The Siege (1998)

	Also Known As: Couvre-Feu (French)
	Year of first release: 1998
	Director: Edward Zwick (Legends of the Fall, Blood Diamond)
	Actors: Denzel Washington (Crimson Tide), Bruce Willis (Die Hard 1-5), Annette Bening (American Beauty, Mars Attacks!), Tonny Shaloub (Men in Black, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
	Country: USA
	Genre: Polar, Action
	Conditions of visioning: 18.11.2014, SD VOD, Home cinema
Synopsis: Terrorist attacks intensify in New York, while FBI agent Hubbard (Washington) investigates, hindered by the silence of CIA agent Kraft (Bening).
Review: At the end of the 90's, The Siege may have shown a different view on the classic 'terrorist' movie (Die Hard for example), a view that dramatically came true (and not too far from the movie events) on September 11th 2001. The parallel is easy to draw: indeed the movie depicts large scale terrorist attacks in New York City, targeted at official buildings (FBI offices vs. Pentagon on 9/11) but also at civilians (bus vs. planes on 9/11, and a demonstration vs. a marathon recently in Boston), by a group of individuals (organized in cells) that do not even present demands, but are ready to die for their cause. Only the scale of the real events was even larger than the screenplay writers could imagine (some years later The Sum of all Fears surpassed this scale). Other difference, the response of the government is (too) extreme in the movie: declaring Martial Law on the city. This extreme response occurring in the last half hour didn't please me so much. Otherwise the rest of the movie is a rather good, the story intricate enough and the actors solid. The moral of this story (we cannot let ourselves become worse than our enemies) is a bit too much, but this is what to expect from the director of Legends of the Fall.
Rating: 6 /10