The Siege (1998) [Martial Law Edition] – DVD

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis, Tony Shaloub
screenplay by Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes & Edward Zwick
directed by Edward Zwick

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Hollywood liberal is a strange beast. It has been known to speak pieties about the evils of racism, the horrors of war, and the value of freedom with what looks like conviction, if not authority–but when our backs our turned, it builds monuments to military hardware, sings praise to the power of the badge and gun, and subordinates non-whites, non-straights, and non-males to positions of zero control within even the most progressive dramas. The Siege captures this particular genus of liberal at its most confused and self-righteous. Firing in all directions at topics it can't begin to comprehend, it is in any event too in love with the rules of aesthetic engagement to commit to its 'issues' with anything approaching honesty. One hand gives, the other takes away–, and the result is a seething mass of contradictions that's almost too painful to bear.

This is the film that got retroactive street cred when 9/11 made it less of a fantasy. It is, after all, about a series of terrorist acts in New York City and the fascistic response they elicit. Released in the wake of the 1998 African embassy bombings, The Siege contrives the capture of a Bin Laden clone that triggers violent retaliation. FBI agent Anthony Hubbard (Denzel Washington) is first called in on what appears to be a prank (the paint bombing of a bus) but quickly snowballs into actual terrorism: a bus blows up, a Broadway show gets bombed, and people want answers. CIA agent Elise Kraft (Annette Bening) seems to have an in with an informant named Samir Nazhde (Sami Boujadila), but his loyalty to "our team" is in question the minute One Federal Plaza receives the Oklahoma treatment and martial law is declared. Thus Hubbard finds himself between the rock of Maj. Gen. William Devereaux (Bruce Willis) rounding up NYC's Arabs for interrogation and the hard place of Islamic extremists spilling blood.

A film playing Arab extremists off Yankee extremists would be a good idea so long as its makers possessed any sense of what either side was arguing for. But for a few scattered lines by Samir, there's no discussion of what's going on in the Middle East or what motivates people to commit terrorism. We know that terrorists are bad and that they ought to be stamped out, but like now, no attempts are made to figure out the root cause of their beef. By the same token, the fascists, as represented by Devereaux, would seem to be operating on exactly the same information that informs the discussion: terrorists are simply to be weeded out and stomped, and the film's own non-evidence backs them up a thousandfold. Watching its crackerjack action and skilfully-wrought tension, you almost feel for the military rulers–not the desired response (at least not for this hardened leftie), just the inevitable fallout of The Siege's navel-gazing politics.

If the film is in love with 'tolerance' for non-terrorist Arabs, it's also in love with the technological machine of Hollywood–a system that doesn't understand anything other than pass/fail (or rather, kill/be killed) and thus reduces the kind of politics The Siege traffics in to ferreting out "enemies" on both sides of the terror/order divide. Whatever else this movie is, it's squarely in the policier genre, and it uses its fast-paced montage and men with guns to punish sinners it barely understands. Though it has two enemies to deal with instead of the usual one, it handles them in the same way: chase, capture, threaten, and possibly even kill. This may be fine when John McClane is duking it out with Hans Gruber, but it's a little reductive when dealing with geopolitical realities. In Hollywood, running and shooting are the way that things are handled. Thus the rules of sensible argument are supplanted for the rules of genre–and one is no substitute for the other.

Everybody has to fall in line with the centre that is the American liberal. Here, Tony Shalhoub is wheeled in as the Lebanese-American Agent Haddad for "balance," but his role is so impotent and circumscribed that it's practically an insult to the talented actor. He's the house-Arab to counter the terrorists, the sign that we don't really have a problem with Arabs as long as they act "like us." To be sure, The Siege is less a disaster than director Ed Zwick's recent Blood Diamond–that film was disgraceful, ugly, and rife with clunky exposition whereas this one is merely disgraceful. If you can stomach its soft-headed politics, it moves fast, looks good, and keeps thumping you with exciting story beats. Just be warned that the shiny wrapper covers something stupid and wrong.

THE DVD
Fox's DVD reissue of The Siege (sensitively dubbed the "Martial Law Edition") is, sadly, terrific. Differing little from that of the previous disc, the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is everything you could ask for: colours are bright and lustrous (especially in the steely blues), detail is fantastic, and neither optical nor digital artifacts present a problem. The 5.1 audio, unfortunately downgraded from the DTS of the 2000 release to Dolby Digital, is nevertheless a strong complement to the image, full of LFE growl and thump while harmoniously distributing sound throughout the full range of speakers. Extras begin with a feature-length commentary from director Ed Zwick and executive producer Peter Schindler. There's some pompous talk with Zwick's non-discussions of the film's themes, but mostly the track covers the enormous amount of effort–and cooperation with various local and federal branches of government–that made the movie possible. Somewhat predictably, the profoundly un-liberal The French Connection is invoked as the model for a car chase.

"The Siege: Taking New York" (14 mins.) features the origins of the project in Lynda Obst's news sense, some back-patting of the actors (including Washington, Bening, and Shalhoub), the sinister nature of the stadium Gitmo sequence (you had to be there), and the rueful knowledge that there's no way, post 9/11, that such an enormous undertaking as this could happen in New York with the full knowledge and cooperation of the authorities. Meanwhile, "The Siege: Freedom is History" (13 mins.)–a title worthy of Orwell–sees many of the same participants as well as a couple of law-enforcement professionals pontificating on the legacy of the film. It's clear that many are now more conservative than the film betrays and less convinced of the limits of power in place when the movie was made. Finally, "The Making of The Siege" (13 mins.) is the original featurette from the old DVD; it's a much happier time, with the participants adopting a more speculative, upbeat tone and Bening spouting gibberish about how first and foremost, the movie makes you "feel something." Indeed, a better criticism of The Siege could not be offered. The film's two theatrical trailers round things out.

116 minutes; R; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox