Terrorism in American Cinema: An Analytical Filmography, 1960-2008

Terrorism in American Cinema ALSO BY ROBERT CETTL MCFARLAND AND FROM Serial Killer Cinema: An Analytical Filmogra...

Author: Robert Cettl

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Terrorism in American Cinema

ALSO

BY

ROBERT CETTL MCFARLAND

AND FROM

Serial Killer Cinema: An Analytical Filmography with an Introduction (2003; softcover 2008)

Terrorism in American Cinema An Analytical Filmography, 1960–2008 R OBERT C ETTL

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY

OF

CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Cettl, Robert, ¡969– Terrorism in American cinema : an analytical ﬁlmography, 1960–2008 / Robert Cettl. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4155-6 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Terrorism in motion pictures — Catalogs. 2. Motion pictures — United States — Catalogs. I. Title. PN1995.9.T46C48 2009 791.43' 6556 — dc22 2009034738 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2009 Robert Cettl. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: A scene from the 2007 documentaryTaxi to the Dark Side— facing blinding dust clouds, the U.S. Army prepares to transport detainees by helicopter to Al Qaim base for questioning after being captured during Operation Steel Curtain, Iraq, November 21, 2005 (ThinkFilm/Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

For Huiling in memory of the Dreamlife

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Table of Contents 1

Preface

3

Introduction

T HE F ILMOGRAPHY 297

Notes Bibliography

301 303

Index

vii

17

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Preface The impetus for this book grew out of the observation that during the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror, few major terrorist ﬁlms were released even though in the previous decade terrorism had generated numerous pop culture ﬁlm fantasies. Indeed, the real events of 9/11 put the cinema of terrorism in much the same situation as the war movie during the Vietnam War: It was only after the Vietnam War was over that American ﬁlm was ready to tackle the issue and its socio-cultural ramiﬁcations. And when American ﬁlm was ﬁnally ready to do so, it had a genre with some forty years of development to draw upon, deconstruct and re-envision. The events of 9/11 and the entry into the American lexicon of such terms as War on Terror, waterboarding and collateral damage forced the USA to address terrorism as national trauma, a turning point in the nation’s history. Terrorism was thus too serious for popular entertainment. However, as the War on Terror President George W. Bush lost control of the Senate and became a proverbial lame duck soon to be replaced by Democrat Barack Obama, American cinema rallied behind the terrorist ﬁlm genre and reinvented it as the most dynamic, exciting and relevant means of socio-political criticism in contemporary American cinema. It was not only the mechanics of terrorism that inﬁltrated these ﬁlms but the criticism of what was increasingly seen as the circumvention of Constitutional ideals by a cabal comprised of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Just what this Republican, Christian government had done to American ideals of democracy became the subject driving a sudden wave of post–9/11 terrorist movies. Yet, the impressive thematic and stylistic coherence within this body of work owed to what had evolved pre–9/11 as a distinct genre in American ﬁlm — the cinema of terrorism — and addressed its legacy in interesting ways. The development of the cinema of terrorism as a genre in American ﬁlm — its historical contexts, thematic bases, narrative structures, ideological ramiﬁcations, political commentary and psycho-analytic intent — is the subject of this book, the ﬁrst evaluation of the cinema of terrorism as a genre and an analytical ﬁlmography of every major, minor and obscure terrorist ﬁlm comprising the genre pantheon. It is the author’s hope that this study succinctly explores a genre that due to the events of 9/11 in transﬁguring the American social and political consciousness uniquely offers a coherent exploration of the development of what now comprises the modern American political psyche.

1

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Introduction Origins of the Contemporary Cinema of Terrorism in the Cold War The American cinema of terrorism, although coming to prominence primarily in the 1970s and emerging amidst high-proﬁle mainly Palestinian terrorist activities, dates back to the beginnings of the Cold War and the ﬁgure of the saboteur in Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage (1936). The ﬁgure of the saboteur was, however, less a terrorist as the term is accepted today than a covert espionage agent whose actions, while terroristic, owed to the tactics through which the communist party had arisen to power during the Russian revolution. But, although such 1950s British ﬁlms as Seven Days to Noon (1950) and Secret People (1951) extended the type in the genre of espionage, it was only when cinema began to tackle the prospect of a political terrorist outside the realms of spy cinema that the ﬁgure began to emerge as a character type in its own right. It was correspondingly a different deﬁnition of the terrorist which inﬂuenced the incipient development of the cinema of terrorism more so than sporadic portrayals in the 1940s and 1950s. Even today, contemporary accounts of terrorism as a phenomenon go to lengths to explain the difﬁculty in arriving at a consistent deﬁnition of “terrorism” itself (1). In cinema, this deﬁnition evolved in stages before reaching its modern form in the 1970s. These stages paralleled both the instances of actual terrorism and the increased media attention to the “problem.” As was the case with even more developed genres and subgenres in popular American ﬁlm, the cinema of terrorism evolved in a kind of ongoing process and historical dialectic concerning the deﬁnition of “terrorism.” In America, the early years of the Cold War provided the genesis of screen terrorism. The initial terroristic concern as a plot device was in terms of the threat from a totalitarian superpower enemy — the Soviets — to inﬁltrate American agencies and destroy the nation’s means of operation through espionage. It was as if the spy was the potential terrorist ﬁgure here — a deadly enemy agent with orders to destroy from within. The early terrorist ﬁgure in cinema was an operative working for a government, not part of a separate or radical group intent on imposing an alien agenda onto the world. It was thus not an individual or even a jointly held cause so much as it was a supreme and rival evil ideology, opposed to that of American freedom. It was a Manichean struggle. The terrorist was an evil inversion of decent Americana, intent on destroying the American way of life to make room for an evil, atheistic ideology: Communism. Such Cold War terrorism involved the threat of large-scale disaster, of primarily nuclear sabotage — the fear that America’s atomic weapons, its new source of national pride 3

Introduction

4

since the end of World War II, would be turned against itself and thus cause complete catastrophe. The worries of the nuclear age brought the new fear of nuclear terrorism as a political goal of “the enemy.” To sabotage, undermine and obliterate American society was the ambition of this enemy — a theory which inﬁltrated much political life throughout the century, not only in the 1950s but particularly through to the many theories of a “proxy war” that would in turn emerge in the 1980s especially (2); whereby a foreign locale was the site for a battle between Soviet and American inﬂuences — Vietnam and Afghanistan being the two primary examples. The enemies of the American way of life thought to destabilize it by overturning it where possible: to sabotage from within. Although this would later be done by proxy in the international arena as indicated, particularly in Latin America under Reagan’s antiterror doctrines of the 1980s (3), the fear was that this would still be done on home American soil in such a way as to cause large catastrophe. The one incident that thus loomed large over the burgeoning cinema of terrorism was the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devastating effects of these awful weapons brought home a terrible new worry — nuclear catastrophe — and with it the eventual fear of such weapons falling into the wrong hands. The sheer scale of the terror was now something to be reckoned with. However much it was patriotism that initially justiﬁed Fat Man and Little Boy, it was the same pride that would grow increasingly xenophobic in the Cold War and worry about what events had been set in motion. Although the terrorist ﬁgure did not yet occupy a central place in this developing nationalistic paranoia, the concerns surfaced in a number of 1950s science ﬁction ﬁlms, from such unstoppable aliens within us fantasies as Howard Hawks–Christian Nyby’s The Thing from Another World (1951) through to such paciﬁstic warnings about society as The Day the Earth Stood Still (also 1951) (4). Terrorism was here not deﬁned as is commonly held now as the politically motivated targeted act against innocents but related still to the fear of action by inﬁltrators intent to do major harm. As such, terrorism ran the risk of destabilizing American society and the crackdown on those supposed Communist forces would consume that very same American society in the 1950s via McCarthyism. Atomic age fears boomed; namely, the paranoia that America’s nuclear capabilities would suffer an accident or worse, sabotage. The totalitarian enemy worming its way into America intent on destroying the nation was a common plot device whether directly treated in spy ﬁlms (5) or indirectly inferred in such other apocalyptic genres as science ﬁction wherein The Day the Earth Stood Still had connected so much with the public as to virtually initiate an identiﬁable movement within the developing genre. Atomics and politics were now symbiotic. Signiﬁcantly, these fears of mass catastrophe returned in the 1990s and the fear of nuclear terrorism, of such weapons falling into terrorist hands and being smuggled into the country for detonation. The spectacle of looming large-scale disaster would nevertheless inﬂuence the burgeoning cinema of terrorism’s need for a distinct and centralized set-piece structure.

Terrorist Cinema Beyond the Immediate Cold War Years Terrorism in the early Cold War years was about the threat of the Bomb: Who would use it? But changing world events soon broadened the cinema of terrorism from its domes-

5

Introduction

tic nuclear concerns to address more emerging international phenomena. “Terrorism” itself was in a process of emerging as a dominant means of violent, proto-revolutionary expression. It was no longer a Soviet peril exclusively. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the terrorist threat expanded in ﬁlm to encompass a climate of anti-western colonialism, fed by the beginnings of guerrilla terrorism protesting the French occupation of Algeria, the growing Marxist inﬂuence in Latin America since Castro and the Arab resentment over the creation of Israel (6). There was a new kind of war being fought, one that world cinema responded to whole-heartedly when Italian activist ﬁlmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo used non-actors in The Battle of Algiers (1965), prompting Hollywood to turn the same Algerian struggle into an exploitable form of cinematic war spectacle in Lost Command (1966). It was a new kind of warfare: the domain of the oppressed against the powerful government oppressor. As much as it was perhaps mired in theories of desperation, it was increasingly viewed as a legitimate tactic in the means of armed struggle (7). This terrorist enemy was now political, revolutionary and not afraid to use seemingly random violence — speciﬁcally bombings — to make their presence felt and destabilize authority. The ideology of terrorism now expanded to include both a national and a religious impetus. It was considered by individuals and groups as a legitimate means of guerrilla warfare in the movement towards national liberation and independence. It was brought on by a perceived desperation of circumstance. Targeted demonstrations of violence were as much violent actions as they were staged media events. Just as there was an equation between terrorism and the struggle for independence, so too was there an ofﬁcial government view of terrorism as an uncivilized form of warfare in need of violent extermination. This was the agenda that Palestinian terrorism brought to the world in the 1970s, following the actions of the State of Israel in the 1967 war (8). The high-proﬁle ﬁlms that followed in the 1970s, particularly Rosebud (1975) and Black Sunday (1977), gave attention to the grievances of the Palestinian terrorists without validating their means. Although there was no validation of terror, the possibility of a visual spectacle dramatizing the terrorists’ actions provided alluring as an aesthetic and possibly moral paradox, saturating Black Sunday and manipulating the audience to want to see a destructive act of terrorism (9). These ﬁlms had an awareness of the terrorist cause and sought a balanced expression of the ideological conﬂict through an exploration of the terrorist as a character archetype. But within this perspective lay an illicit drive to visualize the terrorist action as desired visual spectacle. The question of cause (or “legitimate grievance”) and means underlay all initial conceptions of modern terrorism, even for those terror events played out on a large, grandiose scale. As an attention to motivation, the political context provided the background to these ﬁlms, making many of them straddle the fence in characterization and design between action movies and political thrillers. Terrorism here was a force of resistance and a demonstration of anti-western protest and took unto itself a new target — innocent civilians. In the targeting of these non-combatants and the deliberate courting of media exposure, the new and reﬁned deﬁnition of terrorism soon became of paramount importance in cinema to distinguish it from previous Cold War agendas. With the changed deﬁnition, there was now another historical legacy to contend with, one that drew as far back as early Rome and the Jewish zealots who rebelled against Roman rule: one that drew on the hash-smoking cult of the Assassins, the Indian cult of Thugs and the anarchists of the Russian revolution (10). It was a history of violent dissent against

Introduction

6

the political order of the day and it took the form of the spectacular targeting of innocent civilians for ideological reasons in order to facilitate political change: terrorism in its modern deﬁnition. But terror was reciprocal and in life the actions of the terrorists brought down a heavy series of reprisals by the power of state, reprisals which often complicated the very deﬁnition of a terroristic action. Consequently underlying any conception of terrorism is the notion of state terror. What remained unspoken and is certainly less explicit in ﬁlms is precisely this question of so-called state terrorism, the violent and fearful oppression of a people by its government whether by design or in response to some perceived threat. The tit-for-tat of terrorist and counter-terrorist action by state agency would indicate a battle for political control; but rarely did ﬁlms explore state oppression and terrorism together except by insinuation, although it was a central undercurrent to Pontecorvo’s work. Rarely was state authority questioned, although there was a concern for the ultimate responsibility of counter-terrorist actions, especially when such actions failed abysmally, such as in the Munich Olympics incident ﬁrst dramatized in 21 Hours at Munich (1976). The American cinema of terrorism hence favored individual or group terrorist efforts against the presumed sanctity of the state, especially since such terrorism was usually anti–American in nature. In ﬁlms such as The Human Factor (1975), The Amateur (1982), and through even to Collateral Damage (1999), American patriarchal authority was not only beyond all reproach but was seen as a benevolent authority under attack by indefensibly vicious individuals (often sponsored) who literally attack the sanctity of the American family (11). In this way, counter-terrorist action was seen as a duty: to protect the family values of the American state and the proclivity of the wronged American patriarch — the decent father who through a moment of being unaware of the dangers posed to him by political movement loses what he has (the family) and seeks individual reprisal to reinstate usurped authority. This trend proliferated in many scenarios of terrorism since the 1970s, subtextually tying into the popular trend of urban vigilante movies that had emerged in the wake of Michael Winner’s epochal Death Wish (1975) (12).

Black Sunday and the Spectre of International Terrorism American society and foreign policy now were the open targets of terrorism. The question of why there possibly existed this widespread resentment of America seeped subtextually into the movies. The movies fed off each new real terrorist incident and the politically expedient national criticism inherent in them. But these were still international conﬂicts for most Americans and hardly a very popular cause at home. However, Black Sunday changed all this as it sought to bring the threat of terrorism on foreign soil to an America completely unprepared to deal with such terrorism on its own terrain. The question of what may be American provocation of anti–Western terrorist actions now spread in ﬁlms dealing with American or simply Western representatives abroad and speciﬁc actions aimed against home interests. These scenarios springboarded from actual terror incidents even if they did not dramatize them directly in the same way that, for instance, the Israeli handling of the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue mission was ﬁlmed. Terrorism was now a matter of choice, a deliberate tactic by dangerous individuals with a proverbial axe to grind against the West. Although born of the rhetoric of desper-

7

Introduction

ation — of people being driven to such acts without responsibility for them — this soon shifted onto the rhetoric of what might be termed catalytic transformation. Under this, the terrorist action was intended to set events in motion and precipitate political, ideological and intra-personal change. The terrorist action was a deﬁning moment in the mentality of the terrorist character, an act of self-aggrandizement. Although with the exception of Carlos the Jackal (13) the terrorist ﬁgure in popular culture never became a full-blown cult of personality, terrorism as a precursor to radical change became a provocative theme and the ﬁgure of the terrorist became an awe-inspiring and captivatingly enigmatic danger (14). Although ﬁlms responded by exploring the political ramiﬁcations of terrorist actions, this was actually far rarer than ﬁlms that sought to dramatize the terrorist protagonist’s personal psychological transformation — that the impact of terror could be read not just on the victims but on the perpetrators. The question of the mentality of the terrorist thus became prominent, resulting in such character portraits as Hennessy (1975), The Outsider (1980) and even in Antonioni’s analysis of identity, presence and absence in The Passenger (1975) and the dangers of the U.S. student movement in Zabriskie Point (1970). Indeed, the enigma of the terrorist as fearful epitome of inhumane evil and noble freedom ﬁghter against an oppressive government proved a dualism enticing to ﬁlmmakers in the 1980s, resulting in ﬁlms such as The Little Drummer Girl (1984) and Brazil (1985). In such ﬁlms the terrorist ﬁgure was capable of both extreme political commitment and deﬁant derring-do: contemporary legend. The modern cinema of terrorism thus grew up alongside some of the most highproﬁle terrorist acts since the early 1970s, particularly in the Middle East with the rise of Palestinian militancy and the unconditional U.S. support of Israel. The Palestinians perfected the airline hijacking as a media event and form of international blackmail, a process beginning in 1970 when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked three airlines bound for New York City and forced them to land at Dawson’s Field in Jordan (15). Palestinian terrorist atrocities continued in the 1972 Munich massacre, the Israeli reprisals thereafter drawing them ever further into an escalating tit-for-tat exchange of assassinations and bombings, later dramatized in the telemovie Sword of Gideon (1986) and in Munich (2005). In the 1976 Entebbe crisis, Palestinians diverted a plane to Uganda. And by 1979, the Iranian Revolution had in effect precipitated an all-new form of hostage crisis. Such Palestinian-terror themed ﬁlms as Children of Rage (1974) and Prisoner in the Middle (1975) followed, to be soon joined in the early 1980s by The Ambassador (1984) and the aforementioned The Little Drummer Girl. The successful Israeli-led anti-terrorism mission at Entebbe (ﬁlmed no less than three times in cinema and telemovies such as Raid on Entebbe, Victory at Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt in 1976-77) provided a model for scenarios of armed and even violently action-packed reprisal for subsequent terrorist ﬁlms along action lines. Correspondingly, there were more scenarios involving airline hijacking and hostage-taking, culminating in such reactionary Middle East–themed fare as The Delta Force (1986) and Death Before Dishonor (1987) and ﬁlms which sought to decisively reinstate (in an era where Sylvester Stallone found immense popularity as Vietnam vet cum superhero John Rambo in First Blood [1981] and Rambo [1985] 16) the authority of American militarism as justiﬁable foreign policy strategy. The foundation event in the rise of such reactionary visions in the cinema of terror-

Introduction

8

ism was the actual drama of the Iranian-held hostages played out on American television, crippling the effective presidency of Jimmy Carter (17). The world was learning that the world’s main superpower could be held for ransom and even ideologically undermined by a targeted act of terrorism and/or revolutionary violence. It was fast becoming a matter of pride for Americans in ﬁlms about terrorist actions; and action ﬁlms sought to in effect reclaim a power for America that the scenarists felt had been taken away by terrorist events. The terrorists in such reactionary ﬁlms were inhuman trash, representing cultures worthy of domination by American military democracy. Although many of these ﬁlms were undistinguished action fare, they signaled the extension of the terrorist ﬁlm as a mode of discourse which could develop as a distinct subgenre. The Iranian Revolution proved a seminal point in the cinema of terrorism, one that brought a new fear of hostage-taking and cemented the face of the Middle Eastern enemy as a political-religious fanatic, untrustworthy, unknowable and of course essentially malevolent. The fall of the shah and the American hostages held in Iran by the new Ayatollah Khomeini increased the viability of hostage-taking, the targeting of innocents already seen in airplane hijackings and the Munich incident. It was a matter of American pride. How could these tiny countries control the fate of a superpower? The fate of the hostages thus deﬁned the fate of the nation and gave the terrorist the power to control international affairs (18). The Iranian Revolution also gave vent to feelings of disenchantment in the Middle East with U.S. culture and foreign policy. The Ayatollah Khomeini insisted that Iran would not be an independent Islamic state until it had eradicated all U.S. inﬂuence. This demand to end the burgeoning forces of American Empiricism and even an incipient American globalization-as-cultural-and-economic-domination had implications for subsequent anti–American hostility in the region. American inﬂuence, power, politics and economics were seen as an enemy to independence and thus the fear of American colonization exerted itself as a violent opposition towards U.S. foreign policy. In ﬁlms increasingly shorn of political context, what remained the prominent theme was what the ﬁlms considered an inexplicable resentment of American power coupled with the need for that global power to avoid being forced into action or humiliated by those with far less obvious might. With its ability to inﬂuence thus, terrorism was a bridge to power which authority must destroy.

The Psychological Delineation of the Terrorist as Character Type What was most important to the emerging cinema of terrorism was precisely that idea of another person (or group) able to usurp the right to self-determination of innocent people. Correspondingly, the cinema of terrorism developed the persona of the terrorist as centered on his ability to control the fate of others: an inversely messianic ﬁgure. The terrorist will-to-power fantasy was seen as both a function of a broad ideological cause but also evidence of psychological dysfunction: the malfunctioning ego, often with a highly libidinous connection. Although research into the terrorist persona could ﬁnd no common thread of psychological disturbance uniting true-life terrorists (19), the movies would seek as much as they could ﬁnd, frequently in terms of sexual

9

Introduction

pathology. The terrorist had to be seen to be behaviorally abnormal in some way; and implied or explicit sexual dysfunction became the shorthand means for signifying an aberrant psyche. However, this concern for sexual pathology followed rather strict racial and cultural codiﬁcation. The foreign terrorist menace, speciﬁcally the Arab, was a sexual threat: Time and again in terrorist ﬁlms there had to be a dramatization of implied sexual menace between the male Arab terrorist and a female captive, as if a terrorist action demanded the expression of a malfunction in sexual pathology and hence revealed a cultural deﬁcit in implied sexual socialization. Thus, ﬁlms such as Hostage (1987) took it upon themselves to dramatize the genre’s sexual undercurrents. Such sexual perversion effectively and clearly signaled the Arab terrorist as “other” to the dominant order — a mad, malfunctioning patriarch who sought to control others as a means of self-aggrandizement, the product of the violence in his “evil” culture/religion. This sexual malfunction born of cultural fear did not ﬁnd its way into depictions of Western or European terrorists. The psychopathology of those who would usurp control over the fate of innocents and seize the right to self-determination became the single dominant subtext in terrorist ﬁlms of the modern era, especially those dealing with hijack and hostage situations. Indeed, a major focus of narrative interest in the cinema of terrorism emerged in what might be termed the self-determination set-piece: that moment when innocent people of free will have that free will taken away from them through the powerful actions of another. It would become a central trope: the horrendous self-aggrandizement of the terrorist ﬁgure through the oppression of the individuality and freedom of his hostages. Just how the terrorist ﬁgure handled this illicit and dangerously immoral responsibility for other lives became a dissection of the use of power underlying terrorist psychopathology. The right to self-determination was the concept and plot hook that motivated these ﬁlms thematically and underlay their emerging narrative structure as a developing subgenre. Just as the set-piece had a clear motivating narrative function as a dramatic turning point, so too the act of removing the right of the hostages to self-determination was seen to have a near-metamorphotic effect on the terrorist, so that the remainder of the terrorist ﬁlm explored the terrorist’s self-aggrandizement. As much as the terror action was motivated by political concerns, the cinema of terrorism sought a more intimate demonstration of the very consequences of terrorism by focusing on ﬁrstly the changes in the character of the terrorist involved and secondly through a narrative of reprisal — the counter-terrorist scenario. The resultant narrative action to silence the terrorist, and effectively prevent the transformation of self set in motion through the terrorist act, became the symbolic action to stiﬂe the rebellious individual ego. This internal character tension, the presumed psychological aberration, was in turn the basis for a psycho-drama often played out beneath the narrative in countless action movie scenarios. The dramatization of this crisis of self-determination often played into a surrounding context of surprising moral ambiguity. This was not in terms of sympathy for the terrorist ﬁgure, however, as American ﬁlm primarily followed a nemesis vs. hero line in its conﬂict between terrorist and counter-terrorist. Speciﬁcally, there existed in the thriller genre itself, and a trait willingly appropriated by terrorist cinema, an emphasis on the conﬂict between a moral and an immoral result of the terrorist action (20). Hence, the tension between the suppression of the terrorist action and the narrative drive (perhaps even the illicit audience wish) to see terror expressed as visual spectacle rendered the sus-

Introduction

10

pense in these terrorist ﬁlms often morally problematic. To see the “truth” of terrorism demanded the violent set-piece structure of terrorist action and counter-action; cause and effect: but the visualization of such spectacle risked validating the terrorist ﬁgure’s egotistical self-aggrandizement that the “hero” was determined to see punished. Thus, the moral dilemma of terrorism as ﬁlmed spectacle was very much at the forefront of terrorist cinema. On the one hand, the terrorist characters revealed the idea of the clash between inherent humanistic moral constraint and functional ideological justiﬁcation for inhumane immoral atrocity. But just as they did explore this oppositional process, so too did a number of ﬁlms seek to dramatize this process in terms of what might be termed the displacement of ﬁnal responsibility. Hence, the terrorist paradoxically seizes the right to self-determination of others but displaces the responsibility for such onto other agencies — for instance, saying that if the hostages are killed, it is solely the fault of the negotiating (or non-negotiating) party rather than the responsibility of the terrorists themselves. In this way, the terrorist morality still clung to an air of desperation and over-compensation. This battle between ideological displacement, moral disengagement and personal self-actualization/self-aggrandizement would set the way for depictions of terrorist incidents and characters in terrorist cinema. In such a way as the ﬁlms focused on representative terrorist encounters, they could almost be considered miniature morality plays. They explored what happens, individually and politically, when such an essential human right as self-determination is violated. That many of the ﬁlms used this premise as an excuse for violent action in service of a militarist doctrine of force and reprisal was the result of dealing with the cinematic tendency towards sensationalist exploitation found in the more reactionary extremes of American action genre ﬁlmmaking. It was the possibility of both small-scale and large-scale disaster when this right is oppressed and attacked that underlay the sense of spectacle that terrorist movies borrowed from the action ﬁlms surrounding them. Hence, the terrorist ﬁlm’s iconography and even narrative drive revolved around, as has been mentioned, the psycho-drama of self-determination. In the 1980s, this “spectacle” drove the terrorist ﬁlm to the straight action movie, concerning terrorists and anti-terrorist forces in cause and effect reprisals challenging America’s militarist globalization, an agenda such reactionary ﬁlms accepted without question. Terrorist ﬁlms demonstrated in this dramatization of the right to self-determination the concern for terrorism as a powerful gamesmanship between governments and rogue groups or individuals, explored in terms of the impact of the terrorist action on group dynamics and as individual character portraits. It was also a crisis of socialization — the right of the individual to self-assertion against an oppressive conditioning that destroys free will. A major theme in these ﬁlms was the ambiguous role of terroristic violence as self-actualization — that participation in terrorism (as moral/authorial rebellion) prompted a kind of intrapersonal psychological metamorphosis which brought the terrorist personality into a higher state of self-awareness, as least in the terrorist’s own mind. This aspect of personality transformation is found in the terrorist ﬁlms’ constant emphasis on changing codes of behavior in its lead characters, particularly the terrorist ﬁgures and hostages more so than the heroic ﬁgure (usually a wronged loner seeking to re-establish the power of the state he represents) who remained generally clearheaded in his morally righteous counter-terrorism, as opposed to the terrorists’ self-righteousness. In the conﬂict between what was the righteous reprisal to self-righteous egoistic asser-

11

Introduction

tion, the impetus was to eliminate (or punish) the unstable terrorist personality before it can fulﬁll the violent equation between personality transformation and political revolution that underlay the terrorist expression of self. This cinema of terrorism also drew much of its strength by deﬁning and exploring the terrorist ﬁgure as the nemesis. The protagonist often had the simple virtue of facing down the villain in the name of goodness, law and order. He was in that sense both unambiguous and morally heroic, a selﬂess but proud warrior. He was unquestioningly righteous — the good patriarch out to cleanse and restore the smooth operation of American patriarchy by purifying it of malfunctioning (usually male) egos. Although this simplistic version of good and evil was found in many reactionary action movies, a number sought to explore the moral ambiguities of the terrorist narrative and turn away from the caricature by now inherent in the subgenre. Subsequent rare ﬁlms thus sought to humanize the terrorist character and to contextualize the abhorrent actions in terms of both psychological aberration and political methodology. The greater the human context, the more ambiguous the terrorist ﬁgure became, reaching an astonishing level of complex ambiguity by the time of The Assignment (1997): and the more the traditional morally righteous hero needed to remain a stoical warrior in such scenarios: He was the ﬁgure of moral balance and just restitution. Such ﬁlmmakers as Costa-Gavras, Gillo Pontecorvo and John Frankenheimer went to great lengths to contextualize their drama of terrorism not in the shorthand of caricature but in the wealth of detail accorded characterization founded in political analysis. However, most of the cinema of terrorism kept political analysis backgrounded, instead concentrating on action highlights and the psycho-drama of self-determination as thrilling spectacle rather than developing intellectual political treatise (the paradoxes ﬁnally found themselves addressed as political context in 1998’s The Siege). Politics were now unavoidable, especially when the terrorist enemy was foreign to American soil; and this sense of foreign-ness led to a large amount of reactionary undercurrents, ﬁlms not questioning the apparent hatred and resentment that America faced on the international scene and instead assuming America’s unquestioned supremacy on all matters of domestic and foreign policy. Those ﬁlms that eschewed character ambiguity and political context thus turned the cinema of terrorism into the drama of national superiority.

Trends in the Contemporary Cinema of Terrorism Immediately Prior to 9/11 The 1980s saw the rise in the Middle East of two terrorist-political-religious groups, Hezbollah and Hamas. The activities of these two groups in particular would shade 1980s terrorist action ﬁlms, especially when Hezbollah used a new device against American forces stationed in Lebanon — the suicide bomber. Films would be slow and sparing in the use of the suicide bomber, although it features as a threat to American soil as early as the satiric Wrong Is Right (1980). It was a moral affront to steal the right to self-determination and while it may have made the character a powerful ﬁgure as much as an evildoer, it also rendered them in danger of a kind of caricatured extremism. Racial proﬁling was increasingly put to use, with Arab terrorists looking decidedly grubby in comparison to their European colleagues, whose motivations were less extreme (21). The terrorist and

Introduction

12

his associated psychological self-aggrandizement became the dominant character type in these dramas, so much so that the operational logistics of the terrorist world that surrounded him were left off-screen and suggested rather than explored. Still, the terrorist leader inasmuch as he was the precipitator of action was the ﬁgure to be most feared, for he wielded the ultimate power over the life and death of the innocents. This ﬁgure was recognizably human though increasingly perverse and even suprahuman to the point where caricature took over any sense of characterization. The historical trend in ﬁlm towards such caricature was perhaps best exempliﬁed by some of the villains in the James Bond movies. Indeed, the ubiquitous terrorist mastermind inﬁltrated cinema ﬁrst by virtue of the James Bond ﬁlms of the 1960s and 1970s. The infamous villainous organization known as SPECTRE devoted itself to a variety of mayhem-making, including terrorism. These Bond ﬁlms posited the terrorist network as a threat that could even overwhelm Cold War concerns, although was often tied into them. But more often than not, the villains in terrorist ﬁlms were not so extreme a threat to power as a nemesis organization like SPECTRE. Although much of the threat in the cinema of terrorism came from abroad, there were still many ﬁlms that sought to explore the idea of domestic terrorism, from student radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s to right-wing militia and neo–Nazi movements in the 1980s and 1990s to such off-kilter portraits of dedicated but unfathomable contemporary radicalism as in the unusual ﬁlm Arlington Road (1999). The cinematic treatment of homegrown terrorism often gave more attention to both cause and characterization than did treatments of international terrorism. The main problem of the domestic terrorist was one of an internal patriarchal crisis — the ability of the government to control and pacify those in it who would be drawn to violent protest. The idea of ideology eroding as a result of challenges from within (generational, social, economic) underpinned many ﬁlms dealing with domestic terrorism even if they were not always, as in ﬁlms dealing with neo–Nazis for instance, readily identiﬁed as terroristic in nature. Those ﬁlms that dealt with domestic terrorism often took a different tack. What preoccupied them was the heritage of the anti–Establishment climate of post–1960s radicalism: domestic terror in the wake of the peace movement. The domestic violence of the peace and love generation had turned terroristic in such real groups as the Weather Underground. Ironically, in time there would be a shift from depicting such 1960s radicalism to depicting the threat of right-wing neo–Nazi anti-government agendas usually associated with the so-termed militia movement, which had profoundly worrying Christian underpinnings (22). Radicalism was seen as a counter-culture tradition that had transformed itself from one generation to its increasingly reactionary successor, expressed as a violent and anarchic threat to mainstream social stability. Hence, the once sly satire of the newsworthy popularity of a youthful terrorist radicalism in a ﬁlm like Network (1976) was transformed into the brutal survivalism of Dead Bang (1988) and American History X (1998). Despite the ideological context, it was enough that the strong terrorist ﬁgures wanted to embark on a violent action and the ﬁlm followed it through. Nevertheless, the tension between stereotypical caricature and freshly motivated character is found in much of the recent cinema of terrorism’s depiction of strong individual terrorist ﬁgures and has begun to create a kind of case study or even portrait mentality, brilliantly explored in such ﬁlms as The Assignment and its analysis of the cult of Carlos the Jackal. The megalomania of

13

Introduction

the super-terrorist continued but the psychological portrait necessity of depicting them as recognizably human in conduct and discourse became a challenge for many ﬁlmmakers tired of the simple caricature that had emerged by the early 1990s. The deﬁnition of a modern terrorist ﬁlm centers on both the characterization of the terrorist ﬁgure and the manipulation of the threat they pose — i.e., the dramatization of the concept of someone usurping the right of others to self-determination. The battle for control over innocents by powerful men has an in-built political discourse concerning the proper operations of patriarchal responsibility and the cinema of terrorism became the cinema of patriarchal crisis. The good patriarch, very often a father ﬁgure as much as a loner, has the essential duty to restore the functioning of proper patriarchal order — i.e., of the American way of life (23). That is held to be a sacrosanct epitome of freedom so that the right to individual self-determination and the American way of life are symbiotic ideals. In this way, the terrorist is considered the universal but pathological enemy of freedom, enigmatic and threatening beyond justiﬁcation or even explanation in either political-ideological or humanist terms. To challenge America was seen simply to challenge universal freedom — hence, much of the American cinema of terrorism carries with it a sense of arrogance, pride and smug superiority, the idea of the wronged and misunderstood global superpower. As mentioned, the sexual menace of the terrorist psychology was visible in Arab or Middle-Eastern terrorists primarily whereas any European, WASP terrorist ﬁgures were altogether more reﬁned and far less of a sexual threat. They were sophisticated and alluring, even glamorous as ﬁgures, so much so that gradually even their terroristic motivations changed. This change was cemented in the ﬁlm Die Hard (1988), wherein the highly glamorous European terrorist is eventually revealed not to be a terrorist at all but simply a high-class thief. That ﬁlm in turn signaled a new direction that terrorist ﬁlm would follow through to the events of 9/11— the idea of terrorism not as political warfare but as a form of conventional, though certainly exotic, criminality. By the 1990s and the ﬁlms after Die Hard, the Cold War was over and terrorism now in ﬁlms was no longer a matter of ideology but increasingly contextualized in yuppie-era terms of personal greed and of individual (often grandiose) criminal enterprise. Like other criminal occupations, it could even be sexy, a phenomenon seen in the cult surrounding Carlos the Jackal. Needless to say, this sexiness was altogether denied those many Arab villains who remained shrouded in sexual threat and political menace. European rogue agents and mercenaries were now considered amongst the terrorist ﬁgure pantheon because of what they were prepared to do to get their way, regardless of the presence of any political ideology; the 1990s was the cinematic age of the terrorist as a criminal extortionist (24). The intent was to eliminate ideological rationales for terrorism and replace them with much more recognizable and conventionally criminal personal motivations: The ideology and pathology that had so fascinated the early cinema of terrorism were thus superseded by more familiar generic trappings. Since the mid–1990s in ﬁlm there was a prevalent fear that new technologies — suitcase bombs and the like — would be used against America on American soil. Many of these weapons were supposedly loosed as a direct result of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, available on the arms market for sale to the highest bidder. This twist effectively follows on from the mercenary character type that began to emerge as a terrorist-like ﬁgure in the 1980s, at least a terrorist enabler in that he provided skills and

Introduction

14

arms to the terrorist’s cause, although perhaps the mercenary himself was indifferent to that cause: Such ﬁlms to assess the mercenary as The Wild Geese (1978) had carefully implied a governing morality to the character type, but ﬁlms like The Dogs of War (1980) began to treat the character type as a conscience-less, amoral anti-hero for hire. Keeping in step with the post-war mentality, the divisions between ideological terrorism and terrorism as organized criminal enterprise formed the thematic tension underlying much of the cinema of terrorism’s efforts to deal with terrorism since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, just as terrorism was being criminalized, so too a number of ﬁlms dealt with the prospect of terrorism emerging as a direct result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Former Cold War agents, now with little to do but remember the CIA-KGB rivalry, were in these ﬁlms using terrorism — particularly loose or unsecure weapons — in order to facilitate a global conﬂict. The ultimate goal here was less destabilization than the fulﬁllment of the apocalyptic promise of the Cold War. But, just as there were moves to conﬁne terrorism to a function of a greater, much more recognizable criminality, so too the sheer violence of the terrorist act or threat gave it a gravitas not elsewhere found. In the 1990s and the ﬁlms leading up to 9/11 therefore there was a return to the fear of large-scale disaster. Perhaps the ultimate course of this trend is bookended by two terrorist ﬁlms, Black Sunday (1977) and The Sum of All Fears (2001), within which the entire American cinema of terrorism prior to 9/11 can be considered to fall. The genre-deﬁning former involves a terrorist threat to detonate a bomb in a football stadium (during the Superbowl) which is thwarted at the last moment. The latter contains a similar plot device, the difference being that the bomb this time explodes and the ﬁlm must tie up the aftermath of a terrorist disaster. The fear of disaster thus returned to the cinema of terrorism, echoing the atomic fears of the early Cold War, and bringing the burgeoning genre to a cyclic conclusion just prior to the events of 9/11.

The Re-emergence and Re-Deﬁnition of Terrorist Cinema Since 9/11 Just as the terrorist ﬁlm genre realized its worst case scenario of a major attack on American soil, two planes hijacked by fanatical religious (Islamic) terrorists slammed into the World Trade Center, bringing down the Twin Towers, symbols of American accomplishment. In the realization of the strange conﬂuence of escapist cinema and real events, the American cinema of terrorism suddenly stopped. Those ﬁlms already in progress were completed and released, some of them modiﬁed beforehand, but terrorism as a subject was considered off-limits. President George W. Bush, a born-again Christian elected in large part through Karl Rove’s manipulation of the Religious Right, launched into the “with us or against us” rhetoric that by the election of Barack Obama had resulted in a wave of anti–American resentment worldwide. The “War on Terror” years began. And just as cinema during the Vietnam War did not address the Vietnam War itself until after the conﬂict, the American cinema of terrorism did not overtly address the war on terror from 2001 to 2007. There were a few ﬁlms in this era to address terror concerns, such as the remake of The Manchurian Candidate and the Orwellian comic book allegory of V for Vendetta, but the political and ideological concerns of War on Terror Policy were dormant. Michael Moore released his

15

Introduction

dissent —Fahrenheit 9/11— to world acclaim. But Moore’s hatred of the Bush government was an opinionated indictment, however effective. The resentment of the Bush government’s policies regarding ﬁrst the Iraq War and then the sanctioning of torture in interrogation methods in violation of the Geneva Convention led to another documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. Alongside such work as The Road to Guantanamo, the central ﬁgures of the Bush government — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush — were by 2008 considered by some to be war criminals. This radical politicization would take some years to achieve. Terrorist cinema in the meantime went back to re-address its central theme — the crisis of self-determination — in order to redeﬁne and reassert itself. The ﬁrst signiﬁcant terrorist ﬁlm released post–9/11 was a hijack and hostage drama: United 93. Where the central set-piece had been the terrorist take-over and the loss of the individual right to self-determination, now the emphasis was on the ﬁght to regain that self-determination through a collective action to stop the terrorist from achieving their planned self-aggrandizement, which post–9/11 had now become equated with suicidal religious martyrdom. United 93 seized on a moment of resistance to the terrorist agenda on 9/11 and sought to move the terrorist ﬁlm from the loss of self-determination to the reinstatement of it. The subsequent wave of terrorist ﬁlms beginning in 2007 set aside all previous concerns with a clear and surgical precision. Charlie Wilson’s War redeﬁned the Cold War and set the stage for the terrorism which followed — now clearly rooted in the Middle East. The origins of the War on Terror may have been in Cold War proxy actions by the CIA but the ﬁlms addressed the means of ﬁghting it. Gone were suggestions of criminality and Cold War remnant policies. The lone patriarchal hero was now an ambiguous ﬁgure, his allegiance tested repeatedly. He was not a family man, but someone who could work dedicatedly with the expedient necessity of getting things done. But, in contrast to the reactionary ﬁlms of the 1980s, political expediency faced immense problems of cultural difference and ﬁlms like The Kingdom began to address questions of international cooperation with Arab and Islamic countries. Beyond its rhetorical front, the War on Terror necessitated certain tactics. The question of what to do with terrorist captives became an uppermost concern, especially if those captured terror suspects had information which could save lives. Bush and Cheney, motivated by the desire to save American lives, increasingly sidestepped the Constitution in their creation of Guantanamo Bay. As the ethics and values of American democracy were tested, and many would argue obliterated, by the Bush Christian Republican government, the cinema of terrorism had to wait until Bush lost control of Congress and became a lame duck President in the lead-up to the Obama election. Then, the resultant cinema of terrorism, freed from adherence to Bush’s patriotic fervor, began to tackle the question of political expediency in the War on Terror years. Yet, there was a disturbing ambiguity in these considerations of political expedience. The Bush War on Terror years saw the creation of Guantanamo Bay and the elevation of torture to U.S. foreign policy. This rhetoric of torture espoused in particular by Cheney in his “gloves are off ” rhetoric was, for many, incompatible with the ideals of American democracy. While the on-the-ground agents were doing their duty, following orders, the powers-that-be had a different agenda: They wanted results at all costs. The need to be seen to get results thus began to override cultural, social and even humanistic concerns, addressed in such ﬁlms as Rendition and Redacted. The amoral indifference of the Amer-

Introduction

16

ican intelligence and military community was contrasted to the individual benevolence of its agents to assert an America in the grip of a code of justiﬁable inhumanity, a democracy torn at the seams and at crisis point as a result of the Bush administration. That is what the Bush years amounted to: a wave of patriotism replaced by a moral consideration of just what Bush et al. had turned America into during the War on Terror, just what compromises to democracy and the Constitution were made. And although the ﬁlms were exciting, immediate and tense in a way they were not before, the cinema of terrorism became the primary means for the political criticism and assessment of America’s War on Terror legacy. Terrorists were clearly deﬁned as religiously inspired (as were their adversaries in the Bush government as Oliver Stone’s Bush biopic W. made clear) and a new concern for religious and cultural sensitivity to the Muslim world inﬁltrated ﬁlms such as Body of Lies and Traitor. And the rise of Islamic fundamentalism had given the genre two new set-pieces — the beheading video and the suicide bombing — dramatizations of which began to emerge as structural principles in the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism. In the suicide bombing especially, the paradoxical need for spectacular violence as a set-piece within the cinema of terrorism had a realistic correlative. Reactionary fantasies of family values persisted in such failed ﬁlms as Die Hard 4.0 but the cinema of terrorism was now a full-ﬂedged political discourse. Family values were no longer automatically seen as the embodiment of U.S. democracy, there were higher ideals at play, ideals which had a price on family loyalty but which overrode it. Likewise, the initial Christian call to arms that had Bush label his War on Terror a “crusade” was dismissed as having no grounds. Religious sensitivity existed, but with The Kingdom, Body of Lies and Traitor, the realization that religious faith lay behind terrorism slowly began to fester, just at the time political atheism began to assert itself in the works of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett, works criticizing faith and terror. Finally the wave of terrorist ﬁlms since 2007, the urgency and politics of the War on Terror led to the re-deﬁnition of the cinema of terrorism not as political thriller, but as political discourse making the genre the foremost means of ethical debate in contemporary cinema as it entered the Obama era, with Obama promising to close Guantanamo Bay. The link between religious indoctrination and terrorism began to seep into non-terroristic genres following Obama’s election. In particular, the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 had as a villainous hijacker a tormented Catholic who in one scene stops to pray for the validation necessary to kill. But unlike his Islamic counterparts this hijacker was — in a return to the pre–9/11 cinema of terrorism — a criminal extortionist. The mere fact that he held up a subway train is reported in the news as an act of terrorism even though it is criminal: The hijacker relies on the media accusations of terrorism in his action to affect the stock market so that he can proﬁt from the public fear of terrorism. In this way The Taking of Pelham 123, an action-thriller, brought together the evolving concerns of pre– and post–9/11 terrorist cinema in a timely summation, boldly re-packaged for the Obama era.

T HE F ILMOGRAPHY

Agent Red / Air Force One

18

Agent Red (2000: d. Damian Lee) A dedicated virologist is in the process of transporting a virus, a deadly biological weapon, from Russia to the USA when rogue Russian dissidents seize the submarine carrying it. They intend to place the virus into a missile and launch it at New York City. Dolph Lundgren plays the Marine assigned to stop them. Agent Red tackles cooperation between the former Soviet Union and the USA. The virus is revealed to have been created in the 1950s and stolen by the Russians, who are now returning it. Also revealed is an unintended spill of the virus into a village in the 1970s, recalling the reported development of anthrax by the Russians and its accidental contamination of a small community. The Russians seem aware of their own poor internal security measures and wish to return the virus to prevent it from falling into terrorist hands. The terrorists are angry over the current fate of the former Soviet Empire and are ﬁlled with resentment for the USA. The ﬁlm, however, is a variation on the viral release scenario of Outbreak, combined with the action-in-conﬁned-spaces scenario of Die Hard, Under Siege et al. Lundgren is teamed with a female virologist, his wife — a plot development that owes much to the vastly superior Outbreak. Agent Red though is in spirit much closer to the low-budget Crash Dive series, responsible for a mini-subgenre of submarine movies. The notable trend delved into by Agent Red is to tie the fear of viral outbreak to the fear of terrorism. Thus, even the virus is not natural, but is a weapon, a remnant of the Cold War that will come back to potentially threaten the safety and security of the USA. The implication here is that U.S. foreign policy in some way impels monstrous terrorist acts. What is interesting is the hint in the terrorist motivation of releasing the virus as a warning, a demonstration of the horror of the U.S. government that could have created such a weapon to begin with. Thus, the terrorists’ agenda is to give the USA what they feel it deserves. The rhetoric is paradoxical and is used here to expose the terrorists as moral hypocrites who use violence to supposedly teach the lesson of peace. However, the ﬁlm lacks the condemnatory bitterness towards the peace movement that would underline a similar theme in the scathingly cynical Who Dares Wins. Nevertheless, there is a corresponding belief in these two ﬁlms that hypocritical terrorists will unleash a weapon (viral or nuclear) to show its destructive power so that the world will see the danger and reform.

Air Force One (1997: d. Wolfgang Petersen) The security of the presidential aircraft is broken by terrorists from Kazakhstan (headed by Gary Oldman). They hold the president (Harrison Ford) and his family hostage in order to force the Russian premier to release their rebel leader, currently in a Russian prison. The terrorists believe that the American leader has abandoned the aircraft but he is still aboard and reverses the situation. However, when his family is threatened and he is apprehended, he feels as though he must give in to the terrorists’ demands. Meanwhile, those back in Washington try to get the vice-president (Glenn Close) to sign an order to the effect that the president has been compromised and that other military action is necessary. Gradually Ford gains control over the situation, proving the ﬁghting worth of the American president. Air Force One is very much concerned with depicting the president as a man of action and strong resolve, who does not buckle under pressure. In a climate of increased Rus-

19

Airboss

sian and American cooperation, terrorists and their regional agendas are the new enemies, arrogant enough to believe that they can inﬂuence the fate of nations. However, their motivation here is essentially reduced to petty, selﬁsh pride. Hence Oldman needs to assert that he is not unlike the president as a leader of change and consequence. It is a function of pride to believe in consequence, as if through terrorist actions the terrorists have seized control of a destiny that larger nations (and Imperial interests) have taken away from those he claims to represent. However, the scenario is a basic test of wills between terrorists and a U.S. leader who will never negotiate or tolerate terrorism. The question is simple: Will the resolve on terrorism hold if your own family is in jeopardy? The implication is that emotional ties can compromise foreign policy but the ﬁlm holds that determined self-assertion will rectify the problem, even if it does acknowledge the essential human dilemma involved in such a political hostage crisis. Foreign policy is here equated with a doctrine of peace at all costs, even if it means the use of military force against hostile forces or nations. The ﬁlm’s depiction of a popular man of action is propagandistic as it shows the resolve of the ofﬁce to balance humane issues with greater global responsibility. Yet under pressure, the Russian leader does release his captive, as a reluctant personal favor to the president, in effect demonstrating Russian subordination to the USA. Thus, the president is forced to be a role model on a personal and political level. In this sense the ﬁlm operates from an underlying assumption of America’s greater responsibility as world leader — terrorism threatens this responsibility. Although Air Force One does imply that the new enemy to the USA is determined by terrorist agendas, it roots these terrorist causes in the breakup of the Soviet Union. Post–Cold War resentment of the USA persists from a new breed of so-called patriots: national pride and the struggle for independence in a post–Cold War society contribute to the rise of a terrorist threat from within the former Soviet Union. Still, the motive is the resentment of the “freedom” represented by the United States. Thus, Air Force One ties into the statement that terrorists are the true enemies of freedom, rather than the liberators of their supposed cause. The ﬁlm depicts terrorism as the dangerous folly of absolute belief at the expense of individual mortality: Through his actions, the terrorist will be synonymous with his cause and achieve a form of immortality. It is the height of arrogance and the selﬁsh opposite of the president’s globally responsible stance.

Airboss (1997: d. J. Christian Ingvordsen) A special mercenary unit steals a selection of secret Russian stealth ﬁghters. The renegade group intends to attack and eliminate the Arab oil ﬁelds, thus enabling Russia to corner the new world oil market. Pentagon authorities assign their own agent to ensure that this does not happen. The agent is alone amongst the terrorists until the U.S. military gets involved in a rescue. Airboss follows a fairly typical plot line from 1990s action-exploitation low-budgeters regarding specialized aerial ﬁghting craft. It thus follows a line of descent from Clint Eastwood’s Firefox, crossbred with the delight in aerial combat found in such ﬁlms as Top Gun and Iron Eagle. Its thematic basis, common to many terrorist ﬁlms of the 1990s, is that the restructuring of the Soviet Union has resulted in a security breakdown that enables mercenarial terrorists easier access to classiﬁed equipment and weapons technologies. It holds the breakdown of the Soviet Union as contributing to the spread of global destabilization and the potential proliferation of weapons technologies. It implies the ter-

The Amateur

20

rorist and mercenary as part of a cabal intent on destabilization and the re-emergence of Russia as a major economic power. The terrorists believe that Russia has the power to rival OPEC for U.S. support and ﬁnancial investment. It is a case of terrorism for money, although it is allied to the resentment of the current fate of the Soviet Union. Airboss holds that both international terrorism and mercenary actions are the direct result of the restructuring of world economic order and that the weak point of this order is its dependency on oil. Ironically the Middle East is not the source of terrorism but its targets, pawns in a greater plan by extremists to eliminate the West by exploiting its oil dependency on the Middle East. The Middle East is thus a battleground between the West and the remnants of the East. The Pentagon must protect the Middle East in order to preserve the global economic balance in general and the U.S. economy in particular. The ﬁlm refers back to the worries of the oil crisis and to the debate surrounding the validity of sacriﬁcing U.S. lives to preserve the price of oil. The protagonist is a standard man with a haunted past whose chance at a professional mission allows him a possibility of personal redemption — his last chance to be the best and serve his country’s interests. Individual professional heroism thus serves U.S. foreign policy. However the ﬁlm takes on an aspect of Stallone’s Rambo when the protagonist is disowned by the U.S. government and forced to defend himself in the terrorists’ camp. The ﬁlm moves to restore pride in the U.S. forces rather than ultimately purge it. It is revealed that there are in fact Arab supporters in the terrorist network and the ﬁlm thus suggests the future of terrorism to be an Arab-Russian cooperative — itself a redeﬁnition of Cold War loyalties. However it is clear that the Russians are the dominant force, considering the Arab employers to be little more than clowns. The ﬁlm touches on a spectrum of criminality that holds the mercenary lower than the terrorist in that the mercenary does it for money rather than any ideological commitment. It also suggests that the terrorist needs the mercenary to enable terrorism to thrive. Airboss is far more interesting in implication than in execution. Indeed, it is rather conﬂated on a thematic level, encompassing many contemporary themes without fully uniting them. What is most intriguing about it is the suggestion, apparent subsequent to 9/11, that there is a need for a concerted war against the organized terrorist threat to global stability, and how this centers on the fate of the Middle East. The U.S. military must preserve what the ﬁlmmakers consider an economic status quo. The ﬁlm considers this status quo worth individual lives, but also shows the triumph of individual U.S. heroism.

The Amateur (1982: d. Charles Jarrott) A computer operator-technician working for the CIA plans to retire when a terrorist organization murders his girlfriend. When he concludes that his superiors are unwilling to risk politically sensitive involvement and pursue these murderers, he follows them himself. His hunt leads to communist Czechoslovakia. He inﬁltrates the nation and is assisted by a rogue agent who detests both sides of the Cold War. The terrorist threat in this ﬁlm is European in origin. These terrorists resent the presence of the U.S. military in Europe, particularly at Rammstein Air Base. However, their method is a familiar assumption of terrorists’ intended methodology — to seize a U.S. embassy and demand the release of their “freedom ﬁghters” or they will execute hostages. The ﬁlm exposes as a tactic of terrorism the need to deﬂect ultimate responsibility for the fate of the hostages from the terrorists and onto the U.S. forces and negotiators. If

21

The Amateur

an innocent dies, it is because the USA did not listen. In this way, the terrorist group maintains a moral distance from their actions: They have been moved by desperation to regain some control over their own fate. Yet by denying ultimate responsibility in this manner, they cannot establish control except by provoking the death of a representative innocent. Terrorism in this instance is almost a political game, a paradox of deﬂecting blame and responsibility carried out through violence. As in many hostage crisis scenarios, the selection scene is a key structural point. In this effective scene, the terrorists take their hostages’ passports and make a selection of which hostages to execute ﬁrst if the need arises. As in many ﬁlms, the desired ﬁrst victim is Jewish or a Jewish-American and in this case the terrorists are German, although sponsored by the KGB as part of the Cold War. In effect The Amateur and other movies which use the selection scene in this manner suggest that the terrorist threat is a both a redirection and continuation of the means of World War II, if not always directly related to Nazism. The protagonist of The Amateur is a Jewish-American who must avenge the death of another. The link of his predicament to the Jewish plight is made clear when it is revealed that his father was a concentration camp inmate. It is through the ritual of revenge (as a higher form of justice) that self-assertion against a hostile fate, personiﬁed in the ﬁgure of the terrorist, can triumph. Ironically, however, the terrorist here is almost a catalyst in an individual’s journey to self-assertion and self-fulﬁllment (even if it is through revenge): The ﬁlm tacitly acknowledges that terrorist action is an agent of change, although here on a personal rather than political level. The ﬁlm nevertheless depicts the road to self-assertion as an awareness of the role of European terrorism as a Cold War tactic. Thus, it implies that the Soviets sponsor terrorist groups as a means of undermining the West. The catch is that although the West, and the USA in particular, knows this, it is powerless to act. A nation that despises the USA will lend its support to a terrorist cause that targets the USA regardless of whether or not that nation ultimately shares the terrorist cause. The fact that the USA is perceived as a common enemy is enough of a reason for the state sponsorship of terrorism. The ﬁlm holds that terrorism will never stop. It is by now an established ritual for a group with an ideological agenda, almost a self-perpetuating cycle. The group will make their statement (their terrorist act their perceived best form of communication) and then hide, regroup and go on to a next, hopefully more spectacular demonstration of their continued existence and their growing power. It is allied to an almost sexual ritual, a form of self-aggrandizement; hence a terrorist who executes the hostage is suggested to be a sexual sadist. With ofﬁcial intelligence organizations powerless to end this cycle, the ﬁlm suggests that it is up to individual action to achieve a justice that politics ultimately denies. The Amateur thus applies the pathological nature of revenge as examined in the Death Wish ﬁlms to the growing terrorist pantheon. Such a vengeful individual is a product of a systematic disillusionment with his own government, although ironically he may serve its better interest. The ultimate irony of The Amateur, and where it confounds its cynicism, is that the murderous terrorist is a double agent working for the USA. Thus, the ﬁlm theorizes that a single terrorist action may be permitted in order to protect the identity of a covert operative. To argue the sanctity of an innocent life in such a political context, the ﬁlm argues, is hypocritical. The Cold War has removed all trace of humanity and obfuscates the question of ultimate

The Ambassador

22

responsibility. Adding to the irony is a presumably intended casting choice: The agent, tired of the hypocrisy of the game and who helps the protagonist achieve his revenge, is played by Marthe Keller, the fanatical Black September terrorist in Black Sunday. Indeed it is implied that the “high” of terrorist action makes all its practitioners into selﬁsh homicidal psychopaths. The only form of justice left the disillusioned individual is to kill the terrorist no matter what master the terrorist may serve.

The Ambassador (1984: d. J. Lee Thompson) The United States ambassador to Israel (Robert Mitchum) is blackmailed because of his adulterous wife, who is unaware that the man with whom she is having an affair is a possible terrorist. This threatens Middle East stability when U.S. intelligence reveals the involvement of Palestinian terrorists in the plot to embarrass the United States. Nevertheless, the ambassador works constantly to broker peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He sets up a meeting between students from both sides, hoping that it will cement future stability and understanding, and is heartbroken when the gathering turns violent. The Ambassador is adapted from an Elmore Leonard novel, one that was better served by a second adaptation, 52 Pick-Up. Although The Ambassador does feature blackmail intrigue, it is far more concerned with the delicate power struggle between Israelis and Palestinians and the potential role of the United States as negotiator and peace broker. It actively supports U.S. intervention in the peace process, admitting that this may make the United States’ representatives the targets of terrorist actions designed to sabotage any peace arrangement. It implies that terrorism does not serve the Palestinian cause in any way and is instead the main factor preventing understanding and peaceful settlement. The opening scrolled narration establishes the Middle East as a “powder keg” replete with conﬂicting religious and political organizations and beliefs. It reveals the inherent dilemma of any peaceful settlement since the Palestinian Liberation Organization have effectively vowed to never recognize Israel’s right to exist until a Palestinian homeland is reached. The problem, it implies, lies less with the PLO than with the splinter terrorist groups that surround it and may be taking refuge in neighboring countries (especially Syria). It further compounds the problem by suggesting that Israel is also torn between moderates who support a peaceful settlement and right-wing hard-line Zionists who oppose any idea of a Palestinian homeland. The dilemma of the U.S. ambassador is that he is placed in the middle of this conﬂict, akin to Prisoner in the Middle and an emerging theme since the late 1970s. The ﬁlm thus explores the political and personal responsibilities of being in the middle and advocates the U.S. taking an active role as mediator, or in effect all hope of a settlement is lost, for the terrorists will undermine all other efforts to reach a mutual understanding. The Ambassador is part of a sporadic ongoing attempt by Israeli exploitation producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to incorporate Israel’s dilemma into the plots of American B-movies, hoping to expand their studio’s (Cannon) proﬁle. They have here entrusted the political task to one of their in-house directors, J. Lee Thompson, better known for his simultaneous collaborations with actor Charles Bronson on a series of downbeat thrillers. Thompson is able to achieve a forceful and contemplative analysis of the United States’ role within the region. He starts by contrasting differing landscapes and historical cultures with the process of modernization brought on by the Israeli state.

23

The Ambassador

This modernization is an encroachment of Western civilization on a traditional land and may be a factor in the growing resentment. Thompson draws attention to the need for the USA to take a more active stabilizing role. Thus the ﬁlm depicts a man who so believes in peace that he is willing to broker secretly with the PLO, the one thing that would be impossible for Israeli authorities. The militants resent this intervention and resort to terrorism to undermine it. However; the situation is more complex for it is revealed that Israeli intelligence, Mossad, wants to make sure that no deals can be made and that all Palestinians are thought of as inherently hostile. The ambassador wants to show that not all are so hostile and strives to get a student peace movement going, perhaps mindful of the social upheaval and civil rights movement in the USA in the 1960s. The hopeful solution would be a groundswell of unity and tolerance from new generations of educated youth. The ambassador’s wife resents him for his conviction and his neglect of her, and there is an aspect of revenge in her cuckolding activities. But other than political embarrassment, the ambassador is beyond such efforts. Indeed, much of the ﬁlm concentrates on the wife’s systematic punishment and humiliation for her pettiness. It implies that her harsh treatment (including being injured in a bomb blast) is a deserved response, a lesson to her to be more mindful of the consequences of her actions and to put aside her vanity for the good of the cause her husband represents. Despite the inﬁdelity, this couple holds onto a troubled marriage out of the awareness of the need for at least the appearance of an honorable commitment. Even when she realizes that her lover is Palestinian, she returns to him. The ﬁlm does not present him as a terrorist radical but a conscientious and respectful man who is also held to account for the affair. In the end, the Palestinian lover helps save the ambassador’s life. The ﬁlm ﬁnally even reveals that the Russians are behind the blackmail as a means of sabotaging the peace process, destabilizing the West and prolonging the Cold War. Thus, The Ambassador ties into a number of ﬁlms that imply a link between terrorism and Soviet sponsorship although here this remains an implication as the blackmailers are separate from the terrorists. The Ambassador depicts an Israel forever beset by terrorist bombings of civilian targets. It reveals the Israeli authorities as staunch patriarchs, the Israeli prime minister saying that he resents outside interference by those who claim to have the region’s safety at heart but who do not actually reside in the region (implying that Israel may resent U.S. interference as much as the Palestinians do). It balances the political statement with intrigue surrounding the search for the terrorist’s ﬁlm of the wife’s affair but this intrigue is a narrative obligation in a ﬁlm clearly about the United Sates’ role in Israel and the Middle East. Curiously, the ﬁlm in part seeks to restore the image of the PLO, implying that the criminals and terrorists outside its reach do it a disservice. It suggests that the PLO has ﬁnally begun to question the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy. In that terrorism has thus splintered, the ﬁlm anticipates the Israeli assertion over a decade later that the PLO has lost its power as a policing force and representative agency. The Ambassador also implies that terrorism is the work of murderous criminals who lay claim to ideological causes but are addicted to violence for its own sake. It builds to a scene of an arranged meeting between Israeli and Palestinian students that is cut short by violence. For a moment, however, in setting up this underground meeting, the U.S. has made a genuine move towards brokering a reconciliation of sorts. The ﬁlm suggests that it is America’s ability to arrange a meeting of the minds that is a sign of hope for the

American History X

24

region, however effective the terrorists’ attempts to disrupt it are. Despite the efforts of the respective intelligence communities, sanctioned U.S. representatives can make inroads with persistence. The ﬁlm hopes that future generations can work out their differences, but that all moves to peace are jeopardized by terrorism. It realizes that the U.S. efforts are battling against an additional confounding factor in the continued presence of the Cold War. American intelligence has an obligation to inﬁltrate the region in order to protect its own peacemakers. The ﬁlm ends with a symbolic gesture of the students holding candles outside the ambassador’s home in appreciation of his (and hence the USA’s) efforts.

American History X (1998: d. Tony Kaye) Edward Norton plays a staunch neo–Nazi youth who is imprisoned for his brutal treatment of African Americans. He emerges from prison a reformed man due to his friendship with an African-American inmate and his betrayal by other neo–Nazis who end up raping him in the shower. He intends to stop his younger brother (Edward Furlong) from following him down the same racist path that has led to him to this place. This brings Norton up against his former friends and his substitute father ﬁgure (Stacy Keach) who seeks to organize these youths into a violent political movement. American History X is about the spread of racism in America (the growth of a violent, anarchic neo–Nazi movement). It is not a terrorist ﬁlm in the accepted sense, although it does reveal that fear and intimidation are the tactics of organized racist groups. These violent tactics, for instance raiding a grocery store run by non-whites, are intended to spread fear throughout the target community and are thus an instance of domestic terrorism. Like many ﬁlms of that decade, it implies that the uniﬁcation of racist and other neo–Nazi groups into a single force means that they will inevitably use terrorism as a force of political change. Although the ﬁlm implies this, it depicts only the initial moves to such a strategy as the neo–Nazis are ultimately too chaotic to achieve the unity that would make them into a powerful force of domestic terrorism. They have yet to turn it against the government. The ﬁlm is more about the process of individual reform in preventing the spread of hatred, about the need for re-education through confrontation. The neo–Nazi leader is effective at recruitment because he offers a cause for those who feel put-upon by the world, giving them a common enemy and in the process deﬂecting responsibility for their own failures. The tragedy is that Norton is an intelligent man who has fallen into the rhetoric so completely that he is able to act as another recruitment agent. The ﬁlm roots his problems in the absence of a true father ﬁgure and the need for a role model. Norton realizes the error of his ways and the hypocrisy of his movement while in prison and the ﬁlm then seeks to establish him as a possible role model in the need for reform and re-education. It holds that such re-education can still save society and the individual family from the spread of racism. The key factor in the process of re-education is to admit the incorrectness and limitations of the father: thus Norton acts in essence to restore a malfunctioning patriarchy. The ﬁlm uses ﬂashbacks to reveal how Norton’s frustrations led him to racism, originating as a view passed on by his father and carried on in the father’s absence as a debt to his memory. True maturation lies in admitting the limitations of the father and in moving beyond his inﬂuence. It establishes the common rhetoric used to bind disaffected

25

American Ninja 3

youth to a racist cause — that minorities repress ordinary (white) Americans and deny them their true place as social leaders. These youths perceive themselves as on a racial battleﬁeld and the use of force and terrorist violence is fully justiﬁed to protect true white American liberty from racial contamination and takeover, to serve a true American father and turn America into another Fatherland. The ﬁlm shows that racially motivated violence is a deliberate terrorist act intended as a statement of doctrine and to instill fear in the minority groups it considers political and social enemies. Although the leaders of the movement may be able to express such rhetoric, the majority of the violent perpetrators are ignorant thugs. Norton’s intelligence makes him both dangerous and a true loss, although it also makes him capable of eventual reform. American History X urges supporters to realize that they are just being used and abused by older fascists who seek to organize and focus violent hatred. When Norton ﬁnally confronts Keach, he calls him a predator and a chicken hawk, acknowledging the sexual dysfunction of an older man who hangs around teenage youths and corrupts them. It thus implies a link between sexual dysfunction and the hatred that would justify terrorism. The ﬁlm also implies the sexual power gained through violent terrorist anarchy. For most of the neo–Nazis it is a hedonistic experience, a mere thrilling indulgence. True reformation comes with the acknowledgment of the failings of role models and the responsibility of assuming that oneself. Norton’s triumph is in his awareness of his responsibility to himself, to his younger brother and hence to American society at large.

American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt (1989: d. Cedric Sundstrom) A martial arts competition on a Caribbean island is a front for a sinister international terrorist organization who plan to unleash their genetically enhanced virus onto an unsuspecting American public as the ideal terror weapon. They intend to test it on an American ﬁrst, but he is helped and cured in time to prevent the terrorists’ plans. This uninspiring ﬁlm, part of a franchise of violent martial arts movies of the 1980s, is also clearly indebted to the island-fortress premise of perpetually underrated director Robert Clouse’s American Bruce Lee movie Enter the Dragon. American Ninja 3 is also part of the ninja movie tradition wherein the lethal assassins form a private army that can be utilized for covert warfare or, more rarely, for outright terrorism as here. This cycle was effectively launched by Cannon Films with such works as Enter the Ninja. The American ninja movie is indeed emerging as a mini subgenre all of its own but is too critically disreputable to have received much serious analysis. American Ninja 3 is mainly notable for its plot line suggesting that the diverse terrorist groups of the world will one day be united under a charismatic leader who will then focus their combined efforts against the USA. In that sense, the ﬁlm anticipates Al Qaeda. It is an accepted subgenre conceit that the martial arts contest will be a cover for this secret agenda and that the discipline of the pure martial artist will remove the threat to world stability. The ninja terrorist cult is a pseudo-religious enemy whose codes of domination and superiority pervert physical discipline in service of a terrorist agenda. Yet the ﬁlm reveals the ninja army controlled by a WASP, coming ﬁrmly down behind the racist implication that white superiority is needed to organize the terrorist army. However, the ﬁlm tries to mediate this racist agenda by having an African-American accomplice, suggesting anti–Americanism sans race or culture. Indeed it is somewhat recalcitrant about any origins of anti–American resentment from abroad and within.

American Ninja 4 / American Tigers

26

American Ninja 4: Annihilation (1990: d. Cedric Sundstrom) In Africa, ninja warriors capture four U.S. Delta Force members on a mission. To rescue them, two American agents are sent in but they are also captured along with a Peace Corps nurse. A retired agent (Michael Dudikoff ) is urged to return to duty and facilitate a rescue from the so-called “Super Ninja,” an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organization. This ﬁlm is yet another foray into the seemingly endless stream of martial arts ninja movies. In some of these ﬁlms, the ninja act as a vaguely deﬁned criminal-terrorist group hybrid. In this case it is used as the basis for a poor action movie, an assemblage of derivative scenes beginning with the idea that professionals must put duty before personal commitment, hence the two agents are summoned away in the midst of a marriage ceremony. Once again the villain is a Westerner, in this case a rogue British expatriate in league with an Islamic sect to build a suitcase bomb small enough to carry into New York City (a plot done rather more effectively later in the big-budget The Peacemaker). In that, it refers to the racial base behind many of these ﬁlms, implying that WASP leadership is necessary to head and organize a terrorist group, even one as Islamic as is presented. In this case the ninja are clearly allied with a terrorist group and are called the Red Faction Army, an assemblage of Japanese and Islamic terrorists who claim to be God’s freedom ﬁghters. American Ninja 4 is a direct appropriation of terrorist methodology onto the martial arts movie. It is in this ﬁlm even more than its predecessor that the term “ninja” becomes virtually synonymous with terrorist and the ﬁlm is at least aware of the historical facts behind known terrorist groups. The ﬁlm deﬁnes villainy as the hatred of the USA extending to terrorist opposition. However, it lessens any ideological impetus behind this hatred when it depicts the terrorist leader as a sadistic torturer. This association between terrorism and sadism (or sexual sadism) is a frequent conceit suggesting that terrorism is rooted in pathological imbalances although it does not explore this beyond suggestion. The locus for the organized and disciplined hatred of the USA is the terrorist training camp where enemies of the USA join forces, led by the traitorous Westerner. The protagonist’s battle against the terrorists is to restore Western superiority against a bastardized mix assembled under the banner of Islamic fundamentalism. However much the ﬁlm reveals a multi-cultural base, the enemy is clearly Islamic and the ﬁlm implies the clash of civilizations. The rhetoric is familiar, with the terrorist proclaiming that the bomb is “made by the hand of Allah to bring the Great Satan to his knees.” Yet the ﬁlm also owes its ﬁnal battle scene to the post-apocalyptic cycle of movies of the early 1980s, making the ﬁlm a peculiar attempt to broaden the martial arts movie’s base of reference. Its main accomplishment is to ally the ninja with the Islamic terrorist.

American Tigers (1996: d. David Worth) A former military man joins international terrorists in a plot to hold “America under siege.” They start a series of political assassinations but have greater plans for civilian targets. Responding to the terrorist threat, a sergeant major organizes a specialist team comprised of military prisoners, known as “Tiger Team 525.” American Tigers, a minor update of The Dirty Dozen, includes a terrorist threat against the USA. It begins with a military execution, then dissolves to the American ﬂag

27

Amin: The Rise and Fall

to suggest the swift ruthlessness of American justice. It holds that the existence of a terrorist group within the United States is an embarrassment to the government and that the revelation of terrorists linked to the militant militia movements is a public relations nightmare. Thus, it holds that domestic terrorism springs initially from the white supremacist movement but that it is only a matter of time before these groups link with international terrorists to form a more lethal threat to domestic security. What is unusual, and irreconcilable, is the ﬁlm’s cynical use of violent psychopaths to serve its country’s counterterrorism agenda. This worked for the original The Dirty Dozen, where director Robert Aldrich used it as a statement against the then-emerging Vietnam War, but seems irresponsible here. The terrorists are at ﬁrst given a standard motive attributed to the militia movement — that the government is weak and in need of a lesson that will reclaim American glory and save it from racial impurities. The militia members lament the decline of America and loathe what they perceive as a liberal American judicial system and its support of welfare abusers. With right-wing rhetoric they intend to purify the United States. The most interesting aspect is the terrorist’s proclamation that terrorism is a constitutional right to overthrow the government and has existed since Lincoln. What is more dangerous is the implication that these domestic groups can unify the world’s main terrorist groups into one force to implement a new world order and to overthrow the USA by a series of massive-scale terrorist attacks on civilian targets — to in effect declare war on America in the most underhanded way possible. It is hoped by these terrorists that terrorism itself will precipitate a revolution. The ﬁlm’s main relevance post–9/11 is that it posits that a strong terrorist leader could unite the world’s terrorist groups and bring them into the USA to launch a series of terrorist attacks. However this leader is not a Bin Laden ﬁgure but a survivalist more in line with the fears surrounding Timothy McVeigh. The ﬁlm is one of a growing number to see the militia movement as a new domestic terrorist threat. Despite its promising subtexts, it falls apart in the execution. Director David Worth does show a repeated interest within the conﬁnes of the B-grade action movie, in the terrorist threat as a new enemy.

Amin: The Rise and Fall (1980: d. Shared Patel) This ﬁlm, an exploitative recreation of the tyrannical regime of General Idi Amin Dada, depicts the merciless oppression of the Ugandan people following the coup that brought Amin to power. The supposedly popular leader soon succumbs to his personal sexual and homicidal perversions (including cannibalism) as he organizes state-sponsored kidnappings, assassinations and mass executions to keep his people living in fear as he plunders the nation to increase his personal fortune and perceived international standing. Although the ﬁlm is primarily a study in dictatorial arrogance and excess, contributing to the popular depiction of Amin as a dangerous buffoon, it has relevance to the burgeoning cinema of terrorism. It demonstrates a form of state-sponsored terrorism not initially as a means of waging war and furthering national interests abroad, as is the Islamic model in such cases as Libya, Syria and Iran, but as the primary means of oppressing one’s own people in order to compensate for a lack of international standing. Amin thus uses terror and intimidation to manipulate domestic and international politics and cement his place on the world scene. Of course, Amin is forever connected to Middle East politics and terrorism due to

Amin: The Rise and Fall

28

his involvement in the Entebbe incident wherein he granted Palestinian terrorists a safe location to keep their Jewish hostages following an airline hijacking. The ﬁlm also charts Amin’s attitude toward Israel as stemming from his absolute certainty that Israel will give him weapons when they meet him face to face and see his true power. When this does not eventuate, Amin considers it an insult to his pride and takes an anti–Zionist stance, saying that Israel can dominate and abuse the Arabs but that he will not permit them to do so to the Ugandans. He takes this one step further and his implicit support of the Palestinian terrorists extends his form of state-sponsored terrorism to include international interests. He uses the terrorist cause of other nations to assert his own agenda and as a form of revenge for the perceived snub to his power. State-sponsored terrorism is thus rooted in the monstrous, egotistical pride of an individual rather than a collective ideology: totalitarianism. The ﬁlm depicts Amin’s reign as a harrowing descent into an African Hell. It shows Amin as a petty monster who is insulted when other nations do not consider him a powerful deity of sorts. He cannot tolerate anyone not accepting his supremacy and international importance and resorts to sponsoring terrorism as a means of establishing that importance (hence in reality he pretended to be a negotiator during the terrorist incident). He uses a hostage as a personal power tool, claiming that he will not release an English journalist unless the queen personally goes there to beg for his release. He uses terrorism to further his ego for convenience. He latches onto the Arab cause only because it offers him the opportunity to advance his personal power. That the terrorists exploited this for their own agenda in their struggle against Israel suggests the symbiotic and parasitic nature of such alliances. The ﬁlm also clearly exposes the difference between the terrorist and the freedom ﬁghter, with the latter clearly motivated in a just opposition to oppression and using conventional armed means, even though they may be labelled terrorists for their insurgent aims. The freedom ﬁghter is the armed opponent of state-sponsored terrorism and ﬁghts to restore human rights. The freedom ﬁghter is a rebel who ﬁghts according to a code of conduct and does not descend into barbarous acts of terrorism in the name of liberation. This ﬁlm depicts such as advocating a form of armed resistance and revolution that does not operate out of the need to inspire fear in a target innocent population. The ﬁlm barely touches on the 1976 Entebbe hostage crisis wherein Amin aided PLO terrorists as a means of courting Arab support for his regime. (It is better depicted in two American ﬁlms made shortly after the crisis —Victory at Entebbe and Raid on Entebbe— and the ofﬁcial Israeli version Operation Thunderbolt.) Amin: The Rise and Fall depicts Amin as clearly out of touch with any political reality and totally immersed in his petty pleasures (as the Israeli rescue attempt by commando unit is launched, Amin is in bed with two women). In this way and in Amin’s repeated sexual voraciousness (he wants himself to be thought of as a great stud), the ﬁlm clearly links his terrorism to sexual aberration and immorality. Although the ﬁlm barely depicts the PFLP terrorists themselves, it does imply that the one Jewish woman left behind (because she was taken to hospital) suffered Amin’s wrath in retaliation for yet another international humiliation. Amin clearly wanted to be a powerful leader, but he is shown to act mostly in reaction to the position of other governments against him and is unsuccessful at establishing his presence as an international leader and thus can only exploit his own people to build his ego.

