Thirty years ago, opium was a relatively small crop in Burma; today it's mushroomed into a kind of narco-monster which exploits Burmese farmers while dragging down the world's heroin addicts. Director Adrian Cowell and cinematographer Chris Menges (Michael Collins) combine documentary footage taken over the last 30 years with overlaid commentary to present this sprawling socio-politico diatribe/satire which, at its best, exposes the real underpinnings of the opium trade, and at its worst, blurs the line between journalism and activism. We watched the opening video, "The Opium Cowboys," which chronicled the bloody civil war between the Burmese government and the revolutionaries of the Burmese Shan state. In a revolving door of Monty Python-esque farce and human tragedy, revolutionaries and government officials continually switched allegiances as the opium trade flourished. Eventually, in the war on drugs, filmmaker Cowell would bring a proposal to the Carter administration in the U.S. suggesting a trade of 35 million dollars for the revolutionaries' opium, which the U.S. could then destroy. The proposal was defeated, yet even though the alternative was a miserable failure (search and seize missions which found little and confiscated less), Cowell's obvious uncritical support for the proposal seems naïve--though one could mount a good counterargument concerning which black hole would be cheaper: the high monetary and social costs of heroin addiction vs. extortion by revolutionaries. In a battle, however, where real people are dying (and the film does feature some graphic battle footage), I found both the active involvement of the filmmakers and the sarcastic tone of Cowell's narration somewhat jarring, if not occasionally downright ill-conceived. Although there are two more videos in the series, the second title, "Smack City," takes a serious geographic dogleg into Hong Kong, before the third title, "The Kings of Opium" returns to the location and ostensible subject of the opening volume. An optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)
The Heroin Wars
(1996) 3 videocassettes. 156 min. Bullfrog Films. $395. PPR. Color cover. ISBN: 1-56029-676-3. Vol. 12, Issue 3
The Heroin Wars
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