Cons: Still, preaching is preaching. Scapegoating of Bruce Willis
character.
The Bottom Line: Edward Zwick ("Glory") was wayyyy ahead of September 11 with this frightening vision of runaway Islamic terrorism on American soil, and moral toll of retaliation.
The opening is out of a Tom Clancy technothriller, with the
skillful desert `extraction' of an Iraqi religious leader whose followers are responsible for horrendous terrorist acts. Cut to New York City, where an indeterminate number of the hostage holy man's disciples commence a relentless campaign of suicide bombings. Rats in the walls of American's greatest global village, the terrorists conceal themselves skillfully amidst Brooklyn's large, law-abiding Arab-descended community. The question is, how to root the fanatics out without turning Madison Square Garden into a nightmare concentration camp for Christian and Muslim alike? Denzel Washington plays righteous FBI Agent named Anthony Hubbard, who finds his investigation encroached upon by an arrogant government spook (well-played by a low-glam Annette Bening) with a whole variety of names and cover stories.
Two battles take place here, the cat-and-mouse stuff between heroes and terrorists on one hand - and the territorial clashes behind the scenes, between the FBI, CIA and ultimately the US military, personified by Oliver North-style General William Devereaux (Bruce Willis), called into the fray while continued terrorist strikes cripple the metropolis. Even Devereaux himself warns against applying martial law, as President Clinton (via out-of-context news clips) inches closer to invoking the War Powers Act and sending American troops to occupy American soil, for the first time in modern history. His resourses severely depleted, Hubbard strives to retain a veneer of civilization, while the Bening character demonstrates classic Washington hubris as she tries to play her contacts in the Arab underground like puppets - which they aren't.
Praise be to Allah that (despite Willis and his "Die Hard"
baggage) "The Siege" does not fall in lockstep with 80s actioners like "Invasion USA" and "Red Dawn" that made granite icons out of Norris, Schwarzenegger and Stallone, mowing scores of heathen down with their mighty weapons fire. I had to laugh when this film was released (it's not so funny now) that Islamic defense groups and liberals jumped all over this film in the name of political correctness (and getting their names in the papers). Zwick's script is plainly more than Rambo fantasies, and it treats persecuted Arabs with concern and equanimity. The result is brainy, broad-canvas drama that functions both as a slick thriller and a potent meditation on constitutional justice and human rights in a time of panic and crisis.
There are two cinematic antecedents for "The Siege" that couldn't be more different. One is "The Battle of Algiers," Gillo Pontecorvo's gritty 1965 docu-drama of how ragtag Arab freedom-fighters - or, if you will, terrorists - pushed the French colonists of Algeria so hard and so far that they ultimately won independence (but note that today that `free' Algeria is a battlefield between government and Islamic-fundamentalist insurgents). "The Siege" transplants Pontecorvo's textbook
treatise on guerilla resistance from North Africa to midtown Manhattan, bringing the war back home.
The other source? "Godzilla," the American remake. Zwick also ponders the consequences of a big, green monster loose in New York City, only this time it's the Army's fatigue-clad hordes of G.I.'s, granted supreme authority and imposing checkpoints on the Brooklyn Bridge and turning the Big Apple into a facsimile of ravaged Beruit. These moments are truly disturbing, and should be seen by all those talk-radio cranks who seriously want to set the military after drug kingpins, street gangs, or that delivery boy who keeps throwing the paper into the bushes.
If there's a weak aspect in "The Siege," it's Bruce Willis's character, initially too complex and self-aware to be credible as the jarhead menace he's supposed to become. One could well imagine that the material needed an extra villain, and Gen. Devereaux, like a good soldier, volunteered out of duty. Still, now that the WTC has fallen, viewers should give "The Siege" a chance. It has an overall gravity seldom seen in mainstream American film since the 1970s, and now plays as prophecy.
When the U.S. military abducts a Muslim leader New York City becomes the target of several terrorist attacks in this gripping political thriller rippe...More at Family Video
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