Bombs Thrill, Chill And Kill

America has one hypocritical attitude toward bombs.

Of course we hate them. Who doesn’t? Everybody agrees that that bombs and bomb-makers are a lurking, cowardly menace to society.

Fine. After so much bomb-caused trauma, this is the only sane response.

Then why do we love bombs so much? Why do we demand our movies to have as many bombs as possible, as loud and fiery as art can make them?

Americans have made it clear that this, above all else, is what they demand on screen: a bunch of big fireballs strung together by a few occasional moments of plot.

No wonder we’re such a screwed-up society.

The other day I was watching the ads for “Chain Reaction,” which opened this weekend. The ads gave no indication of what the movie was actually about. The message, in its entirety, seemed to be: Explosions! We’ve got explosions! This is a movie about explosions! Starring Keanu Reeves and lots of explosions!

That’ll bring in the crowds.

Bombs have always been popular in movies, for the very reason that the word “explosion” is so often preceded by the word “spectacular.” An explosion is something to see, I will grant you that.

But in recent years the trend accelerated beyond ridiculous, with the rise of Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Those two guys always seem to be silhouetted against some kind of gigantic fireball.

Then came the “Die Hards” and the “Terminators,” as well as the “Lethal”-thises and the “Robo”thats. Somewhere along the line, a movie director became just like the kid you knew in elementary school whose sole idea of fun was to get some cherry bombs and blow things up.

Movie explosions are always gloriously photogenic: billowing balls of fire, casting a healthy orange glow on the heroine’s face as she looks on bravely.

You know what movie bombs never have? They never have shrapnel. Movie bombs are not like the bomb in Atlanta, filled with nails and nasty shards of metal. In the movies, the explosion always occurs just 15 feet from the hero as he runs for cover. The boom knocks him down, of course - that’s dramatic. But then he gets up and continues whatever noble “Die Hard”-like mission he has embarked upon.

He never has deep, jagged gashes or sickening burns. Bombs in movies look spectacular without the unpleasant side effects.

In fact, any special effects man who came up with a bomb like the Atlanta bomb would be fired for incompetence. The bomb produced no fireball; the sound was more like a big pop than a blast. Maybe that’s why people thought it was a blown transformer at first: It didn’t look or sound like a movie bomb. Yet it was sufficient to kill one and injure scores.

If Bruce Willis had been 15 feet from that real-life bomb, he would have been, at best, lying dazed, in shock, cut by shrapnel. No more stunt-filled heroics for him that night - the emergency room would have been Bruce’s only credible destination after that.

Listen, I understand that movies are not real. I’ve long ceased to expect them to be, nor do I even demand them to be.

But here’s what I will never understand: that people find explosions to be amusing at all.

I’m certainly not alone in believing that explosions are a pathetic excuse for entertainment. What bothers me now, though, is the feeling that I am increasingly in the minority. Now, if I say a movie is “nothing but explosions,” people are likely to say: “Cool.”

Now, as someone who has watched the televised events in Oklahoma City and Atlanta; as someone who has imagined the scene in Lockerbie; as someone whose own newspaper has been pipe-bombed, I have to tell you: I have lost all stomach for it.

Will the rest of America finally conclude that explosions are not the highest form of art? Not bloody likely. Kaboom.

, DataTimes MEMO: To leave a message on Jim Kershner’s voice-mail, call 459-5493. Or send e-mail to jimk@spokesman.com, or regular mail to Spokesman-Review, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.