(oh I guess they do).

I hope Winterbottom takes a balanced approach to this film. As of right now, I dont have high hopes. I suspect Stern will be portrayed as a maniac, when in reality, he was a man in a desperate position doing the best he could. The Stern Gang and the Irgun were, to a negligible degree, involved in questionable activities, but the bulk of their actions were directed at legitimate military targets, not civilians. This makes Stern as much a terrorist as say George Washington. After all, the British had strict provisions on keeping arms out of Jewish hands, even as Israel had been partitioned by the UN and the world knew the surrounding arab countries planned to attack immediately following British withdrawal (it is also widely acknowledged that the British were much tougher when searching and raiding Jewish parties for arms versus their relatively lax policies towards Arabs in Palestine). See Leonard Slater\’s The Pledge for information on British favoritism to the Arabs (for reasons of oil and anti-semitism).

Most of the derision of these right wing groups comes from the fact that the rivaling Labor/Socialist Zionists, such as the Haganah, managed to come out on top in the end, and they wrote the history books. Lets not forget that they too were responsible for some unspeakable deeds (google the Altalena affair, where both ben Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin were involved in the deliberate killing of Holocaust survivors).

Skewed or not, Winterbottom will give us something entertaining to see at the very least.