Deeper Than Expected

The trailers would have you believe The Siege is another shoot-'em up with Bruce Willis, occupying brain-hardened territory somewhere between Armageddon and another Die Hard sequel.

The good news is that The Siege -- starring Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Annette Bening and Tony Shalhoub -- has a lot more going for it and it's still a dandy piece of entertainment.

More cautionary thriller than action-suspense flick, The Siege uses fear of Islamic fundamentalist-sponsored terrorism on U.S. soil only as a jumping off point, not as the movie's reason for being. (Meaning, it's better than True Lies and its ilk.) It seems a rogue general in the White House, Willis' General Devereaux (shades of Ollie North) has orchestrated the capture (okay, "extraction") of a suspected terrorist sheik, Ahmed bin Talal (shades of Osama bin Laden), prompting a series of escalating reprisal terrorist attacks in New York City. G-man Anthony Hubbard (Washington) is on the trail but, not knowing the sheik's been snatched, doesn't have all the info he needs. Then there's Elise (Bening), a CIA operative, who's also very much involved.

Amidst our era of cynically dumbed-down entertainment (the Hollywood formula is seemingly that for every $5 million more you spend over $50 million, your movie must appeal to an audience with a collective IQ of 5 points lower; how else to explain this past summer's Godzilla?), The Siege is pleasingly complex. Maybe at times a bit too complex. But it also has a politically provocative agenda: When's the last time you've seen a big-budget Hollywood flick that featured ethnic minorities interned in holding pens inside an American stadium by right-wing U.S. generals?

That's right, The Siege has a functioning (and liberal) mind and there's something very much on it. Director Ed Zwick (Courage Under Fire, Glory) is too smart to make just another Die Hard genre flick. The Siege will have folks talking about our constitution and civil rights, of all things, as they exit the theater. The only weird thing about the whole business is that The Siege was made and is being released by Fox, whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, would probably like nothing better than to keep the "towel heads" locked up in Downing Stadium on Randall's Island. Come to think of it, Murdoch must be asleep at the switch: Didn't Fox also release Warren Beatty's Bulworth?

- The Raving Reviewer