29

Angel Fist / Anthrax

Angel Fist (1993: d. Cirio H. Santiago) A U.S. colonel in the Philippines is murdered by a terrorist group known as the Black Brigade. A female martial artist is also killed. Her sister, a Los Angeles police ofﬁcer, takes her place in a martial arts tournament in order to avenge her death. Director Santiago is a veteran exploitation director and is here in terrain inspired by the martial arts movies of American pioneer Robert Clouse. Angel Fist furthers the respective inﬂuence of Clouse on the American martial arts movie as much as it develops the subgenre of the female martial artist. Although actress Cynthia Rothrock is the usual ﬁgure associated with such a role, Angel Fist launches Cat Sassoon as a rival and is far more interested in showing her as a sexual object than is ever present in Rothrock’s ﬁlms. Sassoon was obviously willing to appear in nude scenes and was almost launched as a soft-porn action heroine here. Indeed, the movie is a titillating exploitation vehicle for undiscriminating action audiences who no doubt search the video racks where much of this director’s product is to be found. It knows its target audience. Angel Fist roots as background to the terrorist assassination resentment of the presence of U.S. bases in the area. Anti–U.S. protests are depicted as endemic in the region and the fanatical terrorism is inspired by intense nationalism, hence the “keeping Asia for the Asians” doctrine. However, the targets of such terrorism initially serve a political purpose as the supposed representatives of U.S. imperialism in the region. What is important here is the link between the resentment of a U.S. military and political presence in the region with the progression from civilian protest to terrorist statement. It suggests that terrorists are patriots who believe that terrorism as a tactic will ultimately accomplish far more than diplomacy, as if the U.S. will otherwise not heed the populist sentiment against it. However, the terrorism spills over into the death of innocents abroad and so necessitates American revenge by the lone hero. Although the terrorist group combines genders, the ﬁlm does not develop any contrast between this apparent gender integration and the overall tendency to see women in terms of erotic spectacle.

Anthrax (2001: d. Rick Stevenson) Anthrax, a hastily assembled action thriller, was released at the peak of the anthrax scare. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, letters containing anthrax powder were sent to various ofﬁcials throughout the USA. Government buildings and post ofﬁces had to be evacuated and anthrax detectors installed in government buildings — a post–9/11 living condition later evoked in the cyber-terrorism plot of Die Hard 4.0. In this ﬁlm, a vial of anthrax disappears following a terrorist attack, and a government agent ponders how to protect American citizens. Meanwhile, a Seattle policeman (Cameron Daddo) investigates the potential leak of an enhanced-strength anthrax virus killing cattle. A reporter (David Keith) arranges a protest at the research center after which he disappears with stolen vials. The policeman must recover the stolen vials as the protestors, locking themselves in the research facility for a sit-in, inadvertently loose the deadly virus into the building’s air conditioning system. Anthrax begins with an evocation of the threat to American shores of attack, the USA no longer protected by its geographic isolation. Evoking the ﬁrst-ever threat to American shores during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Anthrax posits that biological terrorism is a new and deadly threat to the USA and that measures must be taken to protect against it. Then turning to modern-day cowboys at work, the ﬁlm evokes traditional

Arlington Road

30

American values in its depiction of a small mid–American town policeman, a frequent symbol of patriarchal duty, morality and righteousness in American ﬁlm. Despite making timely points about biological research and the possibility of domestic terror related speciﬁcally to the anthrax scare, the ﬁlm tackles the ethical subtext of chemical company responsibility for anthrax terrorism (lax security) comparable to the way The Insider held tobacco companies responsible for addiction and Erin Brockovich held chemical companies responsible for poison and environmental pollution. Indeed, illicit chemical use by research stations and companies was a prominent theme in the 1970s revenge-of-nature movies, responsible for such monster ﬂicks as Prophecy. Anthrax is a relic of the early years of the War on Terror. It uses the paranoia of the anthrax scare and its national security implications for a didactic but routine detective thriller in the manner of a television movie of the week. Security at research plants which are of interest to extremist terrorists is the point here as the ﬁlm explores the terrorists’ means of acquiring enough anthrax to potentially decimate an enormous population. Uninvolving as human drama, Anthrax plods through its scenario of farmer outrage, lax security and the threat of terrorism with functional efﬁciency though the depiction of emergency contingency procedures echoes the emphasis on crisis management as a theme in post–9/11 terrorist cinema. Its view of biological viruses being released through terrorist interference also informed the pre–9/11 ﬁlm 12 Monkeys and the post–9/11 zombie hit 28 Days Later. The ﬁlm’s ﬁnal act concentrates on the domestic terrorist Keith. Keith is in it for the money although he has connections to an Algerian terrorist group. U.S. policy to not negotiate with terrorists, nor pay extortion demands, informs this intrigue. However, the ﬁlm does not explore terrorist Keith’s ideological motivations beyond vague suggestions and he is a simple caricature terrorist-as-extortionist, a trait in much pre–9/11 American terrorist cinema since the demise of the Cold War.

Arlington Road (1999: d. Mark Pellington) A terrorism professor ( Jeff Bridges) takes a young boy to the hospital following an accident. He then becomes involved with the boy’s parents, his new neighbors (Tim Robbins and Joan Cusack). He is increasingly suspicious and investigates Robbins’ background and anti-government past. Although Robbins makes a case for his own privacy, Bridges continues and soon believes that Robbins is part of a terrorist plot to destroy an FBI building. Bridges’ son is kidnapped and Bridges struggles to ﬁnd him, unaware that the terrorists may be manipulating him. Indeed, the terrorists have been using him to get the bomb where they want it, a fact he discovers too late to save his own life. He is subsequently blamed for the terrorist attack as a lone psycho with a grudge. The ﬁlm admits that domestic terrorism has enough of a developmental history behind it (as part of a tradition of social dissent) to warrant collegiate study. It is ironic to Bridges that such terrorism and anti-government sentiment can come from within the country at a time of peak economic prosperity. Thus from the outset a crucial question lingering over the ﬁlm is, what kind of people are domestic terrorists? And why would they take this drastic step? The ﬁlm leaves the motivations ambiguous but depicts its terrorists as ordinary people able to blend into American middle-class existence. The message is a paranoid one: The terrorists could be your own neighbors. The ﬁlm carefully avoids the militia enemy common to many late 1990s ﬁlms about domestic terrorism and

31

Arlington Road

suggests that contemporary terrorism may be the residue of the social protests of the 1960s peace movement. While such ﬁlms as Running on Empty have sought to glorify the 1960s radical terrorist, Arlington Road is decidedly more skeptical. It is as though the tradition of social protest begun in the 1960s and continued through the 1970s in post–Watergate disillusionment has resulted in contemporary government resentment and terrorism. The domestic terrorists pose as an ordinary couple. The ﬁlm’s disturbing suggestion is that this is not a posture and that they are an ordinary couple motivated by the same desire for family and nation that is found in Middle America. However, the trust that they develop in the neighborhood can be used and abused for malevolent purposes. In short, American values can justify and cover a far more sinister agenda. In Bridges’ plight the ﬁlm charts the process whereby suspicion turns into justiﬁable paranoia in the wake of Timothy McVeigh. Arlington Road arguably explores the need to be suspicious of everyone and to not take any appearance of normality for granted. It also suggests that the terrorists in turn will be able to manipulate this paranoia. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm examines the prospect that there is almost an imperative to violate the right to privacy in the need for greater national security, although the consequences are ultimately more devastating. Arlington Road does not directly address the need to redeﬁne civil liberty in the wake of increased terrorism but it does hold this as a dominant subtext. The contemporarily released The Siege was more explicit about the threat to human rights posed by terrorism, but developed this in the context of a threat from outside the United States. Arlington Road suggests a greater need for background checks and for the close scrutiny of those with even a collegiate record of anti-government protest. However, the potential for misunderstanding is rife, hence the details surrounding the death of Bridges’ wife, and the ﬁlm’s conclusion suggests that facts can be eagerly misread in the search for blame that follows any terrorist attack. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm questions the modern imperative for private citizens to pursue their suspicions until all doubts have been clariﬁed for better or worse. But in so doing, a private citizen takes a responsibility unto himself or herself and becomes a target. By implication, the ﬁlm wonders if private details and past history should be in the public domain. The ﬁlm has plenty of questions but offers no answers and its elaborate, paranoid ending suggests layers of terrorist malevolence that implies them capable of manipulating individual destiny. Arlington Road also addresses the growing discourse surrounding culpability. It develops the suggestion that America wishes to believe in lone terrorists or lone “nuts” rather than face the possibility of a widespread, organized conspiracy and that this popular belief originated in the Kennedy assassination. As presented as one of Bridges’ lectures on terrorism, the lone culprit allows for the idea of swift justice to be pursued and to cater to the public outcry for immediate results. It is easier to believe in one identiﬁable aberrant villain than in a secretive cabal. In either case, the enemy is entirely from within. The great tragedy of the search for the lone culprit is that an innocent’s background can be used to build a case against him or her. Such is the ﬁlm’s irony: The background check into Robbins reveals a terrorist but the details of the innocent Bridges make him ultimately a patsy; the terrorists are quite adept at using people’s backgrounds for their own agenda. In its exploration of personal paranoia and political conspiracy, the ﬁlm updates the concerns of the 1970s political thriller to the fears of domestic terrorism. The ﬁlm’s ending has the cynical despair found in The Parallax View, another ﬁlm that addressed the lone assassin-patsy theme as a dominant means of anti-government action.

Assault at Ground Zero

32

Assault at Ground Zero (1994: d. Rick Jacobson) aka Bloodﬁst VI: Ground Zero Ellsworth, a U.S. nuclear missile base, is the target for terrorists who attack and eliminate the facility’s security measures. They override the missile launch security codes and aim the missiles at New York City. A lone air force courier (Don “The Dragon” Wilson) must inﬁltrate the facility and eliminate the terrorist threat. This ﬁlm is yet another variation on the Die Hard formula although with some added plot reference to Twilight’s Last Gleaming. The publicity machine sought to link the ﬁlm to Die Hard and Under Siege and outside the USA it was even retitled for video to downplay the link to the Bloodﬁst series of low-budget martial arts movies starring Wilson. With throwaway sexism (yet more nude footage of Angel Fist starlet Cat Sassoon) and violence, this is a mediocre actioner aimed primarily at the video market. It depicts a terrorist-mercenary hybrid that has become a common villainy in such third-string action exploitation vehicles. Assault at Ground Zero operates on the premise that nuclear facilities are no longer well-guarded. The Cold War has resulted in a short-lived sense of national triumph that in turn has meant a relaxation of domestic security. Indeed, it holds that such security has been redirected towards the nuisance of hippie anti-nuke protestors rather than a true terrorist threat. This has renewed terrorist interest in these targets, the ﬁlm thus implying that terrorists will replace the Communists as the new enemy in American popular culture, a trend well-developed in ﬁlms of the 1990s. The threat here, however, is from domestic terrorist groups that nonetheless have an Islamic agenda. Signiﬁcantly, the terrorist is presented as a potential sexual sadist, allying the psychology of terrorism to sexual aberration. Likewise, Sassoon is revealed to be a traitorous sex object, the duplicitous woman. One reason for terrorism is revealed to be ﬁnancial, to hold the USA for ransom under fear. The ﬁlm thus makes clear a plot thread developing since the original Die Hard, that extortion under fear of terrorism is itself a terrorist act regardless of the absence of all but a front of ideological fervor to punish the government. However, the ﬁlm offers one intriguing point of development in its suggestion that real terrorists may use the guise of extortionists (and by extension conventional criminals) to cover their true agenda and then emerge into a more frightening reality. Terrorism and extortion are explicitly linked in this ﬁlm as enablers of one another. Signiﬁcantly, the terrorist may be an Arab but has been disowned by his sect due to his valuing of his own ego above the group’s stated intentions. However, this allows the group to distance themselves from a terrorist act (a trait derived from the process of PLO involvement in terrorism in Israel). The religion and ideology of Islam is never explored, its mere mention just assumed as a motivation for villainy. The terrorist leader plans annihilation, but his underlings are in it for the money. This terrorism-for-proﬁt line is also found in Twilight’s Last Gleaming. Nevertheless, behind the extortion resides a greater Islamic threat. Assault at Ground Zero is somewhat confused about this Islamic threat and resorts to standard issues of suicidal martyrdom. It does not develop any context for this and assumes instead a knowledge and acceptance of such a threat from Islam to the USA. The battle of wills between the terrorist and the hero has an equally ill-deﬁned if representative clash of civilizations, complicated by the fact that the hero is Asian-American (a nod to the martial arts subgenre, which advocates

33

The Assignment

the fusion of Asian discipline and American cultural superiority). What is signiﬁcant is that the ﬁlm postulates that such a battle between Islam and the West will be fought inside the United States itself.

The Assignment (1997: d. Christian Duguay) A U.S. ofﬁcer (Aidan Quinn), mistaken for a terrorist by Israeli intelligence and arrested, is released when his identity is veriﬁed. When he returns home, a U.S. intelligence ofﬁcial (Donald Sutherland) and an Israeli Mossad ofﬁcial (Ben Kingsley) approach him for a dangerous mission. Quinn is a physical double for the known terrorist Carlos the Jackal and the ofﬁcials want him to impersonate Carlos so that the Russians will think Carlos has turned informer and kill him before he reveals compromising secrets. Quinn reluctantly agrees and undergoes a training mission designed to make him as close to Carlos psychologically as possible. The Assignment is a fascinating ﬁlm, the ﬁnest made about the mystique of the very real Carlos the Jackal. Carlos is an almost legendary ﬁgure here, a kind of freelance terrorist everyman through the ages, representing an anarchy-for-hire that feeds off of any ideological or political afﬁliation, although he remains a devout enemy of Israeli agents in particular. He is a man of supreme arrogance who moves from one terrorist act to the next, for cash, often in service of a Cold War destabilization. The USA is reluctant to get involved in any opposition unless it affects them personally, hence the ﬁlm arguably uses as an undertext the idea that greater foreign policy and inter-agency cooperation can help to prevent such terror from gaining momentum. Director Duguay holds that the solution is born of human desperation in combination with a dedicated professionalism that has been sobered by the experience of loss through direct involvement. This is where Sutherland’s character is paramount. As an agent who had personal contact with Carlos just before a café bombing, he is haunted by his failure to stop the terrorist and his professionalism must be balanced by his desire for personal revenge. The ﬁlm explores the role of pride and moral responsibility in the terrorist equation. It steadily develops the proposition that the more experienced with terrorism (acts and underlying psychology) people are, the more convinced they become of the need for special, selective means of dealing with it and preventing it. Sutherland tellingly refers to terrorism as a “growth industry,” a potentially contaminating spread of horriﬁc violence totally indifferent to human value. Terrorism may serve a goal but the ﬁlm implies that its appeal for terrorists is more psychological than ideological or even ﬁnancial. The Assignment is concerned with the mindset of the terrorist perpetrator as beyond any ideological conviction. It approaches this in a novel way, by proxy, asking, “What would a normal man feel if directly encountering an aberrant terrorist mind?” “Terrorist” is here a state of mind, a psychological aberration that can act as a identity-destroying contaminant. Quinn realizes the depth of evil he has a duty to root out and must struggle to keep himself from becoming that which he wishes to destroy. Ironically though, he experiences the thrill that Carlos must face evading capture. In imitating a terrorist, he experiences the attraction that such an illicit state of mind has, as a demonstration of supreme power and invincibility. Thus the ﬁlm also addresses the dilemma facing those who are impelled to understand the enemy directly through such imitation: Is the mindset of the terrorist truly a human aberration?

Attack on the Queen

34

The terrorist is revealed to be addicted to the sense of absolute power over others: Through terrorist acts, he is able to control the destiny of individuals and even nations. The most dangerous thing about Carlos is that this is not motivated by any feelings of desperation or of being robbed by others of his own right to self-determination — a common thread amongst terrorist justiﬁcations — but by personal paraphilic desire. The terrorist is a superman in his own mind, beyond the normal moral laws of humanity. By understanding this attraction ﬁrst hand, Quinn realizes the absolute moral imperative to prevent the spread of terrorism, regardless of the valid political issues attached to it; terrorism is a threat to the human condition and the sanctity of the individual identitypsyche. The ﬁlm thus raises the horrifying theme that for some people, the “terrorist” is a form of self-actualization, perhaps even an idealized self that resides in the inner capability of all humankind, however enabled by political reality. For Quinn, the process of identifying with the terrorist mindset is a journey of self-discovery and an awareness of this human capability. He realizes the rage, power and attraction of anarchic violence that runs through this mindset. When the ﬁlm’s action moves to Libya, presented as another terrorist hub and sanctuary of sorts despite inﬁltration by foreign intelligence agencies, Quinn is alone and the pathological ruthlessness of the terrorist mindset emerges. Although Quinn survives (as does Carlos), he will always have that mindset with him as the psychological scar of terrorism. What is a necessary but confounding irony is that this terrorism must be stopped by any means necessary, even at the expense of innocents: There will be casualties in the greater moral conﬂict. This is the nature of war, as the ﬁlm is set during the Cold War against the background of the Middle East crisis. The Assignment holds the Middle East and Israel-Palestine in particular as the real battleground for terrorists and implies a KGB connection behind such terrorist actions as a means of covert warfare against the West. The ﬁlm also develops the subsequent emergence of the terrorist-as-mercenary as a unique development of such Cold War agendas: that the Cold War in fact birthed a sub-class of terrorists whose actions were not motivated by political or ideological means, but by ﬁnancial and personal. Few ﬁlms have depicted the terrorist ﬁgure as obliquely as The Assignment and yet with such a sense of the dangerous excitement that attends the ﬁgure. In that way the ﬁlm is, of all recent ﬁlms about terrorist characters, the closest to elevating the legendary ﬁgure into something more in accordance with modern myth. The cinematic mythiﬁcation of terrorism through the combination of ruthless but appealingly vicarious action is a subtext here that to date has not been followed through as any subsequent impetus in that direction has been temporarily halted by the events of 9/11. Although The Assignment is in no doubt about the abhorrence of a ﬁgure like Carlos the Jackal, it holds the same ﬁgure in mythic awe.

Attack on the Queen (2001: d. Jerry London) The U.S. president joins other world leaders on board the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner, a unique place for the latest G-7 summit. Terrorists seize control of the ship, hoping to disrupt U.S.–China relations. They claim that if their demands are not met they will blow up the ship and launch all of China’s nuclear missiles against the U.S. Two government agents trapped on board the ship try to prevent nuclear catastrophe.

35

Avalanche Express

Attack on the Queen is a formulaic, drably dramatized action teleﬁlm from the author of Crimson Tide. Although the involvement of U.S.–China relations in terrorist agendas is a novel background, in all other respects this is familiar. Unconvincing, it is another variation on the Die Hard premise of lone heroes thwarting mad terrorist agendas. Fears of domestic terrorism from lone agitators underlie the ﬁlm although any ideological rationale is vague and inferred. Elements from the more successful 1990s action ﬁlms litter Attack on the Queen though as shipboard drama it has nothing on Juggernaut. It completely wastes the initial opportunity for a discussion of China–U.S. politics.

Avalanche Express (1979: d. Mark Robson) A KGB double agent knows that his cover has been compromised and boards the Orient Express to escape into the West. U.S. agents try to protect him and KGB agents to kill him. The Russians have put into effect a biochemical weapons plot and the KGB hires a local terrorist group in an effort to stop the train. Avalanche Express owes to the train-set adventures of the 1960s, which director Robson had essayed earlier to more notable effect in Von Ryan’s Express. Indeed, the casting of Robert Shaw as the Russian traitor brings to mind his role as the Soviet nemesis to Sean Connery’s James Bond in From Russia with Love. Although essentially a minor piece of Cold War espionage, Avalanche Express does address the growing 1970s fear of chemical and biological warfare and essays the interdependence of intelligence activities and emergent political crises. It holds that the Cold War is fought on two fronts: a political front and an espionage front of self-perpetuating measures and counter-measures. This is all taken with extreme sobriety and solemnity, without any touches of absurdity despite the potentially farcical sense of accumulation that is developed throughout. The ﬁlm descends into a series of events designed to stop the train and get Shaw. The destructive avalanche reminds the viewer that this ﬁlm was made at the end of the 1970s disaster movie cycle and that Robson also directed Earthquake. The ﬁlm’s place in the terrorist movie pantheon comes when a Soviet KGB hunter contacts the leader of a group of terrorists involved in failed attempts to free their Hamburg compatriots. These terrorists are recruited to stop the train. The link between Soviet intelligence agencies and the sponsorship of terrorism to destabilize the West is again developed by this link. However, it also implies that ideological terrorists are not above doing a little freelance work for other gains should the opportunity arise. When it becomes expedient to do so, terrorism is a state-sponsored method of waging the Cold War and a convenient means of covering the real tracks of those involved. The terrorists themselves are a potentially mercenary army for use by whoever can pay or attract their ideology or assist their particular anti–American cause. The theme of the terrorist-as-mercenary is interestingly implied here and would become a dominant theme through the 1990s following the end of the Cold War and the removal of such implicit state-sponsorship. However, subsequent developments of the terrorist-mercenary ﬁgure would try to totally disassociate the ideological component and replace it with conventional criminal greed, seeking to link terrorism and common criminality. Signiﬁcantly, Shaw remarks that the terrorists are “anyone’s bomb” until they are exposed and eliminated; the terrorists’ power lies in their anonymity even if their loyalty is corruptible. Terrorists are a weapon in a war greater than their petty issues, a potential tool in the hands of superpowers (or by extension nations looking for such international sta-

Avenging Force

36

tus and inﬂuence). The real terror here lies in the Soviet development of biological weapons and the insinuation that they may just as easily use minor, petty and arrogant terrorist groups to serve their greater cause.

Avenging Force (1986: d. Sam Firstenberg) Michael Dudikoff plays a retired secret agent in New Orleans. His African-American friend (Steve James) runs for Congress and is threatened by neo–Nazi domestic terrorists known as “The Pentangle.” The FBI is on the trail of this group, whose leaders are all high-proﬁle business leaders who consider themselves sportsmen. They plan to spearhead a new, racially puriﬁed America and use assassination to achieve their goals. Dudikoff plans to expose them but they capture him and a woman close to him and set them loose in a swamp, intending to hunt them down and kill them. Avenging Force is a follow-up to the surprise hit American Ninja, also directed by Firstenberg and starring Dudikoff and James. However, it removes the idea of the ninja as terrorist group common to the ninja cycle and instead explores the potential of domestic terrorism emerging from within the survivalist movement. In that, it is part of another minor trend in 1980s action ﬁlms also inﬁltrating such mainstream movies as director Costa-Gavras’ Betrayed. Firstenberg is repeatedly drawn to violent martial arts’ heroic machismo and loyalty codes. Avenging Force is intriguing in that it adopts the martial arts movie’s faith in Oriental discipline and incorporates it into right-wing American survivalism. This underlying paradox is here monstrous and the discipline of the survivalist amounts to a corruption of American ideals. Like many ﬁlms dealing with domestic terror threats, it suggests that a corrupted form of patriotism motivates terrorism as a means of social protest and revolution. The irony is that right-wing terrorists would use the means of left-wing insurgents, that assassination is the potential beginning of such a terrorist movement beyond mere rhetoric and race crimes. The ﬁlm is set in the South and holds that racism is almost as much of a tradition as is the New Orleans Mardi Gras. The ﬁlm nonetheless stresses a Capitalist ideological pride behind the leadership of such elitist right-wing groups that goes beyond the usual moronic fervor of lower rank KKK or skinheads. The real terrorist leaders are not brutes, but proud hunters, even implied as being inheritors of traditional American values and practices. These terrorists claim adherence to the law of the survival of the ﬁttest and are not above using whatever ritual means to prove it. They develop a hunt akin to that in The Most Dangerous Game. This is a test within the organization to determine who has the moral obligation to lead America. Only survivalists pass this test and have earned the right to determine America’s true future. Here, the ritual of survivalist combat is truly monstrous. Avenging Force represents director Firstenberg’s most contemplative take on the patriotic rituals of violence that dominate much of his action-exploitation output. The ﬁlm ultimately boils down to a prolonged indictment of the skirmish and survivalist movement and a championing of individual heroism as if terror will not be stopped unless matched with equal, just force. The ﬁlm never provides much of an insight into the greater terrorist agenda of its right-wing groups beyond targeted assassination and is of only tangential interest in the emerging cinema of terrorism. Nevertheless, it is part of the beginning of a trend that would over a decade later fully link the survivalist movement to the growth of domestic

37

Bad Company

terrorism and as such is part of a sub-group within the terrorist ﬁeld. Firstenberg would return to the subject of terrorism within such genre B-movies as the Cyborg Cop series, Delta Force 3 and the Operation Delta Force telemovie. He has an apparent fascination with the moral and ethical justiﬁcations for the use and expression of force, quite apparent in his ﬁlms’ titles.

Bad Company (2002: d. Joel Schumacher) A CIA agent dies while saving his superior (Anthony Hopkins). They were in the process of buying a suitcase bomb (nuclear) from former Russians now selling weapons on the black market in Europe. The agent’s twin brother (Chris Rock) is “recruited” (forced) to impersonate the agent and assist Hopkins in another plan to buy the bomb. However, members of the Yugoslavian-based terrorist group known as Black Hand apparently intend to kill Rock and purchase the bomb for them in order to use it against the USA. They steal the bomb but need Rock’s retinal scan to activate it and so kidnap his girlfriend while they bring the bomb into the USA and to New York City, hiding it in Grand Central Station. With this ﬁlm, director Joel Schumacher is appropriated into the Jerry Bruckheimer stable of action directors. Despite an efﬁcient if formulaic last act, he is unable to match the visual panache of Tony Scott or the overkill of Michael Bay. Although Schumacher has shown an interest in such themes as justice and vigilantism, his work in Bad Company reveals only a craftsman for hire. Indeed this efﬁcient action movie is most notable for its delayed release following the events of 9/11, making it one in the ﬁrst batch of terrorist themed movies to emerge after that attack. But as the ﬁlm was made before its timely release, like The Sum of All Fears and Collateral Damage, it is best considered as amongst the last of the terrorist ﬁlms before the renewed cultural emphasis on terrorism. The ﬁlm starts with a common assumption in post–Cold War cinema: that the former Eastern Europe is now a thriving black market for weapons of mass destruction. It also plays on the then timely discussions of the existence and possible theft of the supposed suitcase nukes from the former Soviet Union. The “loose nukes” fear is of course founded on the assumption that opportunistic individuals, though not terrorists themselves, would supply weapons to terrorist groups. In this climate, the arms dealer (Peter Stormare) is an amoral ﬁgure whose actions enable terrorism even though in Bad Company it is revealed that the arms dealer did not want to sell it to the terrorists. Indeed, he is rather slyly ironic, ﬁnding personal satisfaction as a former Soviet now intending to sell the weapon to American groups. CIA agent Hopkins runs through the list of nations possibly interested in purchasing such a weapon and concludes “anyone in the Middle East,” conﬁrming this area as the new international trouble spot. Although the ﬁlm glosses over the rise of radicalism in terrorist afﬁliation, it implies a connection between state interest and terrorism. Hopkins represents the heroic bastion of the CIA, a man who claims to be impersonal and to have no relationships but is a humanist ready at the outset to put a mission in jeopardy to save an individual and a friend. This assessment of an impersonal operative who values life alongside the so-called greater responsibilities is often an idealized character able to redeem the ﬂailing morality of the intelligence community and is a type also essayed by Robert Redford in Spy Game. Hopkins becomes a worthy surrogate

Bad Company

38

father ﬁgure to Rock but the white father–black son theme is barely acknowledged bar comedic asides; the promising subtext of an African American defending white patriarchal America is buried amidst Rock’s particular blend of comedic shtick. There is, however, a passing nod to issues of African-American cultural identity in the contrast between Rock’s hip-hop lifestyle and the more aesthetic and sleek elegance of his brother, whom he must impersonate. The plot hook of white authorities using a young African-American man to lure bigger criminals was used to better effect in the non-terrorist themed Bait. Although Hopkins says that Middle Eastern interests are the ﬁrst suspects, the actual black marketeers are Russian and the terrorist leaders are European, suggesting as a terrorist impetus the resentment of U.S. intervention in the Bosnia crisis (a theme also in the other suitcase bomb terrorist movie Peacemaker). However, the ﬁlm rather confusingly makes the terrorist underlings Middle Eastern in appearance and rationalizes their dedication in terms of assumptions about such Middle Eastern terrorism. Thus, the terrorist hit man out to get Rock commits suicide rather than surrender and his Arab appearance is intended to make this understandable. Another assumption by implication is that Europe is a potential middle ground for Islamic terrorists to gather before looking towards the USA as the real target. The Black Hand is hence a curious hybrid: It is headed by a former Yugoslavian operative and its members are fanatics required to take a suicidal pledge. It combines resentment of the USA as an international peacekeeper with the Middle Eastern suicidal idea of martyrdom. The oath of suicide is a distinctly Arab twist in this context. Thus, those who plant the bomb at the end of the ﬁlm have no hope of escape and are thus effectively European suicide bombers. The idea that the phenomenon of the suicide bomber will cross over the conﬁnes of the Middle East and affect other terrorist groups and disgruntled individuals also affected the Bosnian terrorist in Peacemaker. However, the ﬁlm does not present the terrorist dedication as in any way honorable, as the arms dealer whose only intent was to sell to the highest bidder is double-crossed by his underlings who prefer to deal with the terrorists who in turn betray them. The dealer is distinguished by his amorality as opposed to the immorality of the terrorists, a common distinction in the cinema of terrorism. The terrorist justiﬁcation is familiar — that the USA grows fat and lazy as it inﬂicts suffering on other nations, in effect playing God with their fate (robbing them of their right to self-determination) and imposing its politics, morality, economics and culture on the rest of the world. The terrorist action is a planned lesson in humility. The ﬁlm’s climax depends on the assumption that it is alarmingly easy to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the USA. The most horrifying consequences of this apparent lack of security are realized in The Sum of All Fears, also made before but released after 9/11. Indeed, it is the realization of intense nuclear devastation that ﬁnally inspires Rock to assume greater responsibility and move towards the restoration to America of the right to self-determination by eliminating the terrorist threat. Responsibility in a world where America is the central terrorist target means awareness and action greater than self-interest. However, the ﬁlm sidesteps the importance of this personal realization by having Rock’s girlfriend kidnapped by the terrorists as if to say that a more personal reason is needed beyond the concept of national security. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm ends with Rock getting married, having earned the right as a responsible patriarch.

39

Bananas

Bananas (1971: d. Woody Allen) A “gadget tester” (Woody Allen) becomes a revolutionary leader in a ﬁctional South American country. Although he merely wanted to get laid, events spiral out of control around him as terrorism has varied forms. The U.S. government eventually considers him a threat to its security and brings him to trial. Bananas is a movie from Allen’s frenetic gag phase, before he became a celebrated auteur in the late 1970s. The ﬁlm is intriguing in the cinema of terrorism for its asides to the domestic and international political climate of the early 1970s, including reference to the student radical movements that contributed to the rise of the domestic urban guerrilla. The ﬁlm draws a parallel between domestic and international revolutions, but roots both in selﬁshness rather than true ideological commitment; indeed, it serves to subvert any notion of a commitment beyond such self-serving interests. The sardonic tone is set early with a TV report of an upcoming presidential assassination presented on Wide World of Sports and a depiction of street violence beginning with the apparently traditional bombing of an American embassy which is referred to as “a ritual as old as the city itself.” Behind the joke is the assumption that revolution begins with an attack against U.S. presence in the region, that terrorism precedes revolution and is thus a tool. However, the USA apparently treats South American politics as entertainment and Bananas looks forward in part to the terrorism-as-ratings joke in the more sustained satire of Network. Allen plays his usual horny nerd type, here a college dropout who makes a date with a girl even though she admits that she may be bombing an ofﬁce building that day. The throwaway gag underlines the common fear of student radicalism in the early 1970s as the major impetus behind domestic terrorism. That Allen greets this revelation as if it is to be expected both highlights the association between student rebellion and domestic terrorism and suggests the essential indifference of the Allen persona. Indeed, the disturbing aspect to Allen’s persona developing in Bananas is that as a comical walking disaster area he may actually seek to instigate catastrophe as a means of conﬁrming his cynical world view. His involvement in a South American revolution makes the ﬁlm address characters that battle to take control of their circumstances but are unprepared for the political consequences of their desire for control. In this context, terrorism and revolution are almost naïve, innocent acts by shallow, inept people. The Allen persona in this context is that of an aspiring manipulator whose pettiness and struggle for control balloons out of all proportion. However, manipulation is for him a form of intellectual self-aggrandizement (partially through self-pity, ironically enough) and an aphrodisiac. Yet the character also has a dread of any true self-knowing, a man for whom sexual activity becomes an identiﬁable form of self-deﬁnition. His half-truths and actions are designed to manipulate favors and keep up his appearance of self-control. If he in any way represents America abroad, then he is a naïve stooge for a government that plans to kill an American citizen in order to discredit a revolutionary movement and prompt U.S. intervention. Allen thus becomes a guerrilla and the ﬁlm reveals that the so-called freedom ﬁghters are not above using their ideology as a justiﬁcation for petty crime. In terms of U.S. foreign policy, the ﬁlm implies a hypocritical America ready to sponsor both government and rebels so as to keep a foothold in South America but then ready to consider any leader as a threat to domestic security. Allen wins the admiration and sexual favors of the student-terrorist through his support for so-called revolutionaries. In this way the ﬁlm both explores the naïve fad of stu-

The Battle of Algiers

40

dent terrorism and suggests that such faddish political sentiments may get way out of hand when extending support to the revolutionary movements found in South America. The association between domestic terrorism and left-wing revolutionary movements is a springboard for the comedic misadventures that dominate this very funny ﬁlm.

The Battle of Algiers (1966: d. Gillo Pontecorvo) This ﬁlm is a semi-documentary recreation of the successful terrorist campaign by Algerian Muslims to liberate their country from French colonial occupation. It covers various instances and tactics in an eight-year struggle from 1954 to 1962, charting how resistance adopted terrorism as a matter of effective strategy. It remains controversial in its refusal to condemn terrorism and its effort to set it within historical context. The Battle of Algiers was a highly acclaimed movie, winning several major awards and much support for its director, who would go on to another portrait of colonialism and revolution (within which he considers terrorism an integral tactic), Burn! The Battle of Algiers was one of a number of high-proﬁle terrorist-themed international ﬁlms to have a substantial reception in the USA and makes for an intriguing comparison to the Hollywood version of the same crisis, Lost Command, released the same year. Indeed, it seems that the Algerian terrorist campaign marked a reference point for the developing cinema of terrorism, to be conﬁrmed with the rise of Palestinian national terrorism a decade later. Thus, director Pontecorvo’s movie has a ﬁrm place at the commencement of terroristthemed movies although its inﬂuence on Hollywood is not as great as its inﬂuence on European political ﬁlmmakers like Costa-Gavras. The ﬁlm considers fear and terror to be the means of colonial oppression and depicts the French as torturers and plunderers. Thus, the rise of Islamic nationalism beginning in 1954 with the development of the National Liberation Front is considered a necessary step in the ﬁght for self-determination on a national and personal level. In a culture where the Europeans look down on the Muslims as inferior, the colonialists try to repress nationalist sentiment through imprisonment and torture-execution as a means of keeping the populace in line. The European arrogance creates bitterness and a sense of cultural desperation that quickly gives rise to terrorist actions, presumably as a well-rationalized last resort, to destabilize the occupiers’ sense of security and superiority. The ﬁlm thus charts the process by which a revolutionary movement turns to terrorism as a tactic. Since the Algerians did win their independence from the French, The Battle of Algiers is a veritestyle account of successful Islamic terrorism; indeed, the Algerian result is not to be underestimated as a role model for future Islamic terrorist actions as they spread to the Middle East and Palestine. The process of revolutionary terrorism in the ﬁlm begins with the decision by a revolutionary movement to take responsibility for the moral and ethical aspects of all Islamic protests and resistance, to make social and moral reform a precursor to political change. This translates into selective assassinations and targeted shootings of soldiers and other “legitimate” targets. The authorities immediately label these acts of terrorism as a means of justifying a stern response, even though the acts were not directed against civilians. However, these acts spread fear and hatred amongst the Europeans for the Muslims. The ﬁlm thus holds the descent into terrorism as a mutual act on the part of both resistance ﬁghters and oppressors. As the wave of bombings continues, the authorities step up the hunt for the rebels, especially if this means terrorizing the local populace. Thus, an act

41

Betrayed

of violent deﬁance spirals into a cycle of violence as it brings government reprisals. This garners support amongst the populace for the terrorists. Seeing the escalation of violent response, the rebel campaign of terror takes a new step when the decision is made to bomb cafés and other places where Europeans gather — to attack the sites of cultural importance to the occupiers. They use women to inﬁltrate secure sections and place bombs (a trait also depicted in Lost Command), although signiﬁcantly these events take place before the phenomenon of the suicide bomber. Thus, the ﬁlm holds that in a war between occupied and occupier, terrorism is necessary and valid, however horrendous the acts may be when bombs are left in populous places: To spread fear amongst the occupiers, the “innocent” are targeted. For Pontecorvo, this is a tragic development in the escalation of violence although it is the virtual deﬁnition of true terrorism and arguably the tactic that brings them the desired response, albeit in the long run. The ﬁlm depicts terrorism as an escalation in tactics in a war for independence where the occupiers deny the occupied any voice of protest. Terrorism has become a modern form of the war for liberation. That it brings only greater violence in response is again part of a long-term strategy. Indeed, the ﬁlm holds as proof that terrorism is working the fact that the Algerian issue was subsequently debated in the United Nations. Just as the ﬁlm depicts the process by which terrorism escalates, so too it explores the means by which those targeted by terrorism seek in response to demonize the terrorist. Systematic armed response that does not distinguish between innocents and culprits is a result of the means of the occupier to criminalize the terrorist, to remove from them their political, religious or ideological grievances. The danger running throughout this ﬁlm is the idea of collective responsibility. Hence, retaliation against innocents for the acts of the insurgents is allied to Nazism (although is never directly stated as such). There is also a factor unique to the Algerian situation, the idea of French pride and the force of history. Thus it is implied that the failure of French colonialism in Indo-China led in part to the ferocity of the response in Algiers on both sides. The idea of the failure of French colonialism as an insult to French pride is also found in Lost Command and Day of the Jackal. The ﬁlm’s vividly systematic depiction of the growth of terrorism as a strategy makes it a valid historical document, in effect a blueprint for nationalist terrorism. It also depicts what it considers the futility of the effort to remove nationalist fervor. There is no justice in the use of torture by oppressors against captured terrorists and such is considered here an act of moral hypocrisy. Although the terrorists are eliminated, their example spreads as a lesson for others and the terrorist becomes an object of fascination for the world media. However, there is little honor to be found in a modern terrorist war and the ﬁlm holds it as an inevitable historical progression that the nationalist beliefs of the extremists will spread to the people. Thus, although the Algerian NLF is eliminated, two years later a spontaneous demonstration erupted against the occupiers — a precursor of the Palestinian intifada. The response to terrorism is a key factor in the subsequent shaping of popular opinion. In that way, the ﬁlm depicts events that mark the rise of Islamic terrorism against the West, although here is still in terms of the resistance to Colonial occupation.

Betrayed (1988: d. Costa-Gavras) An undercover FBI agent (Debra Winger) is on the trail of a white supremacist (Tom Berenger), suspect in the killing of a radio deejay. She ﬁnds him to be a loyal family man

Betrayed

42

and may be falling in love with him, hardly believing him capable of what he has been accused of until she uncovers his membership in a right-wing underground network, planning to use Berenger for a targeted assassination as a means of instigating a terrorist war. Winger’s loyalties are torn between her growing love for Berenger and her rivalry with her boss and former lover John Heard. With Betrayed, controversial political director Costa-Gavras turns his attention to the threat of domestic terrorism in the USA by right-wing revolutionary groups. The ﬁlm takes as its inspiration the true-life killing of radio talk show personality Alan Berg, an event that also inspired the non–terrorist-themed Talk Radio. Betrayed is perhaps the most high-proﬁle of a growing number of ﬁlms since the late 1980s that have sought to address the rise of neo–Nazism in the USA and its potential development as a new, dominant domestic terrorist threat. It emerged alongside such ﬁlms as Dead Bang and Avenging Force. Betrayed’s discussion of the freedom of speech when dealing with racist agendas suggests that the American dream of freedom is threatened and eroded by the developing racist-fascist elements within the heartland. The threat to American liberty thus comes from within and uses as its weapon patriotism and the Constitution. The target of these would-be revolutionaries is the supposed Zionist inﬂuence on government and the terrorists are presented as modern-day cowboys, the inheritors of American tradition. Director Costa-Gavras considers these heartland cowboys to be the embodiment of the values that formed and spawned the nation not to show how they have been corrupted over time but how they are directly responsible for a climate of intolerance and violence. It speaks back to the idea of the Ku Klux Klan as both the embodiment of the U.S. spirit and the beginning of racial terrorism in the country. Behind family values lies a monstrous intolerance ready to embrace terrorism. The true monstrousness of the American tradition is the Negro hunt, where the proof of white manhood is the ability to hunt and kill an African American (a plot device also used in the more exploitative Avenging Force). This symbolic ritual, the killing of an African American, serves as an initiation and a true demonstration of racial loyalty. For Berenger it is a glorious moment meant to celebrate his bond to Winger by opening up his world to her. She is duly repelled when he reveals his hatred for Z.O.G., the Zionist Occupied Government, and their “nigger police.” However, when she betrays Berenger by bringing the information to her FBI boss John Heard, Heard takes it as a means of subordinating her on an interpersonal level, revenge for her slight against him. CostaGavras does not explore the roots of these beliefs as he explodes the façade behind middle–American decency, ridiculing need for interpersonal connection. Intriguingly, the ﬁlm develops the rituals that bind the racist, survivalist community. It is through rituals that they achieve a community deﬁnition and assert their own version of Americana. That their message is spreading is clear in one scene that reveals that the leaders plan to use the Internet as a means of uniting the disparate groups into one vast network. It is in this suggestion that the ﬁlm addresses the fear of domestic terrorism — that the possible uniﬁcation of racist groups will unleash a powerful wave of terrorism in an effort to promote a new Civil War. Thus, with uniﬁcation comes targeted assassination as a ﬁrst step along an inevitable path to terrorism. Their funding is achieved through robberies, the conventional crimes a mere stepping stone to enable a greater and more devastating political agenda. Winger’s involvement in this robbery, as a means of

43

Black Dawn / Black Hawk Down

demonstrating her loyalty to the cause, also addresses the Patty Hearst case. In Betrayed, white supremacists plan a campaign of murder to incite a race war. Costa-Gavras considers these right-wing American groups at a point where they can put such plans into effect, with terrorism thus a revolutionary tactic.

Black Dawn (2005: d. Alexander Groszynski) An ex–CIA agent (Steven Seagal) breaks an international arms dealer out of prison and brings him back to America. The CIA believed the agent dead, but now ﬁnd him involved in a plot by terrorists to detonate a nuclear weapon in Los Angeles. Another production made through the auspices of Andrew Stevens, Black Dawn evokes the iconography of the political thriller though the context is post–Cold War Russian terrorism emerging out of the collapse of the Soviet Union: Fears of “loose nukes” in terrorist group hands dominate. A reference to the Geneva Convention and the inferred need to violate such for political expediency suggest the germ of a human rights concern entering the cinema of terrorism post–9/11 although the context here lacks relevance. Standard set-pieces punctuate a plot about disgruntled European terrorists whose motivations are kept vague while the ﬁlm focuses on the practicalities of a terror cell deploying a nuke on American soil. Interestingly, Seagal here belongs to a secret CIA division sanctioned to do the dirty work necessary to ﬁnd the needed intelligence to combat terrorist threats on American soil. The “dirty work” analogy references former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s justiﬁcation of torture in circumvention of the Geneva Convention. The ethics of torture would saturate the revised cinema of terrorism in a wave of high-proﬁle releases in 2007, but the reference here is the mere germ of an idea: a new war needing new means for a new threat. The terrorists are idealists who have sworn to be martyrs to their cause, dying in the attack. The grafting of Islamic martyrdom references onto a variation of a European terrorist makes for a curious hybrid of terrorist genre characterizations, though again the hybrid is embryonic rather than explored in a War on Terror context.

Black Hawk Down (2002: d. Ridley Scott) Black Hawk Down is an intense recreation of the October 3, 1993, raid by U.S. troops on the Somali capital city of Mogadishu. In this raid, nearly one hundred Rangers were dropped via Black Hawk helicopters into the city to capture and remove a Somali warlord’s two henchmen. However, helicopters went down and men were trapped in combat, facing a spontaneous opposition by hundreds of armed militia and citizens. Strictly speaking, the ﬁlm is not a terrorist movie, and is included here on a tenuous connection related more to the timeliness of the ﬁlm’s release and some of the implications carried by that release. After the actual event and in later years, Osama bin Laden claimed credit for organizing the apparently spontaneous citizens’ revolt against American troops. In retrospect thus, the events are a preliminary stage in what would later be termed a greater war on terrorism. When the ﬁlm was released into cinemas shortly following the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, its rampant militarism was taken as a sign of American patriotism and of the military impetus behind the war on terrorism. Thus, defenses and attacks launched against the ﬁlm were done so often from the perspective of the war on terrorism. It was accused of praising the military but neglecting to explore a then-popular idea that the war on terrorism was in part the resultant

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legacy of President Clinton’s foreign policies. However, at a time following 9/11 when all debate that implied any connection between acts of mass terrorism and foreign policy was seen as counter-productive (to say the least) or even unpatriotic, the ﬁlm chose to glorify military achievement. The gloriﬁcation was subsequently also attacked for turning what many consider to be a failed mission into a portrait of military strength and resolve under unexpected pressures. Although a brilliantly directed war movie, it is essentially evidence of director Ridley Scott ﬁnding a place within the Jerry Bruckheimer stable of directors, where his brother Tony has nested for some time. The idea of a militaristic political message from the blockbuster action studio offended many critics who were eager to attack the ﬁlm. There was some speculation at ﬁrst that audiences would not respond to such a graphic war ﬁlm in the immediate post–9/11 world but it was nonetheless released early (unlike the ﬁlms depicting terrorist acts, that had their release delayed) and caught a wave of patriotism. Reportedly, the ﬁlmmakers added to the opening and closing titles intending to place the ﬁlm in terms of a new American outlook following 9/11. In that sense the relevant theme for that audience was the right of the United States as a superpower to intervene in the civil and humanitarian plights of other smaller nations: The USA had a duty to be a world peacekeeper, even though this may be interpreted as a form of Imperialism. Thus the ﬁlm is keen to establish the U.S. mission as one undertaken on humanitarian grounds and shows the Somali warlord’s henchmen withholding UN food from the population, maintaining power by enforced starvation. The moral U.S. troops are horriﬁed but have orders not to intervene. Later, when the order does come, it is seen as the right moral choice and the responsible act of a nation unofﬁcially charged with being the force of stability and humanity in the world. The ﬁlm is quick to establish that the world is behind the USA. The Somali militia that attacks them are thus an uncharacterized rabble, their leader speaking the usual resentment of U.S. presence in the affairs of foreign nations — using anti–Imperialism as a cover for a more inhumane, unfair and evil exploitation of humanity. The ﬁlm holds that resentment of the just presence of the U.S. is a pretext and an impetus behind acts of terrorism. U.S. moral supremacy is carefully maintained throughout the movie. Despite its relevant context, the ﬁlm rests on the immediacy of the combat sequence for its effects; director Scott referred to his style as intent to capture “the anatomy of war.” It is enough to imply the righteousness of the U.S. in conﬂict and then to reveal the hardships of battle in foreign terrain. It does, however, suggest a rivalry between the varied U.S. armed forces there in operation — the Delta Force and the Rangers — and cunningly depicts the cockiness of the military (even using an ironic song, Elvis Presley’s “Devil in Disguise,” over their scenes) as a perhaps necessary evil. Thus the Somali experience functions as a due lesson in humility, a lesson not to underestimate the strength of anti–U.S. resentment. The military leaders are burdened with the responsibility of taking active responsibility not only for their own forces but for the Somali citizens who may be affected. In that sense, the ﬁlm approaches the theme of the right to self-determination which is at the heart of many terrorist-themed ﬁlms. The fact that Clinton subsequently withdrew the troops from Somalia was taken by many as both a sign of isolationist policies and an impetus to subsequent anti–American acts, goaded by the “success” of the Somali experience. The idea of “rules of engagement” is paramount as a depiction of military honor and morality. Thus, the ﬁlm shows that military planners and soldiers put much effort into

45

Black Sunday

the distinction between friendly neighborhoods and enemy militia strongholds, and that the soldiers have orders not to ﬁre unless ﬁrst ﬁred upon. The irony of the situation is that the so-called “friendlies” turn hostile, implying that the U.S. should consider all as hostile unless otherwise proven. This is of course a problematic theme and drew much resentment from critics. Likewise the care in selecting targets and the “don’t shoot ﬁrst” policy gets the soldiers in even deeper trouble. Nevertheless, the principle is there: Rules must be followed in war even if the enemy does not follow them and forces the U.S. to react in a different way. Again, the moral righteousness of U.S. troops is stressed throughout. William Friedkin’s later ﬁlm Rules of Engagement would further explore the issue of moral responsibility when dealing with a response to armed terroristic hostility against a U.S. presence abroad. When a leader refers to the Somali terrain as the Wild West, the ﬁlm comes dangerously close to an endorsement of a kind of international Manifest Destiny, with the Somalis (effective terrorists) as the Indians.

Black Sunday (1977: d. John Frankenheimer) A Palestinian terrorist (Marthe Keller), a member of the fanatical organization Black September, is spared in a raid by Israeli troops. She comes to the USA where she is helped by a disillusioned Vietnam veteran (Bruce Dern) who builds a bomb which they plan to detonate during the Super Bowl as a lesson to America to stop supporting Israel and to draw attention to the plight of the Palestinian people. An Israeli intelligence ofﬁcer (Robert Shaw) in America attempts to track them down and thwart the plan, the U.S. Intelligence ofﬁcers not as earnest as they should be and even unaware of any impending peril. Finally, Shaw tracks down the perpetrators, by which time Dern, a blimp pilot, has attached the bomb to the Goodyear Blimp and with Keller attempts to pilot the blimp into the stadium and detonate it, the two of them committing suicide in the process — the suicide bomber has come to the USA. Shaw kills them and the blimp is taken to a spot above the water where it detonates harmlessly. This ﬁlm is the starting point for any discussion on the commencement of a genre of terrorist cinema and its importance should not be underestimated. Its premise — that terrorists would attempt to attack a high-proﬁle civilian target within the United States — has continued relevance and anticipates the post–9/11 environment. The later ﬁlm The Sum of All Fears has a similar premise, but in this case the terrorists are successful and a nuclear bomb in this case is detonated. What could be prevented in 1977 cannot be prevented by 2002 and the two ﬁlms effectively bookend the ﬁrst phase of development in the terrorist movie. Where mass terrorism was once an escapist and paranoid possibility, it has in recent years become a certainty. The change in mood can be charted over the ﬁlms dealing with terrorism in the intervening years, leading up to 9/11. Starting appropriately in Beirut, suggesting the city to be a haven for Arab Palestinian terrorist groups, the ﬁlm begins with an Israeli commando raid on a terrorist stronghold. The terrorists there are Black September, PLO and the Japanese Red Army, suggesting an amalgam of causes centered on Palestinian independence. After the raid, the terrorists are dependent on the survivor, Keller, who in turn must use her control over the emotionally unstable Dern for whom Keller is an amalgam of mother and desired sexual object. Israeli agent Shaw’s initial mistake is to spare her life because he sees her in her most vulnerable and desirable state, naked in the shower. Shaw’s moral decency in sparing a woman from death is a ﬂaw; the lack of moral ruthlessness in dealing with ter-

Black Sunday

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rorists is fatal. But at this stage in the ﬁlm, the audience is unaware of the true monstrousness of this woman and may side with Shaw. Gradually director Frankenheimer punishes the viewer for their pity by revealing the horrendous depths of this woman’s fanaticism. Much of the subsequent ﬁlm concerns Shaw’s sense of guilt at being merciful. His wounding in the middle of the ﬁlm functions as a moment of clariﬁcation, and he thereafter pursues the terrorist trail with added fervor. By the end, the opening situation is neatly reversed as an armed Keller sees Shaw but hesitates, leaving Shaw enough time to shoot her and make amends for his earlier mistake. The portrayal of Dern makes for the ﬁrst depiction of an American as an effective suicide bomber, intent to pilot the bomb-laden blimp into a full stadium. Yet his motivation is not one of political ideology or even any commitment to the Palestinian cause. He is a disgruntled Vietnam veteran who feels mistreated by the American government who have not recognized him as the hero he believes he is. As Dern states later in a moment of psychotic pathos, he just wants to leave something for America and the world to remember him by: His act of suicidal terrorism is his stab at vengeful immortality. It is a perverse form of self-aggrandizement and an intriguing Americanization of the martyrdom trait later attributed to Palestinian suicide bombers. Like Keller, however, he acts partially out of a sense of pride and the feeling of having been wronged. The alliance between international terrorists and disgruntled Americans who feel ignored or insigniﬁcant and thus have a cause to resent their government would be a potent theme. The danger is that terrorists can take advantage of psychologically vulnerable individuals in order to perpetrate acts of terrorism. The immature need for attention can transform into a perverse grandiosity that can be used to serve any cause; Dern is the more dangerous ﬁgure here because he is willing to kill regardless of cause. Terrorists with a cause can thus appropriate disillusioned men and give them their opportunity at glory. Black Sunday represents American ﬁlm’s ﬁrst effort to acknowledge and probe the suicide bomber before such acts would become a phenomenon. The later ﬁlm Wrong Is Right would also depict the suicide bomber on American soil, but without a psychological underpinning beyond religious fanaticism. Black Sunday in part justiﬁes the use of force and personal political intimidation to get information and validates the impression of Israeli Intelligence, Mossad, as the most knowledgeable anti-terrorism operation. The ﬁlm speaks of increased cooperation between the intelligence communities of the USA and Israel before the repercussions of Palestinian terrorism reach beyond the Middle East and target America directly. The ﬁlm sees this terrorist action as inevitable as long as the Arab-Israeli situation remains unresolved. Israel is more prepared to deal with terrorists than are American ofﬁcials and it is an Israeli agent who ultimately prevents the terrorist disaster. Ironically, however, the U.S. authority (Fritz Weaver) looks down on Shaw’s methods and warns him that these are not acceptable in the USA. The USA apparently works by different rules, protective of individual freedoms and rights, but the ﬁlm clearly suggests that the values of the Constitution are not effective in dealing with the spread of international terrorism. Yet there is also for Shaw a sense of futility in his ongoing battle with terrorism. He conﬁdes in a friend that in thirty years of struggle he has achieved nothing of substance and that the killings merely continue. This moment of weakness coincides with his wounding; and the wounding, as usual in Frankenheimer ﬁlms, functions as a purifying act of almost symbolic castration. Shaw’s subsequent actions are determined to redeﬁne, refo-

47

Blast

cus, restore and assert a lost potency. Disillusionment and self-doubt are cured by the wounding but there is added impersonality in the individual surviving such a process. The wounding is a puriﬁcation, from which to emerge with renewed vigor and determination. It allows Shaw to state his own right to self-determination and to eliminate the terrorists who would remove this right from their victims, including his co-agent who is indeed targeted by Keller. Shaw realizes that he ﬁghts against terror to give himself meaning, where for the terrorists, meaning is attained in the death of innocents. Hence, in the test of a bomb in which an innocent man is killed, Dern is unconcerned with the dead body; his only worry is with the effectiveness of the bomb, his callousness surprising Keller. Shaw maintains the ﬁght almost as an Existential deﬁance of an imposed fate represented by the terrorists. Signiﬁcantly, Shaw’s playing card is to talk directly with an Arab foreign minister familiar with Palestinian terrorists. The scenes of their discussion encapsulate the madness of the Arab-Israeli struggle with assertions that Israel in effect created the terrorist Keller because of their treatment of her family during its occupation of Palestine. The implication is that the hardships experienced by the Palestinian people because of Israel’s actions is the sole propellent behind future terrorists — that future world terrorism germinates in this Middle Eastern struggle. Whether the blame per se rests with either side is irrelevant now as the rise of terrorism has superseded any “cause.” The suggestion that Israel may be in theory responsible for the rise of terrorism and for people like Keller makes it a double imperative for Shaw to stop Keller before she can attack the USA. The war on terrorism is Israel’s task, and through Shaw they succeed, in the process educating American ofﬁcials about the dangers that now threaten them. Israel can no longer control the struggle. The ﬁlm’s ﬁnal act is one of the most effectively suspenseful sequences in 1970s Hollywood and a testament to Frankenheimer’s mastery of the thriller form. All tensions come together as the director cleverly manipulates audience sympathies into at once dreading the bomb detonation and almost wishing it to happen in order to see the destruction it will cause. It shows the almost arbitrary ridiculousness of Super Bowl culture as a depiction of American innocence as fans watch the game, oblivious to the danger of terrorism that threatens to descend on them from above. That the threat is from an aircraft, and a benign cultural symbol at that, gives the ﬁlm added resonance in retrospect in the wake of 9/11. Terrorists can turn everyday American symbols into weapons directed against symbolic targets intending to cause mass damage in order to both punish the U.S. and to affect public opinion and force foreign policy changes. The director also manages a sly parallel between the violence of the unfolding football game on the ground, and the unfolding struggle against terrorists that takes place above. In that sense it is both a celebration and indictment of the American cultural fascination for large-scale, spectacular combat — the very direction of the Hollywood action blockbuster itself. The irony is often bleak and so when Shaw says that he (his team) must kill the pilot (Dern), Frankenheimer cuts to the sacking of a quarterback. It is grotesque in its cynicism and is a moment of national cultural self-criticism.

Blast (1996: d. Albert Pyun) Blast is set before the Atlanta Olympic Games, as terrorists attack and take over a swimming complex where a women’s swim team has been training. They hold the team

Blast

48

hostage but are unaware that a cleaner is trapped in the complex. He endeavors to stop the terrorists as they use satellite technology to broadcast their demands (the release of political prisoners worldwide). The presidential ofﬁce and the FBI seek the help of a counter-terrorism expert (Rutger Hauer) to guide the cleaner through the complex and undermine the terrorists. Director Albert Pyun is a proliﬁc maker of genre exploitation ﬁlms. Although he is often ridiculed by fans, he is proﬁcient and there is enough in his better works to suggest a stylish talent in the low-budget ﬁeld. He would return to terrorist themes with the surprising Ticker. For Blast, he tackles the prospect of a Munich-style terrorist takeover within a major sporting event staged in the USA. It begins with an explanatory note saying that there were 23 terrorist plots investigated by the FBI in Atlanta and that one of them was real. Going on, it states that the FBI worked with counter-terrorist experts from around the world to undermine and prevent the terrorist action before it could be initiated. Blast extrapolates what may have happened if the plot had not been stopped. As found in many of Pyun’s better ﬁlms there is a note of melancholia throughout, with human desperation and weariness coming through. Although Blast does not have the striking contrast between hot and cold colors that is found in his better works, it does have his concern for entrapping circumstances and the struggle to overcome them. The cleaner is a derivative character, a rugged loner troubled by past relationships and the loss of a loved woman (very much in the Bruce Willis mold of Die Hard). However, Blast makes one signiﬁcant departure from Die Hard. The Die Hard terrorists were not terrorists at all, but clever criminals using the methods of terrorism in order to cover a robbery. Blast restores the formula to traditional means of terrorist attack, the memories of Munich anchoring the ﬁlm closer to fact, and seeks a further examination of the persona of the terrorist leader. The makeup of the terrorist group is intriguing as it is led by a man who speaks with a German accent, suggesting a possible link to the Baader-Meinhof group and the notion of the Western European terrorist. Like many terrorists, he warns the response team of the repercussions that will follow any counter-terrorist action and that any such response is their fault not his, in effect displacing the blame and ultimate responsibility for any catastrophic consequences. This is a standard terrorist evasion in many ﬁlms as it is clear here that the terrorist action fulﬁls deeper psychopathic needs. The terrorists’ demands comprise a familiar rhetoric and the most notable aspect is the terrorists’ command of sophisticated technology and the fact that they even have their own website. They represent the fusion of terrorism with modern technology, however reliant they are on tested terrorist action. The counter-terrorist agent is said by another character to be “like the terrorists, he’s obsessed to the point of insanity” and the ﬁlm develops the expert as a terrorist nemesis in much the same way that the specialist proﬁler is brought from the outside to aid a serial killer investigation in many serial killer ﬁlms. The terrorist is thus a criminal aberration demanding a specialized response even if this action may jeopardize the innocent hostages. Indeed, the terrorist kills a man and says, “Exciting, isn’t it?” barely able to contain his sexual glee at murder, allying the terrorist in some part to the sexual dysfunction of the serial killer. The leader is also revealed as a career terrorist who regularly takes and kills hostages in order to spread fear and awe worldwide — the serial terrorist, perhaps. Such a terrorist ﬁgure is addicted to the power of life and death regardless of any polit-

49

Blown Away

ical rhetoric or other demands that may arise. His ruthlessness is a means to secure acquiescence. Many of the actions are implied off-screen (evacuations, panics, isolation, etc.) rather than being shown, no doubt a budgetary decision. Instead Pyun concentrates on the struggle between the rival characters as a means of rectifying the problem posed by terrorists. Thus, the battle has a simple and direct function although it means that the ﬁlm ends up providing little more than that needed by the demands of the action genre. (The later Ticker is a more efﬁcient and provocative reworking of terrorist themes.) Blast settles down to a series of prolonged encounters in the labyrinthine structure under terrorist control although without the impetus of Pyun’s gunﬁght movie, Mean Guns, a far more effective display of violent energies within a conﬁned space.

Blown Away (1994: d. Stephen Hopkins) Boston is the site of a number of attacks by a serial bomber (Tommy Lee Jones). The bomb squad, led by Jeff Bridges, are seemingly the ones being targeted in a deliberate battle of wits. Bridges discovers that the mad bomber is a former IRA terrorist with a personal score to settle with Bridges, who has hidden his Irish identity from his U.S. employers. Bridges must hunt down Jones, considered too dangerous and psychotic even for the IRA, before he wreaks havoc and spreads the anarchic fear that seems to be his inspiration. Soon Jones targets Bridges’ family. Blown Away is comprised of familiar borrowings and has plot similarities to other movies, especially Patriot Games, another ﬁlm (along with The Devil’s Own) which sought to bring the prospect of IRA–inspired terrorism to the USA. It was released alongside the superior Speed and was critically dismissed as formulaic in comparison. It can be considered part of a group of ﬁlms of the early 1990s —The Specialist, Final Cut and Live Wire included — that sought to explore the prospect of a serial bomber and were similarly visually excited by explosions and the possibility of social collapse into anarchy. However, the ﬁlm is uncertain as to what qualiﬁes as terrorism in such a domestic situation and seeks a more pathological rationale for the actions of the bomber. Although Jones is a former IRA operative and terrorist, the ﬁlm quickly establishes him as a kind of mad Irishman who is beyond the cause and whose actions are a symptom of his irrationality and psychosis as opposed to the driven political commitment associated with IRA fanaticism. Like the IRA killer in Patriot Games, he is motivated by petty revenge, using the means of terrorism to intimidate his rival and prove his superiority. He kills for the sport of it, to match wits with a skilled adversary, tying into the interplay of hunter and hunted that runs through many of director Hopkins’ works. Blown Away posits the Irish troubles as a psychologically scarring time for both Jones and Bridges, who have nonetheless reacted in divergent ways, Bridges to stop potential carnage in a kind of penance for his former involvement in the IRA and Jones to spread it. Hopkins is seemingly determined to have Jones represent the chaos posed by terrorism devoid of a political intent and thus Jones’ abode, a deserted ship, is ﬁlled with decaying colors, tilted angles and the clutter of a mind who can only ﬁnd meaning in spreading chaos and destruction. Signiﬁcantly, Bridges is a family man and responsible patriarch whereas Jones is not a father and thus a scourge of patriarchy. Jones suffers from a pathological desire to affect and control the lives of his victims. Like many serial arsonists, for instance, he lingers around his own crime scenes, taking

Blue Thunder

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in the breadth of his capability. He also directly stalks Bridges’ new wife, suggesting his resentment at being denied such ordinary pleasures. Hence the ﬁlm allies his actions with psychological imbalance and is keen for much of its length to disassociate this from the terrorist origins of the character. Nevertheless, in the end the ﬁlm does characterize this lone madman as a terrorist, the ﬁlm struggling with its own deﬁnition of terrorism. Although the actions of a serial bomber may inspire fear in the populace, they are not the acts of a conventional terrorist in that they serve no ideological intent beyond the anarchic madness of a single person. The ﬁlm is thus an example of terrorist actions perpetrated by a lone madman, an outsider who claims to want to spread fear and anarchy but whose real motives are more personal. In that, it posits the disenfranchised terrorist as the ultimate anarchist and the main threat to the sanctity of American patriarchal family values — the man without interpersonal or ideological responsibilities. Signiﬁcantly, Jones is later described as a “freelancer,” a career terrorist who has sold his indiscriminate favors to such as the Red Brigade and the Libyans.

Blue Thunder (1983: d. John Badham) A police helicopter pilot (Roy Scheider) and his new partner (Daniel Stern) are assigned to test a new tactical armed helicopter planned for anti-terrorist use and crowd control. They uncover a conspiracy where the authorities apparently plan to use the heavily armed helicopter for inner city management and crime control. When Stern is tortured and murdered for information, Scheider steals the helicopter in an effort to bring his plight to outside attention. Another pilot (Malcolm McDowell) takes to the air in an effort to shoot Scheider down before Scheider’s girlfriend on the ground can deliver an incriminating videotape to the press. Blue Thunder is a slick thriller that, along with Wargames, conﬁrmed director Badham as a major commercial director. It extends the 1970s themes of surveillance and the invasion of privacy into a paranoid vision of then-contemporary law enforcement. The ﬁlm posits the development of such weapons as the title helicopter as a response to increased threats of terrorism (set before the Olympics are scheduled to come to Los Angeles). Inspired obviously by the Vietnam experience, the helicopter represents a means of establishing ground control from the air. The ﬁlm enters the realm of conspiracy thrillers in its suggestion that the fear of terrorist actions is used as an excuse by authorities to justify increased police activity and the development of fearful weapons intended for the fascistic control of the American people. The ﬁlm addresses the American fears concerning the control of urban crime and suggests that hardline politicians may be seeking a more militarized solution to a potential armed insurrection from within the United States itself. They hence justify the weapon by staging a simulated terrorist incident and show how the helicopter would rectify it. The ﬁlm thus concludes that anti-terrorist rhetoric may be used as a means of repressing the U.S. population. In its way, the ﬁlm associates the anti-terrorist agenda with a new form of fascism, positing a government agenda obsessed with controlling the populace by any means necessary. Like many conspiracy theories, it implies the consent of the military-industrial complex in collusion with politicians. The details of the actual conspiracy in Blue Thunder are kept rather vague, disclosing only enough to advance the plot; but the ﬁlm is nonetheless historically interesting as a bridge from the political conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s to the action-oriented spectacles of the 1980s. It implies that

51

Body of Lies

terrorism may be used by such plotters to justify their agenda, and that such militarism is a legacy of the Vietnam experience.

Body of Lies (2008: d. Ridley Scott) Body of Lies follows on from the key 2007 terrorist-ﬁlm wave releases and updates the terrorist genre to address the practical, intelligence and ethical concerns of the War on Terror as waged by the Bush government. In Body of Lies, a CIA operative (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the Middle East is on the trail of a terrorist who may be operating out of Jordan. He is helped by the head of the Jordanian secret service (Mark Strong), but only to a point as the U.S. home-based department head (Russell Crowe) is a ruthless man unconcerned by the cultural subtleties the U.S. must face in the War on Terror and obsessing over his duty to ﬁght it to the point where he can no longer separate national duty from his obligation as a father (thus, as he gives orders to DiCaprio in the Middle East via headset, he simultaneously attends to his children). DiCaprio dates a doctor but when she is placed under surveillance because of her involvement with a Westerner, he realizes the repercussions of his actions and must protect her in addition to ﬁnding the terrorist cell. Crowe’s determination to see the War on Terror fought no matter what the cost to foreign relations or cultural sensitivity makes him the embodiment of the Republican Terror Warrior — a man who is determined to use any means necessary to ﬁght the terrorist threat in the Middle East. He employs highly skilled Arabic-speaking ground agents to do so. Intelligence on the scene is the only effective way, backed by state-of-the-art surveillance equipment (a situation director Ridley Scott essayed ﬁrst in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in Black Hawk Down). DiCaprio’s intelligence agent as a ﬁeld agent in the War on Terror is at risk of being in a foreign culture and in hostile territory and has a different perspective than those who wage war from a safe distance (from what Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters termed “the bravery of being out of range”). DiCaprio must therefore respond to the cultural sensitivities of cooperating with friendly Islamic regimes in the War on Terror, and indeed dating Islamic women, in ways that Crowe considers irrelevant. The contrast in attitudes to cultural and political sensitivity in the War on Terror between Crowe (who embodies the American “arrogance” that the Middle East resents) and DiCaprio (who embodies the lone-hero efﬁciency that always gets the best results in American ﬁlm) reﬂects a dialectic highlighted in the cinema of terrorism post–9/11. Since Vice-President Dick Cheney ﬁrst announced that America would have to ﬁght the War on Terror at a new “dark” level in order to deal with an enemy so dehumanized as to be “evil,” terrorist ﬁlms post–9/11 have been consumed by an ethical dilemma: the imperative to ﬁnd the dangerous terrorists vs. human rights ethics and Constitutional circumvention. Indeed, questioning of the ethical nature of the Republican-led War on Terror dominates the resurgence of the terrorist ﬁlm and makes the genre considered off-limits in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 now the most dynamic, sophisticated and thrilling means of socio-political criticism in contemporary American cinema (ranging from the documentary on the ethics of torture in Taxi to the Dark Side to the dramatization of waterboarding techniques in Rendition through to what is emerging as a new set-piece in terrorist cinema — the U.S. hostage being bound and videotaped by terrorists in preparation for a beheading-execution video to be broadcast over the Internet — dramatized in

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52

2007’s The Kingdom and here, for the second time in American ﬁlm post–9/11, in 2008’s Body of Lies). Trust is the key issue in Body of Lies. The War on Terror has made an imperative out of international cooperation with friendly regimes. In 2007’s The Kingdom it was cooperation with the Saudi Royal family over terrorism in Saudi Arabia and in 2008’s Body of Lies it is cooperation with Jordanian intelligence. Indeed, the Jordanian intelligence chief (played by British actor Mark Strong) emerges as the most intriguing character in the ﬁlm: charming, eloquent and exquisitely tailored, he knows the need to ﬁght against terrorists, employs stern means to do so (though justifying such within Islamic law), and insists on being told the truth by Americans. When inevitably lied to during a covert American plan to lure the terrorists, he is quite capable of single-handedly withdrawing Jordanian cooperation. It is Strong who introduces the theme of trust and, importantly, refuses to obediently acquiesce to American demands — and for good reason: Needing to work with the Americans, he demands to be treated as an equal, with due respect from the American intelligence community. Crowe considers America’s needs above all else, however, and is quite happy to condescend, demand and mislead to secure foreign involvement in the War on Terror. DiCaprio initially wins over Strong with his cultural sensitivity and distance from the American Republican arrogance of Crowe though is ultimately answerable to Crowe and becomes involved in an intelligence-agency covert plot to expose the terrorist behind Strong’s back. Naturally, Strong considers this a violation of the terms of international cooperation in the War on Terror and thereafter is reluctant to help the Americans as he cannot trust them. His position in Body of Lies is the central ideological tension in what is a fast-paced, relentlessly exciting terrorist thriller. The abuse of international trust by American authorities, which director Scott considers emblematic of the intelligence community in the current War on Terror, jeopardizes the success of the needed ﬁeld work rather than ideally complement it as it should. Lies have consequences. Indeed, the clash between safe surveillance from a distance and ﬁeld work on the ground is in Body of Lies startlingly deployed for a dramatization of the strengths and weaknesses in America’s War on Terror. Just how those strengths and weaknesses relate to Republican policy underlies the wave of terrorist ﬁlms post–9/11 including, in addition to those already mentioned, Death of a President and Civic Duty. Body of Lies, and the recent ﬁlms which it ideologically reﬂects, conclusively demonstrates American cinema’s willingness to ﬁnally examine the War on Terror after several years (2001 to 2006: and the release of United 93) in which the subject was taboo. Immediately after 9/11, the Republican Bush government said that any consideration of American foreign policy as in any way related to 9/11 was unpatriotic. Though political dissent was exercised by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 only the recent wave of post–9/11 terrorist themes have begun to seriously address American foreign policy. It is perhaps Body of Lies which announces this intellectual and aesthetic scrutiny of American action in the War on Terror with its opening quote by W.H. Auden: “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” Although 9/11 was an “evil” act against the USA, the USA’s reprisal as conducted by the Bush government — considered arguably indictable war criminals in Taxi to the Dark Side— seriously calls into question America’s conduct in the War on Terror. In Body of Lies, though, the context is not human rights violation in a war that sanctions torture but American political arrogance and intelligence com-

53

The Bourne Identity

munity deception in dealing with international “friendlies” to root out the terrorist threat. However real, dangerous and exciting the terrorist threat may be in director’s Scott’s thrilling pace and layered narrative in Body of Lies, it is the ideological scrutiny through which the War on Terror is framed in the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms that makes them vibrant works of socio-political criticism, especially in the lead-up to the U.S. presidential election that would see the end of the Bush era and the ﬁrst African-American president, Barack Obama. The Village Voice dubbed the wave of post–9/11 terrorist movies “terror porn.” The term is perhaps appropriate — the ﬁlms all use the unique post–9/11 political context to contemporize tales of thrilling espionage in the War on Terror with a violent immediacy that is truly exciting and undeniably contemporary, are obsessed by both the threat of terrorism and its thrill as forbidden spectacle, foreign policy ramiﬁcations and responsibilities and 1) the dramatization of America’s intelligence-gathering capabilities in tandem with 2) the invigorating thrill of actual on-ground espionage ﬁeld work in foreign countries.

