The Siege

This was part of the Action Movie Friday series that Deb and her old friend Scott started a few years ago. We picked the movie before the reviews came out (which were lukewarm at best) and stuck with it because we knew no matter how mediocre it was, it would still be better than The Waterboy. Imagine my surprise when I wound up liking this a lot more than I had intended. Imagine my even bigger surprise when I found out The Waterboy took in $39 million and set a new box office record for November. Hmmm...

It's sort of a mix between Die Hard With a Vengeance (mad bombers throughout New York) and 1984 (Orwellian police state), though it's actually a little more and a lot less than that. Denzel Washington is (solid as) Anthony Hubbard, head of the terrorism task force for both FBI and NYPD, and man, does he have his hands full. Day after day, he is confronted with bomber after bomber, yet he has no real idea who they are or what they want. The first time, they let him off the hook, saying it was a warning of what they can and will do if their demands aren't met. But they still haven't asked for anything. Enter Elise Kraft (the oh-so underrated Annette Bening), a CIA goon who has vague ties to the Arab-American community and can help "Hub" sort this whole thing out. Or is she simply helping herself? Like most spooks, she has another agenda.

When the bombing escalates to the point of hysteria and stereotypical finger pointing, the President feels he has no choice but to turn Gotham into a police state, a job General Devereaux (Bruce Willis, trying vainly not to get blown off the screen) seemingly reluctantly but ultimately gleefully accepts. He even goes so far as to round up every Arab-American in the city and the surrounding boroughs until they find their man. Stuck in between the long arm of the law and his people is Hub's partner (an excellent Tony Shalhoub), whom has a serious personal conflict after serving the US Government so faithfully, only to see his people treated so terribly.

Thank God Edward Zwick (Glory, Courage Under Fire) directed this instead of, say, John McTiernan or Tony Scott. The movie was already conflicted in terms of deciding whether to be an action movie or a drama. It falls somewhere in between, starting off like a Speed derivative with better dialogue and winding up as Crimson Tide playing the race card. Zwick was at least smart enough to take a very touchy subject matter and make the bad guys somewhat sympathetic. Shalhoub's character was crucial to balancing between race baiting and some semblance of tolerance. I suppose the big "MESSAGE" speeches by Washington at the end are a necessary evil to counter the maliciousness of the acts the Arabs commit. But if getting beaten over the head by your own common sense is not your idea of fun, then maybe this isn't the movie for you. To be fair, though, the blunt instrument they're putting to your noggin is more like a Nerf bat than a sledgehammer. It's a message, but I've been hit harder before.

The more disturbing theme to me in this movie is the idea that the Americans are the real bad guys, worldwide. That seems to be a very popular subplot these days. Maybe that is the theme that will help this movie play well overseas. An American movie about what weasels we are. Still, despite how popular that sentiment may be, I'm not expecting this to open big in the Middle East.

The Siege is getting some bad press for being anti-Arab, and I think that's a bit unfair. The movie as a whole portrays the Arab community as very peaceful. But every religious group has its radical sect (David Koresh, anyone?), including the Arabs. I think they were picked as the token bad guys because it's the most believable right now, I hate to say. This is probably the first movie that showed both sides of their dilemma as well (There is probably another better example, but I can't think of one). Arabs in movies tended to be gross stereotypes in both extremes, as filthy rich businessmen, fully content pacifists, or rocket launching zealots. Here, they portray the majority as a peaceful bunch, and a few bad apples with a lot of C-4 explosives ruining it for everyone else. They briefly played with the religious theme, that these bombers are motivated by the honor of dying for
their cause. But the race card always held the upper hand.

Washington does good work under Zwick's direction (he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Glory), and this is no exception. Bening was doing a Sharon Stone impression or sorts, playing the ambiguous hard-edged cynic. But poor Bruce Willis doesn't stand a chance against these master thespians. I'm sure he chose this movie to raise his credibility a notch or two above Armageddon and Mercury Rising. But all he wound up doing is showing his weaknesses as an actor. Don't get me wrong, I think Willis can do good work (Nobody's Fool and 12 Monkeys, for example). But this was not the right vehicle for it.

The makers of this movie no doubt wanted to make their audiences think a little more than they would after seeing, say, a Die Hard movie. And I think audiences will think a little more. But not much more. The Siege is slick and enjoyable, but not the debate stirrer they were hoping for.