The Siege
And just like a five year old who tells on his sister for eating the candy bar that he stole from a classmate, America is hypocritical about its actions. During World War II, while we were screaming about Hitler being the Anti-Christ, Japanese-Americans - I stress, naturalized or native-born Americans - were quietly being rounded up into concentration camps in California. Possible spies for the Rising Sun, you know. Funny how my high-school civics class glossed over that minor point.
What if we suddenly found ourselves at war again? Not some long-distance far hemisphere war that we fight by remote control with what Roger Waters called "the bravery of being out of range," but war within our own borders? What if Arab terrorists were strafing a major American city with bombs? And what of the Arab-Americans who were trying to live peacefully during such a crisis? Would we accept them as patriotic citizens, or treat them as we did the Japanese-Americans during WWII?
This is the question The Siege deals with. And because it is a movie with a reasonably intelligent director, it shows the unfortunately likely scenario of racism rearing up to cloud Reason. Based in part on the World Trade Center bombing, The Siege asks what our reaction would be if Arab terrorists were infiltrating New York City. The film's answer? Call in the Army, seal off Brooklyn and stick all quote-unquote "towel heads" in detention on the assumption that their allegiance to Palestine is greater than their allegiance to the U.S.
Sadly, this somehow seems a possible scenario, which is why The Siege works as well as it does. Or conversely, The Siege is good enough to make you believe this could happen - the film has a slow, eminently plausible, relentless build-up of terrorist events which allows you to accept the growing fear in NYC and Congress. This is a thriller with a message, and is out to make you think, not impress you with explosions - you only actually see one bombing, to devastating effect. The Siege wants you to think about what America really stands for. Is keeping the peace more important than upholding the Constitution?
I love a good intellectual thriller, and a double-pronged dig at racism and jingoism only makes me happier. But The Siege is too focused on its message to always deliver it effectively. The plot is complex, yet thinly sketched; details are frustratingly muddled as the CIA, FBI, Feds and Army leaders play off each other. Still, Denzel Washington is noble and flawed - that is, human - as the FBI agent trying to solve the mystery of the terrorists, and enough is made clear to keep you engaged, wondering what the next turn of events will be.
Annette Bening delivers the best performance as a triple-dealing, slippery CIA agent playing every side - she projects an intelligent sexuality (the best kind) that is refreshing to see onscreen. The often underrated Bruce Willis is solid as General Deveraux, whose intense sense of duty blurs his sense of justice. In what is one of the most memorable scenes, his response to terrorism is to resort to torture to restore order, flouting the Geneva Convention and standard morality in his quest to justify the ends by horrible means.
I was uncomfortable with the underlying parallels to reality we have seen in recent terrorist events, and the assumption that it's OK to make a movie questioning Arab-American patriotism; the film has its heart in the right place, but imagine the outrage if such a film were made about Jews or blacks. Also, the Denzel character becomes a plot device at the end, a mouthpiece spouting Founding Father rhetoric about maintaining the moral high ground.
That, and the often labyrinthine plot, make this movie a qualified success. Rather than thinking about the high ideals of the Constitution or the insidiousness of racism, I left the theatre remembering the admittedly powerful images of a baseball stadium turned into a detention camp, of troops on the Brooklyn Bridge and the sense that if our well-organized and extraordinarily well-equipped army was ever turned against its own citizens, we'd all be in a world of hurt. Instead of feeling as proud of our country as it wanted me to feel, The Siege made me want to buy a gun and hunker down for chaos.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker