So I should really hate George W Bush, his government, the whole US Army, and its ‘War on Terror’, shouldn’t I? Cos that’s what people like me do. And I should like Michael Moore.

I don’t though, and neither do Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and that’s what makes this film such a breath of fresh air. They’re the Chris Morrises of America, spewing bile at both sides, crucifying the pompous and the self-righteous, keying the limousines of prominent lefties and right-wingers. South Park is better satire than anything Michael Moore’s burger-addled brain could edit.

Brief plot outline: It’s basic Jerry Bruckheimer stuff, only with puppets. Team America are an elite Thunderbirds-style anti-terrorist force. When one of their number dies, they persuade Gary Johnston, Broadway star of the musical ‘Lease’, to infiltrate terrorist gangs. The terrorists, meanwhile, are planning a huge WMD attack, with Kim Jong Ill acting as arms dealer. Cue the involvement of the useful idiots/limousine liberals of Hollywood – Penn, Robbins, Sarandon, and their leader, Alec Baldwin. Shot with real actors, and without the jokes, this would be your basic Top Gun type film. (The puppets are great, by the way, with more expressive eyes than a lot of their flesh and blood counterparts. The sets are beautiful, little miniature works of art.)

In a scene satirising the right, Paris is destroyed – in a great action sequence - by the trigger-happy Team, who tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to getting the bad guys. By the end the city’s in ruins, landmarks are demolished, the people shocked. Team America still think they’ve saved the day, they expect celebration, they always do.

Elsewhere in the film we realise that Intelligence is a compute with a stoner voice “That was bad intelligence. Very bad, Intelligence!” We get a parody of a patriotic country song, we get an 80’s style rock masterpiece called ‘America, Fuck Yeah.’ The piss-taking is all over the action-movie questions, the military might of America is as awesome as a flashy car owned by some teenage boy-racer, desperate to show what he can do, desperate to impress, desperate to “fuck” something.

But the real bile is reserved for the anti-war crowd, and in particular the famous faces. They get it tight, in more ways than one. Not only are they ripped mercilessly (Matt Damon, for some reason, gets it really bad. I dunno why) but they die the most gory, gruesome, wonderful deaths. Anyone who’s sick of some po-faced prick or braindead bint lecturing the leaders of the world from their luxurious trailers will enjoy this immensely. The actors are all part of the Film Actor’s Guild (F.A.G.) and they’re all, as we learn at the end, pussies.

Over and above all this you get stuff that’s just plain funny. Kim Kong II, with his little Cartman voice, is a great little character – foul-mouthed, evil, but vulnerable (listen to his song, ‘I’m so Ronery’, it’s heartbreaking). You hope that one day the real Kim will see this portrayal, a million times more accurate than the bullshit he serves up to his own people.

Then there’s the puking scene, the graphic puppet sex, and a shitload of great quotes, like “Gary is the kind of man that understands, when you put another man's cock in your mouth, you make a pact.”

Now, by now, you should want to see this, so go. Every time I read some writer, or some film-maker, actor, or other “creative” person make some cliched done-to-death remark slagging the government, or being all anti-war (oooh, controversial!) I lose a little more faith in humanity. But films like this make me think; it isn’t all that bad, there’s guys out there who understand.

Just pay attention to the message, and remember, without dicks, we’d all end up covered in shit.

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Iain Bahlaj lives in Fife, Scotland. His short stories have appeared in Front & Centre, Fife Fringe, Chapman, Pulp.net and The Macallan Shorts 3 and 5. His novel, 'Tilt' was published in 2003 (Pulp Books, London). The short story 'Sugar' is a prequel to 'Tilt.' Iain currently works as a night-shift shelf-stacker, while working on a novel about vampires, in this spare time. To read more about Iain on the Showcase section of this site, click here.

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© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.