Unconventional Warfare

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"I didn't want to spend 18 months writing this and then be sent away," he says. That didn't happen. Instead, as they used to do in the days of the movies Russell admires, a major studio risked major money (around $50 million) on what remains a film of determinedly independent sensibility.

We keep meeting the enemy on our various peacekeeping missions and discovering that he is very like us--wearing our sneakers and T shirts, lusting after our music, our gadgets, our more deadly hardware. As Russell notes, the son of Slobodan Milosevic even has an American-style amusement park up and running in what's left of the former Yugoslavia. This is not exactly what people mean when they talk about the American Century. But that's the way it has worked out. And David Russell has written its epitaph in blazing, user-friendly fire.