Delayed Reaction: The Siege

What I Guessed It Was About: I have no idea what this is about. I assume that it is in no way related the Under Seige with Steven Seagal. I assume it's a military movie about some troops who are cornered and trying to get out alive from a heavy assault, the eponymous seige.

How I Came Into It: Guys, I might be an Edward Zwick fan. I didn't realize it until now. He directed Glory, Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai, and that movie with Anne Hathaway getting naked all the time (Love & Other Drugs). I'll ignore Legends of the Fall and say that this is a very favorable sign going into The Siege, a movie that I knew absolutely nothing about.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) It seems that I have spent most of my first 27 years on this Earth seeing virtually evey big movie that didn't have Denzel Washington in it. I'm scared to even count the number of his movies that I only watched because of my Club 50 project. Again though, he's a god damn movie star in The Siege and most of it works because he's at the center of it all. I was still pretty young when 9/11 happened, so I forget that we were already making movies about Arab terrorists doing exactly that sort of thing years before it happened. I'm not sure what my point is about that. I just know that I checked the release date of this numerous times while watching it.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's a pretty infantile understanding of terrorism. I believe in one scene, Annette Bening explains that if you stop one terrorist cell, two more come to replace it, soon followed with her saying that there are four cells in New York that they need to stop to end the threat. That's called trying to have your cake and eat it too. The movie wants to appear savvy about terrorism and still have a threat that can be handled on binary terms (active or neutralized). It's one of those movies that makes me feel icky about Hollywood's depiction of Arab people, even with Tony Shalhoub's character there to try to diffuse the perception.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend