Nighthawks (1981) Review
Nighthawks (1981) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Stallone and Billy Dee Williams are New York decoy cops assigned to an international terrorist, and Rutger Hauer is so much better than the film around him that he…
Tag: Terrorism
Terrorism on screen is usually a plot device and occasionally a subject. This tag collects reviews and essays on films and writing that deal with terrorism, hostage situations, and the politics underneath them.
Book ReviewsGhost Wars
Steve Coll's Ghost Wars traces twenty-two years of CIA operations in Afghanistan that led directly to 9/11, and his choice to end the book on September 10th makes the argument impossible to ignore. Everything that happened the next morning had…
Book ReviewsOrdinary Heroes
Joe Pfeifer was in the North Tower lobby when the first plane hit, running the initial response with no working radios and no way to know his younger brother Kevin was dying in the stairwell above him. This book follows…
Book ReviewsTouching History
Lynn Spencer's "Touching History" reconstructs 9/11 through the people who managed the crisis in real time: air traffic controllers hunting for planes with dead transponders, fighter pilots launching unarmed to ram airliners, and a new FAA manager ordering 4,500 flights…
AmericaWhat I Wrote on September 11, 2001
On the evening of 11 September 2001 I wrote about what I had watched that day, and never revised it. Twenty-five years later, some of it holds up and some of it is wrong in ways that took years to…
MysteryBehind the Book: Unlikely Hero
Unlikely Hero started with a single image, a nuclear bomb near Los Angeles, and became a two-character story about a criminal, a cop, and one impossible choice. Here is how it was built.
American DecayThe Taking of Pelham 123 (1974) and The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) Review
Two substantial adaptations of John Godey's subway hijacking novel. 1974 Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw foundational.
1970sMidway (1976) and Midway (2019) Review
Two substantial adaptations of the Battle of Midway. 1976 ensemble approach with Charlton Heston and Toshiro Mifune.
1990sDie Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
Jackson, John McTiernan returns to direct, Jeremy Irons as Hans Gruber's brother. It is the best Die Hard sequel and the closest the franchise ever came to matching the original.
2000sLive Free or Die Hard (2007) Review
The film is held back from a 9.5 or 10 by the studio's decision to cut the theatrical release to PG-13 and by the inevitable franchise-fatigue cost of being the fourth entry. Olyphant's Thomas Gabriel is the franchise's third great…
AmericaSeptember 11th: A Writer’s Tribute
A personal remembrance of September 11, 2001, the day that changed everything, and why the stories from that day must continue to be told.
Amazon & KDPReview Bombing: How It Works and How to Survive It
Review bombing is the practice of flooding a product, service, or creator with coordinated negative reviews that have little to do with actual quality. Here is where it hits hardest, the structural conflicts that make it worse, how to spot…