The Factual Opinion

Cafe Lumiere

2003
Directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou
Written by Hsia-hsien Hou and T'ien-wen Chu
Starring Yo Hitoto and Tadanobu Asano

The original ideas behind the "Lumiere" project was for three directors to make a triptych anthology film as a celebration of the centenary of Yasujiro Ozu's birth.  When it came time for work to begin, Hou was the only man standing, so he chose to make a straight-forward film.  Instead of embracing Ozu's study of domesticity, previously celebrated in these pages, Hou embraced Ozu's quiet, somber style, making a movie that focuses on a young woman and her quiet, somber life. 

It doesn't really work.  Without anything to really say, or anything to really do, Cafe Lumiere is a film that is, for the most part, only interesting for it's showcase of version of modern Japanese life that is rarely depicted in film: one that isn't all about sake, karoke bars and electronics.  The deadbeat slackers in this film aren't that different from the deadbeat slackers in American films--their pants don't really fit, they wear stupid hats and need a shave, and in the case of our lead actress, take naps when they should probably be looking for a job.  If it wasn't for Tadanobu Asano, the film isn't one that most viewers will want to finish watching, and although they may hold out hopes that Asano will show off some of the brilliance that makes him such an enthralling actor, this film is his version of Johnny Depp's performance in Nick of Time: a dumb movie made even dumber by the presence of a superb actor.  While Cafe Lumiere has it's moments of beauty, the film is so numbing and dull that by the waning minutes, one keeps pressing the "time/text" button on the remote, wondering how far away their next sandwich is.

Salo

1975
Written and Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini
Based on The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade

Watching Salo is one of the most difficult things any normal human being can pull off--and not just because the bootleg DVD format is the only way to find it.  It is full of some of the most horrific acts of torture, rape and perversion to ever be captured on film; in context, it makes movies like Texas Chainsaw and Ichi the Killer tame by comparison.  It has a simplistic plot: four men, fascists leaders in Italy, take a small collection of kidnapped children along with a few perverted women and a couple of soldiers and proceed to reenact every dark version of cruelty they can come up with.  Standard male/female intercourse is the only thing to be prohibited.  As the fascists become tired with anally raping and emotionally brutalizing their often nude captives, meals of human feces become the norm, and the movie closes on horrific acts of physical torture (one of which is portrayed on the front of the DVD in this very review.)

Why was this movie made?  What purpose does it serve, and to whom was it expected to find an audience?  Merely watching the film is as much as can be expected--getting a "message" or "the point" seems to be an exercise in confusion.  While the film is a little too expensive and (technically) well-made to be just a straight piece of pornography for (one hopes) an infinitesimal niche market, it strains all human reason to imagine that this film was ever believed to be even watchable to a mass audience.  The film is so nakedly cruel, so cynically devoid of any sense of morality that it becomes, by the end, almost impossible to believe that these villains could be so evil.  At no point does any of the men responsible show any sign of remorse, nor do they ever question what they are doing.  While this may have been part of Pasolini's rage at fascism, the movie is too clearly obsessed with focusing solely on the violence and perversion to be fully dealt with as a political allegory.  Fascists are, after all, human beings: by ignoring this and presenting them so demonically, it makes it impossible to truly fear them.

Salo has been referred to as "one of the most intellectually toxic films ever made."   Here at the Factual, we have to concur.  And we also have to tell you that, no, you don't need to watch it--which we're sure that you already knew.

Ultimates # 12

Written by Mark Millar
Art by Bryan Hitch
Published by Marvel Comics

It's been months since a new issue of Ultimates came out--and although no comic is ever really "worth the wait," the latest issue came as close to that as anything else in the last twenty years.  Without delving into the mechanics of plot, this latest issue of Ultimates was what one would refer to as a "fight" issue.  For most of this 7 part story, the various members of the team have been betrayed, tortured and imprisoned by a massive army of third-world terrorists who only recently had revealed why they were doing in this first place.  (It has something to do with "hate" and "America.")