The Bourne Identity (1988: d. Roger Young) The Bourne Identity is a television mini-series adaptation of the popular novel by Robert Ludlum about an amnesiac (Richard Chamberlain) who is washed up on the shore near a small town and treated by a country doctor. He soon ﬁnds himself hunted down for reasons he does not understand. The more he investigates his identity, the more he suspects that he may be the international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. His identity play is further eroded when it seems that he may be sent to impersonate the real Carlos and gotten too close to liking what he discovered within himself. This middling mini-series plays with the amnesiac premise to suggest that what we accept as a good man may in fact be one of the worst specimens of humanity, a terrorist. Thus, it wonders if human nature is essentially good and asks: If a bad man is given a second chance, will he reform? To that end, Carlos the Jackal is held up as the nadir of human capability. Unfortunately, this theme is essentially the proverbial red herring as the search for his identity eventually vindicates Chamberlain. The identity crisis theme is far better treated in The Assignment, a ﬁlm also about human nature with Carlos as a nadir. Nevertheless, what remains interesting about the mini-series is the depiction of a world-wide (especially European) network of connections involved in maintaining a terrorist identity and in hiding from pursuers. The mini-series delves into the mystique of Carlos, arguably the best-known, infamous and even celebrated international professional terrorist. It implies that such a terrorist is an amoral ﬁgure and dangerous enough to be the world’s most wanted man, suggesting that the pursuit of terrorists should be a primary goal of the Western intelligence community. It works on the assumption that the terrorist is the new enemy of the civilized Western world and seeks for its ﬁrst part to imply the terrorist’s personality by proxy. Signiﬁcantly, the main trail that Carlos leaves is a money trail. But he is a human chameleon, regularly changing his name and appearance in order to evade capture. Terrorism is not an ideological statement, but a professional lifestyle choice for this man. The real Carlos is developed largely as an absent signiﬁer, a master manipulator who controls Chamberlain’s identity and destiny. The plot’s resolution of its identity crisis implies that to catch a terrorist, the pur-

The Boxer

54

suer must become a terrorist himself. Almost by deﬁnition, the terrorist mindset is alluring and seductive, a theme also found in The Assignment. Chamberlain’s dilemma is that the evidence he uncovers makes him out to be an evil man, but he feels good within himself and cannot accept that he may be capable of what they say he is. Ironically, his plight is attractive to the woman who helps him, who may be thrilled by the very uncertainty surrounding the man: Danger has its own sexual allure. Chamberlain longs to be the master of his own identity and to take control of his circumstances, in the process exposing a terrorist network operating mostly within Europe. When he ﬁnally ﬁnds out the truth, that he was not a bad man but made to look like one and assume such responsibility in order to expose the real evil, the mini-series comes down on the side of man’s inherent goodness. The terrorist is an aberration and the terrorist network is something of a viral contaminant to human nature. The terrorist is thus effectively removed from the spectrum of ordinary humanity and is implied as a pathological Other.

The Boxer (1997: d. Jim Sheridan) An Irish boxer (Daniel Day-Lewis) returns to his Belfast home after fourteen years in prison for IRA–related activities. He hopes to continue his boxing career and perhaps even ﬁnd romance once again. However, the IRA is inescapable and his old contacts come back to pressure him. He tries to make amends and push in his own way for unity and peace rather than division and conﬂict. The Boxer is the third ﬁlm to team actor Lewis with director Sheridan, following on from My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father. Co-scripter Terry George would also go on to direct Some Mother’s Son, also about the Irish troubles. The Boxer is part of a mini-wave of ﬁlms that sought in the mid–1990s to bring the Irish troubles to American audiences, alongside such American works as The Devil’s Own and Patriot Games, although unlike those ﬁlms The Boxer does not examine the Irish troubles as directly spilling over onto American soil. Although the ﬁlm begins with a Clinton presidential speech for the hope of peace, it is clear that the peace-at-all-costs philosophy is broken with the realization that the IRA has not disappeared. In the fourteen years that Lewis has been in prison, the situation remains unchanged, and the British Army still patrols the streets. Lewis has changed however, more prepared to accept their presence rather than resort to violence that may claim innocent lives. The IRA has strict codes of honor, especially regarding the ﬁdelity of the wives of imprisoned “soldiers.” Thus, Lewis’ romantic interest in a former friend is an affront to the so-called morality of the organization and may threaten his own life. This code is an indication of their unwavering desire for the constancy and stability of their ideals in opposition to the Brits rather than any real desire for peace, despite their claims that all they want is their prisoners released and the Brits gone. Here, the ﬁlm contrasts IRA patriarch Brian Cox’s view of an ideal future achievable through terrorism with Lewis’ experiences of a wretched present, to suggest that IRA idealism is making an insufferable world for those who long for true peace. Thus, the ﬁlm contrasts this idealization of imprisonment for the cause with the reality of the economic hardship and homeless shelters that greet these prisoners on release, rather than the heroes’ welcome promised by the IRA. For Lewis, the IRA has come to mean only empty promises and ideals reliant on violence rather than the honor they claim. Like many ﬁlms dealing with the IRA, The Boxer implies that the terrorist organi-

55

Brazil

zation can never really be escaped from. It is the legacy which dooms people by association: It is a tainted past and the scourge of a life spent trying to distance itself from the contaminant. Bombs continue to explode and people continue to die. Little has been achieved and little has changed as the result of terrorism. The latest promise of a ceaseﬁre is seen by Lewis as less another hope for true peace than a chance for him to truly start afresh. He begins the process by removing explosives that the IRA has hidden in a community center. Still he longs for the woman he cannot have and the ﬁlm is ﬁlled with a sense of melancholia about dealing with the remnants of “the troubles,” as the Irish refer to their blight of terrorism. Some Catholics in the IRA loathe the Protestants so much (for unexplained but traditional reasons) that they would prefer a climate of terrorism rather than peaceful coexistence and thus resent Lewis’ efforts to turn the community center into a uniting body for all Irish. Without the divisions, the terrorists would have no reason to exist and so it is in their interests to preserve the current situation. Thus, the bombings continue despite the ceaseﬁre, and the community center is burned to the ground, Lewis’ iconic presence destroyed and its futility more than evident. The Boxer suggests that all in Ireland are, in a sense, prisoners of terrorism. The ultimate irony is that the IRA must kill their most violent terrorists if any movement towards peace is possible: The only way to stop the hardliners is to execute them. It is a sobering realization that must come to the leaders in the troubles. Those who hold on unﬂinchingly to the old ideals of terrorism have no place and must be eliminated, the ﬁlm suggests — they have become liabilities in the modern world, perhaps even blights on the reputations of those few in the IRA who may indeed be serious about peace. Although Lewis’ efforts fail, he remains alive and the gesture has important symbolic value, the ﬁlm clinging desperately to some hope amidst the overriding sense of futility that underlies this movie.

Brazil (1983: d. Terry Gilliam) In an Orwellian realm, “somewhere in the 20th Century,” a bureaucrat ( Jonathan Pryce) becomes disenchanted with his world and dreams of becoming a great hero. He has his ducts ﬁxed by a rogue engineer (Robert DeNiro) and considers this a rebellious gesture. He soon spies the woman of his dreams, a truck driver, but believes that she may be a member of an unspeciﬁed terrorist group that have been detonating bombs in populated urban areas. He plans to run off with this woman but is dismayed to learn that she is wanted by the authorities. Thus, he seeks to use his position to eliminate her identity from the records and run off with her. Their plot is found out and he is sent to a room for torture. Brazil remains director Terry Gilliam’s crowning achievement, a combination of science-ﬁction nightmare and nostalgic ﬁlm noir in design. Its troubled production history is almost as well known as the ﬁlm itself. U.S. distributors in particular did not know how to handle Brazil and shortened it considerably, ending it prematurely. Its defenders consider it a triumph of the cinematic imagination and it has become a cult ﬁlm in its original version, a truly bleak black comedy. The idea of a recognizable world gone mad seems integral to Gilliam’s vision and here he indirectly essays the role that prolonged terrorism has on the individual minds and governmental structures of any major bureaucratic civilization. The ﬁlm begins with a terrorist bomb exploding in a crowded place, but the terror-

Broken Arrow

56

ist theme functions as a background threat for much of the ﬁlm, indeed just one harsh example of rebellion. Ironically, the authorities refer to the terrorism as “bad sportsmanship” by a minority who refuse to play the game properly and live by the chaotic rules of the maniacal bureaucracy depicted. In that it is revealed to be a thirteen-year terrorist campaign, the link to the IRA is implied and indeed director Gilliam can be accused of being somewhat excusive of terrorism (indeed, the would-be terrorists of his later Twelve Monkeys are revealed to be harmless pranksters). Either way, the ﬁlm implies that the terrorists have been misrepresented and that the ruling government functions on repression, violence and terror to keep the populace fearful and confused. In a world beset by terrorism, the smooth functioning of the bureaucracy is all that truly matters to those in power. They will use any means to justify their response. Pryce’s character is a dreamer who has been given the chance to be a true revolutionary and who rediscovers meaning in risk and danger. But in living his dream life he is subject to torture and ﬁnally madness. His plight is representative of the futility of the individual life, destined to be stiﬂed by an oppressive system. The war between the government and the terrorists-revolutionaries will go on indeﬁnitely and insolubly. The randomness of the initial terrorist act creates expectations as to the terrorists, effectively undercut when DeNiro is introduced although DeNiro is never associated with the terrorists anywhere but in the protagonist’s mind, where he is a hero for going against the system. However, because DeNiro works for himself rather than the state, he is branded a terrorist as if any kind of opposition to an organized government is bound to be labeled terroristic as a kind of guilt by association and an excuse to stamp down on such opposition. DeNiro’s own rhetoric for going rogue is simple but representative of a growing dissatisfaction: He merely hates the paperwork involved. His deﬁance of the system makes him the true hero of the ﬁlm and is what Pryce aspires to but cannot achieve. Pryce longs to follow his dream even though this puts him in opposition to society. He is both scared and excited when he believes that the girl of his dreams is a potential terrorist, even though he has never seen nor met a terrorist. He maintains that it is his job to prevent the moral aberration which is terrorism, although in the end he longs for rescue by these terrorists, idealizing them in part through the remainder of the ﬁlm. Indeed, despite the terrorist incidents through the movie, no real terrorists are seen — they function as an absent signiﬁer of the extreme end of deﬁance and rebellion. The more Pryce retreats into a fantasy of deﬁance, the more psychotic he becomes. He is convinced that he can ﬁnally beat the system but ﬁnally cannot cope. In the end he retreats into madness and perhaps this is the only illusory deﬁance left him. He is in the end a man without a place in any world but his own — he no longer works for the system, has lost his dream girl, is not a terrorist and is a failed revolutionary. He has been defeated, although in his madness there is a paradoxical triumph: He has escaped in (and into) his own mind.

Broken Arrow (1995: d. John Woo) John Travolta and Christian Slater play two Air Force pilots on a test ﬂight with a live nuclear weapon. Travolta turns rogue and the plane and missile go down to a location where Travolta has men on the ground with a plan to blackmail the government. It is up to Slater and a determined park ranger (Samantha Mathis) to stop him. Director John Woo and Travolta would essay terrorism again with far more success

57

Bulletproof

in Face/Off. Travolta himself would in effect complete a terrorist trilogy of sorts with his role in the later Swordﬁsh. Broken Arrow functions mostly as evidence of celebrated Hong Kong auteur Woo’s mastery of American action movie conventions. Indeed, the title and the desert setting recall the traditional landscape of the American Western. Although Broken Arrow is not as thematically pronounced as his best work, there are nevertheless signs of his presence in the editing and staging of the action scenes and in the characters’ adversarial relationship, played out in a number of violent encounters. This is one of a number of ﬁlms in the early 1990s to ally the ﬁgure of the terrorist with that of the rogue mercenary (or arms dealer in many other ﬁlms) as a criminal entrepreneur using the fear of terrorism to extort money. Intriguingly enough, the theme of relationships formed under intense circumstances between Slater and Mathis is perhaps an extension of that between Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed. Broken Arrow examines the terrifying prospect of the U.S. military losing control of one of its own nuclear weapons on American soil, not to terrorists, but to mercenary traitors who function as possible conduits to terrorism. Travolta’s ultimate motivation is pettier and personal, however, as he says that he has been passed over for promotion too many times. He in effect becomes an enabler of terrorism because of his personal gripe with authority. The analogy to the Western ironically implies the terrorists as pioneers to some degree, the weapon in their modern covered wagon, inverting the terrorist as Indian developed in Prisoner in the Middle for instance. It is Woo’s update of a quintessential American genre into the era of the fear of terrorism and loose nukes. However, in that Travolta intends to blackmail the government, his motive is primarily extortion, allying the fear of terrorism to a new kind of deadly criminality. The subtext of the American fear of loose nukes is alluded to in a general’s comment that if anyone really wanted these weapons, they could buy them from the former Soviet Union at a very cheap price. Travolta essays the arrogant villain as a man intent on using fear as a means of his own self-aggrandizement, a man whose ﬂaw is the size of his ego. Like traditional American characters, he ﬁnds self-deﬁnition in action and conﬂict. Slater senses the weakness and taunts Travolta by questioning whether it is about the money or merely an elaborate form of revenge intended to prove himself superior to those who refused him promotion. The resort to terrorism-as-extortion is thus a function of resentment rather than ideology. Perhaps it is the lack of such ideology that makes his act criminal rather than terroristic, although the ﬁlm essays the uncertain point at which these distinctions blur in American ﬁlm. Travolta is so spiteful and unconcerned with humanity that he would rather let the bomb detonate in a crowded area than admit failure. The resort to this form of personality-inspired terrorism is a means of restoring the potency which the younger Slater has effectively usurped from him. In the end, Travolta is destroyed by the missile, killed by his obsession with lost or thwarted potency.

Bulletproof (1988: d. Steve Carver) Terrorists hijack a new American top-secret tank-like vehicle known as the “Thunderblast.” The CIA seek to send specialist “equalizer” McBain (Gary Busey) into the terrorists’ South American stronghold to take back the vehicle before it can be used. Busey seizes the weapon and wages a single-handed war against the terrorists. Bulletproof is a ﬁlm from Roger Corman protégé Steve Carver, an exploitation director who never graduated to the mainstream, unlike many of his compatriots from the

Burn!

58

Corman stable. Despite some intriguing work in the ﬁeld in the 1970s, his work since has been disappointing, although in this case he tries for an undercurrent of comedic machismo. There is a sense of mockery to his use of military caricatures and it is this humor that lifts the ﬁlm slightly from the level of the mechanical action formula. It is also amusingly paranoid in its treatment of an amalgamated terrorist threat germinating in South America. Interestingly, the ﬁlm assumes that South America is now a close-to-home threat and a training ground for future revolutionaries. It is typical of ﬁlms set in this part of the world in that it automatically equates insurgent revolution with terrorism. Armed revolutionaries will resort to terrorism as a matter of course and without reservation — it is a necessary means of their deﬁnition of war. In Bulletproof, the revolutionary squabbles of Central America are a training ground for terrorists from Cuba and the Arab nations as well, being trained for use in Mexico and the USA. It is also taken for granted that they will be holding American hostages. They want the weapons to launch a surgical strike more effectively in the USA. These terrorists are akin to the bandits (or bandoleros) in American westerns set in Mexico, their raid on an American convoy treated as a Western set-piece. The U.S. authorities characterize these groups as “Communist-inspired guerrilla terrorists” and it is implied that Cuba is in effect a state sponsor of terrorism in South America. These terrorists are in league with the Soviets, also implied as state sponsors of terrorism interested in South America as a means of getting within strike range of the USA, the legacy of the Cuban missile crisis. Signiﬁcantly, however, the terrorist leader claims to work for Allah and is representative of an Islamic threat that may attack the USA via South America and Mexico, with Soviet sponsorship. He is shown as both militant and fanatically anti–Christian. In that, the ﬁlm dangerously, though slyly, asserts that the God worshipped by Christians is not the same God as that prayed to by Muslims and that Allah in essence is a more devilish deity, the patron of terrorists worldwide. The leader is also a rapist, a fact allied to his religion’s treatment of women and is typical of a movement in lesser action movies to equate the Islamic terrorist with the sexual pervert, implying a link between their terrorism and sexual sadism or dysfunction. Sexual degeneracy is a frequent theme of Carver and is behind the erotic spectacles of his better known ﬁlms The Arena and Drum, the sequel to Mandingo. The casting of Henry Silva as the terrorist leader recalls his role in Wrong Is Right. Busey plays the customary one-man solution to America’s terrorist problems although he represents a self-parodic cowboy spirit: He is revealed to have removed a bullet from his own wound rather than admit that he has been shot, so afraid is he of any admission of weakness.

Burn! (1968: d. Gillo Pontecorvo) Marlon Brando stars as American mercenary William Walker, sent by the British to a Portuguese sugar colony in order to facilitate a revolt amongst the local slave population. He is successful and a local leadership is set up with a former slave as revolutionary leader. However, Walker is sent back years later in order to remove from power the man he had so established and who thought of him as a friend. Burn! was director Gillo Pontecorvo’s follow-up after the international success of The Battle of Algiers. By this time, Pontecorvo had developed a reputation as a major political ﬁlmmaker, a fact that had helped him secure ﬁnancial backing for this movie, in many

59

Burn!

ways a companion piece. The ﬁlm ran into numerous production difﬁculties, including pressure from Spain who did not want to be depicted as a villainous nation, making United Artists fearful of a backlash. After unfavorable reviews, the ﬁlm was reportedly dumped by the distributor. Brando later expressed hostility towards the director. Although Burn! is a period ﬁlm and owes something to spaghetti westerns, it attempts similar docudrama techniques to The Battle of Algiers, addresses similar themes and casts a non-actor as the revolutionary leader. Once again the ﬁlm tackles Pontecorvo’s theme of society in transition, although the role of terrorism is more tangential here, rooted in the historical process of insurgent revolution. It also tackles the subject of colonialism and European Imperialism, suggesting that any occupying power is indifferent to the needs of the indigenous populace and that western superiority and a kind of international Manifest Destiny will cause them to repress, exploit and dominate a foreign people and culture. This people will then turn to revolution and terrorism as a means of liberation. The arbiter of change is the American Walker, a ﬁgure also played by Ed Harris in director Alex Cox’s unusual Walker. This American may ingratiate himself with the cause of liberation but serves a greater political agenda. Although Burn! only incidentally covers the subject of terrorism, it is included herein because of its underlying assumption of U.S. foreign policy in Central America as being a root cause of later resentment and terrorism in the region. Walker is commonly taken as symbol of the contemporary CIA, whose presence internationally is frequently cited by terrorists as a reason for their actions. Walker’s instigation of the process of revolution begins with the shaping of a charismatic leader, then the commission of crimes to gain ﬁnances for weapons. The hope is that a single act of deﬁance will lead to more politically signiﬁcant acts of violence. Brando’s rhetoric is not without a cynical irony as he compares the slave and free worker to the cost of keeping a wife or a prostitute, conceding that the prostitute is more economically viable. He claims that he wants to end the foreign domination of Latin America but is in effect aiding greater economic exploitation in the name of free trade. His example is a forerunner of American international capitalism and foreign policy. Freedom and independence are only the means of political and economic expediency. When the same forces that urged rebellion and liberation want a new political change, they turn to Walker, who now betrays his so-called friend. Nation-building is at the bequest of developed nations and subject to the whims of their economic needs rather than the integrity of the new nation. Brando warns the new leader that white civilization must be adhered to or it will make a lethal enemy, suggesting the course of Western Imperialism throughout the developing world as a means of intimidation. Foreign policy turns such men as Walker into betrayers and ideological hypocrites, exposing their inherent amorality. The ﬁlm largely implies the intervening years of terrorism in the insurgent process, only to have the insurgency in effect squashed by those who set it in motion, as if too much freedom and independence threatens the smooth operation of capitalism. Nevertheless, the progression is there: Guerrillas start with the poor and oppressed in targeted strikes but segue into a form of terrorism. However, like The Battle of Algiers to a degree, the real terrorism is in the form of the means of counterrevolution. To put down an insurgent movement, the authorities kill the poor and weak, the innocents demanding an end to their suffering. It is as though the demand for independence from the inﬂuence of the

Cal

60

West is an affront to Western notions of inherent superiority and must be suppressed as efﬁciently as possible when it can no longer be manipulated. The gift of food to feed the starving is a calculated political move rather than a truly humanitarian gesture. The slave leader comes to the conclusion that if it hadn’t been for capitalism and Western civilization, there would be no need for revolution (or terrorism by extension) and that these conditions are essentially the product of the West. Brando retorts by calling it “the logic of proﬁt.” The traitorous American becomes the real villain of the ﬁlm. (The idea that William Walker was a forerunner of American foreign policy in the region is more developed in the ﬁlm Walker, although that ﬁlm removes any terrorism.)

Cal (1984: d. Pat O’Connor) A teenage Catholic boy ( John Lynch), immersed in the IRA agenda in Northern Ireland, is an accomplice in the murder of a Protestant police ofﬁcer and ﬂees the crime scene. He soon gets a job from, of all people, the dead man’s wife (Helen Mirren) who becomes attracted to him. Cal’s house is burned down and he becomes a tenant in Mirren’s household. The two of them embark on an affair replete with Oedipal tensions. Cal was much praised on release as a sign of Irish cinema beginning to tackle themes of home-grown terrorism. Mirren won a Best Actress award at Cannes and would go on to play the mother of a convicted IRA terrorist in Some Mother’s Son (which for the most part did away with the Oedipal tensions). In some respects the international success of Cal and its distribution in the United States went a long way to legitimizing the serious study of Western terrorism on ﬁlm. Paralleling the killing of policemen by the IRA to the workings of an abattoir, director O’Connor initially emphasis the notion of slaughter, the senseless butchery of terrorism turning Ireland into a kind of slaughterhouse. However, the ﬁlm favors the depiction of the daily drudgery, stagnation and ennui of everyday life: The resentment of the Protestants and the British is as much out of boredom as it is out of any rationalized ideology. Terrorism becomes something to do, in fact allied in the ﬁlm to a kind of thrill killing. However, people are forever tainted by their association with the terrorist organization — the kind of trap that says once you’re in, you can never get out (a mindset ﬁnally voiced in The Crying Game, also a breakthrough hit in the United States). Thus the protagonist is effectively pressured into a plot to plant a bomb in a bookstore, seen as the ultimate terrorist act as it does not differentiate between innocents and so-called “legitimate” targets. The animosity between Catholics and Protestants is shown as kind of perpetual motion, whatever reasons may have initiated it. Lynch is beaten as a Catholic living in a Protestant area. However, the more he becomes aware of the repercussions of his own terrorist act, the more he realizes that his participation in a brutal killing makes him really no different from those punks who beat him up. His affair with Mirren allows him a moral insight into his actions that offers the possibility for true redemption. He must battle the IRA rhetoric that calls for action to make a statement for fear that inaction will keep the Brits there. However, the mighty IRA for all their rhetoric and ideology resort regularly to petty theft and the ﬁlm thus implies the link between terrorism and conventional criminality as a kind of spectrum, hence the British refused to consider the IRA as political terrorists but rather conventional murderers (a distinction propelling Mirren in Some Mother’s Son).

61

Cast a Giant Shadow

Cast a Giant Shadow (1966: d. Melville Shavelson) This is a biographical ﬁlm concerning the activities of Colonel David Marcus (Kirk Douglas), a U.S. ofﬁcer asked by Israeli forces to mobilize troops in the newly formed state of Israel. Israel is preparing for Arab hostility and a much feared Holy War as the British troops prepare to withdraw from Palestine. The ﬁlm’s publicity presents Marcus as one of the men responsible for guiding Israel into nationhood as a justiﬁably and responsibly militarized Western country in an Arab zone. The ﬁlm is interesting for its underlying assumptions concerning the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conﬂict and its suggestion that the enemy of the Jews effectively segued from the Nazis to the Arabs in the years following World War II and the formation of the state of Israel (similar implications to those found in the ﬁlm Exodus). The subsequent terrorism is a perpetuation of an older conﬂict. It highlights the moral obligation to provide the Jews with a nation in light of the Holocaust and that the civilized world has a duty to help the Jews establish themselves. The USA as the liberating force of the war is the one country to meet these obligations as international peacekeepers. Douglas begins as a soldier unsure of what he intends to ask of himself, or of what his role in history will be. Although married, he prefers the excitement and purpose of armed struggle and so responds when asked by Israeli representatives to assist them in their ﬁght for self-preservation. The ﬁlm establishes the threat by Arabs as one akin to a kind of guerrilla-terrorist movement — hence snipers and so forth. At this initial point in Israel’s development, the British have banned them from having arms although it is clearly imperative that they arm themselves to ﬁght off the indiscriminate Arab hostility meant to keep them in fear. The ofﬁcial U.S. reluctance to assist Israel at that time is seen as a demonstration that the USA has ironically lost sight of the very struggles for independence it once valued. Douglas’ decision to assist Israel is seen as a bold historical gesture meant to correct America’s foreign policy regarding Israel and the Middle East, such as it existed in the immediate postwar years. The decision to punctuate the ﬁlm with ﬂashbacks to World War II (and the liberation of the camps) is meant to show how America has been incorporated into the Jewish call for a homeland, whether it wants to be or not. The ﬁlm urges America to meet the challenge. Cast a Giant Shadow seeks to explore the clash of cultures in broad strokes (cutting from a Jewish dance to a belly-dance, for instance). However, it answers the Palestinian question as to why they are losing their homeland with the suggestion that the Jews are in fact enriching the land for the beneﬁt of all who dwell there and are more responsible with it. What is even more problematic is the ﬁlm’s treatment of Israel’s military imperatives. It speaks of the nation’s need for preemptive strikes against hostile Arab concentrations (in Syria, for instance). These tactics are compared to a form of terrorism although it is in response to the threat of terrorism that these measures are taken. Therein perhaps lies the paradox of the region although the ﬁlm in no way doubts Israel’s responsibility in the course it has taken. The ﬁlm does not examine the role of Jewish nationalistic terrorism in the formation of the Jewish state — a trait at least covered in Exodus. Douglas’s mobilization of the troops represents an early demonstration of the ideal commitment between America and Israel even though it is implied that the USA at the time needed Arab oil more than it needed to support Israel. While the ﬁlm is more concerned with the forging of a nation it nevertheless is

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important in the development of the cinema of terrorism for its assertion of the enemy Arab tactics as a kind of proto-terrorism. The Arab enemy thus ﬁre from rooftops and hillsides on any target and are depicted as little better than animals. They are a guerrilla force that would repress the Jewish identity and nation and their means would develop into indiscriminate terrorism. Signiﬁcantly, the ﬁlm posits the need to keep Jerusalem as a safe haven and the absolute, uncompromised center of the Jewish state, an idea opposed by the Palestinians. Douglas’s ﬁnal admission that as an American Jew he has been searching for where he truly belongs and has found it in Israel is another aspect of the ﬁlm’s rather transparent political agenda tying Israel and the USA together forever in the ﬁght against what was emerging as a terrorist enemy. Considering the growth of Palestinian terrorism in the years surrounding this ﬁlm’s release, this agenda is not to be dismissed.

C.A.T. Squad (1988: d. William Friedkin) When a spy escapes from an Air Force plane, the elite Counter-Assault-Tactical Force is brought it on to ascertain what happened and who is responsible. The trail gradually reveals a right-wing renegade South African terrorist group known as the Sjamboks, intent on getting power. Radioactive ingredients are offered for sale in a plot to trap foreign agents and rogue mercenaries. While it is possible to consider this ﬁlm part of director William Friedkin’s interest in forms of law enforcement, this is something of a stretch. The presence of creator and co-screenwriter Gerald Petievich on C.A.T Squad implies a connection to his previous work on To Live and Die in L.A. It is more likely that C.A.T Squad, as a telemovie, is something of an aberration in the director’s work, made at a point when his career was perhaps in decline. He has, however, dealt with the prospect of unscrupulous arms dealers supplying terrorists without hesitation in his previous ﬂop Deal of the Century. The premise of South African loyalists and the breakup of South African power would also be used in another telemovie, Operation Delta Force. C.A.T Squad works on the presumption that plutonium has become a desirable commodity in the arms arena, implying that there are a number of rogue groups and hence terrorist organizations seeking a nuclear (or even dirty bomb) capability. The ﬁlm is less of a terrorist-themed movie than a piece of espionage in the demise of the Cold War and the subsequent restructuring of world order. What is important is the implication that a domestic nuclear reactor could be a target for groups whose main agenda is only incidental to the USA. It also interestingly compares and contrasts the threat of right-wing militia groups with the conventional left-wing guerrilla groups found in South America and more familiar in American ﬁlm. Right-wing neo–Nazis were an emerging form of domestic terrorism in the USA as depicted in such ﬁlms as Dead Bang and Betrayed. Typically, the terrorist leader claims that his captives (the Americans) are the real terrorists in the world, those who have bombed civilian targets and killed innocents (whites) and sponsored a soft new South African state. Terrorism as a result of deﬂated pride out of the impending collapse of apartheid seems the point here and the ﬁlm clearly shows the right-wingers as hypocrites, killing civilians they can safely claim to be terrorists and using methods of torture apparently learned from people they consider black terrorists. However, there is some ambiguity to the notion of interrogation, hence the scene where a captive is questioned by an African-American member of the title team, a scene recalling the bizarre interrogation of a murder suspect in director Friedkin’s Cruising.

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Chain of Command

The camp holding Americans prisoner is compared to Vietnam and the implication is that the ﬁght against terrorism is somehow a similar priority. The South African government reluctantly cooperates with the American government as if such right-wing militia units were a state-sponsored form of terrorism designed to keep the black population afraid of the power they are set to inherit. It is through fear that the racist agenda can still have some sway over power. The plot also refers to South Africa’s one-time nuclear ambitions, suggesting that the government would seek to avoid scrutiny from international inspectors but in so doing making it a target of interest for terrorist groups or renegade outﬁts intent on redistributing power. Although C.A.T Squad is not directly a terrorist movie, its implications considering the future possibility of terrorism make it a valid and paranoid work.

Chain of Command (1993: d. David Worth) American undercover agents seek to expose an apparent conspiracy by renegade terrorist revolutionaries to inﬂuence the fate of a ﬁctional oil-rich country in the Middle East. They face a group whose methods include invading U.S.–sponsored oil companies, taking hostages and slaughtering Americans. The ﬁlm begins with one such attack but complicates it as a Secret Service agent (Eli Danker) from the country soon suspects CIA or other such involvement. The terrorists prove to be something other than the expected Islamic killers and are using the guise of terrorism and its expected political rhetoric for a monetary agenda. This late-stage release by exploitation studio Cannon is surprisingly cynical in its assessment of Middle Eastern paranoia regarding the CIA’s international initiatives and the pressure this perception puts on governments and their agencies. It seems this perception of CIA dirty tricks behind every action is what the ﬁlm considers the dominant view behind the demonizing of the USA as “the Great Satan.” It is the Muslim bitterness of what is perceived as American “dirty tricks” that impels resentment. Rather than condemn this, the ﬁlm chooses to explore the potential validity of this sentiment, still popular amongst certain circles in the region. Any action against U.S. interests is immediately labeled an act of terrorism, yet the ﬁlm also seeks to explore the methodology of the hostage-taking acts against Americans. In this ﬁlm, terrorism is yet again a means of wresting control from an enemy by determining the fate of its innocent representatives, intruders in a foreign world. Hence, the terrorists follow a set pattern — they take control and then enter into a selection process, dividing hostages into a hierarchy, seeking to isolate the Americans (in many ﬁlms, this process is used to isolate the Israelis) as the main bargaining chips. This isolation of names deliberately recalls the Nazi means and in the terrorists’ minds allows them a compensatory power, to be in charge of the fate of others is to attain the power they feel denied them through international American foreign policy. This is the political undercurrent running behind the actions in this ﬁlm although they are soon inverted by the revelations the narrative ﬁnally makes about those forces really behind terrorism. The plot in Chain of Command is surprisingly detailed, from the dubious link between the CIA and terrorism implying terrorism as a scapegoat for foreign policy failure or deception, through to the sense of inﬁghting between terrorist or rebel groups over political and ﬁnancial issues. Yet, the ﬁlm seeks to examine the crises facing those countries in the Middle East that are friendly to the United States and having to respond to a per-

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ception that America is behind their actions — that the fate of the nation and its people is being dictated by American self-interest. An intriguing subplot raises the question of the lengths the intelligence services of such nations can go in manipulating public opinion, an idea that would have more relevance following the post–9/11 links between Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban. What is also signiﬁcant is the implication that the best form of intelligence gathering on terrorist groups comes from direct inﬁltration. The ﬁlm is cynical in its political implications as the foreign security services seek to explore CIA operations hiding under terrorist acts. It examines the perception that the U.S. is trying to destabilize the Middle East countries in order to control their oil and their oil-based economies. Terrorism is seen to serve capitalist interests rather than to attack them. Western oil corporations plot to control foreign secret services and terrorist mercenaries in order to foster their own greed for oil revenue. The real villains by implication are greedy Americans who hope to manipulate world events via staged terrorist actions for ﬁnancial domination. (These powers are ironically revealed to be even beyond the reach of the CIA.) The U.S. wants a divided and hostile Middle East. This kind of terrorism denies the political grievances behind the actions it imitates for its own purposes. The ﬁlm is politically confronting in not following the usual rubric of terrorist cinema in its greater implications, but it is indifferently acted. (Still it is perhaps the best of star Michael Dudikoff ’s second and third string action movies.) What is unusual about it is its notion of terrorism as manufactured to serve Western ﬁnancial interests; when Dudikoff symbolically explodes a “Western oil” tanker truck, the ﬁlm is even subversive. It is a step up in complexity from director Worth’s previous ﬁlm on terrorism, the martial-arts action vehicle American Tigers, and is one of the few ﬁlms about terrorism to treat the U.S. with such scorn and doubt. Perhaps that alone makes this ﬁlm noteworthy.

Chain of Command (2000: d. John Terlesky) Although having the same title as a 1993 ﬁlm, this actually has a plot hook similar to the Dolph Lundgren action vehicle Peacekeeper. It concerns a Secret Service agent who has the responsibility to guard a briefcase that holds the electronic codes needed to launch nuclear weapons. It is set on board a yacht, which is soon overrun by terrorists who hold the president (Roy Scheider) hostage. The terrorists demand that the U.S. secures the diplomatic recognition of Taiwan by the Chinese but secretly plan to precipitate nuclear war between East and West by launching an attack on China. A Chinese agent on board has inﬁltrated the terrorists. Highly derivative, this ﬁlm nevertheless features a Clinton-style president depicted as an adulterous, lecherous man whose humiliation by terrorists is a just moral punishment (although the ﬁlm is too straightforward to really confront this). The protagonist is a conﬂicted man, disliking the president whose life he saved but impelled by duty to protect the codes. Indeed, he considers the president an immoral man and is forced to search for a greater sense of responsibility. His dilemma is an intriguing one — to put the power of the presidency before the person of the president, a dilemma that inevitably faces those people who must respond to scenarios in which the president is hostage (and dealt with to much popular success in Air Force One). This dilemma was perhaps revitalized by the sex scandals of the Clinton era. The terrorist motivations in this ﬁlm are discreetly linked to the China-Taiwan cri-

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Charlie Wilson’s War

sis and the UN hope that trade would bring greater peace, hence the courting of a businessman to act in mediation between the two parties. It is the businessman who is the villain here, intending to use terrorism as a means of destabilizing the government in order to precipitate an overthrow that would see the end of the United States as the major power in the world. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm is intriguing for its suggestion that instability in Asia will lead to terrorism against the United States. Although it may be a new world since the collapse of Soviet Communism, the fear of nuclear obliteration is still persistent and is here allied to the fear of terrorists controlling the fates of nations through nuclear threat. The ﬁlm implies that the USA is not invulnerable from distant conﬂicts. The possibility of a terrorist launch against another country, with the U.S. held to blame, turns the ﬁlm into a spin on material covered in the various versions of Fail-Safe. However, it is the subtext of Chinese-American cooperation to end terrorism that remains the most progressive factor in this middling ﬁlm. In a sign of how cynical the world has become since Fail-Safe, the ﬁrst nuclear strike by terrorists is successful. Thus, what is most disconcerting is that the president is ultimately a failure of a man, politically and personally (so unlike the heroic action man played by Harrison Ford in Air Force One), dying in an attempt to salvage what he can. Also signiﬁcantly, the vice-president is a woman who proves herself capable of decisive action under pressure, no longer relying on a male. In terms of the emerging cinema of terrorism, the ﬁlm is minor but does suggest that terrorists with WMD capabilities will seek to precipitate conﬂict as much as kill innocents. The potential for another World War is linked to terrorism.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007: d. Mike Nichols) The CIA manufacture of a proxy war to ﬁght the Soviets forms the backdrop for a captivating look at how one U.S. Congressman turned the Afghanistan War into a covert U.S. military operation which saw the demise of the Soviet Union and arguably, in the CIA sponsorship of the mujahedeen, the origins of the current War on Terror. This is the historical perspective underlying Charlie Wilson’s War. This slyly funny political biopic follows the title character’s outraged humanity upon visiting the remote Peshawar region of Pakistan, which had seen an inﬂux of Afghan refugees following the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, through to his organizing a covert war which eventually saw the Soviets leave in defeat from Afghanistan; and the arrival of the Taliban. The knowledge that this would eventually lead to 9/11 rings through in a quote from Wilson: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world... and then we fucked up the end game.” Director Mike Nichols celebrates Wilson’s idealism in seeing the end of the Cold War but the ﬁlm is tempered with the realization of what was to come after in American politics in the Bush years. Hence, Charlie Wilson’s War depicts the complex political machinations needed to get an Israeli arms dealer with links to Mossad to join the CIA, Pakistan and Egypt in a campaign to arm Muslims with stateof-the-art weaponry. Wilson is in a hot tub with strippers, a decision that would result in a scandal this ﬁlm documents with due irony, when he sees reporter Dan Rather say that the mujahedeen are ﬁghting a holy war against the Soviets and all they need is arms and support. Nichols makes no other mention of the jihadist holy war mentality of the mujahedeen; however, he does suggest that religion, speciﬁcally the appeals to Christian American politicians to fund the covert war and the spin given to such as a war of good against

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evil, was a regrettable political necessity. Given that President Bush would preﬁgure his declaration of the War on Terror with allusions to a “crusade,” the acknowledgment of the inﬂuence of religion is handled with subtlety by Nichols: the point simmers throughout the ﬁlm. Nichols is a skilled satirist. Under his direction, Tom Hanks plays the title character as a womanizing Congressman who doubles the covert operations budget the day after bathing with strippers and having just been appointed to a Congressional ethics committee. He is prompted back into Cold War idealism when confronted with evidence of the Soviet inhumanity in invading Afghanistan; Hanks teams with a disgruntled veteran Cold Warrior (Philip Seymour Hoffman in a droll performance) to ﬁnally end it in Afghanistan. Their humanity, idealism and dedication invest Charlie Wilson’s War with an incisive irony that questions the association between morality and ethics in American politics, topics Nichols touched on in his indirect reference to the presidency of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors. Although the ﬁlm is witty, as Nichols could generally be relied on to be since ﬁrst galvanizing American ﬁlm with The Graduate and Catch-22, its political perspective makes Charlie Wilson’s War an insightful and clever reﬂection on the origins of the War on Terror in the end of the Cold War: subtle rather than polemic.

Children of Men (2006: d. Alfonso Cuaron) London, 2027: The human race is sterile and it has been almost twenty years since the last human birth. England is struggling with a ﬂood of illegal immigrants who are put into detention camps. A radical terrorist group, known as the “Fishers,” protests the treatment of immigrants and refugees and recruits a man (Clive Owen) from outside their organization to escort the ﬁrst pregnant woman in almost two decades, an immigrant, to safety. Along the way, he becomes her protector as they must enter a detention camp in order to work their way through and ﬁnd safety on a research ship. A bomb in a café begins Children of Men. It is apparently one of many that have been plaguing the city, although the residents are more concerned with the death of the world’s youngest human. With the world plunged into anarchy, Britain has closed its borders and homeland security ofﬁcers patrol for illegal immigrants, rounded up and imprisoned. In this world, Owen is a warm-hearted cynic. His friend, Michael Caine, is a pot-smoking hippie who tends to his invalid wife, a journalist that MI5 denies torturing although she is now a devastated woman peering out of a window. The terrorists claim to be at war with the British government; they are idealistic, so much so that they are organized in their resistance, holding communal meetings to determine suitable courses of action in the struggle. They have stopped bombing but are still the government’s scapegoat for any act of terrorism on British soil, there being a wave of such averaging a couple of bombings per month. In the midst of an infertility crisis which could spell the end of the human race, many have retreated into religious faith, believing that the infertility is God’s punishment. Yet it is clear that religion is a last recourse and of no consequence in the real world, wherein it is the terrorist Fishers who ironically ﬁght for a legitimate future for the human race as well as a fairer British society. As noble as the terrorists are, however, it is ﬁnally their political agenda and the need for media exposure which threatens the pregnant woman, the very future they would serve to protect. However, it is those individuals

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Children of Rage

demonized as terrorists by the government because of their use of bombs that have the greatest concern for the future. The depiction of the Fishers is careful to frame them in terms similar to the IRA: not a nationalistic terror group but political soldiers at “war”— idealists. Indeed, the notion of the terrorist as idealist is far more common in British ﬁlms than American cinema, hence the elevation of the terrorist to mythic martyr in the Orwellian War on Terror allegory of V for Vendetta, the notion of terrorism in opposition to an oppressive government found also in another Orwellian fantasy, Brazil. The Fishers are organized along democratic lines, gathering at a safe house to vote on matters of policy. But political fervor and dedication result in indifference and soon Owen realizes that both his life and that of the pregnant woman are in jeopardy if their fate is left in the hands of the Fishers. The Fishers’ attempts to enforce their ideological will mean that the pregnant woman is a political tool to them. With the literal future of humanity in their hands, they debate the practicalities of using the baby for political ends. Their politics have blinded them to the humanity of the situation, the ﬁlm examining the difference between humanism and ideological dedication in terms of the fate of an individual whose self-determination ultimately falls into the hands of terrorists, not because she is their hostage but because they alone can guarantee her safety. In that, Children of Men is a clever inversion of the usual terrorist formula wherein the terrorists usurp another’s right to self-determination; here they argue about how best to ensure it, even though their zeal threatens to overwhelm the humanity they claim to serve. In striving to ensure the self-determination of the future of humanity, they ironically usurp it for their own agenda. The Fishers, in their pursuit of Owen and the girl, prove themselves more ruthless than idealistic, killing Caine; their indifference to human life and suffering (made possible by their ideological zeal) makes them callous executioners. However, their inhumanity is surpassed by that of the government forces who are Nazi-like in their treatment of the illegal immigrant population, executing at will and forcing people into internment camps which are breeding grounds for Islamic terrorist causes eventually resulting in a full-scale riot in which the Fishers, the Islamist refugees and government troops battle. In a magical moment the ﬁghting is halted to allow the escape of Owen, the woman and her baby (as she has given birth in the refugee camp). In the midst of the combat, the terrorist leader makes one ﬁnal proclamation in rationalization of his actions: That sight of the baby will inspire an uprising that will overthrow the government. Although his politics are reasoned, his horrid willingness to expose the baby to harm in order to make a politicized rather than humane point speaks of, once again, the ﬁlm’s interplay between humanism and the ideology of revolution, the latter threatening to overwhelm the former in the name of political expediency, the same rationale the government would use in its inhumane treatment of the refugee population. Hence, the dominant theme in Children of Men is not just the survival of humanity but the survival of humanism above all, the two of them being arguably separate though interrelated concepts.

Children of Rage (1975: d. Arthur Allan Seidelman) Children of Rage concerns the effects of the Palestinian-Israeli conﬂict on an entire generation of children who have grown up in the midst of this turmoil. Much of the action is presented through the eyes of a benevolent Israeli doctor who becomes enmeshed in the Palestinian situation when a friend dies. Slowly, he realizes that the friend may have

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been a Palestinian terrorist. In the midst of this story is the tale of a 19-year-old who vows to take the place of his dead brother in a terrorist organization intent on avenging his brother’s death even at the cost of his own life. Director Seidelman had an extensive background in theatre before venturing into ﬁlm for the ﬁrst time with Children of Rage. Although the project was deemed too talky to succeed as a thriller and too polemic for American audiences in the 1970s, Variety did make a point of mentioning that Seidelman does not rely on the commonly held view that Israel is entirely blameless. Indeed, it is the ﬁlm’s willingness to look at the notion of joint responsibility that distinguishes it. In the attempt to make a convincing drama, Seidelman weaves in subtextual notions of the Israeli forces primarily being propped up by American technology. Although the ﬁlm deals with the politics of that region, it is the unstated U.S. backing behind it which makes the ﬁlm relevant to U.S. audiences as an analysis of political consequences. Much is made of the parallel between the doctor and the terrorists, the ﬁlm playing off the attitude of the young terrorists to the doctor. It ﬁnds in this love-hate relationship the peculiar paradox of humanism in a terrorist-based anti-occupation sentiment. Seidelman likewise establishes the Palestinians as subject to Israeli occupation so that all terrorist action is arguably a chain of consequence accordingly. In this way, the clash between humanism and the dehumanization of a military occupation is fought out between the terrorists and the individuals perhaps naively but genuinely expecting to affect change without violence. In the effort to not demonize any character (including the terrorists), Children of Rage goes to great lengths to contextualize just what “terrorism” entails in this region, speciﬁcally the unpopular equation between terrorism and insurgent revolution, an idea that U.S. foreign policy has not found particularly relevant in its determination of politics in this region. Seidelman makes much of the process of indoctrination of young terrorists as they go through their training procedures. This indoctrination is horrifying but always contextualized within the surrounding occupation: These young people believe (or want to believe) that they are willing to die for their homeland and that victory will come with the persistence of generations in the armed struggle. Likewise, it is suggested that these terrorists have taken heed of the lessons of both the Algerian and Vietnam conﬂicts. Correspondingly, Seidelman takes pains to establish the rationale of terrorism as these people see it — to expose the vulnerability of the Israeli populace and make them fear for their safety by striking innocents as the ﬁrst stage in a plan to subvert Israeli dominance of the homeland. Despite the rhetoric, the decision to resort to terrorism is painted by Seidelman as reached somewhat in desperation rather than self-aggrandizement (despite the underlying rhetoric of martyrdom that sustains it) as if the spread of fear is a last resort. However, Seidelman equally suggests the compliance of the international media, and that the labeling of “terrorist” merely reinforces the tactics of terrorism for those who believe there is no alternative. The escalation of the process of terror attacks is likewise seen as the result of a longstanding process: that targeting legitimate targets for many years has led nowhere. The desire to expose vulnerability thus underlies the planning of Palestinian terrorism in this ﬁlm — but as a calculated strategy. Correspondingly, the ﬁlm’s depiction of suicide bombing does depict the events before, during and after so as to place the act — so painted by the media as an aberration — within a debatable context. For Seidelman, abhorrent actions

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Chill Factor

in the Israel-Palestinian conﬂict do not exist independent of each other and are indeed mired in a chain of cause and retaliation that has snowballed out of control. The only hope left here is beyond the political and with the humanist (thus the characterization of the benevolent doctor as the surrogate point of identiﬁcation in this political maelstrom). Most signiﬁcantly, the ﬁlm depicts the doctor in terms perhaps familiar to those with sympathies towards the Palestinians, speciﬁcally that one can agree with the cause but not with the tactics. Indeed, Sedielman is subtextually aware of the political expediency of, and damage done when, linking these two. Such is the mire as it is debated in talky scenes between the doctor and the terrorist: that Israelis see the Palestinians as nothing but savages because of their tactics and will not respond. This drives the terrorists to ever greater atrocities to provoke a response — to reclaim the power of consequence denied them by an occupation of their homeland. Much of the debate concerns the very concept of the homeland as it exists within a Zionist state agenda battling the Fedayeen. As much of the latter half of the ﬁlm parallels the doctor’s efforts with the Israeli Army’s hunt for the terrorists, the ﬁlm seeks to separate the humanists from the militarists. Seidelman’s key revelation is the depiction of the doctor’s excursion to the refugee camp, where he sees ﬁrsthand the after-effects of Israeli military occupation and the forced removal of Palestinians from their land and houses. He is aware that in exile there will be no end to the terrorism, either state or insurgent as both now are implicitly held up against one another. As the doctor sets up a makeshift hospital, even the terrorist leaders recognize that there is a dimension of humanism behind the tactics of terrorism. Still, the climate of hard-line Palestinian hatred is such that even “the good Israeli” is killed in reprisal. In a ﬁlm fully aware of the Israeli (and international) policy of never negotiating with terrorists, the label of “terrorist” is here examined with more complexity and sad awareness of the concept of futility than found in most ﬁlms. Children of Rage ﬁnally emerges as much more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than any ﬁlm either before or since.

Chill Factor (1999: d. Hugh Johnson) A disturbed ofﬁcer is blamed for an unstable chemical weapon and out of vengeful spite intends to sell it. Soon, an ice cream truck driver (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and a convenience store worker (Skeet Ulrich) must reluctantly team together to prevent the unstable explosive from falling into the hands of potential terrorists. The explosive must be kept below a certain temperature if it is to remain stable. Chill Factor is a minor variation of the hit ﬁlm Speed, but without ever achieving that ﬁlm’s almost narcotic exhilaration and narrative pace. Its black and white youthful everyman protagonists suggest a variation on The Deﬁant Ones’ theme of conjoined destinies and an enforced mutual dependence due to circumstances beyond one’s control. It strives to blend action and comedy and some of the stunt-work remains impressive along the vehicular action model pioneered by such as The Road Warrior much earlier. Despite its technical skill, the ﬁlm is ﬁnally too derivative to be engaging as more than another superﬁcial entertainment. However, underlying its desire to entertain are some unsettling assumptions about modern American authority. Speciﬁcally, the ﬁlm posits that it is ultimately the petty resentment of individuals that threatens to erode national security. Like many 1990s thrillers, it takes the position that the disgruntled ex-serviceman, upset at being the fall guy whenever there is a foul-

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up, is so inherently psychologically reactive as to turn mercenarial in revenge. Once again, the ﬁgure of the mercenary as an aid and facilitator to terrorism underlies the fear of weapons proliferation. The mercenary is the median ﬁgure between the U.S. authority and their potential terroristic enemies. The ﬁlm thus makes much out of the ideological discussions between the traitorous mercenary-terrorist ﬁgure and the scientist ﬁgure, another stock character in so much 1990s cinema of terrorism. While the scientist can maintain that the real lesson of WMD usage and manufacture is “power without caution is death,” perhaps justifying the proper use of such material, the rogue mercenary-terrorist maintains that rational men have the duty to ﬁght any government that would seek these weapons. For the rational man thus, terrorism against a WMD–possessing government is a justiﬁably patriotic act. Had this philosophy not been rooted in personal resentment and vengeance, it may have carried more conviction; here, the ﬁlm is intent to place the blame on individual psychological instability. Ruthlessness can be justiﬁed by patriotism — whichever side of the spectrum it is ideologically governed by. However, Chill Factor stops short of equating individual mercenary terrorism with state-sponsored terrorism as the proverbial twin sides of the same coin. The ﬁlm does stake its reactionary agenda somewhat when it reveals that the terrorist of the piece is also a former Vietnam veteran who so resents his government’s sanctioned killing of civilians for politically expedient but vaguely imperialist reasons that he would seemingly resort to the same. In this way, the terrorist is demonized as a madman and radical arguably identiﬁed with both the leftwing liberal critiquers of foreign policy and the internal right-wing threat posed by a reactionary militia. Once the ﬁlm establishes, albeit brieﬂy, these ideological undercurrents, it then easily forsakes them in favor of conventional vehicular action thrills: the young Americans out to stop the madman, himself a product of unresolved ideological issues from a prior generation. Although the ﬁlm stops short of directly implicating internal terrorist fears as the legacy of the internal divisions surrounding Vietnam, this subtext does linger. However, just as the ﬁlm hopes more to capitalize on Speed in reference to the terroristextortionist in that ﬁlm, in design it is perhaps best considered a variation on the classic French suspense thriller Wages of Fear, with the ice cream van containing a new weapon here replacing the truck containing nitroglycerine in the original.

CIA: Code Name Alexa (1992: d. Joseph Merhi) A police siege of a building reveals a group of sadistic thieves, apparently also terrorists. A CIA agent wonders about the real motives behind the crime and it soon develops that a trained assassin (Kathleen Kinmont) is being prepared by the leader of an international terrorist organization and criminal enterprise. Two cops capture her and the CIA plans to turn her against the terrorist leader. To do so, they utilize threats against her daughter as a form of emotional blackmail. The terrorist leader also recognizes her vulnerability and seeks to kidnap the child. Like many of the ﬁlms made by PM Entertainment, comprising Richard Pepin and Joseph Merhi, CIA: Code Name Alexa is a polished low-budget direct-to-video action ﬁlm made with a reasonable pace, snappy editing and superior production values for its station. Indifferently acted and formulaic in construction, it is undeniably technically polished enough to be engaging. More than most, the ﬁlm is consumed by a despairing

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irony: The terrorists are such vile and irredeemable specimens of humanity that they kill the priest who prayed for their souls while ironically a terrorist-criminal gets a decent burial. The ﬁlm is preoccupied with the idea of a terrorist-criminal network operating within the USA, a theme it shares with such other works as Executive Target. However, it is the Luc Besson female assassin ﬁlm Nikita (and its American remake Point of No Return) to which the Merhi-Pepin team are here most indebted. Indeed, in its scenes of training and reindoctrination of a female assassin, CIA: Code Name Alexa clearly evokes Nikita. Merhi takes the sexual undercurrents in such genderexplosive dynamics to almost pathological overtones. Hence, the terrorist leader is a childish, arrogant sadist (easily cutting out the eye of his own brother) while Alexa is a totally professional troublemaker and terrorist-for-hire. It is Alexa’s ruthlessness which Merhi wholly admires and much of the ﬁlm is spent wondering what psychology would drive a woman to such actions and indifference. This agenda places the ﬁlm within a select minor group that have sought to explore the speciﬁc motivations of the female terrorist — such diverse ﬁlms as The Little Drummer Girl, Timebomb and Programmed to Kill. Ironically, there is hope here that a woman’s innate maternal instincts can turn her and be used as a kind of emotional blackmail in certain circumstances (such as using threats against a child for extortion and control measures). The ﬁlm sees terrorism and the terrorist ﬁgure in terms of megalomaniacal selfaggrandizement. Any ideological pretenses are merely cover for the immense and perverted ego of a man who craves control over powerful weapons simply in order to be thought of as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. Aptly enough, this is a kind of superpower terrorist mentality which suggests that control of nuclear weapons by selfaggrandizing terror group leaders will supplant the Cold War as the battle between supposed superpowers. Thus, terrorism is positioned as the new greatest threat to American supremacy and that such terrorism inherently seeks to acquire the weapons reserved for nuclearized nations. The terrorist leader is revealed to also be a diplomat and thus subject to diplomatic immunity, able to travel at will. Such ease of travel is suggested as a major problem for proper U.S. security measures. Underlying this ﬁlm’s cynicism is a strange sense of hope. For a while, the female terrorist bonds with one of the capturing ofﬁcers (Lorenzo Lamas) and with her daughter brieﬂy is there the suggestion of the nuclear family as the ultimate ideal all this terrorism and counterterrorism revolves around. The suggestion of a human, moral and traditional core nicely establishes terrorism as a threat to an established way of life by acquiescing to the demands of an individual ego. A former terrorist who can be turned (by her realization of the greater good of family) is a valuable weapon, although perhaps in time also doomed by political expediency to be reconsidered an expendable liability. The political and the interpersonal thus run throughout this ﬁlm’s assessment of humanity and terrorism.

CIA 2: Target Alexa (1992: d. Lorenzo Lamas) A former CIA agent is now a rogue terrorist leader in charge of a private army. When he steals a nuclear weapons system, the CIA gets the former assassin Alexa, now a farm girl, to inﬁltrate the terrorists’ desert training ground. Although she has put her links to terrorism behind her and sought a respectable place within patriarchy, she must now do what she is called upon to do.

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This low-budget sequel to CIA: Code Name Alexa is another PM production. This time out, starlet Kinmont had greater story input and the ﬁlm seems earnestly trying to establish her as another action heroine in the manner of Cynthia Rothrock, although here with shades of Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. The ﬁlm suggests a conﬂuence of rogue disgruntled American operatives and international terror groups as emerging threats to American interests but it is only tangentially a terrorist movie based on the popular link in 1990s cinema between mercenarial enterprise and organized terrorism. This functional sequel furthers the irony of the ﬁrst ﬁlm somewhat by suggesting that the terrorist leader and the only person who can stop him were literal bedfellows. In that the mercenary-terrorist ﬁgure is also depicted as a father unwilling to accept the responsibilities of fatherhood, the ﬁlm clearly establishes this as ideological grounds for his expulsion from the realms of the true and just patriarchy he opposes and threatens. As the plot boils down to the rivalry between mercenary groups, the opening suggestions of terrorism are diffused.

Civic Duty (2007: d. Jeff Renfroe) Following 9/11, the U.S. government urged its citizens to do their patriotic duty in the War on Terror and report anything suspicious. News media such as Fox News covered the numerous alert-status level variations to such an extent that in the immediate years following 9/11 Americans were hyperconscious of being in a new state of war, with an enemy that may already be on U.S. soil. Such was “justice” in the early years of the Bush era and such is the period evoked in Civic Duty. The plot, in which a man loses his job and becomes overly suspicious of his new Muslim neighbors, has a faint echo of Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down. In that ﬁlm, a defense worker loses his job and, unable to adapt, snaps. The protagonist in Civic Duty doesn’t snap, but segues into paranoia. Falling Down was considered an indictment of the political conservatism and economic rationalism of the Reagan-Bush years and it is appropriate to consider Civic Duty in similar terms — as an indictment of the fear-based, culturally paranoid War on Terror spin spread by the Bush government. The unemployed accountant protagonist (Peter Krause) wanders through a post ofﬁce, the famous “terrorist most wanted” list pinned to a noticeboard. Extracts from Bush’s most fear-mongering us-and-them “axis of evil” rhetoric ﬁlter in and out of the soundtrack, adding a hallucinatory quality to this ﬁlm’s sense of paranoia. When Krause notices his new neighbor is Middle Eastern he follows him, becoming suspicious enough (at least in Krause’s paranoid mind) to report him to the FBI. Following the CNN news scrutiny given Islamic events like Ramadan, Krause is driven ever deeper in his suspicions. The FBI warns him not to pursue the matter. He subsequently confronts the oblivious neighbor at gunpoint, demanding to know who he works for. Soon it descends into a siege standoff. The neighborly suspicion in this ﬁlm dates back of course to Hitchcock and Rear Window and had been played for black comedy in the 1980s in The ’Burbs, then a metaphor for the anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s. It is appropriate that Civic Duty, although by no means a comedy, addresses similar terrain of cultural difference breeding suspicion and resentment. However, Civic Duty, like The Siege a decade before it, posits the double-edged sword that is cultural proﬁling in a world in which the prime terrorists acting against U.S. interests are Muslim. Hence the protagonist’s suspicions of his

73

Code Name: Vengeance / Cold Night...

neighbor ring as perhaps not entirely unfounded (a premise which also inﬁltrated the terrorist-as-neighbor ﬁlm Arlington Road). Interestingly enough, when Krause says he doesn’t care about his country’s foreign policy, his captive counters that it is about time he did. This is the ﬁlm’s point: lack of awareness of American foreign policy enables the racial proﬁling that can only end in a kind of middle American paranoid psychosis. It’s the parallel between the Bush rhetoric of civil vigilance and paranoid psychosis that motivates Civic Duty’s study of a man on the edge, driven to irrational acts of violence.

Code Name: Vengeance (1987: d. David Winters) When rebels kidnap the wife and son of a Third World country’s leader, a formerly jailed arms smuggler (Robert Ginty) now freed by the U.S. government is sent in to “neutralize” the emerging terror threat in that country. The terrorist leader preaches freedom from Western colonialism. Although the ﬁlm ostensibly tackles Qatar, the ﬁlm has allusions to the Iran hostage crisis with a picture of Ronald Reagan visible on the U.S. embassy there and indeed creates its nation as a hybrid of Third World African and Middle Eastern inﬂuences. Terrorist rhetoric here is one of Islamic independence from the forces of Western colonialism backed up as they are by missile defense. Terrorism is thus deﬁned as the reaction against American foreign policy and military presence beyond its own borders. The ﬁlm is unusual for the depth of its cynicism towards CIA inﬂuence, suggesting that U.S. support for small countries is conditioned on those countries not knowing any better about the real agenda behind the U.S. intelligence community and believing it is genuinely for their own national beneﬁt. In its treatment of Ginty, the ﬁlm is remarkably bleak about the U.S. reasons for ﬁghting such terrorism. Ginty has always brought a puppy-dog vulnerability to hard men which often contrasts their actions, there being a quality of lost innocence to him. With Ginty seeming a lost, troubled and tormented soul (enough to wish he were a better actor), his character here is buttered up by authorities — implanting the idea of his being a real American hero only to insure his cooperation when the reality is that he has been abandoned inside prison for years, his spirit almost broken by mistreatment, until so needed. He emerges from prison to ﬁght the enemy much as did Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in Rambo: First Blood Part 2. Tracking terrorists here requires following the weapons trail and much explosive mayhem ensues in typical action mode. As Ginty battles the terrorist foe, what started out as a cynical view of U.S. foreign practice segues into standard mindless, violent heroics which justify the U.S. presence as there to prevent small nations from consuming themselves. This ideological split unbalances the ﬁlm even more so when it is discovered that CIA dirty tricks are the real enemy with their ability to create dummy governments and to perpetrate murders and betrayals at will underscoring the terrorist leader’s belief in U.S. puppet regimes being installed around the world in poorer, desperate countries such as his. Ginty’s ﬁnal punitive action in purging the corrupt CIA man serves much the same purpose as did Stallone’s violent gesture at the end of Rambo in purging the establishment.

Cold Night into Dawn (1997: d. Serge Rodnunsky) In Chicago, an FBI agent with increasing personal problems is teamed with a female rookie to investigate a series of armed robberies seemingly perpetrated by the armed mili-

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tiamen of a paramilitary force. Meanwhile, a Vietnamese immigrant enters the USA, intent on avenging his baby daughter (the victim of a landmine explosion). He kills several of the militiamen and steals their weapons. Educated in China’s nuclear weapons program, he has plans for nuclear terrorism as an attack on what he considers the arrogance of the USA. For his actions, he has had plutonium implanted in his body and his health is rapidly deteriorating. The agents attempt to track this new threat before he can assemble and detonate a WMD on American soil. Cold Night into Dawn is an example of the lone, disgruntled terrorist movie (also a device featuring in the more upscale Peacemaker). The terrorist perpetrator seeks revenge against the USA for actions stemming directly from its foreign policy. The main assumption here and behind many similar narratives is that the terrorists consider such foreign policy to be evidence of America’s innate and inhumane arrogance regarding its position in world affairs and thus a nation in need of humbling. Terrorism is thought to be the main means of teaching an arrogant nation a lesson in humility and vulnerability. All main characters are at the point of emotional burnout, the ﬁlm examining the consequences of the ﬁght against such a course of emotional action in life. For the terrorist, despair turns vengeful and is rooted in the distant past — the continued animosity over the Vietnam experience. The ﬁlm slowly surrenders its initial note of rather potentially despairing melancholia regarding its underlying conception of terrorism to the standard formula gimmick of reluctant mismatched partners who gradually develop a mutual respect, ﬂirting with the possibility of an older man–younger woman romance. Still, it balances its conception of the external lone terrorist threat with the internal, organized one posed by the militiamen. The growing survivalist menace and its perverse patriotism is weighed against the politicized personal cause of the Asian terrorist. The weapon has become the most desirable commodity in power struggles both within the nation and in its foreign policy as the ﬁlm implies that America is a horrible country riddled with predatorial sensibilities. Such a mentality is considered here the direct result of the course of history set in motion by the Vietnam experience as it is this which continues to haunt the American psyche. Cold Light into Dawn is ultimately a ﬁlm about loss and memory — personal, interpersonal and national. It suggests that maxim that old wounds never heal, extending it to imply that the political wound will inevitably decay towards apocalyptic terrorism. It measures and even covertly validates this in the terrorist’s claims that after all these years, the USA is uninterested in the country it once took to war for the sake of protecting and now has a vested interest in keeping the nation in total poverty. Inevitably, with the lone terrorist simultaneously building himself a WMD and being tracked by current radioactivity monitoring equipment, the ﬁlm boils down to a race against the countdown scenario, interesting primarily as yet another ﬁlm which implies anti–American sentiment and terrorism as a direct result of the legacy of American foreign policy, here the burden of the Vietnam era.

Collateral Damage (2002: d. Andrew Davis) Arnold Schwarzenegger is a Los Angeles ﬁreﬁghter hero whose wife and son are killed in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil engineered by Colombian terrorist El Lobo. When Schwarzenegger is informed that the whole U.S. State Department cannot act forcefully enough in reprisals in the name of justice for the innocents lost to such terrorism, he goes

75

Collateral Damage

to Colombia to track down the terrorist, a drug dealer. There, he ironically saves the terrorist leader’s wife and son and in gratitude the wife turns informer, telling Schwarzenegger that the terrorist intends to plant bombs all over Washington. Director Andrew Davis was one of the foremost Hollywood action directors when he made this competent ﬁlm. The ﬁreﬁghter hero is a professional life-saver, akin to the law enforcement heroes of Davis’ earlier works, and a dedicated family man. In the plight of the protagonist’s vendetta is implied the desperate need for justice to be seen to be done by those who have been robbed of all that was important to them by the actions of others. This sense of personal trauma underlies the drama here, that Schwarzenegger’s pursuit of justice is in part his means of regaining control of a previously usurped destiny: the restoration of the right to free will and self-determination via vigilante action. This is an effective recap of the themes of vigilantism as they interest the self-determination ethos of the cinema of terrorism. Collateral Damage was planned and ﬁlmed prior to 9/11 but had its release date delayed following the events of that day. Its view of the State Department as cowering before a terrorist threat on home soil recalls the late 1980s notion of departmental impotence against those with a grudge against American foreign policy. The terrorist rhetoric is the same worrying pre–9/11 constant: a defensive reaction against unwanted U.S. foreign policy involvement in the fate of their nationhood. Although the government spokesman claims that they will not stand for terrorism perpetrated by such anonymous criminals (even though they know who is responsible), underlying this is the sense that the U.S. cannot rush into foreign policy decisions in the immediate aftermath of such terrorism, a view refuted by Schwarzenegger and the ﬁlmmakers. Either way, the ﬁlm depicts the U.S. as vulnerable to terrorism and ill-prepared both politically and militarily to deal with a terrorist threat on home soil. The political quagmire regarding foreign policy here perhaps ﬁnds its most cogent expression in Hollywood action ﬁlm formula. Foreign policy is considered by its opponents to be exporting U.S. state-sponsored terrorism worldwide and that a terrorist response is perhaps inevitable, a view expressed here regarding South America but also a view in ﬁlms dealing with the Middle East. Meanwhile, there exists the stated U.S. view that it is plain wrong to blame foreign policy as a contributing factor. Ironically, in the ﬁlm’s scheme of things there are people in the USA who would rationalize and condone terrorism on such a basis, minimizing the loss of innocent life. In the ﬁlm, these excusers or rationalizers of terrorism occupy the moral low ground: They are all-talk, petty types who latch onto an awful cause to advance their own self-importance. The U.S. Senate, it seems, feels that foreign policy is in part responsible when it begins to call for a U.S. withdrawal from Colombia, a situation which politically compromises the ability of the U.S. to act forcefully in retaliation and so puts the onus on the lone individual to save the dignity of the American patriarchal system, a return again to the reactionary agenda of the Rambo ilk of ﬁlms. Signiﬁcantly, the U.S. representative in Colombia deﬁes Senate orders and uses Schwarzenegger’s presence there to launch an attack on the guerrillas, intent on ﬁghting terror with retaliatory force and not bow to political leftist foreign-policy sensitive pressures. The ﬁlm does not condemn this ruthlessness and suggests its effectiveness although is aware of the apparent double-bind of such decisive action furthering U.S. resentment in the area — a risk of what is considered necessary U.S. action although arguably left a touch ambiguous here as the troublesome subtext is once again the role of the CIA in

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Latin America as both the cause of anti–U.S. terrorism and the main role in combating it. This is the essential paradox of the U.S. foreign policy predicament in the era of the Monroe Doctrine, wherein the U.S. has a primary role as international peacekeeper. Interestingly, the U.S. representative ﬁgure here is comparable to that used by Costa-Gavras in State of Siege and held responsible for state-sponsored terrorism as a means of generating support for revolutionary insurgence. Colombia is depicted as a virtual war zone, where visitors casually remark that the two most proﬁtable businesses are the drug trade and kidnapping gringos — a view reinforced in Proof of Life. The guerrillas-terrorists are shown as ruthless and uncaring for the people despite their pseudo-ideological rhetoric. They believe a view taken as emblematic of terrorists — that the USA is essentially weak and does not have the strength of will or the forceful resolve to combat terrorist attacks — unless, it seems, due force is shown in response. The U.S. representative’s dismissal of the terrorist leader as a “second-rate Che Guevara” equates South American social revolution with such anti–U.S. terrorism. Furthermore, in many ﬁlms about South America, including notably Let’s Get Harry and Clear and Present Danger, the drug dealer and terrorist are symbiotic ﬁgures. Davis’ ﬁlm effectively merges the types, offering a distillation of the South American terrorist movie wherein the revolutionary = the guerrilla = the drug dealer = the terrorist. The terrorist leader condones drug distribution as a means of revolution, destabilizing U.S. society for economic proﬁt yet without espousing a revolutionary ideology behind it. He is instead a ruthless sadist and opportunist sans cause, the ﬁlm demonizing the Latin American revolutionary in case there were any lingering romantic 1960s radical views of Guevara. The greater irony here is that Schwarzenegger saves the wife and son of this man: that even when immersed in a savagery that tests his will, the U.S. lone hero will not condone the killing of innocents (the clear demarcation of terrorism here). But by ﬁnally revealing the wife as a head terrorist, the ﬁlm suggests that the U.S. raid which would have cost her her life would have been completely justiﬁed — that in the terrorist world, there are no real innocents, unlike the U.S. casualties. The fact that it is the central female ﬁgure who turns liar and betrayer of trust further underscores the patriarchal sensibilities of this action ﬁlm: The clever terrorist will take advantage of the U.S. belief in the possibility of reform and redemption in order to manipulate it to other ends. Hence, the ﬁlm considers itself as having given the evil woman the chance for redemption only to have her throw it back in the face of the benevolent American cause. The disturbing message of this slick and accomplished Hollywood formula ﬁlm is that the U.S. cannot afford to restrict its foreign policy or to trust the “innocents” who have in any way been associated with anti–U.S. sentiment. Ironically, the ﬁlm’s doublecross climax recalls that of Arlington Road as the protagonist realizes he has been set up all along. This being an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, the bleak resolve of Arlington Road is reversed: The lone righteous American hero does save the day and prevent the terrorist plot after all. In this way, Arnold, the once-father whose self-determination and control of his family were stolen by the terrorists, is restored to the symbolic role of father and worthy patriarch, here taking the responsibility for raising the terrorist’s son — the real innocent needing U.S. protection and indoctrination accordingly. Collateral Damage was taken by some as signaling the end of the terrorist ﬁlm cycle, an honor it perhaps shares with The Sum of All Fears. Although essentially a recap of the pre–9/11 view of terrorism as entertainment, it is intriguing in retrospect for its assess-

77

The Confessional

ment of the complexities of foreign policy scape-goating, however reactionary it may ﬁnally emerge. Ironically, the Reverend Brian Jordan, who ministered Ground Zero workers, protested the ﬁlm, claiming it was an insult to the real ﬁreﬁghters claimed in the attack. The ﬁlm also drew protests for its racial proﬁling, stereotyping all Colombians as drug trafﬁckers and guerrillas. There was some speculation that ﬁlms such as Collateral Damage would be needed post–9/11 to restore a concept of lone American heroism.

The Confessional (1989: d. Gordon Flemyng) A KGB assassin on a mission to enhance the turmoil in Northern Ireland poses as a Catholic priest intent on starting a war between Northern Ireland and Britain. To prevent this, various international intelligence organizations, including MI5 and the IRA, reluctantly form an alliance. They recruit a former “freedom ﬁghter” (Keith Carradine), now a paciﬁst. He has to track down the renegade agent, not realizing it is a childhood friend. Although the KGB orders him dead, the agent plans to assassinate the Pope. This telemovie from the novel by Jack Higgins features the gimmick of Russian agents using terrorism as a means of provoking global destabilization — a continuation of the Cold War agenda and a theme present in such diverse 1980s thrillers as Octopussy and The Fourth Protocol. The agent wonders why he feels nothing no matter how many he kills; such is the result of the dehumanization of the intelligence community. This cynicism carries through the whole enterprise as director Flemyng is totally unsympathetic to the Irish people (depicting Irish patriots in Boston as drunken pub brawlers) and to humanity in general, doing his utmost to depict a violent world wherein the paciﬁst hero is surrounded by savagery and hostility. Into this, Carradine as the former IRA sympathizer faces a conﬂict of ideology as he must rationalize the former justiﬁcations of IRA actions as ﬁghting a war with the growing use of IRA activities for terrorism. Carradine, much like Mickey Rourke in Jack Higgins’ A Prayer for the Dying, is a formerly violent man now given a chance at absolution. Importantly, Carradine is a former soldier rather than a full terrorist and as his past is revealed, it is made clear that he killed only military targets until a mistimed bomb at a wedding party caused him to change his ways. The death of innocents is the key event which turns the soldier into the terrorist, a change of identities which does not sit well with moral men. Correspondingly, into this is imbued a heavy Catholicism. As an IRA killer who ﬂed to America, which is presumably a haven for these types, he must return to settle a score and hope for some sense of closure — penance. This personal struggle dominates in a ﬁlm that posits terrorism for national cause and for global political destabilization as a kind of spectrum, the suggestion being that the opportunity for terrorism to develop in a “war” will springboard into something with broader implications for world stability as it is a situation which can be exploited by others. Parallel to the dilemma of a conscienceless man slowly developing a conscience is his friendship with another man of former violence. This creates an odd doppelganger effect, as if Carradine’s enemy is a representation of his own monstrous inner capabilities if left unchecked. This idea of killers with a moral conscience suggests a Catholicism in crisis as the only person with a strong morality is the terrorist-anarchist as in his conscience and ideology of terrorism he moves one psychotic step beyond a mere programmed operative. As he does not represent the IRA, the ﬁlm seeks in part to remove the terror-

Connor’s War / Cosmic Shock

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ist label from the IRA and to put it on the shoulders of outside forces seeking to exploit a just “war” to suit their own dubious agenda.

Connor’s War (2006: d. Nick Castle) A CIA special agent, blinded during an intelligence operation, agrees to try an experimental serum which could restore his vision. Delighted by his vision and his new assignment, he soon realizes that he is being used by terrorists intent on stealing a chemical weapon. He must single-handedly stop the megalomaniacal terrorist leader. Starring rap singer “Treat,” Connor’s War begins with a hostage crisis — the ﬁrst lady being held by disgruntled American patriots — handled by rival agencies, their competition reﬂecting the shufﬂing of jurisdictions that affected the CIA and the FBI post–9/11 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. However, the ﬁlm is a familiar retread of the lone counterterrorist special agent character type popular in 1990s action genre movies, of which this is an update but otherwise imitative. On one level it is an attempt to make an action hero out of a non-actor, as had happened with rappers Ice-T and Ice Cube and basketball star Denis Rodman. Fans may make allowances for the performance but it’s the quick pace, stylized segues and action set-pieces that are the attraction here. Appeals to patriotic duty override cynicism in a ﬁlm which uses its returned vision theme as an excuse for distorted point-of-view shots, which it frequently inserts into the action as the protagonist is troubled by hallucinatory images in addition to nocturnal sight capacities until once again becoming blind. The terrorist leader is a former agent whose department was rendered obsolete, a fact which justiﬁes his vendetta against those he feels responsible for his sacking, up to and including the president. His experience dates back to Vietnam and extends to the deployment of nerve gas by the CIA against Iraqi soldiers ﬂeeing Kuwait during the Gulf War. The theme is the prospect of domestic terrorism from within the intelligence community, which it ties into fears of chemical weapon deployment on U.S. soil. However, the threat of a chemical weapon attack comes here not for ideological, political or religious motivation but from wounded pride: a former agent holds a grudge and decides that terrorism will settle it.

