonna call this US marshals, so if the fugitive is about the fugitive, and this one's about the US marshals, why not just have it be the US marshals trying to get some guy? Yeah, I guess it wasn't interesting at all. I don't know. The other thing is, it's so similar to the first movie, and that there's like a crack, you know, like the premise is the same of how the fugitive escapes. Like they couldn't think of anything more creative. Oh, we're gonna put it on a plane instead of a bust. This thing. If you read about the making of the fugitive, everyone involved was like, we were shocked that this movie was actually watchable. Really? Because they were like, wow, they were making it to see terrible.

25:49Yeah, it's good. The script, the script was barely finished. Like there's a lot of trouble in the production, just like it was a hard movie to make. And so when it came out, kind of a masterpiece, everyone's like, wow, you know, the magic of the movies. The US marshals feels like what they thought the fugitive was gonna be. Kind of convoluted, not really working, never be holding together very well. As far as the politics of this movie goes, one thing that, we talked about the fugitive way back when on this podcast, we talked a little bit about the racial politics of that movie, and how so much of it, how much of Harrison Ford's characters, Richard Kimbell's ability to escape and prevail was a function of his whiteness. It's how he's able to blend in, it's how he's able to do all these things. And I'll say, I'll give the writers of this movie credit for this. It's like interesting how much of, like Wesley Smith's character cannot hide. That's the thing that's happening constantly in this movie.

26:49He's trying to hide, and he simply cannot, because he's just like, he's a black guy. And the extent to which this film, at least tries to nod towards that different dynamic, I think is interesting. It doesn't do a lot with it, but I do think it's there. I mean, a lot of ways this, the US Marshalls is almost like a, it's a little bit like generic as a 90s thriller. Yeah. You know, it fits the era, it fits the time, that kind of, to the extent that there's a foreign adversary, it is China, you know, Chinese espionage, you know, the FBI as untrustworthy, sort of those federal agencies as untrustworthy, like 50-year-old. But there's like, there's like not like a ton going on in the hood. It's just, it's a rehash of the first movie,

27:49except not, not as good, not as well written. Tommy Lee Jones is doing the most he can with the material he has, as well as these types of doing the most he can with the material he has. But there's, there's no attempt to really say anything deeper. And unlike the fugitive, which is this great showcase of Chicago, it's like, it's maybe one of the great Chicago movies, the US Marshalls takes place in Chicago, New York, but you'd barely know it. Yeah. I kind of jumped around the country, but it doesn't really make it much of those, you know, locations. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's really pretty flat. I, I don't know. You know, yeah, Taiwan is a, is a subplot, I guess, because it's like, they're, they're trying to prick the secrets involved. They're Taiwanese defense secrets, which I guess is kind of relevant these days. Did you know that Tommy Lee Jones was Al Gore's roommate? I didn't know that. Yeah.

28:49Yeah. And Harvard. It's a fun fact. Yeah. I don't know. I think that, that is true, that he can't hide as well. There is some, there are some gestures to his race. But I have to say also, like, we don't know that he's innocent. So, that's sort of a convoluting thing. Like, the whole fugitive is like, you're pulling for the guy because you absolutely know he's innocent. And the other thing is, he's obviously obviously a hero and sympathetic. But he commits a lot of crimes in the course of escaping, which I guess you can justify because they were trying to kill him. But he does, you know, he hijacks those poor, that poor trucker and his wife. I mean, that's a bad, he commits a lot of felonies in the course of the movie that are like violent crimes. And yeah, okay, like, you know, he's got to escape, he's got to do what he's got to do. But I mean, like, those are bad things. And it's never like, and I don't think in the fugitive,

29:49in the fugitive, he commits some crimes while trying to escape. But like, I don't think he commits a violent crime. He's in the course of escaping, does he? No, I don't think he does. Yeah. He commits like, misdemeanors in the course of escaping. Yeah. I guess the escape itself being the felony. Yeah, so I don't know. And like, the whole, I don't know how I feel about movies like that are lionizing the marshals who are just like, it's, it's, it's, it would be, they're just like, they hunt people down, you know, like they, I guess they're bad guys, but it's sort of like, when you abstract a little bit, you're like, oh yeah, like, this is a movie about the people who like, you know, put people in prison. And then you're like, is that cool? I don't know. Like, they're, they're just sort of, they're cops. And they're not a particularly glamorous role. Yeah, they have like a down-homey art, old time America thing going on, because they're like associated with the old West.

