America 2028 Movie Reviews, #12

Previous 2028 movie reviews.

Fear the future? Well, it’s time to don your radiation suit and step outside. Get yourself a movie ticket and go see Hardass Babcock: One Badass Chickenhawk. 

Unfortunately, once this modern drama is over and its credits start to roll, you will still fear the future. But while you will continue to fear the future, here’s the thing: government agents monitoring the theater will record your attendance and, therefore, you will appear to be a more desirable citizen in the eyes of the people who serve President Eric Trump. Also remember that Hardass Babcock: One Badass Chickenhawk has been labeled one of the movies that every citizen must see anyway, so none of us has a choice in the matter. 

Here. Here’s an idea:

See the movie three or four times and make sure their video cameras scan your visage every time. I say wear a t-shirt with your name and social security number on it, then smile and flash the ‘thumbs up’ right as they take the picture. 

Fittingly, Hardass Babcock opened with a quote from our nation’s first president. 

I always felt that I was in the military. 

— Donald Trump, Trump the First  

Those big letters fading up on the screen while that electric guitar soundtrack screamed—talk about an epigraph that teasingly paints a picture of what the viewer will experience. Boy did this movie deliver! So warlike, in this roundabout way. For a movie with no war in it, it felt like a war epic.  

And what a military-ish, soldier-esque main character. As Hardass Babcock proudly preaches at the beginning that soldiers are suckers who let themselves get played—he says this while sitting at his trading desk short-selling the stock of a defense contractor—we viewers sense his faith in himself. He just knows that he could outperform every soldier, even with zero training, and wow does he know it. Visions like these are crystal-clear in his mind. The moviegoer truly comprehends how much he believes them.  

Besides Hardass, I like the way that every other male character overused military jargon, referring to things like vacation time as “R & R” and four-star restaurants as “chow halls”. The scene where Hardass shows off his specially-made replica of the Medal of Honor, making little passive-aggressive jokes about its price tag the whole time—it all just felt so…so…what’s the word…2028. 

Yeah. Like pretty much everything else, masculinity is different in the year 2028. 

Why just the other day, I read in an article that this year’s most popular boy’s name is Caligula Chernobyl. Strange thing to see this information written down, because over the course of the previous few weeks, I had met up with two different sets of parents and they introduced their brand-new baby boys to me. 

After saying goodbye to the second couple, I remember thinking, Is it coincidence that you just got shown a newborn named Caligula Chernobyl McMulligan right after you got introduced to a newborn named Caligula Chernobyl Tortinelli? 

Whoa…look at me. Veering way off topic and deviating from reviewing this movie. 

Okey-doke. Back to Hardass Babcock: One Badass Chickenhawk. 

So we viewers get to follow a week in the life of the self-described “Navy SEAL of Finance”, Hardass Babcock.

We witness him making machine-gun noises after every securities trade, finger-guns a-blazing. During a ten-minute monologue, we hear him scream that not many men have the courage to make the risky bets like the ones he made in late 2019 that crashed the economy in 2020. His speech felt like Colonel Nathan Jessup’s iconic speech from A Few Good Men. In a small way. 

There’s this recurring comedic bit between Hardass and his three nubile secretaries. They yell, “Please, Hardass! Don’t hurt ‘em!” and he replies with a shrug-filled aw-shucks and an “Awww…okay…” Each of the ten times this joke is repeated, it delivers that mix of male humorousness and testosterone that is sure to influence younger male viewers. 

A new movie genre has arrived.

No. 

Moviemaking ripped away its shackles and stepped forward into a new dimension, one where moneyed white men order poorer white men to put others in shackles. 

This genre, being so new, hasn’t even been named yet. While I am just a lowly movie critic, if you ask me they could label this new sub-category Movies That Feel Like War Movies In This Roundabout Way But Aren’t War Movies In Any Way, Shape or Form. Yes, my longer name does not roll off the tongue. But it is indeed descriptive. And these days, artistry takes a back seat to clarity. 

See Hardass Babcock: One Badass Chickenhawk, folks. You don’t have a choice in the matter. 

Full list of 2028 movie reviews.

I don’t just write movie reviews from the future. I also write fiction. And I post blog thoughts at Medium.

Book One of my #scifi series is now available in paperback.