Cosmic Shock (1997: d. Brian Trenchard-Smith) In the Nevada desert, a nuclear missile site and its military crew become hostages during a terrorist incident. The terrorist leader (William Devane) is a renowned astronomer who seeks to launch missiles against an asteroid he believes will collide with Earth within 72 hours. The military do not believe his claim and treat this as a terrorist incident and are determined to raid the silo. Devane’s daughter endeavors to prove her father correct. Cosmic Shock is a minor addition to the Earth-collision cycle à la Meteor, but the lesser entry in a cycle that includes the lavish TV mini-series Asteroid and the big-budget hits Deep Impact and Armageddon. Director Trenchard-Smith is a veteran of Australian exploitation who found sporadic work in U.S. television in the 1990s. He favors wideangle distortions in his discussion of the varied reactions to an incident which implies terrorism. Indeed, it is the implication of terrorism which holds sway here as the Pentagon Situation Room considers anyone who would attempt such as depicted here to be terrorists, regardless of cause, a situation recalling the missile silo takeover in Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

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Counter Measures / Cover-Up

There is a twist here as Devane resorts to such terrorism not to threaten or to cause harm to innocents but to prevent major catastrophe. Nevertheless, his actions speak of the no-other-choice rhetoric of desperation underlying the decision to turn to terrorism in any situation. The ﬁlm holds that the key factor in the determination of a terrorist action is not methodology but intent. Without threat to innocents, it is arguable whether Devane’s actions are the terrorism the authorities would label it as. The ironic notion of a terrorist action to prevent catastrophe, also used in the low-budget ﬁlm Nautilus, is cleverly turned into a discussion of just what role intent has in the deﬁnition of a terrorist action. As Devane’s case is proven, the ﬁlm unusually posits that a so-called terrorist action of last resort can be indeed appropriated for mass beneﬁt: that the gut-reaction to dismiss as terrorism any such action is a blindly prejudicial policy. In the ﬁlm’s validation of Devane, it emerges a testament to the self-righteousness of the patriarch, just the sentiment that the similarly themed Nautilus in part sought to subvert.

Counter Measures: Crash Dive 2 (1997: d. Ed Raymond) A NATO representative and expert on submarines joins a Russian crew aboard a hitech new sub. On its initial journey, it is hijacked by terrorists. What follows is a joint operation by U.S. and Soviet forces to track and destroy the sub before it can be put to harmful use by the terrorists. The ﬁlm begins on a rather symbolic note for the developing cinema of terrorism after the demise of the Cold War: A rogue Russian commander is literally in bed with a new enemy, a Syrian terrorist. The sense of Cold War loyalties shifting towards Middle East tensions thus underlies this premise, as does the common 1990s fear that weapons from the former Soviet Union are missing and could turn up in Third World or Middle Eastern countries unfriendly towards the West. The ﬁlm suggests the peacekeeping of the future to be in the monitoring of the dismantling and removal of Soviet weapons systems. The terrorists intend control of the nuclear submarine in order to facilitate global destabilization. Their loyalties are easily bought as the ﬁlm suggests the power these terrorists believe they gain from holding the lives of innocent Americans as bargaining chips. Here, the rhetoric of destabilization as a means of the reintegration of the Soviet Union is offered. The plan is to launch the missiles against Russian cities and to place the blame on the various separatist-terrorist groups in the former Soviet territories. This hope for a reborn Soviet Union and empire inﬁltrates a number of low-budget action ﬁlms of the late 1990s and ties into the proliferating number of ﬁlms devoted to former or renegade agents still consumed by a Cold War mentality. The lone American hero here is the protector of Russia from its own internal enemies and thus the ﬁlm further afﬁrms the U.S. role as international peacekeeper in the wake of the Cold War — in the so-called New World Order. The ﬁlm uses the lone, insubordinate hero type to offer a criticism of the military establishment’s handling of terrorist action in order to draw attention to the increasing responsibility of the USA as the current and only international peacekeeping force.

Cover-Up (1990: d. Manny Coto) A U.S. journalist (Dolph Lundgren) investigating a U.S. naval station near Tel Aviv uncovers a possible theft of deadly gas, linked to a terrorist group known as Black October. When his friend is killed in a car bomb, he believes there may be traitorous connec-

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tions within the U.S. military based there. As he proceeds, he gradually uncovers a terrorist conspiracy involving a chemical plant manufacturer of supposed civilian use producing chemical weapons and is himself targeted for assassination. Filmed in Israel before the Oslo accord, the ﬁlm opens with a stereotypical view of Arabs-Muslims in a succession of stills from armed Muslim terrorists, suggesting it is the legacy of the Arab terrorist that has made Israel a dangerous place. In such a tumultuous location, the U.S. military presence is initially ambiguous, the ﬁlm limiting point of view to Lundgren as he investigates the American presence. Cover-Up is aware of the legacy of terrorism in the region and alludes to it. The primary terrorist group in the ﬁlm is the ﬁctional Black October (a reference to the genuine Black September) and it is signiﬁcant that as Lundgren enters Israel, he takes a room at the King David Hotel (the site of a notorious bombing by Israeli liberationists-terrorists). Most people (and most U.S. personnel) here have some experience of prior terrorism, suggesting a generation that has grown up amidst such as a fact of life. It is this view of a people socialized towards terrorism that saturates Cover-Up. Cover-Up translates the set pieces of the Middle East terrorist ﬁlm into the intrigue of the established political thriller. The car bomb is used not only as a trope signifying the everpresent terrorist threat but as a plot device to suggest retribution for someone in a position of power knowing too much about issues they shouldn’t. The rubric of terrorism is linked to expedient assassination in this way — a neat condensation of both Arab terrorist means and Israeli targeted reprisals. Consequently, the ﬁlm’s narrative develops as a thriller, with the protagonist’s life in jeopardy the closer he gets to discovering the secret plot. The ﬁlm extends its conspiratorial nature to its depiction of the terrorist group Black October, made out to be a terrorist network with links to the PLO and Shiite Muslim funding in Libya, Syria and Iran. This network is a pre–Al Qaeda conception of a super-terrorist global threat originating in the Middle East. Furthermore, the network is intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction (in this case a deadly nerve gas), although the ﬁlm cynically suggests that the CIA is concurrently interested in the same nerve gas for their own weapons agenda. The parallel is sinister in its suggestion that the U.S. would withhold information of tactical importance about terrorism from the Israeli authorities in order to ﬁrst secure its own militaristic intent regarding terroristic weapons: All sides regardless of motives want the weapons of terrorism for their own ideological rationale. However, the ﬁlm goes one step further and suggests that the terrorist network may in fact be the creation of a force within the government secretly interested in starting a war in the Middle East. Through this aspect, the ﬁlm suggests that terrorism is manipulated by powerful authorities intent on war beyond whatever ideological agenda is espoused by terrorist rhetoric: that terrorism in the Middle East is a hoax to cover up a governmental agenda. It is revealed that the villain of the ﬁlm intends to create a terrorist incident and release the deadly gas, killing civilians on a holy pilgrimage (recreating Christ’s last steps) and blame it on Iraq and the Arabs in order to facilitate U.S. military involvement in Iraq and trigger a U.S.–Muslim war. Considering the ﬁlm was made at the time of the ﬁrst Gulf War, it is an intriguing hypothesis for the clash of civilizations that would, with Al Qaeda and the invasion of Iraq over WMD fears, become much more of an issue. However, in so doing, the ﬁlm ultimately subverts its own conception of terrorism: It is not the work of a group with a clear ideological agenda but the work of a rogue individual

81

Crackerjack / Crash Dive

intent on war (but, signiﬁcantly, a man who has been so affected by the legacy of Palestinian terrorism that he holds all Arabs accountable and would see them all destroyed as a people). Although undercutting any thesis on terrorism as a collective form of warfare, it does suggest that the socialization to terrorism in the region only serves to create racial antipathy of pathological proportions. Cynically, the ﬁlm sees this racial-cultural resentment as inevitable.

Crackerjack (1990: d. Michael Mazo) After his family dies, a policeman is urged by his brother to take a vacation. He goes to Panorama Springs, a Rocky Mountains resort. He soon discovers that amongst the other guests are Maﬁa members being targeted by a terrorist group led by a criminal intent on robbing the Maﬁa and destroying the resort to conceal their getaway. Crackerjack is a riff on the formula set forth by Die Hard and its replacement of the ﬁgure of the terrorist leader with that of the international criminal, in so doing effectively negating any ideological rationale behind the means of terrorism. Capitalist greed is the agenda that drives the “terrorist” in this ﬁlm, even though the means deployed by this new breed of criminal are those of the ideological terrorist (i.e., the mass bombing of civilians, in this case to conceal another crime rather than make a political point). With its cross-section of resort guests, the ﬁlm also owes to the formula of the disaster movie. The ﬁlm intersects the terrorist pantheon with its staging of one scene found frequently in the genre: The villainous terrorist leader selects from a list of names in a process of elimination (a device used in ﬁlms like Delta Force to recall the Nazi selection of Jews). Overall, the ﬁlm is one more attempt, so common in the 1990s, to efface the nature of terrorism with conventional criminality but keep the spectacular nature of the terrorist means of mass destruction.

Crash Dive (1996: d. Andrew Stevens) A nuclear submarine ﬁnds a group of shipwreck survivors and takes them on board. However, this group is in a fact a terrorist cell who commandeer the submarine. They notify Washington of their control and threaten to launch a missile unless a ransom of $1 billion is paid them. A former Navy SEAL–submarine designer (Michael Dudikoff ) is aboard and seeks to thwart their plans. Crash Dive is a minor submarine movie following the likes of the big-budget hits The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide, especially owing to Steven Seagal’s portrayal of a former Navy Seal up against terrorists intending nuclear blackmail in Under Siege. The ﬁlm centers on the fear of losing control of a nuclear weapon to rogue terrorist interests, which are as so typical of 1990s ﬁlms not ideological but monetary in their criminal nature. Here, the threat of nuclear blackmail amounts to high level extortion. Signiﬁcantly, the terrorists are European and the threat is to the great American lone patriarch once again who must rectify the situation and restore the might of American patriarchy from those who would exploit and usurp it. The ﬁlm further confounds the terrorist-criminal effacement popular at the time by suggesting that the cell has ties to a Middle Eastern group who seek not money but ideological domination of the West and intend to launch the missile whether or not the ransom is paid. Again, the distinction between the “civilized” European criminal and the largely off-screen “fanatic” Muslim terrorist is held as something of a cultural given,

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emerging as a stereotype within terrorist cinema. The plan is to deploy the nuclear missile against New York City (the favored target of all terrorist groups). It is enough by now in the subgenre for the ﬁlmmakers merely to mention a Middle East connection to qualify these hijackers as major threats to U.S. soil and that such an attack would function as the ideal grand statement for an essentially ill-deﬁned cause.

Crossﬁre (1979: d. Bruce Lood) A woman is torn between her love for a Christian man and a terrorist, eventually uncovering a plot to bomb a crowded shopping mall. Just as she faces her lover’s reckoning, the terrorist struggles with religious issues, ﬁtting his beliefs into the word of God, and the three of them eventually team up to thwart the bomb plot. Crossﬁre is an hour-long religious drama released by the Gospel Film Ministry, ﬁlmed in San Juan in response to the threat of potential Puerto Rican terrorism. Despite the relevant context, it uses its terrorist dynamic only as a springboard for matters of evangelical proselytizing. As a short feature, it is aimed primarily at providing entertainment for other devout Christian believers. Although that severely limits its potential as drama, it does reveal what is considered a safe discussion of terrorism for Christian viewers. The ﬁlm begins with a bomb being placed into a briefcase. Soon after, a woman meets ﬁrst a Christian missionary and then a terrorist. The ﬁlm depicts the two as cultural and religious opposites. The terrorist is evil; the question is if the evil can ﬁnd redemption through the word of God and the combined efforts of the well-meaning Christians. The racial and cultural proﬁling in this conceit is abominable: The “heathens” are all potential terrorists whose religion and values place them in opposition to Christian teaching and makes them automatically a threat. This is in turn used to validate the Christian mission, spreading the word of Jesus to overcome the corruptive evil of the local terrorist population. The love story, of a good Christian woman falling for a terrorist, is handled so tritely as to be virtually the excuse for a banal travelogue of supposedly exotic locations in its tale of the innocent American abroad, forced to intercede in local politics as such is essentially demanded of her (the responsibility of American Christians abroad to spread their values and morals to all). Nevertheless, the terrorist ﬁgure is allowed a scrap of ideology, claiming benevolent revolutionary motives to improve the lot of the nation’s poor, who are repressed by an inactive government. The terrorist is an initially charming ﬁgure, luring the innocent American woman and trusting her to the point where he brings her into his terror plans. The American innocent pleads with him to reform but now faces a situation where she is involved in local politics whether she wants to be or not — perhaps a metaphor for American foreign policy abroad in this terrible ﬁlm’s appropriation of such. The solution here is to compare the evils of revolution to an absolute ideal of purity — the Christian missionary. Thus, the ﬁlm suggests that it is decent Christian morality that needs to slowly convert the world if the evils of terrorism are to be stopped. This naïveté is staggering and makes the ﬁlm truly risible. Inevitably, the terrorist and missionary argue over the Bible, the terrorist seeing the error of his ways and agreeing that revolution can only come through absolute obedience to the Christian God. As the terrorist now realizes the value of human life, he seeks to end the bombing plan that has already been put into operation. Crossﬁre means to depict the earnest soul-searching of a terrorist struggling with

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issues of religion, politics, morality and ideology but conceptualizes this only as an insipid validation of the Christian missionary ideal (in effect, Christian Imperialism to bring peace and stability to the world). The ﬁlm holds that merely giving people access to the reformative word of God will alter their destructive, terroristic ways. The only novelty here is that the usual race-against-time scenario is impelled by the need to quickly adopt the word of God before more harm is done.

Crossﬁre (1998: d. Gary Lipsky, Joe Zimmerman) A U.S. government agent (Andrew Divoff ), working undercover to eliminate threats to national security, may have to kill an 11-year-old boy. As he becomes involved in a terrorist plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty he slowly starts to trust the boy rather than seek to assassinate him, even wondering whether he should protect the boy when he learns that other assassins have been dispatched to kill him. Crossﬁre is an inversion of the plot of Mercury Rising. (The assassin with a conscience when it comes to killing children is found repeatedly in such non-terrorist ﬁlms as Leon the Professional.) The child ﬁgure here is on tour from the Middle East, with parents who ostensibly want to give him a better education in the USA. The Statue of Liberty is a representation of U.S. ideals to the world and the ﬁlm holds that radical arms dealers would wish to see it destroyed to make a political point. Lady Liberty as a target for terrorists had been accepted as far back as the mid–1970s, when in Up the Sandbox a domestic terror group recruited Barbra Streisand in a plot to blow up the Statue. The assumption here, and in similar ﬁlms, is that it is New York City speciﬁcally which is the most attractive target for terrorist attacks within the USA. Intercut with ﬂashbacks as to how the protagonist landed the assassination case (to kill the child of a man with suspected terror links to Lebanon), the ﬁlm wonders what type of reprisal should be taken against those who commit atrocious terrorist action against both Americans and American interests abroad. Nevertheless, the ﬁlmmakers are aware of the moral ambiguity here and suggest that it is truly a terrible thing to kill a child for the crimes of the father, in turn elevating a minor action ﬁlm to the status of moral-philosophical allegory. This is resolved by a standard series of successive child-injeopardy set pieces wherein the government assassin can prove himself worthy of true patriarchal responsibility and abandon his assignment even if this makes him a target because of the dereliction of his duty: moral right vs. duty in the War on Terror. This intriguing-sounding ﬁlm is dismally paced, ﬂatly directed and wholly without style or suspense. The terrorist motivation — which seems to be revenge for loss — is kept vague and unexplored as a background, supplying only the needed plot device of yet another countdown to catastrophe which must be averted.

The Crying Game (1993: d. Neil Jordan) This English-Irish ﬁlm dealing with a plot by IRA terrorists to bomb London was a huge international hit. An English soldier (Forest Whittaker) is kidnapped by the IRA and held captive prior to his planned execution. In the meantime, he emotionally bonds with one of the IRA men (Stephen Rea) who is tempted to let him go. A turn of events makes this impossible and Rea soon journeys to London to contact Whittaker’s girlfriend ( Jaye Davidson), whom he falls in love with. Rea’s life is soon complicated by his IRA companions, who plan to use him in a terrorist plot.

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The Crying Game was director Neil Jordan’s breakthrough ﬁlm after helming the highly acclaimed Mona Lisa. It made Jaye Davidson a brief celebrity — due to a spectacular scene in which Rea discovers the true gender of someone he thinks is an attractive woman (a twist that made the ﬁlm famous at a word-of-mouth level although was anticipated by the serial killer ﬁlm Mascara)— and contributed its title track to the song hit parade. Hailed by critics as one of the decade’s best ﬁlms, it remains one of the foremost examples of box ofﬁce terrorist ﬁlm successes. The Crying Game is ambiguous about the tactics adopted by the IRA, speciﬁcally, whether or not it is justiﬁed in the IRA “war” to kidnap and kill British soldiers. In this way, Jordan cleverly essays, at the level of background context, the notions of terrorism vs. unconventional warfare, a distinction held by the IRA (and indeed many politically motivated terrorist groups). Within this apt discussion of the mentality of hostage-taking (as a bargaining chip to secure the release of captives held by the Brits) is what interests Jordan most: the humanity of the terrorist ﬁgure Rea (a frequent Jordan collaborator). As Rea ﬁrst warms to the captive he must guard and then to the woman he falls in love with and feels he owes something to, the ﬁlm explores what might be termed the dawning of humanity, the resultant balance of hope in interpersonal relationships amidst inescapable political cynicism also essayed by A Prayer for the Dying. Rea’s initial dilemma interests Jordan as the core of the terrorist dilemma: Is it in human nature to kill indiscriminately and is it possible to kill someone with whom you have established some emotional connection? For Jordan, it is a horrible thing to kill for whatever reason as it essentially goes against human nature. Such is the reality of the political scene underlying the impetus to terrorism and murder that killing can be rationalized and justiﬁed by a given political context, even though at core it is a renunciation of one’s essential humanity. This clash between humanity and political necessity (as the terrorists rationalize it) yields a mentality of “no other choice”; the director would examine the origins of this theme in his subsequent Michael Collins. That Rea had to be involved in murder sets up a humanistic dilemma for the character, who seeks time out to gather his thoughts even though the return of the IRA into his life reminds him that once he is in, he can never get out. Rea’s rediscovery of humanity takes the form of his growing relationship with the dead Whittaker’s girlfriend, Davidson. Attracted to the woman and feeling a humane debt to Whittaker to at least inform her of her boyfriend’s fate at his own hands, Rea gets involved in a sexual relationship with her. However, seeing her nude, he is confronted by the reality that the “woman” is in fact a transsexual. Initially nauseated, he sets this aside and accepts “her” on her own terms as such at least to him moves towards the restoration of the humanity he felt he had lost sight of and is now his debt to Whittaker. As Rea takes the dead man’s place in an emotional and sexual relationship, he seems subconsciously to feel he can ﬁnd — not redemption, but perhaps repentance. Rea segues into the role of protector and unintended savior for Davidson once Rea’s terrorist associates arrive on the scene and pressure him to return to his old ways. The closer he gets to Davidson, the more Rea realizes that the dead Whittaker has become a kind of lost object for them both — an innocent ideal of interpersonal communication and bonding which has been destroyed by terroristic inhumanity. This restoration of humanity becomes director Jordan’s subtext in the second half of the ﬁlm. The dilemma

85

Cuba

is whether Rea, who has found the humanity he felt was eroded by his terrorist association, can hold onto it or will be led back into a terrorist plot to assassinate “a legitimate target” and once again be consumed by the inhumane language of legitimacy in the IRA war against the British.

Cuba (1979: d. Richard Lester) Cuba is a lavish adventure story concerning a mercenary (Sean Connery) in Cuba circa 1959 as the Batista regime falls to Fidel Castro. Connery gets caught up in the furor as he romances a former lover (Brooke Adams), now a factory manager. Anticipating in part the later Sydney Pollack ﬁlm Havana, Cuba is the last intriguing ﬁlm by the talented Richard Lester before his career declined in the 1980s. From the ﬁlm’s beginning, Lester delights in depicting what he considers the color, decadence and sensuality of Batista’s Cuba, full of pleasure resorts although with a heavy military presence. As it has been since Lester’s ﬁlms with the Beatles and his trip to the USA for Petulia, sexual amorality is a dominant subtext. Sexual amorality in Lester’s ﬁlms is frequently treated comedically though reached almost tragic overtones in Petulia. Here, the notion of sexual abandon is held against the backdrop of the military attempt to crush the rebel forces of Castro, whom they consider terrorists creating what ofﬁcials dismiss as “political unrest.” Yet Lester is skeptical of the U.S. exploitation of the Cuban land, hence a character who passes out brochures for a sex tour, with a starlet walking behind him. For Lester the theme is unsubtle: The U.S. turns the land into pimps and prostitutes for their own private pleasure and are essentially exploiters who have lost all moral perspective on their actions (and their foreign policy). Lester develops a sense of ironic counterpoint in his depiction of incidental detail (the military pushing a bus to make way for a cow while foreigners drive unrestricted) and suggests a notion of farcical incompetence behind the government actions as well as those of the supposed protagonist, Connery, who is seen here by Lester in a most unﬂattering portrayal (recalling the way Lester used Connery in the earlier Robin and Marian). However, it is in Cuba that the farcical incompetence underlying many Lester ﬁlms becomes dangerous and even lethal. Connery arrives as a British soldier of fortune and starts after Adams, who must contend with an American ( Jack Weston) whose sole interest in her factory is ﬁnancial. Lester depicts the quintessential American Weston as a greedy entrepreneur for whom all Cuban women are whores. Cuba is a rare ﬁlm in its outright condemnation of American foreign policy: Capitalism is a corruptive evil here and the often unseen terrorists emerge as potential liberators of the nation. The Americans abhor the “political unrest” and promise the corrupt Batista safe passage and sanctuary in the USA should the problems escalate beyond control. Amidst this continued cycle of exploitation, Connery’s presence soon comes to the attention of Che Guevara. Cuba is a demonstration of a ﬁlm about terrorism where the label “terrorist” could easily be replaced by that of freedom ﬁghter, as rhetorical debates often suggest. Thus, Lester takes pains to depict the so-called terrorists operating a radio broadcast to the people: Rebel radio advocates freedom, literacy and hope for the oppressed and exploited Cuban people. For Lester it is more than empty rhetoric and is the only alternative to the corruption and anti-idealism surrounding it. The rebels for Lester are not terrorists but inevitable forces of progress and change in a nation corrupted by U.S. television com-

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mercials and rampant consumerism above both education and humanism. The irony for Lester is that the so-called “terrorists” are the sole force of humanist reform. As Connery is hired to participate in anti-terrorist actions by Batista’s general (Martin Balsam), Lester depicts him as an essentially amoral ﬁgure and simultaneously develops Connery’s façade of professional macho bravado and undercuts and mocks it at every opportunity, as Connery too is corrupted by his lack of political ideals. Yet Lester is aware of how political power seduces and corrupts the most earnest of the ideologically committed and depicts Balsam as a former revolutionary who has been seduced and led astray by the trappings of wealth and sexual abandon brought in by the American inﬂuence the terrorists would overthrow. Connery detests terrorists but for Lester, his morality and his ideology is merely a self-serving and self-aggrandizing sham and Connery emerges as an ideologically bankrupt ﬁgure easily led by the political whims of those who recruit his services. Although many ﬁlms dealing with terrorism have sought to blur the line between the mercenary and the terrorist, Cuba insists on the ideological difference: The terrorist is uncorruptible. Yet, in the depiction of a rebel raid upon a society dinner of rich capitalists in which innocents are killed, Lester establishes the toll of such a “kill the rich” ideology as practiced here. Ironically, Lester parallels the terrorist incident with the routine of a stripper at the infamous Flamingo hotel. In the aftermath, the Americans act superior and assume that all Cubans are corrupt (or, for their purposes, corruptible). Again, Lester develops a heavy sense of irony in that although the Americans treat the Cubans with contempt because they consider them corruptible and exploitable, the terrorists in fact represent the incorruptible side of Cuba which is, of course, a threat to American interests. Thus, when American ofﬁcials uncover incorrect ﬁnancial records they blame it on the revolutionary forces rather than the corrupt businessmen. In such throwaway moments, the ﬁlm emerges as a stirring political satire. As the Batista regime and its American backers brutally strike back against the terrorists, Connery wonders if he is indeed doing the right thing. His cynicism eventually comes to the fore as he describes counterterrorism as “ﬁghting people who hide grenades in shopping baskets, shoot up crowded hotels, hack the legs off cattle, leave them dying on their stumps.” For Connery, as much as he abhors so-called “terrorism,” he sees no way around it, such is its cold-blooded nature to him. Although Lester elsewhere mocks Connery and iconoclastically undermines his former image as James Bond, the director allows the view to emerge that, despite the ideological cause, the terrorist methodology is highly questionable on moral grounds. Connery’s hatred of the ideological terrorist cause makes a contrast to the later ﬁlm Under Fire in which mercenary Ed Harris grows sympathetic to the terrorist cause in South America. It is revealed that Connery, whose views may now be getting audience sympathy, fell in love with Brooke Adams when he thought she was 17 but was in effect 15, making him a child molester, an irony that Lester delights in despite it being again a throwaway moment. Eventually, the fragile political situation collapses into a rebel-led revolution. Despite the political ideology, Connery clings to his own moral code, claiming that he would never take arms against a legitimate government and would ﬁght to protect such a government. Foolish to the end, Connery’s mercenary code is, to Lester, old-fashioned and irrelevant in the modern world and the director questions the idea of “legitimacy” as inherently right and revolution therefore inherently wrong under any circumstances. Such a sim-

87

Cyborg Soldier / The Dancer Upstairs

plistic moral code does not hold for Lester and he thus follows Connery as the mercenary realizes that he is ﬁghting for a lost cause and must get out if he is to save himself. Like a rat he ﬂees a sinking ship, leaving Adams behind. Although featuring Connery’s most unheroic portrayal, Cuba emerges as one of the ﬁnest ﬁlms to use a terrorist theme as a means of cogent political satire.

Cyborg Soldier (1994: d. Sam Firstenberg) A sequel to director Firstenberg’s earlier Cyborg Cop and indeed titled Cyborg Cop 2 for release in several U.S. territories, Cyborg Soldier is another B-movie that tries to use terrorist themes as a subtextual backdrop for the development of action and sci-ﬁ movie clichés. Here, the protagonist has to confront an army of cyborgs intent on the liberation of their kind and resorting to revolutionary terrorism in order to emancipate themselves. Instead of developing the terrorist angle, the ﬁlm merely uses it as a background for what is a timeless theme (or enduring cliché) of sci-ﬁ: Technological creations revolt against their masters. The ﬁlm suggests that increased police powers and presence are necessary to combat those forces which would disrupt the social order. Although never fully advocating a police state, the ﬁlm comes too close to this theme for comfort as Firstenberg develops the notion of a cyborg liberation movement determined to counter the dominance of humans, a theme echoed to vastly different ends in the non-terrorist sci-ﬁ I, Robot although here Fistenberg revels in depicting the primal scene of created killing the creator (derivative of the same in Blade Runner). Although Firstenberg is clearly interested in the means by which villainous and potentially terroristic organizations take control of the social order and the necessity of violent forces to oppose them through counterterrorist measures, he lacks the directorial skill to develop the full terrorist implications of his subject matter and once again settles for derivative genre action, virtually dismissing the idea that terrorism may contribute to the process of global and/or domestic instability.

The Dancer Upstairs (2002: d. John Malkovich) In Latin America in “the recent past,” a lawyer turned policeman ( Javier Bardem) has to catch a notorious guerrilla leader named Ezequiel to prevent the country from being consumed by revolution. As his investigation continues, Bardem is distracted by an attractive dancer (Laura Morante). With increased bombings, the president declares martial law and Bardem loses control of the investigation, though he continues to look into it on his own, bringing his attention back to the dancer. Symbolic protests — dead dogs hung from streetlights — soon escalate into the deployment of a child suicide bomber. The subsequent systematic investigation of local folklore as a means of uncovering the terrorists comprises the bulk of this ﬁlm. In that respect, The Dancer Upstairs is an intriguing look at how police respond to what seems to be a terrorist campaign as a preliminary to social revolution. The terrorists remain off-screen for much of the ﬁlm, which concentrates on Bardem’s investigation and personal life. The investigation of terrorism as a police matter is the concern here. Signiﬁcantly, the words “terrorist” and “guerrilla” are not mentioned directly until the ﬁlm’s latter stages; however, the means of each are interchangeable in what director Malkovich considers social revolution. The off-screen terrorist campaign evokes the spirit of Latin American revolution’s

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Marxist base, popular since Costa-Gavras’s State of Siege, though The Dancer Upstairs does not concern American involvement in the self-determination of Latin American states as is traditionally the subtext here. Interestingly, those carrying out the attacks in the name of revolution are young, children in fact — a reﬂection of the growing incidence of child soldiers in Africa and the fear of child suicide bombers (visualized here to devastating effect). However, the attacks are directed against members of the government and not random, with civilian casualties not the primary agenda; perhaps why the ﬁlm is so reluctant to ever use the word “terrorism.” Indeed, the government responds to the situation as one of incipient revolution — an admission of the political reality behind the means depicted here: revolutionary warfare though clearly resembling terrorist campaigns. The absence of judgment of the revolutionaries is intriguing, as is the examination of the difference between civilian police and military responses to a campaign of bombings and assassinations. Likewise, the emphasis is on the folkloric aspect of the revolutionary leader; as Bardem gets further out into the country, the more he hears stories and legends about Ezequiel. Interestingly enough, the terrorist leader’s sexual prowess with willing women is elevated in stories of orgies after each bombing or successful assassination. Again off-screen, the myths of potency that emerge out of such a guerrilla campaign are seen to sustain the popular sympathy and awe that rebel forces have amongst the populace, another reason the government seeks to eliminate them as a means of ending the popular mythology around revolution in this part of the world. Terrorism is mentioned for the ﬁrst time here in a discussion Bardem has with his superior ofﬁcer about the ﬁlm State of Siege, an explicit acknowledgment of source material. However, as Bardem’s superior ofﬁcer dismisses the ﬁlm with the remark that real terrorists are not played by handsome French actors, The Dancer Upstairs signals its intention to frame the material of State of Siege from the investigator’s perspective, neither allied to the “terrorist” or the government troop perspective. In attaching itself to Bardem, the ﬁlm maintains an admirable objectivity and Malkovich slowly immerses himself in the investigative realities of revolutionary terrorism with the political intrigue surrounding it a balanced background perspective. A studied, slow terrorist ﬁlm, The Dancer Upstairs is a non-didactic, humane exploration of the terrorist mystique; the reality of Ezequiel and his treatment is in stark contrast to the popular mythology surrounding him.

Day of the Jackal (1973: d. Fred Zinnemann) In 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle encountered much criticism for his decision to grant Algeria independence after a long and bitter terroristic struggle against the forces of French colonialism. His opponents band together to form an underground terror group, the OAS, motivated by nationalism and patriotism. They hire an anonymous British assassin known as “the jackal” (Edward Fox) to kill the despised French ruler. The assassin makes his way from England to France and, after a series of encounters, arrives at a scheduled parade in which he intends to kill his target. From the outset, director Zinnemann depicts the near-psychotic pride and fanaticism of the terrorist leaders, their zeal overriding all else. Their loyalist sentiments are clearly out of touch, however, with political reality but the only way they can affect change is by terror — in this case through a hired political assassin — even though they claim that “we are not terrorists, you understand, we are patriots.” As in many ﬁlms about hired assassins or mercenaries, Day of the Jackal essays the collusion between the amoral hired

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operative and the political ideology his actions support. In so doing, like The Parallax View, the ﬁlm explores the point where the assassin becomes a terrorist weapon. After all, targeted political assassination has been long favored as a terror weapon. Although serving a political agenda, the assassin is himself an apolitical ﬁgure. His pleasure lies in his cold, detached professionalism alone. In it for the money and the challenge, he remains an emotionless cipher, unknowable except through that same professionalism. The bulk of the ﬁlm follows Fox as he plans how to carry out the perfect political assassination, intercutting such with the counterterrorist tactics of the French government (torturing captured OAS operatives) in order to gain information so that a detective (Michael Lonsdale) can stop the assassin. However, such is the terrorist network that they have informers ready to bed government ofﬁcials in order to get the needed information to protect Fox and monitor the investigation. The ﬁlm is entertaining and noteworthy for the meticulous attention to the detail and planning of a daring act of international terrorism. Although the protagonist is a cipher, his distanced professionalism almost redeems him and the ﬁlm’s narrative juxtaposes two contradictory audience desires: to both see the assassin succeed and to see him thwarted. Almost unbearably tense, the ﬁlm was a noted popular hit. However, for Zinnemann the political ambiguities are left subtly evident — thus the inhumanity of the terrorists is returned by further inhumanity on the part of the counterterrorists (torture), ironically producing results as if terror begets terror in justiﬁable response. Indeed, there seems no other way to combat the real threat of terrorism than by using oppressive means — torture and illegal blanket surveillance amongst them. Zinnemann remains almost as detached from these themes as his protagonist and the ﬁlm emerges as a nonjudgmental thriller about people caught up in a web of political circumstance.

Day on Fire (2006: d. Jay Anania) Questions about the effects of an explosion on the body of a suicide bomber are sprinkled throughout this brooding multi-character drama about intersecting lives in New York. The questions are asked by a Palestinian journalist, a young woman investigating the suicide bombing phenomenon within her country. A doctor’s dispassionate account of the effect of twisted nails blown through the human skull is heard over close-up shots of an attractive young model photographed in a studio setting. The Arab journalist plays back the recording as she prepares her story. The physical horror of the suicide bomber–martyrdom experience obsesses her: the irreconcilable association of the suicide bomber as emblematic of the Palestinian experience far more than the intifada. Day on Fire is a melancholy, glimmering ﬁlm about developing bonds between different women — journalist and model — and the indifference to human suffering in a modern world in which the suicide bomber is an icon of almost mystical religious ecstasy. There’s a curious mythologizing of the suicide bomber mystique here, in stark contrast to the reality of the aftermath of such an incident. Indeed, confronted with the physicality of the bombing, the journalist is still dangerously obsessed with suicide. What might be termed the cinema of intertwining destinies underlies this ﬁlm’s structure, meshing parallel narratives in the way of Babel and with a connection to the cinema of terrorism that is just as ﬂeeting. Stranger still is the oblique, partial descent into serial killer cinema also inﬁltrating Canadian director Denys Arcand’s not dissimilar Love and Human Remains.

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Dead Bang (1988: d. John Frankenheimer) Drunken, recuperating, hard-boiled policeman Don Johnson investigates a murder of a shopkeeper which leads to a network of neo–Nazi militiamen preparing for a revolution against the government. Assisted by an FBI agent (William Forsythe), he goes to the compound headquarters of the neo–Nazi organization and pushes them into a violent showdown. Director Frankenheimer is one of the foremost ﬁgures in the cinema of terrorism, having effectively made the ﬁlm which commenced the genre, Black Sunday, and returning to it here and in the later Year of the Gun. Although his other terrorist-themed ﬁlms had more international dimensions, Dead Bang concerns the threat of domestic terrorism (and race hate crime) posed by the American militia movement as essayed in Betrayed and American History X. Dead Bang is one of a number of ﬁlms in the 1990s which began to explore issues of domestic terrorism from within the dangerous and expanding rightwing militia movement, hence such other, minor ﬁlms as Avenging Force, Patriots and Fortress of Amerikkka, the link between militias and domestic terror being made most explicit in Patriots. Stylishly directed, the ﬁlm begins appropriately enough with a shot of a blimp, the same aspect of American sporting culture revealed as object of unexpected menace in Black Sunday, only to tilt down to the street below and follow a race crime in progress. However, intertextually the implication is clear: while the threat of international terrorism may ﬂoat above, a very real form of terror is occurring every day in America in the form of random race hate crime. Frankenheimer’s camera movement is both ﬂuid and circling as it hovers around the ﬁgure of noble police wreck Johnson, a fallen patriarch barely able to connect with his estranged son. Like many ﬁlms dealing with patriarchal overtones, the subtext here is that the ﬁght against the terror group provides a means for the fallen patriarch to restore himself to the position of ideological masculinity demanded of his status: redemption. Frankenheimer never lets this characterization of the fallen patriarch overwhelm the action even though it has been a recurrent theme in such ﬁlms as 52 PickUp and inﬁltrates his discussions of male menopause in The Gypsy Moths and I Walk the Line. The depiction of the right-wing terror network implies connections amongst the criminal underground. In so doing, Frankenheimer suggests that the ideology of the militia movement is so warped from conventional political ideology that it needs criminal support in order to maintain its momentum. Uncovering the trail of such a network leads Johnson to a fortress in the Midwest, presided over by people claiming religious sanction for their neo–Nazi beliefs — the alliance of Christianity and race-hatred thus being a provocative subtext and one that hits home in that the militia movement (and the KKK) in reality often claim Biblical justiﬁcation for their horrendous actions. For Frankenheimer, the U.S. heartland is a proverbial powderkeg of seething racial resentment. The neo–Nazis, as epitomized here in the Aryan Nation Church, cling to the belief that they represent “the nucleus of what America once was and will be again,” although the director often lampoons them as dangerous racist clowns. The sense of stylized caricature is in many respects quintessential Frankenheimer but here threatens to undercut the intended solemnity of the proceedings, making the black comedy elements ( Johnson is so sick after a foot chase that he vomits on a suspect) rather jarring in context. (The director would again try a balance of serious menace and black comedy in his ﬁnal fea-

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ture ﬁlm Reindeer Games.) For the irresolute Johnson, the terrorist danger posed by the Aryan Nation Church provides just the impetus he needs and he ﬁxates upon it. With such a newfound purpose, Johnson grows bolder and more provocative in his search, although his near obsession makes his superiors feel that he needs psychological assessment (a scene typical of the aforementioned black comedy in that the police analyst looks and talks like Woody Allen). Dead Bang intriguingly explores the potential of a domestic U.S. terror network with criminal connections to legally exist within the U.S. heartland, its existence ironically protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, until the second half and a few references to an impending revolution, the ﬁlm does not delve into the mindset and agenda behind the militia movement of the Aryan Nation Church, at least not as much as Costa-Gavras explored in Betrayed, which truly sought to bring out the link between right-wing politics and domestic terrorism. However, Frankenheimer does posit that there is a virtual army out there, ready for an impending struggle with the police if their vague and rather demented ideology demands such. As ridiculous as they are in the ﬁlm’s sense of heightened stylistics, they are a threat that the director takes seriously.

Deadly Heroes (1993: d. Menahem Golan) On a clear morning at Athens International Airport, armed terrorists crash through security and seize control of a U.S. airplane as well as its passengers and crew. They then demand the release of their supreme leader from his imprisonment within the USA. As the U.S. government debates the matter and acquiesces, a Navy Seal (Michael Pare) assembles a group of specialists for a covert anti-terror response. Pare is additionally motivated by the fact that his wife is a hostage. Deadly Heroes is director Golan’s return to the theme of terrorism following Operation Thunderbolt and the surprise hit The Delta Force. It can be seen as the third in a trilogy tackling anti-terror commando raids, motivated by the actual Israeli incursion into Idi Amin’s Uganda as dramatized in Operation Thunderbolt. The choice of Athens Airport is symbolic as that is where the PLO hijacking to Entebbe Airport in Uganda originated. However, the hodgepodge of historical details emerges as the excuse for a fairly routine hijacking action ﬁlm typical of the B-movie action genre fare that Golan and his associate Yoram Globus released through Cannon Films in the 1980s especially. Golan is primarily concerned with the idea of U.S. foreign policy impotence when dealing with international terrorism, hijacking in particular. His scenario is informed by the real-life Iran hostage crisis and the inadequacy of President Carter to take decisive action to free the hostages. However, typical of the reactionary fare that Golan so often lent his name to as producer, this ﬁlm considers decisive action to be violent counterterror operations: meeting like for like as it were. Also, as Golan did in the other ﬁlms of the trilogy, he takes time to depict the terrorist leader (Billy Drago) as a sexual sadist, making the ﬁlm one of a number to link the terrorist mentality to sexual perversion rather than any lucidly expressed ideological cause. The sense of the terrorist as sexual aberration makes it easier for him to be viliﬁed in the course of the movie; after all, he is a threat to that which a patriarchal society holds dear, its women. Golan depicts the Middle East as wrapped in perpetual but futile peace talks. Golan considers the staging of peace talks on the terrorists’ home turf to be an insurmountable irony which caters only to the worst examples of men, a theme he developed in the

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Lebanon scenes in The Delta Force. Golan here reduces the material to the level of formulaic action set pieces and the ﬁlm never emerges as potent as the director intends. More intriguing than the action, however, is the political context surrounding it, particularly the suggestion that such terrorists often have state backing, hence their arrogant bravado in tackling the USA. Despite such backing, the terrorists for Golan have no clear political motives and are concerned with destabilization for the sake of it alone. There is no legitimate cause here, only sexual madmen. The terrorist leader Drago develops a pathological need for both the sadistic domination of captive women (particularly Pare’s wife) and the need to get her to accept her own domination, in so doing imagining an interpersonal bond between himself and his victim. The terrorists are quite prepared to videotape the rape of an American woman and send the tape to the U.S. president as a means of sexually humiliating what they consider an impotent nation. Far from being ideologically motivated by the Middle East crisis thus, these terrorists are merely violently amoral pornographers who get off on mindless torture and rape. The violation of the WASP woman is considered the ultimate insult. The systematic erasure of political causality behind terrorism negates its status as a political form of warfare and depicts it as a cheap and nasty form of sex crime, beyond understanding or tolerance. In contrast to this sexual horror is what Golan considers the resilience of the American family unit, as exempliﬁed by wronged patriarch Pare’s determination to restore the family that has been momentarily separated by the terrorist actions. Once again, as in so much cinema of terrorism, the underlying theme is that of a patriarchal crisis: The terrorist is a threat to the so-called morality of American family values so beloved by conservatives and Republicans, to whom this ﬁlm is aimed. Remarkable, however, is one almost throwaway line spoken by a distraught American covert operative: Frustrated by the political situation in the Middle East, he remarks that the Arab nations are “shitting all over us,” a line that hearkens back to the shitty-Shiite little countries pun in Iron Eagle, making the anti–Arab sentiment of this action genre ﬁlm abundantly clear. Naturally, the ﬁlm ends with the family reunited to the music of “God Is on Our Side” as the ﬁlm descends into patriotic propaganda.

Deadly Outbreak (1995: d. Rick Avery) Also known as Deadly Takeover, this action B-movie concerns a team of U.S. and international scientists sent to the Research Development Institute in Tel Aviv to test chemical weapons. Their plane is intercepted by a group of armed terrorists (led by Ron Silver). At the chemical plant, the scientists are held hostage while Washington is ordered to pay the ransom. An ex-marine ( Jeff Speakman) on the loose in the facility is determined to kill all the terrorists. The ﬁlm suggests that the U.S. and Israeli governments are jointly responsible for the development of chemical weapons and that terrorist action to commandeer such is inevitable. Typical of terrorist action B-movie fodder, the protagonist is developed as a genuine American patriarch, a loner in the cowboy tradition who, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, can single-handedly take on a terrorist cell. Signiﬁcantly, terrorist leader Silver claims to be a patriot who resents U.S. foreign policy to the extent of taking matters into his own hands. However, being a reactionary diatribe, the ﬁlm posits that those who oppose the domination of U.S. foreign policy are essentially un–American traitors hid-

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ing behind the language of patriotism. Again typical of the B-action ﬁlm, terrorist force must be met with counterterrorist force in equal measure; anything less is a cowardly betrayal. An intriguing but undeveloped subtext suggests that Israel is in perpetual trouble with terrorists (allied to Western mercenaries as again part of the genre at that time in the early 1990s) and is a dilemma that can only be solved by a greater U.S. presence and intervention in said affairs: greater foreign policy rather than less. However, these terrorists are revealed not to be ideologically motivated at all, but lured by the promise of money through extortion; they are less actual terrorists than criminal mercenaries adopting the methodology of terrorism to suit them, again derivative of the ﬁlm Die Hard. Silver’s characterization is, however, too rigid to assume the demented and anarchic heights that Tommy Lee Jones was able to bring to a similar character in the Die Hard rip-off Under Siege and the ﬁlm emerges as humorless and unexciting in comparison to its betters. The Israeli–U.S. alliance is problematic in the ﬁlm. Israeli authorities claim that they have more experience dealing with terrorism on home soil than does the U.S. and resents the U.S. effort to take charge of anti-terror initiatives. However, this dynamic is resolved through the actions of Speakman, essentially the lone American cowboy hero who eliminates the terrorist threat and in so doing proves that the U.S. can handle any terrorist threat as well as, if not better than, the Israelis. However, as the terrorist is an American mercenary rather than an Arab, the Middle Eastern Israeli setting seems rather perfunctory and even irrelevant to the actual action. With theme and content so divorced, the ﬁlm has nowhere to go, ending in the cliché of the triumphant father who proves himself against the threat to his son.

Deal of the Century (1983: d. William Friedkin) In this contentious political satire, an unscrupulous arms dealer (Chevy Chase) plans to sell malfunctioning arms to a petty dictator. With the global arms dealer responsible for international terrorism, fears abound that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists. Although there are several amusing moments in this ﬁlm parodying the right-wing conservative “hawkish” mentality — such as a mock commercial by arms manufacturer Luckup (a pun on “fuck-up”) about the commercial potential of armaments used to protect children — the script lacks subtlety and the ﬁlm emerges less a sustained satire than a droll comedy of overstatement. Chase’s hard-boiled, cynical voiceover does little to add to the comedic potential of this mishmash of a ﬁlm although the actor’s customary laidback remove suggests the emotional distance the arms dealer has from the (im)moral consequences of his actions. Indeed, all the characters emerge as morally irresponsible and it is impossible to relate to any of them, leaving the ﬁlm cold and remote rather than engaging on any humanist level. Director Friedkin has always been a cynic but here he leaves room for nothing else and the ﬁlm emerges as skewed and manipulative as well as unfunny. The world according to Friedkin is here violently amoral and everybody is either a cold and cynical manipulator out to make a proﬁt or a bumblingly inept idealist (a portrayal Friedkin reserves for the terrorist revolutionaries in the ﬁlm). So sarcastic is Friedkin that he stages a scene in which weapons are smuggled out in Red Cross containers and the arms dealer Chase is so amoral as to not care as to which side he eventually sells his arms to — such is the great American Dream of proﬁt above all. Chase’s accomplice

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(Gregory Hines) develops a moral sense of accountability although as this involves a silly decision to turn his life to Christ only to return to the arms game, it is revealed again as a cynical joke. Without any ambiguity, the overwhelming cynicism becomes obvious and tiresome, all the more disappointing in that Friedkin had proven himself a master of ambiguous moral conﬂict in previous ﬁlms. Friedkin had earlier essayed protagonists driven by obsession and even a despairing existentialism to amoral acts which reveal the loss of their ability to control their circumstances. Chase here is under the illusion that he remains in control while the ﬁlm transforms the earlier theme of fatalism into broad comedy — as if what was once pure at heart has been overwhelmed by a surrender to amorality in the name of proﬁt. Amorality is survival to Friedkin in Deal of the Century and the ﬁlm is resoundingly bleak for a comedy, no less than when Friedkin stages an “Arms for Peace” international arms show, depicting the arms bazaar beloved of terrorists as emblematic of the American Dream gone mad with cynical abandon. In a ﬁlm devoid of heroism, the only characters who approach such are the terrorists, simply because they are prepared to take a moral stand, even if paradoxically it would lead to the weaponization of those who wish to make an armed protest against the proliferation of arms spearheaded by unregulated American enterprise. Friedkin delights in these absurd ironies and it is a shame that the ﬁlm is not funnier. Despite the thin terrorist connection, the terrorist angle remains relatively unexplored except for the beginning sequences which set up the illicit arms trade. Any hope of moral reformation is undercut by the mocking ending in which the arms dealers see the error of their ways and reform, only to become smarmy used car salesmen. The arms dealer black comedy Lord of War hits these targets with far greater aplomb.

Death Before Dishonor (1986: d. Terry Leonard) A Marine leader (Fred Dryer) in the Middle East squares off against deadly, wanted terrorists after they murder an Israeli diplomat, bomb a U.S. Embassy and kidnap his superior ofﬁcer. Taking matters of foreign policy into his own hands, he goes after the Islamic terrorists to rescue the American hostage. Death Before Dishonor is a reactionary right-wing lone-avenger fantasy in which the lone U.S. hero (a Marine who won’t lie down for small countries, whatever their attitude to the USA) makes amends for such as the Beirut Embassy bombing which saw the U.S. leave Lebanon to its fate with Hezbollah and Syria. The terrorists here are impersonal brutes, their inhumanity signaled by their sparse, ruthless fanatical zeal. In contrast, the U.S. Marines are presented initially as boozing, brawling, fun-loving good guys — hence terrorist initiation rituals are paralleled to Marine initiation and drinking rituals. Filmmaker Terry Leonard (a former stunt coordinator) lacks irony and fully identiﬁes with the Marines, though his portrait is one of ugly, arrogant, unintelligent American pride. Recent ﬁlms about U.S. troops in Iraq (Three Kings, Jarhead) also seek to depict the bawdy nature of Marine culture, and this clash between anarchic soldiers and the discipline needed to carry out their duty to the American war machine (and the set-piece depicting troops engaged in drink and partying while abroad in strict Islamic countries) is one which is found in post–Vietnam War movies and which Death Before Dishonor uses to introduce the context of Middle Eastern terrorism. It’s a rare ﬁlm in that it depicts terrorist training methods in the struggle against

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Zionism, with recruits mainly impoverished young men eager to prove themselves. Signiﬁcantly, the ﬁlm shows a Western liberal media sympathetic to the terrorist cause; reporters have access to the training camp, the terrorists hoping that their articles will help politicize the struggle. Leonard considers the journalistic attention to the politics of terrorism to be a distraction from the inhumane, cowardly and abominable ethics of these people. Thus, Leonard sees the Western media as betraying the American cause by giving attention to an armed enemy that is clearly prepared to attack American foreign policy interests. Leonard sets up a ﬁctional Middle Eastern state, though modeled on the Syria-Jordan-Lebanon region, in which the American Embassy is beset by anti–American protestors with such banners as “Death to Americans.” Death Before Dishonor examines anti–American outrage only as a hostility that American foreign policy must contend with. Thus, American foreign policy and involvement in the internal affairs of the Middle East is taken unquestioningly as a U.S. right: hence, the ﬁlm ﬁnally advocates U.S. military responses to protect its involvement in the supposed self-determination of foreign nations. The right of America to be anywhere in the world is wholly accepted. The ﬁlm is full of outrage at despicable Muslims burning the American ﬂag but only brieﬂy explores the reasons for such anti–American hatred. Pride and honor are the central concepts here — U.S. pride in imperialism and honor in terms of the duty to ﬁght terror and preserve American interests, which are presumed righteous — in what is a silly, propagandistic action ﬁlm. Although there is evidence here of the U.S. selling arms to secure an allied presence in the region, protagonist Dwyer says that his duty is not to question his superiors, the ﬁlm thus sidestepping questions of American foreign policy to concentrate on those honor-bound to enforce it in the face of terrorist threats. Politicians cannot be trusted in this ﬁlm but the military — due to its code of honor distinguishing the soldier from the politician — is above reproach, and Leonard gloriﬁes the rugged Marine determined to see his country triumph. The Marine honor code is contrasted to the unorthodox terrorist means and their media supporters, who portray what the ﬁlm considers reprehensible criminals of no discernable honor code as religious warriors defending their country from foreigners. The terrorist enemy epitomizes a culture which the ﬁlm feels should clearly stand secondary to U.S. might and military authority. The terrorists are dishonorable ﬁghters who conduct war in an uncivilized manner in comparison to the Marine hero, whose natural cultural, national and political supremacy gives him the right to discipline them at will. It’s the American Way or no way at all in Death Before Dishonor, a ﬁlm which advocates ruthless force in dealing with the Middle East embassy bombing crisis set in motion by events in Lebanon facilitating the U.S. pull-out, which this ﬁlm clearly sees as political cowardice. The terrorist leader is a caricature representing all those committed to jihad against American interests. His demands for the release of American hostages are, however, familiar from many hostage scenarios within the terrorist ﬁlm subgenre: release of political prisoners in exchange for the hostages. He is aided in his agenda by the sympathetic journalist whom this ﬁlm considers a traitor to her country and representative of the liberal media (CNN) in general. Politicians are duped by this liberal journalist, the result being that innocent U.S. Marines are tortured and killed — a situation that this ﬁlm considers not only intolerable but validating violent anti-terror military responses, although the political situation is such that these must be “unofﬁcial,” the work of lone patriotic

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heroes like Dryer who refuse to let their fellow Marines be tortured and humiliated by vile religious madmen. The ﬁlm delights in scenes of Dryer humiliating the terrorists and defeating them almost single-handedly, the kind of right-wing reactionary historical revisionism also found in Rambo: First Blood Part 2’s treatment of the Vietnam War experience. What is intriguing here, however, is the subtext of a religious war and the notion of ﬁghting on God’s side. The terrorist jihad is a known cause. To counter this notion of the terrorist sanctioned by an essentially false god, Leonard takes care to stage a scene in which a captured Marine hostage kisses his cruciﬁx before dying. The evocation of Christianity in response to an Islamic terrorist cause gives this entire struggle the context of a holy war in which the American Marine hero represents the good Christian soldier. Likewise, in a theme presciently predating the post–9/11 rash of War on Terror movies, the unorthodox and cruel means of the terrorists justify similar means being used by the U.S. Marine hero — his arguable inhumanity vindicated by his association to Christian righteousness. The use of brutal means to get information from inhuman terrorist “scum” is perfectly acceptable as the un–Christian terrorists are depicted as less than human. The European terrorist with whom the journalist falls in love is secretly a pedophile, an insinuated link between terrorism and sexual perversity that recurs throughout pre–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm. Death Before Dishonor introduces the suicide bomber as a character type in the cinema of terrorism. The suicide bomber’s motivation is arguably petty: Humiliated by the U.S. during a routine interrogation, he seeks revenge by suicide bombing, in effect choosing martyrdom to prove his manhood to the emasculating Americans. By depicting suicide bombing as petty self-aggrandizement, the ﬁlm avoids discussion of the political and religious issues underpinning this then-new phenomenon and seeks to trivialize it as the acts of disgruntled, weak men. The suicide bomber ﬁgure is depicted as an insecure man desperately hoping that martyrdom will secure for him a reputation that he is too cowardly and incompetent to otherwise pursue. When confronted by this ﬁgure, Dryer (representing the honorable American) concludes that life is cheap in Islam and that the U.S. is unquestioningly morally superior to these people, who must be put in their place through decisive U.S. military action if the U.S. government only had the courage to follow through with its military presence in the region.

Death Has a Bad Reputation (1990: d. Lawrence Gordon Clark) Following the French expulsion of Soviet diplomats, KGB Intelligence seeks the help of infamous terrorist-for-hire Carlos the Jackal. An informer tells British Intelligence of the Soviet plot and planned terrorist attacks in France. After innocents die in the resulting attacks, a lone agent must track down Carlos. Death Has a Bad Reputation, a British telemovie produced in association with London Weekend Television, is based on the novel by Frederick Forsyth (whose Day of the Jackal had previously been adapted for the screen). It is yet another ﬁlm to explore the legend of Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, the international ﬁgure known as Carlos the Jackal. In the Carlos ﬁlms, the rogue terrorist represents a threat that requires the cooperation of various international police agencies and governments. Carlos here is also considered a proxy ﬁgure in the Soviet Cold War agenda, though the ﬁlm was released just as the Soviet Union was dismantling its Eastern European empire and the Cold War was

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drawing to a close. Ironically, the ﬁlm says Carlos took the alias “The Jackal” after reading Forsyth’s book. Beginning, as would The Assignment, with the notoriously brash hostage-taking of OPEC representatives, the ﬁlm suggests that the rogue terrorist was supported by the Algerian government in his actions. Indeed, the covert national support of terrorists is the context underlying Death Has a Bad Reputation: international terrorism as a means of destabilizing the West. Carlos is proud of his collection of press clippings boasting ties to Libya and Cuba as well as to the KGB. With the KGB losing its inﬂuence, its support of terrorism alone continues its anti–Western agenda, here intent on destabilizing Western Europe through seemingly random terrorism. Terrorism is the last vestige of espionage in the Cold War. Carlos is not an ideologically neutral mercenary despite being a terrorist for hire: His motivating political ideology is based on outrage over the U.S. support of Israel against the Palestinians, the subtext being that the Soviets aided the Palestinians and the Syrians in order to further the anti–American Cold War agenda and keep Israel from achieving peace. Hence, it is in the ﬁgure of Carlos the Jackal that Middle Eastern terrorism, European Cold War terrorism and the cult of personality merge, making him a recurrent point of reference in the cinema of terrorism. Death Has a Bad Reputation calls for espionage and intelligence activities to be coordinated in what it feels is potentially emerging as a new threat towards the end of the Cold War: the growth in international terrorism. Governments can only do so much and the ﬁlm champions the investigative journalist, an expert in terrorism (the terrorist expert being an infrequent character type in the terrorist ﬁlm genre, surfacing in Arlington Road and The Stone Merchant) whose reportage is a valuable aid in the battle against terrorism. At the end of the Cold War, the terrorism set in motion by the Soviet intention to destabilize Western Europe has resulted in terrorism being a serious situation requiring increasingly coordinated means of surveillance. While many post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms stressed this need for surveillance and on-the-ground espionage ﬁeld work, Death Has a Bad Reputation is one of the very few pre–9/11 terrorist movies to acknowledge the political inﬂuence and even “success” of terrorism on the political scene. Like The Assignment, Carlos here is a sexually voracious and insatiable ﬁgure. (The character is the source for the consistent alliance in the cinema of terrorism between terrorism and sexual perversity, usually reserved for Arabs.) Consequently, his KGB superior (who considers him a psychopathic runt) must ensure that the communist terror cell that Carlos inﬁltrates contains women who are willing to give themselves sexually to him in the name of the communist ideal, which Carlos himself arguably could not care less about. He is turned on by terror: the terrorist as sexual psychopath. When the ambitious Carlos plans to blow up a school, even his (female) associates begin to despise him. Finally, as epitomized by Carlos as the ﬁgure representing the birth of contemporary terrorism, terrorism itself is depicted as a means too abhorrent for traditional espionage and Carlos becomes an uncontrollable, morally objectionable functionary in the Cold War, though eventually one with signiﬁcant reach beyond that war. The ﬁlm depicts terrorism as an inhuman and immoral pursuit by individual functionaries intent on monstrously sexual self-aggrandizement. To combat it properly, a civilized society must reach beyond the conﬁnes of conventional diplomacy — a theme that presciently looks forward to the post–9/11 wave of American terrorist-themed movies. According to Death Has a Bad Reputation, the origins of contemporary terrorism lie

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in desperate KGB tactics towards the end of the Cold War in which diplomacy degenerated into a proxy terrorist war.* The motivation for all this terrorism is resentment of American foreign policy — hence the ease with which the Soviets can appeal to Islamic terror sects intent on destroying America. However, in the removal of the Cold War context, the initially state-sponsored terrorist struggle ﬁnds a momentum beyond it: The Soviets, ﬁnally outraged over the inhumanity they have set in motion, tell Carlos “the carnival is over.” Carlos, fuming that he could not blow up a preschool, deﬁes the Soviets and goes rogue, intent on monstrous terrorism solely to secure his reputation and infamy as the world’s super-terrorist. His immense ego makes him evidence of what the ﬁlm offers as a central thesis: that terrorism cannot be controlled by any authority and will seek to perpetuate itself regardless of political, religious or ideological afﬁliation. Death Has a Bad Reputation presents an intriguing solution to the Carlos problem, concluding that it is far more necessary to eradicate his myth than the man himself. After he is captured and shot dead, a media blackout ensures that his death goes unreported, lest it prove inspirational to future terrorists motivated not by cause but by the will to kill as a means of self-aggrandizement.

Death of a President (2007: d. Gabriel Range) Death of a President is a speculative political thriller set in the immediate future. It postulates through the use of archive footage and documentary realism America’s reaction to an outrageous act of political terrorism — the assassination of War on Terror President George W. Bush by a sniper at an anti-war rally. The near future here depicts an America polarized by Republican foreign and domestic policies as background for the ﬁctional investigation that follows the assassination. As hypothetical political contingency, Death of a President addresses the dominant imperative in terrorist cinema since 9/11: terrorism as crisis management. The confusion and attempt to restore order and national self-determination here echoes that of air trafﬁc ground control during the events of 9/11 as depicted in the ﬁrst post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm United 93, which also sought to use docudrama techniques as a means of authentiﬁcation. Death of a President begins with Muslim outrage and grief following the events of 9/11, balanced with the view throughout the Middle East that America had lived too safe and secure for too long and it was about time they got a taste of the terror that the Middle East lives with on a daily basis. It continues in the structure of a documentary, combining archival footage with ﬁctional interviews to create an absolutely convincing depiction of presidential security measures post–9/11, waning conﬁdence in the Bush government, Republican reaction to the North Korean nuclear crisis and the rhetoric surrounding the necessity of the use of force — the use of “force” in the War on Terror being the ethical ﬁlter through which the terrorist ﬁlm subgenre operated after 9/11 as witnessed in the rush of ﬁlms in 2007. Fahrenheit 9/11 used the documentary form for a mixture of opinion and dissent, its director Michael Moore admitting he sees a blurred line between objectivity and subjectivity in both journalism and documentary feature ﬁlm. Death of a President also blurs *Although not addressed in this ﬁlm, even the USA supported this by its ﬁnancing of the Mujahadeen in the campaign against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which, according to a suggestion in the post–9/11 terrorist movie Charlie Wilson’s War, paved the way for the Taliban and hence the erosion of American civil liberties by the War on Terror president.

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that line in what is essentially a ﬁctionalized “mockumentary,” assembled with an attention to the political context of post–9/11 America reminiscent of the genuine documentary work of Alex Gibney in Taxi to the Dark Side, also released in 2007: the year that American cinema used the taboo terrorist subgenre to contextualize the issues during the War on Terror as fought in the Bush years, with Bush himself at the time of the ﬁlm’s release increasingly referred to as a lame duck president reminiscent of Jimmy Carter after the Iran hostage crisis. The blending of fact and ﬁction and the incorporation of archival footage brings the techniques Oliver Stone brought to JFK to the terrorist ﬁlm: The investigation of the presidential assassin here alludes to the search for Lee Harvey Oswald following the shooting of President Kennedy and the packaging of the “assassin”— also themes found in the 2007 release Shooter. What Death of a President adds is the international repercussions of a Bush assassination; the interviews include those of a woman who, upon hearing of the assassination, prayed it was not by a Muslim. This woman felt that 9/11 was a betrayal of Islam; however, she is also aware of the sudden disappearance of terror suspects, sent to CIA interrogation centers outside the reach of the U.S. Constitution — an ethical dilemma explored in Rendition and Taxi to the Dark Side. In an evocation of a new term to enter the cinema of terrorism in this ﬁlm, “racial proﬁling,” Islamic names investigated ﬁrst lead to the arrest of a Middle Eastern man, simply because he was seen there by one of the many security cameras that dot the American urban landscape: the innocent terror suspect being subject to torture being dramatized in Rendition and Civic Duty and the subject of the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. Being an American with Middle Eastern ties is a difﬁcult predicament, a subject acknowledged in the pre–9/11 The Siege. Nevertheless, the prime suspect’s Syrian nationality puts Syria under greater U.S. scrutiny, to the point where they must enter into political statements. Interestingly, Death of a President evokes the heavily religious overtones to the War on Terror, the view that Bush was a president on God’s side: ironically a justiﬁcation claimed by Islamic terrorists, which this ﬁlm acknowledges in a clever match cut. The imperative to prove a terrorist connection impels interrogation procedure, an ethical dilemma the ﬁlm contrasts to the tragedy faced by U.S. troops in Iraq, knowing they are not wanted and in constant danger of roadside bombing. The humanity of the American soldier is tellingly portrayed here in one former Gulf War veteran’s view that it is not worth dying for an immoral cause. Implications of Gulf War veteran resentment of Bush and his War on Terror cause as a factor in peace movement protest and domestic terrorism is also evoked here — ideas of patriotism beloved of the American Right in an era deﬁned by the Patriot Act. Death of a President contextualizes Bush’s hypothetical assassination in relation to the anti-war protest movement that felt the Bush administration’s war policies were violating human rights — indeed a subtext throughout the 2007 releases and the impetus behind the revision of the terrorist genre from escapism to socio-political criticism respective to the compromise to civil liberties in the wake of the Patriot Act. (The ruthless amorality of the CIA Terror Warrior justiﬁed by the Patriot Act would saturate Body of Lies in 2008.) But in Death of a President, there is a new term to contend with for the ﬁrst time in the cinema of terrorism: “enemy combatant.” Hence, a terrorist suspect (who is innocent) is detained without being read his rights and is told to cooperate or be

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declared an enemy combatant and therefore lose all entitlement to civil rights; and even habeus corpus — as examined in the analysis of the Guantanamo Bay treatment of such enemy combatants in The Road to Guantanamo. Other presidential assassination ﬁlms in 2007 were Vantage Point and Shooter and it seems that terror directed at the president is fast becoming a set-piece of post–9/11 terrorist cinema, whereas pre–9/11 the prime example was Air Force One. Of these, Death of a President is a relevant portrait of the Bush years and indeed how Bush may be remembered in the lead-up to the Oliver Stone biopic on George W. Bush, W. It was acclaimed in the popular press as being devoid of an agenda in its reﬂection on the Bush presidency. In that, much of Death of a President treats the Bush era with a distinctly retrospective distance, hence the framing mockumentary footage surrounding the tense excitement of the speculative plot. Fear of terrorism, human rights compromise and cultural sensitivity post–9/11 inform Death of a President most of all the 2007 terrorist ﬁlm releases, and its subtle suggestion of Bush’s legacy of patriotism is one of humanist irony.

The Delivery (1998: d. Roel Reine) When a young couple’s business collapses, they are recruited and paid to smuggle 25 million worth of ecstasy pills from Amsterdam to Barcelona. Two men go while one’s wife stays behind as hostage-security guarantee. They meet a mysterious woman and are soon trailed by Interpol and a terrorist organization to which the woman once belonged. A pursuit thriller in the manner of Run Lola Run and The Transporter, The Delivery is a ﬁlm primarily aimed at the dance-rave-trance young adult culture — a heavily Americanized Euro-thriller allusive to such ﬁlms as Go and even Pulp Fiction. Its characters take to criminal action out of ﬁnancial desperation and the terrorist connection is tenuous: The mysterious femme fatale has betrayed the terrorist organization, an anti–European Uniﬁcation group and the modern-day legacy of such as the Baader-Meinhoff cell. Interpol is involved less for the ecstasy than the terrorist connection, hoping to trace their whereabouts. Tellingly, attention is given to the protagonist’s moral reformation in turning away from her terrorist afﬁliations. It is revealed that she joined the group when it was an Internet political protest group but rejected it when it escalated into letter bombs and political assassinations. The ﬁlm is primarily a road movie about friendships and loyalties and the terrorist plot is the backdrop for a protracted pursuit scenario as the terrorist leader thinks the protagonists have a detonator he needs for a planned bomb attack. The terrorist cell is depicted as a well-armed group who have reached the point where they seek terrorist action to back up their political rhetoric. From frustration and anger they have made the decision to adopt violence and anyone who disagrees is a danger to their operation and not a true, devout ﬁghter for the cause. Ironically, the drug dealers become embroiled and must band together to stop the greater evil — terrorism. The elevation of drug smugglers and drug dealers to heroes was a problematic plot point for some although is fully in keeping with the mores of the rave culture target audience. The ﬁlm suggests that criminality is relative: The terrorist ﬁgure is absolutely immoral, so much so that terrorism provokes a moral response from those the law considers to be amoral criminals and drug dealers. Signiﬁcantly for this target audience, the terrorist leader lives a hedonistic existence of pornography and nightclubs but has gone beyond all standards of moral accountability even in an illegal nightclub

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scene. Terrorism, sexual perversity and anarchy are here intertwined as the terrorist leader is a libertine. Correspondingly, The Delivery emerges as a thriller about people on the threshold of moral abandon, becoming increasingly critical of the rave culture as it proceeds, paralleling and yet distinctly separating the terrorist and the drug dealer as the two forces contributing to the European cultural decline. They are separated only by the distinction between immorality and amorality, a subtle distinction but one this ﬁlm holds valid in a culture so heavily sexualized as presented here. Finally, as the drug dealer is revealed to be a torturer, he seems little better than the terrorist but without even a political agenda and the ﬁlm’s initial alliances are systematically eroded. However, the ending, which sees the protagonists escape with the ecstasy haul, comes down clearly on the side of amorality.

The Delta Force (1986: d. Menahem Golan) An elite anti-terror unit (headed by Lee Marvin and Chuck Norris) responds to the hijacking of an airplane by Islamic radicals and the taking of Israeli hostages by inﬁltrating Beirut. Beginning with an evocation of the Iran hostage crisis, the ﬁlm is director Golan’s return to the subject of terrorism after depicting the Israeli counterterror operation against Idi Amin in Operation Thunderbolt. However, Golan’s position here is reactionary and jingoistic in the manner of the American B-movies usually associated with star Norris, trying with difﬁculty to reconcile his martial arts ethos with the topic of Hezbollah-inspired terrorism and hijacking emerging from Lebanon in the wake of the U.S. pull-out following the Embassy suicide bombing, themes also addressed in the earlier Death Before Dishonor. Golan seeks to reveal the risks posed to Israelis who travel abroad: The hijackers take all airplane passenger passports and select those with Israeli citizenship or Jewish names; the German stewardess refuses to cooperate; even under pressure. In this scene, the Islamic hatred of the Jews is insinuated as akin to the Nazi persecution and thus politically unfounded race hatred. For Golan, the terrorists are no better than Nazis, the suggestion being that Islamic terrorism is merely the latest in the persecution historically greeting the Jewish people. The passengers are proﬁled in the manner of 1970s airline disaster movies but the ﬁlm sets up its terrorist enemy as a new breed of revolutionary Islam that has declared war on both Israel and America. Golan uses this premise to suggest that America is tied to Israel in facing a common enemy whose ruthless tactics can be stopped only by Special Forces counterterror operations, i.e., by the might of the American military ethos, with Marvin leading a crack team of experts far removed from the criminals and rapists he led in The Dirty Dozen. Despite the simplistic formula there are telling asides. For instance, an Islamic hijacker is kind to a pregnant woman and the hijackers do not get the ofﬁcial reception they expected from the Lebanese though they smuggle the hostages into Hezbollah-held territory, making the ﬁlm a kind of exercise in Israeli paranoia as much as an American wish-fulﬁllment fantasy about defeating the Islamic terror threat in Beirut in the same way that Sylvester Stallone redressed the imbalances of the Vietnam War in the reactionary revisionism of Rambo: First Blood Part 2, the ﬁlm which perhaps typiﬁes Reaganera views of foreign policy and American global authority. The Delta Force raises the question of how best to deal with terrorists — through negotiation or force — concluding

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that force alone is necessary as civilized men cannot reason with the forces of terror. In that a Christian comes to the aid of the Jews, the ﬁlm stresses a Judeo-Christian alliance against the speciﬁcally Muslim terrorist enemy in what is a subtextual clash of religions, the Muslim terrorists convinced that God is on their side. The Delta Force does not concern itself with the foreign policy implications and justiﬁcations for U.S. counterterror actions in the Middle East. Instead, it emerges as a minor action ﬁlm which always promises to deliver more than it does. Inspired by the real-life June 1985 hijacking of a TWA airplane and the ensuing hostage drama, the ﬁlm struck a resonant and timely note when released and quickly became star Chuck Norris’ most successful movie, even though his role in it was subdued in favor of the surrounding context of terror and counterterrorism. Despite giving the impression of being a B action movie writ large, The Delta Force is distinguished by a superb performance by Robert Forster as the Islamic terrorist: his terrible conviction lending the character an awe-full humanity.

Delta Force 3 (1990: d. Sam Firstenberg) After detouring to tackle the war on drugs in Delta Force 2, the Special Forces team are back battling terrorist fanatics who plant a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city, seeking to hold the nation hostage if their demands are not met. Out of political options, the president sends in the title unit, this time securing the support of the Russians in a joint combined superpower response to a terrorist threat. The ﬁlm begins with a female suicide bomber preparing and cleansing herself according to precise religious ritual — a behavior pattern addressed later in The Siege. Unusually though, the suicide bomber is in Moscow, targeting an international “friendship league” that seeks peace in the Middle East. Director Firstenberg clearly suggests that radical terror is the greatest threat to the peace process and that the Islamic enemy will do anything it can to derail peace negotiations, here resorting to nuclear terrorism in order to secure the removal of all U.S. troops and inﬂuence from Arab lands. Like the ﬁrst Delta Force, the terrorist threat to U.S. interests and global peace emerges from Lebanon’s Hezbollah-controlled regions, which the ﬁlm shows in street scenes that reveal the posters of suicide bombers adorning the walls, suggesting a perverse Islamic culture that idolizes suicidal martyrdom. The terrorist cell network is such that the Lebanon base has outreach in the domestic U.S., the bomb assembled there. Delta Force 3 is prescient in its overt suggestion that in the demise of the Cold War, the Americans and the Russians must combine forces to defeat a new threat to world security — Islamic terrorism, emboldened by the U.S. pull-out of Lebanon following the embassy suicide bombing, a theme also present in Death Before Dishonor. Ironically, the terrorists consider themselves moral people ﬁghting for a just cause — the end of Western imperialist control of Arab territories, one of the motivations behind the later formation of Al Qaeda. In a nod to Delta Force 2, the terrorists are tied to the drug trade, using it to support and ﬁnance their operations. (The link between terrorism and criminality would dominate 1990s terrorist ﬁlms following the success of Die Hard.) The terrorist leader, stockpiling weapons in a desert training camp, has a Messianic complex: As a divine emissary of Allah he intends a wave of suicide bombings, an ambition also affecting the revolutionary in Wrong Is Right. Once again the Islamic terrorist leader is also depicted as sexually malevolent, even perverse in his manipulation of women, a device held in

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contrast to the Soviet female agent on the counterterrorist team, evoking questions of power and gender differences between Islamic and Western-European cultures. The torture of the terrorist leader through brutal interrogation procedures in possible violation of human rights is depicted as an absolute necessity in obtaining the information and intelligence needed to prevent a terror attack on American soil. This “smoking gun” interrogation imperative would dominate the foreign policy imperatives of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the War on Terror a decade later, after 9/11. The ﬁlm considers the terrorist leader’s prime vice to be pride: Full of his own bloated self-importance as an adversarial nemesis in a new war, he says that he will speak only to the president, obviously considering himself of equal status in this conﬂict. Tracking down terrorists already in the USA thus becomes the priority — tracing them through passports. On this note, the ﬁlm is again surprisingly prescient, depicting a terrorist at a televised debate on the immigration inﬂux into America, the subtext being that tighter controls are necessary on those entering the country from the Middle East. After 9/11 this would dominate the Ofﬁce of Homeland Security’s inﬂuence over immigration and airline security, resulting in a much-debated form of “racial proﬁling.” Just as Soviet–U.S. cooperation saves the world from terrorism, so the terrorist is ﬁnally revealed as a coward whose ideology of suicidal martyrdom hypocritically crumbles when his own life is threatened.