30:50The marshals were, weirdly enough, weren't they involved in the attack on Venezuela? Because like, it was a law enforcement, a law enforcement thing where they were like capturing a fugitive quote unquote? Yes, they were, yeah, they were, that they were capturing Maduro. So they were, they were sending, it was, it wasn't technically a military intervention. This is the legal cases because the marshals were, it was there, they were there to serve and arrest warrant. And the military was just there to protect the marshals. Right. Right. I mean, also the marshals, not for nothing, you know, there's sort of like, kind of, um, left-wing cliche, which is that, like, cops are the descendants of slave catchers. Not quite true, but the marshals did enforce the fugitive slave act. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. They're, I mean, they also did escort Ruby Bridges

31:50to and from school and James Meredith to their famous for that. So they've redeemed themself somewhat, I guess. The US marshals, they contain multitudes. They contain multitudes, very interesting and storied. The thing is, they're one of the oldest federal law enforcement in the country because they were authorized by the Judiciary Act of 1789. Yes. They have, kind of a weird, function within the separation of powers, because they are under the executive branch, but they're somewhat the enforcement wing of the Judiciary. Like, they're, yes. They're supposed to enforce court orders. Um, but, uh, I think that there was a reorganization of the law enforcement, they became more a part of the executive branch and the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice. I'm not exactly sure when that happened. Um, but, uh, yeah, they're kind of a weird and interesting and older organization. Uh, let's, let's look,

32:50should they currently operate under the direction of the US Attorney General, right? So they are, they're, they're tasked, yeah, they're tasked with providing protection for the Judiciary. Yeah. But, um, they're, they're reorganization, uh, they're reorganization, as opposed to putting them under the Attorney General. Uh, the Marshalls Enforce Prohibition, which makes sense. Yeah. Uh, was, was, Elliot Ness? No, he was an FBI guy, right? He was an FBI guy. Yeah. Okay. So, and in part of, I mean, if we, we, this was covered in the movie, J.I. Gurbich, we covered it, and it's part of, uh, Bev Gage's book, but part of the story of the FBI is that, Hoover wanted them to do some of the functions of Marshalls. Right, right, right, right, right, right. It's so funny how, I mean, it's funny. We have many overlapping, like we have the US Marshalls. We have the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And now we have DHS investigations. Yeah. So many federal law.

33:50You know what? You might say we could abolish some of them. You, you probably could. I wouldn't, you know, you could abolish ICE and probably, uh, Department of Homeland Security entirely. Okay. Get rid of DHS entirely. Recon to your CBB. I think Congress actually probably need to own Marshall's service, like basically to serve subpoenas. Um, and, uh, and, uh, enforce its, uh, you know, when officials, like, we don't have to testify. And you can send the congressional marshals to come drag them in. You want to, you want to give, you want to give them, you want to give Congress an army? Yes. Yeah. Uh, I think this would not sit well with conservative justices. I don't think, I don't think what either. There used to be the office of the special council. Is that what it was called? Or the independent council, which was directly under the under Congress, but was

34:50ruled to be a separation of powers issue. That's right. Yes. But I think that you're right in the sense that, um, it's not separation of powers. It's overlapping powers. So it does kind of make sense. That's why I think that the, the marshals should be under the judicial branch entirely, because then everybody could say, well, oh, the judge, the federal judges can't, the Supreme Court or judge, federal judges can't enforce their rulings. Well, if the marshals were directly under the judiciary, the US marshals could technically get into a shootout with that. So what, what an interesting thing. It's, it kind of switched gears from this movie, which there, I mean, there just really isn't that much to talk about. It's like, it's a long, kind of boring movie. It's mostly apolitical. Obviously, you know, Taiwan, part of the story, but there's no, like, there's not like Taiwanese

