My problems with this movie

I'm on your team (And so we're most critics, as it's more of a Cult Success.) It is enjoyable but it misses on so many fronts for me. Oldman, Reno and Portman make it rewatchable but 8.6 and #27 on here... Nah, no way. I mean, WOW. Lol... But hey, everyone differs. I just know Kubrick and Scorsese have made multiple films better than this but are far behind (The Shining/2001, Taxi Driver/Raging Bull) just for a few examples. This movie is a solid 7/10 for me, nothing more. Not bad, not great, just GOOD.

Months if not years is right. All Stansfield had to claim was that he had some information from some source. Part of the attack in Besson's film (shooting Mathilda's Father repeatedly when he was already down) was based on the treatment of Donald Carlson, a completely innocent computer executive who tried to defend himself when Feds burst into his house with no warning or identification. He was disarmed and shot repeatedly when he was already down.

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cjs13.htm

The attorney represented a forty-five year old executive for a Fortune 500 computer company named Donald Carlson. A Federal task force of Customs, DEA, BATF and Border Patrol agents, just graduated from a paramilitary assault school the week before, wearing black ninja outfits, helmets and flack vests, using flash-bang grenades and automatic weapons had invaded Mr. Carlson's upscale, suburban, San Diego home, shooting the corporate executive three times and leaving him in critical condition. They were executing a search warrant based on the uncorroborated, uninvestigated word of a professional rat.

Miraculously, despite the best efforts of the this newly formed, suburban assault squad one of the invading feds did a Rambo-roll, firing fifteen rounds from his submachine-gun hitting everything in Mr. Carlson's foyer, but Mr. Carlson Mr. Carlson was going to survive and wanted to sue the government.

"We'd like to retain you as our consultant," said the attorney, a soft- spoken, thoughtful man with an impeccable reputation for integrity.

"How did this happen?" I said.

"That's what we'd like you to tell us. It seems that this task force had a search warrant seeking for 5000 pounds of cocaine and four armed and dangerous Colombians in Mr. Carlson's garage. The warrant was apparently based on the word of a criminal informant."

I immediately started pouring over the reports and statements. Dawn had begun to light the sky before I realized that I had read the whole night through. It was one of the most frightening examples of an out-of- control, almost comically inept Federal law enforcement that I had ever seen or heard of in my twenty-five year career if it weren't for the fact that these guys carried real guns and badges.

In short, a low-level professional rat/petty thief/druggie who'd been selling street-level dope cases to a local south Florida police department, convinced a team of California Federal agents representing four Federal agencies, that he had become a trusted member of a major South American drug cartel.

They overlooked the fact that the rat spoke no Spanish and seemed to have a hard time putting together an intelligible sentence in English; that most of the people he was implicating as "members" of this Colombian drug ring weren't even Spanish speakers; that the rat's credit was so bad that the phone company refused to furnish him with a telephone (the agents had to give him a cellular phone, which they took back when he started making unauthorized phone calls); that a local cop had called the rat a liar. Even the rat's story, that he was doing pushups in a California park when he was first approached by a stranger to join one of the notoriously paranoid, Colombian Cartels, would have been dissed at a UFO abduction convention.

But none of this bothered these feds.

For three months the agents put the CI on the payroll, accepted everything he said as "fact," implicated dozens of innocent people in government files and computers as "drug traffickers," belonging to a drug trafficking organization that didn't even exist, and even obtained four search warrants including the Carlson warrant on nothing more than the rat's uncorroborated words. And then, ignoring the words of a San diego cop who called the rat a liar, they "Ramboed" the suburban home of a computer company executive like it was Desert Storm, only to find that the Colombian Cartel didn't even exist.

Holy *beep* I thought. What is going on here?

The Federal grapevine must have been buzzing. I was contacted by cops and agents who wanted to see some of these guys go to jail. A San Diego cop who had taken part in the investigation but not the raid was quoted as saying that the feds shouldn't be carrying guns and badges. A lot of feds felt the same way, but they weren't going to break the blue wall of silence. One did, however, send me a copy of Congressional Report of hearings chaired by Congressman John Conyers Jr. that he thought "might be helpful."

The title of the report tells its story: Serious Mismanagement and Misconduct in the Treasury Department, Customs Service and Other Federal Agencies and the Adequacy of Efforts to Hold Agency Officials Accountable.

The hearings not only found evidence of all of the above, they also found there was "a perception of cover-up" in these Federal agencies for all their misdeeds. In spite of this report being issued within months of the Carlson shooting, the killings at Ruby Ridge and the massacre at Waco, Texas, it went virtually ignored by the media.

I had served part of my career as an Operations Inspector and began doing what I used to do for the government documenting violations of rules, regulations and Federal law on the part of agents. I began what would become two reports (160,000 words) noting hundreds of instances where these feds violated their own rules, dozens of indications of federal felonies false statements, perjury, illegal tampering with evidence and coercion of witnesses and violations of the U.S. Constitution. I also found and noted in my reports just as Congressman Conyer's report noted powerful indications of cover-up going right to top level management of DEA, Customs and the Justice Department. Powerful people wanted the Carlson incident to "disappear." I was not going to let that happen.

Or so I thought.

A couple of days into my work on the Carlson case I got a call from Miguel's attorney. The jury had found him guilty of "attempted possession of cocaine." The charge carried a mandatory minimum of twenty years in Federal prison.

"The jury said they weren't very impressed with either your testimony or the government's" he said. "They voted on what they thought was the law. Miguel promised he'd deliver the coke for the money, so he's guilty."

The attorney said he was appealing the conviction. The CI, in the meantime, was paid whatever he'd been promised and was probably off selling more cases. I mean, even I had to admit, it was a good living. I hung up feeling like *beep*

Weeks later, after I had submitted the Carlson shooting report, recommending that the agents and prosecutors involved in the case be fired and prosecuted. I was full of hope. A rat cannot be king unless the people who are supposed to control him become as immoral and corrupt as he is and I was going for their throats. The Carlson case would be the example that all Americans should see of what was going wrong all across this country.

I looked forward to the civil trial and testifying publicly to my reports. It wouldn't be a congressional hearing, where facts the facts testified to are usually the ones the politicians want to hear, so that they could comfortably reach the "conclusion" they'd already agreed upon long before the hearings began. I was even going to call Court T.V.

I was at war.

Miguel's attorney called me again. "The judge reversed himself. He's granted a new trial on the basis that Miguel should have had an entrapment defense. Will you be available to testify?"

"Sure," I said."I'd love to."

It would be months before I learned that the attorney and the Federal prosecutor had worked out a plea bargaining deal. I'm not sure what Miguel pled guilty to, but he ended up with a ten year prison sentence. I suppose it could have been a lot worse.

It would be more than a year before I would learn that the U.S. government in the person of San Diego U.S. Attorney Allan Bersin, had decided to settle with Mr. Carlson, avoiding a trial and the public revelations of my reports. Mr. Carlson's attorney made a public statement that by settling without a trial the misdeeds of the government were being covered up. The government paid Mr. Carlson 2.75 million. Part of the final agreement was that the government's reports of its own actions, be classified.

The U.S. Attorney of San Diego, made a public statement exonerating the agents and prosecutors of all wrongdoing. He said that "the system" failed Mr. Carlson, but that the agents and prosecutors were to be commended for having done their jobs.

Within weeks the government would also settle with Randy Weaver, paying him $3.1 million. Once again the legality and morality of the government's actions in entraping Weaver in the first place were never even questioned.