Demolition Man (1993: d. Marco Brambilla) In a peaceful future Los Angeles circa 2032, criminals are reprogrammed and frozen in cryogenic prisons. All aggression has been virtually eliminated from society. Thus, the police are wholly unprepared when a 20th century master criminal (Wesley Snipes) is thawed out and wreaks havoc. In desperation, the government thaws out a former police ofﬁcer (Sylvester Stallone) framed as a criminal by Snipes. A contemporary prologue shows Snipes hijacking a bus because it was intruding on his sovereign gang territory. The chaos and violent disharmony of late 20th century life is, however, preferable to these ﬁlmmakers than the peacefully anodyne future in which the acts of violence perpetrated by a revolutionary organization whom the government consider terrorists are seen as heroic returns of the anarchic spirit of American individual freedom. Thus, grafﬁti vandalism is referred to by the new American leader as “radical terrorist behavior,” the ﬁlm obfuscating distinctions between political ideology and criminal civil disobedience. This nihilistic perspective is submerged in large-scale action scenes and moments of ironic humor in which future police ofﬁcer Sandra Bullock desperately wishes that something exciting would happen to brighten up her day. Terrorism and violence prove to be just the sexual ﬁx she needs. Perhaps distantly evocative of the thesis in such as A Clockwork Orange, violence here is considered the price of human free will, the exercise of which cannot be controlled by government decree. The terrorists of the future are rebels, the disobedient anarchists and violent criminality associated with the 20th century. Naturally, villain Snipes goes after the terrorists to ﬁnd recruits for his planned new criminal gang enterprise. With the terrorists dressed in fanciful costumes and dismissed as “scraps” by the authority, the ﬁlm downplays the ideological threat posed by the terror group. With some humor about future sexual practices where the exchange of bodily ﬂuids has been outlawed in the belief that to eliminate violence one must eliminate sex, Demolition Man also suggests that vio-

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lence and sex are symbiotic presences in American popular culture and necessary to sustain an American ideal of individual freedom. Once the plot reveals that Snipes has been engineered as a kind of super-terrorist to inﬁltrate and draw out the revolutionary movement, the ﬁlm suggests that the government is willing to create a terrorist in order to ﬁght terrorism, an intriguing suggestion which, of course, backﬁres. Only the rebel leader maintains a revolutionary ideal of freedom in the face of government oppression and it is in his characterization that once again the lines between revolution, guerrilla war and terrorism are blurred in the struggle against a peace which is nonetheless fascistic in its societal control. However, even if violence and chaos are preferable to sterility and stagnation, such violence consumes everything in its path. Still, for director Brambilla, it is an essential ingredient in true American freedom and the violent spectacles in this ﬁlm are riddled with celebratory energy and stylization, the dominant subtext being the justiﬁcation for violence in society (and art).

The Detonator (2006: d. Po Chih Leong) Wesley Snipes brings attitude rather than conviction to the role of an arrogant and self-righteous U.S. Homeland Security agent protecting a woman who has absconded with stolen monies from an international arms dealer who had planned to purchase a nuclear weapon for detonation on U.S. soil. The Detonator is a routine terrorist-themed thriller by UK–born Chinese ﬁlmmaker Leong, who took to examining populist American culture with his reﬂective serial killer ﬁlm The Wisdom of Crocodiles. As evident in such ﬁlms as The Peacemaker, the prospect of detonating a nuclear device on U.S. soil predates 9/11 and the deployment of the premise in The Detonator, one of the ﬁrst post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms, follows generic precedent with accomplished indifference. Fears of the proliferation of loose nukes in the demise of the Cold War inform The Detonator, which explores the equation between arms dealer and terrorism that was taking shape in the genre pre–9/11 but halted until Nicolas Cage essayed an international arms dealer in Lord of War. In that respect, the immorality of the arms dealer parallels that in the terrorist genre usually accorded the mercenary ﬁgure: an amoral enabler of terrorism. The Detonator contextualizes fears of bio-chemical terrorism into another in the lone patriarch series of action movies so beloved by American audiences since director John McTiernan transformed terrorism into alluring criminality in Die Hard. Indeed, Die Hard 4.0 was in production when The Detonator screened, the two of them (along with another Wesley Snipes vehicle, The Marksman) restoring to the terrorist subgenre a faith in the appeal of terrorism with enough distance from the relevance of 9/11 as a suitable prospect once again for escapist entertainment. Although it is efﬁcient as entertainment, it adds nothing to the terrorist subgenre and serves only to polish and contemporize it with renewed, but formulaic, vigor.

The Devil’s Own (1997: d. Alan J. Pakula) In The Devil’s Own, director Pakula looks at the Irish “troubles” and their impact upon the USA (themes also addressed in The Outsider and Patriot Games) at the level of feud, deception and resentment. The ﬁlm begins in Northern Ireland in 1972; an idyllic father-son setting is shattered when the father is killed by a masked gunman. The son

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grows up an IRA terrorist (Brad Pitt) obsessed with the loss of his father and journeying to America to continue his terrorist agenda. There he befriends an elderly man and father substitute (Harrison Ford) who accepts the Irish youth into his family. Life in Belfast is depicted as a non-stop succession of IRA–inspired terrorist actions in which the gunman is a mythic ﬁgure. Pitt is a lone operative, less representative of the IRA ideology than determined to pursue his own agenda in a world in which, to the British, “peace” means only an IRA surrender. America’s ofﬁcial lack of interest in these “troubles,” despite conspiratorial forces at work in government circles (as there often is in Pakula ﬁlms), ensures that Pitt can obtain false documents and entry into the USA with surprising ease. For Pakula, political will comprises people willing to use the means of terrorism (such as political assassination in The Parallax View) to further their cause. However, Pakula’s interest in The Devil’s Own is patriarchal authority and the right of chastisement. Pitt ingratiates himself into Ford’s welcoming family but when Ford ﬁnds out the truth, Pitt must effectively be chastised by what Ford here symbolizes — the great American father, the traditional hero in 1990s terrorist thrillers culminating in the lone father of Collateral Damage, the ﬁnal terrorist ﬁlm made before (but released after) 9/11. The American patriarch as responsible for world peace following the end of the Cold War is the issue again here. Pakula addresses the ease with which the terrorist Pitt can assimilate into American popular culture and embrace family values. The enigma of the IRA terrorist here is that he can relate to the American family just as he plans to buy missiles from crooked arms dealers and smuggle them back into his homeland. In that, the ﬁlm is reminiscent of terrorist genre works which repeatedly attempt to frame Irish terrorism speciﬁcally in terms of family cost (In the Name of the Father). By contrast, the Islamic terrorist as a character is totally incapable of relating to any kind of Western “decency” and is in contrast a monstrous and unknowable ﬁgure, although this stereotype was beginning to be reassessed in such as The Siege. The idea that a radical movement would hire a hostile youth for acts of political terror recalls Pakula’s The Parallax View. In The Devil’s Own, Pitt has gone through a process of ideological disciplining that enables his survival; in The Parallax View, the youthful assassin is a dispensable tool. The prolonged test to moral rectitude and dedication is a recurrent Pakula theme, tied into notions of the repercussions for actions taken in pursuit of greater self-righteousness or a cause. Abhorrent actions can here be easily justiﬁed through a combined appeal to ideological conviction and self-aggrandizement as self-empowerment, again themes central to the terrorist ﬁlm genre. Pakula’s characters deﬁne themselves through repeated action more so than words or confession. The bond between Ford and Pitt is such that Pakula injects a hope of reconciliation and redemption — that the benign authority of the American father will reform the wayward youth, a theme Pakula explored in Orphans. Hence, the unscrupulous character in The Devil’s Own is not the terrorist but the arms dealer whose criminal actions enable the terrorism to occur. Such portraits of arms dealers as amoral terrorist-enablers recurred throughout 1990s cinema, culminating in the 2005 release Lord of War. Ultimately, wounded pride more so than political ideology impel Pitt towards his planned acts of terror and Ford refuses to cooperate with British forces, believing that they intend to kill Pitt whereas he still hopes to redeem him, ﬁnally comforting him as he lies dying. The Devil’s Own was subject to much controversy when released. The ﬁlm’s press

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notes included a nine-page essay “About the Conﬂict in Northern Ireland” but it was accused of being one-sided in favor of the IRA and never exploring the real issues underlying the Irish “troubles” whatever the press kit said. On the ﬁlm’s release, Brad Pitt disowned it, calling it “the most irresponsible ﬁlmmaking — if you can call it ﬁlmmaking — that I’ve ever seen.” It was also a troubled shoot, subject to endless script revisions, rumors of reshot endings and ego-driven arguments between the principals. It proved to be Pakula’s ﬁnal ﬁlm as director.

DF One: The Lost Patrol (1999: d. Joseph Zito) With the telling tagline “Peace has its price,” DF One: The Lost Patrol concerns an arms dealer who proﬁts from national conﬂicts and rivalries, selling stolen nuclear weapons and other non-conventional arms. International peacekeeping forces must track him down in his private terror camp from which he threatens to launch a nuclear weapon in order to redistribute the global power balance away from the USA. This ﬁlm was an attempt by Golan-Globus’ Cannon Films to launch a franchise to repackage its Delta Force movies, popular during the 1980s. It is noteworthy in that it makes no distinction between the arms dealer and the terrorist, a distinction that many terrorist ﬁlms cling to and which indeed saturates depictions of this character type up to and including the 2005 hit Lord of War. In that, DF One: The Lost Patrol is the summation of the trend to depict the post–Cold War arms dealer as a major destabilizing force in global security, primarily because of his association with an incipient terrorist threat to the USA. Interestingly, the ﬁlm’s premise suggests that nuclearized Islamic countries, speculatively Iraq and Iran, are more likely to use such weapons on each other than target the USA. Hence, the idea put forward by this ﬁlm is of a self-destructive Middle East which will consume itself if not properly checked by UN security measures. Typical of director Zito, however, is a sheer relish for sudden brutality, cynically bleak in that suffering is usually in vain. Zito’s earliest works were violently nihilistic, but when he turned to action ﬁlms with the Dolph Lundgren vehicle Red Scorpion, his ﬁlms began to examine the moral repercussions of the violence he gleefully and simultaneously indulged. The desert setting and its Jeep excursions suggests the iconography of World War II “desert rat” movies and even U.S. westerns, which Prisoner in the Middle had appropriated to frame the Arab-Israeli crisis. The terrorists here are paralleled to Native American Indians, themselves allied to guerrilla ﬁghters since Ulzana’s Raid. DF One: The Lost Patrol reveals a disenchantment with the Middle East, believing that it will inevitably destroy itself despite the united Arab hostility against the USA. Smaller governments are at the mercy of the terrorist arms dealer who can supply what they need to arm themselves, as armament is akin to empowerment. Cynically, governments cannot sanction illegal nuclear arms deals but will utilize rogue agencies to acquire such weapons; foreign policy hypocrisy thus underlies this ﬁlm. In contrast to the traditionally held view of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction, Zito believes that the Middle East will readily use nuclear weapons offensively and that deterrence is an irrelevant concept in this unstable region. Hence, the Middle East is a danger to itself and in desperate need of international peacekeeping intervention to prevent its obliteration. In contrast to the mythos of the suicide bomber, this ﬁlm acknowledges the self-sacriﬁcial contribution of pro-Western Arabs. A minor ﬁlm, DF One: The Lost Patrol is intriguing evidence of Zito’s gradual

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embrace of humanist ideals within a nihilistic action movie context, making him one of Cannon’s most distinctive regular directors.

Die Hard (1988: d. John McTiernan) A displaced New York policeman (Bruce Willis) arrives in Los Angeles to attend a business party for his estranged wife. He goes to the Nakatomi Tower only to ﬁnd himself alone against a terrorist group that has occupied the building and taken people hostage as they prepare to rob it. The FBI are called in to manage a terrorist emergency but the terrorists have counted on that. Willis intends to upset their plans. Die Hard is the ﬁlm that made a box-ofﬁce star out of Willis, previously known for his work on the TV series Moonlighting. With a large number of secondary characters, the ﬁlm combines the action movie with the caper ﬁlm for a trend-setting blockbuster; it proved enormously successful, spawning three sequels of diminishing interest. It sets up a context of corporate American success — the Tower is being built to support Japanese–U.S. investment opportunities and the subsequent terrorist incident can be seen as a muddled metaphor on the process of economic takeover. However, what is important about Die Hard in the cinema of terrorism is its redeﬁnition of “terrorist.” The terrorists’ demands are familiar — freedom for all freedom ﬁghters — but are merely a cover for a criminal enterprise, the terrorist leader (Alan Rickman in charming form) claiming that he is an “exceptional thief.” Their criminal success depends upon the FBI playing the seeming terrorist incident by the book, deploying protocol the terrorist-thieves know in advance. Terrorism segues into a criminal enterprise — terror for proﬁt rather than ideology, a trend that would continue throughout the 1990s cinema of terrorism. The fact that these terrorist-criminals are thwarted by the lone American hero positions the ﬁlm squarely in the American cowboy tradition, which the ﬁlm self-reﬂectively puns on when Willis remarks in an audience-pleasing line, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” directed at the terrorist leader who has accused him of watching too many cowboy movies, evidence only of a bankrupt American culture. Hence, American genre cinema’s replenishment seems the agenda here, contemporizing tradition and making Willis an action hero to rank alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. The idea of there being set rules of conduct in a terrorist incident is cleverly used in inventive plot developments and the FBI anti-terror ofﬁcers are seen as arrogant caricatures in comparison to the terrorists. But while director McTiernan mocks the American gung-ho attitude of these FBI ofﬁcers (one of whom says he hasn’t had this much fun since ‘Nam), he celebrates Willis’ deterministic survivalism and triumph over adversity. Rickman’s well-educated villain is a commanding presence, a proud man showing all the reﬁnements of class. Signiﬁcantly, he is European (German); traditionally, European terrorist ﬁgures have been more cultured, suave and even sophisticated than their Islamic counterparts who are seen as barbarous perverts and religious madmen. Despite his villainy, the concept of the reﬁned, well-bred criminal would interest McTiernan, who would remake The Thomas Crown Affair with James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan as a rich art thief. Explosions and ﬁre in a skyscraper recalls The Towering Inferno and has unintentional relevance when seen in a post–9/11 context. The theme of terrorism as a cover would be used not only in the Die Hard sequels, but in Sudden Death. With Die Hard following after his hit Predator, McTiernan was elevated to the Hollywood A-list. Signiﬁcantly, the original script for Die Hard was about a terrorist incident, but McTier-

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nan felt that terrorism was too serious a subject for popular entertainment and so had the script changed to its current criminal enterprise plot, remarking, “I never found terrorism entertaining but a good robbery is fun, whether it be bad guys or the good guys, people love to watch a good caper” (Emery, pp. 180–82).

Die Hard 2 (1990: d. Renny Harlin) Sequel expert Renny Harlin directed this ﬁlm, which sees Bruce Willis battle a rogue military outﬁt that has seized control of an airport in a plan to free a South American drug lord being ﬂown in by special plane. Willis crawls his way through the tunnels beneath the airport in an effort to thwart the terrorist plan to crash an airliner. Once again the villains here have vague motives, more ﬁnancial than ideological, although in crashing a ﬂight they deploy the means of terrorism. Harlin, like McTiernan before him, ensures that the means of terrorism are separated from any political ideology (though the villain says dismissively that America must feel the repercussions from its foreign policy) and instead are a highly organized criminal enterprise — further setting the trend for many terrorist-themed ﬁlms throughout the 1990s until the events of 9/11 brought a hiatus to the genre. The terrorist-criminal villain here is obsessed with physical discipline though motivated purely by greed. His loyalty to the South American leader is not ideological but ﬁnancial, the imperative to proﬁt reﬂecting the inﬂux of materialism into American ﬁlm following the Reagan-era 1980s. Mastery is power for the villain here. Recalling the humor of the original, Die Hard 2 takes a shrill note, however, when the crashing of a passenger jet is treated as merely a large-scale action set-piece without regard for the human toll of such an incident. This disregard for the human cost of terrorism reﬂects Harlin’s take on American genre cinema more so than McTiernan. Die Hard 2 reveals a slightly cynical and paranoid vision of modern America in nearchaotic disarray but like many ﬁlms which reﬂect on this theme — including Demolition Man— sees violence and anarchy as necessary and invigorating, at least as popular entertainment. The terrorist villain, though greedy, is also motivated by a sense of wronged pride. He is a former colonel stripped of his rank by Congress and now seeking revenge alongside proﬁt, his killing of innocents an attempt to prove himself, a motivation which echoes that of Bruce Dern in Black Sunday planning a terrorist act so the world can remember him. Echoing McTiernan’s referencing to The Towering Inferno, Harlin here reveals a 1970s disaster movie concern for people struggling, often futilely, in hostile and threatening environments. (Die Hard 2 ushered in a revival of airline-themed disaster movies in the 1990s — including Passenger 57, Turbulence, Executive Decision and ConAir.) The theme of the often futile but wholly necessary struggle against purposeless oppression seems to interest Harlin over and above his work in this ﬁlm.

Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995: d. John McTiernan) Original Die Hard director John McTiernan returns for this sequel, the second. Here, Bruce Willis is teamed with Samuel L. Jackson to stop a criminal ( Jeremy Irons) from robbing a gold reserve under the cover of a series of school bombings, which he warns authorities about in advance to keep them busy as he and his associates go after the gold. Beginning with what seems like a random terrorist bombing in New York, as would begin The Siege, Die Hard: With a Vengeance becomes an exciting action ﬁlm in which

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once again terrorism is a cover for criminal enterprise, with Irons’ villain being the brother of the ﬁrst ﬁlm’s terrorist-criminal played by Alan Rickman. Unfolding as one-upsmanship between Willis and Irons, the ﬁlm takes as its premise the personal agenda behind the use of force and terror tactics and is here divorced from all ideology. With much humor the ﬁlm utilizes the same black-white teaming as the successful Lethal Weapon ﬁlms. More concerned with realistic street ambience than the secluded tower setting of the ﬁrst ﬁlm, the ﬁlm follows on from Harlin’s Die Hard 2 in its rather cynical acknowledgment that large-scale terrorist-like destruction has become something of a spectator sport. This undercurrent would dominate the cinema of terrorism until 9/11 upon which such setpieces were no longer thought appropriate in American genre ﬁlmmaking for a few years. The ﬁlm examines the threat to America posed by freelance terrorists and mercenaries willing to sell their talents to the highest bidder: terrorism for personal proﬁt. There is again a hint of ideology in the terrorist’s stated intention to redistribute American wealth throughout the world, speciﬁcally the Middle East. The raised and then dropped suggestion that Islamic terrorist forces would recruit criminal mercenaries to end U.S. global economic dominance by striking at Wall Street anticipates post–9/11 fears. The bombings and disposal plot here also ties into such successful hits as Speed and Blown Away. Die Hard: With a Vengeance was released shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing incident and in interviews star Willis requested not to be asked about comparisons between the terrorism in the movie and in real life so as not to cheapen the real incident by talking about it in relation to summer popcorn movie entertainment, indicating the escapist nature of the cinema of terrorism in the 1990s.

Die Hard 4.0 (2007: d. Len Wiseman) In this belated sequel, Bruce Willis is teamed with a young man in order to prevent a cyber-terrorist attack on America’s communications and ﬁnancial computer networks. Replete with elaborate stunts, Die Hard 4.0 emerges as a tired and formulaic variation on familiar material, evocative of cyber-terrorist fears of a virus that detonates explosions. The alternate title Live Free or Die Hard suggests the ﬁlm was intended as an examination of America’s need to take severe measures against terrorism in the War on Terror, i.e., what it means to live free in America. Oblique references to the War on Terror contemporize the material, and the cyber-terror plot to reduce the USA to an anarchic mess has perhaps an ideological basis the prior three ﬁlms lacked. Signiﬁcantly, all ideological matters are wholly secondary as the point here is that preparedness is the dominant concern of post–9/11 America. The terrorist (Timothy Olyphant) toys with the U.S. for the sake of it, simply because he can, his real motivations almost irrelevant in light of the destruction he can cause, evoking the obliteration even of the White House. Die Hard 4.0 is the most reactionary right-wing ﬁlm of the franchise. Willis’s partner here is a teen revolutionary who once thought the “ﬁre-sale” aspect of cyber-terrorism was an admirable goal but is shown the error of his ways by Willis. Just as Willis acts as a substitute father, setting the wayward son straight about the need to ﬁght terrorism and conserve American institutions, he has a daughter of his own. The intrigue framing Willis as a father elevates him to the important status of patriarch whose life is affected by terrorism, a theme in much pre–9/11 terrorist cinema culminating in Collateral Damage. The wayward youth brought in line with the authoritarian, Republican impetus to ﬁght terror is the agenda here, making this ﬁlm a thinly disguised slice of conservative

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propaganda in vast difference to the wave of terrorist movies in 2007–08 that succeeded this ﬁlm’s release. Family values in the War on Terror provide the semblance of a subtext in this elaborately stunted but un-involving and dreary actioner in which the great American father rescues his daughter from the clutches of terrorists who intend to rob her (and the nation) of her right to self-determination. There is little hint of the world beyond America except in references to an anthrax incident forcing the evacuation of government buildings, a note intended purely to contemporize the franchise in a post–9/11 setting of constant terror threats but otherwise a throwaway reference. The actual politics of the War on Terror are irrelevant in this inane movie in which the prime danger of terrorism is the threat to American economic security — hence, mention is made of a post–9/11 precaution that electronically downloads Wall Street ﬁnancial records in the event of a terrorist attack simply to preserve American wealth, which this ﬁlm considers synonymous with the American way of life (and hence the American Dream). The terrorist leader is again a criminal, hoping not just to destroy the U.S. economy but to take it for himself. Terrorism is thus aberrational criminal greed — the central thesis of the Die Hard ﬁlms and never more escapist than in this supposedly relevant post–9/11 context. Terrorism may be safe for escapist cinema entertainment again but Die Hard 4.0 avoids anything of genuine relevance to the post–9/11 world despite playing with its fears of the relationship between terrorism and economic uncertainty. However, the future of American wealth is in good father Willis’ counterterrorist cowboy hands — yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker! Indeed, the terrorist is a disgruntled former federal employee who advocated tighter security of vulnerable systems in the War on Terror but was discredited and cast out. As in Black Sunday and Die Hard 2, terrorism is also a form of vengeful self-empowerment with Willis as the forceful Republican everyman combating terrorism. Signiﬁcantly, when Willis needs a terrorist suspect to inform, he says, “You’re going to tell me what I want to know or I’m going to beat you to death in your own house,” a throwaway one-liner gag which endorses torture and in so doing embraces unquestioningly the equation between the ethics of torture and the War on Terror that makes a mockery of American Constitutional ideology in Rendition and the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side.

Diplomatic Siege (1999: d. Gustave Graef-Marino) A secret nuclear weapon has been hidden in the U.S. embassy in Bucharest, Romania, since the Cold War. Professionals have been sent to disable it, ﬁnding instead that it has been seized by a terrorist group, the Serbian Liberation Front, in a hostage-taking incident. The two Americans there must ﬁnd and defuse the bomb in this variation on the lone building scenario of the original Die Hard. The terrorists in Diplomatic Siege are Serbs protesting the UN–sponsored war crimes trials. The U.S. embassy is seen as the last bastion of U.S. political imperialism in Europe at the end of the Cold War, the protagonists thus having to dismantle the apparatus of an old war which threatens to fall into the hands of those ﬁghting new wars through terrorism. Terrorism is depicted as the main force standing in the way of the smooth transition to the New World Order promised by Bush Sr. The embassy hijacking and hostage drama is staged as a direct challenge to U.S. imperialism, the ruthless terrorists prepared to kill women and children indiscriminately as they abduct the ambassador and force him

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to read their demands. The terrorists claim that the fate of the hostages is now not in their hands but in America’s, a displacement of responsibility for the hostage-taking. Pentagon special forces operations planning is intercut with the embassy siege situation in plans which this ﬁlm suggest not even the U.S. president is fully informed of. The view of a rogue military intelligence community operating independently of any political accountability is, however, an intriguing notion of the means of maintaining authority independently of presidential ofﬁce. However, in the ﬁlm’s resolution, with father Peter Weller debating whether to save his son or defuse a bomb, is found only a conventional assessment of responsibility between the personal and the national, a condition affecting many lone father ﬁgures in the cinema of terrorism in ﬁlms immediately prior to 9/11. Ironically, the terrorist incident is a national embarrassment which forces the rogue military to disclose their secret dealings and past nuclear agenda, the consequences of which (loose nukes) now fall to the president to deal with. The counterterrorist leader is a Gulf War veteran, effectively suggesting that the Gulf War and the growth of world terrorism are somehow related though never developing this association into a theme. Ironically again, the terrorist leader is revealed to have been trained by U.S. forces. Whatever the allusions here, blaming the USA for the death of hostages enables the terrorist cum murderer to achieve a moral displacement from his homicidal acts. In a subplot concerning a terrorist traitor’s attempts to blackmail the USA for ﬁnancial gain, the ﬁlm juxtaposes ideological terrorism with terrorism-as-criminal extortion. In so doing, Diplomatic Siege comments on the twin devices of the cinema of terrorism as a genre in pre–9/11 cinema. Unlike many ﬁlms, it does not disassociate itself from political terrorism: Terrorism and criminal extortion are here clearly separated.

Dirty War (2006: d. Daniel Percival) In Dirty War, terrorists plan to detonate a homemade radioactive device (a dirty bomb) in downtown London. Scotland Yard agents and a Muslim undercover detective race against time to ﬁnd the terrorists. Questioning Britain’s preparedness for the War on Terror, Dirty War is a BBC telemovie shown on HBO in the USA in amongst the rush of post–9/11 terrorist-themed ﬁlms. Like American ﬁlms to immediately address 9/11, Dirty War sees the issue as one of crisis management and explores just how prepared emergency forces are to deal with what the ﬁlm considers an inevitable future act of terrorism. Public reassurance in the face of fear vs. scaremongering underlies the drama here, set in a world of constant new anti-terror laws and bomb-making laboratories in Istanbul with links to the UK. The fear of terrorism injects this ﬁlm with a palpable sense of urgency, the view being that the UK needs greater monies, resources and support to wage the War on Terror with the dedication it deserves. The inadequacy of British funding is established in comparison to American spending ﬁgures: The UK-U.S. alliance is unquestioned. Facing up to the terror threat by Islamic terrorists in England necessitates separating the strategy from that used against the IRA. Socio-economic repercussions of the War on Terror alongside the need for preparedness inform this ﬁlm, focusing on investigation means and documenting the ease with which a terror cell can operate in London. Dirty War proﬁles the suicide bomber as a devout Muslim wholly convinced that his actions are a holy war against the inﬁdel enemy who keep Muslims throughout the world enslaved. With the eventual bombing carried out, the ﬁlm then combines the

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crisis management subtext with disaster movie conventions, also echoed in the likes of United 93 and World Trade Center the same year, in preparation for the ﬂood of terrorist ﬁlm releases that would follow in 2007–08. The “dirty bomb” plot contemporizes the material further, and the depiction of crisis management to nuclear terrorism at ground zero is gripping. It is enhanced by the docudrama immediacy and Dirty War emerges as a poignant and harrowing look at the horror of nuclear terrorism and the revolting intent that makes terrorists enemies of humanity. This ﬁlm does not comprehensively address how the UK should treat terror suspects — as was explored by Michael Winterbottom in The Road to Guantanamo— as all suspects here are guilty and the morality of their interrogation treatment unproblematic.

Doomsdayer (2000: d. Michael John Sarna) A covert organization, Protocol 23, responds exclusively to terrorist threats, organized crime and the anti–American policies of unstable nations. Its intention is to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into enemy hands. The organization must face a billionaire who plans to detonate the title weapon in order to trigger a meltdown of all nuclear reactors. Doomsdayer clearly owes to the James Bond “super-villain” ethos as it addresses the post–Cold War fear of nuclear terrorism in the manner of a mediocre if technically competent B-movie. Ironically, a Mexican bombmaker considers himself an artist — the bombmaker being a rare character type in pre–9/11 cinema but a major character type in post–9/11 cinema of terrorism centered on the Middle East. This ﬁlm takes as irony the premise of an arch-capitalist out to destroy the capitalism that made him rich and powerful but is all styleless banal exposition without character or subtlety. The terrorist villain’s motivation is to create a new world of peace and respect motivated by his sense of humanism. This humanism, destroying the world to rebuild it in his image, reﬂects the megalomaniacal nature of the most fanciful James Bond villains of the 1970s (Curt Jurgens in The Spy Who Loved Me and Michael Lonsdale in Moonraker). Villain Udo Kier here seems inspired by Bond villain Klaus Maria Brandauer in the unofﬁcial James Bond ﬁlm Never Say Never Again.

The Enemy (2001: d. Tom Kinninmont, Charlie Watson) A scientist is kidnapped by terrorists who also steal a lethal biological weapon. Making demands, they threaten to release the weapon and kill millions. A government agent teams with a geneticist (the scientist’s son) to decode a secret formula and rescue the scientist, going up against rogue government forces in the process. Terrorism is the enemy of U.S. patriarchal authority: With the father held hostage, it is up to the son to prove his worth and live up to the traditions of the benevolent father by removing the threat to patriarchal authority. Clichéd and tedious, The Enemy was one of the last terrorist thrillers of the pre–9/11 era and released after the World Trade Center collapse, its debt to espionage cinema conﬁrmed by the casting of former James Bond Roger Moore. With the CIA and MI6 on the case, this ﬁlm bumbles its way through a series of encounters, some of which are intended as comedy but fall completely ﬂat. Again, it is the context of Cold War politics, and Weapons of Mass Destruction cover-ups, that motivate the plot. Hence the scientist, a Russian, defected to the USA because the Russians developed a sample of his biological weapon for planned use against his wishes. The

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son must confront the legacy of his father’s past, searching through old ﬁles and records to uncover the truth and get the genetic formula needed to produce an antidote to the biological weapon, akin to the daughter proving her father’s theorem in Cosmic Shock. The terrorists’ motivations are unclear and the ﬁlm avoids any real political discussion in favor of a father-son reconciliation in which the weapon itself, regardless of the side that uses it, is considered the enemy of all humanity.

The Enforcer (1976: d. James Fargo) The third of Clint Eastwood’s successful Dirty Harry ﬁlms, The Enforcer pits detective Callahan (Eastwood) and a new female partner (Tyne Daly) against a vaguely motivated domestic terrorist group that intends to launch attacks on San Francisco. The original Dirty Harry made a monstrous killer out of a pseudo-hippie ﬁgure and The Enforcer continues the backlash against the “counterculture” by making its terrorists all hippie-like youths of loose morality and ambivalent sexuality. The male terrorist leader is an implied bisexual blue-eyed blonde Aryan ﬁgure. His terrorist cell members are likewise construed as sexually active and perverse, with terrorism thus seen as an outgrowth of sexual immorality and deviance, and Eastwood here an ironic force of moral absolutism and asexual discipline — the fully justiﬁed though selfrighteous force of a repressive patriarchal civilization: America. Domestic terrorism is considered the nadir end of a criminal spectrum which begins with a hold-up hostage situation, single-handedly defused by Eastwood. Director James Fargo’s intent in this installment is to restore American patriarchy to due authority after such was subverted by scripters Michael Cimino and John Milius in the previous Dirty Harry ﬁlm, Magnum Force, distinguished by its director Ted Post’s nihilistic satire of police fascistic authority. In a world of rampant sexual amorality, Eastwood’s detective is a castrator, shooting a criminal in the groin — an act that makes him the subject of an excessive force investigation but serves as a symbolic reactionary punitive measure against the values of the sexual revolution (here allied to domestic terrorism). In this context, the gender conﬂict between Eastwood and Daly makes for sly humor. The terrorist group resembles a commune and claims that their monstrous acts are for the beneﬁt of “the people.” They resemble the SLA (the terror group that kidnapped Patty Hearst around this time) and director Fargo clearly reveals that many of them are less motivated by the political rhetoric of revolution than by the thrills and sexual turnon of the associated violence (terrorism is sexy). Ironically, the terrorist group are integrated in terms of race and gender although it is clear that in their love of violence is the ultimate expression of the “free love” generation, ﬂoundering in a bankrupt ethos of youthful social rebellion turned violent terrorism — hence the subtextual allusions to such groups as The Weathermen. When Harry’s ﬁrst partner is killed, the dead man’s wife remarks, “It’s a war, isn’t it?” reﬂecting the obsession with law and order in a chaotic America that dominated police ﬁlms of the 1970s and 1980s. Tellingly, at signs of political violence Eastwood’s boss Bradford Dillman believes it to be the racially motivated work of the Black Panthers. Eastwood, prepared to talk to a Black leader, is held in contrast to the racist police authority he works for, the sole note of ambiguity in this ﬁlm directed against the police force hierarchy’s racist, fascist agenda. Eastwood knows better and follows connections to hookers and sexual degenerates to ﬁnd the leads he needs. Hence, terroristic violence is merely a cover for a paraphilic dysfunc-

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tion — a theme that inﬁltrates the terrorist genre on frequent occasions, though usually in the context of Islamic terrorism and hostage-taking. In the so-called “revolutionary war” against the police (“the pigs”), a bomb is placed in a hospital lavatory, clearly revealing that terrorists favor easy rather than symbolic targets and have no conscience or humanity left, it being consumed by their implied sexual perversion. However, easy targets graduate to symbolic targets as the terrorists get bolder with each “successful” bombing. The Enforcer addresses then-current fears of the underground resistance and social revolution movement of Vietnam-era America. Eastwood is still a functionary of the police authority, though by the time of the next sequel, Sudden Impact, he would side with the enemy against the police, resulting in an ethical conﬂict here played out as Harry is suspended for voicing his disapproval of his police department superiors’ greater interest in their political image than in solving crimes. When the terrorists kidnap the San Francisco mayor, they demand money: Ideology is secondary to proﬁt. Eastwood’s investigation of the San Franciscan sex culture of massage parlors and the porn scene foreshadows the actor’s descent into perversion in Tightrope. Youthful religion here is nothing more than a front for left-wing immorality and terrorism, the leaders of which recruit members from prisons and the same sex culture Eastwood investigates for clues. Although there is a subtext concerning youthful ideological disenchantment and the search for an alternative morality, this is construed in the ﬁlm as monstrous and warped, a deﬁance of civil socio-political authority and a threat to the stability of the traditional American way of life. The police authority represented by Dillman is ready to cave in to the demands of these degenerates just as Harry resolves the issue, albeit to the death of his female partner, the ﬁlm questioning whether her death was worth it. The Enforcer was director Fargo’s debut after working as an assistant director; he would subsequently become one of the directors Eastwood trusted to shape his image to comedic effect in Every Which Way But Loose.

Escape from L.A. (1996: d. John Carpenter) In this belated sequel to Escape from New York, the unwanted minority population of California is put onto an island by a devout Christian president. A “doomsday device” stolen by the president’s daughter ends up in the hands of a revolutionary terrorist group on the island who threaten to reduce America to anarchic chaos by turning off all power and communication devices, effectively crippling the nation. Snake Plissken (a returning Kurt Russell) is sent to the island to locate the device and return it to the presidential authorities. Escape from L.A. posits a future where those whose lives are considered anathema to the American ideal can have their citizenship revoked and their human rights stripped as they are sent to an offshore, heavily guarded prison. Moral crimes are punishable by deportation in a new evangelical America. The island community (L.A.) is beset by anarchic violence but is seen as a positive and vibrant, if dangerous and monstrous, alternative to the moral majority that would eliminate them. It is a more honest alternative to the ideal of a peaceful Christian America and thus director Carpenter sides with the terrorists to the point where at the ﬁlm’s end, Russell carries through on the threat of terrorism and reduces the U.S. to anarchy. Escape from New York had a similarly nihilistic undercurrent but in Escape from L.A. Carpenter spares no cynical development, creating

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perhaps the most misanthropic science ﬁction ﬁlm to emerge from pre–9/11 mainstream American ﬁlm. Though Carpenter’s sympathy is with the outsiders and revolutionaries, he treats them with equal contempt, revealing their motivations to be petty self-aggrandizement. Terrorist revolutionaries here may be preferable to a Christian American authority but are still egotists. In the juxtaposition of terrorist and president, Carpenter concludes that anarchy is the best solution and so turns his hero Snake Plissken into an anarchistic terrorist by the ﬁlm’s conclusion, the sole character able to step aside from ego and launch a terrorist action without a cause — simply in the name of anarchy. Escape from New York rested on the president of the USA being a likable and admirable character (although he proves himself a vindictive killer in the end) but in Escape from L.A. the president is beneath contempt — an evangelical Christian dictator. Thus, Carpenter sees no hope for the future and despite its energy, color and verve, Escape from L.A. is a bleak, desolate ﬁlm experience. The terrorist here is a Latin American ﬁgure who claims to have united the Third World in opposition to America, which he intends to take down through terrorism. A superterrorist leader, he has united the world’s diverse terror groups under his leadership. Although the context relates to American foreign policy in Latin America, the characterization of the supreme terrorist leader eerily precipitates the Bin Laden mystique of post–9/11 America. Signiﬁcantly, the American Christian authority condemns the terrorist leader as “immoral” but is in turn brought down by Russell, a man who can be considered, by comparison, amoral. The terrorist as leader of an immoral world is just as abhorrent as the president, leader of a moral world of presumably good Christians and in the ﬁlm’s parodic view of Los Angeles lifestyles and subcultures emerges the view of Los Angeles as a modern Sodom or Gomorrah. For Carpenter, anarchy is the only possible freedom from moral autocracy and in a staggeringly cynical conclusion, his hero Russell destroys American morality as he smokes a cigarette from a pack marked American Spirit, delivering his ﬁnal words direct to the camera and the viewer: “Welcome to the human race.”

Escape from New York (1981: d. John Carpenter) This is a futuristic adventure comic book ﬁlm in which the island of Manhattan has become a walled maximum security prison serving the entire USA. On the eve of international peace talks, the president’s plane is hijacked by a terrorist group “in the name of the oppressed workers” and crashes into the island prison. Authorities secure the cooperation of new prisoner Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) to enter the city and rescue the president in time to give an important speech at the historic peace summit. Only the ﬁlm’s opening scene has any relevance to the cinema of terrorism: A female terrorist reﬂects the conventional left-wing sentiments associated with domestic terrorist groups. The terrorist is willing to die hijacking a plane and crashing it into a New York skyscraper, killing all on board, though the president escapes in a pod and is held captive by the island prison population who intend to swap him for the release of all on the island. The sequel Escape from L.A. would elaborate on many of the embryonic themes of terrorism present here to wholly scathing and subversive effect.

The Execution (1973: d. Reza Badiyi, Uri Massad) A man is hunted by Arab assassins throughout the world. Slowly he realizes that his lover has been sent to kill him and he seeks to ﬁnd out why he is being hunted and threatened.

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The ﬁlm offers comparison to The Next Man. Its terrorism begins with grenade attacks launched against Israeli politicians and against Arabs whom the terrorists feel have betrayed the cause of Islam. The Execution devotes some attention to the polemicized views of the Middle Eastern situation with a symbolically paralyzed Arab father saying that the young (his sons) have taken up arms in the name of peace, to which he is told that his sons are nothing but “terrorists.” With voiceover describing an Israeli plot to uncover Arab terrorist networks by leaking false information (a device also informing the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm Body of Lies), the ﬁlm posits the Arab-Israeli conﬂict as affecting many countries and involving innocent or chance victims. This voiceover is clearly intended to introduce the theme of Arab-Israeli terrorism to European audiences then unfamiliar with such although poised to be dominated by news reports of PLO actions throughout the decade. There is also some irony here in that an innocent German is caught up in Jewish intelligence maneuvers. The Execution sets up the righteousness of the Israeli cause as opposed to Arab terrorism although is far from being a simple-minded endorsement of Israeli operations. The ﬁlm uses the spy genre to popularize the Israeli-Arab crisis in much the same way that the nearly concurrent release Prisoner in the Middle sought to frame the crisis in the generic manner of an American Western. In this, the ﬁlm is part of an early 1970s trend to introduce the issues of emergent Islamic terrorism to cultural forms outside the Middle East. Over several years and ﬁlms like Children of Rage, Rosebud and Black Sunday, which boldly deﬁned the cinema of terrorism as a genre in American ﬁlm, America became aware of the threat posed to both its security and global security by the potential spillover of the Arab-Israeli crisis as rooted in the Palestinian Liberation movement. Its plot of an innocent who becomes the target of a terrorist group allows the ﬁlm to explore subtle levels of human empathy in regards to socio-political ideology. The protagonist questions the nature of trust and the assumptions made about people. In his romance with an Arab sympathizer, he considers her writings sophomoric and dangerous propaganda. As he reveals his Jewish background, the ﬁlm questions whether a Jew can maintain a friendship with an anti–Zionist or whether political Zionism is such that is has alienated the entire Middle East, making simple human interpersonal connection impossible. Casting an American actor as a Mossad agent implicitly allies the U.S. and Israel as the ﬁlm attempts to get the complacent European populace involved in consideration of some of the issues in a terrorism it equates with the legacy of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm develops into a tragic love story between an Arab terrorist and a German Jew, questioning whether love can conquer religious, ethnic and political divides. The love affair of these opposites proves to be a humanist lesson for the both of them. As the Arab woman returns to her fellows, she is considered a sympathizer and spat on as if anyone sympathetic to a Jew is automatically a traitor. All events and relationships here are ultimately affected by the intelligence community; the state in its battle to prevent terrorism usurps the right to self-determination of those people it affects (a central theme in the subsequent evolving cinema of terrorism). In its depiction of Jerusalem and the Israeli lifestyle of the Kibbutz, the ﬁlm contrasts political Zionism with benevolent Jewish daily existence. When the former lovers confront each other, political cause alone has become the means of justifying oneself and deﬁning purpose in the modern world: Terrorism politicizes people.

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While the ﬁlm sympathizes with the terrorist woman, it also shows that in her education, class and ideology she is out of touch with the needs of ordinary Palestinians, as concurrently documented in Children of Rage, suggesting that the terrorists in no way represent the majority of the people on whose behalf they claim to act. The terrorist is consumed by hate alone; she knows that there is no life beyond her extremist convictions and does not want them to be taken or reasoned away from her; she is ready to kill the Jewish innocent who loved her in a betrayal of her humanity. The suggestion here, that whatever the political cause terrorism is anathema to humanity, is a potent and prescient one to emerge from popular cinema in the early 1970s.

Executive Decision (1996: d. Stuart Baird) Ace action ﬁlm editor Stuart Baird directed this ﬁlm which reexamines the airplane disaster movie of the 1970s, alongside such as Passenger 57 and Air Force One. Here, Chechen rebels take charge of a nerve gas stolen from Russia and a crack team of specialists must intercept the hijacked plane carrying it and the terrorists into the USA. Executive Decision is one of a number of typical 1990s ﬁlms which sought to ﬁnd a new enemy in the wake of the demise of the Cold War, ﬁnding one in the separatist movements of the former Soviet Empire, which it equates with terrorist threats. The terrorist threat also emerges from the Middle East as U.S. forces capture a terrorist leader and face inevitable repercussions — a premise shared with the more “realistic” socio-political examination of the Islamic terror threat in The Siege. A rush of suicide bombing and the inevitable hijackings are thus unleashed upon America, the ﬁnal threat being from weapons loosed in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The central set-piece here is the airline hijacking sequence, a starting-off point for the dramatization of the threat posed to the USA by terrorism. As terrorists take over a plane and keep the passengers in line, the ﬁlm looks forward to the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm United 93, although such was rooted less in the context of terrorism and foreign policy than in the disaster movie theme of crisis management. The hijacking terrorists plan a major attack against the USA, using the plane as a weapon to loose a nerve gas over Washington. The subsequent dilemma over whether or not to order the hijacked plane shot down concerns Pentagon authorities, making the ﬁlm a preﬁguration of post–9/11 Homeland Security concerns. The solution here, as per the demands of the genre, is the Special Forces anti-terror team. Executive Decision dismisses the terrorists’ politics as “extremism” and refuses to engage with it on any level other than that of imminent threat to domestic U.S. security. Such terrorist threats cannot be negotiated with and must be dealt with by force. Part of the terrorist motivation is that any successful attack against the USA would embolden the terrorist leader and make him a jihadist “holy warrior” ﬁgure of enormous standing in the Middle East, doing glory to Islam and Allah, who has chosen the terrorists for a higher cause (although one terrorist rejects this rationale). However, Executive Decision is a static action ﬁlm.

Executive Target (1997: d. Joseph Merhi) In Executive Target, directed by proliﬁc direct-to-video action specialist Joseph Merhi, a stunt driver (Michael Madsen) has repeated run-ins with the police. When his wife is kidnapped during a hijacking and he is forced to drive a getaway car during a robbery,

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he learns of a scheme to kidnap the president of the USA. (Interestingly enough, the president is played as a moral man by Roy Scheider, who played the president in two other terrorist ﬁlms —Chain of Command and The Peacemaker.) With proﬁcient technical competence and expertly edited action scenes in the manner of Michael Bay, Executive Target has as its protagonist a man struggling with the remnants of his self-respect and dignity. He claims that he loves his wife above all but idealizes women, the ﬁlm being far more complex about gender roles in the action ﬁlm than most of its station. However, this gender role examination is merely a background subtext for the story of a renegade underground organization (led by an African-American) who commit bank robberies as fund-raisers for their terrorist agenda — propping up funding for America’s military industrial complex by targeting the president to force policy change and military-security budget increases (a similar motivation to the staging of a fake terrorist incident in The Long Kiss Goodnight). The terrorists, who watch the various car chases the protagonist gets into on a variety of surveillance cameras dispersed throughout the city, intend to sell the president to the highest bidder once they have captured him. Their terrorism-for-proﬁt motive is typical of 1990s terrorist ﬁlms post–Die Hard: greed as the product of ideological disenchantment. The terrorists are not sustained by an underlying cause but resemble an organized crime outﬁt recalling the Maﬁa. The ﬁlm devotes some time to the broader context, as in a talk show interview wherein it is debated whether cutting the defense budget would be an open invitation to terrorists and America’s enemies to strike. The implication behind Executive Target is that America’s greatness lies in its war powers and that moves to counter such within the military-industrial complex will be greeted by hostile resentment bordering on treasonous action. Tying into such other president-in-peril movies as The Kidnapping of the President and Air Force One, Executive Target is full of camera motion and emerges an exciting movie far more effective than one would expect. The ﬁnal suggestion of the existence of a super-terrorist global organization along the lines of the James Bond villains, however, strips the ﬁlm of any shred of credibility it may have had at the outset.

Exodus (1960: d. Otto Preminger) Exodus is director Otto Preminger’s lavish account of the formation of the state of Israel after World War II, when a massive inﬂux of Jewish refugees from around the world into British-mandated Palestine led to terroristic nationalist insurgence by the Jewish people in pursuit of the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state (events also depicted in Cast a Giant Shadow). The ﬁlm begins with the 1947 detention of Jewish refugees in camps in Cyprus and plans by Jewish military forces (the Hagannah) to smuggle them into Palestine and build up a large Jewish population in preparation for statehood. Meanwhile, Jewish militants debate the best means of ﬁghting the British for control, battling the hostile Arab population. Exodus remains interesting as a precursor to the cinema of terrorism that began in full force over a decade later for what Preminger said of his intent when interviewed on CBS (Feb 24, 1961): “[W]hether I approve of violence or not (and I don’t approve of it), the state of Israel would not have come into being without the terrorists. Every revolution needs some kind of terror or violence in order to unseat the regime. That’s why I also understand what’s going on in the Negro movement now, but I don’t approve of it.

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It might momentarily hurt the Negro cause, but a revolution is not something logical that you can ﬁgure out” (Pratley 1976). Variety noted in its review the ﬁlm’s balanced stance, reﬂecting the Nationalistic Zionist concerns as much as those of the Arab community opposing the partitioning of Palestine and the concerns of the United Nations regarding the formation of a new nation. Representative hero Paul Newman remarks that the Jews have no friends but themselves and must stick together, political Zionism being the imperative that now binds them together following World War II and the Nazi genocide. Newman also remarks that it is their willingness to die that will see them victorious — a belief that validates suicide missions from dedicated Israeli ﬁghters (a precursor to Islamic suicide bombers several decades later). The desire for a Jewish homeland in Palestine leads to resistance to the British occupation through violence and terrorism, the Jewish terrorists (Irgun) calling themselves freedom ﬁghters and part of a Jewish Liberation organization. Similarly, much Arab hostility to the partitioning of Palestine into part–Jewish and part–Arab sections results in heated UN debate concerning the proper formation of a so-called “holy land.” The ﬁlm’s second half concerns life in Palestine as a means of Zionist imperatives and violent terror, with Jews debating the means of peace versus the means of terrorism as the best way toward the Zionist goal. Jewish terrorism puts pressure on the UN to respond to the bombings and killings and usher the British out. Hence, terrorism is considered a valid form of nation-building to the Zionists — that violence is necessary to secure a free homeland that they have a territorial claim upon dating back some 3500 years. In contrast to Cast a Giant Shadow which posited the Arabs as terrorists, Exodus posits the Jews as terrorists and Israel a state born and won from violence. When the British authorities capture several of these terrorists and threaten to execute them, Jewish authorities claim that all Jews must come together to demand the release of their number regardless of what acts they have perpetrated. Likewise, Newman transforms from advocating nonviolence to supporting violence as the only means of achieving statehood. Signiﬁcantly, on the declaration of Israel as a state, the Arab leader known as the Grand Mufti declares it the duty of every Muslim to resist the partition and that all Jews should be killed — the precursor to the longest running terrorist campaign the world has ever seen: that of the PLO against Israel, the implications of which Preminger would examine over a decade later in Rosebud, one of the ﬁrst ﬁlms in the modern cinema of terrorism which began in the 1970s speciﬁcally in response to Islamic terrorism related to the Palestinian-Israeli crisis and the ramiﬁcations of the 1967 war. The Grand Mufti’s henchmen resemble Nazis, making an imperative out of the new state of Israel’s need to defend its borders and obtain arms, for which its support from the USA (underlying Cast a Giant Shadow) would be essential.

Face of Terror (2003: d. Bryan Goeres) Face of Terror begins with a terrorist bomb at the American airlines terminal at Barcelona airport. Terrorists targeting American-owned businesses comprise the backdrop to yet another tale of the lone American hero battling the terrorist threat virtually single-handedly. When his sister disappears in Europe, LA policeman Rick Schroeder journeys to Spain to investigate, fearing the worst. The trail eventually leads to an internationally wanted terrorist. This ﬁlm was made before Al Qaeda struck Madrid and the Spanish government

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withdrew their support for the War on Terror. However, the ﬁlm lacks any real political analysis of international terrorism and focuses on a simple detective plot in which Schroeder emerges as a boorish, arrogant and unsympathetic American bully. In contrast, one terrorist is an intriguing ﬁgure: a young Palestinian man whose sister was killed by troops — childhood poverty and oppression birthing a terroristic means of retributive justice. His loss of family is compared to Schroeder’s loss of sister and the ﬁgures are in parallel development throughout the ﬁlm. Tellingly, once U.S. authorities become involved in the latest terrorist bombing, Spain’s alliance to the U.S. gives U.S. War on Terror investigators jurisdiction over international boundaries, something Schroeder can exploit. Although Schroeder does not represent the U.S. War on Terror, his investigation parallels and eventually intersects it, and this arrogant buffoon of a character is vindicated in his self-righteous American pride. The nationalistic arrogance throughout this ﬁlm, its unquestioning acceptance of its brash, vulgar hero, is annoying and wearisome. Schroeder is meant to represent the ordinary American affected by the terrorism and using his country’s authority in the War on Terror to see his own personal justice accomplished: familial pride. In the greater War on Terror context this ﬁlm evokes, Schroeder makes for a trivial protagonist. The point of Face of Terror is to justify U.S. intervention in the investigative resources of other countries in the War on Terror. Spanish detectives are seen as uncooperative and indeed outsmarted by a Los Angeles street cop. Not only is this prospect ridiculous, it acts only to justify American bullying. Just as Schroeder must bully authorities in the race to save his sister from becoming a forced suicide bomber, so too, in the ﬁlmmakers’ views, the U.S. is justiﬁed in pressuring all other nations in the War on Terror; America must take complete charge of the War on Terror. The terrorist is a more captivating ﬁgure than the protagonist in this simplistic ﬁlm, notable only for being the ﬁrst post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm to address War on Terror policy, albeit here with unquestioning acceptance of the agenda which subsequent post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms would call into question. His motive is scantly addressed — resentment of the U.S. for watching the Israeli treatment of Palestinians — and though he is of course beaten in a man-to-man ﬁght, the American way, it is up to Spanish troops to execute him while Schroeder rescues his sister.

Face/Off (1997: d. John Woo) Agent John Travolta avenges the death of his son by capturing terrorist Nicolas Cage. Travolta exchanges faces with his quarry so that he can go undercover to obtain the details of a bomb planted in the city of Los Angeles, for what the terrorist feels is Biblical retribution for the moral plague the city has become. To get these details he must convince Cage’s brother that he is Cage. In the meantime, Cage awakens and gets Travolta’s face, gradually taking over his life. Face/Off is Hong Kong director John Woo’s exploration of façade, pretense and reality, questioning whether if one impersonates one’s enemy, one will become like them. The question here is, if good poses as evil (just as evil poses as good — with terrorist Cage detonating a bomb while dressed as a priest and getting his sexual satisfaction out of touching a choir girl) in order to understand it and experience it ﬁrsthand, will it be irrevocably consumed and corrupted? It’s a novel premise and one that owes to Nietzsche’s pondering of what happens when one looks into the abyss (the abyss also looks into the

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looker). Typical of Woo, violent people are driven to pursue each other, the good convinced that redemption lies in pursuing and overcoming his adversarial nemesis. There is an operatic, religious intensity to Woo’s action scenes, his use of point of view and slow-motion editing during balletic violence indebted to director Sam Peckinpah who was once nicknamed “the master of violence.” With stylized, explosive energy, Woo signals his intent: the exhilaration of violent terroristic action. Travolta is obsessed with the idea of closure, the theme being the difﬁculty a man has in escaping the demons of his past. In that, the desire for control — of self and circumstance — is an essential mark of individuality. Each person is in charge of his or her fate, the mark of the terrorist being their usurpation of others’ right to self-determination for their own, often sexually perverted self-aggrandizement — long a theme in terrorist cinema (where an apolitical pathology is allied to ideological causes to variably complex and ambiguous results). Utilizing a standard “countdown to doomsday” scenario, Face/Off explores the madness that results when a good man must become his opposite. As fates intertwine, the narrative builds a sense of inescapable reckoning. Replete with irony — the terrorist pretending to be a cop disarms his own bomb and becomes a hero —Face/Off is Woo’s ﬁnest American ﬁlm and closest to his seminal Hong Kong action work. Despite the terrorist connotations, it is the theme of identity exchange which sustains this movie and there is surprising subtlety in the way each man adjusts to the life of the man he impersonates, one responding to the demands of raising a family and the other feeling the invigorating thrill of violent moral abandon: As Travolta dons Cage’s face and lives the life of a terrorist, the more he begins to enjoy its dangerous hedonism. Finally, the ﬁlm ponders the nature of identity and appearance, a look at a man who used the past to give meaning to the present but ﬁnding the means to achieve closure and move on. The ﬁnal irony is the good couple’s adopting of the terrorist’s son, taking the good out of the bad to secure a future.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004: d. Michael Moore) Michael Moore begins Fahrenheit 9/11 by questioning the legitimacy of the Bush government in the narrow Florida election that won him the presidency, Florida’s governor being Bush’s brother. With Bush’s limousine pelted with eggs on his inauguration day by the youth protest movement, the sheer hostility to his claim to the presidency in America is documented alongside the refusal of the Senate to support a motion by Florida African Americans against the handling of the election and their disenfranchisement under Florida’s governor. The pre–9/11 Bush is depicted as an inept vacationer already becoming a lame duck and living the high life, unconcerned. Soon, the credits reveal the president’s staff as vain, ﬁxing their façade for the awaiting media. Fahrenheit 9/11 evokes the events of 9/11 in reaction shots of onlookers. The concern here is the nation in reaction: crisis management once the initial inhumanity of the act is taken into account. As Bush, informed his nation is under attack, sits holding a book for preschoolers, the dilemma of crisis management and (eventually) the moral accountability of the Bush government for their actions in the War on Terror take shape as the dominant themes in post–9/11 cinema. Yet, Bush’s ﬁrst moves after 9/11 are to evacuate Bin Laden family guests, who were not interrogated, and alter his records of military service to avoid association with the Saudi Bin Laden Group he protected. Ironically, Bush and his father were both ﬁnancial investors in The Carlyle Group, a company linked to

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defense investment and which came under scrutiny after proﬁting from the events of 9/11: and a company in whom the Bin Laden family were investors. The Bush family’s ties to Saudi oil money to the tune of $1.4 billion over thirty years are enough to question their loyalties to the oath of ofﬁce in Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore here ponders the fact that Saudi investment in America makes them effective owners of seven percent of America. In light of that, the Afghani War is shown by Moore here as a strategic mishap from the very beginning and the ineffectual Afghani campaign obscured the oil-driven impetus of Dick Cheney to secure pipeline development and allowed Bin Laden two months to escape. The stage-managing of the War on Terror through the media perception of fear, propagated through Fox News, creates a situation of feigned alert, which Moore demonstrates kept the American populace from criticizing the Bush presidency and slave to a paranoia which fed into America’s patriotic duty to prepare for a terror attack. The extent to which the War on Terror was a fear-driven media fabrication reﬂecting a covert Republican agenda driven by oil-dependent relationships to the Saudis is the subject of Moore’s reﬂective manipulations, which with his direct (albeit brief ) participation in the ﬁlm as celebrity question the relation between the objective and the subjective in the documentary form. John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act and its ramiﬁcations are taken by Moore to qualify life in the War on Terror: The increased powers given the government and their ethical human rights implications in the crisis management of the War on Terror are raised by Fahrenheit 9/11, making the ﬁlm the single-most potent force of political dissent during the Bush years. In Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore establishes what would be the discourse underlying the subsequent wave of terrorist ﬁlms in 2007: the ramiﬁcations of the Patriot Act on American civil liberties, a theme extended in the later Alex Gibney documentary Taxi to the Dark Side to include human rights. George W. Bush as a “wartime” president emerges in Fahrenheit 9/11 as an ineptly dangerous warmonger, inheritor to a cowboy-like gun culture that Moore would subsequently portray in Bowling for Columbine as embodied in actor Charlton Heston. Bush’s war agenda against Iraq, sanctioned by the doctrine of “preemptive defense” (a post–9/11 term), results in indiscriminate ﬁre by U.S. troops on civilians. These same troops listen to heavy metal music in their tanks as they invade Baghdad, reﬂecting the gung-ho nihilism of military amorality that had earlier inﬁltrated the Gulf War movie Three Kings and would continue into the 2007 The Situation, detailing U.S. military atrocities against civilian Iraqis by hyped, thuggish soldiers. These gung-ho heavy metal troops are contrasted to the horrendous damage and suffering inﬂicted upon innocent Iraqis by their actions. When one Marine is confronted by what U.S. ﬁre has done, he muses, “Shoot, what the hell did we do now?” Such ironic reﬂections on the armed forces owes to depictions of Vietnam War troops in particular in the ﬁlms of Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola, though here is evoked by Moore through careful juxtapositioning of archival and interview footage to create irony. Such irony is the seed of dissent propelling the linear structure of Fahrenheit 9/11 as it moves to the manufacture of the threat of state-sponsored terrorism by weapons of mass destruction manufactured by the Bush propaganda machine to create a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq where none existed, purely to incorporate Saddam Hussein into the War on Terror in order to invade Iraq. Bush’s premature announcement of victory precipitates a mounting casualty toll, the dead U.S. troops found through recruitment drives in economically underprivileged urban areas, as represented here by Moore’s “hometown”

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of Flint, Michigan; areas ignored by the Bush government to the point where the beneﬁts offered by military service appeal most to the same socially deprived, minority-heavy communities whose vetoed voice of protest against disenfranchisement during the Bush election process began the ﬁlm. And ﬁnally, as to whose agenda was served by the Bush War on Terror, Moore reveals Vice-President Dick Cheney’s connection to Halliburton, a business looking to make money from involvement in Iraq. It’s Moore’s audacious, and reasoned, critique of the ethics of the Bush era that makes Fahrenheit 9/11 the impetus from which the terrorist ﬁlm as a genre would explode in 2007 though less focused on Bush’s money agenda and its ties to Saudi oil, than on Cheney’s ties to Halliburton and his sanction of the ethics of torture, hinted at in Fahrenheit 9/11, exposed fully in the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side and saturating the wave of terrorist ﬁlms in 2007 in the lead-up to the election that would see the end of the Bush presidency.

Fallout (1998: d. Rodney MacDonald) Fallout is a science-ﬁction actioner about a space station seized by renegade cosmonauts led by a former war hero and Tajikstan nationalist who demands the withdrawal of Russian troops from his homeland. If his demands are not met, he threatens to reactivate a dormant Cold War nuclear satellite system. A U.S. specialist team is sent to remedy the hijacking and remove the terrorist threat. Conventional plotting anchors this mediocre movie, typical of the 1990s in its association between terrorist threats and the break-up of the former Soviet Union (a common theme in the works of producer Andrew Stevens, active in B-movie terrorist ﬁlms pre– and post–9/11). Most ﬁlms addressing this concerned the fear of loose nukes and Fallout ties this to nationalistic terrorism in the former Soviet Union. Though the ﬁlm is set in 2015 it is rooted in immediate post–Cold War concerns for border security in the former Eastern Europe. Developing a conﬂict between a headstrong American individualist and an equally headstrong Russian loyalist, Fallout in part explores the personal choices of those who make the commitment to ﬁght terrorism. A competent but undistinguished work, Fallout transplants the hijacking scenario common to the cinema of terrorism to the science-ﬁction trappings of spacecraft, postulating that terrorism in the future will involve space technology and hardware. It also argues that the obsolete Cold War arms will be appropriated by other causes and used for reasons unknown at the time the arms were manufactured. The theme here is hence how Cold War artifacts can threaten the new world order promised by U.S. President Ronald Reagan at the collapse of Soviet communism. Signiﬁcantly, the female counterterror agent takes it upon herself to tell her young son what is going on, hoping to keep the future generation informed of threats still posed by past tensions, as she prepares to sacriﬁce herself for the good of the planet and world peace.

Fear of Flying — Turbulence 2 (1999: d. David Mackay) Ironically enough, a fear-of-ﬂying support group take a ﬂight which is hijacked by terrorists after experiencing severe turbulence. Two members of this group must overcome their fears and combat the terrorists in this in-name-only sequel to an obscure Ray Liotta vehicle that tied into the revival of airplane-themed disaster movies in the latter part of the 1990s.

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The terrorist is here an object of fear because he represents the theft of control over one’s fate and personiﬁes what the protagonists fear. The hijacking scenario and the corresponding ﬁght-back becomes a metaphor for the struggle for self-control, elevated to the struggle for national control in the crisis-management subtext of the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm United 93. As the ﬁlm cross-cuts air trafﬁc control’s ground level intrigues with the on-board aircraft peril, it resembles the Airport disaster movies of the 1970s, which did not embrace any subtext of ideological terrorism in their premises of airline jeopardy. The terrorists here are European and their motives vague as the ﬁlm concerns the human response to averting potential disaster, succumbing to an automatic equation between hijacker and terrorist. A plot concerning a deadly nerve gas on board the hijacked plane was similarly deployed in Executive Decision. Passengers must overcome their fears and organize a rebellion in order to prevent an on-ground catastrophe if the plane crashes and the nerve gas is loosed upon an unsuspecting America. Hence, ground control automatically consider the hijackers to be suicidal terrorists, Fear of Flying thus gaining an added post–9/11 relevance in its conception of suicidal terrorists hijacking an airplane and the on-board struggle of passengers to prevent their hideous designs. Correspondingly, the ﬁlm dramatizes pre–9/11 what would become a real concern during 9/11: the responsibility of the FBI over the FAA in a national emergency which may mean the military decision to shoot down a passenger aircraft. The airplane as weapon of mass destruction is cemented in this ﬁlm.

Fifty/Fifty (1992: d. Charles Martin Smith) Guerrilla ﬁghters led by Robert Hays are hired to kidnap the president of a South East Asian island. They encounter resistance in the form of Hays’ old rival turned mercenary Peter Weller. One of the handful of ﬁlms directed by actor Charles Martin Smith, this is an intended action comedy which takes as its premise the mercenarial overthrow of a supposed dictator. It emerges instead as a racially insulting variation on the American “buddy movie.” Most intriguing in one subtext regarding U.S. foreign policy — the U.S. has strategically placed “advisors” throughout the area in a parallel to their activities at the outset of the Vietnam War —Fifty/Fifty depicts the innate cultural and intellectual superiority of the Americans over the Asians, who desperately need America to intervene in their affairs to maintain stability. However, the Americans so appealed to are mercenaries ready to commit their talents to either side in any struggle; they have no political allegiance or recognizable ideological authority. Indeed, to the American mercenaries, it is all a game (a theme also found in the look at international arms dealing in Deal of the Century and Lord of War). Here, the CIA is omnipresent in world affairs. The villainous dictator plans to build a chemical weapons plant in league with local terrorist groups, the theme of state-sponsored terrorism thus lurking in the background although only at plot level. However, it postulates that states seeking recognition, power and authority will inevitably seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction, clandestinely using terrorist groups to do so, in order to destabilize the region. It is up to the CIA to prevent this, a noble cause which with some irony the ﬁlm suggests invests the CIA with a newfound purpose after bungled foreign policy directives from Vietnam to Afghanistan and the mujahedeen proxy war against the Soviets. However, greed overwhelms ideology

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in this ﬁlm as it serves to distinguish the terrorists’ ideological conviction from the mercenary’s proﬁt motive (a character distinction used whenever terrorists and mercenaries feature in the same ﬁlm). One crucial difference between terrorist and mercenary is that the former has a cause worth dying for, but the latter has not. With a convoluted plot, Fifty/Fifty considers CIA “company” manipulations emblematic of U.S. foreign policy throughout the world. It depicts U.S. mercenaries in the jungle contacting local rebel groups, but never doubts the USA’s cultural, moral and ideological superiority to these locals. The amoral Americans here are much more intelligent and capable than any foreign presence in the region, enhancing the insulting racist overtones to this pro–American “comedy.” By allying the state to unseen terrorist groups, the ﬁlm seeks to distinguish the terrorist from the rebel revolutionary. Subtextual here is an examination of changing CIA agendas over the past two decades regarding the support for either dictators or freedom ﬁghting insurgents, the ﬁlm ﬁnding little rationale for the choices the CIA has made though arguing they now act from moral righteousness. The assumption is that any insurgent group needs U.S. support. Hence, these insurgents are depicted as decent folk needing U.S. money, arms and support to ﬁght state-sponsored terrorist oppression. The amoral protagonists gain some morality as they help these people — the mercenary’s acquisition of ideological purpose being akin to a redemptive theme as they become protectors of innocent women and children, like the gunﬁghters in The Magniﬁcent Seven. Also implicit in this ﬁlm is the suggestion that the CIA would use the excuse of state-sponsored terrorism to sponsor a coup to prevent that state from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It is this theme, the ﬁlm’s insistence on the politics of WMD, which gives it added relevance in a post–9/11 context. Finally, whatever the moral benevolence of CIA operations, they are answerable to foreign policy directives at a higher level of governmental authority and will betray whatever cause they align themselves with as beﬁts any changes in said policy. Foreign policy whims here leave the CIA in the lurch, imposing an amorality upon it which makes a mockery out of any notions of U.S. benevolence in world affairs. The ﬁlm switches gears politically towards the end as it depicts the mercenary impelled to take a moral stand against any such state-sponsored terrorism even when the U.S. backs it. The ﬁlm emerges as an examination of the need for moral correctness in U.S. foreign policy as coordinated with CIA operations worldwide.

Fight Club (1999: d. David Fincher) Edward Norton, a disaffected young man, seeks refuge in self-help groups. On a plane he meets Brad Pitt and the both of them set up an underground cult whose members gather for ﬁstﬁghts as a masculine ritual. Pitt and Norton soon develop a political agenda which segues into a terrorist campaign culminating in a successful plot to bring down the World Trade Center. Fight Club concerns the operations of “project mayhem,” an instance of organized U.S. domestic terrorism emerging from disenfranchised 30-something masculinity rigging bomb attacks out of a need for social “revolution” against materialist, conforming, emasculating American society. Norton plays the archetypal soulless yuppie who gradually concludes that violent terrorism will win back his split identity. For the bulk of it, this ﬁlm is a psychodrama of a divided male psyche seeking reintegration and redeﬁnition,

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and eventually driven to terrorism as self-empowerment: the embrace of violence as a revolution against a culture that suppresses innate male aggression and tempers it instead to a twelve-step support group mentality of emotional desperation in deference to “feminine” conceptions of civilization. Pitt symbolizes the disaffected male, weary of a consumer culture to the point of reactive psychosis. His anti-capitalist pronouncements on the foibles and weakness of a generation of men raised by women strike a chord with men everywhere, to the point where he can command a terror cell. For men, according to Pitt, violence is an innate means of self-expression and communication. Indeed, it is this progression that the ﬁlm considers quite logically as the ﬁght club grows from underground cult to terrorist organization. Here, civilization is a repression of masculinity and terroristic violence is the only means of communication left modern men: political speech and self-assertion. “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” This is the mentality that eventually concludes that terrorism is a legitimate arena of self-expression, revolution and political deﬁance. For men who take a new start in opposition to the emasculating consumer society, terrorism and violence are the main, indeed only, means of communication and are inherently valid concepts in a masculine world. Terrorism is depicted as a progressive masculine impulse: The ﬁght club is initially conﬁned to brawls amongst its members but soon necessitates picking ﬁghts with total strangers and so forth until the development of a systematized bombing campaign, the ﬁlm’s ending reﬂecting American fears over Oklahoma City bombing–style domestic terrorism as the emboldened Pitt trains terrorists ready to sacriﬁce themselves for “the greater good.” Fight Club contextualizes incidences of terrorism in America (Oklahoma City and the ﬁrst WTC bombing) within a context of anti-capitalist hatred. Signiﬁcantly, as Norton and Pitt are revealed to be twin personalities, the reconciliation of selfhood for the divided protagonist only comes with the successful terrorist bombing at the end: that bringing down a Twin Towers–like structure affects the protagonist’s personality transformation — terrorism is self-realization here, making Fight Club perhaps the most radically subversive Hollywood ﬁlm of the 1990s. On release, the ﬁlm was criticized as a fascistic celebration of violence in what Roger Ebert described as “macho porn.” Rage and frustration are the factors inevitably behind this terrorism as self-assertion.

Final Approach (2007: d. Armand Mastroianni) This three-hour telemovie concerns an FBI hostage rescue specialist on a domestic airline ﬂight hijacked by the terrorist group the People’s Separatist Movement. They demand the release of an imprisoned patriot. When threats of nuclear detonation are involved, the destruction of the hijacked plane is considered. On the ground, the FBI man’s wife investigates the case. This is a formulaic action B-movie extended to protracted length to take advantage of the popularity and newsworthiness of terrorism as a subject for popular entertainment. There is nothing here that hasn’t been dramatized in countless pre–9/11 terrorist action ﬁlms. Rather than attempt to upgrade the terrorist subgenre for a post–9/11 environment, Final Approach slavishly imitates the genre’s conventions and set-pieces. There is a little discussion of the moral responsibility of hostage negotiation and the ﬁlm begins by dramatizing a militia-related hostage situation that recaps previous depictions without adding anything to the ethical discussion surrounding the set-piece except a post–Waco analogy.

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The Final Option

Final Approach tries hard to capture the excitement and intensity of such television series as 24, but emerges merely a tired rehash of a conventional terrorist movie, updated to current police procedural practices. What is perhaps noteworthy is the sense of urgency and crisis management underpinning the ﬁlm’s action scenes and acceptance of the need for decisive action to combat a very real terrorist threat in Manhattan. Setting the ﬁlm around Manhattan dramatizes a post–9/11 fear of a bomb loose in New York, although such plot devices existed before 9/11 and it is difﬁcult to see Final Approach as anything other than an exploitation of the fear of terrorism for yet another functional but banal genre ﬁlm. The terrorists here are domestic, militia movement–related, and the ﬁlm is more concerned with the legacy of Timothy McVeigh and the patriotism that underlies pathological terrorism in the USA. Yet, it evokes airline travel security measures post–9/11 to suggest the urgency and moral tension of living in a world beset by the daily threat of terrorism, not only from outside America but from within. The mix of subgenre set-pieces from hostage-taking to kidnapping to hijacking reveals that the genre has not lost its structure post–9/11. The resolution in terms of airline hijacking and the decision whether or not to shoot down a passenger aircraft clearly evokes 9/11 and United 93, making Final Approach a summation of the terrorist subgenre.

The Final Option (1982: d. Ian Sharp) aka Who Dares Wins An anti-nuclear terrorist group headed by Judy Davis plans to attack the U.S. embassy in London as a means of drawing international focus to their cause. A British Intelligence agent inﬁltrates the group, pretending to be a disgraced SAS captain. However, he cannot prevent the plan and the terrorists take over the U.S. embassy and hold its staff hostage. In response, the British government sends in crack SAS troops. The Final Option is set against the British anti-nuclear protest movement of the early 1980s, which saw a rise in anti–American sentiment in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe. The ﬁlmmakers hold the view that emboldened “peaceful” protesters will resort to terrorism and hostage-taking to make their point. As this view condemns the peace movement, it is tempered in the ﬁlm; hence, the military intelligence community believes that hard-core revolutionaries are using the peace movement as a cover for their terrorist agenda. Terrorism is the main threat to democracy here and said threat must be dealt with swiftly and effectively through force. In its juxtaposition of SAS and terrorist training camps, the ﬁlm posits the view of terrorism as a kind of modern warfare, which only specially trained British forces, the SAS, are equipped to ﬁght. The ﬁlm depicts a radical youth culture drawn to anarchy. In one surreal scene, the terrorists perform a night club stage routine; in effect, the act of terrorism becomes for them a political performance on the world stage — terrorism as performance art. The terrorist leader here is female, and the ﬁlm suggests that a magnetic male ego can manipulate and uncover such threatening females, in effect putting them in their place. Although short of a misogynistic allegory, gender differentiation in this ﬁlm is problematic. On their part, the terrorists consider themselves revolutionaries ﬁghting the U.S. warmongers in the name of world peace, an irony not lost on the ﬁlmmakers as they suggest that the real sponsors of such youthfully misguided protest can be ascertained by following the money trail. Revolutionary fervor is associated with youthful anti-establishment resentment and in need of disciplining by strong men acting on behalf of British authority. This emphasis on discipline adds a reactionary undertext.

Final Voyage

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Overall, The Final Option depicts a condescending view of youthful alienation affected by popular culture’s political narcissism. Ironically, the terrorist group, calling themselves “The People’s Lobby,” claims that as Christ was an anti-church militant and radical, his subversion was a form of terrorism. With such misdirected anarchy, as the ﬁlm considers these views, British youth culture is seen as sorely in need of guidance and discipline to prevent the rash of quasi-religious terrorism germinating in the modern peace movement. The irony is overstated: The peaceful terrorists threaten to launch a nuclear missile against a U.S. submarine base in Britain in the name of peace. It is clear that these ﬁlmmakers hold the peace movement in utter contempt and seek to discredit it through association with anarchic terrorism rooted in monstrous egotism more so than political conviction. Once the embassy is under terrorist control, the ﬁlm exposes the absolute futility of any attempt to reason with terrorists, who are seen as beyond reason and rationality and intent on self-aggrandizement through violence alone (then a developing theme in the newly emergent cinema of terrorism). The peace movement here births irresponsible lunatics who seek nothing but to usurp the right to self-determination from those they consider the enemies of their political agenda, unanswerable to rational discourse — terrorists are fanatics. However, the ﬁlm does develop the systematized process that government authorities must go through when dealing with any terrorist emergency and/or hostage crisis: There is always protocol. The impossibility of reasoning with madmen willing to die for their cause signals the examination of suicidal terrorism that would ﬁnd its way into select terrorist ﬁlms pre–9/11 before exploding as a dominant concern in post–9/11 American terrorist ﬁlms. The Final Option was made in outraged response to the genuine embassy hostagetaking incidents of the early 1980s (in Europe, Iran and Lebanon), in particular the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980, which saw the SAS elevated to popular hero status in British culture at the time it embraced “Thatcherism” (Paterson & Schlesinger, 1983). It was this Iranian embassy siege that ushered in the British “myth of the men in black,” representing efﬁciency and authority — the exemplars of Thatcherist “potency.” The original title, used for the British release —Who Dares Wins— was that of a non-ﬁction book about the SAS released shortly before the ﬁlm. Director Ian Sharp felt the peace movement scenario would be more effective than the actual Iranian embassy incident and so instituted the ﬁction, in tandem with scenarist George Markstein who felt that “terrorism is pathology threatening the State and the Free World as we know it” (quoted in Paterson & Schlesinger, 1983). Who Dares Wins was condemned by critics but performed well at the British box ofﬁce when the ﬁlm was released in August 1982 after a wave of British patriotism following the Falkland Islands crisis.

