[SATIRE] Movie Review: Hegseth's Heroes
This comedic romp through a fictional Nazified America turns the old sitcom, Hogan's Heroes, on its head
This post is satire, but the inspiration is a true story that could only happen in Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department.
The real headline and subheadline from the Telegraph:
USS Gerald R Ford: Huge fire ravages world’s largest warship for 30 hours
Blaze in laundry destroys beds of 600 crew-members but is unrelated to combat, says US Navy
Hegseth probably ordered them to use AI to do their laundry. That’s the hill I’m dying on.
Film Review: Hegseth’s Heroes
By Ruminato Film Critic Wesley Williams Jennings Bryan Hutchinson XIV
Trigger warning: Satire
Although I wouldn’t call this a reboot of the beloved 1960s sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes, it sure feels like it sometimes.
In this obvious ode to the classic TV show, the entire Skarsgård acting empire stars in a wildly improbable comedy about navy officers serving under a broken U.S. government led by a deeply immoral crackpot.
The entire film takes place on the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, the massive aircraft carrier that is the pride of the U.S. Navy. There, a fire has broken out in the ship’s laundry area and quickly spreads to other parts of the ship.
Throughout the movie, a silent actor, who looks suspiciously like an AI version of Harpo Marx, infiltrates one scene after another with failed attempts to put out the fire with a long pair of scissors, apparently thinking that if he cuts the cloth or mattresses or whatever fabric is on fire within the scene, the fire will become smaller.
Stellan Skarsgård portrays a brain-dead president who declares to the world that he will decide who each nation’s leader will be. He sends his Defense Secretary, who has renamed the Defense Department the “War Department,” to the USS Gerald Ford to enforce his edicts.
The Defense Secretary, a man named Hegseth, masterfully played by Alexander Skarsgård, lands by helicopter onto the aircraft carrier just as the carrier suffers a mysterious fire started in the ship’s laundry room.
Hegseth is at the center of another set of repetitive scenes throughout the movie: Whenever one of the naval officers says, “Yes, Secretary Hegseth,” Skarsgård’s character screams, “WAR SECRETARY!”
The adventure begins off the coast of Venezuela, where the clearly insane president has decided to replace Venezuela’s president. Mission accomplished, the president, donning a German-style officer’s hat, orders the carrier to hurry to the Persian Gulf to replace the leader of Iran. This is when Hegseth descends a rope from a helicopter onto the burning warship, waving his cowboy hat in a scene reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove.
The Defense Secretary walks shirtless around the ship throughout most of the film, revealing disturbing Nazi tattoos. Rarely sober, he demands that the ship’s captain pin a medal of honor on his bare chest after each nation’s leader is replaced.
Only Alexander Skarsgård could pull off playing a drunk Nazi in a comedy. Kudos to the casting director.
After replacing the Iranian leader, the ship is ordered to steam back quickly to the Caribbean, this time to Cuba. “Wait,” says the ship’s first officer, played by Bill Skarsgård. “We were just fucking there!!!”
The ship’s officers begin a daily parlay each morning, using Polymarket to anticipate which nation their president, whose mind is decaying at a furiously rapid pace, will send them next. All while the ship continues to burn and the one single firefighter, apparently, an AI version of Harpo Marx, attempts to extinguish the conflagration.
The film even includes a slapstick battle scene involving Hegseth taking command of the ship. From the bridge, he orders one of the carrier’s destroyer escorts to shoot down incoming drones with its five-inch guns while he screams, “Where’s my medal?????” to a befuddled communications officer played by Valter Skarsgård.
Naturally, it’s pointless for the five-inch guns to fire at the drones, but that’s what makes the scene slapstick, as a frustrated Hegseth, clearly sauced, demands that the escort ship keep trying.
As the film progresses, the aircraft carrier’s crew realizes that they are in a makeshift prison run by the unstable Defense Secretary, who threatens each officer with compromising deep fake images to keep them in line.
You’d expect a film that documents a powerful warship replacing 150 heads of state to be extremely long, but the director, Daniel Skarsgård, cleverly uses a montage that ticks away each event in a period of about two minutes.
It’s a weird movie because there are no female leads. The closest we get is casting director Eija Skarsgård’s portrayal of a White House spokeswoman, who wears a crucifix the size of a fist as she admonishes pool reporters for asking questions about leadership changes throughout the world.
This takes us to the climax of the movie, a face-off with the Canadian Prime Minister, a former international banker with an attitude, played by Gustaf Skarsgård.
The film culminates in a long brawl between a very drunk Hegseth and the Canadian Prime Minister on the shores of Greenland, where a massive crowd of puffins gathers to watch.
In a fun twist, American actor Peter Sarsgaard makes a cameo appearance as a man wandering the decks of the ship as a lost soul looking for his family.
This movie is a fun bunch of laughs if you can look past the preposterous notion of some of the background players at work, including a Secretary of State who wears shoes too big because the daffy president buys him an extra-large pair, an auctioneer who becomes an IRS chief, a vaccine-hating health and human services secretary with a brain worm, a Department of Homeland Security Secretary who shoots her dog and loses $5,000 in a restaurant, and a vice president whose claim to fame is throwing his Appalachian family under the bus in a tell all bestseller.
Whoever said truth is stranger than fiction hasn’t seen this movie.
Or, maybe, the way to look at it is that we all live in a world of dark comedy, and our best hope is to find the light in our darkest days, and become better citizens to the people we love.
Notes
Image credits: IMDB image created by author using a modified image of Hogan’s Heroes’ Charles Schultz and altered titling
Thanks for reading!
Elbows 🇨🇦 Up!
just thank you.
I loved this, although I think that Bill was wasted as the “we were just f-ing there” officer — he should’ve played War Secretary.
Excellent writing, as always!