A Dangerous Game (PG.)
Directed by Anthony Baxter.
Featuring Baxter, Michael Forbes, Denis Rice, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Romana Hansal, Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump. 90 mins
If you judge a man by the things he opposes then Anthony Baxter scores highly – his life is seemingly consumed with a passionate hatred for golf and Donald Trump. His previous movie You've Been Trumped charted the way evil Billionaire tyrant Trump railroaded local objections to build a luxury golf course on some environmentally precious Aberdeenshire coast line, helped by the stooped acquiescence of the Scottish parliament and local MP Alex Salmond.
His follow up continues to chronicle the harassment of the locals who live near the course but widens the sights to examine the ecological impact of luxury golf courses worldwide. The rapid development of the game in China and Dubai are touched upon but presumably budget restrictions (and the oppressive nature of the regimes) ruled out in-depth analysis. Instead he checks out some exclusive luxury golf courses in the States and a grassroots opposition movement to a proposed golf development on the cliffs over Dubrovnik.
In the interest of balance we get to see Baxter's slightly mad uncle Dennis who obsessively collects golf balls and loves the game and is there to show us that the film is not anti-golf, but anti-rich people playing golf and hogging more than their fair share of the water supply. The film states that the amount of water used to irrigate the world's golf courses is equal to amount that could support 4.7 billion people on the UN's daily minimum.
It is decent piece of rabble rousing and Baxter is a reasonable interviewer, in the mode of a calm John Sweeney. I'm as bitter and chippy as the next man and there are points in the film where you will be contemplating the ecological merits of a few hundred discrete and discerning applied bullets around the world. At others points though I found thinking well come on it is just a golf course, after all. Almost any sporting activity is unjustifiable by these terms.
But then Trump will appear and any reservations are swept away. Possibly the most amazing thing about him is his impossibly refined aesthetic. Almost everything offends his sense of beauty – wind farms or the farm house of one of his neighbours and opponents, Michael Forbes, which he describes as being “a slum” and says that he lived “like a pig.” And each time he extolls his precious sense of beauty, viewers will be gazing mesmerised at the assemblage of hair gathered upon his head which looks like an aspirational comb-over that is desperately trying to turn itself into a quiff. Just like the renaissance paintings where bits of gossamer just happen to float into position to obscure naughty bits, his coiffure is pushing the pretence that every time we see him his hair just happens to have been blown forward to obscure his skull.
Directed by Anthony Baxter.
Featuring Baxter, Michael Forbes, Denis Rice, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Romana Hansal, Alec Baldwin and Donald Trump. 90 mins
If you judge a man by the things he opposes then Anthony Baxter scores highly – his life is seemingly consumed with a passionate hatred for golf and Donald Trump. His previous movie You've Been Trumped charted the way evil Billionaire tyrant Trump railroaded local objections to build a luxury golf course on some environmentally precious Aberdeenshire coast line, helped by the stooped acquiescence of the Scottish parliament and local MP Alex Salmond.
His follow up continues to chronicle the harassment of the locals who live near the course but widens the sights to examine the ecological impact of luxury golf courses worldwide. The rapid development of the game in China and Dubai are touched upon but presumably budget restrictions (and the oppressive nature of the regimes) ruled out in-depth analysis. Instead he checks out some exclusive luxury golf courses in the States and a grassroots opposition movement to a proposed golf development on the cliffs over Dubrovnik.
In the interest of balance we get to see Baxter's slightly mad uncle Dennis who obsessively collects golf balls and loves the game and is there to show us that the film is not anti-golf, but anti-rich people playing golf and hogging more than their fair share of the water supply. The film states that the amount of water used to irrigate the world's golf courses is equal to amount that could support 4.7 billion people on the UN's daily minimum.
It is decent piece of rabble rousing and Baxter is a reasonable interviewer, in the mode of a calm John Sweeney. I'm as bitter and chippy as the next man and there are points in the film where you will be contemplating the ecological merits of a few hundred discrete and discerning applied bullets around the world. At others points though I found thinking well come on it is just a golf course, after all. Almost any sporting activity is unjustifiable by these terms.
But then Trump will appear and any reservations are swept away. Possibly the most amazing thing about him is his impossibly refined aesthetic. Almost everything offends his sense of beauty – wind farms or the farm house of one of his neighbours and opponents, Michael Forbes, which he describes as being “a slum” and says that he lived “like a pig.” And each time he extolls his precious sense of beauty, viewers will be gazing mesmerised at the assemblage of hair gathered upon his head which looks like an aspirational comb-over that is desperately trying to turn itself into a quiff. Just like the renaissance paintings where bits of gossamer just happen to float into position to obscure naughty bits, his coiffure is pushing the pretence that every time we see him his hair just happens to have been blown forward to obscure his skull.
