Overview of Chapo Trap House — “1075 - The Bennington Caliphate feat. Josh Olson”
This episode is a long, very funny, and very hostile teardown of the Daily Wire action movie Run, Hide, Fight: Infidels (referred to throughout as Infidels), with screenwriter Josh Olson joining Felix and Will. The core argument is that the film is not a real thriller or even a functional piece of propaganda: it is an incoherent, online-brained rant against campus protesters, liberals, and Muslims that lacks the craft, conviction, or entertainment value of the older right-wing action movies it clearly wants to imitate.
Main Takeaways
- The hosts see Infidels as wish-fulfillment propaganda aimed more at anti-campus, anti-left culture-war targets than at telling a believable story.
- They argue the film’s actual emotional target is college protesters, trans people, gay people, and liberals, with Muslims functioning mainly as a vehicle for the movie’s broader grievances.
- The movie is described as inert as action cinema: bad staging, bad dialogue, weak stakes, and no real suspense.
- Josh Olson and the hosts contrast it with older reactionary action films from the 1980s and ’90s, which were often racist and ugly but still competently made and genuinely entertaining.
- Ben Shapiro’s claim that the movie is a mix of Red Dawn and Blazing Saddles is treated as absurd: the panel argues it is neither sharp enough to be satire nor disciplined enough to be serious action.
Film Critique
Why the movie doesn’t work
- It feels like a collection of talking points and internet arguments rather than a screenplay.
- The dialogue is packed with culture-war references that sound like arguments from social media, not lines spoken by believable characters.
- The movie wants to be terrifying, but the panel says it is so transparently hostile to its targets that it becomes hard to invest in the action.
- Even the violence is undercut by bad execution and a lack of emotional clarity.
Jonathan Majors’ role
- The episode repeatedly notes how little screen time Jonathan Majors actually gets, despite the movie being sold around him.
- They speculate that he may have been limited by injury or by a very short shooting schedule.
- His character is discussed as one of the few attempts at a real protagonist arc, but even that is flattened by the script.
“Old-school” right-wing action vs. Daily Wire slop
- The panel compares the film to Canon Films, Cobra, Delta Force, and similar older reactionary action movies.
- Their point: those films were often blatantly racist or politically crude, but they still had:
- clear villains,
- real momentum,
- charismatic stars,
- and actual filmmaking skill.
- Infidels instead feels like a movie made by people who want the talking points more than the movie.
Notable Themes Discussed
Campus culture-war fantasy
- The movie is framed as a response to pro-Palestinian campus protests, but the hosts argue it is really an excuse to fantasize about punishing “woke” students.
- The panel keeps returning to the idea that the film’s true villains are college kids with political opinions, not the terrorists.
Islam, women, and reactionary messaging
- The movie’s most overdetermined theme is Islam’s supposed treatment of women.
- The hosts point out that the film simultaneously:
- wants to condemn Islamist misogyny,
- but also seems to endorse the same patriarchal logic when applied to women in the West.
- That contradiction is one of the main reasons they say the film is ideologically confused.
Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire style
- A recurring joke is that the movie feels like Ben Shapiro talking to himself through characters.
- The panel mocks the way Daily Wire productions try to sound “hard” while remaining embarrassed about their own beliefs.
- They see this as a signature flaw of the whole operation: too cowardly to be truly extreme, too clumsy to be effective satire.
Running Jokes and Side Tangents
- The episode includes extended riffs about:
- Reacher as a better modern action property,
- Bluey and Miss Rachel as examples of actually effective family entertainment,
- and future Daily Wire movie ideas that would be even more deranged.
- They also joke about the film’s bizarre supporting cast, including cameos and minor actors that seem chosen more for ideological fit than for performance.
Wrap-Up / Final Judgment
The episode’s final conclusion is that Infidels is a failure on almost every level:
- not good propaganda,
- not good satire,
- not good action,
- and not even satisfyingly evil.
The hosts and Josh Olson argue that if the Daily Wire wants to make reactionary genre films, it either needs:
- more actual talent,
- more honesty about its politics,
- or at least enough craft to make the thing watchable.
Plugged at the End
The episode also briefly promotes:
- Josh Olson’s podcast The Movies That Made Me,
- an upcoming Champagne Sharks appearance,
- and Chapo / Patreon scheduling updates, including upcoming Movie Mindset and Players Club content.