Roger Simon makes a great point about Hollywood's current crop of anti-war/anti-American movies. Their lack of passion and paint-by-numbers formula are killing them at the domestic box office almost as much as their politics:

Now that Brian De Palma’s Redacted is such a bomb you almost feel sorry for the director (the film opened nationally to a total audience of three thousand souls – you could do better with your grandmother’s home movies… or maybe even a blank screen), I would like to go further with my analysis of why the Hollywood antiwar movies are failing.

In his interview with Pajamas Media, actor/politician Fred Thompson said they flopped because they were probably “bad movies.” Undoubtedly so, but there is a reason for why this particular “badness” occurred and it is not simply their seemingly anti-American viewpoint. The movies are essentially inauthentic. The filmmakers think they are supposed to be antiwar, but they don’t feel it in their guts.

How do I know that? Part of this is admittedly a gut feeling on my part. This feels to me like a cinema of “received wisdom,” not based on personal experience or “emotional knowledge” of any kind. No matter how you stand or stood on the Vietnam War, compare these recent ventures (Lions for Lambs, Rendition, Redacted, The Valley of Elah) with, to pick one example, Oliver Stone’s Platoon. The director’s passion is literally splattered all over the screen. Ditto for his Born on the Fourth of July. And, not surprisingly, the audience went.

No passion, no conviction of this sort, is evident in the current movies. And that is lethal. Art without genuine conviction is boring and worthless. What else does the artist (filmmaker) have to give to the audience but his or her passion? It’s no surprise the audience is disinterested without it.

And since beneficent deed goes unpunished, since American audiences have had the good taste to say, ala Sam Goldwyn, "Include me out" of the current crop of Hollywood's Ike Turner-style patriotism, expect lots more of these films:

Seven of the seven anti-war films haven’t just flopped, they’ve been humiliated. So, what does Hollywood do? They greenlight a half-dozen more of them.

Like I said, expect a glut in the guitar picks market by the end of next year.

Update: Related thoughts from Ed Morrissey and Investors' Business Daily.