Final Voyage (1999: d. Jay Andrews) A ship with a large guest list of rich dignitaries is hijacked and held for ransom by a vaguely motivated terrorist-extremist group in Final Voyage, a ﬁlm rushed to completion to take advantage of the publicity surrounding the release of the hit Titanic. After a gunﬁght and explosion on board, the ship slowly begins to sink. Advertised in the direct-to-video action ﬁeld as a cross between Titanic and Under Siege, though perhaps more reminiscent of the Achille Lauro affair, the ﬁlm begins with an airplane hijacking subdued by the protagonist, depicted as yet another great lone

129

Firehawk / Flashback

American patriarchal hero in an unremarkable fashion. Cheaply made, this mediocre movie lifts plot developments from 1970s disaster movies (the ship was built to budgetary constraints resulting in design ﬂaws — responsible for the ﬁre in The Towering Inferno— and the team descent on ship recalls that in the superior ocean-liner bomb thriller Juggernaut). In the manner typical of much generic terrorist movie fodder in the 1990s, these terrorists operate with a proﬁt motive, intending to rob the ship’s safe in the manner of the thieves posing as terrorists in Die Hard.

Firehawk (1995: d. Paul Levine) Two U.S. planes (including one international airliner) crash in two days under similar circumstances and a secret new stealth ﬁghter vanishes. Soon, the Defense Secretary must deal with demands from a Russian terrorist group saying they will destroy an airliner every four hours unless the U.S. admits culpability in the death of a Soviet scientist (the father of the terrorist leader, a vengeful daughter). Two specialist U.S. pilots are sent to ﬁnd the daughter but are captured and tortured. The theft of a secret stealth plane has been a trope in action ﬁlms since Clint Eastwood’s Firefox and the pilot as hero owes to the likes of Top Gun and Iron Eagle. The lone theme of interest in this highly derivative ﬁlm is that of a daughter driven crazy by her apparent need to uphold and avenge the law of the father: that patriarchy triggers a psychosis that demands terrorism as a form of reactionary vengeance. The loss of the father is what this ﬁlm considers the ultimate trauma upon women. Technological advancement here results in new levels of terrorist threat as the ﬁlm borders on science ﬁction. The terrorist base in Kazakhstan owes to the realization of super-terrorist bases in the James Bond ﬁlms, although Firehawk lacks their budgets. Intriguingly, despite the promising look at patriarchal psychosis, the terrorist leader is revealed to be acting out of the desire to make her mark on the world around her: i.e., terrorism as self-aggrandizement, whatever the ties to patriarchal psychosis that underpin it. Ironically, the terrorist villainess claims to be motivated by love and the ﬁlm implicates the CIA with foreknowledge of the Lockerbie airplane bombing disaster.

Flashback (1990: d. Franco Amurri) When a former ’60s radical (Dennis Hopper) still wanted on terrorist charges is caught by the FBI, an uptight young yuppie agent (Kiefer Sutherland) is assigned to escort him to trial. When Hopper escapes, as per his plan all along (a publicity stunt to sell his book), Sutherland must ﬁnd him. He encounters a variety of former hippie types now having to adjust to modern commercial America. As a comedy, Flashback downplays any link to radical 1960s terrorism as plot contrivance. Instead the ﬁlm focuses on the cultural clash between the values of the sexual revolution (as personiﬁed by Hopper) and the values of Raegan’s America (as personiﬁed by Sutherland). However, like Running on Empty (which delves into the consequences of 1960s terrorism), Flashback does address the modern plight of former 1960s radicals and their inﬂuence on a subsequent generation. Although the FBI considers Hopper a dangerous terrorist, the revelation of his “crime” is that of merely a pranksterish political protester who embarrassed the FBI by escaping custody after derailing a train carrying then Vice-President Spiro Agnew. Hence, it is the FBI’s revenge for being humiliated rather

Flashpoint Africa

130

than any real terrorist threat which sustains their persecution of these former radicals way beyond the time when their acts had any political inﬂuence. As a parodic cum nostalgic appeal to the same generation that made a hit out of the ensemble movie The Big Chill, Flashback has amusement value. Scenes of Hopper impersonating an FBI agent are an entertaining piece of central casting work trading on Hopper’s Easy Rider image, itself self-referentially acknowledged in the movie when Hopper says to two former hippies that it takes more than going to the video store and renting Easy Rider to be a rebel: to which, one former hippie admits proudly that he owns a copy of Easy Rider. Soon Flashback’s true ideological agenda is clariﬁed in the gradual way in which Hopper becomes a father ﬁgure and role model to the increasingly disillusioned yuppie Sutherland: The spirit of 1960s radicalism informs American patriarchy to a beneﬁcial extent. As the two former hippies get drunk and call themselves the “’60s Liberation Army” and kidnap Hopper (thinking him an FBI agent), 1960s “terrorism” is effectively de-mythologized as harmless idealism in what is a comically reductionist and simplistic ﬁlm.

Flashpoint Africa (1984: d. Francis Megahy) News reporters in an African state agree to ﬁlm only those events which enhance the activities and proﬁle of a wanted terrorist leader. Their loyalties are complicated when two English girls are kidnapped and forced to participate in armed raids. Set against the backdrop of British colonial interests in Africa (as was the earlier Game for Vultures), Flashpoint Africa suggests that the more organized a revolutionary group becomes in their embrace of terrorism and guerrilla warfare, the more they depend on press collusion to sustain their momentum, themes also of such other diverse terrorist ﬁlms of the early 1980s as Death Before Dishonor and Wrong Is Right. Kidnapping on racial grounds is considered a guerrilla act with political, colonial overtones though the government is determined to downplay any political agenda and dismiss such targeted kidnappings as not the means of terrorism but as merely criminal enterprise. The sexual menace of white women held captive by virile black men is raised but abandoned when the captors reveal they are under orders to leave the women alone, the presumption being that otherwise they would have been raped. The reporter (also a woman) ensures that the kidnapping is given worldwide attention. After receiving such, the emboldened terrorists claim that they represent the voice of the people; a high-proﬁle terrorist incident lends credibility to their political claims as they see it. Hence, terrorism is again self-aggrandizement but less individual than social in this ﬁlm, which seeks to delineate the relationship between revolutionary terrorism and the modern media. The ﬁlm is structured to accommodate ﬂashbacks to the construction of a TV documentary, though the theme of mass media–constructed “product” is devoid of the satirical overtones that attended a similar theme in the earlier Wrong Is Right. The terrorists are revealed to be impoverished petty criminals who rally around a dynamic, charismatic and idealistic leader. They claim to wish to end poverty though seem to be involved in compulsive theft, a situation that leads the press to consider their activities as “Robin Hood–ism.” Ironically, the meeting between the journalist and the terrorist leader (a situation developed to greater irony in the concurrent Under Fire) proves an opportunity for the both of them to aid their self-aggrandizement. Thus, the terror-

131

Flight 93

ist-media relationship is construed in terms of a parasitic symbiosis, a professional compromise of journalistic ethics in order to serve a one-sided story simply to gain exposure and attention for personal rather than ideological gain. Amusingly enough despite the lack of comedy is the suggestion that the terrorists want to program media content regarding their representation just as they admit despising commercial entertainment programming, an irony that informed the earlier satire Network. Journalistic responsibility and ethical compromise in the media reporting of terrorism and revolution is the issue sustaining Flashpoint Africa. Though the ﬁlm is careful to avoid any mention of the word “terrorism,” it construes coverage of a revolutionary guerrilla war as resulting in inevitable ideological disintegration in the pursuit of power, whether individual or collective. Just as media reports paint the revolutionaries as freedom ﬁghters representing the oppressed in post-colonial Africa, the reporter gradually realizes that despite their idealism, these revolutionary terrorists are hypocritical murderers. Intriguingly, the premise of hostages becoming involved (practically and sexually) with the captors makes for a curious interpretation of both the so-called Helsinki Syndrome and the facts surrounding the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.

Flight 93 (2006: d. Peter Markle) Emerging in competition to United 93 was Flight 93, a telemovie retelling the story of the passengers and crew aboard the title ﬂight, hijacked by terrorists on 9/11 but forced by a passenger rebellion to crash before it could reach its target. Echoing the crisis management disaster movie subtext of United 93, Flight 93 is a lackluster version of the tale that eventually had the ﬂight passengers considered the heroes of 9/11 in ﬁghting back to prevent the terrorist takeover of their right to selfdetermination. Again, it focuses on air trafﬁc control’s handling of the situation and evokes the tragedy of 9/11 as TV news coverage witnessed by ordinary Americans, those whose relatives are aboard Flight 93 and will play a mythic role in the reinvention of American heroism post–9/11, in which Todd Beamer became a symbolic name in American culture. Essentially, Flight 93, more so than United 93, takes the material of the airline hijacking movie pre–9/11 and applies it to the facts of American confusion on 9/11 and the speculation as to what transpired on the title ﬂight, which it recreates within evident budgetary limitations and ultimately without the intensity and authenticity of United 93. Using docudrama-like observation of the citizen response to 9/11, it seeks to delineate in heroic terms the ﬁght against the terrorist design on a home territory attack: thus, it seeks to dramatize the sole tale of resistance and deﬁance against the terrorist agenda during America’s initiation into the War on Terror. It avoids all political context, as did United 93 and World Trade Center (the two ﬁlms ﬁrst marking America’s eventual willingness to address the events of 9/11). The aspects of the by-then legendary ﬂight are played out as intercut set-pieces — the mobile phone communication between passengers and relatives on the ground as they watch the collapse of the Twin Towers on television; the crisis management at air trafﬁc control as they realize that the ﬂight has been hijacked; the interplay of the terrorists as they try to keep the passengers from revolting; the strategic decisions of the passengers to ﬁght back and prevent the terrorists from their “suicide mission” even if it means their own deaths.

The Fourth Protocol / Frantic

132

The Fourth Protocol (1988: d. John Mackenzie) In this adaptation of a Frederick Forsyth novel, a KGB chairman is intent on destroying NATO through the violation of the title agreement, a secret pact between the Soviets and the West prohibiting the importing or smuggling of nuclear component parts into any nation or territory. A KGB agent (Pierce Brosnan) is assigned to an English village near a U.S. airbase to assemble a nuclear bomb while a British researcher (Michael Caine) investigates the matter. The Fourth Protocol is a Cold War spy thriller more so than a terrorist movie, though the plot’s base in the fear of loose nukes and renegade Cold Warriors seeking vengeance would dominate much post–Cold War scenarios a few years later. The fringes of government enable terroristic scenarios as a means of furthering the Cold War agenda. Here though, the premise is the fear of rogue government agents violating détente in order to start a new war, themes also in the James Bond movie Octopussy and the U.S. thriller The Package. The ﬁlm parallels Brosnan, on a deadly mission from his superior, to Caine, a drunken researcher similar to his role of the drunken professor in Educating Rita as much as it may recall his Harry Palmer secret agent ﬁlms in the 1960s. The policies of détente here threaten the hardliners, who are willing to resort to sinister dealings and terroristic plans to see their agenda through via the espionage agent network: nuclear terrorism to restore Soviet authority. The plot is based on the U.S. nuclear presence in Britain, also addressed in The Final Option, as the Soviets plan to detonate a nuclear bomb, blame it on the USA and so dissolve NATO. Interestingly, Brosnan’s sexuality is at issue here and he is arguably either asexual or even bisexual, as if hiding a personal ﬂaw by proving himself a good agent through a form of monstrous ideological dedication to his superiors. Assembling the bomb is thus a sexually surrogate act for Brosnan, the ﬁlm suggesting such agents/terrorists are immoral people turned on sexually by the prospect of mass destruction.

Frantic (1987: d. Roman Polanski) A U.S. doctor (Harrison Ford) and his wife arrive in Paris for a conference; when his wife disappears from their hotel room, the doctor searches desperately for her through the Paris underworld, uncovering a terrorist plot to smuggle atomic detonators into the city. With the help of a Parisienne, Ford goes after the terrorists. Frantic follows Ford’s mounting desperation as he struggles to make sense of his wife’s apparent disappearance. In his obsessive search, the ﬁlm implies an emotional dependence on his part for her, hence he does not take advantage of sexual possibilities with the woman assisting him and consciously chooses a monogamous relationship. Director Polanski charts Ford’s mounting desperation with excitement although the eventual plot connection to Middle Eastern terrorists is far-fetched. Indeed, the resolution of the terrorist intrigue is secondary to the ﬁlm’s themes of emotional despair, the difference between love and need, and spousal loyalty. There is little mention of the terrorists’ plans or their ideology beyond the mere fact that such exist with a conviction that would willingly prepare for nuclear terrorism. The terrorists are well-mannered, dressed and cultured, fully able to blend in with upper-class French society. Also, the word “terrorist” is never used: instead, these Arabs smuggling nuclear component parts are referred to as “agents,” the assertion being

133

Freedom Strike

espionage rather than terrorism, although the two concepts are conﬂated in this plot. Ironically, the U.S. embassy only becomes seriously involved in the investigation of the wife’s disappearance when they realize the Arab agent/terrorist connection. When the Arab agents discuss the death of one of their number, one remarks, “Those Israeli dogs,” the implication that the Israel-Palestine situation is spilling over into Western Europe where the barriers between espionage and terrorism crumble.

Freedom Strike (1998: d. Jerry P. Jacobs) In this vaguely futuristic ﬁlm, the UN creates their own International Special Operations Team to inﬁltrate hostile regions to recover stolen or manufactured weapons hardware and components as well as remedy hostage situations. When Syrian terrorists attempt to murder the Syrian president in order to prevent the signing of a peace treaty in the Middle East, the USA is blamed. The terrorists inﬁltrate a nuclear reactor and the UN strike force is sent into action. Freedom Strike is much more interesting in its implications than in its execution, which merely continues the dehumanization of the Middle Eastern terrorist in the most reactionary way. Its thematic backdrop is the UN’s role in the Middle East crisis as fully warranting its own security forces as effective as U.S. covert operations: i.e., that the UN should be the dominant force in the post–Cold War “new world order” rather than the USA. However, it is hatred of the USA and its foreign policies that motivates terrorism in the region to the extent that the terrorist threat is the dominant one to both U.S. and UN interests, as well as to the stability of the Middle East. The ﬁlm posits that Syria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are poised to become nuclear powers, contributing to rampant instability in the region which has simply too many rival power bases struggling to assert control and inﬂuence. In such a context, the U.S. and the UN have no option but to utilize preemptive strikes to prevent the rise of terrorism in the region. The prospect of a U.S.–brokered peace treaty between Middle Eastern nations to end inter–Arab warfare is intriguing but here becomes the excuse for aerial dogﬁghts in the manner of Iron Eagle and team operations in the manner of Navy SEALS and The Delta Force, offering nothing new except for its relevant political speculations, which curiously enough avoid all mention of Israel. Issues of a peace treaty are examined, with one militant wondering how any signed peace of paper can end a holy war that has been waged for generations; jihad is a tradition in the region. As the turmoil is exclusively inter–Arab, Freedom Strike avoids any consideration of the consequences of the traditional U.S. support of Israel and instead assumes that it is up to the U.S. to now attempt to bring peace to warring Arabs — the Middle East here has nothing to do with Zionism. This puts the U.S. in a no-win situation: They must act to promote peace but their actions are considered interference in the affairs of sovereign Arab nations and thus the reason for terrorist adversity. Rogue presences in the Arab military lend their aid to the terrorist cause, in much the same way that in so many post–Cold War terrorist ﬁlms disgruntled former Soviets segue into terrorism related to the smuggling of nuclear component parts or arms. The villain is a rogue Syrian colonel using the terrorists as cover for his anti-peace agenda, in the belief that a nuclear capacity is a patriotic duty. In turn, the U.S. cannot tolerate a potential nuclear Arab threat to U.S. personnel and interests and so must go after the colonel via his terrorist associations.

Full Disclosure / Futuresport

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Full Disclosure (2001: d. John Bradshaw) A reporter (Fred Ward) gets involved with a Peruvian fugitive, a political assassin and an FBI agent. Ward’s radical past comes to the fore when he is asked by friends to protect a foreign radical (Rachel Ticotin) with Palestinian ties. Ward begins to suspect Ticotin may be involved in the assassination of a pro–Israel ﬁgure. Ironically inverting the usual terrorist association between terrorism and sexual deviance, the Israeli targeted for assassination is a homosexual: The Palestinian “terrorists” feel this Jew is a deviate and aberration whose exploitation of young Arab men is sexual in nature. As Ward trails the FBI, he realizes that the Israeli has been cruising for foreign students he can sexually exploit. In the context of an FBI crackdown on former domestic radicals, the ease of this sexual “conquest” is alarming and exactly the irony that propels these ﬁlmmakers. Also, the existing network of former radicals is allied to Latin American revolutionary politics, hiding a Shining Path guerrilla. The terrorists are linked to the Algerians and fear that if there is evidence of state-sponsored involvement, the USA will merely bomb any involved country “back into the Stone Age.” Ticotin, here representing Palestinian terrorism, is revealed to have grown up in the West Bank, was educated in the USA (she has a Master’s degree) but returned to live in a refugee camp with her parents. A decent person at heart, she has tried to extricate herself from her terrorist associates but their hold over her is too strong. Ward can sympathize with her — he once tried to bomb a campus ROTC division and was labeled a terrorist also — but Ward’s problem is less one of his own ideological convictions than a weakness for the wrong kind of women, who inevitably involve him in their ideological convictions, drawing him into terrorism by circumstance. Full Disclosure builds sympathy for Ward and Ticotin but slowly distances itself from such, contextualizing their actions and examining the plight of former radicals in a way which alludes to such as Running on Empty though springboarding from that ﬁlm into an examination of how decent “radicals” can extend their convictions to the support of international terroristrevolutionary causes. Ward plays an unappealing character whose inadequacy is gradually exposed as the narrative proceeds to examine his role as protector. He unburdens his guilt on Ticotin, the one woman he will never see again, making his confession impersonal and self-serving rather than genuinely emotionally cathartic. The more he conﬁdes in Ticotin, the more he wants there to develop a romance between them, unaware that Ticotin has been ordered to kill him to tie up loose ends. This romantic intrigue is lackluster in comparison to the study of radicalism’s ties to international terrorism and bogs the ﬁlm down in uninteresting interpersonal melodrama. As twists occur casting doubts on Ward’s conviction (he once informed on his fellow radicals), the ﬁlm seeks to show how those labeled terrorists are done so by circumstances alone and are not, in effect, genuine terrorists. In so doing, Full Disclosure turns the investigation and pursuing FBI into the villains and the so-called “terrorists” into the heroes, an ironic inversion of U.S. genre ﬁlm formula. But the ﬁlm does not take full advantage of this.

Futuresport (1998: d. Ernest Dickerson) In 2025, the title game is organized at a time when the U.S. is beset by terrorism from a Hawaiian separatist movement looking to violence to publicize and politicize their cause. Owing much to the vastly superior Rollerball (itself inadequately remade around

135

Game for Vultures

the same time) which used its premise to indict corporate American globalization, Futuresport is unconcerned with any realistic speculation about the future of American politics. The terroristic Hawaiian Liberation Organization (the HLO rather than the PLO in what seems intended as comedy) is an unbelievable absurdity rather than an engaging novelty. Nevertheless, the ﬁlm posits that a nationalist-separatist group will leave the negotiating table and target a sporting event in order to achieve its terrorist aims. But as their cause is ridiculous, there is no insight into their operations beyond the level of menace to America’s new generation of sports heroes. In this, the sporting hero epitomizes the cult of celebrity in America, making such, in this ﬁlm’s terms at least, a more likely target for terrorists than political leaders, the rationale being that killing a sports hero will evoke more fear in the U.S. populace than killing a political leader. It’s a clearly satiric jibe at the cult of celebrity and its importance in American popular culture. Solid computer effects keep Futuresport lively and colorful but after spelling out its themes, the ﬁlm does nothing with them beyond premise and functional exposition. There is some irony in political tension being solved in sporting matches — thus, tension between Australia and the USA over the Pan-Paciﬁc region is played out in sporting conﬂict rather than political negotiation. Sport is here seen as serving a politicized purpose in allowing rival gangs, groups and corporations the opportunity to settle their differences in friendly competition — the American way, after all. Now appropriated by the masses, it has become a cultural phenomenon. Although there is some suggestion of U.S. foreign policy being the cause for anti–American feeling throughout the world, the ﬁlm is more concerned with the impact of popular culture than the political ends such culture may be appropriated to serve. It settles for spectacle over satire and emerges as a mediocre sci-ﬁ actioner of little interest: As the U.S. faces terrorism from abroad and tensions from within, it avoids the issue by involving itself in ratings-winning, mindless sport. However, terrorism — in the form of an old-fashioned bombing campaign throughout Hawaii — can precipitate a world crisis and threaten international alliances. The terrorists are given money and weapons but their sponsors wish to stop short of commencing an all-out war involving the USA. Thus, terrorism in the sporting context is that which seeks to sabotage an otherwise fair contest and much of the ﬁlm’s intrigue involves whether or not the main sporting ﬁgures will be compromised by their associations with terrorists. Naturally, the showdown between all opposing forces occurs during the title sporting event at the climax to this feeble movie.

Game for Vultures (1979: d. James Fargo) Game for Vultures takes place in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe during a terrorist war. Richard Roundtree plays a self-proclaimed freedom ﬁghter who has set aside an earlier paciﬁsm in favor of armed terroristic resistance against the oppressive government. Soon, he must face down a rich, white landowner (Richard Harris) longing to set up business in his native land. Their conﬂict is dramatized against the unfolding terrorist campaign and ideological rhetoric of the freedom ﬁghter vs. the terrorist (with the distinction deﬁned at the prerogative of the government). The contrast between those in power and those who seek to take power in order to liberate an oppressed underclass is well rendered. Battles between the so-called “terrorists” and the troops out to get them are staged as conventional combat scenes so that the terrorists here ﬁght like soldiers and even dress uniformly. It is the conﬂation of terrorist and freedom ﬁghter which interests director

Gandhi

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Fargo (who would the same year direct the only American ﬁlm made in Iran some months before the Iranian Revolution —Caravans). Correspondingly, Game for Vultures frames its consideration of terrorism in terms of conventional civil war. African wars are often depicted as such, often with mercenarial opportunities — from The Wild Geese to Blood Diamond and Lord of War. Framing terrorism as conventional war allows sympathy for the terrorist leader, reminiscent of the depiction of Algerian “terrorism” in Lost Command. There is a humanist core to Game for Vultures. Whatever the idealism behind the terrorist war, the physical toll is brought out by Fargo. Politically, UK colonialist interests and U.S. military-industrial complex proﬁts are at work in the formulation of tiny African nations (the U.S. sells helicopters to the government to ﬁght the “terrorists”). The discrepancy between rich and poor, pragmatist and idealist are examined here as Fargo parallels Harris’ political machinations with Richard Roundtree’s armed, presumably Marxist struggle amongst a sympathetic populace. Scenes of Harris realizing he can do nothing to help someone suspected of being a terrorist give way to Roundtree confronted by a poor boy who wants only to be a freedom ﬁghter. “Africa for the Africans” was a popular phrase around the time this ﬁlm was made and Fargo discusses terrorism in the context of the African independence and civil war movement with some complexity although is duty-bound to follow the soap operatic intrigues of its all-star cast. Terrorism is a valid form of resistance and the rhetorical distinctions between terrorist and freedom ﬁghter are indistinguishable in this ﬁlm. In that, it encapsulates American ﬁlm’s response to African civil wars and the anti-colonialist movement. It also postulates “terrorism” as the means of warfare of the poor and underprivileged, labeled “terrorists” by rich, powerful, foreign military and economic interests. That context is oddly radical considering the glamour associated with rich man Harris and his romantic interest Joan Collins. Yet, Roundtree too becomes disillusioned with the ideology that emerges from the freedom ﬁghter leaders, their methods indirectly paralleled with, and contrasted to, those of high politics and big business. The main point of Game for Vultures is to de-mystify the “terrorist” label and stress the validity of the “freedom ﬁghter” (leading children to safety from troop ﬁre). This is a distinction the ﬁlm seeks to explore practically and politically.

Gandhi (1982: d. Richard Attenborough) Gandhi is an epic biopic about Mahatma Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) who sought freedom for India from the forces of British colonialism by non-violent and peaceful means. It charts Gandhi’s rise from lawyer to activist to national leader assassinated by Islamic terrorists over the issue of a religious homeland for Muslims in Pakistan. Unconcerned with terrorism until the climax, Gandhi is about non-violent means of political process to achieve change, contrasting the success of such with the monstrous assassination, which begins and ends the ﬁlm, establishing a period in world history essentially ended with the growth of political terrorism over non-violent protest. Intriguingly, Gandhi is seen as having a Christian base but appealing equally to all religions, his one failure being his inability to quell religious difference — the root cause of terrorism in this movie. Idealism brings with it a tremendous responsibility. Gandhi advocates peaceful protest in the name of a cause worth dying for, saying that there is no cause worth killing for — a belief ironic considering his death by political assassination. However, the greater

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The Glory Boys / Greenmail

the ambition, the greater the threat of a social descent into terrorism when that ambition is achieved. Gandhi eschews those who seek home rule for India by violent means, denying terror any role in the freeing of India from colonialist rule. Terrorism is, for Gandhi, an anarchy that can never be organized in support of meaningful political change. His associate Pandit Nehru says that terrorism only justiﬁes further oppression, pondering whether it is better to live with nationalistic terrorism or be subservient to colonialist terror. As Gandhi faces advisors who urge that the time of non-violent protest has passed, director Attenborough examines the issues surrounding terrorism and resistance or protest, pondering the role of terror and violence in struggles of independence. Gandhi’s response is to advocate active resistance but still non-violent, rejecting not the ends of terrorism but its means and in so doing achieving a hard-won independence for his nation. Signiﬁcantly, Gandhi’s arrest triggers government fears of terrorist reprisal as the hold on non-violence is weak and Gandhi must continually advocate against the everpresent threat, believing that a terrorist response is merely a slide into criminal action and not a means of political protest. Indeed, terrorism in Gandhi is from the British colonialists as they use violence to keep the “natives” in line. When provoked politically, an occupier will resort to terrorism to stay in power — State terrorism. But once independence is gained for India, the nation is embroiled in sectarian turmoil between Muslims and Hindus, resulting in the formation of Pakistan and the terrorism that would ﬁnally claim Gandhi’s life.

The Glory Boys (1984: d. Michael Ferguson) A Yorkshire telemovie from Gerald Seymour, author of the successful Harry’s Game, The Glory Boys looks at the combined efforts of UK and Israeli intelligence as they learn of a plot by IRA and Arab terrorists against a noted Israeli physicist. Considering the brutal torture by Israeli agents of Arab “terrorists” as absolutely necessary in order to extract information in Lebanon, The Glory Boys soon degenerates into a preposterous plot. The view that the IRA would ally themselves to other causes, speciﬁcally in the Middle East, is odd and seems to constitute what the ﬁlmmakers feel is evidence of a growing international network of terror cells, as if all terrorists are united by their methodology over and above whatever cause it may serve. Individual safety must be risked for national security in this mini-series, one of several terrorist related miniseries in the 1980s including Harry’s Game, Sword of Gideon and The Bourne Identity. In the end, The Glory Boys becomes a standard manhunt detective plot with a few asides to terrorist concerns — such as the fear that taking an Arab leader alive would lead to terrorist reprisals — until its staging of an attempted terror incident at London’s Heathrow Airport.

Greenmail (2001: d. Jonathan Heap) A serial bomber with links to environmental terrorists targets Seattle. A federal agent teams with a radical environmental activist to track the bomber down. Greenmail explores the potential for radical “green” causes to segue into terrorism, falling in line despite its contemporariness with a long line of ﬁlms including The Mad Bomber, The Final Cut, Speed and Ticker in that it unites serial bomb-maker pathology with the aberration of terrorism. Positing an underground network of terrorists ready to

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turn violent on short notice, Greenmail suggests that incidents like the much-publicized Waco siege (involving self-proclaimed militia messiah David Koresh) are being used for propaganda by anti-government groups as a catch-cry for the growing resistance movement. Despite the novelty of its environmental terrorism theme, the ﬁlm follows a standard investigative procedural format. Adversaries are here prepared to consider their opponents “terrorists” if it can dehumanize them further. Thus, the real “terrorist” considers his actions as revolutionary statements against the corporate elite, designed to inﬂict maximum economic damage. Bombings are born of political and ideological desperation with the bomber saying that “legality is no guarantee of morality,” and clearly inspired by genuine 1960s radical group The Weather Underground. The bomber considers his acts the result of hubris and a means of self-actualization, killing to become a great name in history when he is eventually found out — the dreams of a feeble and cowardly nobody seeking self-aggrandizement. He feels that if he kills often enough, he will achieve political change and a personal transformation that will see him swept up as a great leader in a reformed world. Hence, the bomber here uses terrorism in order to achieve personality transformation, motivated by a fantasy image of himself in much the same way that serial murderers enact repeated fantasies as they kill.

Guerrilla — The Taking of Patty Hearst (2002: d. Robert Stone) America 1974. Cinque, heading the Symbionese Liberation Army, kidnaps the daughter of newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst. Patty Hearst becomes a member of the SLA and assists them in their revolutionary struggle against the forces of what they consider fascistic American authority. The case affects her family members, becomes the subject of a large police investigation and generates a media circus. Guerrilla is a documentary which begins by interjecting interview footage with surviving SLA members with footage of the Vietnam War and the U.S. student and peace movements of the 1970s. The idealism of the home-grown terrorist is at issue here: the politics of Vietnam birthing a generation of discontented youth who turn to terrorism out of ideological rage against what is considered a monstrous American establishment. Like many ﬁlms about home-grown terrorism (usually related to the militia movement or evocative of the Weather Underground), Guerrilla examines the relationship between American patriotic ideology and the inhumanity of terrorism, although the ﬁlm seeks to humanize its terrorist ﬁgures and present the historical factors as they saw them converging. Social and historical context is everything here, and there is an abundance of found footage, skillfully edited in elaborate montage sequences documenting the political crises of the 1970s and evoking a range of epochal cultural phenomena from Che Guevara to the then-controversial ﬁlm State of Siege. The ﬁlm devotes much attention to the racial conﬂicts of the 1970s in which black convicts were considered political prisoners. It reveals the formative operations of the SLA as well as the societal and media conditions which spawned and reported on the sudden, violent outbreak of home-grown terrorism that was the SLA revolution. The relationship between social revolution and political terrorism informs much of Guerrilla. The kidnapping of Patty Hearst was the SLA’s most high-proﬁle action and the ﬁlm subsequently charts how the initial idealism of a revolutionary movement ﬂoundered in the aftermath of the kidnapping, which was under immense media scrutiny as the SLA were

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now considered “anti-government terrorists.” Still, it’s the discussion of revolutionary vs. terrorist that underlies this ﬁlm’s deployment of archival footage with which to illustrate the background for its interviews. The blending of archival footage, media reports, voice recordings and interviews with surviving terrorists makes for a captivating piece of ﬁlmed narrative nonﬁction, though just short of the pace and drive of the noted documentary about the Palestinian terrorist action during the Munich Olympics, One Day in September. Every aspect of the case as reported in the media and as investigated by the police is covered in this documentary, which unfolds in a selective day-by-day manner for the duration of Hearst’s ordeal. The socio-political impetus that provoked the terrorist “crimes” is also very well-documented for an in-depth portrait of domestic American terrorism in the wake of the sexual revolution as it was consumed by the Vietnam War. The historical perspective in this ﬁlm clearly seeks to both document the case as an epochal event and investigate it for what it says about the climate that generates revolutionary ideologies that readily segue into terrorism. Without Hearst’s direct participation, however, the portrait of her that emerges is through voice recordings and news footage, until an LSD-like sequence recreating the preceding events from her brainwashed point of view as she is brought to trial. Nevertheless, the revolutionary zeal in her audio recordings culminating in the famous photograph of her holding an automatic weapon does make for a systematic exposure of her personality transformation (her self-determination shaped by terrorist intervention — what the ﬁlm also looks at as a classic case of what is known in terrorist literature as the “Stockholm Syndrome”) from spoiled rich kid into living legend of U.S. domestic terrorism. The ﬁlm’s postscript concerns recent SLA judicial proceedings due to the increased scrutiny on terrorist-related crimes in post–9/11 America. The irony ending the ﬁlm — juxtaposing the confessing SLA members apologizing and being sentenced to prison with Hearst guesting on a cable TV talk show to say she had a perfect life — puts the ﬁlm in an apt context regarding political idealism and the cult of celebrity. The Hearst kidnapping and her subsequent career as a guerrilla revolutionary were the basis for the telemovie The Ordeal of Patty Hearst and the feature ﬁlm Patty Hearst. Hearst herself went on, since the 1990s, to become a member of cult ﬁlm director John Waters’ stock company of actors alongside former under-age porn star Traci Lords, who also disowned aspects of her past.

Half Moon Street (1986: d. Bob Swaim) A London woman (Sigourney Weaver) seeks satisfaction and money in working for an exclusive escort agency. Soon she is making contacts in political and ﬁnancial circles, including a high-status “political trouble shooter” (Michael Caine) and a terrorist who sees her as potential bait in an assassination plot. Half Moon Street begins with an evocation of a British populace gradually accepting the ramiﬁcations of the politicized terrorism on their doorstep — hence Weaver casually jogs as a car bomb explodes, killing a Libyan in exile. Weaver has a PhD and attends the Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, believing it vital to maintain connection to the Arab world. The Institute, funded by Arab sources, advocates ambassadorship and regional stability and feels that contact must be stepped up with moderate Arab states in the wake of continued regional terrorism — i.e., to get the Islamic world to police its own extremists.

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Weaver turns to prostitution for money and is unashamed of what she does. Like Kathleen Turner in Crimes of Passion, she leads a double life until her profession leads her to Caine, a former radical who admires her intelligence, Weaver admitting that she is also in it for the “uncomplicated sex.” As she segues into the political leader social set, her connections lead to a network of state-less Palestinians for whose terrorist interests she becomes an unwitting conduit in what is a clever ﬁlm pun on the notion of political bedfellows. Weaver’s arrogantly smug self-satisfaction makes her a bed wench operating under the illusion of personal empowerment. As Weaver chooses immorality over a moral stand, she becomes an emotionless cipher, counterbalancing Caine’s radical-moral posturing in favor of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Weaver’s cold need for control through sexual manipulation and fantasy recalls the icy impersonality of Jane Fonda in Klute. Caine’s pro-peace stance makes him a target of terrorists, whom this ﬁlm suggests are deﬁned in their terrorism by their opposition to the peace process. (Political assassination here is considered the main means of terrorism.) As Caine, under pressure, seeks a more romantic relationship with Weaver, the ﬁlm’s interpersonal intrigue resembles that of The Next Man. On Weaver’s part, she fails to realize that she is being used by the men she believes she has control over — one of the ambiguities in ﬁlms dealing with the subject of prostitution, the ﬁlmmakers suggesting that the whore’s sense of liberation in impersonally commoditized sexual exchanges is an illusion, an awareness that Weaver slowly comes to as she realizes she is being set up by terrorists in a plot to kill and discredit Caine. When Weaver makes a stand, she is told that there are plenty of women in London like her, a humiliating fact that shatters her illusory self-conﬁdence for the last time.

The Hamburg Cell (2004: d. Antonia Bird) The Hamburg Cell predates United 93 in being the ﬁrst ﬁlm on terrorism made during the post–9/11 War on Terror. A telemovie, it explores the lives of several of the 9/11 hijackers as they live their lives as Muslim students prior to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. After a brief showing at the Edinburgh Film Festival, it was “dumped” to television screenings (ﬁrst by the UK’s Channel 4) and all discussion of releasing the ﬁlm theatrically in the USA as the ﬁrst post–9/11 terrorist movie was abandoned (that honor going to United 93). Considered a non-judgmental look at the events of 9/11 and the plight of modern Westernized Muslim youth, the ﬁlm was shown to much heated discussion at the 2004 Dubai International Film Festival. Concentrating on one representative 9/11 terrorist, Ziad Jarrah, The Hamburg Cell is an essentially humanist view of the pressures affecting young Muslims in Europe, speciﬁcally appeals to Islamic religious duty as opposed to the ways of the West; hence a more devout Muslim makes a snide remark about the supposed good Muslim Jarrah enjoying premarital sex with his girlfriend, something condemned by hardline Islam. Subsequently, as a proﬁle of real terrorists, The Hamburg Cell challenges the dehumanization of the Bush War on Terror policy by presenting the terrorists not as “evil” but as empathetic human beings drawn to extremist causes by reasons this ﬁlm contextualizes as reasonable and understandable in the given circumstances. Thus, The Hamburg Cell focuses on how one young man fell into the cycle of Islamic jihadist rhetoric in order to be a “good Muslim,” an ideal that all with his religious background are under pressure to be,

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The Hamburg Cell

especially when surrounded by European “decadence” and the political rhetoric of the struggle against the Zionist Israeli imperative and its American sponsors. Religious commitment has the power to transform human lives, even if in the end it becomes monstrous in its transformation of the individual into the terrorist mass-murderer. Although religion itself may be to blame for this impetus towards terrorism, it is Jarrah’s expressed desire (“I want my life to count for something”) that indicates the sense of helpless desperation that leads young men to seek guidance in religion. Once they surrender to religious decree, they are at the mercy of those fanatics who claim God’s (or Allah’s) authority for their monstrously inhumane actions. It is that gulf between religious conviction and mass murder that obsesses The Hamburg Cell’s style of contemplative behaviorist observation. The Hamburg Cell gives due attention to the terrorist cause beyond the level of rhetoric, exploring the motivation for terrorism as a ﬁght against the dehumanization, humiliation and domination of the Islamic world by the U.S. and its interests, both oil economy– and Judeo-Christian–driven. The defense of Islam is thus considered a duty, with all Americans legitimate targets by virtue of the democratic process whereby the government represents, and is elected by, the people. The subtext of American democracy making all Americans complicit in the foreign policy actions of its government remains subtextual here, though is important to note considering that this was exactly the suggestion that the Bush government labeled as unpatriotic and treasonous in their reductionist “with us or against us” rhetoric. Still, it is Islamic patriarchal pressure that bears upon such as Ziad Jarrah and Muhammad Atta, forcing them to live up to ideals which demand their deaths as “martyrs.” The Hamburg Cell relates the day-to-day activities of the key 9/11 hijackers whose names and actions in Europe were reported extensively in the media following 9/11. It is these people’s religious dedication, over and above any political indoctrination (which is here elided over somewhat), that perhaps seals their fate in history. But still, it is the enigmatic humanization of Jarrah that dominates The Hamburg Cell. The man deeply loves his wife (though argues with her over her responsibility to Islam — urging her to dress in more traditional, covering robes where she prefers the freedom of Western women) but is ready to abandon her for what he sees as a higher calling — martyrdom. The ﬁlm is telling in its suggestion that the ideology of martyrdom allows Islamic youth angered over U.S. interference in their right to self-determination in their own lands the opportunity for self-aggrandizement through terrorist actions, seen not as terrorism but as jihad. The ﬁnal stages of behaviorist ritual in the lead-up to 9/11, particularly the notion of spiritual preparedness and bodily cleansing, are well developed, a similar attention to the rituals of the suicide bomber inﬁltrating the earlier The Siege. Likewise, the ﬁnal minutiae of preparation are taken from the exact proscriptions laid down by Atta in his ﬁnal letter, again publicized to much disbelief and condemnation by the American press following 9/11. The ﬁnal stages of the intrigue surrounding the lead-up to 9/11 segue the ﬁlm into political thriller terrain as The Hamburg Cell takes on such traditional terrorist themes as the will to power and the usurping of the right to self-determination and restages them in relation to 9/11. The result is perhaps the ﬁrst attempt to use the terrorist subgenre as a means of cultural, social and political comment on not only the events of 9/11 but the events leading up to it as well as the climate of the War on Terror that followed it.

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Harry’s Game (1982: d. Lawrence Gordon Clark) Undercover operatives are sent into Belfast following the IRA assassination of a British cabinet member. A Yorkshire television production, Harry’s Game is remembered today mostly for its musical theme by popular folk band Clannad. Filmed in the naturalistic, socially conscious manner of much British television social drama, Harry’s Game concerns the notion of parallel destinies brought together by a horrid fate: the assassin and the target. It is full of outrage that such terrorist killers escape the net of British justice and calls for forceful action in response to the threat of continued IRA terrorism. Although the assassin is depicted as the most valuable asset to a terrorist cause, the inevitability of reprisal is suggested through constant parallel editing and juxtaposition of supposed cause and effect. As the IRA claim responsibility for terrorist attacks, so the British media attempt to paint such as merciless self-aggrandizement of no political consequence. Yet, the British are provoked into a counterterrorist response to promote justice as they see it and protect their national image of safe territorial integrity. It is the latter note that ironically compels the British to launch a military incursion into Ireland (perhaps as a parallel to the Israeli incursions into Palestine then occurring). Ireland (as represented by Belfast) is depicted as a socially underprivileged war zone where public protests in ruined streets are stiﬂed by force, though such military measures are not only ineffective against the IRA but embolden them in their struggle. Thus, the ﬁlm depicts the Irish ghettos as havens for terrorists, who see themselves as resistance ﬁghters in opposition to an occupying force which has ghettoized them. Undercover operative Harry had previous experience in the Middle East — just one of several parallels this ﬁlm seeks to make between Palestinian terrorism and the IRA. This suggests an implicit link between terrorist groups and causes throughout the world. Ironically though, the “terrorist” is seen to have a normal family life and is not dehumanized as much as one would expect given the context of this ﬁlm. Indeed, the terrorist faces stigma at home because of his association with the IRA, being far from a populist hero and closer to a man whose life is in a shambles due to his political allegiances and terrorist actions. The assassin’s political anti–UK extremism brings his family to the point of ruinous split. In this ﬁlm’s fatalistic agenda, a “rendezvous with fate” unites the counterterrorist operative and the terrorist-assassin: modern adversaries bound to face each other off one on one. Ideas of trust and interpersonal communication underlie this ﬁlm, with Harry needing to be careful amidst such Irish bitterness and despair to conceal his true identity. Although the ﬁlm hints at a scarred humanity beneath the Irish veneer of militant pride, it can scarcely ﬁnd genuine evidence of it amidst such nationalistic hostility. Irish militant pride is counterbalanced with British militant pride. (Pride here, the “devil’s sin” according to Catholic lore, enables terrorism to continue on both sides.) The British are more concerned with national pride than with true justice; they merely do not want to be seen as letting the Irish “get away” with something, a convenient means of avoiding negotiation and perpetuating the cycle of violence which consumes all in this ﬁlm. Indeed, the British, emboldened by the self-righteousness of their anti-terror cause (just as it feeds the self-righteousness of their adversaries), persecute and suppress instances of Irish cultural solidarity, feeling that any expression of Irish nationalistic unity is tantamount to terrorism.

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Just as the assassin is the most valuable weapon in the terrorist arsenal here, the assassin himself is an ill-informed, ultimately dispensable tool of no personal or political import to the causes he advocates through his terrorism. The assassin is manipulated and used by others, a nobody and lower-level functionary despite his opinion of himself as a noble ﬁghter for a just cause. In an ultimate irony, the terrorist-assassin is shot by the British undercover agent who is then shot by British troops unaware of his undercover status, the British troops themselves shot at by the assassin’s widow. The cycle of terrorist violence and reprisal is tragically one of seeming perpetual motion.

Held Hostage (1991: d. Roger Young) In this dramatization of a real-life 1984 hostage-taking incident, CNN foreign correspondent Jerry Levin is kidnapped in Beirut by Arab terrorists. He is held hostage for years while back in the USA his wife lobbies the ineffectual State Department for action only to be urged to keep quiet and not “make waves.” With help from his brother, she seeks to publicize the case and do the opposite of what the State Department advised. Beginning with a marriage — notions of holy union and lifelong commitment thus underlying the subsequent drama of long-time separation and spousal commitment — Held Hostage goes on to dramatize in attempted cinema verite style the CNN coverage of the conﬂict between the Lebanese army and the militant Shiite Muslim population. There is attention to the broader details of the Lebanese lifestyle and the landscape of bulletridden suburbs and bombed-out cars in which this Muslim population lives. (Life during the Lebanese Civil War was treated to a much harsher and ironically subversive treatment in Witness in the War Zone). Nevertheless, the vast gulf between American afﬂuence and impoverished Lebanese social despair underlies this ﬁlm, ﬁnding a parallel in the division between well-off Christian and poor Muslims within Lebanese society itself, the discrepancies and associated resentment here seen as contextual ﬁgures in the examination of Lebanese terrorism. The ﬁlm takes some time to outline the history of religious struggle in the region, relaying information about the pre–1975 Christian majority in the Lebanese Parliament ruling peacefully with the Arabs until the Israeli-Palestinian War led to a huge refugee population as the Muslim population welcomed the PLO, eventually resulting in a bitter civil war. Amidst such a conﬂict, the U.S. was present supposedly as peacekeepers. Yet, this background is unknown to the ordinary American housewife whose coming into political consciousness is dramatized in Held Hostage. It is the plight of the wife turned activist more so than the depiction of life in a war zone or the day-to-day treatment of the hostage journalist (a central concern in Hostages by contrast) that propels Held Hostage. Central to the wife’s newfound political awareness is what the ﬁlm depicts as the real U.S. agenda in Lebanon. While the State Department insists on the peacekeeper rhetoric, the U.S. takes sides in the conﬂict and begins shelling Muslim areas, effectively dragging themselves into what risks becoming another Vietnam-like situation as now the Muslim side considers the U.S. its enemy, the American support of Israelis by stealing weapons arguably allowing Israel to displace the Palestinian populace into a state-less refugee population embraced by the Islamic nations that surround Israel and would oppose it. The ﬁlm clearly suggests that the kidnapping of the U.S. journalist was in direct response to the U.S. betrayal of its peacekeeping rhetoric and its support of the Christian anti–Muslim coalition in Lebanon. Such U.S. support is seen as integral to the per-

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ception of the crisis amongst the Islamic population as a holy war in which Islam must face the encroachment of Judeo-Christian inﬁdels into the holy lands. U.S. foreign policy is beneath contempt in this ﬁlm, in which the USA has no right whatsoever to claim “innocence” in being targeted by terrorists, drawing them into a conﬂict in Lebanon that would blight the USA and the reactionary Rambo-like mentality of the Reagan presidency. The kidnapping of U.S. citizens is considered an understandable retaliatory act in light of U.S. afﬁliation with one side in a religious struggle which does not concern them except at foreign policy level. The U.S. is not a neutral peacekeeper in a troubled region but clearly allied in opposition to the Islamic cause — the U.S. is the enemy of Islam by virtue of its foreign policy particularly regarding Israel, as exempliﬁed by its actions in Lebanon. This disdain for the U.S. does not automatically amount to unqualiﬁed support for the jihadi cause although it does seek to contextualize it in terms of U.S. foreign policy actions in the Middle East and the regional turmoil that began with the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis that saw the end of the Carter presidency. In light of this, U.S. State Department action in response to the kidnapping of an American citizen in the context of a religiously inspired civil war is equally telling: complete non-involved silence on the matter. The State Department’s avowed concern for quiet diplomacy essentially means the cover-up of such politically sensitive incidents, with America thus considered impotent in the face of Islamic terrorism and unable to protect its civilians or its own interests in the Middle East. Although such perceived impotence birthed a cycle of reactionary win-the-war-on-terror-single-handedly terrorist genre movies in the 1980s (exempliﬁed by the likes of Death Before Dishonor and Iron Eagle), here it is seen as the political failure of the USA to justify its foreign policy agenda and suffering consequences which are its due. In that the wife retreats into Christian, Biblical rhetoric, her actions only collude with the religious agenda that led to the kidnapping of her husband. Thus, Held Hostage arguably errs in this narrow-minded depiction of her Christian strength of will as spiritually empowering in contrast to the Islamic rhetoric of violence and terror, reinforcing a populist stereotype which undercuts the otherwise insightful political commentary. Her “good Christian” efforts are paralleled to the mistreatment of her husband by his Muslim captors as he is forced to read messages onto videotape — a scene which subsequently became commonplace in hostage-driven scenarios, restaged to ironic effect in a post–9/11 context in Inﬁnite Justice, which likewise addressed the Islamic side of the terrorist debate. Under pressure from the State Department, the U.S. media refuse to publicize the story, a fact which director Roger Young considers makes a mockery of the notion of a truly “free press” in America, especially one controlled by Republican foreign policy. As the wife speaks on television to publicize the matter, her words have relevance despite the Christian basis seen to inspire them — that America should respond peacefully to such crises and listen to the plight of the affected and displaced people (i.e., the Muslim population) rather than respond with force to terrorism, a foreign policy decision that leads nowhere. This view that the U.S. should attempt to talk to its enemies rather than respond through military means was of course disavowed in the Republican Bush government’s agenda in the War on Terror, although was expressed also in the post–9/11 ﬁlm Inﬁnite Justice. Held Hostage seriously questions the American rationale of preemptive strikes, so common in U.S. warmongering rhetoric following the events of

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Hell Squad / Hennessy

9/11 a decade later. As the wife becomes a spokesperson for a new peace movement, she travels to the Middle East, hoping that the kidnapping will open up people’s eyes to the situation just as the State Department would deny that such a situation exists. As her husband escapes, he says that neither terrorism nor silence is a valid response and that the world must ﬁght to prevent the use of terror whatever the cause; that results in a war on terrorism are achieved not by mightier military preemptive force but by human empathy, understanding and sympathy towards one’s enemies, qualities nowhere in evidence during the post–9/11 practices of the Republican Bush government in its agenda of torture in the War on Terror.

Hell Squad (1984: d. Kenneth Hartford) The title group are an elite all-female commando unit whose cover has them double as Las Vegas showgirls. They are sent on a mission to the Middle East which requires them to “ﬁght and fuck” for their country in this sexploitation trash-ﬁlm variation on the formula of prime time television’s once popular Charlie’s Angels. The kidnapping of an ambassador’s son is here considered political leverage. However, Hell Squad forsakes genuine political analysis for a reactionary view of Arab terrorists as motivated purely by the desire to acquire weapons of mass destruction in order to do Allah’s will in reeducating the inﬁdel. Such caricaturish villains once again justify deployment of a special counterterror team, the usual plot device in the reactionary 1980s anti-terrorist ﬁlms emerging from Cannon such as The Delta Force. However, all of this ultimately emerges as an excuse to show scantily clad, nubile young women involved in the usual action set-pieces that glorify rugged, macho Marines. Hell Squad is an amateurish, terribly acted and poorly scripted mercenary-team movie. All the Arabs are vile caricatures and the only “civilization” depicted in the Middle East is that of Western cultural outposts, like hotels. In comparison to the Americans here, the Arab population are little better than animals in this racist, sexist tripe of bottom-of-the-barrel action exploitation trash.

Hennessy (1975: d. Don Sharp) In this once highly controversial ﬁlm, a munitions expert’s (Rod Steiger) wife and child are accidentally shot. Vowing revenge, he intends to blow up London’s Parliament House. When released, the British Censor Board considered the ﬁlm a threat to national security and reportedly even the queen did not want certain scenes shown. As a result, the ﬁlm was banned in the UK. During ﬁlming in Northern Ireland, Steiger received death threats as fears escalated over a major attack against the British homeland. Though produced through exploitation house American International Pictures, there is a documentary validity to the Belfast scenes. The ﬁlm poses that most families in Ireland have some connection to the IRA — a brother in this ﬁlm — which is rapidly gaining support amidst public determination to get the British out of Ireland. Violent patriotism is the climate consuming Ireland and armored riot police contend with stonethrowing locals in what the ﬁlm depicts as a popular uprising against an armed occupying force. Each shooting is followed by a reprisal and the accidental shooting of Steiger’s family makes him realize that it is impossible to keep politics out of family life in Ireland. Personal tragedy (the loss of loved ones) breeds the amoral, dispassionate determination of the vengeful terrorist: desperation against an oppressive system enforced through

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violence. Steiger’s actions are less IRA–endorsed than motivated by personal grievance as the ﬁlm explores the notion of terrorism as retribution. Once the British Special Branch becomes aware of a possible threat, the ﬁlm evolves into a detective story involving the hunt for a suspected terrorist and “mad bomber,” intercutting Steiger’s progress towards his bombing with the investigation intended to track him down. Ironically, the IRA realizes that their cause would be hurt by such an act as Hennessy plans and so they too endeavor to stop him, considering him a rogue terrorist. The Irish “troubles” are considered an insurgent uprising in which “terrorism” is the act of a rogue individual, separate from the ideology of those who consider their actions part of a war against the British; the ﬁlm suggests that the fallout of an act of terrorist mass destruction would hurt any ideological cause, and therefore the IRA tells Special Branch that they must stop the bomber before he targets the Royal family. Curiously, Steiger intends to blow up Parliament House by strapping the explosives to his body, in effect becoming a suicide bomber — the last, desperate act of a man who has lost his humanity after a personal tragedy. Such vengeful justiﬁcation for suicidal terrorism would feature again some 25 years later in the characterization of the U.S.–Serbian terrorist in The Peacemaker. The ﬁnal staging of the planned terrorist action owes to Day of the Jackal, but the point here, which offended the British government, is that a terrorist would be able to get close to a symbolic government head. As Steiger is shot dead and detonates his bomb in a park outside, the smoke rises above Parliament House, showing just how close he came. The ﬁlm does not take sides in its depiction of the Irish “troubles” but uses it as a point of departure, interpolating actual footage of Queen Elizabeth and Parliament House to unnerving effect. This use of actual footage led to heated arguments between producers AIP and the British ﬁlm distributors EMI. The ﬁlm was meant to be titled The Fifth of November in reference to Guy Fawkes Day, the legendary 1605 effort to blow up Parliament House which was also used as the basis for the post–9/11 War on Terror allegory V for Vendetta. When introducing the ﬁlm to American audiences, Variety felt it necessary to stress the ﬁctional component as unrelated to the political background of the Irish “troubles.”

Hi Mom (1970: d. Brian DePalma) Robert DeNiro plays a Vietnam veteran who becomes an amateur ﬁlmmaker in New York City’s Greenwich Village. He is a pornographer and Peeping Tom who intends to aim his camera at a high-rise apartment building for an intimate view of the tenants’ existence in the manner of the avant-garde Warhol-Morrissey ﬁlms and their equation of art and porn. Eventually he takes up the Black Panther cause and becomes an urban guerrilla. In part a sequel to director DePalma’s earlier Greetings, Hi Mom has a mock-verite look which is parodic of the New York City experimental ﬁlm scene from which DePalma emerged in the late 1960s. Addressing the theme of the pornographization of popular culture following the counterculture sexual revolution, the ﬁlm reveals an obsession with looking and questions the nature of honest representation vs. role-playing in ﬁlm art. The critical success of Hi Mom led to DePalma moving to Hollywood to attempt a ﬁlm career with the ill-fated Get to Know Your Rabbit. The almost casually comical segue into domestic terrorism here ﬁnds an echo in the Barbra Streisand vehicle Up the Sandbox.

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Hi Mom depicts the Black Panthers as a radicalized race-conscious group who attract the ideologically disillusioned into anti-establishment terrorism. As a revolutionary movement intending to raise public awareness about issues of racial identity in Civil Rights–era America, they appeal mainly to young, radical students though they claim that “blackness” must be lived rather than intellectualized. The rhetoric is familiar: capitalist white oppression of the poor and underprivileged black minority. At ﬁrst through radical theater and performance art, they intend to brutalize whites into the experience of being black. Disappointed with the results of their attempt at avant-garde audience participation, they turn to terrorism. Amusingly enough, they have a manual they consult, The Urban Guerrilla, which outlines the proper methodology for the spreading of race terrorism. However, in this world DeNiro is an anonymous loner. Hi Mom reveals terrorism as emerging out of frustration at one’s cause not getting the media attention and response one feels appropriate. Although humorous in its depiction of terrorism arising out of theater, the ﬁlm has a cynical disdain for the horrid direction taken by the Black Panthers in their recourse to violence. Terrorist DeNiro is depicted as a failed artist, so insecure in his own identity that he erects masks through which to ﬁnd self-expression, which he cannot: yet, he can survive only in pretense, allying himself to role after role, the “terrorist” being merely the latest of his endeavors. Although a loser, he is revealed to be a dangerous man when he plants a bomb in a laundromat and it levels the entire building in an eerie anticipation of the kind of domestic terror destruction perpetuated by such as Timothy McVeigh. Amusingly, the terrorist act is followed by media attention to analyze the social causes that led to it — here amounting to hostility over the Vietnam experience.

Hijack (1998: d. Worth Keeter) Inspired by the enigma of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Hijack concerns a political terrorist on trial for bombing an LA elementary school and killing some 200. The terrorist’s younger brother intends to prove himself of similar mettle to his terrorist hero. Soon, related patriots hijack a train carrying a U.S. senator and a detective. Comparable to the likes of Under Siege 2, Hijack is routine. Domestic terrorism by the militia, “patriot” movement in the USA is the agenda here. The senator held hostage is an anti-gun campaigner looking to gun control to curb the epidemic of violence consuming the USA and the threat posed by anti-government survivalist groups. The terrorist survivalist group members describe themselves as a “brotherhood of vengeance” and ally themselves to the cause of the pro-gun lobby which sees the senator as a threat. The group has its own website. However, the senator (although now a gun control advocate) was a former Vietnam veteran who refuses additional Secret Service protection. Outspoken, he becomes the target for fanatics. The theme behind the terrorist agenda is the need to manipulate the American populace into an awareness of the issues through the direct use of force. Such an enforced perspective is only achievable in the terrorist rationale through the usurping of others’ right to self-determination, which are restored in true genre fashion by the great lone American hero, here a somewhat disillusioned obsessive with a grudge against terrorists. The terrorists desire a big-scale event to force their cause into an otherwise uninterested media and establish their name as one to be known and feared by the American populace (group self-aggrandizement). The terrorist claim is that the freedom to bear arms is

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a sacrosanct Constitutional guarantee in American culture; as extremists, they see it as the last bastion of true political freedom and worth rebelling over. The terrorists claim to be patriots and revolutionaries acting in the country’s best interests. However, they have no real demands and simply plan an act of large-scale mass destruction as their warning message to the government to perceive the attack on freedom represented by gun control. Protesting gun control by massive violence, however, is an irony not lost on director Keeter as the terrorists are depicted as hypocrites, repressing the freedom they claim to ﬁght for. However, Keeter relies on the tried-and-true formula of the lone American hero defeating the terrorist threat (nuclear in this ﬁlm) in the nick of time.

The Honorary Consul (1983 d. John MacKenzie) aka Beyond the Limit A doctor and the title alcoholic (Richard Gere and Michael Caine) in Corrientes, Argentina, near the Paraguay border, are taken hostage after the failure of a terrorist plot to abduct an American diplomat. Both men have been lovers of the same woman, Caine’s wife (a local whore), and still obsess about her. The context behind The Honorary Consul is the South American resentment of Western political interference in their right to self-determination, which is paradoxically addressed in the terrorist action of robbing others of a similar right. South America is depicted as a proverbial hot spot of ideological despair and desolation, of complete moral abandon. An emergent theme is the brutalization of the psyche through obsessive despair. The doctor tries to reinject humanity into the despair that sees the region a refuge for the desolate and those on the run. Third World desperation is here a near–Expressionistic locale: the two men ﬁnding beauty only in a woman. Sexual obsession is an escape from the poverty and despair around them. Ironically, the monied few talk of how to deal with the poor, dismissing them as terrorists in their struggle for equality and opportunity and unaware of the link between terrorism, social deprivation and desperation that this ﬁlm attempts to contextualize in a uniquely Latin American manner. All Westerners here are exploiters for whom prostitution is the epitome of their enforced imperial power over lesser nations and peoples. As the two men are drawn to the same woman, the theme of patriarchal disillusion emerges, as both are obsessed with roles of lover and protector as the only means of selfvalidation left them. Yet no matter how they justify their love, it too is just another form of exploitation, the woman a symbolically prized whore. The Honorary Consul is a downbeat ﬁlm, full of Oedipal ironies and a scathing indictment of patriarchal political folly in South America. Patriarchy here is synonymous with immorality, forcing the woman into prostitution if she is to master her circumstance, determined solely by the sexual interests of the men in her life. Although Richard Gere is depicted as a humanist, he has no qualms sleeping with another man’s teenage wife — the hypocrisy of men pretending ideological righteousness knowing no limits in this ﬁlm. In such despairing circumstances, sexual obsession is power; the only form of potency left the desperate and deprived is sexual potency, a trait enforced upon them by the Western exploiters. The long setup to the terrorist intrigue sets up desperation as the key factor underlying terrorism, hence the ease with which the terrorists can appeal to the sympathetic humanist Gere for assistance as they claim they have no choice in the matter and have been forced into such action. The terrorist kidnapping is here seen as an act of moral desperation: humanity’s end

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in a world consumed by immorality and Western exploitation. Likewise, the terrorists are desperate, uneducated and unorganized youth, brutalized and, signiﬁcantly, shown as fatherless. Gere aids these terrorists in the name of a patriarchy he seeks to redeem by warding off government torturers from abusing the local populace. Yet, although he clings to the law of the father for validation amidst this patriarchal crisis, he is loathe to become a father himself. In comparison to Gere’s contradictory hypocrisy, the drunken Caine is, as the title suggests, the most honorable person in the ﬁlm. Ironically, the terrorist leader as a former priest is referred to as “father,” the theme here being the desperate search for a new patriarchal authority. Yet in such a bleak world as depicted here — a quality that resulted in the ﬁlm’s poor box-ofﬁce and critical reception — terrorism is the sole force of revolutionary change available, it alone offers potentiality. The Honorary Consul is full of reprehensible people. The Americans in particular are wholly unsympathetic to the abuse of the peoples and lands they exploit for their own gain. As long as the Argentinean leadership maintains its hardline anti-communist stance the Americans are happy, validated in their continued exploitation. If it is politically expedient to do so, this ﬁlm suggests, American foreign policy interests will abandon the people’s plight in favor of capitalist money. In practice this means creating endemic prostitution and propagating a truly amoral world. Yet there is a note of humanity: The cuckolded Caine, on realizing that Gere has been sleeping with his wife, ﬁnds forgiveness: Caine is the sole redeemable ﬁgure around him, although so consumed by the surrounding despair as to have retreated into alcoholism.

Hostage (1987: d. Hanro Mohr & Percival Rubens) A local African ﬂight is hijacked by PLO–linked Islamic fanatics who intend to kidnap the daughter of an international mining company head. She and others are held captive on a remote airstrip as the terrorists demand millions in gold and the release of their jailed leader. In response, the mining company arranges for company security head Wings Hauser to lead a team of mercenaries in an unauthorized rescue attempt. Hostage ﬁts into Hauser’s penchant for vigilante-oriented action ﬁlms. Intriguingly enough, the terrorists act according to patriarchal lore by going after what they consider a father’s point of weakness, his child. In this way, the ﬁlm clearly implicates the terrorist “struggle” as a form of patriarchal resentment — hubris at the wealth of the select (usually American) and the enforced poverty of the masses. Although there is some genuine human tragedy in Karen Black’s role as a tired, pitiable former movie sex symbol who has sex with a terrorist in order to secure the release of a sick child, the ﬁlm is a routinely efﬁcient exercise in hostage dynamics and counterterror team measures. The ﬁlm begins with the usual cross-section of future hostages as they board the ﬂight, unaware of the drama which is about to unfold. The hijacking scene is the initiating set-piece in this narrative, knowingly reliant on 1970s airline disaster movie clichés. The American capitalist father ﬁgure has to respond personally as ofﬁcial U.S. policy is non-negotiation with terrorists. Hauser is symbolically the son entrusted with upholding the law of the patriarch from the challenge posed to it by terrorism. As such, the terrorists themselves are ruthless and brutal, killing for spite and power and shorn of any sense of humanity in their actions and their demands. Amusingly, the African setting recalls the Entebbe hostage crisis but it is American mercenaries who are in charge here, one of them tellingly wearing a T-shirt which reads “Keep America strong — buy guns.”

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There is a brief quasi-mystical aside as one of the hostages is a holy man who inspires fear in the religious zealot terrorists after healing a wounded man just by touching him. This spiritual note is undeveloped as ﬁnally it is force and violence alone that achieve change. Repugnant terror tactics demand the same in return, this ﬁlm argues, and the counterterrorist operation involves attacking the hijacker’s family, doing to them what they are doing to the Americans: the ﬁlm using this to examine the hypocrisy of the hijackers as they are forced to react to the situation they have put others into. Hauser, the heroic ﬁgure here, reveals distinct glee in killing some of the Arab terrorists, suggesting that his violence is a psychotic release of retributive rage as much as a planned antiterror operation, again tying into the vigilante theme Hauser essayed in his own ﬁlms as actor-director in which his characters repeatedly realize that morally justiﬁed force is the right and only solution when dealing with amoral evil terrorism. Hence, the terrorists are depicted and demonized as the forces of evil anarchy, “evil” in its full religious sense here as the ﬁlm frames the conﬂict as one between good and evil although this aspect of religious conviction is sadly underdeveloped in favor of the routine action highlights akin to 1980s genre movies released through Cannon Films. Tellingly, the female hijacker is also the most ruthlessly dedicated to the cause. Although Hostage is far from mindless, it is hampered by mediocre execution. As the commando anti-terror team use hang-gliders, the ﬁlm is similar to Sky Riders and the later Mercenary. Symbolically, the anti-terror raid here fulﬁlls the function such a set-piece usually has in the cinema of terrorism: Lone “son” Hauser proves himself worthy of joining the patriarchy he protects and serves by rescuing the hostages and killing the terrorist, the symbolic bad father. The most humane note in this ﬁlm is the characterization of veteran actress Karen Black. Her commanding work in a few scenes turn the ﬁlm brieﬂy into the exploration of a woman who has made a living out of her sexual desirability now so programmed by such that it is all she can rely on in a moment of crisis. Her attempt to have sex with the terrorist to secure the release of the child proves ineffective and she is used, manipulated and dumped one more time. Though Black is sympathetic in the role, this truly emotionally affecting subtext is unfortunately treated as throwaway bathos.

Hostage Flight (1985: d. Steven Hilliard Stern) A routine airplane hostage drama, Hostage Flight is a telemovie that owes heavily to the formulaic airplane disaster movies of the 1970s, by then reduced to TV Movie of the Week banality. After the usual cross-section of passengers and crew are introduced, terrorists take over the cockpit of a domestic ﬂight and give the pilot a new destination much to the confusion of air trafﬁc on the ground who consider it a runaway hijacked plane headed towards New York City and call in a specialist to deal with the situation. That context alone perhaps makes Hostage Flight a curio when looked at post–9/11 although it has little to offer otherwise. The ﬁlm capably depicts the technical responses by ground personnel professionals to airport emergencies, themes reinvented for a post–9/11 context in United 93. Here, the code of professionalism in a crisis is a measure of the strength of the American character. Tellingly, the terrorists herd the passengers to the rear of the plane, depersonalizing them as an expendable group. In that, it is the more individualistic of the passengers who seek to rebel against this treatment, reasserting their individuality as a means of regain-

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ing control of their right to self-determination, the central theme in hostage dramas within the cinema of terrorism. The terrorists refer to themselves as the People’s Liberation Army and refer to the passengers as “bourgeois pigs,” resenting their middle-class afﬂuence. The lead terrorist is depicted as a rapist for whom sexual domination is a form of self-empowerment. This alliance between sexual perversion and terrorism again is a frequent motif in the cinema of terrorism as a genre, which this ﬁlm draws on heavily and routinely: Terrorism is an extension of sexual sadism over and above any ideological rhetoric associated with its “cause.” While the terrorist is driven by what is perceived as desperation, the hijacker is motivated exclusively by self-actualization. Juxtaposed with the terrorist perversity is the passenger dilemma — that of having to wait, powerless to control their own destinies as the terrorist by contrast feels that he is achieving a personal transformation. On their part, the terrorists plan their action as a declaration of war against the USA, intended to humiliate the “pigs.” The terrorists mix Middle Eastern and European characteristics and seem to be a collective representation of America’s enemies, seen here motivated by resentment of the American way of life and its associated wealth. The terrorists brutalize their captors but displace blame, saying that they brought it upon themselves. Paradoxically, they both assert control and displace responsibility for their actions upon others, the usual means of dramatizing a hostage situation in the cinema of terrorism. One hostage makes the decision to ﬁght against this, claiming that he alone should be able to chose how and when he is to die, refusing to let this right be usurped by the terrorists. Likewise, the token Jewish passenger compares the terrorist brutality to that of the Nazis, concluding that the lesson of history is that the use of force demands a corresponding use of force in reprisal (thus the passengers rebel and overpower the terrorists). The ﬁlm ends with a moral question: “What is justice and the due process of law in dealing with captured terrorists?” and sides with “justice” over law as the terrorists are hanged by the passengers.

Hostages (1993: d. David Wheatley) Hostages dramatizes the plight of Islamic terrorist hostages in wholly abhorrent conditions — chained in underground cells, beaten and threatened repeatedly and kept without food or light while the U.S. government claims it is powerless to act. An HBO showcase production, it charts the one woman (Kathy Bates) willing to speak up on the hostages’ behalf. The opening sets the mood, relaying the information that between 1984 and 1992 more than 50 Western citizens were held hostage in Beirut, and showing footage of the Lebanese civil war; the Israeli bombardment to crush the PLO; and U.S. “peacekeepers” attacked by suicide bombers. Hezbollah claims that the CIA are behind the attacks and kidnap Westerners in reprisal. In response, U.S. President Ronald Reagan (a Republican) claims that these are terrorist attacks by uncivilized barbarians and comprise attacks on the whole of Western civilization, painting the conﬂict as a clash of cultures to avoid any implication of foreign policy culpability much like the Bush government did in the War on Terror years. With British PM Margaret Thatcher in full obedient support of the Reagan administration, much like Tony Blair would later acquiesce to the Bush agenda of torture and preemptive strikes, the Islamic enemy considers all Westerners to be legitimate targets.

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The ﬁlm is quickly paced, and a sense of dire urgency accompanies the cinema verite authenticity of the images. Motivated by a repugnant religious extremism, Hezbollah treats the hostages in the most inhumane way possible — chaining them naked in a cold cell — as their leader and sponsor in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, calls the U.S. the real terrorists and barbarians. The juxtaposition between the rhetoric of political Islam and the reality of hostage treatment exposes the sheer hypocrisy of political Islam in its anti–Western rhetoric. The reluctance of government to enter into any kind of dialogue between such radicalized enemies led to the ofﬁcial position of the U.S. government (nonnegotiation with terrorists) out of the belief that if they are seen to negotiate, it will merely inspire copycat acts of terrorism (bargaining with “terrorists” leads to more terrorism). As a result, nobody speaks to anyone — precisely the situation that the terrorist in the post–9/11 Inﬁnite Justice says is responsible for 9/11. The failure of diplomacy here results in monstrous inhumanity. The exploration of hostage treatment is interspersed with news footage of the IranContra arms affair which saw President Reagan enter into an arms-for-hostages plan with the Iranian post-revolutionary government. Hypocritical Republican politics aside, the thematic interest here is on the endurance and strength of will of the hostages, who realize that their captors need them alive. Indeed, the friendship between the hostages is the last vestige of humanity in this ﬁlm of political hypocrisy and religious monstrosity (the terrorists claiming in effect that Islam must rule the world). As the arms-for-hostages deal threatens to derail and humiliate the Reagan presidency, the ofﬁcial State Department response is to devalue the hostages even further, with only the dedicated citizen Bates ﬁghting this agenda of closed doors. One hostage (Terry Anderson) purposely injures himself to secure additional privileges (permission to contact his family for Christmas), adding that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East effectively means that the U.S. is far from being as blameless as they would like the world to think (though U.S. authorities inevitably claim that he was forced to say this). As the hostages talk amongst themselves, they discuss ofﬁcial overuse of the term “terrorist” to justify any aggression and dehumanization of “the enemy” and that application of the term only encourages people to think of different cultures in terms of Otherness. Hence, “terrorist” is a word much like “nigger”— of crude but meaningless derision. Yet, geo-political change affects the fate of these terrorists: Khomeini dies and as Reagan is replaced by Bush Sr. the hostages become bargaining chips in talks of strategic political advantage between Islam and the West. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this ﬁlm feels, only the USA as the sole remaining superpower has the military and arms resources the Islamic world in the Middle East wants: thus the U.S. embarks on a more forceful response, bringing a response in turn as the release of the hostages is eventually secured. In this way, Hostages acts as a humane drama exploring the human and political circumstances of Middle Eastern terrorism as exempliﬁed by the hostage crisis that consumed the Carter and Reagan presidencies.

The Human Factor (1975: d. Edward Dmytryk) European terrorists in Italy intend to kill a U.S. family every 72 hours unless their demands are met. After his family is murdered, George Kennedy begins a single-minded vendetta against the terrorists and enlists his friend, a NATO computer whiz ( John Mills), to use technology to identify and stalk them.

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The Human Factor brings to the cinema of terrorism the vigilante fad then popularized by the Michael Winner–Charles Bronson surprise hit Death Wish. Kennedy represents the middle-class American liberal who has lost everything dear to him — his family. The unspoken sacrosanct nature of the American family sets up the righteousness of his vendetta as a means of achieving justice through vigilantism. The Italian government calls the actions abhorrent and isolated but Kennedy determines that the terrorist group kills for a reason: the destabilization of Europe as a means of attacking U.S. foreign policy. Although not afﬁliated with a known political cause, the “terrorists” here are led by a messianic individual (a naturalized American originally from Palestine and ﬁghting for their cause) rich and charismatic enough to attract a devoted following in the manner of a cult leader. The threat to execute Americans unless political prisoners held in the West are released, as well as a $10 million ransom paid the terrorists, suggests the collusion of ideology, greed and megalomania behind such acts: The terrorist is a monstrous egotist. In its speculation, The Human Factor is, alongside Rosebud and particularly Black Sunday, a seminal ﬁlm in the development of an American cinema of terrorism, rooting a threat to American citizens and American soil in the spill-over of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis and, in particular, of the USA’s sale of arms to Israel — the core of its disastrous Middle Eastern foreign policy. The Human Factor, exploring the possibility that a computer may be able to develop a personality proﬁle of a representative terrorist that can help identify individuals, is a balance of detective story and examination of personal obsession. Director Dmytryk’s ﬁlms repeatedly show a concern with determined individuals whose personal morality is potentially affected by their obsessive actions and the subsequent moral ambiguities that open up. Determination and ambivalence motivate this ﬁlm, the obsessive former increasingly responsible for the latter. Kennedy feels exclusively validated by past wrongs to the point where his obsessive drive prevents him from questioning or examining the morality of his own murderous quest for revenge. Dmytryk wonders thus if by killing the terrorists Kennedy in effect becomes no different from the inhumanity he feels they epitomize: yet, as abhorrent as is his drive for vengeance, it is recognizably human. As Kennedy succumbs to his baser instincts, the ﬁlm becomes a study in aberration (though ﬁlmed in a nondescript manner unlike the demented study of aberration found in Dmytryk’s Bluebeard). The ﬁlm ends with a Biblical quote endorsing violence, an ending which Variety felt made the ﬁlm fascistic (Variety, November 5, 1975).

