[Borges]

If you’re using ‘Elah’ as an example of ‘defeatist propaganda’ than you can use just about anything that’s not ‘uplifting’. Ever see ‘They Were Expendable’ (1945)? The Steel Helmet (1951)? There were plenty of melancholy, ambiguous war films back then as well.

[puroresu]

They Were Expendable is as patriotic as any film ever made. It was melancholy because it was set during the early days of the war in the Pacific, when the Japanese still had us reeling. No one expects Hollywood films to show us winning battles we actually lost. Some of us are just sick of a steady stream of films depicting America as evil and our troops as psychotic murderers. They Were Expendable showed the sacrifice our soldiers made in that war, but it didn't depict our boys as the bad guys and treat the war as an insidious plot by imperialistic American politicians.