The annual Over The Top NYE show at Reunion Tower will add a drone light show to the festivities this year.
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Reunion Tower will add a drone light show to its annual Over The Top NYE event this year, making for even brighter start to 2022.
Taking place on — duh — December 31, the sixth annual event will feature the usual light show on the tower itself and fireworks, but they will be joined by a 225-drone light show engineered and flown by Dallas-Fort Worth-based Sky Elements.
The drones will fly at heights of up to 400 feet and create an array of visual elements to bolster the already memorable show.
Organizers are hopeful that the addition of the drones will make this year's show the most memorable one since it started in 2016.
"We are thrilled to add Sky Elements to the Reunion Tower Over The Top NYE 2021 production," said Dusti Groskreutz, President of Reunion Tower, in a statement. "Reunion Tower Over The Top NYE is a one-of-a-kind show, not only in the Central Time Zone but across the country. The addition of this drone show will continue to make this spectacular an evening to remember for our viewers as we usher in 2022."
Anyone interested in watching the show has multiple options, although none from directly below the tower, as that area will be closed to the public. Spectators are encouraged to watch the show from various vantage points around the city. The show will also be broadcast on TV by The Nexstar Media Group (NBC 5 in DFW), and KLUV (98.7 FM) will simulcast the celebration.
At this point in movie history, there are precious few ways to make a war film feel original. Every major American war, including the most recent ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been covered, and the “war is hell” idea has been featured in too many films to count. So for a film like the new Warfare to stand out, it needs to do something that other war films have not.
To say that it accomplishes that goal is an understatement. Set in Iraq in 2006, it follows a platoon of soldiers tasked with helping to gain control of the city of Ramadi, a hotbed of activity in the war at that time. But this is not a story of good triumphing over evil, nor one that tries to examine exactly what the U.S. military was trying to accomplish in the war. Instead, it’s just a story of a group of young men trying to do the job they’re asked to do, and what happens to them during that mission.
It presents as fact, with no judgment either way, that one squad of the platoon overtakes the home of two Iraqi families as part of the mission. An ensuing firefight pins the soldiers down with almost no way to escape, and subsequent rescue attempts by other squads result in multiple casualties. The bulk of the film focuses on how the shell-shocked and injured soldiers react to the situation in which they find themselves.
Written and directed by Alex Garland (Civil War) and Ray Mendoza, the film is based on the memories of Mendoza and his fellow soldiers of this exact situation they experienced. As such, the film does not attempt to add extra drama or even emphasize one character over another. In fact, the first 30-40 minutes of the film are relatively boring, as the squad relays information about their position to other, unseen people.
The men in the platoon are not exactly interchangeable with each other, but the way the film is structured, they’re essentially equals. It’s easy to tell who the leaders are, but those giving orders are not treated as more important to the film than those carrying them out. This is especially true when things go to hell, as each person goes from trying to fight to trying to survive, with their training coming into play in different ways.
The situation depicted in the film is somewhat mundane - it’s not some big battle or a turning point in the war - but the intensity with which Garland and Mendoza stage it makes it enormously impactful. They put the audience right in the thick of the carnage, and the horrific injuries inflicted on some of the men, as well as the seemingly never-ending screams of pain emanating from them, can be difficult to take.
The cast features a few actors who are starting to make names for themselves (Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, Noah Centineo, Charles Melton, Michael Gandolfini), others who’ve had smaller impacts (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Cosmo Jarvis, Evan Holtzman), and plenty of others who have yet to get their big breaks. Each of them does their job extremely well, which in this case means that they complement each other’s performances, with none of them overshadowing the others.
Warfare is not an overtly political film, and yet the politics of war are inextricable from the story it tells. Neither anti-war nor pro-war, it simply lays out the facts of one individual mission in a larger conflict, and each viewer will likely take away something different from the experience of watching it.
