Incredibly naive. The epitome of both sidesism, that ultimately one or two good men in the FBI can wrangle the system back into control from the big bad military and CIA. That they’d care about illegal detainments and torture and execution of Arab American citizens. There’s interesting ideas about the friction between departments in a machine as big as the American government, and the consequences of interventionism, but it outstrips the movie’s ability to really tackle them. And the third act twist undercuts its desperate attempts to assure you it’s not Islamophobic, promise! It’s kept afloat by a really solid cast. Washington, Shaloub, Bening, and Willis deliver as the leads, as expected, but you never hear of these roles as iconic ones of theirs for a reason. It plays to their strengths but never asks more of them. Washington can monologue like no one else, Shaloub gets to show some edge, Bening is eccentric and hard to pin down, and Willis is believable as an implacable military man. The supporting cast is made of solid hands like Reddick and Proval. Proval gets a pretty good laugh through mostly his delivery of ‘The dog works for the CIA?’ And Reddick stands right beside Washington as an equal while not diverting attention from the lead, not an easy task. They make the film watchable. But they can’t save it from its clumsy mess.

"The CIA didn't know the Berlin Wall was coming down until bricks started hitting them in the head." Not exactly what I expected but not a bad one at all. Bruce Willis being kind of the bad guy here was great, Denzel Washington almost never disappoints, Tony Shalhoub was my favorite in this one and Annette Bening should've known better. Anyway The Siege is a decent thriller but to me feels very mid. Which isn't bad but when something stars Denzel Washington, Tony Shalhoub and 90's Bruce Willis I expected a bit more. But in the end I was entertained which is all that counts and I was happy that Frank Haddad was reunited with his son in the end! Ps. Kind of brutal to hear that gunshot and Bruce Willis walking out wiping his hands clean.

Really shines a light on a difficult subject in the history of the America's. A really thoughtful and provocative thriller that had my attention gripped right from the beginning until the very end.

This film is very prescient.

The Siege (1998) - ❤x7 Politics and all the alphabet agencies and Power-hungry Generals suck!! How I rate: 1-3 ❤ = seriously! don't waste your time 4-6 ❤ = you may or may not enjoy this 7-8 ❤ = I expect you will like this too 9-10 ❤ = movies and TV shows I really love!