For the sake of background, here is Christopher Hitchens on the woeful state of North Korea:
Given that North Korea is one of the few places left on Earth where an absolute autocracy rigidly polices thought and speech, freedom-loving people have a duty to openly criticize and wantonly satirize the regime. For a brief time, though, it looked as if we would completely fail to stiffen our spines in the face of vague threats of terror attacks from persons unknown:
Well, this is some cowardly, precedent-setting bullshit. http://t.co/p6neHfCCo6
— Scott Meslow (@scottmeslow) December 17, 2014
Even if we were to eventually discover that the online threats against moviegoers were completely unrelated to actual North Korean saber-rattling, the lesson we send to prospective cyberterrorists by pulling the movie remains the same: Americans are ready and willing to be pushed around. Thankfully, Sony eventually reversed their decision after a bit of high-level prodding, and as a result The Interview was released in a handful of local independent theaters and made available for online streaming via YouTube, Google Play, Xbox Video, and (eventually) iTunes.
I say “thankfully” here not only because are we sending the right message to the world now, but also because it’s just a fun movie with an overall positive message, as noted by Chris Hallquist. No one can play a Hollywoodian media imbecile quite like James Franco, and it takes quite the imbecile to be taken in by a necrocratic dictator. Randall Park excels as Kim Jong-Un, an insecure loser with way too much power and profound daddy issues. And Seth Rogen, well, he’s Seth Rogen. (Either you enjoyed Superbad or you shouldn’t bother watching his films.)
I don’t want to get deep into spoilers, here, but the message of the movie from beginning to ending (from Eminem to Kim) is that the interview format can get people to reveal hidden truths about themselves, if done correctly. The hidden truth that The Interview movie revealed to me is that (at some primal level) I’m eagerly awaiting the day when the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest, so that men can be truly free.