The last issue was the obligatory issue where our various protagonists break the bonds of oppression using various methods of killing, maiming and/or mixtures of both.  It ended with the return of the Incredible Hulk, who then proceeded to kill as many people, robots, and super-powered bad guys as he possibly could.  Of course, he only did this for a few pages, and then the issue was over.  All those months later, issue 12 showed up and was non-stop brawling from cover to cover.  The most impressive part of the Ultimates has always been it's mixture of violence and dialog, so issue 12 was sure to be entertaining--but would it match up to it's already high standard?  After all, we've already seen the Hulk kill his way across New York in hopes of eating Freddie Prinze Jr. (sadly failing), we've already seen Captain America shove his fist down a immortal Nazi alien throat, and only two issues ago, Hawkeye ripped out his own fingernails to slaughter the men who had been torturing him for weeks (he used them like a ninja star.) 

How much more over-the-top can you get?  After all, this is a comic book, not Con Air for God's sake.  We've got standards, don't we?

Thankfully, Millar thrives on this sort of insanity, and with the help of Bryan Hitch (who can draw big panels of disgusting violence that look like they'd go well framed in your parents living room) he's pulled off the best knock-down drag out fight of any superhero comic in a long time--and by long time, we mean Maybe Best Ever.  Millar has punished the main characters for over a year now, and this issue was the one where the good guys got revenge--and it was a mean, ugly thing, as good revenge always is.  Every character had their moments: Hulk dismembering his counterpart while telling him that "you think too much," Quiksilver taking his competitor speedster apart, literally, at Mach 10, the debut of Iron Man 6 (which has to be seen to be believed, as it's the best art in the issue) and, of course, the final punch out at the base of the Vietnam War Memorial between Captain America and a super-powered Muslim who calls himself Abdul (because, as he puts it, "costumes and names are childish.") 

You'd be hard pressed to turn the Ultimates into a larger statement on the current global situation--and you'd be foolish to do so.  If anything, the Ultimates has left the realm of dark satire (like the Colbert Report) and become a Republican fantasy (like Fox News.)  Other than that, it's just plain fun--crazy, blood-soaked fun not fit for children, but fun nonetheless.  Sometimes we don't need comics to be more than that.

Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of People and Dangerous Ideas

By Chuck Klosterman
2006
384 pgs.
Published by Scribner

It’s a couple days before Christmas, 2004, and I’m sitting in the Minneapolis airport waiting for a significantly delayed flight to Fargo, North Dakota.  Chuck Klosterman is sitting across from me, talking loudly on his cell phone.  I am reading the issue of Esquire with George Clooney on the cover.  Chuck Klosterman writes for Esquire.  Even so, he has no reason to believe that I or any of the other Fargo-bound holiday travelers recognize him—despite the fact that he writes about our destination frequently, most notably in his first book, the heavy metal paean Fargo Rock City.

That book netted Klosterman a job at SPIN Magazine—a reliable source for solid music writing in the first part of the decade, if not the cultural barometer it once aspired to be.  A subsequent collection of essays, Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs, has (deservedly) escalated Klosterman to a rung of celebrity rarely (if ever) enjoyed by music writers.  In other words, people actually read his books.  However, the success of Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs has also plunged Klosterman into a strange period of consistently misidentifying his own strengths as a writer.  For example, the essays in Sex began with facets of popular culture (The SIMs, Saved By the Bell, the 80’s Celtics/Lakers rivalry) and mined them for philosophical or human or American truths.  In his columns for SPIN and Esquire, Klosterman now opts instead for observational comedy, aiming for a general quirkiness—absent of the depth that made his first two books work—and riffing on hot topics like why are men different than women.

In the January, 2005 issue of Esquire—the one that I am reading—he rails against people who feel betrayed by culture, citing a friend upset about the final episode of Sex & the City, in which Carrie Bradshaw ends up with Mr. Big.  This reads mostly like Klosterman responding to daily annoyance, not unlike a stand-up comic.  It also mostly rephrases an argument he made in Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs:  Culture, he says, can never be wrong.

In the July, 2004 issue of Esquire, he sets forth the theory of “Advancement,” which states that true artistic geniuses make works of art that are unintelligible by 99% of the population.  These Advanced works of art are neither 1) what is expected from the artist, nor 2) the opposite of what is expected.  “For example,” he writes, “if Radiohead released an album of wordless, mechanized droning, that would be predictable.  If Radiohead made a glam record, that would be overt.  But if Radiohead recorded an album of blues standards, they would Advance.”  He names Val Kilmer as the most Advanced actor on the planet.  This is intriguing, but reads a bit like barroom conversation among hipsters—something I would participate in, but hesitate to subject others to.

