Red Mercury

As the end of the day rapidly approached, I was tired but not inclined to go to bed as it was before ten pm I selected a film to watch because the briefest of notes said it was a film which involved terrorists taking over a restaurant and where the chief investigator was Juliet Stevenson as an MI5 special agent and Pete Postlethwaite as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, theoretically responsible for deciding how the hostage siege situation should be dealt with, Stockyard Channing has the part of a Greek restaurant owner, once married to a Turkish Muslim. The film, Red Mercury was made in 2005, does not appear to have been released for the cinema theatre as there is no review but is as interesting and question raising as the best of Spooks where a new spin off series is to be shown shortly. The combination of some fine actors and an eloquent and knowledgeable script held my attention although I worked out the punch point long before it was formally revealed. It is the plausibility of the of the plot which interested me and caused me to debate writing about the experience and in what way, I am going to write in the chronological time sequence of the experience. Three young Muslim men are part of a cell brought together by a fourth to create a dirty bomb which could devastate a city and which is to be used to blackmail the British Government into meeting a number of demands, but the authorities are topped off about their work and it is during their attempt to escape with the unmade device that they enter the restaurant. Juliet has a similar role to Denzil Washington in déjà vu and also the similar ability to see what others do not. She senses there is something not right about the situation especially when the media gets hold of information about the identity of two of the three Muslims. In order to confirm her suspicions about what the group are up to she consults her former husband who is an academic who retains security clearance and he explains that Red Mercury is a theoretical substance which it was for a time believed the Russians had developed in order to create a dirty bomb, but was a myth promoted to cause fear an side track Russia's enemies. It emerges that in order to smoke out home grown terrorists the British Government arranged for Russia to provide the substance) which they know does not work) as a means of identifying and capturing potential suicide bombers, which is fair enough, but the government is shown to be not adverse to bringing in the SAS to bring the siege to an speedy end and where the level of casualties can be expected to be high, the film suggests over 75%. For some reason the film implies that by using the police led anti terrorists squad when shooting breaks out in the restaurant there will be fewer casualties and the film implies that he real baddies are the politicians and that the terrorists are nice guys from good families who would not have come to behave as they do if they had been treated with more love and greater respect by society in general. The main sub theme of the film is that Muslim if a good religion because it preaches a good way of life whereas the way western Christian behave immorally and socially divisive. Juliet's daughter is a suicidal, self harming drug addicts who cannot connect with her mother or father but is helped by a thoughtful, understanding and supportive black man from a 'West Indian' background. One of the three has a white protecting mother who lives behind bars on a poor estate in London whose Asian father has disappeared and had a history of trouble at school and involvement in minor car crime until finding faith and preaching against drugs and crime to the latest generation of former school mates. By one of many unbelievable coincidences in this film he was influenced positively by a book written by one of the hostages who he is able to save from the wrath of another terrorist when the man challenges, taunts and provokes by exposing the hypocrisy of their behaviour. Another in the restaurant is an illicit couple, a major international corporate figure out for a discrete meal with his Personal Assistant and young mother whose husband believes she has been called way to an event in Edinburgh. The bomb maker is an intellectually bright young man who has become an expert in nuclear physics and special metals and who father is an honest and kindly Asian trader where his son is also able to give him advice on wines his rue love rather than become a PH.D. Earlier I had watched one of several short films about present day China in which a young and extremely wealthy female wine maker explains the opportunities now emerging in her country where one if five of the new four million business enterprises are also female. Depressingly another film was a series of interviews with young men and women all anxious to but the most fashionable of goods in a situation where the manufacturers of these goods are going to great lengths to gain a piece of the action regardless of the consequences upon China and the rest of us of uncontrolled consumerism lacking any sense of moral or social purpose. The interest of the main theme that governments have to use challenging methods in the interests of the overall security of the nation and which will involve innocent casualties, together with detailing aspects of the story and its characters would not have been as great had I not decided to check the internet about Red Mercury and immediately came across a factual BBC news Story dated 25th July 2006 emphasising that the film was released in 2005. What is Red Mercury, is the headline. " three men have been cleared of trying to procure the raw ingredients for a dirty bomb which the prosecution claimed could have devastated a British City if it fell into the hands of terrorists. But mystery surrounds the material at the centre of the plot., begins the story written by Chris Summers., He explained that no one in court could be certain that the terrifying substance upon which the prosecution case was based existed. The story explained that it did not matter if the substance existed but the issue was that the three men with others were attempting to acquire and use the substance. An undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood is said to have been farcical conversations with the prospective buyers. The article gives the impression that the substance is regarded as a medicine with uses ranging from impotency to extending life. The main accused had searched the internet for information and in particular an article from About.Com. Chemistry is quoted at length in the BBC report which provides a link to the article by Dr Anne Marie Helmenstein. This explains that science newsgroups have been a-buzz about a 2 kiloton yield Russian Red Mercury fusion device, theoretically in the possession of terrorists. The article goes on to explain what is possible accurate and what is not. It is undated. I then turned to Wikipedia which explained that articles about the substance first appeared in the late 1980's and then people started to but it. By the late 1990 there was reports of the substance having a market value of one to three hundred thousand dollars a kilogram. The three young men were arrested in 2004, in eh year before the film was released.. The News of the World provided the fake Sheik. The Wikipedia article claims that Samuel Cohen, the father of the neutron bomb had been stating for sometime that the chemical known as ballotechnic had even perfected into a bomb by Soviet scientists in the form of several softball size pure fusion bombs which were then made in large numbers. The Wikipedia article then lists the various books, programmes and Video games which feature the substance, including novel called Red Mercury by Max Barclay and Red Mercury Blues an Artie Cohen mystery by Reggie Nevelson published 1995 and reissued in 2006. It was also used in third series Spooks as bait for an Al-Qaeda style terrorists group! Who therefore is kidding who and about what? I watched Middlesex do to Somerset what they did to Durham in the 20 20. Although they lost have their side for a handful of runs, Shah and Henderson performed as they did in the 20 20, Henderson getting 50 and Shah 96. Udall who was about to play for Henley on Thames until Middlesex resurrected his career and Kartick bowled tightly and Marcus Trescothick scored only 50. The cricket news of the day was the appointment of Kevin Petersen as captain for all three sides( Test, 1 day and 20 20) but only Bopara was added to the Test side in place of Vaughan and there is no place for those who have shown recent great form such as Shah or Napier in the one day squad who took 3 for 33 in six overs demolishing Northants in the Pro 40 last night. I had a workmanlike day going to the supermarket early for milk, bread, salad and stir fry, and then calling at the post office for AOL wireless internet delivered while I was away. I did the ironing and finished writing Blogs bringing this aspect of my work up-to-date. I enjoyed playing chess and Hearts. And sorting out papers but the prescription sun glasses remain missing and presumed lost while away. I will write to the garage in case there were left in the loaned vehicle. I did some more work on the plants and began to count the true financial cost of the trip. I continue to be self indulgent re food with a large portion of stir fry in the evening but the lunchtime salad was OK with one slice of bread and then offset by a small quantity of peanuts with a quarter glass of wine and the remaining three orange jam biscuits, after toasting the remaining roll for breakfast and having cereal later in the day.