Rhino -- Rocky's Movie Corner

This time of year the major studios clean out their collective refrigerators and treat film goers to the cinematic equivalent of fuzzy soup, gray-green bacon, and half-eaten pods of McNugget sauce. What a treat it is, therefore, to stumble across Date Movie, a geopolitical thriller that spins an intriguing tale of money, power and corruption, cogently explaining why the Middle East is the world's tinderbox.

Adam Campbell stars as Grant Bernwood, the naive financial reporter sent to Dubai to analyze the merger of the world's two largest petroleum companies. Bernwood's belief that the world grapples over the Middle East because of oil is challenged when he encounters Whit Coolidge (Fred Willard, so brilliantly creepy that Christopher Walken is officially expendable). Coolidge approaches Bernwood from the shadows of a crowded bazaar with a story that could get them both killed.

Through a series of secret meetings and dangerous trips across the region, Coolidge paints a picture of the commodity that puts the region at the vortex of all things violent. And that commodity is not oil -- it's dates. “Think about it,” urges Coolidge, “Oil is everywhere. The North Sea. South America. Canada. But you don't see drones flying missions over Quebec, do you?” What those areas lack, he explains, and what the Middle East has a corner on, are “date trees, majestic leafy palms that bear the meaty fruit that gives life so much of its meaning.”

Coolidge presents the evidence in compelling sequences without becoming didactic or proselytizing. On a harrowing drive through war-torn Basra, Coolidge reveals that Iraq has led the world in date production “since Eve tempted Adam with her date pudding.” Presently there are 22 million date palms in that country producing nearly 600,000 tons of fruit annually. The insurgency is driven by the fear of this crop falling under Western hegemony.

There are forces, of course, who don't want this information revealed. An assassin of undetermined allegiance, Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan, showing off what she learned at sniper camp) hooks up with these two men. Her presence ratchets up the suspense level as we try to figure out if she is friend or foe. Maybe she'll off them, or maybe she'll partner up, becoming the Dorothy Lamour figure on The Road to Fallujah.

What is clear is that the demonizing of Big Oil is one of history's great diversions. The real villain is Big Food. While the world obsesses over Exxon and Chevron, the Middle East gets plundered by Dole and Del Monte. Date Movie pulls back the curtain and reveals who really controls the machinery of Western Civilization. He's Jolly, he's Green, and he's a Giant.

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