The Human Shield (1991: d. Ted Post) In the months before the ﬁrst Gulf War, U.S. Marine Michael Dudikoff inﬁltrates Iraq in order to free his brother held hostage. Although not focusing on terrorism in the sense it is usually deﬁned, The Human Shield is concerned with what constitutes state terror as epitomized by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and how best for the international community (i.e., the USA) to deal with it. The ﬁlm’s prologue shows the killing of Northern Iraq villagers in 1985, depicting the Iraqis as inhumane butchers whose actions outrage the “decent American,” even though the USA was sponsoring Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War evoked here. The Iraqis are presented as an arrogant people who disregard U.S. diplomacy to the point of invading Kuwait as demonstrative of the Iraqi intention to seize and assert power over areas in which America has more inﬂuence. As background suggestions are views of

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the Iraqi regime as emboldened by American foreign policy though in the end turning against the USA. In this climate Dudikoff acts alone and without ofﬁcial sanction in the attempt to rescue his brother, representing — as was typical in post–Rambo revisionist reactionary action fantasies — the lone hero going where his country politically cannot. The Human Shield is one of the ﬁrst ﬁlms to examine the Iraq situation and attempts to do so from within established hostage-taking scenarios evocative of such as Death Before Dishonor (the ﬁlm reveals the consideration of state terrorism as the means of demonizing Iraq under Saddam). As Dudikoff enters a refugee camp, The Human Shield suggests that Iraq is a violent and disruptively tyrannical force in the Middle East. However, underlying this remains the fact that U.S. foreign policy supported and emboldened the state terrorism exempliﬁed by Iraq under Saddam. The theme of U.S. responsibility for its foreign policy decisions runs through the ﬁlm, ironic in that again the lone patriarchal hero must make amends for a hamstrung and ethically compromised political process. It is a matter of Iraqi pride to control, remove and mistreat foreigners, ironically linking Saddam’s agenda to that of his enemy the Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iraq-Iran war. Furthermore, the ﬁlm suggests that the ﬁrst Gulf War was the culmination of a long period of anti–U.S. resentment in the region amidst Middle Eastern petty power struggles and ego battles. Through it all, director Post’s theme is the perseverance of humanity in the midst of inhumane force. Although Post has been cynical about this, depicting the absolute futility of humanity bringing about nihilistic apocalypse in the misanthropic anti–Christian allegory of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, his theme of humanity ironically requiring force to preserve it is treated with much irony. The Iraqi leader is, as is typical of ﬁlms demonizing Middle Eastern terrorists, a sexual pervert and rapist, low enough to separate a mother and child — i.e., a destroyer of families just as the American patriarchal ethic throughout the cinema of terrorism is the sanctity of “family values.” As Dudikoff rescues his hostage brother and destroys an Iraqi chemical plant, heroism is undercut with a despairing undercurrent of nihilistic contempt, the suggestion that the corrosive destruction of humane values is unavoidable in such a situation: Politics is the enemy of humanity.

The Hunt for Eagle One (2006: d. Brian Clyde) From legendary exploitation ﬁlm legend Roger Corman, The Hunt for Eagle One is the veteran producer’s take on Al Qaeda and the War on Terror. One of the few ﬁlms to tackle Al Qaeda directly, it explores the terror group’s Philippine connection to local antigovernment rebels. When a helicopter is downed, a special forces team must rescue the crew and root out the terrorists. With parallels to the mainstream hit Black Hawk Down, The Hunt for Eagle One gives attention to the post–9/11 context of holy war which hangs over what are otherwise routine heroics: The terrorist enemy here hate all “inﬁdels.” But, beyond that initial context, the material is familiar rebels vs. government troops in which the U.S. is allied to the Philippine government and the rebels to Al Qaeda. With little attention to the politics of the rebel cause, it is the alliance to Al Qaeda which impels the sense of urgency here, the need for special troops to remove terror threats which could result in another 9/11. Hence, the ﬁlm is an update of the reactionary B-movie formula pre–9/11 but updated with minor modiﬁcations to accommodate the political context of the War on Terror.

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Politics are relatively unimportant in The Hunt for Eagle One as the ﬁlm focuses on the special unit members headed by martial arts actor Mark Dacascos. Although it suggests international terrorism as a background, much of this ﬁlm is jungle warfare, presumably the indulgence of co-producer and Philippine exploitation veteran Cirio H. Santiago.

The Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point (2006: d. Henry Crum) Terrorists steal an anti-hijack device designed to lock out a pilot’s instruments and give control to Air Trafﬁc Control; they plan to crash a jetliner into a U.S. military base in Southeast Asia. The anti-terrorist team is sent in to stop them. Producers Roger Corman and Cirio H. Santiago return to provide yet more formulaic action along the lines of The Hunt for Eagle One, with a token post–9/11 context in that the terrorist threat resolves around controlling and crashing a jet. The unknowable terrorist enemy recurs here and the politics of the War on Terror form the background for what is another jungle warfare mission premise. The ﬁlm posits Melbourne, Australia, as the next site in the War on Terror but again relays its surrounding terror conﬂict through newscasts rather than direct address. Hence, terrorism is more of a context for military bravery in the face of terrible odds in a new war with a new deadly enemy. The terrorists are again allied to anti-government rebels and the combat between them and their enemies reﬂects the conventions of a war movie more than a terrorist thriller. Indeed, The Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point is less a terrorist thriller than a minor war movie in which the enemies happen to be terrorists. It considers the War on Terror in terms of an on-ground war against an unconventional enemy willing to use underhanded tactics to get the job done. There is no questioning of government ethics here as the ﬁlm is simplistic but actionful. The terrorists, however, are bloodthirsty butchers, a fact which heightens the urgency of the imperative to stop them from organizing and carrying out their horrible agenda. They make videos for broadcast to their enemies via the Internet, the framing of these videos suggesting the terrorist leader as a bin Laden ﬁgure. Many post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms from 2007 would feature a terrorist leader enemy paralleled in some way to Osama bin Laden; here, though, the parallel is functional, seamlessly integrated into an update of conventional pre–9/11 terrorist B-movies. There is a context of 9/11 revisionism here that is absent in the ﬁrst ﬁlm: The plot involves U.S. military efforts to prevent terrorists from crashing planes — after a demonstration of the chaos that happens when they do. In other words, preventing the terrorist enemy from striking again seems the agenda. The ﬁrst blow in this “war” is dealt by the terrorists and it is up to American troops working in collaboration with friendly foreign government forces to make sure it can never happen again. This ﬁlm, however, eschews the lone hero formula to concentrate on teamwork and group dynamics during the on-ground anti-terror action. Nevertheless, the parallel between the on-ground mission and the attempt to deal with planes which may need to be shot down displaces and dramatizes the crisis management during the 9/11 attacks, a dilemma also explored in United 93, without displacement onto genre.

I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist (1985: d. Stanford Singer) I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist is a low-budget production from Troma Films, allusive to S.F.W. A rebellious student and his girlfriend work for a cheap cable TV outﬁt. They

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take their revenge against the society they feel has wronged them via a live special event — a hijacking and hostage-taking incident. An intended satire which cross-sections its high-school level intrigue in the manner of channel surﬁng, the ﬁlm is about a son who rebels against the law of the father, making it inherently subversive in the reactionary patriarchy-praising Reagan-era 1980s. The father here symbolically considers the son exploitable labor in the patriarchal allegory underlying this ﬁlm — the father loathes the son’s generation as failing to live up to his ideals. Likewise, the young teen couple realizes the corrupt and exploitative nature of the parents’ generation and resents their power and inﬂuence in leadership positions, exempliﬁed in the programming of mindless mass entertainment. Terrorism is born of desperation, an act of self-expression through ideological and social deﬁance. With more thought behind it at a thematic level than much Troma horror product, the ﬁlm is nevertheless limited by the cheap aesthetics of the threadbare production house. The theme is youth pushed into terrorism by a climate of corporate exploitation and its related media brainwashing. The terrorist couple want revenge for their mistreatment and enforced cultural servitude to patriarchy, the terrorist target being the media itself. In this, the ﬁlm suggests that such domestic terrorism results from a generational communication breakdown. The terrorist youths ﬁnd renewed purpose, meaning and ideological orientation through their actions, a measure of their perceived maturity and independence; it is a means of their self-actualization. Just as the media portray them as terrorists, they realize that they gain in power and status with the fear and media exposure that such a label brings. Hence, the media wish to present these terrorists as a threat because of their resentment of their parents and related authority ﬁgures. As the terrorists become a media focal point, the tendency in reporting is torn between political statement and mere irresponsible pranksterism, downplaying the event on the presumption of immaturity. Ironically, it is an exploitative adult (a reporter) who seeks to use them and propel a minor symbolic gesture into an act of national signiﬁcance and in the process turn them into media celebrities. The reporter urges them to ever greater acts in order to fashion a ratings-winning story. Hence, the teen terrorists are swept up in events beyond their control and intention, their attempt to win for themselves the power of self-determination backﬁring. In this, as they are again manipulated by adults, their rebellion proves futile. For these youths, however, the terrorist hijacking is a rite of passage into adulthood. Climaxing with a prison sentence handed out to both father and son, the ﬁlm ironically shows them ﬁnally achieving some communicative togetherness while the girlfriend merely runs off with another exploiter in what is a deeply cynical, if talky, satire.

In the Name of the Father (1993: d. Jim Sheridan) The true story of petty thief Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis), an irresponsible youth in 1970s Belfast who, in the midst of an IRA campaign of bombings, upsets the IRA and is sent to England by his religiously devout father (Pete Postlethwaite). In England, he and his friends are arrested as terrorists and with fabricated evidence are imprisoned as IRA bombers (the so-called “Guildford Four”) after forced confessions. His father is imprisoned with him and a dedicated lawyer (Emma Thompson) ﬁghts for their release. The ﬁlm establishes that the Guildford Four were innocent of terrorism but being irresponsible counterculture types were rounded up and prosecuted as scapegoats by

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Infinite Justice

British authorities needing to be seen to be doing something about terrorism but unconcerned over such matters as truth and innocence. As a result of the IRA bombing campaign, new terrorist detention laws are passed by the British government, which this ﬁlm sees as a violation of innate human rights. Hence, the need to prevent terrorism is taken as the excuse to torture and imprison innocent detainees — an intriguing foreshadowing of the post–9/11 ﬁlms which criticized the terrorism laws introduced by Tony Blair (for example, The Road to Guantanamo). Interestingly, In the Name of the Father raises as a central theme the interrelationship between individual and collective responsibility for acts of terrorism. The attempt by the British to give a prosecutable face to the IRA results in a misapplication of the imperative to ﬁnd and assign responsibility for terrorist bombings. British authority needs to paint a falsely reassuring picture of IRA terrorism in order to pacify the population into thinking such action is not the result of a war but of indiscriminate murder by young louts — hence the ultimate importance of political prisoner status to the inmates. The British are blind to the real nature of the terrorist threat as they deny the political impetus behind it and attempt to portray it as rogue irresponsibility. The real IRA bomber, a man of pride, refuses to be intimidated by either the British or the other inmates, who treat the Irish prisoners with contempt (except for some drugdealing Jamaicans tripping on a jigsaw puzzle dipped in LSD who befriend Day-Lewis). The genuine terrorist confronts the innocently imprisoned Day-Lewis and says that the target was a military one — a soldiers’ pub — and that he is a soldier in a greater war. Postlethwaite rejects this but it appeals to Day-Lewis, who sees the terrorist as a rival father ﬁgure in contrast to his own weak-willed “Da.” The terrorist becomes a substitute father who educates the wayward and irresponsible son in the political functioning of patriarchy as it justiﬁes the use of terror as a struggle for national unity and independence. The terrorist’s method, however, is one of inviting conﬂict and violence — of forceful confrontation in contrast to the “good father” who advocates quiet dignity, personal strength and hope motivated by religious faith. Hope, however, lies not in God but in the lawyer Thompson. In the growing bond between the Irish prisoner Postlethwaite and his British guard is a humanist note of interpersonal connection and in contrast to this sense of innate human empathy the terrorist is an inhumane monster and thus the enemy of said humanity, a lesson that Day-Lewis ﬁnally accepts. Once Day-Lewis moves beyond his loyalty to the terrorist, he realizes his father’s quiet campaign for justice is the right thing and that they will win in the end. Although he ﬁnds hope, he stops short of fully embracing religion. Day-Lewis’ journey in In the Name of the Father reveals the ﬁlm’s theme: that the self-respect of the son comes only after respect for the means of the good father rather than the terrorist who would seek to usurp this role and twist patriarchy into monstrosity. The redemption of Irish patriarchal authority concerns director Sheridan here, as it would in part in his later ﬁlm with Day-Lewis, The Boxer.

Inﬁnite Justice (2006: d. Jamil Dehlavi) One of the ﬁrst ﬁlms to deal with the ramiﬁcations of the War on Terror, Inﬁnite Justice (named after the initial code name for the ﬁrst post–9/11 military operation, changed to “Enduring Freedom” after U.S. Muslim groups protested that their religion teaches that only Allah can dispense inﬁnite justice) concerns an American ﬁnancial reporter

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supposedly held captive in Karachi, Pakistan, by Muslim fundamentalists in protest against the conditions at Guantanamo Bay. It begins with audio reports of 9/11 and President Bush declaring that the terrorists have not only attacked the American way of life but have attacked the concept of “freedom” itself. It then has audio broadcasts from Bush and British PM Tony Blair about the need for democracies to band together to eliminate the terrorist threat to freedom. Based on the story of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, as would be A Mighty Heart, Inﬁnite Justice shows terrorists forcing a seemingly captive journalist to read a video statement to the effect that he is a Jewish spy sent to defeat Islam and is in service of “The Great Satan” as America is referred to in the Islamic jihadi world. Functional acting and expository dialogue are balanced with intriguing views of how the captive journalist responds to his Islamic captors, with whom, the ﬁlm reveals, he is initially collaborating, making a personalized documentary in the hope of ascertaining the reason why the terrorist action of 9/11 (shown from a pilot’s-eye view of the ﬁrst plane hitting the Twin Towers) occurred. But, just as he wants to know “Why?” those around him say the real question is “How?” and that the only reason for the attack is buried in their resentment of America’s lifestyle. It is the reporter’s desire to know why that sees him develop contacts within the Islamist movement, which he seeks to explore on his own, though under advisement that should he secure an exclusive interview with a terrorist leader the channel will make him world-famous — a prospect this egotistical man cannot resist. What remains intriguing are the reasons behind the why— the oppression of the Muslim people by western governments, Al Qaeda’s “point” all along — speciﬁcally that which the Bush government would consider irrelevant to their response, invasion and torture. This rhetoric then leads into scenes of a speech delivered in a mosque, rooting the jihadi vision of an Islam under attack by the Christian nations following the defeat of the atheist enemy — the Soviet Union — and now looking to the Muslim lands. Of all the terrorist ﬁlms made during the post–9/11 years of the Bush presidency, Inﬁnite Justice is the only ﬁctional ﬁlm, alongside the subsequent thriller Traitor, to attempt to contextualize the radical jihadist side of the War on Terror conﬂict. The “terrorists” here are smart, devoted and sympathetic, victim to the taunts of bullies. As the scenes of the Pakistani boy’s childhood in a Christian school show, the Christian nations not only do not listen to the Muslim cause but attempt to beat them into submission through violence and intimidation. Although this is dramatized at a personal level, it is clear that what the ﬁlm considers abhorrent at the level of social behavior is precisely the attitude that underlies diplomatic relations between the West and the Muslim lands. Extremist fanaticism is seen as the response to the forced betrayal of Islamic values; the sympathetic characters here are the jihadi recruiters for Al Qaeda. The reporter ﬁgure comes across as an unsympathetic and arrogant man, more concerned with his exclusive documentary than in the lives or values of those he seeks to interview, ﬁrstly in America as he begins to trace the ﬁnancial connections between 9/11 and an Islamic charity, shortly before Al Jazeera begins broadcasting more Bin Laden videotaped recordings. His investigation is intercut with scenes of a Muslim’s childhood in a Christian school which has no moral issue dispensing corporal punishment to a Muslim boy for not “respecting” their religion and his subsequent adolescence which sees him join Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Between the two emerges a dynamically scripted account

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Into the Sun

of the diverse nature of the War on Terror, shorn completely of the simplistic “evil acts of evil men” rhetoric of Bush and Blair that began the ﬁlm. Inﬁnite Justice is an Islamic look at the War on Terror situation from the point of view of not only the American journalist but of two Muslims whose faith brings them into the service of Osama Bin Laden. Their interaction as they play chess forms the basis for a curiously symbolic dialogue between the Western Jew and the Islamic jihadist. The sympathetic terrorist ﬁgure angers his superiors, who feel he is trying to cement his own myth as the human face of fundamentalism. His leadership’s response to the propaganda opportunity is violence, erasing any explanation on the journalist’s tape as to “Why?”; hence, fundamentalist violence risks erasing any validity their cause may have. The ﬁnal trump card to Inﬁnite Justice is the manufacture of violence, hence the staging of a beheading video, a set-piece that inﬁltrated American mainstream cinema proper in The Kingdom and Body of Lies. The beheading video here is rushed and ﬁlmed by Western and Pakistani intelligence agents who seek to use the video to reveal the threat posed by the fundamentalist extremists, their concern no longer with rescuing the reporter. Inﬁnite Justice emerges as a cynical clash between an idealistic reporter looking for answers as to why 9/11 happened (the eventual reason given that America does not talk to its enemies, whereas it should open dialogue) and the reality of fundamentalist extremism in Pakistan and the intelligence network that exploits it. In contrast to ﬁlms which favor the American perspective, this ﬁlm favors the jihadist perspective.

Into the Sun (1991: d. Fritz Kiersch) U.S. pilots at a European air base become involved in a Middle East war. One pilot (Michael Pare) has to train a pretty-boy movie star; the two of them are eventually forced to bail out over hostile territory. Looking cheap and cheesy, Into the Sun owes to the likes of Top Gun and The Hard Way and is replete with Iron Eagle–type racist and culturally insensitive provocations. Intended to be a comedic account of the discrepancies between real pilots and actors playing them, Into the Sun never rises above mediocrity in its notion of an arrogant youth seeking role models for his behavior as a means of his maturation, a Kiersch theme in such lesser known works as Tuff Turf and Children of the Corn. The message in Into the Sun is that the Arabs cannot be trusted: They manipulate incidents into media spin that reﬂects badly on the USA and its foreign policy, making cheap political points through the videotaping of hostages’ messages to U.S. leaders. The staging of the terrorist video would be a frequent trope in the cinema of terrorism, extending post–9/11 into a new setpiece: the beheading video broadcast on the Internet (as in Inﬁnite Justice, Redacted, The Kingdom and Body of Lies). The offending Arabs here may be government troops but behave as terrorists; there is no difference between such in the Middle East. It is due to dreck like Into the Sun that Arab became synonymous with terrorist in American popular cinema of the 1990s. At its worst, the ﬁlm supports the view that the U.S. should just nuke the whole area and put an end to these inhuman regions, those which Iron Eagle described venomously as “shitty” little countries in a pun on “Shiite.” The ﬁlm further suggests that as all Arabs are reprehensible, then the U.S. is fully justiﬁed in whatever action it takes. Such is the presumed superiority of Western civilization and U.S. foreign policy in this reactionary tripe.

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Invasion USA (1985: d. Joseph Zito) The USA is subject to a wave of terrorist attacks around Christmas — shootings, bombings of shopping malls — in Invasion USA, a reactionary Chuck Norris vehicle. The terrorist plan is to use such attacks to crush American democracy. The plan is instigated by foreign agents under orders from the Soviet Union. Norris alone decides to stop them. Invasion USA postulates that the Soviet Union would use a planned campaign of terrorism on U.S. soil as a means of destabilizing the country and winning the Cold War. The ﬁlm was released through the auspices of Cannon, a low-budget Israeli-backed production house responsible for much B-grade action fodder in the 1980s including The Delta Force and many of Norris’ ﬁlms. Director Joseph Zito was one of Cannon’s in-house directors and his ﬁlms are noted for the depths of their nihilism and contempt for human nature in amoral, reactionary action set-pieces. Invasion USA is also comparable to director John Milius’ Red Dawn (about a Russian military invasion of the USA). Beginning with Cuban refugees trying to get into Florida but killed by terrorists pretending to be an American boat patrol, Invasion USA resents liberal journalists and law enforcement. Cynical about government, it postulates America’s fate in the hands of the lone patriarch Norris, a martial artist hired by “the company” to track down the terrorist leader (Richard Lynch), an old adversary. Lynch says that he will make U.S. history as America has never been invaded by a foreign enemy in 200 years and has become soft and decadent, its citizens not knowing the true value of their freedom. He feels that the best way to undermine freedom and security is through terrorism in order to provoke a government reaction restricting liberty. His methodology involves sneaking terrorist forces into suburban neighborhoods and launching bombing attacks in a systematic campaign over 18 hours, claiming that the USA is wholly unprepared for such a crisis. Invasion USA suggests that terrorists attack American civilians purely to engender fear in the remainder of the population. The attempt to spread terror within U.S. borders through such means was attempted with more realism in the teleseries Under Siege. Although Zito includes some honest American suburbanites, he depicts the bulk of the U.S. as seedy and one wonders if he feels the country worth saving at all from the ravages of terrorism: His suburbs look rotten. The terrorism, once it occurs, undermines public faith in U.S. authorities and institutions, this being the rationale behind such terrorism. Zito depicts the USA as vulnerable to any organized terror threat although the ﬁlm is handled in a haphazard and unconvincing manner. The view of terrorism coming to the shopping malls of America is a frightening prospect in a despairing ﬁlm. The ﬁlm reveals what may be a theme in Zito’s work: the systematic exploitation of vulnerability and weakness by ruthless killers. Here, this weakness is national. Zito’s resolution is the fascistic endorsement of the popular American lone hero myth — the irony of America needing a righteous killer to be protected from terrorism. There is scant attention to the logistics of a government response to such a terror threat as posed here — martial law is decreed at the expense of Constitutional Law — and the ﬁlm favors a succession of Norris martial arts set-pieces: Karate conquers terrorism. As Norris teams with a reporter, he seems omniscient in his knowledge of where the terrorists plan to strike next and the plot is never convincing. Terrorist Lynch revels as he watches the Dow Jones fall, delighting in the challenge to U.S. ideals posed by the threat to liberty.

161

IRA: King of Nothing / Iron Eagle

IRA: King of Nothing (2006: d. Damian Chapa) IRA: King of Nothing takes as its premise the existence of the offshoot movement known as the CIRA (Continuity IRA) who persist in using the means of armed terrorism while the IRA has turned exclusively political in its efforts. It follows a disgruntled IRA member who takes it upon himself to continue armed resistance, soon becoming a threat to the peace process. The ﬁlm seeks to establish that the “war” was never about religion, Catholic vs. Protestant, but about the land of Ireland. Beginning with the Belfast 1970 involvement of children taunting British soldiers, nationalistic sentiments dominate this rumination on the dwindling but persistent strain of almost nostalgic political terrorism in contemporary IRA splinter groups. American action genre stalwart director Damian Chapa plays the Irish terrorist in a ﬁlm that has been accused of glorifying terrorism. Bringing the sensibility of his secondrate American genre movies with him, Chapa’s take on “the troubles” has a clumsy, soapoperatic quality that parallels nationalism to terrorism without ever really achieving the distance for any meaningful discourse on the theme to emerge. Talky and dull, if earnest, this ﬁlm is contrived and inauthentic in comparison to the works of genuine Irish directors Neil Jordan in both The Crying Game and Michael Collins and Pat O’Connor in Cal. Clichéd, mawkish patriotism cannot disguise a lack of genuine conviction in IRA: King of Nothing. The ﬁlm’s promotional tagline has it “the most controversial ﬁlm on terrorism ever.” Not at all.

Iron Eagle (1985: d. Sidney J. Furie) This jingoistic action movie proved popular enough for a string of sequels of diminishing interest. An 18 year old knows how to ﬂy a ﬁghter jet; when his father is shot down and imprisoned somewhere in the Middle East, the boy enlists the help of a retired colonel (Louis Gossett Jr.) to steal an F-16 and bring back his father. Iron Eagle praises military technology to the point of fetishization, common in ﬁlms of the 1980s Reagan “Star Wars” era but it emerges as improbable and idiotic nonsense in which the teenage ﬁghter pilot listens to rock music on his Walkman as he does a combat run. Like many reactionary lone-hero-wins-the-war-on-terror fantasies of the Reagan era, Iron Eagle postulates the U.S. as timid and powerless politically in the tumultuous Middle East, the solution being more forceful and decisive action. There is a strong element of post–Top Gun teen wish-fulﬁllment fantasy in this patriarchal allegory of the son proving his mettle by rescuing the father from a threat to patriarchal rule. The idealistic teenager is given a lesson in the ﬁne points of political expediency when the downed father is put on trial for violating sovereign air space, a point-scoring tactic in the world of international diplomacy and foreign policy intrigue. On the latter note, the ﬁlm advocates that President Reagan (referred to here as Ronny Ray-Gun) should get tough on the Middle East, referred to as “shitty little countries” in an offensive pun on the Shiite nations, to avoid the mistakes of Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis. As the Islamic regime here stages a show trial of their prized captive, it is clear that the USA cannot negotiate with such extremists and that the use of force is the only available solution. As the son lines up to inherit the father’s mantle of “responsibility,” he advocates a take-charge attitude to the Middle Eastern situation: that the USA cannot stand by and

Irresistible Force / The Jackal

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watch these people abuse U.S. citizens no matter what these citizens were doing in the Middle East to begin with. Foreign policy is irrelevant here as the U.S. has any right to be wherever it sees ﬁt in the world. The downed ﬁghter pilot is a stubborn, arrogant, egotistical man full of his own and his nation’s self-importance. This characterization is meant to evoke depictions of Vietnam MIAs, then popular in such ﬁlms as Rambo and Missing in Action. Thus, there is an understated link drawn between the Vietnam experience and the Middle East, the ﬁlm’s reactionary agenda being to ensure that history does not repeat itself and that the U.S. gets to win “this time.” The Islamic enemy torture prisoners so as to extract false confessions they can use to embarrass the USA, much like the Vietnamese.

Irresistible Force (1993: d. Kevin Hooks) A veteran policeman is assigned a new partner (Cynthia Rothrock) who failed assault and hostage training. They are called to duty when white supremacists take the governor and others hostage in a shopping mall. As all other policemen are elderly men, the ﬁlm is clearly yet another reactionary fantasy about terrorism as a threat to America’s patriarchal traditions. Ironically, the veteran cop says he wants a female partner because they are softer and less likely to get into trouble, he being increasingly aware of his own mortality. He is also a misogynistic boor, set up against the tough woman Rothrock who proves herself in action the equal of any man and a worthy incorporation into patriarchal power. The terrorist group, known as the White Cobra Association, stage criminal enterprises as fund raisers for their cause. Like Dead Bang, Irresistible Force ﬁnds a domestic terror threat emerging from the neo–Nazi survivalist, militia movement. In their battle against the government, they see the shopping mall as a secure fortress they can take over and so plan their action accordingly. Once the shopping mall is seized, the ﬁlm becomes a standard imitation of the Die Hard formula, with the villains underestimating the lone counterterrorist adversary Rothrock because of her diminutive stature and gender. The terrorist demands naturally include the release of imprisoned fellows as well as a substantial ransom as ﬁnancial penalty. It seems, as is so common in terrorist-themed ﬁlms of the 1990s, that terrorism is merely another form of criminal enterprise. The terrorists have a nerve gas weapon marked in Russian and Arabic, although how they may have acquired such a weapon remains inferred (stolen after the Gulf War); that they plan to release it as a grand statement anticipates Steven Seagal’s The Patriot. Authorities face the dilemma of negotiation with what are essentially extortionists more so than terrorists although the leader boasts of a following in cells throughout the USA. The ﬁlm itself pays scant attention to the politics of the white supremacist movement in the USA let alone the logistics of their terrorist agenda against a government they feel has betrayed the ideals of the nation’s founding fathers (an issue related to gun control legislation). Routine in its action scenes, Irresistible Force suggests that government negotiators are motivated by their desire to advance their political careers and are more concerned with publicity opportunities than in the safety of a threatened population.

The Jackal (1997: d. Michael Caton-Jones) An actionful Hollywood remake of the meticulous Day of the Jackal, The Jackal is about an assassin (Bruce Willis) who is hired to kill a U.S. Senator. The director of

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Jewel of the Nile

the FBI (Sidney Poitier) releases an imprisoned IRA terrorist (Richard Gere) to catch Willis. The Jackal begins with an evocation of the end of the Cold War and the resultant economic turmoil which sees a rising Russian Maﬁa using the means of terrorism (political assassination) to further their ends, in the process threatening America and its interests. This Russian Maﬁa considers itself in a war with the FBI and seek to “strike fear” into the hearts of all Americans via assassination. Tension is equated with a fast pace and the ﬁlm glosses over some of the political details and contexts which the original ﬁlm took some time to establish. The result is a depersonalized but efﬁcient Hollywood blockbuster. Although there is some irony in an IRA terrorist sharpshooter recruited to serve the U.S. government, the ﬁlm does relatively little with it except play off the decent IRA hitman against the cold, impersonal killing machine Willis. In terms of the label of “terrorist” hung on him by American and British ofﬁcials, Gere maintains that he was not a bomber and just a sniper, presumably to make the character more sympathetic to American audiences. The difference between Gere and Willis as assassins is that the former operated out of ideological conviction whereas the latter is an impersonal, machine-like killer for hire. With Gere depicted as a soldier and political prisoner rather than a terrorist, dedication to a cause is depicted as a redemptive quality. The mercenarial killer Willis embodies what these ﬁlmmakers feel is the truly irredeemable evil — amorality. With Gere visiting his former girlfriend, a Basque separatist, once again the passionate conviction to a cause is seen to redeem those demonized as terrorists, their passion almost irrelevant to their cause and reason enough for their valued distinction in opposition to Willis, a mere machine. Typical of the Hollywood overstatement of this enterprise is the choice of assassination weapon, an automatic cannon in this ﬁlm. The assassin in the original Day of the Jackal was chillingly bisexual and killed when necessary, whereas Willis kills with added sadistic glee suggesting a link between amorality and immorality. Gere’s redemption and incorporation into a functioning American patriarchy is his killing of Willis, a past terrorist associate in a Libyan arms deal gone bad; his execution of Willis is the cathartic expurgation of the worst of his past. As Gere is allowed to walk free an honorable man and take his place in American patriarchy — a privilege this ﬁlm says has to be earned — he remarks, “He’s evil, he’s dead, he’s gone, nothing else matters.”

Jewel of the Nile (1985: d. Lewis Teague) A sequel to Robert Zemeckis’ hit comedy Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile brings the adventurous duo Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner to the Middle East. Turner is lured there by the prospect of writing a biography of a messianic man who seeks to unite the Nile tribes. This man, the “jewel” of the title, has been imprisoned by government forces and his supporters have taken to terrorism in an effort to release him. The casual, comedic nature of the terrorism in Jewel of the Nile reveals an underlying assumption that such terrorism is indeed an essential part of North African–Middle Eastern politics, even a ﬁxture of the region’s lifestyle and culture. The African Arab potentate here relies on an army to enforce social control, hiding his monstrousness behind a façade of charming benevolence which only the gullible American Turner believes. The terrorists are unequivocally freedom ﬁghters in this ﬁlm’s background politics, the ﬁlm

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being a coarse look at the Americanization of a foreign culture with the same jingoism that infects the reactionary cycle of 1980s action movies dealing with terrorism and which director Teague would return to in Navy SEALS. Unlike the action cycle, which demonizes all Arabs, this ﬁlm argues that U.S. authorities need to look beyond the false front of the ruling parties and address the concerns of the people forced to express themselves through terrorism. In doing so, however, the ﬁlm depicts the Middle Eastern rulers as bully-boy megalomaniacs intent on power by enforced religious sanction. A broad action-comedy with some parallels to the ﬂop Ishtar, Jewel of the Nile is replete with variations of the notion of the disastrous folly of religious leaders coming into positions of power in the Middle East, a region governed by false holiness. Despite this, the ﬁlm emerges as more about an American woman’s need for danger and consequence as a kind of wish-fulﬁllment fantasy that gets her in over her head. Ending in marriage, the ﬁlm ﬁnally brings all back in terms of the cultural superiority of American family tradition, with American involvement in the Middle East (and foreign policy by implication) nothing more than a grand romantic adventure whose time will pass before more pressingly traditional middle–American values will consume its folly.

The Kidnapping of the President (1980: d. George Mendeluk) An extremist turned terrorist straps explosives to his body and handcuffs himself to the U.S. president (Hal Holbrook). He holds him hostage inside a truck set to explode and demands $100 million in diamonds. The Secret Service responds to the situation. Although the monetary ransom demand indicates a motive other than terrorism, this Canadian ﬁlm ﬂirts with the link between the terrorist and the extortionist in that the political motivations for the kidnapping stem from a South American (Argentinean) guerrilla group with lofty ambitions at a time when the U.S. is beset by internal political turmoil, with a disloyal vice-president, and must deal with Marxist terrorist threats from Latin America. The terrorist leader is a well-educated man whose methods relate to Marxist guerrilla-ﬁghting but whose actions spread anarchic terror beyond any cause. (He was targeted for assassination by the CIA but they failed to carry through with that mission.) Holbrook, in a canny piece of casting that speaks to his niche in political thrillers (as “Deep Throat” in All the President’s Men and the conspiratorial patriarch in Capricorn One), plays a forward-thinking president who claims that as a man of the people, he should be amongst them more often. His populism makes him vulnerable to an outsider posing within the U.S. populace and ready to strike when the opportunity is right. The president is surrounded by people the ﬁlm depicts as corrupt — the vice-president readily accepts a bribe and his scheming wife has all the charm of Lady Macbeth. The attempt at Shakespearean overtones foreshadows the presidential trilogy of Oliver Stone (JFK, Nixon and W.). The Marxist group has sympathizers within the USA — people disillusioned with the government’s inactivity and seeking to change the situation by force. Like the thrillers of the 1970s, The Kidnapping of the President fosters the idea of credible threat to justify what is replete with political paranoia. Hence, it is up to the U.S. intelligence community (the Secret Service and the CIA) to monitor such credible threats. The terrorists and their sympathizers claim that the USA is arrogant and needs a lesson in humility — speciﬁcally to be taught how vulnerable they really are to acts of terrorism on domestic soil. These terrorists are dedicated to the “destruction of Capitalist tyranny” in the name

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Killing Streets

of a higher human justice (non-religious). As is typical of early ﬁlms in the cinema of terrorism, the terrorist leader here is also a sexual sadist. As the threat to the president comes from Canada, the ﬁlm examines the readiness of terrorists to use Canada’s proximity to the USA to coordinate and launch their terror efforts. The Canadians are depicted as being under pressure from internal dissent over their ties to U.S. oil policies — the core of its foreign policy strategies. Once the president is kidnapped, the Canadians claim jurisdiction over the Secret Service, raising the question of whose responsibility it is when a terrorist attack is carried out against U.S. citizens or representatives on foreign soil. The terrorist-kidnapper revels in the public exposure, claiming that his actions are in the name of the “People’s Army” and that he wants his movement’s fate linked directly to that of the president in order to become a force in international politics: terrorism as ideological and personal self-aggrandizement. The U.S., although ostensibly negotiating with the terrorists, feels that the ofﬁce of the presidency overrides the personage of the individual president (a situation also inﬁltrating another presidential hostage drama, Air Force One). This is used by the vice-president as a reason to advance his career by claiming that there should be no negotiation with terrorists, lest there be copycat attempts if the kidnapper gets away with it. The corrupt vice-president thus advocates that the time has come for the USA to get tough on terrorism before it becomes an epidemic — though as the terrorist ultimately wants money, this rhetoric seems bombastic. Constitutional debate arises over the responsibility to the ofﬁce or the person once the person is inoperative. These machinations are motivated by the vice-president’s scheming wife who is paralleled to the terrorist and implied to be even a worse ﬁgure for her covert Machiavellian manipulative nature. As the Secret Service puts a plan into operation, they agree to the terrorist’s monetary demands. The terrorist still resorts to rhetoric and claims that his is a revolutionary gesture. However, it is motivated by personal self-aggrandizement more so than genuine ideological fervor, although divisions between the two are blurred in this surprisingly effective ﬁlm.

Killing Streets (1991: d. Stephen Cornwell) Killing Streets was produced by Menahem Golan, who brought to the screen The Delta Force. It concerns a man (Michael Pare) who wishes to rescue American hostages held by terrorists in Beirut. With a ﬁne street sense of Beirut circa 1984, the ﬁlm examines the role of those visiting Americans at a time when the Lebanese Civil War made the country a dangerous place. Such is the popular resentment of the American presence that a woman who sleeps with an American man is considered to have betrayed her people (Muslims) and country and executed as a traitor. All this is set-up for the hostage-taking scene as a central set-piece in the terrorist ﬁlm genre. When the U.S. State Department is uncooperative in the efforts to release the terrorists, one man takes it upon himself to look for his brother, held hostage. His outrage at the hostage-taking gives him license, as he sees it, to roughhouse the locals into securing the information he needs, something the ﬁlm justiﬁes with its view of all Muslims as deceptive terrorists or terrorist sympathizers hiding valuable information. About the only friendly help the protagonist receives is from a taxi driver with seeming omniscience about the locale and its people. The terrorists are arrogant, vicious, sadistic bullies who consider their hostage a spy.

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They hold him for ransom, demanding the release of their imprisoned colleagues. Their hostage-taking is meant to force the world to recognize their plight (though unnamed, it refers clearly to Hezbollah). Calling themselves the “Guardians of the Oppressed,” the terrorist group claims revenge and justice for mistreatment but perpetuate mistreatment in return. They consider the USA a land of ideals but low morality and recruit others to their cause by the anti–U.S. language of hatred and revenge. An unofﬁcial U.S. commando raid serves to resolve the tensions here, the ﬁlm asserting that only through forceful counterterror raids will the U.S. achieve dominance, control and stability in the region. With the raid staged in glorious World War II combat mission style, the reactionary politics of this ﬁlm are as unsubtle as can be expected from these producers.

The Kingdom (2007: d. Peter Berg) The co-dependence of America and Saudi Arabia since the 1933 Aramco discovery of oil is the historical context informing The Kingdom. The ﬁlm begins with a recap of 9/11 in terms of Bin Laden’s antagonism to the Saudi Royal Family who expelled him and the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals. It is the context of post–9/11 co-dependence between the two nations due to their mutual interest in an oildriven economy that informs this story of a combined mass shooting and suicide bombing in the Al Rahmah compound in Riyadh, with the death of any U.S. citizen on foreign soil being the domain of the FBI. A special team led by Jamie Foxx is assembled to investigate, but need permission from the Saudi Royal Family to set foot on Arab lands. Extreme Wahhabist hatred of the USA runs counter to the policies of the Saudi royal family resulting in a cultural division within Saudi society and reﬂected in the situation of a Saudi investigator (Ashraf Barhoum). When he is assigned to accompany and assist U.S. federal investigators in their search for clues following the suicide bombing, Barhoum is regarded by others in the same police force as helping the enemy. His loyalty to his culture and his religion is called into question and he must wonder whether or not he is prepared to die helping the Americans. His death — at the hands of those “terrorists” and terrorist-sympathizers who would consider him a traitor — is a very real possibility and The Kingdom is just as much about the cultural sensitivity faced by those who cooperate with the Americans in the Holy Land as it is about the procedural investigative details. And just as the ﬁlm contrasts Barhoum’s quiet family prayers with the inﬂammatory Allah-uh-Akhbar rhetoric of the terrorists, so too The Kingdom ﬁnally examines the cost that some in the Islamic world must pay for their cooperation with the Americans, a cost that the majority of Americans do not even consider. In Barhoum’s predicament lies an assessment of the Saudi situation regarding terrorism perpetrated speciﬁcally by Saudis against the USA. Such terror, the ﬁlm suggests, is Al Qaeda’s post–9/11 strategy — sending killers into Muslim lands to spread a “join us or die” campaign of terror to galvanize Muslims, who already consider terrorists folk heroes akin to Robin Hood. Barhoum ﬁnds the means of terrorism abhorrent and, despite the cultural and religious contexts that mitigate his feelings, believes that terrorists are murderers who must be hunted down like any criminals. He is able to put aside religious feelings in order to assist the Americans as that is his duty as a criminal investigator. Cause and method are clearly delineated in this ﬁlm’s conception of terrorism and it is this that dominates The Kingdom, making it the most involving and balanced look at the cultural issues surrounding speciﬁcally Saudi terrorism yet in post–9/11 cinema. Indeed, in its

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attention to the issues faced by the Islamic world in responding to terrorism, the ﬁlm joins The Hamburg Cell and Inﬁnite Justice (both non–U.S. productions) in seeking to explore the issue as far more complex than the simplistic “with us or against us” doctrine of U.S. foreign policy during the Bush administration’s War on Terror. Regarding a possible terrorist attack against Americans in Saudi Arabia, the ﬁlm also explores the dilemma faced by the Saudi royal family. The Saudis cannot allow a full U.S. investigation for reasons of cultural and religious sensitivity but if they appear to be losing control to the terrorist faction they face the prospect of losing control of their oildriven economy. The Americans on their part expect that any and all cooperation must be forthcoming in the War on Terror, a theme also echoed in Body of Lies. American arrogance in expecting such cooperation to be fully forthcoming reﬂects a cultural superiority that this ﬁlm calls into question. U.S. acquiescence to Saudi cultural needs is primarily due to what this ﬁlm establishes as an oil-dependent economy. Hence, anti–U.S. terrorism in Saudi Arabia speciﬁcally in The Kingdom is both about the religious issue of the inﬁdel presence in the Islamic sacred lands, which is the catch-cry uniting the terrorists, and the ramiﬁcations of such religious-based terrorism on the global destabilization of the all-important oil economy, to which the USA is most vulnerable in its foreign policy in the Middle East. Religious sensitivity prevents the USA sending in more troops and investigators even when a situation demands it, the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia being the explosive and divisive issue. Correspondingly, customary American determination, forensic expertise and even “arrogance” must be tempered with extreme sensitivity to the local culture and the politically precarious situation. For instance, buxom investigator Jennifer Garner, who dresses in tight tops, must cover her bosom completely when in the presence of the Saudi prince. Likewise Garner, as an inﬁdel female, is not allowed to touch a dead male Muslim body and must instruct her aide on the proper means of getting ﬁngerprints. The Saudi royal family on their part cannot afford any more bad press in the U.S. media, being implicated indirectly in the material support of terrorism due to the laundering of funds to terrorists direct from Saudi charities. Thus, the investigation of the suicide bombing is announced as a joint U.S.-Saudi cooperative venture. Although the U.S. has no authority to arrest, they are allowed under armed escort onto Arab lands to conduct their investigation. Correspondingly, the Saudi royals must put pressure on policeman escort Barhoum to keep the Americans safe. The details of the investigation are gripping, as the trail leads to former bomb-makers (who can be identiﬁed by examining their hands for missing ﬁngers — an occupational hazard). The Kingdom also raises a theme that haunts the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism: the ethics of torture. Here, the Saudis can torture suspects to get information, and ethical considerations are secondary to the imperative to collect vital information. This is precisely the rhetoric that Bush’s Vice-President Dick Cheney used to validate torture and make a mockery of the U.S. ideal of democracy according to the documentary makers of Taxi to the Dark Side and informs the ﬁctional ruminations of both Rendition and Extraordinary Rendition. Likewise, Body of Lies sought to dramatize the role of torture in Islamic lands as opposed to American soil, the collusion between such being the central point in Rendition. Evolving in the terrorist genre post–9/11 is the suicide bombing set-piece, examined from multiple points of view in Vantage Point and here shown with a terrifying imme-

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diacy that emphasizes the exhilaration of terror. The Kingdom quickly establishes a precarious U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia — the reality of being watched by terrorists intent on killing soldier and civilian, women and children, the resentment of the U.S. in the region and the cultural sensitivity this demands of troops, politicians and, in this context, special investigators. In its detailed forensic investigation of a suicide bombing, the ﬁlm neatly combines the procedural nature of such television shows as CSI with the evolving dynamics of the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm to create a unique detective story — the hunt for a terrorist, as explored in part in A Mighty Heart. Likewise, the procedural reality of the bomb-making process is depicted in vivid detail as is the making of a terrorist ritual beheading-execution video (also seen in Body of Lies, Inﬁnite Justice and Redacted). Barhoum’s situation as the “good Muslim” helping the U.S. investigation distantly recalls Tony Shalhoub’s role in the pre–9/11 ﬁlm The Siege. Barhoum is the epitome of reason and rationality in contrast to the terrorists, who emerge as madmen and enemies of reason; the subtext of reason vs. religion also inﬁltrating the latter stages of Charlie Wilson’s War. With a resolution tellingly questioning the humanity of the will to kill, The Kingdom takes the Islamic terrorist as perverted monster ﬁgure from the pre–9/11 cinema of terrorism and repositions it within a culture in which what is demonized in the West is treated almost as a folk hero in the Middle East. While the terrorist culprit remains off-screen in this ﬁlm — an absent signiﬁer of tremendous import — the ambivalence in the depiction of terrorism’s trans-cultural status is a hallmark of post–9/11 cinema and would the following year inﬂuence both Body of Lies and Traitor. Indeed, these three ﬁlms comprise the redeﬁnition of the terrorist thriller as not only an exciting and contemporary genre but the main means by which cinema began to address the ethical and cultural complexities of the War on Terror concealed and suppressed by the Bush government.

Knock-Off (1998: d. Tsui Hark) Set in 1997 before the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland, Knock-Off is a quick, colorful ﬁlm amply demonstrating the talents of veteran action director Tsui Hark, who would make a number of ﬁlms with star Jean Claude Van Damme. In KnockOff, Van Damme is involved in counterfeiting. A shipment of fake jeans from Hong Kong to the U.S. concerns Van Damme as he becomes involved in a terrorist plot to demand U.S. money by smuggling thousands of “micro-bombs” concealed in manufactured fake goods (and sent to the U.S. by the Russian Maﬁa). A deliberately caricatured satire on cultural imperialism, imitation and covert warfare, Knock-Off is played for broad comedy, with a rickshaw race even parodying the chariot race in Ben-Hur. However, the unsubtle style misses the dark irony and comicbook fantasy look of the superior Double Team and results in mere throwaway thrills. The ﬁlm delineates a kind of self-consuming capitalist ethic, with the counterfeiters being the bottom-of-the-barrel operators within the proﬁt-making system (though with a clownish charm). The real villains are the Russian Maﬁa, popular villains in ﬁlms of the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, as they interject terrorism into an essentially harmless criminal enterprise like piracy. The idea is intriguing — that an innocuous aspect of criminal capitalism could be exploited by terrorists and used against the USA — although is replete with a jokey sense of paranoia.

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The ﬁlm’s sense of humor sustains it; for instance, the American intelligence community in Hong Kong is concealed within a giant Buddha idol. The view of the American inﬁltration of Hong Kong’s cultural heritage is obliquely addressed in a ﬁlm which posits Hong Kong as a means of furthering the rivalry between the new Russian criminal elite and their economic adversary, the USA. Counterfeit goods, though a trivial matter, are nonetheless depicted as the ultimate capitalist crime — the faking of quality consumer products and the stealing of brand-name reliability. Sabotaged goods constituting a terrorist attack on the U.S. (and its economy) is a clever conceit. A ﬁlm of tremendous energy, Knock-Off posits pre-handover Hong Kong as the center of capitalist criminal decadence, all poised to change on the eve of Chinese takeover. In that respect, the ﬁlm is also a meditation on the future of the Hong Kong action movie once mainland China controls the ﬁlm industry. Although Hong Kong offers opportunities to the terrorists, their bombs destroy Hong Kong landmarks as much as they affect the USA. The real terrorist villain here is a CIA leader whose sole interest is making money, another obfuscation of the roles of terrorist and criminal so popular in the ﬁlms of the 1990s, following the success of Die Hard.

Lethal Tender (1997: d. John Bradshaw) In yet another formulaic Die Hard imitation, a rogue cop ( Jeff Fahey) is assigned to watch over a union dispute in a water puriﬁcation plant. The situation turns into a hostage crisis when terrorists seize the plant. Fahey and the plant manager’s daughter (CarrieAnne Moss) use hidden tunnels to enter the plant and prevent the head terrorist (Kim Coates) from achieving his ends. Mediocrity abounds in this failed and annoying thriller whose intended comedy falls ﬂat. Competent cast members do what they can with clichéd material, with Gary Busey playing another variation of the sidekick role he played so well in Under Siege. In keeping with the equation between terrorism and sexual perversion in terrorist cinema since its outset, the terrorist ﬁgure here has pedophilic inclinations, bizarrely religious in nature as he quotes Scripture (the Gospel of Luke) about only children getting into Heaven. The religious obsessions of the terrorist Coates add an intriguing but under-developed subtext to his otherwise clichéd characterization, evident when he espouses the usual Marxist rhetoric of doing what he is doing in the name of the oppressed people of the world. In that he wants money, the terrorist is revealed here as nothing more than a greedy, criminal hypocrite. The only note of relevance is in the treatment of the hostages regarding the cinema of terrorism theme of displaced blame and responsibility. The terrorist forces someone to make the decision of who will be released and who will be held hostage. In earnest hostage dramas, which this ﬁlm is not, such usually signals the efforts of the terrorist to displace responsibility for his actions onto others although in the context of Lethal Tender it is merely a cheap and obvious gimmick designed to enhance the evil nature of the terrorist villain.

Lions for Lambs (2007: d. Robert Redford) As America ﬁnds itself immersed in the Iraq war, an ambitious Republican senator (Tom Cruise) reacts to his president facing low approval ratings on the ability to win the War on Terror. A reporter (Meryl Streep) doing a post–9/11 terrorist timeline interviews

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Cruise, who wants her to write a story about a new initiative he has set up which could win the War on Terror and the hearts and, he believes, the minds of the people involved. Two idealistic former students of a college professor (Robert Redford) are involved in this initiative: radical military excursions in Afghanistan. Although Cruise is here playing a Senator, certain script references to Bush-isms like “mission accomplished” ally him to a presidential ﬁgure and as he puts the events of the ﬁlm in motion, initially he has such status. His concerns about a nuclearized Iraq and increased military mobilization mark him as a classically Republican ﬁgure. Cruise plays him as such, bringing memories of his role as the salesman in Magnolia in the process. When Cruise demands an unequivocal response to the question “Do you want to win the War on Terror — yes or no?” which he considers an epochal issue, the characterization stops short of caricature. Cruise refuses to examine prior U.S. foreign policy as responsible in any way for the current war, an attitude director Redford holds representative of the Republican mentality, which claimed that to cast aspersions on U.S. foreign policy was unpatriotic in a mentality which divided the world into those with or against the USA. He sees 9/11 and the U.S. un-preparedness for terror on home soil as the justiﬁcation for military intervention in the affairs of foreign nations so as to ensure U.S. political hegemony. Scenes of ﬁghting men on a mission are interspersed with political intrigue, nicely suggesting the ease with which hawkish politicians can place lives in jeopardy. Likewise, the gung-ho militarism that qualiﬁes the military ethic rapidly disappears in the intense stress of actual combat. This movie’s combat is far from the vainglorious thrill it was in, for instance, Black Hawk Down: It is unheroic and costly in light of intelligence inadequacies such as depicted here. The juxtaposition of the political showmanship and the military blunder expose and dramatize the gulf between intention and execution that Redford feels characterizes the Republican-led War on Terror as exempliﬁed by the mishandling of the Iraq War. In Redford’s character as a professor recruiting the best and brightest out of a belief in the value that achievement is through self-assertion (the downside of which in a Republican government means military “engagement” is demonstrative self-enhancement) is revealed the ideological impetus that underlies the true heroism of the military man, not the Republican patriotic vacuity that risks them for offended hubris. Lions for Lambs is a reﬂective look at the War on Terror and Republican culpability in the inadequately planned debacles of military excursions in Afghanistan and, by extension, Iraq. It examines the media’s role in spreading political agendas (indeed its culpability in the Iraq invasion) but works best as a humanist treatment of idealism unfortunately bound by the equivalent of dangerous political warmongering. Some Republicans were offended by this ﬁlm; no doubt the ﬁlmmakers would say, “Mission accomplished.”

The Little Drummer Girl (1984: d. George Roy Hill) Based on the novel by John Le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl concerns an actress and PLO sympathizer (Diane Keaton), recruited by the head of an Israeli counterterrorist group to be a potentially valuable ﬁgure in a trap set for a wanted terrorist. An agent is sent to seduce her and recruit her to the Israeli intelligence cause in their battle against PLO terrorism. Of all the ﬁlms of the 1980s, The Little Drummer Girl is the most obsessed with the

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Arab-Israeli crisis as it is fought over the Palestinian question. Beginning with a bomb in a West German Israeli consulate, the ﬁlm concerns the efforts of Israeli intelligence to track those whose “signatures” were on the bomb. The terrorist bomb-maker here has a unique manner, designed to be readily identiﬁable so as to inspire fear and awe in his Jewish-Zionist enemies. Simultaneously, hooded PLO representatives speak of the rhetoric of reprisal for Israeli atrocities, claiming that America and Israel label them terrorists because they deliver their bombs by hand rather than by tank or missile. Ironically, an Israeli tank commander can be hailed a hero while the Palestinians are demonized for ﬁghting back as best they can under such oppression, resorting to terrorism in the search for justice and international recognition of their cause. Keaton, who sympathizes with the Palestinian argument, is depicted as a naïve romantic sexually aroused by the political illicitness of her sympathies. Israeli intelligence are aware that the terrorist they seek is posing as a womanizing student and plan to send the naïve Keaton in to attract him. Keaton in turn is driven by the sexual excitement of danger — her role intriguing in its allusions to her work in Looking for Mr. Goodbar. She claims to be politically aware but is easily duped by Israeli intelligence agents. The Israeli agents here plan to kidnap the terror suspect and take him back to Israel for trial — the strategy used to hunt former Nazi party members. Hence, terrorism and Nazism are inferred as in a line of descent plaguing the Jewish people’s Zionist agenda in Israel. Keaton, fascinated by Arabs, thinks her relationship to the Palestinian is liberating; however, her sense of self-determination is clearly illusory as she becomes a pawn in the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli terrorism operations, buying into the terrorist’s rhetoric of terrorism as “revolution.” As Keaton is ﬁnally recruited to the Israeli cause to act a part in what Israeli agent Klaus Kinski calls the “theater of the real,” the pro–Palestinian activist is forced to confront her own shallow views and the lack of any meaningful difference her previous actions have made in what is a desperate and dangerous conﬂict. The recruiter appeals to her desire to make a difference, to be a person of lasting consequence, and she is thus turned to help Israel so that she may ﬁnd such consequence. Though still naïve, the actress with terrorist sympathies becomes a spy in the world of Israeli counterterrorist espionage. The ﬁlm essays the plight of a woman seeking to express a matter of conviction but swamped by circumstance. As Keaton goes into Palestine as an agent, she experiences ﬁrst-hand the hatred of the Jewish people within the Palestinian circles she once sympathized with. The ﬁlm makes some intriguing points, depicting a Palestinian terror training camp and exploring the PLO–held distinction between anti–Semitism and anti–Zionism. When Keaton is in Palestine, director Hill begins to reveal both sides of the political and religious animosity behind the Arab-Israeli conﬂict: Educating the Americans seems to be the agenda here. As Keaton is on the verge of prostituting herself and carrying a suitcase bomb, she realizes that both sides only wish to use her to further their agenda, caring not for her individually in any way. Thus she emerges as, at the very least, no longer naively supporting the Palestinians as a terrorist-training camp is bombed in neighboring Lebanon. Keaton’s character is based on real-life Palestinian activist and actress Vanessa Redgrave. The Little Drummer Girl was publicized as a ﬁlm that did not take sides but critics felt its ending condoned the killing of Arabs and so they spoke out against the ﬁlm,

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which failed to generate the interest expected. Keaton soon returned to work in comedy, balancing her more dramatic roles.

Live Wire (1992: d. Christian Duguay) A terrorist is systematically eliminating U.S. Senators who control a Middle East defense fund by triggering internal bodily explosions. Despite this technological terrorism, authorities are adamant that no demands will be met. A bomb disposal expert (Pierce Brosnan) investigates in a ﬁlm barely released theatrically before being distributed on cable TV in the USA. Live Wire begins by quoting terrorism statistics: Over the last ten years, over 3,600 lives were lost worldwide to terrorism and every country is subject to political kidnappings, hijackings and ﬁrebombs... except the USA. A litany of terrorism thus unfolds, with stock footage of Lockerbie, the U.S. embassy bombing in Beirut and the Achille Lauro incident intercut with children playing, a device similar to the one director Duguay would use to begin his subsequent terrorist ﬁlm The Assignment before squandering his talent in this genre on the wasteful Extreme Ops. The terrorist’s agenda here is to arm the Middle East. His bomb-making “signature” is traced by the icy, cold Brosnan (in a prelude to his work as James Bond). Between them is the scientist, an unscrupulous presence capable of selling his research to the highest bidder, terrorist or otherwise. Thinking he controls all, he is merely a pawn for those who seek to spread global destabilization as America’s Middle Eastern foreign policy decisions now, in the minds of its enemies, validate terrorism against the USA on its home soil. The terrorist’s motives for attacking the Senate are kept hazy although relate to his desire to arm the Middle East, targeting corrupt Senators involved in the drafting of an anti-arms bill — alluding to the Reagan arms-for-hostages scandal and the corruption of such as Col. Oliver North in the Iran-Contra Affair. However, although he serves a cause, the terrorist is an anarchist-mercenary selling his abilities. In that, the ﬁlm allies the terrorist to the criminal in an equation that dominated the cinema of terrorism in the 1990s and in the depiction of a career terrorist sets up Duguay’s study of the notorious Carlos the Jackal in The Assignment. Terrorism is a profession here, mixing criminal enterprise with political-ideological conviction in an amoral witches’ brew of explosive horror. Such is the subtext of paranoia in this ﬁlm that Brosnan’s epiphany is his realization that no one in the modern world is safe from the ravages of terrorism by ruthless criminal entrepreneurs who care nothing for the lives of innocents and are intent on destabilizing America by any means necessary.

The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996: d. Renny Harlin) The Long Kiss Goodnight is a treatise on memory and identity in the guise of an action-thriller. More thematically complex than director Harlin’s other ﬁlms, it concerns a government agent (Geena Davis) who suffers amnesia. Disbelieving rival agents torture her and she regains her identity, realizing that rogue FBI agents are planning a “fundraiser”: a staged terrorist incident for which Muslims will be blamed, the popular outrage against terrorism ensuring that the FBI gets budget increases in the next ﬁnancing round. The villains are all government employees and former agents. Changing times and the demise of the Cold War necessitate a new enemy for the American intelligence com-

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munity to reckon with: Islamic terrorism or, as they put it, “blame it on the Muslims.” Worse, they are prepared to stage a terrorist attack in order to demonize their new enemy. As a post–Cold War thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight relates to the majority of such ﬁlms in the 1990s which sought to ﬁnd a new enemy in disgruntled former Cold Warriors but differs in that the enemies are not renegade Soviets with ties to an emerging Russian Maﬁa but innocent Muslims demonized as terrorists to serve America’s post–Cold War foreign policy agenda in the Middle East. Although The Long Kiss Goodnight does not textually address these issues, they nevertheless remain subtextual in what is an exciting action ﬁlm, the script of which (by Shane Black) broke the $1 million barrier in scriptwriter fees. The snowbound Christmas setting recalls Harlin’s work in Die Hard 2: however, The Long Kiss Goodnight addresses the reality of American domestic terrorism in an oblique if conspiratorial aside, where the villain says that some of the claimants in the ﬁrst World Trade Center bombing insisted that the CIA had advance knowledge and indeed it was the CIA who had issued travel visas to the terrorists. Such foreknowledge implies intelligence community complicity in terrorist attacks against the USA. The Long Kiss Goodnight suggests that Muslims, though not blameless in the occurrence of terrorism worldwide, are stooges for an agenda more covert and sinister than Islamic anti–Americanism.

Lord of War (2005: d. Andrew Niccol) The lyrics to “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springﬁeld tap into American ethical conduct in the years following 9/11 and introduce the arms-dealing world of Lord of War, which charts the rise of an arms merchant from his beginnings in New York in the 1980s through various historical entanglements, including Lebanon after the ﬁrst suicide bombing, which while not directly addressing terrorism nevertheless reference it. The arms dealer (like the mercenary) has always been an ambiguous ﬁgure in the terrorist genre, an amoral merchant of no ideological scruples willing to enable terrorism for a proﬁt. Ironically, the arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage is here the epitome of entrepreneurial American capitalist enterprise: a European immigrant selling weapons to achieve the American Dream. When the Americans evacuated Lebanon following the ﬁrst embassy suicide bombing wave, they left their munitions (it being cheaper and more practical to buy new ones than to take them back), the stockpile of which Cage sells for a proﬁt, a kickback going to a U.S. military ofﬁcer. At the same time he picks up loose dollars behind a wall while on the other side of it children are executed by ﬁring squad. This cynical, amoral black humor distinguishes Lord of War, whose core character sells Israeli-made Uzis to Muslims to wage war on Israel. Cage admits shipping cargo to Afghanistan to help ﬁght the Soviets, although admits that he never sold to Osama bin Laden not on moral grounds but because back then Osama “was always bouncing checks.” In its sense of mounting absurdity, Lord of War is the War on Terror equivalent of Catch-22 with an equally cynical sense of the morality of warfare and proﬁt-making. In one scene, the sound of the bullet cartridges being expelled from an automatic weapon is that of a cash register. The fall of the Soviet Union provides just the opportunity Cage needs (disgruntled former Soviet troops and warehouses full of weapons from Soviet troop withdrawals in the Ukraine): just the theme that action ﬁlms of the 1990s latched onto — the threat of

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former Soviet weapons falling into dangerous hands. The humor also recalls the cynical critiques of American entrepreneurialism in the military in Kelly’s Heroes and Three Kings, where ideology and national pride are secondary to the pursuit of riches. The agent (Ethan Hawke) trailing Cage comments that the paranoia of nuclear war is such that nuclear weapons are no danger compared to the fact that nine out of ten people killed in wars die by small arms and automatic riﬂe ﬁre — most of the weapons Cage sells. The rivalry between Cage and Hawke here would ﬁnd an ironic echo in the later ﬁlm American Gangster, about the drug trade. The adversity between Cage and competing arms dealer Ian Holm adds a layer of irony in the analysis of the egos of these admittedly powerful men in the arms trade. Amorality and humanity are curiously mixed in Lord of War but its focus is on African civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone to the extent that the earlier allusions to bin Laden and terrorism remain background context until the end, with the suggestion that the War on Terror has obfuscated existing ethics to the point where Cage will not face prosecution for violating arms embargoes because he supplies to those who share the terrorist enemy the U.S. faces in the War on Terror. Hence the chilling conclusion to this ﬁlm: Men like Cage are a “necessary evil” in the U.S. War on Terror and that the biggest arms dealers in the world are the USA, UK, Russia, France and China — the ﬁve permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Lost Command (1966: d. Mark Robson) During the French-Algerian war of independence, former French Colonialist soldier Anthony Quinn is assigned from Vietnam to Algeria, where his lieutenant (Alain Delon) is torn between patriotic Nationalism and his infatuation with a beautiful terrorist (Claudia Cardinale). Testing the limits of human endurance is a frequent theme in director Robson’s work (epitomized in Earthquake). The test to such endurance is here in the form of a guerrilla bombing campaign leveled against the Colonialist French. The ﬁlm begins with an evocation of Vietnamese guerrillas in 1950s French Indo-China, calling into question the distinction between the terrorist and the freedom ﬁghter as one of method and cause. The ﬁlm frames this unconventional conﬂict in conventional terms, familiar from countless World War II movies of the 1950s, though it derives some parallel between the French experience and America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, just commencing when Lost Command was released. The bulk of Lost Command is set in Algiers where local Arab resentment of French imperial foreign policy has resulted in a sustained guerrilla campaign of terrorism, the same context explored in the highly controversial Italian-French co-production The Battle of Algiers released the same year. Such conﬂict focuses on one character (George Segal), an Algerian Arab soldier who fought for the French in Indochina but has returned to mixed loyalties regarding French control of his homeland. Slowly, Segal becomes involved in an anti–Western Muslim movement and enters into their campaign of terror, his story drawn in parallel to that of wearied ofﬁcer Quinn and love-struck Delon for a contrast in attitudes to Colonial occupation and guerrilla resistance. In this context, the French are depicted as aristocratic imperialists — hardly changed since the French Revolution — and little better than looters, plundering the nations they occupy and enforcing their culture and language with total disregard for indigenous Muslim custom. French commander

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Quinn, desperate for a command but slowly realizing the folly of what he has been assigned, considers these terrorists petty criminals and dismisses their cause out of hand; in that he is representative of any occupying force in Robson’s view. Lost Command, unlike The Battle of Algiers, insists on downplaying incidences of terrorism and instead stages encounters between terrorists and troops in the manner of a conventional war movie, though the context of Arab armed resistance also speaks to the likes of Exodus and Cast a Giant Shadow. The cycle of violence, the demonization of what Quinn feels are “rebels” as “terrorists” by his superiors results in a cycle that is said to “turn warfare into murder” as the French try to bring the war to the Arab homeland in planned reprisal sorties in which the locals blend effortlessly into the terrain to continue their guerrilla resistance. In the depiction of contrasting means of warfare, a collision between Christian and Muslim attitudes to ﬁghting war is evoked but not really followed through beyond the initial suggestion. However, it is the large-scale persecution of the Arab population which clearly validates their resistance efforts, termed “terrorism” by the French into order to discredit the cause behind the guerrilla campaign. Persecution brings reprisal and the theme in Lost Command is that any liberation from an occupying colonialist force demands terrorism as the ideal means of combat. Lost Command is the ﬁrst American ﬁlm to attempt to contextualize issues of terrorism within the codes of genre ﬁlmmaking, the impetus towards the cinema of terrorism as a genre begins with this ﬁlm. At a time when the terrorist ﬁlm had not yet developed into a genre (as it would be a decade later with the release of Black Sunday), Lost Command attempted to convey and frame a terrorist “war” in the recognizable terms of a conventional war movie, presumably to make the subject matter more understandable to American viewers and introduce the political context of revolutionary terrorism within classical Hollywood genre discourse. Intriguingly enough, the ﬁlm Prisoner in the Middle would likewise attempt to discuss the question of Israeli-Palestinian terrorism by evoking a classical Hollywood genre, in that case the Western.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004: d. Jonathan Demme) Congressional Medal of Honor winner Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) from the Kuwait Gulf War is being groomed for political ofﬁce by his mother (Meryl Streep). A member of his unit (Denzel Washington), diagnosed with Gulf War Syndrome, is having disturbing ﬂashbacks to the war experience that suggest that Schreiber is more than what he seems — that an entire platoon have been hypnotized as part of a sinister agenda. Washington is driven to ﬁnd out what really happened during the Kuwait incident that elevated Schreiber to U.S. hero and likely vice-presidential nominee. Recurrent news broadcasts of updates on the War on Terror make The Manchurian Candidate, a remake of the 1962 John Frankenheimer Cold War classic, the ﬁrst political thriller post–9/11 to feature the War on Terror as a political background. The ﬁrst presidential election since 9/11 forms the backdrop to this timely update of what was in 1962 the pinnacle of American political satire. A likely vice-presidential candidate here openly says that the terrorist enemy was one spawned by previous foreign policy — a view the Bush government ﬂatly considered unpatriotic and irrelevant to 9/11— but that the real enemies to America are from those who compromise American ideals of civil liberty. Compromises to ideals of civil liberty in the wake of 9/11 would surface strongly in a wave of ﬁlms in 2007, embracing terrain informing this political thriller.

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The campaign is to free America from the grip of fear. War hero Raymond Shaw is primed for political service by his ambitious mother Streep who is propelled by ethical compromises to civil liberty which her opponents ﬁnd unconstitutional. Streep feels there is a nuclear threat emerging against the USA not from terrorists but from an alliance of enemy nations emboldened by recent attacks against America and the anti-unilateral action movement then informing America as they prepared for the Iraq War. Shaw platforms on the difference between real security and the need to feel safe. His stance, while admirable, is revealed in the end to be a façade of rhetoric concealing a far darker agenda rooted in global corporate enterprise — the potentially malevolent company Manchurian Global, whose role in the War on Terror lurks in the background. A geo-political corporate extension of government policy, Manchurian Global manipulates military technology for their own proﬁt, are involved in Guantanamo Bay and negotiating with the Saudis on a missile defense shield. Their employment of a wanted war criminal medical researcher speaks to the legacy of the U.S. government using Nazi scientists following World War II, although the idea here is that the ethics of the War on Terror condone such behavior. The incipient criticism of ethics during the War on Terror years would saturate American ﬁlm in a wave of terrorist ﬁlms in 2007–08, many of which were driven by such ethical concerns. Although The Manchurian Candidate prefers to use them suggestively, as background for the thriller, the context makes the ﬁlm a ﬁne update of the material for a War on Terror mentality. The primary difference between the original Manchurian Candidate and this remake is one of tone: In 1962, director John Frankenheimer knew the political sensitivity of the material was suited to a style of blackly comical paranoia. The result was satire. Without the grotesque humor that Frankenheimer invested in the original, the remake emerges a hybrid of psychodrama and political thriller which, although certainly socio-political criticism in the guise of popular entertainment, never becomes satire. But it’s not intended as such: The ﬁlm is meant to indict the ethics of the U.S. War on Terror, though ﬁctionalized here as a willingness to deal with a man who sells his talents to terrorists for a price — the implant researcher as rogue scientist. This man, a doctor who possesses knowledge of secret mind control experiments, is the villain — the prize purchase of Manchurian Global. Corporate interest feeding from government-propelled fear-mongering is the thesis behind the remake of The Manchurian Candidate: Manchurian Global hopes to create private armies to replace American troops stretched thin by the War on Terror. Likewise, a puppet president allows them control of the political scene necessary to ensure their proﬁt-making in the War on Terror. The ethic Streep espouses here (“Do what needs to be done”) would ﬁnd tremendous resonance with subsequent terrorist ﬁlms which sought to directly deal with that sentiment though from its original source, Republican VicePresident Dick Cheney announcing the need for strong measures to ﬁght conscience-less terrorists. Streep would follow up by portraying a similar character in the 2007 political drama Rendition, also appearing for Robert Redford that year in Lions for Lambs, making her perhaps the most high-proﬁle actress in the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism.

The Manhattan Project (1986: d. Marshall Brickman) aka Deadly Game A high school prankster told to improve his grades is determined to win a New York City science competition and prove his worth to the world by building a small nuclear

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bomb. U.S. government forces uncover his appropriation of secret weapons-manufacturing technology and hunt him down lest his experiment fall into the proverbial “enemy hands” in The Manhattan Project, the directorial debut of former Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman. Inspired by the smart teen boy vs. the government’s defense security apparatus found in the populist hit Wargames, The Manhattan Project concerns a professor ( John Lithgow) desperate to assume a role as a father-ﬁgure in order to attain true patriarchal status. His effort inspires a bright young teen to idolize the science of weapons of mass destruction but without the morality or responsibility to deploy his knowledge in the proper way. In that, the ﬁlm is arguably a wayward youth in need of direction by an overtly responsible patriarchy-themed combination of caper movie and teen fable. Smart people demonstrate their intelligence for the sheer thrill of doing so, unaware of, or unwilling to confront, the serious moral repercussions of their demonstrable intelligence. The government attempt to psycho-analyze the young man with a prior agenda: to get a working proﬁle of someone unbalanced enough to carry a grudge against the American political system. Once the bomb is stolen by persons unknown, the dangers of the situation escalating into terrorism become known, and it is up to the teen and his friends to remedy this situation. When the theft is reported by the media, the protagonist says that he will turn over the bomb only if the true purpose of the secret laboratory from which he stole the equipment is revealed. In effect, by making such demands, he is labeled a terrorist. In the protagonist’s progression here is a study of discontent and arrogance leading to political radicalization and eventual segueing into potential acts of domestic terrorism. The protagonist considers his motives benevolent but embraces his new public persona as a terrorist in order to give validity to his “demands.” However, he begins to suspect that the label of “terrorist” is conveniently applied so as to make him an expendable target for assassination or imprisonment. Thus, he arms the bomb out of perceived self-protection. Confronting Professor Lithgow, he is told of the imperative of the U.S. government to keep secrets and realizes that power lies in covert operations withheld from the ordinary American populace.

The Marksman (2006: d. Marcus Adams) Producer Andrew Stevens made a number of minor action ﬁlms in the 1990s before moving on to higher budgets and name talent post–9/11, attracting Wesley Snipes for two terrorist-themed quickie action B-ﬂicks, The Detonator and The Marksman. Both centered on post–9/11 terrorism as emerging from post–Cold War concerns; in The Marksman, Snipes plays an elite U.S. special forces operative out to prevent the Chechen terrorist takeover of a decommissioned Soviet power plant. Updating the terrorist subgenre to account for Soviet politics and practices following the Cold War is an intriguing concept but The Marksman gives only scant attention to Chechen politics, using the Chechens instead as yet another dangerous terrorist enemy in what is essentially a disposable action movie. It demonstrates the continuing viability of the terrorist-themed action genre but, short of being one of the ﬁrst returns to terrorism as a subject for escapist genre entertainment post–9/11, offers nothing of political insight and only a polished and impersonal functionality in execution. Hatred for the Kremlin motivates the terrorists here: the necessity for American

McHale’s Navy / Memorial Day

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control of the nuclear capabilities of the former Soviet Union lest what has been left open in the collapse of the Soviet Union can fall into terrorist hands. The theme was a popular one in the 1990s but in a post–9/11 environment seems more populist terrorist ﬁlm cliché than a truly contemporary redeployment of the genre. In 2007, the terrorist genre would be boldly redeployed and announced as a genre of political sophistication and consequence in such ﬁlms as Rendition, A Mighty Heart and Lions for Lambs; prior to that, the two Stevens-Snipes ﬁlms and Die Hard 4.0 resurrected the taboo terrorist subgenre as once again suitable for American cinemas. One subtext here, more so than in The Detonator, is the apparently irreconcilable gulf in the American War on Terror between morality and political expediency. The harsh reality of what needs to be done in ﬁghting the terrorist threat has made Snipes cynical to the point of doubting the American idealism his actions embody. Snipes becomes a symbol for the might of counterterror U.S. foreign policy — the man who supplies the on-ground intelligence needed for American technological war might to be effective. This mythologizing of Snipes as the cold professional terror-warrior adds ruthlessness to the characteristics of the post–9/11 terrorist B-movie: Again, the American need to ﬁnd a suitable hero post–9/11 also saturating Die Hard 4.0’s assertion of American patriarchal pride.

McHale’s Navy (1997: d. Bryan Spicer) A former Navy ofﬁcer, now a wheeler-dealer in the Paciﬁc Islands, comes back to military service to face down an old foe, “the second best terrorist in the world,” who intends to be the best by restoring the old Cold War political order. McHale’s Navy furthers, through comedy, the standard 1990s theme of the threat posed by old Cold Warriors who resent the demise of the Cold War and resort to terrorism as global destabilization to bring back the previous policy agenda. The terrorists here are mocked — they stockpile weapons and fancy themselves as military leaders amassing a private army — and the head terrorist is a megalomaniac right out of the James Bond gallery of villainy. But, the context of the terrorist threat to American bases overseas is used as the background for this reinvention of the former hit TV sitcom of the same name. The terrorist plans to destroy the Pentagon during a world conference on terrorism involving some 27 countries: a symbolic attack on America’s intended domination of world affairs in its post–Cold War foreign policy. Yet, the terrorist is motivated not by ideology but by his own petty self-aggrandizement, his desire to be the best at what he does, to be “number one.” Despite this terrorist context, McHale’s Navy is a moronic comedy for undemanding children. Its ending — in which local islanders thank the U.S. for their presence and protection — is a justiﬁcation of U.S. military Imperialism, offensive in that such a message is meant as indoctrination in an ostensible family ﬁlm.

