THE SIEGE

The political thriller attempts a comeback in Edward Zwick’s new movie about terrorism, THE SIEGE, starring Denzel Washington, Annette Benning and Bruce Willis. The movie has already gotten some heat from Arab groups for its portrayal of Muslim terrorists, even though the movie has a subplot that is extremely sympathetic to the Arab-American community in New York as a whole.

When a mysterious group of Muslims stages a series of terrorist bombings in New York City, Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington), the head of the FBI/NYPD Terrorism Task Force, is assigned to investigate the bombings. He teams up with Elise Kraft (Annette Benning), a CIA operative with important sources in the Arab-American community and ambiguous ties to the suspects.

The bombings escalate, and the President of the United States declares martial law in the Arab section of New York City. A general named William Devereaux (Bruce Willis) reluctantly but forcefully uses harsh means to “round up the usual suspects” to use the famous term from CASABLANCA. Hubbard and Kraft search for the secretive bombers while at the same time they try to stop the general, who seems to have secretive plans of his own.

THE SIEGE plays on all the terrorist intrigue that’s become so much a part of America’s foreign policy. In the movie, a small group of Muslims from Iraq have a secret agenda that eventually is revealed in an exciting climax. They are led by a charismatic leader who has been kidnapped by the United States and imprisoned in a secret location. THE SIEGE also plays on the fallout from the Oklahoma and New York Trade Center bombings earlier this decade, which led to some new anti-terrorist laws by the bloated federal government in Washington. The movie asks, What would happen if one of our major cities became an armed camp like Beirut or Belfast? At what point does the protection of the country’s citizens conflict with the protection of their rights?

This movie is reasonably exciting and has some interesting moments, but its action sequences are somewhat familiar, predictable and strangely uninvolving. Take, for instance, another thriller about terrorists, the original DIE HARD movie with Bruce Willis. In that movie, Willis’s character is always personally in danger, as is his wife. The danger was unique, filled with action scenes audiences hadn’t really seen before. In THE SIEGE, however, the characters of the three major stars are hardly ever in personal danger until almost the very end. The climax of this movie contains one of those typical shoot-out scenes that Hollywood-made movies and TV shows have been doing for years. The final conflict between Washington and Willis also lacks originality.

The acting in this movie, while good, is nothing to write home about. There are some interesting moments between Denzel Washington’s character and the other two stars, Willis and Benning, and even more interesting moments between Washington and character actor Tony Shalhoub’s FBI agent, who is supposed to be an immigrant from Lebanon. Benning’s enigmatic CIA character and Willis’s evil general character take actions in the movie, however, that don’t quite make sense politically or psychologically. Director Edward Zwick tries to build tension between them and Washington over these actions, but the tension seems rather artificial and naïve. For instance, at one point Washington complains to Willis that Willis’s actions are “shattering” the United States Constitution. His comment is politically naïve because both liberals and conservatives have been complaining for years that the federal government has been working, in one way or another, to destroy the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights against employing a standing army against U.S. citizens (a Constitutional principle which was clearly violated at Waco and Ruby Ridge.) One may disagree with the merits of their claims, depending on one’s political point of view, but THE SIEGE envisions a scenario that it assumes is new and different. This is a tremendously artificial conceit that only a wishy-washy, non-ideological person, unfamiliar with American political history, would harbor.

Also, it is hard to see what exactly the CIA agent and the general are trying to gain by their actions in the second half of the movie. Their motives are much too murky. The use of the general’s character, in fact, seems anti-military. It may be hard, therefore, for people to relate to these two characters.

Finally, THE SIEGE includes some violent, bloody scenes, a fornication scene, 35 obscenities, and 2 strong profanities. Such content merits an extreme caution for adults from MOVIEGUIDE. Only the movie’s overall moral worldview saves it from a worse moral rating. Although two characters recite The Lord’s Prayer while one of them is dying, the movie has no solid theological or moral content that would encourage a Christian, or a Jew or Muslim for that matter, to run out and see it.