Hollywood has made numerous movies about wars – some of them genuine blockbusters, some just mediocre and some in a disturbingly bad taste. ‘5 Days of War’, released a week ago is one of those features which has not yet been fallen into any of those categories. The niche for it will take a certain amount of time to be carved in the spacious Hollywood sky, which will probably depend on how much the investor will manage to cash back in.

Revenues are usually the best barometer for putting a final sticker price on a film – that’s Hollywood’s unforgiving yardstick. Unless my memory is failing me real bad, I have never written a critical essay or commentary on a movie, nor do I want to step into an untapped for me a field, particularly the oversensitive artistic realm. I know that this is not my job, and God forbid I present myself to my readership as a feisty little upstart who can’t wait to stick his nose into a competition with other zealously operating squirts. ‘5 Days of War’ (original title ‘5 Days of August’) is a horse of a totally different color. I cannot and should not keep mum here. Here, I have to say something, be it as unintelligent or irrelevant as it might get. We the Georgian intellectuals love to go publicly smart and bright because we think this is cool. But in reality we often sound pompously self-indulgent and provincially conceited. I am talking about some of our smarties who had an expressly negative reaction on the fortnight-ago release of the Hollywood film about the Russia-Georgia conflict which turned into the 2008 South Ossetia war in August of 2008. They commented on just another Hollywood produce so boisterously as if that was the end of the world. Guess why? Politics! We go political even as we have comfortably parked our butts on our toilets seats, not wasting the precious time and viciously trashing out whatever piece of art or act come our way against our will and mind.  Folks, it is not the film itself that matters in our case. Even if it is the worst movie Hollywood has ever made, it does not matter at all. What counts here is the political value and weight of the artifact. Period! How many countries have lately interested Hollywood to put them on the big screen? Georgia has all of a sudden gotten on Hollywood’s mind, and this is a big deal. We don’t need to scavenge in it and scatter filthy trash around it. We have to simply recognize that it is an extremely agreeable fact for Georgia that its president was presented on the screen by an international megastar. How many kings or presidents have been that lucky and deserving in history? There is another, even more important twist to it that attracts our attention. Russians had produced a movie about that war in just two week’s time after the damn thing was over. They had almost the entire world on their stinking side thanks to that farce, having persuaded the mankind that it was Georgia who had started the war. Isn’t now this Hollywood feature film a perfect answer to the Russian brashness and mendacity? Listen, somebody did a good job for us and we now want to trash the efforts of those good people? No way! The fact is a fact is a fact – a serious movie is out there for the world to watch and make conclusions in our Nation’s favor. What else do we want? Ingratitude and lack of appreciation will never pay. How many millions more will know where Georgia is on the world’s political map thanks to Hollywood’s ‘5 Days of War’? Just think about it for a second! And how many more will think right about this country!