Review of the movie Bushwick from a prepper perspective

Sometimes finding a movie to watch comes from the oddest ways. As part of following @skycorridors on Twitter, there are is a circle of Twitter stranger/friends who pop in to make comments on threads. One of these is @cjwestin. In a BitCoin Girl Monday Marathon pushed by @LamboLlama, which is a whole 'nother ball of wax. One of the videos that was posted was apart of the Cap South series.

In fact, it was episode 1

I didn't watch the show, but CJ posted a bunch of replies apparently about a certain character in the series.

So, just by chance, there is a movie with the same name of that character. And, just by chance, this movie is about a Shit Hits the Fan (SHTF) situation and perfect to talk about from a prepper perspective.

The way I got to this movie almost sounds like some really odd conspiracy.

Bushwick (2017) was created by some nobody's, which I don't have an issue with at all. It stars Dave Bautista, who is Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy. Bushwick was filmed between the first Guardians of the Galaxy and the sequel. My guess is, someone involved with the movie knew Dave from his WWE days and got him to agree to do this low budget film. Brittany Snow started out on the soap opera Guiding Light, which ended in 2009. She has played in many roles, but probably wouldn't be recognized beyond hardcore fans.

Bushwick isn't that great of a movie, mostly because the dialog is pretty bad. I am assuming that part of the reason the dialog is bad, is because there are very long periods between cuts. The movie is 1 hour and 34 minutes and probably was filmed with less than a handful of takes. By not cutting away from the actors, the movie helps you feel like you are right there with the action, however, it doesn't help if the actors have to ad-lib the majority of their lines as they go along a long route. Another movie that does these long endless takes is Children of Men, which had a significantly larger budget and is a must see, just for that.

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead!!! You have been warned!!

Bushwick is the name of a neighborhood in New York, a portion of Brooklyn. According to Wikipedia, there are around 129,000 people living in there and it is a very diverse, mostly minority population, which comes up in the movie as part of the plot. And since New York is infamous for its gun control, it is also expected to be unarmed, which also comes up in the movie.

OODA loop

OODA loop is a method of determining what action to take as you move through an unfamiliar situation. It was developed by United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. The acronym stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. In Bushwick, the characters do this sometimes, but should have done this a whole lot more.

Stup (Dave Bautista) has a military background, who joined the Army when his wife and child were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack. After being deployed in Afghanistan, his plans changed soon after arriving and he decided to go into the medical corps and ended up getting even more upset with things, when he couldn't save more people than he lost. Lucy(Brittany Snow) is a civil engineering student, who is home to introduce her boyfriend to her family. She was raised by a woman, who may or may not have been a blood relative along with her sister, who is obviously not a blood relative of Lucy.

The movie starts out with Lucy and her boyfriend walking through an underground train station and noticing that it is mostly empty. When they get close to the entrance, they hear explosions and then a man on fire comes running down the stairs from the outside entrance. Not wanting to be caught underground during a catastrophe, they try to go up the stairs to see what is happening. Lucy's boyfriend goes first, there is an explosion and he comes back down with his face burned up and he dies. Lucy, after seeing two people die of explosions, decides that she will also go up the stairs to see what is going on. Lucy isn't very good at OODA loop.

The Plan

Lucy's plan is to get to her grandmother's house. As she goes through the street, she sees people shooting at each other, helicopters overhead and military dressed groups rounding people up and loading them into vehicles. She is caught by a couple of these military people and as they are trying to handcuff her, they are shot by some gang bangers who drive by in a car. Lucy escapes only to see some other gang bangers shoot someone for no apparently reason, they begin to chase her and she ends up in someone's basement apartment. The gang bangers confront her and when they are close to causing her harm, Stup comes out of nowhere and dispatches both of them. After a bunch of poor dialog about what is going on, we learn that Bushwick isn't the only place that this is happening too. Stup believes it is happening all around the New England area. Stup wants to get to Hoboken and Lucy wants to get to her grandmother's house. Stup, unwillingly, helps her.

Before they leave, Stup grabs his bug out bag (BOB). Being a field medic, he has packed a surgical kit, rubbing alcohol, a road flare and pain medicine. He also seems to have at least one plastic bottle of water, which really isn't the best BOB. For the entire time he is carrying the BOB, he only uses one strap. Granted, Stup is a big guy and he's wearing several layers, due to the time of year, but maybe he should have planned that better. The BOB comes in handy later when Stup needs a glass shard removed from his leg and Lucy needs her shot off finger sewed up.

As Stup and Lucy travel past snipers and avoid the military men, they end up running into a store, where people are stealing food. There is a radio broadcasting news, but it is mostly useless, except for the notice that martial law has been declared. Lucy had grabbed a flyer from a telephone pole before they entered the store. Before they leave the store, Lucy finds the store owner who was stabbed by one of the thieves and left for dead.

