Siege, The (1998)

reviewed by
azat@my-dejanews.com


Azat Badretdinov, Ph.D.

New Hollywood product The Siege started this weekend in many theaters across the USA. The plot of this movie, as well as several other Hollywood movies (i.e. True Lies), is based on the issue of Arabic terrorism. Because of the trend in American industry to depict Arabs as fanatic terrorists, this movie received negative evaluation from several Muslim and non-Muslim American Organizations, which called up to boycott this movie. In order to decide myself I went to see The Siege last Saturday afternoon.

Review.

First scenes took place somewhere in the Middle East in the desert with violent CIA kidnapping of a sheik (presumably a leader of one of the Arabic guerilla groups). After that action is transfered to New York City and stays there for the rest of the movie.

Main characters include ?main-good-guy? - one of FBI chief officers (Denzel Washington), ?controversial-but-good-guy-must-die-in-the-end? - CIA operational officer (Annette Bening), ?main-bad-guy-must-die-in-the-end? - her lover Palestinian fighter Sarik, ?auxilliary-good-guy? - Lebanese-American FBI officer (Tony Shalhoub), ?stupid-good-guy? - army general (Bruce Willis, who degraded now to supporting character roles). Most of the time those characters verbally confront each other delivering standard Hollywood dialog lines with a slight percentage of action montage which was shot at a technical level somewhere between shooting the train of Lumiere brothers and Soviet action movies.

First New-York based scene - Arabic-sounding music over panoramic view of Manhattan canyons - leaves the audience in a quite a dismay. It is strange because, as we all know, and as it is also shown later in the movie, Muslim Middle East population in New-York City is mainly Brooklyn-based. Muslims of Manhattan live in Harlem and South Bronx, belong mainly to the Nation of Islam and have nothing to do with either Sunnis or Shiah or ?Arabic terrorism?.

Then follows quite standard Hollywood disaster escalation: warning bombing with the blue paint in the bus (there is quite elaborated and plain stupid discussion why the paint is blue and not green) - explosion of a city bus in Brooklyn - Broadway movie theater (where was a police, which should be immediately mobilized to control all the public places) - FBI building in New York City (certainly not a landmark, because it is first time I heard of it).

The standard Hollywood trick - FBI vs CIA - is developed in this movie ad absurdum - during whole movie the main obstacle in the investigation is not a sophistication of terrorist conspiracy, but a stupid opportunism of the CIA officer who is covering her lover - Palestinian guy, sponsoring J-1 visas (which is simply impossible - by rules of INS there should be an ORGANIZATION sponsoring them) used later by terrorists.

Just note - this naive CIA officer sponsored a suicide-terrorist - who was never arrested (except brief detention) not only in the first half of the movie, but even when the whole Muslim Middle East population was apprehended and incarcerated to a stadium (it is quite strange that in the following demonstrations there were no participating Yankee fans demanding their stadium back). High-ranked FBI agent could not save his son from detention, but CIA agent could hide her lover - clue figure in investigation as every character in the movie knows - until the very end of the movie!

The depiction of ?main-bad-guy? is plain stupid. I never saw such a bad actor in major Hollywood movie. Besides the fact that he drinks wine (is not he supposed to be a Muslim fanatic?) with his CIA lover, his face knows only one very artificially looking expression of self-confident arrogance and the lines he delivers is always plain political message.

Poor Annette Bening (?controversial-but-good-guy-must-die-in-the-end?)! The supporting stuff of the movie had really bent over to mutilate her face, haircut and clothes. They made her so disgusting, that I refuse completely to understand why all the good and bad guys in the movie are so sexually attracted to her. Is it a new kind of perversion to fall in love with a woman dressed like a bum? The only explanation I have is that the director was afraid that people will cry rivers of tears when she dies in the end. Well, he certainly overshot - her death left the audience absolutely unemotional (probably, because of the strange twist in director's mind - he decided that the last words she should say should be 'inshallah' - which means 'if God will permit', which is by itself has nothing to do with the situation and it is strange for a CIA officer so fluent in Arabic).

There were quite a few moments that made the audience to react - a couple of ordinary jokes made by Lebanese FBIer caused a couple of laughing bursts in the audience. In the dull boring landscape of the movie a joke comparing the radiotracking to a microwave should really look like a gem.

Summarizing, this movie is very weak even at Hollywood standards. I would disagree with both views: that The Siege is against white-and-black view of Muslims (as the creators claim) and that it hurts Muslims (as Muslim groups claim) simply because it is so vanilla stupid that I am really surprised that it made $14M during its first weekend.

Indeed, American audience is attracted by bad reviews like a naive teenager is attracted to bad guys.

P.S. There was a moment that touched me personally only in the evening when I returned home. During Al-Fatiha (most favourite and popular Muslim prayer) I suddenly remembered with sheer poignancy one moment in the movie - when the only apprehended member of one of the terrorist groups (about half a dozen of other ?bad guys? died during suicide explosions, massive killing in a gas station and in the Brooklyn apartment) was delivering the same words that every Muslim pronounces at least 10 times a day. He said ?[Allah], lead us by the straight path, not the path of those who went astray? just before he was brutally tortured, killed and sent to heaven by USA army general (Bruce Willis). Since this guy appeared only first time in this movie, apparently he was punished for praying.

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