It looks like George Clooney is gearing up to direct and star in the WWII series, Catch-22. For those who still don’t know what Catch-22 is, it’s basically a no-win situation. As Variety states, ” a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but a request to be removed from duty is evidence of sanity and therefore makes him ineligible to be relieved from duty.” So in other words if you want out of something dangerous and make that kind of request it will be denied because you’re sane enough to know better, but if you don’t make a peep about it then you’re qualified as insane. Basically you die trying or be labeled a deserter if you take yourself out of active duty. That doesn’t seem fair does it?
According to Variety, Clooney will be playing the part of Colonel Cathcart, a man who is “obsessed with becoming a general” to the point that he will do virtually anything his superiors tell him to do at the expense of his soldiers. Each member of the US Army Air Corps that serves under Cathcart is subjected to his desire to advance by being given mission after mission in an attempt to earn their way home. The trouble is that in order to do this they must contend with Cathcart’s obsessive desire to advance in rank, meaning that they moment they think that they’re close to having reached their mission quota Cathcart raises the number they have to hit yet again and continues to send them on one perilous mission after another.
This seems like something a cruel and uncaring man would do, which wouldn’t be too out of character for at least a few people in the military throughout history. But the unethical nature of it seems like it would be countered by the fact that each man that had enlisted was there for a reason, and couldn’t possibly be expected to turn on their superiors. It seems like an act of betrayal fueled by ambition on the part of Cathcart, who is so desperate to gain the notice of his superiors that he’ll do anything, but it’s also a tough position for his soldiers who couldn’t possibly revolt without suffering dire consequences either way. So the decision with a Catch-22 in this case seems to be death or dishonor, with a very small margin for the success that lies between.
This will mark Clooney’s first return to a regular series since his time on the popular show E.R. back in the 1990’s, but it’s only slated to be a six-episode series. It will also be one of the only films in which Clooney is seen as a character driven by the desire to succeed so badly that he will apparently put others in harm’s way without their consent. That part could be a lot of assumption but so far it seems like it might be at least a little accurate.
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