35:51politics happening here. And this is an interesting period in Taiwan's history, right? This is like democracy, the democracy movement is like the kind of taking you as taken hold in Taiwan. I believe in 96. There was a democratic election or there, there, there, there is a, uh, uh, Lee Tang-Hee was re-elected in the first, the country's first direct presidential election. And he was corrupt, but it was like a, it was like a democratic election. So there's just like, there's a lot of interesting happening in Taiwan, but to switch gears and talk about just federal law enforcement a bit, which is like a recurring subject on this podcast. Yeah. It is interesting. So like, you have all these, you have, we love federal law enforcement. It's part of what's happening in the 90s. There are all these controversies around the behavior of federal law enforcement, Ruby Ridge and Waco, Chief among them.

36:51Um, oh, and also the, the, uh, the Atlanta, the Atlanta bombing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I've never seen. It's good. I mean, it's like a Clint Eastwood. These guys were railroad in the movie, but it's good. They really stuck into this white guy. But it's good. You know, I mean, a long time listeners will know that you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know. Usually we talk about IPOLs program. We are Tampa, and I've seen some of the TV oyens are already seen on B Shin and

37:52talked about it. I guess that we can call them domestic law enforcement agency. The CIA is a foreign intelligence agency. CIA cannot like spy on Americans at home. FBI cannot engage in foreign intelligence operations. So there's a disconnect there. And the other various other agencies, INS, right, knows about the hijackers in the country. Like every, all the agencies have bits and pieces of the puzzle, but there's, there's basically no ability to, in no real will to kind of like share the intelligence that I put things together. So DHS is this attempt to put a lot of these agencies that are federal law enforcement under one branch, under one umbrella agency, the better, the better enhanced communication between them. And then there are efforts taken to enhance communication between CIA and FBI. There's a big kind of effort to kind of make sure that all the agencies can talk to each other.

38:52And this was, this was like regarded at the time that the mainstream views that this was a necessary thing to prevent terrorists. They kind of critical view was that this is a privacy nightmare and that the, that the, the level of friction involved in interagency cooperation was actually like an important piece of privacy protection. And I'll say, I think that criticism is basically borne out to be completely true, especially in the context of a current administration that is 100% like weaponizing the connection between agencies to, to do like insane domestic surveillance. So if you, if you've been following, you know, the ICE encourage into various places, you'll know that agents are given these at this app powered, I believe, by Palantir, that they scan faces and they connect to this like big database. And part of what was happening with Doge last year was an effort that kind of created gigantic database using basically every bit of information the federal government collects on its citizens

39:54to be able to identify people, presumably for deportation. But, you know, for who else? It's a little funny to me that in the, the plot of the Marvel movie Captain America Winter Soldier is of like fascist and government using domestic surveillance to target their enemies. And it's like, oh, well, you know, you know, no, I mean, also, yeah, there's the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is a new, well, there used to be, basically, they kind of brought together the CIA, like the CIA was, the director of the CIA used to be called the director of Central Intelligence and that was supposed to be the clearinghouse of all US intelligence gathering. But then they created another institution, which is the DNI, which is a cabinet level post,

40:57now Tulsi Gaboris, the DNI, which is very bad, which was supposed to kind of recordinate all the intelligence branches. But there's so many different, there's such a huge proliferation of national security bureaucracies. And like, you know, I'm sorry to use the analogy, but it kind of reminds you, Nazi Germany a little bit because you're like, there's a good stoppo, there's the SS, there's the right main security office, like there's all these like competing bureaucratic centers of security and like efforts to centralize them, but they're all sort of like just different ways to strip people's constitutional rights. Yeah, I really think that if we get out of this era intact, there has to be some real thought to reforming the federal government to actually be smaller, surprise me as a lib to say that,

42:00particularly in the respect to, I don't think that we need some of the, I think we should get rid of the DNI, I think we should get rid of the DHS. And I think that we don't need a cabinet level post that's, you know, and then a director of the CIA, and then a director of the NSA, and then the director of the FBI, and then the Homeland Security Chief. It's like, come on, you know, what is going on here? Yeah, so this movie was from an era when, yeah, federal law enforcement was in the news for a lot of unfortunate incidents, and this movie also, there was a lot of propaganda about federal law enforcement in the 90s too. So there were two counter-railing forces. But yeah, I don't know, this film, not much meat on the bone. Yeah, I got nothing.