From the flier we can see that there is a civil war starting and that the people who are invading Bushwick gave notice to people to leave the area. Bushwick is Zone 6, which means there are at least 5 other areas targeted as well. This is the first part to help clear the cloud of war that is going on outside. Stup and Lucy make it to Lucy's grandmother, but she already died of heart attack and not before Lucy loses a finger trying to exact revenge on one of the thieves from the store.

After leaving her grandmother's, Lucy goes to her sisters apartment a few blocks way to find that her drugged up sister thought that the neighbors were playing Call of Duty all morning. After some more awkward and bad dialog, one of the military personnel comes through the window and Stup manages to subdue him in order to get information.

The Second Civil War

From this guy, who is from Kentucky, we learn that Texas is seceding from the USA and forming the New American Coalition. As part of this coalition, several states have already joined with Texas and parts of Pennsylvania and Maryland are also about to come on board. The plan for Bushwick and the other zones, was to come in and move out the people and form an insurgency, which would force the President to accept the terms for the separation. The soldier said that the commanders expected it to be easy due to the diversity and poverty levels in Bushwick and the belief that most of the populace was unarmed. But, when they started getting push back, they changed the orders to take the area by attrition.

Now to refresh your memory, the Civil War confederate states looked something like this.

As I have mentioned, this movie was shot in very long cuts. The dialog is mostly ad-lib, so it is possible that the actor simply forgot to mention the other states needed to make a unified contiguous new country. Leaving out Mississippi and Alabama would seem like a huge tactical mistake.

From this point on, Stup and Lucy and her sister run into other road blocks, one being the local gang needing people for all of their guns. So, the mother of the gang leader sets up a deal for Stup and Lucy to get the people, who are organized by a local pastor to join them with the guns at a laundromat down the street. Lucy's sister has to stay with the gang as collateral. Lucy's sister is basically dead weight. One of the most worrisome thoughts for a prepper is to wonder if family members will be helpful, neutral or the reason they all get killed.

At this point the story goes south, as the pastor doesn't seem to be organizing anyone and soon after Stup and Lucy arrive, the place is overrun by the New American Coalition. When they get to the laundromat, nobody is there. After we get some rehearsed lines about Stup's background, he casually goes off to the bathroom, where he is promptly shot by a girl hiding in there. Lucy doesn't know what to do, but drags Stup away from the open area.

Lucy's sister shows up, after being released by the gang, and they try to make there way to a Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where the USA Military has setup to evacuate people.

The Disappointing End

The DMZ is in a park and there is a large amount of New American Coalition in the way. As Lucy, her sister and the rest of the survivors try to make their way across the park, they get heavy fire and manage to become much better shots then they were at the start of the movie. Yards before making it to the DMZ, Lucy's sister is shot, she tries to go back to get her, but after getting her and turning around to get to the DMZ, Lucy is shot in the head and killed.

A pan back of the Bushwick scene shows New York City burning.

Thoughts on a Second Civil War

The one thing that I think the movie got right was the infighting. Even though at the end, there was talk about the neighborhood joining together to fight off the invaders, in the end it was pointless. Throughout the movie, we see people taking advantage of the situation by robbing and killing without regards to the overall picture. I have read many times, that people believe that cities will turn into living hells during a SHTF situation. Even if the police were able to keep down the rioting and looting at the start, eventually, things would get to the point where they would most likely leave their posts in order to go protect their own families. Because all cities require food and water resources from outside the city, power loss and transportation loss to a city would cause a calm situation to get worse, after the shelves go empty.

Would it be wise to setup insurgency spots near cities in order to start a civil war or threaten at one? It would be a high casualties rate on both sides, in my opinion. Going house to house or building to building would be a risky endeavor for any military group, highly trained or not. Even those who were unarmed, could find ways of stopping or killing people who were armed by having the benefit of knowing the terrain, nooks and crannies.

I think, if a second civil war was to happen, it wouldn't be as clean cut as state vs state. The biggest separation is between rural vs urban. Half the country lives in cities, where ideologies can be split heavily and cause strife easily among the groups. But, there is also another way to look at a possible way for a split of the country to happen and that is with legislation aimed at a Convention of States.

Article V of the U.S. Constitution gives the ways that the Constitution could be amended. One of these options is for 3/4 States to hold a convention to amend the Constitution. While there wouldn't be an amendment to dissolve the Union, by looking at the map above, you can see the States whom have already put forth legislation to call the convention. These states already have a grudge with the Federal government. And, if there were to be a State by State secession, it would probably be most of these states together to withdraw from the current union and form a new one.

Bushwick is an okay movie. I think the directors tried to do a mini-Children of Men and I do applaud them for that. But, the low budget and poor script doesn't make for a good enough movie to recommend. If you haven't gotten your yearly dose of people saying the "F-word", then you can watch the movie to get that fulfilled.

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