In the October, 2004 issue of Esquire, Klosterman writes about the imminent threat of “Super-Babies”—children born inhumanly strong or with X-ray vision—as a justifiable reason to support stem-cell research.

I have not particularly enjoyed or agreed with any of these essays.  However, I have found myself bringing up at least two of them in casual conversation.  This, I believe, perfectly encapsulates my relationship with Chuck Klosterman, the writer.

Chuck Klosterman, the person, on the other hand, is sitting across from me in the Minneapolis airport, talking loudly on his cell-phone.  Apparently, Val Kilmer has read the Advancement article, and has invited Klosterman to visit him at his house in New Mexico for an exclusive interview.  This in and of itself is not surprising.  What is surprising is that Klosterman is talking so loudly that he must obviously 1) want people to know that Val Kilmer is a fan of his, and 2) want people to know that he wants people to know that Val Kilmer is a fan of his.

Now: Jump forward to the present.  Klosterman has recently published Chuck Klosterman IV, a collection of his magazine and newspaper articles spanning the past ten years or so.  I have been increasingly frustrated with Klosterman’s writing over the past couple of years.  His last book, Killing Yourself to Live, was profoundly disappointing in that it used an incredible idea (a cross-country trip visiting rock stars’ graves) as an excuse to discuss mainly two things: how eccentric he is, and how many women love him.  And yet, I constantly reference passages from Killing Yourself to Live in conversation.  So, despite my current disenchantment with Klosterman, I bought and read IV immediately.

Chuck Klosterman IV is divided into three sections.  The first contains full-length magazine and newspaper articles—celebrity profiles, ruminations on pop-cultural events, conversations with psychics about bowling.  Klosterman is obsessed with celebrity persona: Are these people for real or full of shit?  First, he assumes that each person he profiles is absolutely as smart as they possibly could be (this is an extremely rare quality in people, especially writers—elsewhere, Klosterman writes that every successful person absolutely deserves to be successful; going by the way he treats his subjects, he truly believes this.)  Then he goes about dissecting their actions in order to determine which pieces of the person’s personality are calculated and which are genuine.

This is Klosterman at his best.  Taken as a whole, the chapters in the first section of IV greatly enhance one another.  He seems to be approaching a single question from many angles and through many subjects (Britney Spears, Val Kilmer, Mike Skinner, Billy Joel.)  The fact that he wrote many of these pieces as assignments for editors keeps him from slipping into self-indulgence.

The section reaches its apex in a collection of four pieces on celebrity deaths.  Here, he compares the death of Dee Dee Ramone to that of Ratt’s Robbin Crosby; he compares the deaths of Spalding Gray and Mary-Ellis Bunim; he ruminates on the deaths of Johnny Carson and Eric Griffiths.  IV is worth buying merely for these essays; everything else is gravy.  They begin by examining each subject’s persona and end with genuine insight into American culture.

However, Klosterman is just as obsessed with his own persona.  This is the Klosterman who wants us to hear him talking about Val Kilmer—equally deliberate and self-aware.  IV bears all the marks of someone keen on controlling others’ perceptions of his own personality.  He comments on each of the articles with introductions and footnotes; conducts pre-emptive strikes against criticism by criticizing himself; plays both sides of arguments; and generally presents himself as emotionally unattached to his own writing.

These are niggling complaints in the first section of Chuck Klosterman IV, but they evolve into crutches in the second section.  Here, Klosterman collects essays from his columns in SPIN and Esquire. (All three of the aforementioned columns are included; the “Super-Babies” article has not gotten any better with age.)  These, unsurprisingly, vary greatly in depth and quality.

But IV gets really bizarre in its final section—a fifty page piece of fiction (!) that Klosterman wrote while working as a film critic in Akron, Ohio.  It is about a film critic in Akron, Ohio.  In his introduction, Klosterman calls this “reverse creativity.”

I have no idea whether the quality of this fiction is good or bad, and this is why: Klosterman writes fiction in the exact same voice as he writes non-fiction.

In the introduction, Klosterman insists he did not mean to make his protagonist so dislikable.  Yet, the protagonist’s persona is exactly like the persona Klosterman takes on in his writing.  So what do we take from this?  Is he completely unaware of the similarity?  Does he think we’ll be unable to notice the similarity?  Or is he merely trying to control our perception by pre-emptively suggesting that he is unlikable so that we may assure him he is not?  The piece is seven years old.  Does he think it’s good or bad?  Is it Advanced?  Or is Klosterman merely working toward Advancement (a move which is decidedly not Advanced… unless, maybe, it’s made by the chief proponent of Advancement)?

