Review: THE SIEGE

SEARCH & DESTROY…THIS MOVIE

(reviewed on ppv Sunday, June 13th, 1999)

    If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the serious thriller, look no further than the duller than dull, sillier than silly, ridiculously bad “The Siege”.
    You would think by getting Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis together the script would have had to, at the very least, be acceptable. I couldn’t stomach that piece of shit if it was covered in chocolate sauce and topped with a maraschino cherry.
     The film pretends it’s smart because it deals with terrorists in a deadly serious manner. Big deal. The last major terrorist bombing in the U.S. was the Oklahoma City incident which didn’t even turn out to be a terrorist bombing, yet more or less that incident inspired this boring mess.
    Denzel Washington works for the F.B.I. His partner coincidentally happens to be Middle Eastern. Denzel gets a call about a bomb on a bus. If you haven’t seen the previews for this movie then you don’t know that the bus blows up. But seriously, if you’re watching this movie than you’ve heard about it more or less from the previews which gave away that the bus blows up. The previews don’t give away that a Broadway theater blows up, the F.B.I. building blows up, and a car warehouse blows up.
    The mediocre plot involves Denzel running around the city mad, then a big explosion rips apart something, then Denzel runs faster and madder, then a bigger explosion happens, then Denzel runs around even faster and much more mad, and then a really big explosion occurs, and then Denzel sprints around furious.
    Silly. Then the film has the audacity to turn Bruce Willis and the entire United States army into “the villain” instead of the immigrants going around doing the bombings.
    Come on.
    I remember when the film hit theaters it was a hot topic because all these people from the Middle East who now lived in the U.S. were pissed because the film portrayed them as being cliched terrorists. I’m sure the film’s producers were happy to get the extra publicity push. I honestly don’t agree with them hating the film because it portrayed their people as all being terrorists, I think they hated the film because it SUCKED.
    Denzel does his best, but Bruce Willis and Annette Benning walk around like robots in need of re-fueling. The plot gets even sillier towards the end when a stadium is turned into an…internment camp. Edward Zwick, you are a hack. You made “Glory”, good, pat on the back, then you made “Courage Under Fire”, one of the worst, most boring movies I’ve ever had to painfully sit through. Now this disaster.
    And to think, you had a writing credit on this.
    Pray to Allah, Zwick, because you better believe in reincarnation when you put that gun to your head. ½*