The Washington Times reports—surprise, surprise—that antiwar films aren’t exactly conquering the box office.

In the Valley of Elah, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon, has grossed all of $6.5 million so far, and Rendition, a bigger-budget pic, is off to an equally anemic start. It tells the story of an Egyptian-American kidnapped by the CIA and transported to be tortured abroad—not exactly what audiences are seeking. As the Times notes:

Rendition, which features three Oscar winners in key roles, grossed $4.1 million over the weekend in 2,250 screens for a ninth-place finish. A re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas beat it, and it’s fourteen years old.

By contrast, The Kingdom, a thriller set in Saudi Arabia that presents Americans as the good guys fighting jihadist terrorists, has done better, if still not spectacularly. It has grossed over $44 million so far.

All films focused on the war on terrorism are handicapped, no doubt, by the desire of film-goers to be diverted from, rather than reminded of, their daily worries. I, for one, had no interest in seeing even critically acclaimed movies like World Trade Center and United 93 about September 11. Having been downtown that day, I’m not eager for cinematic reenactments of the horrors I witnessed.

But I might be willing to see a movie that dramatizes the heroics of American soldiers. There is no shortage of examples from which to choose, starting with the late Navy SEAL Michael Murphy, whose family just accepted a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the antiwar crowd in Hollywood to make such a flick. Apparently they’d rather lose money than do anything that might be construed as supporting the American war effort.