A MOVIE THAT GETS IT RIGHT

A little while back, in this post, we all had fun with some of the “gun bloopers” from TV and the movies.  I have now been authorized to tell you about one movie that’s gonna get it right.

Panteao Productions is a producer of high-end tactical training films, as a quick scan of their website at www.panteaoproductions.com will show.  In the interest of total disclosure, three of those films are mine, and like the others are all downloadable to computer or available to you on DVD.  I also shot on his pistol team for many years.  So, he’s a friend of mine…but I also know the guy, and when he says he’s going to produce a film, it gets produced.

Now, Panteao is going to expand into movie theater entertainment with the film “Alexander’s Bridge.”

You can check it out here: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/alexander-s-bridge.  Their quick synopsis is: “Alexander’s Bridge is a science fiction/action film about an elite team of US Army Delta Force Operators accidentally sent back 150 years to the middle of the Civil War. Finding themselves where a battle is about to take place and where thousands of Federal and Confederate soldiers will be killed or wounded, they must decide what to do. Can they make a difference? Who will they try to help? Will they get back home?”

I’ve read the script. This ain’t “Guns of the South” with M4s instead of AK47s.  Panteao CEO Fernando Coelho has real Delta Force operators like Paul Howe and Tom Spooner on his team, and many more top-notch people from whom to draw technical advice. The movement patterns, the tactics, and of course the gun handling are all gonna be real. The Civil War battle scenes won’t consist of Hollywood extras dressed in blue and gray and given rubber guns to run around with: they’ll be made up of hard-core Civil War re-enactors who are absolutely authentic down to the threads of their clothing,  period-correct boot-laces, and of course, the guns.

I hope I’m not letting a cat out of the bag here, but my favorite part of the script is that it ain’t just about 21st Century dudes rockin’ M4s and kickin’ butt on dudes with muzzle-loading single shots (though some of the players will be using period-correct lever actions like you’d have somehow found the money to buy for your son if he was going off to fight in the War Between the States back then).  The most moving part of the film will come when bone-tired battle surgeons of the 1860s watch America’s Finest apply modern tactical emergency medicine to wounded soldiers.  I like it because it shows the world that Our People care more about saving lives than extinguishing them.

It will be entertainment…but it will also be “enter-train-ment.” With the “indiego” thing, you get to chip in for a piece of the production action.

And once it comes out, the next time you and your friends are joking about how movies and TV always get this stuff wrong, you’ll be able to say…”Well, they got it right on the movie I helped to underwrite and produce!”

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