Casablanca, just another guy fearing commitment, sacrificing love to go on hanging with the boys.

When Harry Met Sally, we knew from the start where this one would finish up.

Say Anything, just a daddy’s girl with no mind of her own, and a kickboxing lay about with no aspirations for the future.

Forrest Gump, hilarious but just another story of a whacked out junkie who couldn’t see what she needed even after decades of having it shoved in her face.

Captain Corellie’s Mandolin; while Penelope Cruz is a lot of fun to look at it’s just another case of boy meets girl, boy goes off to war, than boy comes home against all odds. 

Come on Hollywood, been there done that and burned the tee shirt.

     For year’s movies, TV, and books have been trying to show us what true love is.  We suffocate beneath mounds of sappy honey laced celluloid.  Hours of blank eyed staring hope surfing channels for a story we could believe in.  An assault of prose on eyes and ears, as writers desperately try to name the unnamable.  In the space of a heartbeat during a conversation with the coolest chick ever to walk the earth, well after my grandmother that is, the vale of ignorance was ripped away and the only true love story ever told was brought to my attention. 

     In 1984 a simple man showed us all the light.  He was no intellectual giant, nor a star of screen or sports; just an average soldier is what he was.  Though an average man who would make the decision to sacrifice his, future, his family, his friends, and his very life to save the life of a woman he has never met. 
     This simple soldier fell in love with the idea of a woman of strength and character.  Fell in love with the image of a lonely woman with eyes that saw too much of the world mankind would make for itself.  A solemn expression of mixed hope, and resignation for her part in history.
     A woman who would, in the course of time, give birth to a man whom he would come to respect and admire above all others.  A man who would save this simple soldiers life and the lives of countless millions through the courage of the convictions passed down to him by this amazing woman. 
     Upon learning that the life of this beacon of hope for all mankind was in danger of assassination he volunteered to give up everything to be sent to her, naked as the day he was born.  With no weapons save his wits and the burning passion of his love.
     This story is called many things, but never a love story, what a horrible injustice to a tale that gives something to everyone.  A tale that teaches us that love is about the willingness to sacrifice everything to ensure that the one we love will still have a future.  This tale gives something to everyone; car chases for the adrenaline junkies in our midst.  A war story for the warhawks among us, for the science weenies in the world we are given time travel and cyborgs’ with an Austrian accents; and most importantly a lesson that teaches us that with perseverance and passion human beings can overcome even the most intractable of enemies.  So the next time your looking for the meaning of love remember despite what you read in The Accidental Tourist, or the sweetest romance novel of the present day; you will only find true romance while being chased by killer robots.

 Bryan D. Lang