The Informer

To celebrate the last weekend of freedom before another academic year’s worth of work I had arranged a pretty standard weekend. A run, cinema, food shopping, thinking about lessons, rifle-related reading, reading, and the playstation.

At about mile three my right Achilles started hurting but I soldiered on and that was probably a mistake. I hurt today while walking. It’s annoying as I wanted to run again later this early evening but instead I might go on the rowing machine for an hour. i’ve got a busy few weeks and so can’t risk being immobile. I also like exercising and so need to rest the ankle for a week or so. Maybe I’ll be able to run on Thursday.

Oh, I also ironed all the shirts in the house ready for the next couple of weeks. It was a boring task, but oddly satisfying. While ironing I was watching 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown which is a regular watch, I like the comedy. I’ve also been watching The Patriot Act on Netflix which I like and makes you think about society and how it works. I can’t write too much about that TV show or this communication will end up in calls for revolutions around the world.

As I drove along Chariot Way I checked out the river. It looked to me that the tide was low. I could see all the river mudbank and all the grasses were visible. The boats all moored in the area were down low along with the water [it would be weird if they weren’t]. I was amazed therefore as I left the cinema to see that the river was even lower [possibly as low as it goes]. The level of the water was below the mudbank by quite some distance and it was clear that this was close to lowest tide.

The film programme started at 17:50 and I came out of the cinema around 20:00. You can see from the chart above that this corresponds with what I observed. I asked for tide data in Chatham whic is slightly further down the river towards the Thames estuary because I’m not sure the data exists for Rochester or higher up the river. The tidal range at Allington, for example, is very large and the river only has what flows down from Maidstone at that point so low tide is possibly negative there! That’s something I’ll need to investigate.

I rated this film on IMDB after I watched it and I have to remind myself of the rating system so you should do that also. It’s in this communication. I then tweet the result. If you find the earliest movie reviews in this site then you can see that I just wrote the result as text. I think I probably wrote those communications before embedding was much of a thing in websites and stuff. Here’s the result:

This film was a satisfactory movie covering the tensions between those assholes in the FBI and the wonderful police in the NYPD. The Informer is a murderer who gets screwed over by the Feds and the local drugs cop helps him out. I think those aspects of the film were rather lazy and common within the film media. It could have been different and clever.

The Informer character is a violent man, but that’s justified in this film because he’s trying to get justice? Because it’s all self-defense? Because the Feds are screwing him over? Because it’s a film and needs prison violence to show how bad things are? I’m not sure I liked that aspect of the film. The ending was all very clever and so on and The Informer had it quite well planned. I kinda wryly smile when plans include lots of, what would be in real life, random acts that are required for the plan to work. I do know that when planning for things you can’t plan for the actions of other people. They do things wrong. Anyway, the plan seems to work well for The Informer.

So, let’s discuss the character should we? The Informer is a Polish chap who emigrated to the USA and then served in the Army a lot. This means he is a good man because to “serve your country” is the “best” that any US citizen can do. This is regardless of the facts that while in the forces you are treated like shit, once out of the forces you are treated like shit and those in charge will use you to maintain their positions of power. That’s all that the forces do. They maintain the power base for the white men in charge. I know I’m really into the air force and planes but I like planes. I don’t have to like what they are used for or what they do.

The Informer, once credentials have been asserted that he’s a bad motherfucker who did four tours in Iraq, then kills someone in a bar after they verbally insulted his wife. Now, some people are assholes, but it seems strange that this is glossed over. This man killed someone else. But that’s ok in this film because he was defending his wife’s honour [whatever that means]. There had to be a reason for him to be in prison in the first place and I guess that the writers thought this was the most “justified” way this character could be there. What pricks.

Two small things really irritated me:

In the opening credits there is a company the name of which I should have written down. I think it’s Imagination. This is the second time I have seen their logo and the second time it has irritated me. The company have used the Greek letter theta instead of an O in their logo. But the theta isn’t pronounced as an O in any language and so it’s just stupid.

The Feds were driving around in a Toyota Prius, which is good. But, we watch it move away at one point and before it starts moving we hear the sound of an engine starting. That’s not how the Prius works. It starts to move and then the engine starts. There, annoyances based on hybrid technology. I bet you weren’t expecting that.