Cool Movie: The Siege

The History Channel is probably my favorite TV channel. I don't watch much TV anymore, but when I do, I find I can just about leave it set to the History Channel and stay fairly well entertained all night. This is despite the fact that sometimes it seems to be produced as a joint project between the Pentagon and the White House. There seem to be a lot of shows that try to stir the martial leanings in us, kind of along the line of the old "Why We Fight" propaganda series we had during WW2.

I figured that was what was happening last night as I started out watching some documentary on how the mafia was busted up because of the introduction of wiretapping and how beneficial wiretapping of criminal types is. I had to wonder if it was some effort to make us more comfortable with certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act? Interesting show though, it was.

I started wondering if the same thing was going on when the next show started at 8pm. The Siege, starring Denzel Washington. Anyone else seen this one before? I never had.

It started out well enough. At first, though, I wondered if it was some pro- war/ anti- arab piece, although it didn't seem too out of line. I just thought that was a weird movie to show after a documentary on wiretapping.

This movie came out two years before 9/11, amazingly enough. Washington is an FBI agent that gets involved in anti terrorist efforts in New York City. He ends up meeting a female CIA agent involved in the same sort of thing. Together they go after four terrorist cells that are on a bombing campaign in the City. Things take a different twist when the President declares Martial Law and the military takes over NYC and starts interning all the muslims they can find. The military ends up getting out of control, at least almost out of control, and the FBI and the military end up at each others throats. At the end of the movie the citizens of NYC are staging demonstrations against the military occupation and Denzel Washington gets the last terrorist, the lady CIA agent being killed in the process. Then, Denzel goes and arrests the General in charge of the occupation, after a near gunfight with the military, for a number of civil rights violations.

It was pointed out by one of the commentators that accompanied the host of the movie during the commercials that the reality is probably different now, post 9/11, than what's depicted in the movie: The movie had the military ultimately getting out of control and the FBI eventually saving the day from the evil military guys whereas, nowadays the military is held in higher esteem than the FBI by most folks, for whatever reasons.

Anyway, good flick although it lasted three hours and I didn't want to stay up that long. I see History Channel doesn't have it scheduled again but maybe it's out in video?