43:01All right, should we wrap it up? We should wrap it up. So that's the US Marshals. I wouldn't, this, you know, my friends at the We Hate Movies podcast refers to some movies as Dad for Noon movies. The kind of film that might come on TNT on a Saturday, and you kind of just watch it, could it's on? Perfect example from our podcast is In The Line of Fire. Not a perfect movie, but if it comes on, it's kind of hard not to just sit down and watch it. It's pretty good. We've covered some other movies that are great, Dad for Noon films. Another Clint, Absolute Power, Courage Under Fire. I mean, this is the bread and butter of this podcast. But like, US Marshals is actually too boring to fit that. It's just sort of like, you, you, yeah. It's on the lower end, yeah. Yeah, it's on the lower end. It's really, it's actually quite inexplicable how boring it is and how much,

44:02it just doesn't really work all that well. It's too long. It's really why. It's just a need to be two and a half hours long. It could be a 90 minute, I don't know. It's just, this is a problem with movies today. Yes, very much so. Okay, well, that's our show. Thank you for listening as always. If you want to, you can find this podcast or podcast or found, and if you want to leave a rating and review, we always appreciate it. It helps people find the show. You can leave us feedback at unclear and presentfeedbackatfastmail.com. For this week in Feedback, let's see here. For this week in Feedback, we have an email from Garrett, titled GIJ and Military Masculinity.

45:06Hello, I really enjoyed your episode in GIJ, and it got me thinking about the military as a vehicle for masculine validation for the men who participate in it as well as an avatar of national masculinity for civilians and politicians. I think one of the reasons that this administration is so insistent on reifying masculine savagery in the military is because military service no longer requires the same level of sovereignty that it once did. Infantry combat and soldiering in general are less important to a country to military strength than they were a century ago. We've seen with the Russian invasion of Ukraine that combat between modern militaries is increasingly reboticized and remote. The contemporary battlefield is characterized by massive nomads land that are dominated by swarms of highly lethal drones. I'll say those drones are often also, this is me commenting now. Those drones are often also autonomous, and so they are run by kind of AI programs that use pattern recognition to determine whether or not someone is a target, and then they unleash their payloads,

46:07which I think there are a lot of problems with that. I'll continue with this with email. When one nation attacks another, it is usually with long-range missiles rather than with boots on the ground. They are so human shooting at each other, but generally on a much smaller scale than in popular imaginative war. Like other parts of society, war has become less personal and even more alienating. I think this explains why the pop culture archetype of a heroic soldier has evolved from the robot to infantrymen to the operator. Increasingly, operators are the only ones who get to affirm their masculinity by killing. The problem is that special forces make up a very small part of the militaries. The average person who wants to live out of the traditional fantasy of violent masculine valorization has fewer realistic avenues. By militarizing and massively expanding, by militarizing and massively expanding the ranks of ICE, the Trump administration has created an outlet for these fantasies. Unfortunately, in the modern world, the only enemies who can provide the blood to sanctify these rituals of perform masculinity are civilians. I enjoy both of your work. Please keep it up.

47:08Thank you, carrot. This is going to segue into our politics conversation later, but I think this is basically right. I mean, right before we recorded, a defense secretary Pete Hankseth gave a press conference where he was doing this raw, raw, hyper-masculine. We are hitting the enemy when they're down kind of speech. And to me, that's pure kind of like, that's pure, in a attempt to edify his own kind of like, sense of masculinity. Like, his own kind of masculine insecurities. I don't know, what do you think? Yeah, no, I mean, that sounds right to me. Basically, yeah, I mean, there's this fantasy about war that happens now, just exactly when a lot of those things are not that important

48:11when it's a lot of automation and a lot of computerized systems. And yeah, the operators are still out there and operator culture, unfortunately, has really run rampant in the military. I mean, there's a great piece by Seth Harp recently about this. And the author of the Fort Brad Cartel. And yeah, you know, I think that basically, it is a kind of, it's all image. I mean, this is all about like this entire, I mean, we're going to discuss this, but there's so much about the war pursuit of wars. And in this era and under this administration is mostly about fantasies and images and spectacle and very little about actually achieving political goals or having a strategy. And that is a result of the fact that like, basically, they're only interested in propaganda.

