Posted by Leonard Pierce
Patrick Creadon’s I.O.U.S.A., a documentary about the massive national debt being accrued by the United States, opens in limited release today. Using charts, graphs, and mountains of economics statistics, Creadon – the man who brought us the charming crossword puzzle documentary Wordplay – has essentially created An Inconvenient Truth 2: The Doomsday Debt. In the film, which features guest appearances from a pantheon of econ-nerd luminaries including mega-investor Warren Buffet, Comptroller General David M. Walker, and celebrated presidential candidate/crazy person Ron Paul, we are shown how our unthinkably huge national debt may lead to war, inflation, the collapse of our international alliances, economic catastrophe, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria. But hey, every movie with those three wonderful letters ‘U.S.A.’ in the title has to be about how we’re all doomed because of the short-sighted policies of warmongering, tax-cutting, pork-barreling, corporate-welfare-loving presidential administrations! Maybe it’s just some residual patriotism from the Fourth of July, but this movie inspired us to create a Take Five featuring other ‘U.S.A’ movies that aren’t quite so bleak. Or, at least, don’t have so many pie charts.
UNDERWORLD U.S.A. (1961)
A little-seen late-period noir from the underrated Sam Fuller, Underworld U.S.A. is a flawed film, particularly in its underwhelming cast, predictable action, and sometimes hokey dialogue. But Cliff Robertson is dynamite as Tolly Devlin, a man who, after seeing his father murdered by two-bit hoods, decided that revenge is a dish served straight out of the freezer, as he spends the next 20 years infiltrating their organization.
MADE IN U.S.A. (1967)
One of the most impenetrable relics from when Jean-Luc Godard really started to go off the narrative rails and into an experimental/revolutionary world of his own, Made in U.S.A. purports to be – and, to a certain albeit incomprehensible degree, actually is – an adaptation of one of Donald Westlake’s “Richard Stark” novels. Bu really, it’s just a glorious excuse for Anna Karina to lounge around in a (French-speaking) Atlantic City hotel room, talking about socialism.
HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. (1976)
Barbara Kopple set out to make a documentary about the bitter electoral dispute that was tearing the United Mine Workers union apart in the mid-1970s. Instead, after visiting an unauthorized strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, she found a new subject: the desperation, suffering, and nobility of the miners as they struggled to survive under the weight of bosses who crippled them at every turn. Moving, gripping, suspenseful, infuriating, enraging, affirming and beautiful – everything a good documentary should be.
GRANDVIEW, U.S.A. (1984)
Made during that period of the 1980s where they would apparently greenlight a movie about any old thing, this forgotten relic by Randal “The Blue Lagoon” Kleiser involves a painfully underfed C. Thomas Howell, who is a race car driver and aspiring oceanographer for some reason, falling in love with Jamie Lee Curtis, who owns the local demolition derby in the grand tradition of movie sports bosses who look nothing like Bud Selig.
INVASION U.S.A. (1985)
Now we’re talkin’! After all this 'waah-waah, the economy is failing, the unions are dying, some gangsters killed my dad' nonsense, here comes Chuck Norris, with a sleeveless denim shirt and a big pickup truck, to make everything all right. He does this by single-handedly wiping out a huge invasion force, consisting of a wide variety of swarthy foreign nationals, who have had the unmitigated audacity to take over some of our finest shopping malls. Now that’s the U.S.A. I’m talking about!
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