Despite the president's necessary ramblings against the west during his latest state of the nation speech, there are already hints of greater caution and prudence.
There's a hint of Great White Hope-ism that takes place when people feel a collective sense that a way of life or entitlement is being threatened.
Thanks to Segel's performance, Lipsky's book, and Wallace's own talk, even the film's hint of great mysteries is occasionally moving, exciting, fascinating, but the experience remains inescapably, dismayingly anecdotal.
The easy description is that it's "The Walking Dead" with angels instead of zombies, desert instead of forest and no hint of great writing or acting whatsoever.
We are not only aware that Michelle and Barack will end up together, we know that when Michelle tells him "you definitely have a knack for making speeches" it's a broad hint of great things to come.
It's a kind of thought without content (the script, as A. O. Scott pointed out in the Times last week, scrupulously avoids any hint of greater substance) but one that, nonetheless, suggests, however fleetingly, the movie this could have been.
Like my mind was this little basket, big flood pouring in, but all I got was this hint of greater water?" "You were always a nice person," I say.
The patriarchal violence is peculiarly mirrored by the presence of a pair of wholesome and witty young I.R.A. activists, whose hint of greater violence in a greater cause suggests just as powerfully that this arcadian paradise isn't given for free and, rather, must be painfully won.
Yet a well-turned phrase has the power to be both arresting and enlightening, as well as a hint of greater depths lurking within the full work.
European Council President Herman Van Rompuy said the EU leaders had reaffirmed the need for sound government finances, but there was a hint of greater flexibility in his language, the BBC's Andrew Walker in Brussels reports.