I don’t know.

The other thing that Klosterman did in the Minneapolis airport back in December, 2004 was this:  He had either a first class ticket or a business class ticket (I don’t really know how to distinguish between the two—whatever the case, he wasn’t flying coach.)  He was waiting for the delayed flight with the rest of us.  Yet, he waited until everybody else boarded the plan, and got on at the very last minute.  This was something so simple and inconsequential, but, for all I’ve flown, I’ve never seen it done before.  It probably has some easy explanation (claustrophobia?), but I’m baffled by it.  I’ve thought about it many times since, but I really couldn’t tell you why.

See, I should have realized then what occurred to me after reading the fiction at the end of IV:  Chuck Klosterman is way, way ahead of me.

Marty Brown, 2006

Jackass Number Two

2006
Directed by Jeff Tremaine

If there were any real doubts that Jackass Number Two was not going to be number one at the box office, those doubts are now, officially, at rest.  Almost 30 million dollars for an end of summer R rated movie?  That's rare, even though it is already been used as by cineaste and intellectuals as "evidence" of America's awful taste.  Of course, by this argument, terrible movies like The Lakehouse would have been unqualified successes, which, of course, they were not.  To all the doubters and armchair philosophers, we at the Factual have this to say: Jackass may not be smart (it isn't) but neither are are any of the other films in this weeks top box office draw--and neither are almost all of the movies that were released in the past year.  The simple truth is this: there are almost no good American movies being released right now--and the ones that are relatively good are not by American directors at all.  2006 has been a banner year for anyone working on a thesis about commerce replacing art at the cinema house--now that the big studios have constructed cost-protective outlets (Warner Independent, etc.) the ghettoizing of intelligent work will get worse.

Is this to imply that Jackass is smart? No, not at all--if anything, the amount of creativity from Knoxville and his crew of lunatics seems to be stretched a bit thin in their latest outing.  But what's intoxicating about the film (beyond the horse semen, feces and Academy Award winning cameos) is that unlike almost any American film this year, Jackass has a palpable sense of urgency, a clear and inspiring message that regardless of harm, these men-boys will not stop or rest on their laurels.  Unlike Kevin Spacey in Superman, Johnny Depp in Pirates or any of the other low-rent performances from high-rent actors in big-budget studio jack fests (I'm looking at you, Philip Seymour Hoffman), Jackass Number Two never, not for a second, showcases men doing jobs for the sake of a paycheck.  What would have once seemed unthinkable due to both taste limitation and physical danger is now exactly what they will pursue.  Even to someone unschooled in the history of this suicidal clique, Jackass Number Two is a rare piece of excitement: a movie laced with determination; a determination born out of the desire to top oneself so insanely that fear and danger are not only expected, but required.  When the moment comes where one of the cast members literally begins to cry in fear (if not a first for Jackass, than an incredibly rare occurrence) the sense of surprise in a half-filled theater is as palpable as a punch to the kidneys: "He's crying? And not out of pain? What the fuck?"  It isnot just because it seems so out of character--it is because to anyone watching movies this year, it is one of the few times you have seen anyone actually invest anything personal in their work; and considering the work they are involving themselves in, it's the best example of the rest of Hollywood's cowardice.  If a man in Jackass can give his all to a silly daredevil stunt or a poop joke, than why can't a 20 million dollar leading man show some guts in MI3?

Jackass is, of course, not for everyone's taste.  That doesn't change the simple truth that, like it or not, it's one of the few courageous films of the year--which may be a more damning indictment of those currently reviling it.

