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But no such luck. Trying to play it straight with more sanctimony and false pretence than ingenuity, director Edward Zwick's The Siege is a murky failure, a rather unhappy, scattered film with too few good moments to recommend it.
Set in the present day with the World Trade Center and Oklahoma Federal Building horrors still fresh in our collective consciousness, the movie's title initially refers to a series of Palestinian terrorist bombings that have all but closed down New York City. By the time the final reel rolls, the title cynically alludes to an occupying military presence as the equally deplorable solution. Shades of the Japanese-American plight during W.W.II, stadiums are turned into makeshift detention centres chock-full of Arab-Americans. Screenwriters Lawrence Wright, Menno Meyjes and Mr. Zwick attempt a statement about hate, fear, and racism, but founder in the very confusion their inconsistent script creates.
Embodying decency and waxing enthusiastic for the American conscience is Denzel Washington as F.B.I. agent Anthony Hubbard, protector of Mom, apple pie, and the Constitution. A square-jawed patriot in the old Hollywood tradition, Mr. Washington's special agent never expands beyond two dimensions. Yet his sincere style and established credibility make this of the film's few acceptable performances, virtually insulated from the groping wiles of a script fraught with uncertainty. Unlike the currently voguish bent to display the dark side of every hero from Thomas Jefferson to Lassie, what you see is what you get from the handsome leading man.
But not to worry if you're hoping for some irritatingly hazy portrayals. Annette Bening supplies a lulu as mysteriously phlegmatic C.I.A. agent, Elise Kraft. Symptomatic of the film as a whole, practically all the performances play on different wavelengths. And Ms. Bening's sore thumb character is truly in la-la land. Thoroughly annoying, if it was the actress' goal to make her loyalty-questioned operative a completely distasteful entity, then she is a success. Informing that her first boyfriend was a Palestinian, the covert hussy relates: "My father (an American professor who raised his daughter in the Arab world) says they seduce you with their suffering." Suffering succotash is right.
Much more centred and perhaps the film's only character with real pith is Tony Shalhoub (Big Night) as agent Frank Haddad, Hubbard's trusty, right-hand man. Soulful Frank's allegiance is tested when his son winds up among the detained. So he sulks in his ethnic pride and doesn't even bother to call in. Of course, no sooner does that happen when his services are urgently needed; a break in the case requires his expertise. Will he come through? Put it this way: The dramatically challenged story plays like a typical cops 'n' robbers gambit. It ventures nothing out of the ordinary.
The story's catastrophic explosions play to our visceral anxieties with suspicious impetus. And despite the film's preachy devotion to truth, justice and the American way, Arab-Americans are portrayed with a prepossession Hollywood once accorded native Americans. But while filmmaker Zwick pays lip service to a realistic atmosphere, the lack of sociocultural background and/or terrorist motivation makes Muslims little more than a utilitarian foil; curiously convenient "Indians" supplying the xenophobia the movie trades on. There is a half-hearted subtext about the Arabs wishing the release of mastermind Sheikh Ahmed Bin Talal, but it just doesn't wash.
The dastardly doings are the work of a renegade group of Palestinian thugs who, in the opening scene, begin the bidding with the suicide bombing of a bus. They raise the ante to include a Broadway theatre. The next day, a panicked America keeps half its children home from school. Espying vulnerability the way a shark spots blood, the Arabs turn up the terror with yet more attacks. Having flushed out several hideouts, The F.B.I. is now at a standstill -- virtually at a loss to uncover this reportedly last cell of opposition.
Of course, there are those like General William Devereaux (Bruce Willis) who would confiscate our civil liberties in return for the illusion of security. Though he says martial law should be instituted only as a last resort, when push comes to shove the oily fascist can barely disguise his glee. Out of his normally glib element, Willis proves vastly uninteresting as the gung-ho militarist.
The Siege is as much a poor man's treatise on power struggles among the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the military as it is about Arab terrorism on our shores. Trying to mix large-scale action with political philosophy, the sophomoric effort is in over its head, taking more than an hour-and-a-half to theorise what should have been a given in the opening credits: that martial law is an expediency as unsavoury as the terrifying situation that precipitates it. Well, duh, thank you, Mr. Toynbee. The film might as well tell us that a wedge of German chocolate cake is better than a sharp stick in the eye. Failing to capture the imagination, The Siege can hardly lay claim to your movie-going money.
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