49:13And it was, and they're impressed by propaganda because it was all this ridiculous Russian propaganda showing soldiers doing silly maneuvers, very muscle bound airborne soldiers doing silly maneuvers that made Western conservative, American conservatives freak out that the American military was like getting sissified or something like that. And you're like, dude, all those people are, if they were actually in comment, they're all dead now. Right. I mean, the other thing is I'd say, I wouldn't even say they got freaked out. I'd say they got horny. Yeah, no, you're right. They were like, oh, we wish we had that. And you're like, are you so stupid? Like, this is not, anyway, it's terrible. But yeah, it's because of these images have taken over people's minds. Large part to do with also some of the films that we comment on. Yes. That, you know, I think it's a big part of why we're ended up in this situation. Yeah. So I think that that's the letter as well observed.

50:16Yeah. Thank you so much for the email, Garrett. And a reminder, if you want to send us feedback, unclear and present feedback at fastmo.com. Episodes come in at roughly over two weeks. And so our next main feed episode will be on Mercury Rising, a movie that I kind of vaguely remember from my childhood, but I've never seen. Oh, yeah. It's written by Harold Becker. It stars Bruce Willis. Here's a very, very brief plot synopsis running at FBI agent Art Jeffries protects a nine year old autistic boy who has cracked the government's new unbreakable code. This is during the period where people are like, autism, what's that? Yeah. And there's lots of sort of like people with autism of superpowers, kind of content. So that, that is the story. It is our next film over at the Patreon. If I, if I remember correctly,

51:18we're doing Southern Conference, what's called? Yeah. We're doing a Walter Hilvey and I'm more film called Southern Comfort. Yes. And we're going to follow that up with, I believe apocalypse now in the deer hunter. And we might do deliverance as well. So kind of your, your Vietnam, your movie is about or loosely about Vietnam and the reaction to the, there are, there are others, but I recently rewatched Platoon so I don't feel like watching it. And I do not particularly like casualties of war, which is Brian, no, Brian De Palmas. He shouldn't be allowed to make a Vietnam movie. I guess that's cats out of the back. Yeah, I'm not that crazy to be up with, too, honestly, but I have a lot of issues with Oliver Stone in general. But yeah, no, I think Southern Conference will be interesting. And then I was, we were talking about, maybe doing something about the Nuremberg films.

52:18Yes, yes. And so to give you a fuller, a fuller view of where the Patreon is going, we'll do these Vietnam films. And we're going to do a bunch of Nuremberg films, apropos, the recent film Nuremberg. We've already done judgment at Nuremberg and there is one other, there is one that you wanted to do in particular. There's a TV movie from the 90s, I think, called Nuremberg. Also called Nuremberg, with Alec Baldwin and Brian Cox, which I think is worth taking another look at. Yes, it is, it is just called Nuremberg. It stars, yeah, Alec Baldwin, Brian Cox and Christopher Plummer and Michael Ironside and Max von Sydau. Yeah, he's in it. Wow, I forgot what he is in it. I think he might be a Nazi. I mean, if you're hiring Max von Sydau for Nuremberg movie, he is 100% playing in Nazi. All respect to the great Max von Sydau, RIP. Brian Cox is curable, so I think he does a really good job. So worth watching.

53:21All right. So that is what's going on with Patreon. Guring, not curable, it's Guring, sorry. Guring, yes, yes, yes. That's what's going on with Patreon. So join us over there at unclear and present, sorry, join us over there at patreon.com slash unclear pod. For Chimaboo. For guys, if you're listeners, I'm getting over a migraine, so my brain is a little scrambled. For John Gans, I'm Jim Albuy, this unclear and present danger, and we'll see you next time.