Fearless

2006
Directed by Ronny Yu
Written by Chris Chow
Starring Jet Li

Martial arts films have never really had a classic--sure, they've dabbled in popularity, they've occasionally been well-known, but a straight martial arts movie has never really been as successful as a film beyond profits on a balance sheet.  While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it will always remain a bit depressing that men like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan don't have a film library to match up with their incredible talents.   Jet Li has been able to achieve some greater success, choosing to turn down a lot of ugly American comedy scripts (all of which are then made into hideous films by Jackie Chan) in his attempts to capture American audiences with action movies that have actual quality to them.  Jet's problem has been that the choices he's made haven't been very good: Romeo Must Die, Kiss of the Dragon, The One and the DMX-starring Cradle 2 Grave were all abysmal movies, rife with poor casting and terrible dialog.  Again and again, the only thing that shone through was Li's performance--his physical perfection, his incredible ability and his strikingly honest charisma were able to make what should have been unwatchable movies entertaining.  With an incredible piece of film making like Hero (not an explicit martial-arts film under the aegis of the Factual Opinion) under his belt, Jet seemed poised to strike an even greater note with the French production of Danny the Dog, which consisted of a brilliant score by trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack and gold-rush casting in the form of Morgan Freeman and Bob Hoskins.  Sadly, Unleashed, as it was known in America, was another miserable failure; an unbearable story saddled with the sort of nonsense driven characters and idiotic costumes that not even Li's formidable athleticism could save.

Returning to the drawing board, Li decided to retire from the genre with Fearless, another  based-on-"true"-Chinese events film, subtitled for American audiences.  Hoping, one assumes, to give the Hero loving audiences something more intelligent than the fare Li's name brings, while still giving his core base of action fans enough high kicks to ensure their company.  As Li is now 42, referring to Fearless as his "final martial arts epic" makes the film seem that much more important, and the brilliant previews lead the viewer to hope, against all logic, that finally, someone has made a kung-fu movie that isn't going to be saddled with embarrassment.

Unfortunately, logic has done to the beautiful martial arts what all the wires and Matrix films have been attempting to pull off: Fearless is just like all of the rest of them.  Yes, the fights are incredible, and the physicality on display are just as amazing as the advertisements led one to believe.  Everything else...well, everything else is just like the "else" in any of the other American Jet Li films: stupid, wooden dialog, delivered by boring actors who seem uncomfortable with any sentence beyond a threat or an overly sentimental promise, scenes of incredibly blunt romance between two people who seem to be the only single people on Earth, evildoers bereft of any sensible motive, and, worst of all, pointless violence wrecked upon children and elderly women so that the protagonist can "learn a lesson."  Although one can't expect much from the director of Bride of Chucky and Freddy Vs. Jason, and Jet clearly hand his hands full fighting 28% of the population of China, one can still feel slighted, and, yes, even a little angry.  Fearless is just like every other bad movie with good action made in any genre--except that it clearly thinks and behaves like it's not.  Over and over, the dull script attempts to use the trials and tribulations of it's main character as some kind of statement on man's responsibility to his...what? His family? His country?  It's never very clear, and even if it was, it's done so poorly that it does little more to aggravate.  Like the crazed teenager in the row behind you, Fearless is the sort of film that makes one cry out, "For God's sake, just get to the fighting!"  Fearless, of course, does--but the bad taste it leaves behind makes one wish that Mr. Li had just thrown up his hands and retired with a remake of Once Upon A Time In China.

Mad Max

1979
Written and Directed by George Miller
Starring Mel Gibson

In these hallowed days of disgust, as Mel Gibson gets in line with R. Kelly, Michael Jackson and Gunter Grass as artists who have failed to toe the line as decent human beings, it will be easy to slight their respective works as mere reflections of their obscene personal failings.  Still, as any normal man will tell you, one has to return to Thriller eventually--MJ may be a disgusting pedophile (by "may" we mean "is")--but taking that out on all those adorable tiger cubs and Billie Jean just shows a lack of maturity.  So we here at the Factual are willing to wait for you to return from your well-earned opportunity ridiculing Mr. Gibson, for we have a film you should watch.

Mad Max is the least well-remembered of the three "Max" films, falling further into memory than the Master Blaster and Tina Turner of Thunderdome or the sheer perfection that is Road Warrior--Mad Max, in all honesty, isn't as good as either of those films, one of which isn't even that good.  Max is both incredibly sentimental and cynical at the same time, jumping from scenes of horrible dialog to incredibly intense car accidents, mixed with a veritable Molotov cocktail of homegrown gang violence--the movie is so devoid of any real characters or any sort of real acting that Mel Gibson's performance is more impressive because it didn't ruin his career, much less because Max is the film that started it.  So why did it succeed--and it did, heroically earning a massive profit?  The easiest way is to watch it--and in watching it, you'll see why: because Mad Max gave a generation of viewers (well, male viewers at least) what they all wanted, but didn't know how to ask for--automobile pornography.  Nothing in Mad Max holds up anymore, nothing human at least: but those cars, those cars!  From the psychopathic version of chicken that results in broken humanity that opens the film until the sociopathic speeding that Max engages in while cruising for vengeance that ends the film, the viewer is bombarded, pumped and assaulted with every different form of fast cars, chases and engines so that the climax of the film, with it's explosion-as-backdrop, serves also as the climax of the viewers relationship with Max's car.  By the close, we're back where we've started, looking at a vehicle we'd all like to have--only now even more so, because we've seen what that baby can do.

