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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, October 2, 2000
A thoughtful action flick? Believe it
Something odd - not unpleasant, you understand, but definitely off the beaten path - happened the other day. I saw a movie that made me think.
Understand, now, this was not some bleak, incomprehensible Scandinavian art film. That sort of thing has its place, but over the years I've learned that most movies of this sort don't have nearly enough car chases to hold my interest.
So, during a recent visit to my neighborhood video emporium, I passed by that highbrow stuff and homed in on the Action racks. I got my car chases and exploding buses and so on - but I also got food for thought.
What it was, was "The Siege," a Denzel Washington/Bruce Willis vehicle that managed to address an issue or two even as the flawlessly orchestrated explosions and firefights were unfolding before us.
Of course, I should have realized this flick was something out of the ordinary: There was but a single copy of it on the shelf. That's not the sort of treatment usually accorded heavy-duty action movies.
To business, then: There are a number of sub-plots in "The Siege," but the central issue is terrorism and the impact it can have on an open society.
Nothing particularly new there. Even Sylvester Stallone has made such a movie: "Nighthawks." But there's a huge difference between that simple-minded exercise and "The Siege."
The premise in "The Siege" is that New York City has become the target of a group of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Denzel Washington, the super-straight-arrow FBI agent heading the task force charged with tracking down the terrorists, finds himself stymied by their guile and ruthlessness.
Early in the action, Washington (the actor, not the city) encounters Bruce Willis, a high-powered but thoughtful Army general who agrees entirely with the FBI position that dealing with the terrorist threat should be left strictly to the civilian authorities.
Of course, that doesn't play. (How could it? We'd have no movie then.) The terrorists - nameless, faceless, remorseless - steadily up the ante: First they stage a fake bombing; then they blow up a bus, a theater . . . After they (unsuccessfully) target an elementary school, all concerned agree Something's Got To Be Done. New York is in a state of shock. Congress is frothing. The president is chewing the carpet.
So they declare martial law in Brooklyn. Why? Because it is home to the highest concentration of Arab-Americans in the city and is assumed to be the terrorists' base of operations.
At this point, the movie got into trouble in the real world: Many Arab Americans - groups and individuals - were affronted by what they considered the movie's demonization of their community.
Considering how flagrantly and frequently Hollywood has resorted to that sort of deplorable stereotyping, their dismay was understandable. However, in this instance it was misplaced.
The point the movie argued - none too subtly - is how terribly wrong such religious and ethnic scapegoating is. The images of Arab Americans being rounded up by soldiers and interned in a football stadium are not presented approvingly by the filmmakers, but as a chilling object lesson in the lengths to which we may be driven by a threat we cannot comprehend. If a movie can be said to have a heart, it can be said that the heart of "The Siege" was with the very people victimized by this kind of herd mentality.
This is not to say the film is a masterpiece. It has its share of Hollywood failings - most notably in the never adequately explained fashion in which Willis morphs from an unwilling warrior to a ruthless figure who coolly countenances torture, even murder. And the presence of CIA operative Annette Bening sometimes seems more of a distraction than an essential element of the story line.
Even making allowances for all that, however, what you have here is a movie whose creators were brave enough to take on a real issue - and not yield to the temptation to dumb it down.
You might want to check it out yourself . . . assuming you can find it. Gotta keep that shelf space clear for the next "Scream" sequel, y'know.
Brooks Peterson
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