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Siege mentality >> Thoughtful disaster movie has little bang by MATTHEW HAYS
The plot is simple but undeniably chilling--it's one of those speculative, inspired-by-the-headlines tales, clearly taking its cue from the World Trade Center bombings of 1993. Denzel Washington plays an FBI anti-terrorist agent who's based in New York. Suddenly, bombs begin to explode all over the city, each one nastier than the last. The terrorists appear to have no specific demands, thus the mystery that Washington and competing agent Annette Bening must try to solve. When things escalate seemingly beyond control, the army is ordered in to oversee marshal law. Willis is perfectly cast as the general, following orders without question and pissing off the morally upright Washington. But Willis's casting, along with the ads for The Siege, are somewhat misleading: the film has a good deal going for it. Washington and Bening are fine, the scenario will touch enough collective audience nerve to secure interest and the action sequences are excellent. But audiences may well enter the cinema thinking they're going to get that other Willis vehicle Armageddon, and The Siege is no Armageddon or Deep Impact. Director Edward Zwick has tried to create a thinking person's action movie here. So while it is certainly lacking in promotional savvy, there's an ample dose of political sensitivity in The Siege: ultimately, this film is saying that scapegoating an entire ethnic community for the actions of a few is terribly wrong. Who could protest that? That Arabs are sensitive to these issues is entirely understandable: they've been wildly underrepresented onscreen, and when they do arrive there, they're usually pretty evil. Bitching about True Lies I can see--but The Siege is hardly typical in its representations. If anything, the film is only typical in its careful balancing act. This is a classic Hollywood make-up movie. Gee, the producers seem to be saying, we're sorry about all those dreadful representations of your people in the past. Yep, we're still going to have Arab terrorists lurking around, but we're also going to have positive images of nice Arabs who are just as proud to be American as we whiteys are. We're going to cast Tony Shalhoub (remember him from Big Night?) as a really, really good FBI agent, to remind everyone that there are good Arabs as well as bad. As well-meaning as this good-Arab/bad-Arab balancing act may be, screenwriting of this sort doesn't really serve a script well. The filmmakers become prisoners to the rotten history of malicious representation of minorities in the cinema. In doing so, they please no one. Zwick has succeeded in creating a thoughtful, but not terrifically entertaining, movie. The Siege opens Friday, November 6
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Apparently a number of Arab-American citizens are irate about the latest film depicting them as gun-toting, bomb-planting terrorists. Indeed, the trailers and press surrounding The Siege have all the hallmarks of Hollywood's litany of rather grim Arab representations. Plenty of explosions, America as a whole in peril and, on the cast list, Bruce Willis, that paragon of shallow patriotism and major shareholder in Planet Hollywood.