The Mad Max franchise went on to greater moments in film with it's next installment The Road Warrior, before dwindling to Thunderdome, a film that is memorable only because it's a treasure trove of pop cultural oddity, but neither film, nor any other one since, have been willing to showcase cars so sexually and prominently--that is, unless one counts the dull rubberized nature of the Fast and Furious franchise, which is reminiscent of what Max might be like if he couldn't have grown facial hair, and he wrapped his "last of the great Interceptors" in a giant condom.  Max isn't a movie for everyone--it's just a great movie for people who like to go fast.  The rest can hop on board a Lincoln with Dan Akyrod and Jessica Tandy--rumor has it that Morgan Freeman knows about a new Dairy Queen.

100 Bullets # 77

Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso
Cover by Dave Johnson
Published by Vertigo

Regular readers of the COW awards may have noticed that 100 Bullets haven't made it to the top of the pile in a few months--and they may have assumed that has been due to a lapse in quality.  Nothing could be further from the truth-the crew at Vertigo have been steadily putting out some of the most dynamic work available on this long-running crime comic, and it has only failed to receive the Factual's highest honor due to it's consistency.  We try to embrace work that is both innovative as well as excellent here, and while the Bullets have been great in the past few months, perfect even, it wasn't until issue 77 that they, once again, ripped open their now-twisted plot to reveal an even higher level of intelligence than thought possible.

Simply put, 100 Bullets dispensed with what seemed its initial plot dynamic about three years ago--while new players are still introduced, and some of the old guard have been put to rest, the game has stayed the same.  Each issue layers another chapter upon the basic foundation: some really tough people are coming after the "families" that betrayed them, and they are doing it methodically, violently, and slowly; following a plan that only a few seem to fully comprehend.  It makes for fascinating reading--each month one is guaranteed yet another hard-boiled epic tale, each one delivered in the best dialog of any comic on the shelf, bar none. (A short moment of admiration: 100 Bullets would be totally unworkable if it wasn't for Azzarello's dialog--the man has created an entirely new version of the sort of noirish poetry that hasn't really been updated since Double Indemnity.  Nowhere has any artist seemed to grasp what Azzarello proves each month: noir dialog can only work in current settings if it sounds like current language--merely forcing actors/characters to parrot James Cagney and Sam Spade doesn't work, except for nostalgic masturbation--which is why Sin City sounded so cheesy, and why Brick didn't--children talking like 50's films sounds weird enough to be serious, but when Bruce Willis does it, it just sounds terribly, terribly lame.)

Since the beginning, it's been clear that the characters in 100 Bullets weren't what any reasonable person would call "good."  Instead, it's followed the regular anti-hero format, set up years ago in the work of Kurosawa or Clint Eastwood: yes, they aren't nice, and they don't play fair, but they aren't as bad as the really bad guys.  What Azzarello had been hinting at for months finally came the closest to full bloom as his type of storytelling will allow; that not only is it possible that our main characters may be worse than was expected, we may have spent the last 77 issues rooting for the wrong team.  To put it into context, it's like watching the Star Wars movies, only to discover in the last five minutes that the Emperor was the good guy all along.  It's not that Azzarello has been lying to us--it's that we, the reader, have been lying to ourselves; assuming that whatever these characters were doing, it was for the greater good.

With issue 77, that lie was thrown back in our face.  Whatever they are, whatever they're planning, it's going to go badly for a whole lot of people--and the reader has been cheering them along the entire time.  Azzarello, with a deftness for illusion that is his greatest strength, has made it impossible for any regular reader to ignore their now shared guilt in all the horror and hate that have gone before.  In doing so, Azzarello and Risso have reminded everybody who reads comics how much power these cheap things can have--and they've done it without a hint of condescension or irony.