Memorial Day (1998: d. Worth Keeter) A “doomsday weapon” is controlled by renegade government agents motivated by misguided patriotism. They fabricate an imaginary enemy out to destroy the world in order to justify their use of the weapon. Only a television journalist stands in their way although her ambition inﬂuences her more than her “duty.” Memorial Day, another ﬁlm from producer Andrew Stevens, ﬂirts with the potential for WMD terrorism, with the post–Cold War world forever poised on the brink of

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Mercenary

a new, terrorist-based war. Like many ﬁlms in which Stevens has had a guiding hand, the enemy are disgruntled former Cold Warriors, here former defense and intelligence personnel lamenting the fact that they lack a readily identiﬁable enemy and that, accordingly, their funding is being cut (the same motivation behind the “fund-raiser” of staged terrorism in The Long Kiss Goodnight). These men require a new enemy to validate their existence and their funding, and staging terrorist acts in order to galvanize popular support is their means of doing so. Thus, their support is behind a president running for ofﬁce on a promise to ﬁght terrorism (unusual for a pre–Bush ﬁlm), speciﬁcally a new super-terrorist organization of former Communist intelligence agents still perpetrating a Cold War agenda against the Americans. This largely hi-tech super-terrorist group resembles SPECTRE in the early James Bond ﬁlms, which at time of writing had with Quantum of Solace began to reintroduce a SPECTRE–like organization in a speciﬁc post–9/11 context of global destabilization for proﬁt. Yet, anti–American terrorism attributed to this enemy is a fabrication to ensure that the military-defense-intelligence community agenda is fostered upon the American people whether it is relevant or not. In such a climate, the demonization of “terrorism” serves those who wish increased government funding for their operations. Memorial Day is producer Stevens’ most self-reﬂexive work and gains from the assured professionalism of director Keeter, who has steadily improved since his early unremarkable exploitation work in the 1980s. The threat to the U.S. in the post–Cold War world, this ﬁlm suggests, is not from outside but from within its own government, members of whom are ready and willing to manufacture and publicize a “terrorist” threat to sustain their respective departmental funding and security.

Mercenary (1996: d. Avi Nesher) A billionaire’s wife is killed by an international terrorist. Driven by revenge, he hires the title man to track down the terrorist-murderer. Mercenary is a ﬁlm replete with allegorical overtones as an arch-capitalist battles the forces of terrorism which shatter his private family unity and moneyed way of life. Mercenary postulates that rich and successful capitalists are inherently targets of terrorists, radicals and extortionists — such is the resentment that “success” generates amongst radical Islamic groups. Despite the Islamic context, the terrorist villain here is a rogue terrorist-for-hire in the Carlos the Jackal mode. He operates out of the Middle East and is hired by extremists to spread terror; governments are powerless to go after him. He is also a phenomenon of the Cold War, the suggestion being that those previously hired by the Soviets for terrorist proxy wars are, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, a new threat to peace and global security (such freelance terrorists being a frequent theme in the 1990s cinema of terrorism). Thus, the terrorist threat is an anarchist unconcerned by ideology or cause — terrorism for fun and proﬁt. Unlike many ﬁlms which sought to blur the lines of distinction between the terrorist and the mercenary, this one seeks to reconstruct them. The protagonist has the stamp of authenticity of previous military service and takes tasks based in part on his own ideological belief in them. He is a noble man and an adversary to the terrorist from the literal opposite end of a related spectrum. What distinguishes the terrorist from the mercenary thus is the ability to maintain a strict moral, ethical and ideological code of conduct. Both operate in a climate where any emotion can get one killed and the ﬁlm

Michael Collins

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acknowledges the risk in such a situation — namely, that the need to operate without a conscience can lead to moral dissolution and ambivalence. With a moral code, the mercenary is an honorable man: without one, the terrorist is not. The mission leads to mountain ranges in Afghanistan where former Soviets and Afghan warlords support a network of terror: a prescient theme for a pre–9/11 terrorist movie. Terrorist and mercenary were, signiﬁcantly, on opposite sides during the Cold War and now face each other over “unﬁnished business.” The terrorist, as usual for such ﬁlms of terrorism centered on the Middle East, is a sexual sadist and rapist whose self-assertion consists of brutal violence and sexual exploitation. Unusually, Mercenary is a hybrid ﬁlm that strives to retain the traditional Russian enemy while updating it to the new threat to global security posed speciﬁcally by Islamic terrorism. It is one of the most intriguing of 1990s straight-to-video action movies, with a novel scene involving a stealthy inﬁltration by hang-glider recalling earlier work in Sky Riders.

Michael Collins (1996: d. Neil Jordan) Michael Collins tells the true story of the legendary Irish patriot and his involvement in terrorism against the British forces then occupying Ireland. From the director of The Crying Game, the ﬁlm is more about the practicalities and political processes sustaining a terrorist campaign than its predecessor, which was more concerned with the psychology of its IRA terrorist ﬁgures. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ireland is a troublesome British colony. A revolutionary war for independence begins in 1916 and is soon followed by a guerrilla war campaign masterminded by Michael Collins (Liam Neeson). In the face of British oppression, Collins declares that they will no longer play by British “civilized” rules of warfare but will invent their own — the birth of modern terrorism. The IRA are to be an “invisible army,” to blend in with the crowd, strike out and return unseen to the crowd in an urban-guerrilla campaign of resistance against legitimate British targets. The intent is to strike fear in the occupiers and their informants through a campaign of selective assassinations, the rationale being that British Colonialist authority has left them no choice but to act in such a way. In this context, director Jordan frames the origins of the Irish “troubles” in terms of an anti-colonialist struggle, the IRA being a resistance force of freedom ﬁghters. Yet the focus here is not the violence but again, like The Crying Game, the humanization of those associated with the perpetuation of a terrorist “war.” The tit-for-tat struggle against the British results in more armed troops and an escalation of the violence as resistance results in the killing of innocent civilians by the occupying British. This process of escalation is presented as the regrettable, but inevitable, course of armed resistance by guerrilla warfare. Collins’ success in this is his anonymity, the British not above torture to extract information. Jordan’s ﬁlms have frequently explored the clash between humanity and inhumanity over often violent actions and here he explores through his examination of the protagonist the threat to an individual’s humanity as a consequence of their ideological conviction to armed resistance; however politically justiﬁed, there is a human cost to all such action. Collins himself resists becoming a politician when the IRA need a political face as such would compromise the anonymity that makes him so feared by the British in Ireland. As Collins is elevated to political spokesman rather than guerrilla leader, Jordan suggests that the political double-talk surrounding the formation proper of the IRA betrayed Collins’ revolutionary ideals and set

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Collins up to fail, partly to perpetrate the armed combat with an unreachable political goal. Michael Collins was immediately controversial when released. London’s Daily Telegraph claimed the ﬁlm gloriﬁed the righteousness of terrorist violence and “might just as well have been supplied by Sinn Fein’s propaganda department.” Ironically, many devout Irish nationalists also protested the ﬁlm as glorifying the man whose peace treaty led to a divided Ireland. Jordan was accused of being too shallow and facile a director to handle such complex material and as a result he was merely inﬂaming the then-precarious peace process with his ﬁlm, a virtual recruitment drive for the IRA. On his part, when accused of glorifying terrorism (despite all “terrorist” attacks in the ﬁlm being targeted at the non-civilian population), Jordan replied, “Collins wasn’t a proponent of terrorism. He developed techniques of guerrilla warfare later copied by independence movements around the world... Collins would never be a proponent of contemporary terrorism as practiced today. He was a soldier and a statesman and, over time, a man of peace” (Washington Post, 1996).

A Mighty Heart (2007: d. Michael Winterbottom) In the redeﬁnition of the cinema of terrorism that began after 9/11 with United 93 (2003) and World Trade Center (2006), 2007 was a watershed year that saw the release of three ﬁlms —A Mighty Heart, Rendition and Civic Duty. In these ﬁlms, the legacy of terrorist cinema as a subgenre became a platform onto which could be grafted ethical, rationalist and secular humanist examinations of the moral and political issues central to American civilization as deﬁned by the War on Terror and its ﬁgurehead, the lame-duck President George W. Bush. It was in these three ﬁlms, on the brink of the American election that would see the end of the War on Terror president if not exactly the War on Terror itself, that the terrorist ﬁlm as a subgenre was contemporized as politically relevant discourse rather than politically themed escapist entertainment. Indeed, both A Mighty Heart and Rendition brought the post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm back to one of the genre’s most inﬂuential directors, Costa-Gavras and Missing. In A Mighty Heart, director Michael Winterbottom brings a documentarist’s nervous immediacy and a journalist’s authenticity to scenes of Pakistani society reacting to the idealism, romanticism and lack thereof of the American media, here represented by Daniel Pearl. As the narrative centers on Pearl’s pregnant wife, Angelina Jolie, the political perspective is seen through a humanist’s lens. This humanism also inﬁltrates (with varying degrees of irony) the other terrorist ﬁlms of 2007. Of these, A Mighty Heart is the sole true story and as such has perhaps the heaviest responsibility. Although it explores the ethical issues that have arisen since the declaration of the War on Terror, it is reticent about depicting the terrorists themselves except through fragmentary physical details glimpsed initially in photographs of Pearl held at gunpoint. The terrorist ﬁgure, so prominent pre–9/11, is here oblique, an implied “other” so dangerously unknown as to cast doubt on all even remotely connected — themes also informing Rendition and Civic Duty. Pearl features only brieﬂy as a character in A Mighty Heart as the ﬁlm concentrates after the initial abduction on Jolie. Appropriately enough, one of the two central female roles in Rendition was also a pregnant wife hoping to ﬁnd her husband, though in Rendition the husband is a terrorist suspect rather than terrorist victim. Much of the ﬁlm is similar to a police procedural in which Jolie follows the trail to try and ﬁnd her husband

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before the threat of his execution is carried out. The cultural, political and religious subjects it evokes as surrounding the procedural make for a telling depiction of the issues underlying the War on Terror. For instance: Islamic anti–Semitism is chosen by Winterbottom as an ironic context in which to reveal Pearl’s Jewish background. In an interview with an Islamic cleric who believes that 9/11 is a Jewish conspiracy carried out by Mossad, Pearl rather naively states that he’s Jewish. It is immediately after this revelation that Pearl disappears. The ﬁrst question asked of Jolie as she reports his disappearance is “Does anyone know he’s Jewish?” Just as the religious hatred underlying the terrorism that robbed Pearl of his right to self-determination is slyly evoked, so too is the humanity of terrorist treatment — the crisis of detention as represented by Guantanamo Bay. Jolie watches news of Guantanamo Bay detainees as she contemplates her husband’s fate at the hands of the men being treated as such. When the terrorists post pictures, they say Pearl is treated just like the Americans treat their prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and that if the Americans treat theirs better, so Pearl’s conditions will improve. That said, they are quite ready to execute Pearl and ﬁlm it for Internet broadcast. It no longer matters who began what, as what A Mighty Heart implies is the moral relativism of a humanity trapped in a cycle of tit-for-tat exchange between terrorists and Americans, a theme also found in yet another 2007 movie, Vantage Point. The treatment of suspected terrorist detainees would be explicitly treated in Rendition’s waterboarding scenes and the forced interrogation of an innocent scenario underlies both Rendition and Civic Duty. A Mighty Heart, Rendition and Civic Duty all introduce a new set-piece into the dramatic structure of the terrorist movie: the torture scene. In this new trope of the genre, a terrorist suspect is tortured in order to extract information that may be of use to the interrogating authority. The torture scene functions as an ethical discourse on a civilization that in the rhetoric of the War on Terror justiﬁes the effective violation of an individual’s human rights in order to potentially protect a greater number from the terrorist intention to rob them of their right to self-determination. Self-determination is the dominant discourse underlying the cinema of terrorism as a subgenre but it is only after 9/11 that the subgenre developed a set-piece with such headline-making relevance to American morality. Terrorist cinema post–9/11 sees the torture scene as a structuring trope which encapsulates the ethical dilemmas posed to secular humanism by the War on Terror. A Mighty Heart is concerned with the frustrations of the attempt to ﬁnd Pearl. It evokes the monstrous compromises to humanity in the War on Terror as background for a procedural story of frustrated crisis management. In that it reverses the proﬁciency of crisis management that made American legends out of the rebellious passengers in United 93. Here, American crisis management is ineffective and there is a sad defeatism saturating A Mighty Heart, a resignation to the facts of living in a War on Terror world. Of the 2007 terrorist ﬁlm batch, it is aesthetically the closest to docudrama and is informed by a journalistic immediacy familiar from news agencies such as CNN. Indeed, on the DVD release of A Mighty Heart is an introduction by CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour in which she contextualizes the ﬁlm in terms of the risks faced by journalists and the persecution of journalists in some parts of the world. However, this freedom-of-the-press argument does not greatly inform the movie as Winterbottom’s staging of the scene in which Pearl reveals his Jewish background suggests it’s religious resentment rather than

183

Militia / Ministry of Vengeance

speciﬁc resentment of American journalism that underscores the terrorist motivation in targeting Pearl.

Militia (2000: d. Jay Andrews) Agents from the ATF inﬁltrate a radical right-wing militia organization, the Brotherhood of Liberty, who have stolen three missiles containing the anthrax virus and plan to assassinate the U.S. president. The tagline for this movie reads, “Terrorism now comes in the stars and stripes,” identifying the threat to domestic security from terrorism within the neo–Nazi and home-grown militia movement, following a mini-trend set in motion in Dead Bang. An initial helicopter raid on a militia compound, reminiscent of the attack in Apocalypse Now, serves to underscore the point — war on American soil. Ruthless government action results in the death of the militia leader’s wife and child. The lone, wronged patriarch now vows revenge against the government that destroyed his precious family — the ideal of “family values” here being an unspoken evocation of traditional Middle American morality, as it is in much American ﬁlm. Hence, the patriotic duty of rival patriarchs informs Militia. When chemical weapons are stolen, ofﬁcial press releases label the suspects “terrorists,” the distinction between radical patriotism and terrorism being the agenda here. Stacy Keach (in a role comparable to his work in American History X) plays a radio personality. A patriotic critic of what he and the militia movement see as government repression, he espouses the coming of a “new world order” (as symbolized by the United Nations) which will undermine American nationalistic authority, the standard rhetoric of the neo–Nazi movement. The right-wingers for whom he provides a voice have developed an Internet presence and with the theft of the anthrax have become a major threat to the U.S. government. (The anthrax scare immediately following 9/11 gives this ﬁlm unusual poignancy, alongside the post–9/11 thriller Anthrax.) Once the government agent inﬁltrates the group, the ﬁlm turns to an exposure of their political views inevitably bound up in the principle of liberty as embodied in the Constitutional right to bear arms. The militia world is a patriarchy in microcosm with strict father-son traditions, increasing in its acceptance of terrorist tactics as a means of political protest — their patriotic duty as they see it. Such terrorism is intended to galvanize the U.S. population into action against the repressive government and force its violent overthrow in a new American Revolution. The plan is to launch an anthrax attack which the political climate will immediately blame on the Muslims, resulting in severe restrictions upon civil liberties which will empower the people to revolt. The context here is that WMD terrorism is intended both to terrorize and galvanize the population into action. After several engaging plot twists in which the patriarch redeems himself, the ﬁlm suggests that federal force is needed to suppress the militia movement before it seizes on the impetus provided by Timothy McVeigh and launches genuine WMD attacks within the USA.

Ministry of Vengeance (1989: d. Peter Maris) A priest reforms from a life of violence into one of religion and tolerance. He is shocked when terrorists kill his family and he follows them to war-torn Lebanon for revenge. There he faces a powerful terrorist enemy as well as U.S. government corruption and conspiratorial forces.

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Driven by grief and despair as a result of the terrorist incident at an airport which claimed his family, the protagonist feels abandoned by God and so takes violent matters into his own hands. Despite his family being killed by Islamic terrorists, he can get only meaningless condolences from the U.S. State Department — a common theme in the ﬁlms of Middle Eastern terrorism emerging in the 1980s in response to the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut. As diplomatic efforts are futile, force is the only option left to do battle with these terrorists according to Ministry of Vengeance: Diplomacy can do nothing to prevent the killing of Americans by Islamic terrorists. The ﬁlm becomes another routine lone avenger vs. the terrorists movie, dispensing with characterization and subtlety in favor of blatantly reactionary violence. The novelty of its setting — the disputed Bekaa Valley in Lebanon — adds relevance to an otherwise formulaic ﬁlm. The Muslims he encounters all demonize him as a “cross worshipper” and idolator. However, in that the Muslims are clearly shown to be a barbaric people, Christianity is held up as inherently superior to warlike Islam. The ﬁlm gives time to Christian missionaries, validating their view that this region needs a lot of help and suggesting that Western, Christian benevolence alone will save the region from inevitable self-destruction if left to Islamic rule. Yet, such Christian benevolence needs a justly purifying force to accompany it as if disciplining unruly children or brutes. Hence, the Islamic terrorists prove their savagery by attacking a Church — the only true and holy house of God according to this Christian propaganda-driven drivel of a reactionary action ﬁlm. Vigilante anti-terrorist action is depicted in terms of a righteous “crusade.” As the terrorist villain is a covert spy for the U.S., the protagonist’s independent mission jeopardizes U.S. anti-terror inﬁltrations, recalling The Amateur. The CIA would rather kill the rogue American citizen than jeopardize their anti-terrorist initiative. The terrorists are barbaric and irredeemable and the battle against them carries all the hallmarks of a just religious war and cultural clash — exactly the type of response that over a decade later the Republican, Christian Bush administration would push in its initial statement of being on a “crusade” in the War on Terror. However, Ministry of Vengeance does not offer any depiction of Lebanese Islamic culture beyond violent terrorism and characterizes all Middle Eastern residents as hostiles in a religious war. The terrorist leader claims that in today’s world there are no innocents, using this claim to justify the torture of American hostages. As he is here a representative Muslim, the ﬁlm suggests all Muslims are duplicitous murderers, torturers and rapists.

Moving Target (2000: d. Paul Ziller) In Ireland, a man inadvertently gets a wrong package and is framed for murder. He soon ﬁnds himself pursued by terrorists, police and spies for reasons he cannot understand but is determined to uncover. Moving Target is a minor action vehicle for martial arts star Don “The Dragon” Wilson and emphasizes sadistic brutality. Moving Target is yet another variation on the hackneyed plot device of the transplanted American forced into involvement in the political conﬂicts of the country he visits, in this case leading to trouble with the IRA. The IRA are here depicted as violent, conscienceless killers who hypocritically kill other Irishmen with ease. The villainous terrorist group is an IRA splinter cell in collusion with international terrorists. Despite the involvement of an innocent American, Irish authorities want to contain the matter and

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do not seek help from the CIA. The splinter group has stolen detonators which the IRA proper in league with the Russian Maﬁa plan to sell to the highest bidder.

Munich (2005: d. Steven Spielberg) Following the murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, a secret squad of Israeli intelligence operatives is trained and ordered to hunt down and execute the terrorists responsible. The mission, and its ethically problematic nature, gradually takes a personal toll on those involved. Munich is a ﬁlm about how to deal with terrorism: speciﬁcally about using the means of terrorism to combat terrorists — bringing the ﬁght to their level on their terms. Following 9/11 this was the agenda announced by former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Although Munich examines this perspective, it does so from history — hoping to ﬁnd in the lessons of historical anti-terrorism something of relevance. Terrorist cinema was offlimits on American screens immediately after 9/11 although ﬁrst criticisms of Bush’s handling of the War on Terror emerged in 2004 in the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 and the thriller The Manchurian Candidate, both concerned with living in a state of fear propelled by terrorist threats. Munich is effectively the ﬁrst mainstream terrorist ﬁlm to emerge post–9/11 and it is intriguing that it looks to the recent past to delineate its tale of ﬁghting terror with terror: The wave of terrorists ﬁlms in 2007 would contemporize these issues. Director Steven Spielberg said of Munich that it was an attempt “to look at policies Israel shares with the rest of the world and to understand why a country feels its best defense against a certain kind of violence is counter-violence. And we try to understand this as ﬁlmmakers through empathy.” This is not an argument in favor of non-response; Spielberg hopes to draw attention to the moral problematics of such responses as possibly what will bedevil humankind in the War on Terror (the ethical quagmire of ﬁghting terrorist violence with violence and inhumane treatment in return). Munich begins with a recap of the Munich Olympics terror incident, itself previously dramatized in 21 Hours at Munich and the subject of the exhilarating documentary One Day in September. The subsequent events dramatized in this ﬁlm concerning Israel’s covert anti-terror retaliations also informed the telemovie Sword of Gideon. Israeli national pride and moral self-righteousness informs the decision to pursue the terrorist planners and leaders and eliminate them through targeted assassinations: Hence, legitimacy for reprisal is a dominant concern for Israeli authorities concerned with maintaining civilized codes of conduct. Golda Meir’s pronouncement upon deciding that peace is not at present a viable option with the Palestinians concludes that “every civilization ﬁnds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” In light of Cheney’s comment about the U.S. now needing to go into dark terrain to ﬁght the Al Qaeda enemy and the wave of ﬁlms examining the moral repercussions of Cheney’s directive in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the Golda Meir statement here is telling. The logistics of a systematic counterterrorist operation are depicted in Munich in involving detail but it is the surrounding ethical dilemma which transforms the material of a terrorist thriller into an examination of morality in a terrorist war. Posing questions, Spielberg invests the terrorist ﬁlm with a weighty moral burden, reclaiming the genre from its pre–9/11 escapist-sensationalist mentality and making it the prime genre for the socio-political criticism and assessment of War on Terror issues. In so doing, Munich builds

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from the paranoid War on Terror fantasy of the previous year’s The Manchurian Candidate remake to seek a balance of socio-political analysis and genre thrill, although the excitements of the terrorist ﬁlm as a genre can no longer be separated from the morality of terrorism and counterterrorism as a struggle which affects the very deﬁnition of contemporary civilization. The terrorists lined up for assassination are also treated humanely by Spielberg, always a humanist who seeks to avoid caricature in his ﬁlms, making the human toll of the terrorism-counterterrorism cycle all the more tragic and the means of such a cycle all the more terrifying, no matter which side may claim righteous justiﬁcation and validation. From phone-triggered bombs in Europe to street-level anti-terror excursions in Beirut, Munich follows its special anti-terror team on their every mission, exploring their group dynamics and creating a fascinating tableau of the people involved in the counterterrorist intelligence scene. Although Spielberg is concerned with the morality of the Israeli action, he is excited by the peripheral ﬁgures — like the rogue Frenchmen who can ﬁnd information about anyone but refuses to deal with governments — and the truly amoral world which lurks within and around supposedly righteous government action. In the context of Israeli and Palestinian nationalism that underlies this particular terror war, those refusing allegiance to any nation become true power brokers. In Munich, the unaligned have access to unlimited information (as if nationalism itself imposes a system of priorities upon the way “civilization” conducts itself ). This subtextual look at nationalism, patriotism and civilization is frequently found in the terrorist genre though rarely with such technical skill, dramatic prowess and moral questioning as found in Spielberg’s deﬁnitive take on the genre. It’s that nationalist impulse behind the script’s many references to “home.” There is even a wry humor here as an assigned “safe house” makes for a tense standoff when three terrorists converge there seeking safety: the irony being that now the Israeli can talk to a PLO terrorist face to face (albeit undercover) and begin to empathize with the enemy he has been also blowing up under governmental authority. It’s that empathy with the “terrorist” that further problematizes Munich’s discussion of the ethics of counterterrorism, but that is Spielberg’s intent, humanist empathy. Although Munich is a period ﬁlm, its insistence on the ethics of waging war against terrorists announces a distinctly post–9/11 take on the terrorist ﬁlm genre, which pre–9/11 had descended into caricaturish escapist popular entertainment in such as Collateral Damage and The Sum of All Fears. As Dick Cheney revealed to the world America’s readiness to plumb depths it hadn’t in the name of the War on Terror against an inhuman, dehumanized “enemy combatant,” Spielberg looks to Israel’s decision to do the same against the Palestinians in the early 1970s and in his examination of that Israeli response is a complex cautionary tale of reciprocity. The ﬁnal image of the New York City skyline with the World Trade Center intact brings this material to subtle post–9/11 relevance: From Palestine to the War on Terror, what lessons are there to be learned? Munich knows the questions needed to be asked to begin to ﬁnd out.

Nautilus (1998: d. Rodney MacDonald) Nautilus is a sci-ﬁ–themed terrorist ﬁlm set in 2100 AD as planet Earth has been forced into a new Dark Ages, presided over by a militant survivalist. A professor and his

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assistant seek to use the title super-submarine and travel back in time to prevent the catastrophe that has resulted in this bleak world. Another in the long line of straight-to-video action ﬁlms made by Andrew Stevens, many of which ﬂirt with terrorist themes, Nautilus is an unusually provocative ﬁlm. It posits a post-apocalyptic planet full of natural disasters in which world civilization has collapsed and martial law prevails as the military have seized control, forcing small resistance groups to ﬁght over dwindling resources. These resistance groups are demonized by the presiding powers as terrorists and guerrillas. The depiction of the awful future is intercut with a reconstruction of the events (in 1999) that led to this situation, wherein Nautilus follows the eco-terrorist group Equinox threatening security aboard an oil rig. In that, it is part of a mini-trend of movies of the late 1990s, including such as Greenmail, to deal with ecological terrorism. The terrorists are extremists intent on destroying what they feel is polluting the world. In the present, the submarine is taken over by rebels determined to prevent the terrorist catastrophe. Terrorism is treated with complex irony. The search for clean energy from the sea to replace nuclear energy is protested by the same eco-warriors that protested nuclear energy. Environmental consciousness is in this ﬁlm equated to reactionary terrorism which threatens the progress of civilization. As the terrorists are captured, their activities and methods are described as being “right out of the Black September handbook.” However, as the narrative develops, it transpires that perhaps these eco-terrorists had benevolent motives and that what appears in the history books demonizing them is a misinformed and biased perspective. The about-face in the consideration of terrorism is deliberately disorienting and forces the viewer to question the way history is manipulated and presented. The time-travel premise ensures that both sides of a complex issue are examined and that the conventionally reactionary anti-terrorist position that begins the ﬁlm is effectively qualiﬁed. In the ultimate irony, the terrorists are revealed to be the true peacekeepers and the government’s counterterror actions ensure the collapse of humanity. Alluding to the time travel war movie The Final Countdown and reinterpreting The Day the Earth Stood Still as a terrorist movie but doing away with its theme of alien warning, Nautilus tackles divisive issues such as the killing of innocents as a necessary demonstration of will. This rationalization of terrorism makes Nautilus the most provocative and even subversive of the ﬁlms produced by Stevens. Eco-terrorists make a convenient scapegoat for the government to displace the blame for their irresponsible policies, according to this ﬁlm. Furthermore, terrorism is separated from righteous action (and even arguably righteous violence) and seen to, whatever its origins, endanger far more than it accomplishes. Finally, terrorism threatens world peace and the scientist leader realizes the error of his ways, again inverting the ideological consideration of terrorism in another twist in narrative direction. Hence, terrorism is revealed as motivated by arrogant pride over and above ideology or cause and ultimately operates at the expense of any righteous indignation that may have impelled it to begin with. Terrorism for all its appearance of righteousness is nothing but empty self-righteousness, a distinction this surprisingly clever mid-budget action ﬁlm spends much time on.

Navy SEALS (1990: d. Lewis Teague) Navy SEALS is a propagandistic story of a special anti-terrorist unit formed in 1962 by President Kennedy. The ﬁlm’s opening quote reﬂects a view that future wars involv-

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ing the USA would be “low intensity conﬂicts” such as guerrilla and terrorist actions, the SEALS speciﬁcally created to meet the enemy on their own terrain. Although the team members are highly patriotic, spouting the usual simplistic rhetoric that they are prepared to go where their country needs them, they are also set up as drunken louts. As in such equally reactionary movies as Death Before Dishonor, the military may be boozing, swearing and misogynistic but they are America’s best ﬁghting forces and thus represent both the American ideal of patriarchal masculinity and, therefore, American military and cultural imperialism. In contrast to the paradoxically fun-loving-butdisciplined U.S. forces, the terrorists are all ruthless, inhuman Arabs who mistreat decent American troops and deserve whatever treatment they get. As these terrorists are armed and unreasonable, the de facto position of Navy SEALS, as indeed all reactionary positions inﬁltrating the cinema of terrorism, is that force is the only methodology that works. The terrorist leader justiﬁes war against America (and its ally in the Middle East, Israel) on the grounds of the harm done by Americans to “our people.” Yet, this position is presented simply as a token justiﬁcation for terrorism in reaction to a U.S. foreign policy that this ﬁlm does not in any way explore. Hence, the real issues underlying Middle Eastern terrorism in relation to at this point Reagan-era Republican U.S. foreign policy are countered with American “good old boy” antics which make a mockery of any claims to seriousness this ﬁlm may once have had. The terrorists use tourist travel as a cover for their agenda and hide their true purpose in religious activities and organizations. Thus, any Muslim organization claiming to be for the advancement and betterment of the Muslim world is a potential front for terrorism. Naturally, the Islamic terrorists quite happily use other Muslims as expendable pawns in their agenda, the point being to equate Islamic terrorism with moral and ethical hypocrisy. In reference to the terrorist incidents in Lebanon, a reporter makes the point that Islam is peaceful but when the faith is perceived as being in jeopardy, its adherents turn militant. The character of the journalist is depicted as a conduit to the exotic Other that is Islam and thus faced with an enormous responsibility to reveal the “truth” of the situation in the Middle East. With such knowledge, the ﬁlm suggests, the journalist has an obligation to help stop terrorism by any means necessary. In contrast, the Navy Seal leader (Charlie Sheen) is a bigoted, racist risk-junkie unconcerned with matters of culture, sociopolitics or religious sensitivity when dealing with America’s “enemies”; indeed, he is the epitome of “the ugly American.” Ultimately, the problem of how to face Shiite extremism in Lebanon — depicted in some throwaway scenes of Lebanese street poverty — is secondary to a story of hard-partying U.S. troops on a mission for their country and given carte blanche in terms of conduct. Considering that Navy SEALS scripter Chuck Pfarrer was himself a former Navy Seal and thus speaks from ﬁrsthand knowledge, his work here is an atrocious and offensive demonstration of the American military ethos as foul, irredeemable and crudely fascistic.

Network (1976: d. Sidney Lumet) A satire on the internal politics of network television, Network begins with longserving news anchor Peter Finch announcing that he will soon commit suicide on the air. His angry diatribes prove ratings winners and he becomes a public hero, “the mad prophet of the airwaves.” However, he is used by network executives including Faye Dunaway who begins to recruit urban guerrillas for a program to follow Finch.

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Considered one of the highlights of 1970s cinema, Network is peculiarly related to the cinema of terrorism. When Finch is told of the show that will follow his, he jests that it is not simply enough to feature specials such as “execution of the week” but that television has now entered the domain of such programming as “terrorist of the week,” the implication being that domestic terrorism is so widespread in the USA as to sustain such a program. The timely reference point here is the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the SLA and the terrorists that Dunaway interviews as potentially hosting their own show are modeled on the urban guerrilla type the media in America popularized during the Hearst saga. Hence, network television executives sense a ratings bonanza in the activities of an urban guerrilla group, the Ecumenical Liberation Army, who have been videotaping their own armed bank robberies, such verite footage being the proverbial “hot property.” Network parallels its Finch tale with an exposé of news media exploitation and the most ironic corruption of the Marxist terrorist radicals who begin to relish the media exposure and the power this gives them. Dunaway rationalizes that terrorism is an “articulation of American rage” and that programming documenting it should equally be full of anger and aggression. In her development of a terrorist TV show, her sensationalizing of this rage suggests that the media portrays terrorists as valid role models. In other words, what the government decries, TV networks exploit and promote as worthy means of expression, the free press thus actively working against social stability and exploiting violence to promote controversy. In a climate where the search for a new sensationalistic hook is paramount, terrorism is popular to the point of being actively promoted by the media. Finch and the terrorists are repeatedly paralleled throughout the movie: In his demented, visionary madness, Finch becomes a spokesperson for the American rage that Dunaway seeks to mythologize — the hope that change will come from anger and rage, precisely the conditions which birth the terrorists. Yet these terrorists are prepared: When it comes time to discuss a network spot, the head terrorist brings her lawyer to negotiate a better deal. Part of this involves negotiating the exact narrative structure in which the group’s acts of terrorism will be presented as prepackaged, fabricated product — the illusion of reality perpetuated by network news. Hence, the terrorists ironically sell out their political ideology for media exposure just as Finch uses his media exposure to advance his, admittedly psychotic, ideology of rage, his catch-cry being “I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it any more.” In a further hilarious irony, the terrorists become jealous of Finch’s ratings. As Finch begins to lose ratings and threatens the network’s business — including its funding by Saudi sources — Dunaway suggests that they have the terrorists murder Finch on air in a kind of double episode of both shows, a deﬁnite ratings winner. In the end, the network becomes a conspiratorial force that colludes with terrorists to murder one of its anchors.

Next (2007: d. Lee Tamahori) Nicolas Cage plays a magician with a sideshow stage act: He can see two minutes into the future and has been using his ability to earn a meager living hustling the casinos of Las Vegas. After a run-in in a casino, Cage is hunted by government agents interested in his ability as a means of helping them investigate a terror threat posed by a nuclear missile stolen from Russia and now in Los Angeles. Soon the terrorists are also after Cage and the ﬁlm becomes a formulaic action pursuit ﬁlm with due concern for

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the speciﬁcs of post–9/11 crisis management in response to terrorist threat but dated in political context. Cage’s psychic precognizance gives him abilities which are treated with a comic-book tension essayed in such studies of superpowers as Unbreakable, though Cage’s presence here makes the ﬁlm closer to the likes of Ghost Rider despite the terrorist plot. Indeed, the terrorist scheme here concerns a loose nuclear device stolen from the Russian Federation — a plot device that dominated pre–9/11 concerns of terrorism but in comparison to the immediacy of the genuine War on Terror thrillers of 2007 is hackneyed enough to render the capable tension here routine. Next is informed by the use of torture to extract information although it is in the ruthless actions of agents. Its theme of precognizance is an inversion of the time travel in Déjà vu as much as a theme of science ﬁction novelist Philip K. Dick on whose novel Next is based. The clever plot, however, cannot overcome the familiarity of many of the situations and Next is merely an efﬁcient political thriller whose sense of tension owes to real fears and no longer contemporary Soviet politics. Of the 2007 releases, Next is dated and contrived. The sole note of interest is oblique: the precognizance theme of Dick in the context of the War on Terror in which gaining foreknowledge of future terror acts (through torture) is a new U.S. moral imperative (hence the ﬁlm’s tagline “If you can see the future, you can save it”).

The Next Man (1977: d. Richard C. Saraﬁan) A Saudi Arabian ambassador (Sean Connery) tries to negotiate a Middle East peace but is unpopular with certain governments and realizes he has been targeted for assassination. His assassin is a woman who seduces him and falls in love, her newfound emotions conﬂicting with her job. Beginning with a shot of the newly completed World Trade Center as a U.S. Congressman says that events in the Middle East must take precedence in American foreign policy, The Next Man postulates a rogue petro-chemical cabal within the oil-producing nations. Thus, fear of OPEC’s power dominates this movie, which links terrorism to the takeover of U.S. oil interests in the Middle East. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is protectionist — to secure U.S. oil interests by destroying an alternative conglomerate before it has the power to threaten the U.S. oil economy. Assassination is seen as a means of spreading the terrorist agenda, a means which enables the terrorist organization to reach out way beyond any accepted or expected borders. Beneath these high economic stakes is a concern for the economically underprivileged lives in both the USA and the Middle East, a sociological interest in those affected by the oil economy poised to plunge the world into a terrorist war. The Next Man suggests that a wave of targeted assassinations in the Arab world is a terroristic means of initiating change sympathetic to the needs of a rogue oil-producing cartel composed of segments from various Middle Eastern countries. Yet, as becomes clear in a scene set in the UN General Assembly, those assassinated were speaking out in favor of a Middle East peace process. The implication is that the terrorists need a war-torn Middle East in order to proﬁt politically and economically from the oil demands. OPEC is thus an oil conglomerate representing terrorist machinations; the politically unpopular decisions are those which go against the OPEC–driven oil economy foreign policies of American involvement in the Middle East. As the Palestinian cause is supported by

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the OPEC Arabs, the PLO terrorist agenda is best served by continued global destabilization in the region and the enforced dependence of the USA on Arab oil. Hence, The Next Man posits that Middle Eastern peace is a noble ideal which is being resisted at every level to perpetuate a status quo propping up world dependence on OPEC: Terrorist chaos is power for OPEC. The only united Arab cause is that in opposition to Israel, which the Israelis use as the justiﬁcation to arm themselves with American-sponsored weapons. Any Arab who looks to peace with Israel is considered a betrayer of those for whom resolution of the Palestinian question is the central agenda. Indeed, the inability to resolve the Palestinian question eventually leading to terrorism on American soil was precisely the issue that effectively began the U.S. cinema of terrorism in the mid–1970s with Black Sunday and Rosebud in addition to The Next Man and the documentary Children of Rage. Palestine is central to the question of Arab self-deﬁnition in opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel, an irreconcilable conﬂict which has divided an oil-dependent America. Palestinian terrorism and OPEC are presented as empowering the Middle East in a way which threatens to affect America. For ambassador Connery, such terrorism is a form of spectator sport — political theater in which any move to peace is countered by terroristic violence from those who claim that terrorism is the only means to achieving peace in the region. In that way, The Next Man is about the futility of the Middle Eastern peace process as much as it worries over the increasing power of OPEC. Yet it also manages to be a careful, intimate study of a man seeking interpersonal contact as a means of self-validation. Connery’s desire to make a change on the world scene balances his desire for interpersonal emotional communication and connection through heterosexual love, the irony being that he falls in love with his potential assassin. The man who loves peace is vulnerable because of that humanist love. Implicit in this context of OPEC’s relationship to Israel is the covert Cold War proxy between Soviet sponsorship of the Arab lands and American sponsorship of Israel, the Middle East crisis being a spill-over of Cold War foreign policy.

Nighthawks (1981: d. Bruce Malmuth) A noted European terrorist (Rutger Hauer) comes to New York City where he is soon hunted by two policemen (Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams). The terrorist is here a decadent motivated by anti-capitalist sentiments. As he perpetrates a series of terror attacks on New York City, the ﬁlm’s heroes are the undercover policemen who attempt to stop him. Ironically, European resentments here threaten to spill over into a U.S. which director Malmuth shows is beset with socio-economic disparity and strain, in the middle of a domestic crisis riddled with drugs, vice and social desperation. Indeed America here is consumed by selﬁshness and so overwhelmed by petty vice as to be wholly unprepared for the threat of ideological terrorism. Correspondingly, international anti-terror operatives need the humble policeman to be effective in America and the policemen here are instructed by Interpol. Hauer plays the epitome of the terrorist as mercenary, a man for hire like Carlos the Jackal, ever ready to sell his talents to whichever cause pays the best. He is beyond any form of ideological loyalty and thus, more dangerous. He represents the professional anarchist, a ﬁgure more recognizable to U.S. audiences following the law-and-order movies

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of the 1970s (and such anarchist terrorist characters as those in the Dirty Harry sequel The Enforcer). Launching a trend that would continue throughout the cinema of terrorism in American ﬁlm, the speciﬁcally European terrorist is ruthless, smooth, sophisticated, alluring and handsome — in stark contrast to the demonized Arab Others who litter the reactionary racist fantasies in American populist terrorist cinema. A playboy, the terrorist is an egotist who boasts of his accomplishments and is dedicated to the spread of fear and intimidation. Such a unique terrorist villain demands a level of justiﬁable force: The undercover cops are instructed to set aside the mentality of the beat cop and be prepared to shoot automatically on sight without question or hesitation. When the UN becomes the target of the terrorists, the ﬁlm toys with the prospect of the terrorist as revolutionary as much as anarchist but settles for a depiction of the arch-terrorist as threat to the American liberty protected by the undercover policemen. The terrorist action is thus not an ideological statement but a egotistical crime: control and intimidation through fear, enabling the terrorist to usurp from others the right to self-determination, a theme that would saturate the subsequent cinema of terrorism which, following Die Hard’s depiction of European terrorists, would depict European terrorism as criminal in nature and therefore distinct from the pathological nature of Islamic terrorism. The more fear engendered in his target audience, the more “in control” and empowered the terrorist feels. Nighthawks initiates the depiction of the hostage-crisis incident on American soil as a deﬁning moment for it forces the U.S. to negotiate with a foreign terrorist threat against its own population: The problems of the world stage cannot be kept out of America’s domestic situation, and law enforcement must prepare for it. The terrorist claims to act as a liberator for the oppressed of the world, a frequent rhetoric in the cinema of terrorism, yet can use that to justify the murder of innocents without hesitation and in a manner so charismatic as to command the loyalty of others ready to die for him.

No Place to Hide (1970: d. Arthur Allan Schnitzer) aka Rebel No Place to Hide takes place circa 1969: A former student radical becomes an urban rebel, facing a moral choice when he falls in with an underground terrorist organization intent on blowing up a Manhattan skyscraper. Set against documentary footage of returning Vietnam veterans, student protests and the protest-music scene, No Place to Hide examines the drop-out culture of disillusionment that crept into American youth following the sexual revolution. Shots of the carnage in Vietnam are juxtaposed with a presidential speech on the war proﬁts of the Military Industrial Complex, the same conditions that would obsess Oliver Stone in JFK. The terrorists are depicted as disenchanted youth intent on toppling a warmongering American government, akin to the Weather Underground. Activists launch a campaign of bombings, linked to the growth of the militant Black Power movement, as terrorism is a generational resentment born of the civil rights era and its attendant conﬂicts Vietnam and Watergate. To monitor these student terrorists, the FBI (who have no authority to act on such matters) plant an undercover operative, whose goal is to urge them on to terrorist action in order to arrest them in the process of actualization. The agenda reeks of entrapment. To reveal their anti-government cause to the population, the terrorists target places that make the equipment used by the troops in Vietnam — i.e., the targets are not civilian.

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Such actions are intended to spearhead an incipient social revolution. In its treatment of the terrorists as an alignment between student radicals, former Vietnam vets protesting the War and black militant civil rights advocates, No Place to Hide sympathizes somewhat with the terrorist ﬁgures in their anti-establishment agenda, full of outrage over corporations proﬁting while drafted GIs are sent to their deaths in an unjustiﬁable war. Indeed, the ﬁlm posits a virtual network of guerrilla freedom ﬁghters — the ﬂower children politicized and of age. Hence undercover operative Sylvester Stallone is torn between allegiance to the terrorists and love for a hippie ﬂower child not yet of the political consciousness of those around her. The treatment of the radicals in No Place to Hide exposes the abuses of power by a repressive U.S. government in fear of a social upheaval against their capitalist agenda. By extension, groups such as the Weather Underground (or Weathermen) use terror as a fully justiﬁable means of initiating political change. Despite its blend of 1970s naturalism and low-budget alternative cinema, No Place to Hide was picked up long after its initial run simply because of the presence of Stallone. The ﬁlm was reedited and redubbed into a spoof called A Man Called Rainbo in the wake of Stallone’s success in the Rambo ﬁlms. Likewise the alternatively titled version Rebel begins with a prologue acknowledging that it has been reedited for rerelease.

North Sea Hijack (1979: d. Andrew V. McLaglen) In between James Bond ﬁlms, Roger Moore plays the leader of a group of private security agents. A mercenary training others for dangerous missions, he is recruited by the British government to develop a protocol response to a terrorist hijacking scenario. When an oil rig is hijacked by terrorist leader Anthony Perkins and his group, Moore is called into action. The hijackers here are rogue Americans. Their leader, Perkins, claims that he is not a terrorist because terrorists are confused whereas he knows exactly what he is doing and has no ideology to justify him. Being in it for the money, he seeks to disassociate himself from the apparent stigma of the “terrorist” label — the hijacking being a criminal enterprise rather than a political one. As the British government in dealing with the hijackers’ demands cannot be seen to be negotiating with terrorists, despite it being more economically feasible to do so, they need to create media cover stories. In a rare conceit, it is the insurer Lloyds of London who stand to lose most in the event of a terrorist incident that the government has taken out policies to protect against. There is some comedy here about Moore’s resolutely British demeanor and manners, his misogyny and preference for cats suggesting a peculiar sexuality counterbalanced in the casting of Perkins as his adversary. When Moore remarks that his specially trained operatives know their way around a man’s anatomy, the ﬁlm’s possibly unintended innuendo is decidedly risible. The ﬁlm is more a hijacking drama than a true terrorist ﬁlm, in part intended to poke fun at Moore whose Bond persona was then about to be reenvisioned by director John Glen in For Your Eyes Only. The U.S. release of the ﬁlm was titled ffolkes. Moore teamed with director McLaglen again for The Sea Wolves and The Wild Geese.

One Day in September (1999: d. Kevin Macdonald) The 1972 Munich Olympics were dubbed the “Olympics of Peace and Joy.” Members of the Palestinian terror group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes hostage in the

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Olympic village. The resultant ordeal over 21 hours resulted in the deaths of the hostages and several of the terrorists. One Day in September uses archival footage and interviews with the participants (including the only Black September survivor) for a dramatic and thrilling recreation. This documentary was a highly praised look at the events surrounding the massacre of Israeli athletes and ofﬁcials, the failed rescue attempts and the terrorist actions. It seeks also to expose the lies and cover-ups perpetuated in the 28 years since and unfolds as a thriller in its own right as much as a documentary. Winner of the 2000 Academy Award for Best Documentary, it covers material also informing the earlier 21 Hours at Munich and the backdrop for Steven Spielberg’s subsequent Munich. The ﬁlm opens with a tourist documentary of Munich as a “German paradise” before following the tales of the participants in the hostage drama. Thus, the ﬁlm explores the Palestinian perspective — that of a man who, with his family, was forced to ﬂee the Zionist occupation of his homeland after Zionist gangs terrorized an Arab community village in Galilee in 1948, from which his family went to a refugee camp in Beirut. The desperate and wholly deplorable conditions of life in these camps is demonstrated — a bleak, hopeless existence where there was no hope of a return to their homeland. The situation is clear: Those forced out by the Zionists must spend their lives as refugees effectively without any human rights. Faced with such a predicament, the future terrorist joined a revolutionary movement to ﬁght for his homeland. This Palestinian story is cleverly intercut with a proﬁle of the Israeli athletes, humanizing these victims. For the Israeli athletes the Munich Olympics were hugely symbolic: marching in Germany under the Star of David. In an attempt to erase the specter of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, it was trumpeted as revealing the new, democratic face of Germany. Security was correspondingly lax lest Germany appear too militant. The sole surviving terrorist, Jamal Al Gashey (who was interviewed while in hiding), says that he traveled from training camps in Libya to Germany two days prior to the hostage-taking and was proud to undertake a mission against the Zionist occupiers of his homeland, and that the hostagetaking was a demonstration of empowerment for the Palestinian people forced into refugee camps. He says he had no orders to kill unless something went wrong, the terrorist incident organized by the Palestinian Black September leadership well in advance of the arriving team (who knew little of the exact details). Following the terrorist takeover, the media responded to the new “Olympics of Terror” as it was dubbed. Here the documentary introduces the testimony of the Munich police ofﬁcials involved in the incident who had to respond to the terrorists’ demands to release 200 political prisoners. The Israelis immediately refused to negotiate, saying that if they did then no Israeli would ever be safe again, and the Munich police simply did not know how to respond: stalling tactics were tried in the mistaken belief they could negotiate where the Israelis could not. As the Olympics continued around them despite the incident, the terrorists hoped to use the event for maximum media exposure. Although they could not negotiate, the Israelis wanted to send in a counterterrorist team but the German authorities withheld permission, believing that they could handle it themselves, failing miserably. The surviving terrorist says that they were told not to let the situation last more than 24 hours as that was psychologically the maximum time they could keep their composure under the circumstances. They were told that if Israel refused to release the politi-

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cal prisoners, then to demand a plane and ﬂy the hostages to any Arab country they could get into. The German authorities, however, were adamant that no plane be allowed to leave carrying “guests” of the country. As the Games were suspended, the German authorities wanted to remove the terrorists from the Olympic Village so that the Games could continue — actual hostage rescue was secondary to this condition. But, in their relocation and subsequent shoot-out, the authorities miscalculated the total number of terrorists and botched the rescue attempt. After the ﬂop rescue attempt, the German press announced that all were safe, gradually amending their ofﬁcial statement to reveal that all were, in fact, dead. The Games continued. One Day in September reveals that the dead terrorists were ﬂown back to Libya for heroes’ funerals and that the German authorities colluded with subsequent terrorists to stage a Lufthansa hijacking in order to release captured hijackers. The terrorist survivors escaped into Libya, claiming that they made the Palestinian voice heard the world over and that the action helped the Palestinian struggle enormously. Covert Mossad operatives later killed two of these hijackers, in events dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Munich.

Operation Delta Force (1996: d. Sam Firstenberg) Operation Delta Force concerns a joint anti-terror mission in Johannesburg against Afrikaner extremists in order to rescue government ofﬁcials. The Afrikaner terrorists steal a vial of the Ebola virus — a weapons grade, highly virulent strain — from a Mozambique research laboratory (as well as a new anti-virus) and the title team are sent to retrieve it. The terrorists here are loyalists and patriots who resent the loss of their homeland to “the blacks” and use extremist violence to reclaim apartheid. The terrorists are welltrained and their assault on the research center marks them a professional team — the adversarial inverse to the Delta Force anti-terrorists. Like many Firstenberg ﬁlms, Operation Delta Force explores the notion of cold-blooded ruthlessness as a means of action and reprisal, almost necessitated to accomplish change in such a hostile land. The terrorists are ruthless and kill all; they are radicals who are only interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, a situation to which the Pentagon is alerted. Operation Delta Force is a formulaic action movie about a team mission. There is the expected buddy-rivalry between team leaders and a subplot concerning a female team member in an all-male squad which recalls GI Jane. Signiﬁcantly, the woman is a South African who resents the Afrikaner’s terrorist racism and parallels it to the militancy of the KKK in the USA. As the terrorists are pursued into caves, the ﬁlm’s iconography links them to the Middle East. Although not dull in its elaborate pursuit narrative, Operation Delta Force stretches credibility. The series of episodic encounters between rival teams has links to Western pursuit narratives and even allusion to guerrilla warfare in Vietnam.

Operation Delta Force 2: Mayday (1997: d. Yossi Wein) A decommissioned Soviet nuclear submarine is seized by an “international criminal” who simultaneously assumes control of a U.S. luxury liner. If the sub is approached, he threatens to destroy the ship. He demands $25 billion or he will launch his nukes against the U.S. West Coast and mainland Russia. The Delta Force are called in to remedy the situation. This is a rare ﬁlm in that it admits that Russia may be a target for post–Cold War terrorism enabled by lax security following the collapse of the Soviet Union. It employs

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the terrorist-as-criminal subtext so common in the 1990s and saturates its submarine drama with allusions to the Achille Lauro incident (hence a Jewish hostage shouts, “Never again” will she surrender her will or self-determination to an outside force). Operation Delta Force 2 was the last in a series originated by director Menahem Golan with the surprisingly popular The Delta Force. All such ﬁlms retain the premise of a crack anti-terror team called in to face down megalomaniacal terrorists though here the terrorist is a master-criminal ﬁgure of no particular political or ideological position. Starting with an incident in Northern Iraq, the ﬁlm uses its initial set-pieces to suggest a commonality between Middle Eastern hostage-extraction and Vietnam, the hostages hence linked to MIAs. The notion of a freelance terrorist as expert mercenarial criminal is, however, the dominant point here. This breed of criminal, the ﬁlm suggests, is a new and emergent threat to global stability although is motivated purely by ﬁnancial proﬁt. In a spirit of post–Cold War reconciliation, both Russian and American agencies respond to this new crisis. Of sole interest in this by-the-numbers ﬁlm is the theme of the lost patriarch — a boat captain and terrorist sympathizer whose son is part of the Delta Force — given one last chance to redeem himself for earlier acts. Hence, yet again is there a terrorist drama which seeks the reconstitution of a fully functioning American patriarchy or, rather, the purging of a joint Russian-American patriarchy.

The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (1978: d. Paul Wendkos) In February 1974, heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment and her ﬁancé left gagged and bound by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the SLA. Hearst, after much ill-treatment, later joined the SLA in a bank robbery and hid with them, eluding the FBI for some 19 months before capture. She was tried and sentenced to seven years in prison, but moves for clemency created a media frenzy and 22 months later President Carter commuted her sentence. These events are dramatized in this telemovie. There is an irony in that the youthful radicals target university students, turning on what was once the support network for the revolutionary ideals of the sexual revolution but now represented by Patty Hearst, heiress to a fortune. The terrorist radicals are depicted as fanatically dedicated to the ideal of revolution. Signiﬁcantly, they are fatherless: the ﬁlm contrasting them to the lead FBI investigator’s relationship to his own daughter. Intriguingly, the FBI is concerned with its public image in America after the Watergate debacle and hopes to use the media in this instance to bolster their standing. The terrorists aim to elevate the SLA to the status of folk heroes spearheading a new social revolution, the ideals of the student protest movement in their protests against the “pigs.” The kidnapping and violent attack are ﬁlmed with distorted angles, close-ups and hand-held camera for disorienting and stylized impact, featuring surreal and ironic uses of disembodied voices on the soundtrack as a measure of psychological confusion and identity dissolution. Hearst is shown to be tortured by a group who consider her a political prisoner, the ﬁlm cleverly depicting a benign environment turning hostile. Hearst loses her power of self-determination to terrorists who manipulate her into becoming one of them, effectively destroying whatever personality existed beforehand. The terrorists resent Hearst’s parents’ wealth and are psychotic and violent. The process of their conversion of Hearst leads to a bank robbery, domestic terrorism and criminal enterprise.

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Director Wendkos shows that terrorists usurp the methodology of criminal enterprise to serve more ideological ends, the intent being political self-aggrandizement. The depiction of the SLA’s fanatical actions and their “Kill pigs” rhetoric has a dizzying, trippy feel that alludes to the Manson family. Like the Manson family, the SLA represents the souring of the peace movement of the 1960s, its devolution into violent psychosis post–Watergate. Violence is politicized as anti-government protest and the means of social revolution. The SLA uses the situation to demand as much media exposure as possible, as determined to popularize their cause as they are to ﬁnancially proﬁt from it. They cling to their illusory sense of power and control, emboldened by their ability to determine Hearst’s fate. The rhetoric of their cause makes them feel like political ﬁgures of consequence, their egotism undercut by their inhumanity towards Hearst. The terrorist leader is depicted as a wife-beater intent on self-aggrandizement, his self-actualization being through the violent robbing of another person of their power of self-determination. He considers himself a leader within the African-American community but is a sadist and sexual degenerate — a rapist who enjoys power over others. In contrast to this is the portrait of Hearst herself, a woman so stressed that she confuses her tormentors with her saviors and is brainwashed into their cause. She is sexually abused and raped by her captors, her will is systematically stripped and she resorts to acts of violence in an effort to maintain self-control of a personality on the brink of dissolution. (She is even renamed Tanya by the group.) Investigation eventually leads the FBI and police to SLA headquarters, the subsequent raid broadcast live on TV to millions of viewers, the SLA planning to go to their deaths as a grand revolutionary statement — which this ﬁlm sees as madness. There is a note of ambiguity: The raid on the house containing the SLA is thought by some as evidence of government hostility. Ironically, it further damages the FBI in the media even though it was dedicated FBI work that eventually led to the capture of the SLA.

The Outsider (1979: d. Tony Luraschi) An American (Craig Wasson), who grew up listening to his grandfather’s stories of ﬁghting the British, goes to Ireland to join the IRA. There, both sides of the conﬂict are determined to see that he (and his death) be used as a valuable political weapon. The Outsider is especially noteworthy for being a ﬁlm about American involvement in the Irish “troubles” by direct participation rather than non-committal distance. With such there is a public relations opportunity for media spin: that any foreign involvement will be used by both sides to advance their rhetorical cause. The Irish struggle, in contrast to the voice-over of the grandfather’s tales of ﬁghting the British, is presented as something of a “dirty war” carried out by bomb-makers, a kind of border war: the ideal of a United Ireland fought out in violence rather than politics. The protagonist is revealed to have had ﬁghting experience in Vietnam (and the casting of Wasson recalls the actor’s work in the ﬁrst Vietnam War movie The Boys in Company C). In Dublin, circa 1973, children are killed in Catholic-Protestant shootouts, the IRA determined to exploit the momentum to support their cause, claiming that if it had been American children killed they would have all the guns and funds they need. With Wasson’s involvement they feel that if he were killed by the British it would precipitate a move to public support within the USA. Wasson is a romantic idealist committed to the cause, exploited by those around him with complete disregard for his personal safety. The ﬁlm

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follows this naïve American’s descent into the web of IRA terror (shootings, political kidnappings, bombings) until he realizes that he is now associated with murderers who have no real concern for him but is still blinded by the prospect of going to Belfast and becoming an IRA hero: vainglorious romanticism. When Wasson gets to Belfast, amidst a cycle of violent reprisals and butchery, he ﬁnds a desolate, ruined, war-torn city. He realizes that the situation is not a romantic struggle at all. As he meets a college girl who has soured on the means of armed struggle, his IRA superiors plan to kill him with a British gun so that they can blame the British and use the situation to their political advantage. The British, on their part, are aware of this and regard Wasson as just another idealist who found a cause that ﬁt him, to make amends for what he could not ﬁnd in Vietnam. The British also hatch a scheme to use Wasson’s death to make a political point in their favor, both sides in the struggle believing themselves involved in ﬁghting a war. To the IRA, however, the means of warfare is terrorist bombing. As both sides have plans for Wasson he loses control of his right to self-determination and becomes just another victim of the terrorism he would initially ideologically support. Wasson discovers that the IRA will turn on their own members when it suits them, just as the British are ready to implicate and torture innocents: both sides hoping the American will get killed so they can exploit it as a public relations exercise. Stripped of his ideals, Wasson returns to the USA an angry, petty street vandal. Variety called The Outsider the ﬁrst American ﬁlm to deal “in depth” with the Irish “troubles” (Variety, Dec 5, 1979) and praised it for its non-sensational treatment and its attempt to explore the motives of the long-running terror campaign. Elsewhere, the ﬁlm was hailed as a brilliant debut for director Luraschi (Films in Review, August-September 1980).

The Package (1989: d. Andrew Davis) This political thriller explores the reluctance of old enemies to relinquish the Cold War despite the demise of the Soviet Union. Gene Hackman plays an obliging and loyal minor ofﬁcer who follows orders until he realizes the secret agenda of radical separatist forces within the U.S. military. Hackman is involved in an incident when escorting a prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) which is labeled a terrorist operation and is called negligent. The Package contrasts obedient follower Hackman with radical individualist Jones, an unbalanced idealist who speaks out against the undue pressures of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. Once he escapes and Hackman must track him down, the ﬁlm segues into a detective story in which Hackman slowly pieces together the facts surrounding Jones, in the process uncovering a secret military plot. In Hackman’s determination after a life of complacent military service is found the theme that it is the threat to personal liberty that brings out survivalist determination. By contrast, the U.S. military is depicted as precisely the patriarchal authoritarian force which would suppress the individual liberty of anyone who opposes their covert agenda, considering its underling expendable. As Hackman struggles against this oppression, the ﬁlm emerges as yet another variation on the lone righteous man out to purge American patriarchy from the forces corrupting American Constitutional ideals of freedom, democracy and liberty. Set during a time of transition in American politics (following the demise of the Cold War), the ﬁlm posits a patriarchy in such desperate need of a superpower enemy to sustain its Military Industrial Complex that it would resort to terrorist tactics in order to

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continue that struggle. The ﬁlm is full of outrage at America’s warmongering politicians intent on capitalizing on power to preserve the nation’s war status. It uses its scenario of renegade military commanders to reveal a concern for liberty in the post–Glasnost era, relocating the threat to American security to conspiratorial forces within the USA rather than without.

Panther (1995: d. Mario Van Peebles) In this look at the origins and key ﬁgures behind the militant, radical Black Panther movement during the 1960s and 1970s, a Vietnam veteran returns home and starts the ﬁrst African-American gang, precipitating a long struggle with the FBI. Mario Van Peebles was one of a number of key directors in the resurgence of AfricanAmerican cinema in the 1990s spearheaded by Boyz N the Hood. Van Peebles remained ﬁrmly within the exploitation genre and revealed a delight in the sordid conventions of blaxploitation ﬁlmmaking ushered in by his father Melvin Van Peebles in the classic Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Panther was Mario’s attempt to make a mainstream, socially conscious work addressing the militant side of black activism during the Civil Rights era. Panther contrasts the Martin Luther King message of non-violence with the activism of Malcolm X as the central dichotomy in African-American empowerment: the use of force in self-deﬁnition. There is a docudrama authenticity to the depiction of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale as Van Peebles depicts the origins of the movement in the imperative to community service in the face of white racist hostility and indifference. As is the case with many domestic U.S. groups who segued into terrorism, the initial gang members insist they are not a “gang” but social and political revolutionaries no longer content to suffer in silence. The suppression of a peaceful demonstration by force demands the use of force in return — hence, armament is empowerment. The initial Panthers take to selling copies of Mao’s Little Red Book at universities but, ironically, are not taken seriously by authorities until they arm themselves. Although this implies that guns = respect, the ﬁlm cleverly voices the concern of one member that if the AfricanAmerican community is given arms they will end up shooting themselves, a concern reﬂected in tandem with the numerous 1990s ﬁlms about Los Angeles gang life that began with Colors and would include Van Peebles’ own New Jack City. The FBI considers this militant group to be undermining governmental authority and turning society against that government. As the Panthers demonstrate a willingness to confront authority, they are considered a threat to American democracy. The complexity of the Panthers’ status within the black community is depicted in the violence that breaks out within that community between the Panthers and the Muslims over the protection of Malcolm X’s widow. Black consciousness is politicized with the message that when the black community arms itself, white authority seeks to change Constitutional law to prevent the exercise of their democratic rights. Once armed, Panthers take over a state capital building, a campaign of bombings, raids and shoot-outs occurs, and the FBI considers them public enemy #1. The Panthers in turn consider their campaign the organized resistance of a revolutionary movement against racial harassment. The turning point in the debate within U.S. Civil Rights–era society over the use of force in African-American self-empowerment is the assassination of Martin Luther King and the subsequent race riots. The message of non-violence died with King, this ﬁlm suggests, and a wave of terrorism and intimidation replaced it. Out of their depth

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in increased confrontations with the police, the Panthers ﬁnally reveal actions that fully betray the initial ideals of the movement. However, the Panthers latch onto the decision of FBI head J Edgar Hoover in his belief that the Panther power base was provoking armed insurrection and that the suppression of the Panthers was the means of suppressing an incipient racial revolution. The ﬁlm implies that it was Hoover who set out to introduce drugs (particularly heroin) into the black community to addict and pacify them accordingly: drugs were the white patriarchal authority’s way of quelling the black resistance. Thus, the initial idealism of the Panthers is replaced by the cult of the drug dealer within the African-American community.

The Parallax View (1974: d. Alan J. Pakula) A troubled reporter (Warren Beatty) investigates a political assassination linked to the mysterious Parallax Corporation. In order to inﬁltrate this Corporation he pretends to be a social misﬁt about to be recruited as a political assassin. He then tries to stop another assassination only to realize that he is a patsy set up to take the blame for the killing. A seminal political thriller of the 1970s, and perhaps Pakula’s best, The Parallax View blends the cinematic open-frame naturalism of the 1970s with a paranoid expressionism that subsequently inﬂuenced the genre through to Oliver Stone and JFK. The specter of the Kennedy assassination inﬁltrates this ﬁlm’s conspiratorial thesis concerning the myth of the “lone gunman” spread by the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one man responsible for the killing of the President. In such conspiratorial surrounds, and amidst such capitalist corruption, Pakula suggests that it is the American ideal of the free press that alone can expose the truth. Thus, Beatty is set up as a heroic journalist. His fate reveals the ﬁlm’s bleak assessment of political power in contrast to the triumph of the similar investigative journalist heroes Woodward and Bernstein in Pakula’s subsequent ﬁlm of the Watergate scandal, All the President’s Men. The Parallax View postulates that a domestic group intent on political power will use their corporate facilities to recruit agents for terroristic plots designed to inﬂuence and usurp control of American politics, a theme revisited in the remake of the quintessential Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate. The evil corporation here sets out to recruit violent psychopaths it can train, brainwash and use as expendable assassins and patsies. However, the motives of the malevolent Corporation are kept vague and unidentiﬁed. Pakula posits an individual searching for political self-empowerment through knowledge against a conspiratorial world in which reality is a façade and no one is to be trusted. Powerful, rich Americans with the ability to inﬂuence politics have a secret agenda and will lie and kill to further it. The Parallax Corporation’s ideological motives remain elusive but their actions are a metaphorical indictment of the corrupt institutions of patriarchal American capitalism. Tellingly, a major division of this inhumane, immoral patriarchal institution is the “division of human engineering” through which the Corporation programs its obedient followers into doing their will. More about covert terrorism than overt terrorism, the evildoers here do not seek publicity; indeed, their success depends upon their secrecy and anonymity. The domestic terrorism they perpetuate through targeted political assassinations is the cover for a sinister agenda. The theme of terrorism as a cover for other ends would recur in populist ﬁlms, most notably in The Long Kiss Goodnight. The Parallax View is an extremely cyn-

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ical ﬁlm — Beatty believes himself in control of his own destiny unaware that it has been usurped by others and that his belief in his own self-determination is a mere illusion; the only self-determination here is that allowed and shaped by the Corporation. Ending much as it began, The Parallax View’s circular structure reveals a sense of ritualistic futility, making the ﬁlm the most nihilistic political thriller to emerge from the 1970s.

The Passenger (1975: d. Michelangelo Antonioni) In this study of contemporary alienation, a despairing TV journalist ( Jack Nicholson) takes on a dead man’s identity as an international gunrunner. He keeps the dead man’s appointments and begins to be invigorated by the risks and dangers involved. The Passenger is only tangentially a terrorist ﬁlm, being primarily a chronicle of one man’s attempt to escape from despair, abandonment and the desolation of the individual psyche. The notion of taking ﬂight from sociopolitical responsibility is a theme this ﬁlm shares with director Antonioni’s other American ﬁlm, Zabriskie Point. The excitement Nicholson begins to feel while on assignment in Africa where he wanted to make a documentary about African guerrillas is enhanced when he realizes that the man he is pretending to be may have been involved in the selling of arms to terrorists-revolutionaries (the distinctions are obfuscated in this ﬁlm) and spreading global anarchy. Thus, he makes contact with terrorists seeking to resist their country’s support of the USA, who have been selling arms to the government. Arms, terror and ideology are inseparable political tools in the struggle against American imperial hypocrisy. The political contexts are revealed in ﬂashback and it is clear that Antonioni is on the side of the terrorists-revolutionaries. He frames American patriarchal politics in the context of the repression of individual and collective will, essentially implying American democracy to be a vacuous and immoral ideology uprooting the individual and forcing him/her to take ﬂight and seek refuge in renewed human interconnectedness, which Nicholson ﬁnds with Maria Schneider, a woman attracted to him as a man running away from his past. Terrorism is more a subtext evident only through metaphorical associations with armed revolutionary movements in guerrilla campaigns against U.S. interests.

Passenger 57 (1992: d. Kevin Hooks) Passenger 57 uses the premise of an airline hijacking to reintroduce the airplane movie so popular in the disaster cycle of the 1970s. Wesley Snipes plays an air marshal on a plane when it is taken over by terrorist-criminals. The terrorist ﬁgure here is Aryan-European, resorting to plastic surgery to change his appearance and elude detection, a trait also of the European terrorist ﬁgure in Nighthawks. Although there is some attempt to probe terrorist psychology in terms of childhood experience and socialization, the ﬁlm is more concerned with the need for regular training exercises to deal with the possibility of airline hijacking and related terrorist actions. Thus, the ﬁlm supports the need for security experts such as Snipes to be on board all domestic ﬂights — a plan that would indeed be put into effect following the events of 9/11 a decade later. Hence, the ﬁlm begins with a statement — that Israel’s planes have never been subject to terrorism due to their strict security measures. The terrorist takeover of the plane is, naturally, the ﬁlm’s key moment, dramatizing the circumstances in which the individual right to self-determination is usurped by the terrorist ﬁgure. The ﬁlm then concentrates on the communication problems faced by

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ground control in such a situation, it being impossible to deal rationally with terrorists assumed to be monstrous, irrational and egotistical ﬁgures. Passenger 57 supports the notion that the only way to deal with the terrorist threat is by violent response against the terrorists themselves, even if this includes deceptive and immoral means.

The Patriot (1986: d. Frank Harris) Terrorists steal nuclear missiles via an underwater operation. A disgraced Navy SEAL whose Vietnam experience has put him out of favor, goes on a recovery mission to eliminate the terrorist threat. The Patriot was promoted as a terrorist movie but there is scant exploration of the motives behind the terrorist action. All of the characters are arrogant and self-righteous low-lifes and the relentless, cocky attitude throughout this ﬁlm quickly becomes grating. Despite a premise involving the theft of nuclear weapons, the ﬁlm has no sense of urgency and emerges as just another trite man-on-a-mission movie. It seems to want to be about the consequences of rampant pride, with resentment and vengeance the motivation behind terrorism, but is bogged down in an assessment of the role of patriotic duty in American culture. The only note of interest is that terrorism is the one force that threatens to upset the balance of power ensuring nuclear stability in the wake of the Cold War. Rogue American military operatives intent on continuing the political destabilization of the Cold War are again the agenda, as is the case in many works dealing with not only the end of the Cold War but the political ramiﬁcations of “patriotism” as a destructive force in American political culture.

The Patriot (1998: d. Dean Semler) Academy Award–winning Australian cinematographer Dean Semler tried his hand at directing with The Patriot, in which Steven Seagal stars as a lone hero facing down an extremist group who unleash a deadly virus that will decimate an entire town unless Seagal can ﬁnd an antidote. Fears of terrorists unleashing dangerous biological or chemical agents existed before 9/11 although most treatments were formulaic action movies such as demonstrated by The Patriot, an effective Seagal vehicle that introduces terrorist themes into the star’s arsenal of scenarios. Seagal here begins the ﬁlm on horseback, a cowboy at roundup, establishing him as a classic American hero in the lone, rugged Western patriarch tradition beloved of American action cinema in particular. Appealing cinematography distinguishes this ﬁlm in which the terrorist threat is domestic and emerges from the militia movement that spawned such as David Koresh and Timothy McVeigh. An FBI standoff of a militia compound begins the terrorist intrigue here, the leader quoting Thomas Jefferson that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.” He appeals to his followers by saying that America has no room for anyone but “Americans,” who have been betrayed by the U.S. government’s collaboration with the UN and internationalism. Hence, the domestic terror threat in the U.S. emerges out of a misguided nationalism which sanctions terrorist violence as the patriotic duty to oppose an oppressive, internationalist U.S. government. The militia leader is a proud landowner who reserves the right to freedom on his property; correspondingly, he does not recognize a U.S. court of law when told that his actions on his property, in particular as they relate to weapons, break the law and he must be prosecuted.

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Just how this militia have acquired secret U.S. government research is unexplained but what it important here is their readiness to deploy it in order to further their cause. The readiness of the militia movement to strike against the U.S. government is the concern in The Patriot, which assumes audience knowledge of the American militia movement and favors stating its broader agenda without delving into its actual politics. The point is less to scrutinize the militia agenda than to use it as the ideological platform to depict a scenario of a biological weapon attack on U.S. soil, an act which owes as much to the militia leader’s arrogant pride as to his ideological agenda. The caricature ensures this ﬁlm stays within action genre limits and after establishing the potential link between the militia movement and domestic terrorism within the USA it concentrates on Seagal’s actions a lone hero. Towards the ﬁlm’s end there is some off-hand discussion about U.S. chemical and biological weapons research following Vietnam and the stockpiling of experimental material that should be destroyed as a medical hazard. This is not enough to implicate the intelligence community in malevolent action but just to suggest potential CIA misuse of material created in the laboratory for non-military purposes. Dispensed with in a couple of minutes, the brief political contextualization is held in counterpoint to the militia leader’s ideological stance against the CIA. Not enough of an irony to eliminate the caricature, it nonetheless adds a level of ambiguity in its consideration of just what constitutes American patriotism.

Patriot Games (1992: d. Phillip Noyce) Patriot Games is the second ﬁlm to feature the Tom Clancy character Jack Ryan, played here by Harrison Ford for the ﬁrst time (Ford would return in Clear and Present Danger). While on holiday in England, CIA agent Ford prevents a terrorist action, his heroism resulting in the death of IRA operative Sean Bean’s terrorist brother. Bean vows revenge against the interfering American. Terrorism is here a system which Bean exploits for personal reasons. The ﬁlm analogously posits an American intelligence community facing repercussions for interfering in the terrorist actions of other nations in which the Americans should have no role. On a metaphorical level, Ford’s action can be seen as representative U.S. interference in the self-determination of other nations. Although this theme is subtextual, it is almost unique to Australian director Noyce’s take on the Tom Clancy oeuvre, being severely downplayed in the later The Sum of All Fears. As Ford must respond to the unforeseen consequences of his actions, so too the American doctrine of foreign policy interventionism is held to account, Noyce cleverly balancing literal and allegorical interpretations. As the CIA must protect one of their own, the means of anti-terror surveillance are used, demonstrating America’s technological means of waging war and enforcing foreign policy through targeted anti-terror actions. The IRA is here depicted as a splinter group intent on toppling the monarchy. Sexuality, in the form of the woman assassin, is another weapon in their arsenal. The terrorists are organized and have a network of connections throughout London. These terrorists are trained abroad — in the Middle East — suggesting a loose network of alliances between all terror groups regardless of cause. Although the terrorist ideology should be paramount, Bean’s obsession reveals that personal petty concerns (vengeance) will inevitably supersede any ideological conviction to a cause. The terrorist ﬁgure represented

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by Bean is a hypocrite, an egotistical psychopath motivated by pride to kill — his cause is merely a rhetorical convenience. Once that is established, Noyce concentrates on depicting Ford’s dilemma as a man who realizes he is being relentlessly stalked by a violent psychopath and enlists the help of both the CIA and the IRA (now more concerned with their public image than in supporting the rogue Bean) in eliminating the threat to his family. Again in American ﬁlm, the terrorist as threat to the American family is the dominant predicament, the patriarch needing to remove the threat and restore the stability of the family values rhetoric. Author Clancy and director Noyce fought throughout production. Clancy accused Noyce of turning the character into a left-wing cipher and Noyce accused Clancy of creating an extreme right-wing cliché. Despite Noyce’s intentions, Clancy had more creative control and his reactionary conservative agenda dominates the ﬁlm, despite the subtexts regarding foreign policy interventionism that Noyce managed to impose upon the material when given the scant opportunity. Noyce ﬁnally dismissed the popular leading character as a “naïve watchdog of the world, who will plunge headlong and blind into an ancient tribal conﬂict somewhere on the other side of the world because he thinks he is right” (Cinema Papers, #90, October 1992, pp. 53–55) and that his home struggle is the direct result of his interference in a foreign conﬂict.

Patty Hearst (1988: d. Paul Schrader) Considered one of director Paul Schrader’s lesser ﬁlms despite an expressionistic ﬁrst act, Patty Hearst is a recreation of the Patty Hearst kidnapping-brainwashing, the highest proﬁle domestic terrorism instance of the 1970s. Patty Hearst begins with narration of Hearst’s early life until her time as a student at Berkeley. Hearst herself is portrayed as naïve and intellectually vacuous. The SLA are initially presented as armed hoodlums, breaking in to kidnap. As the SLA take Hearst captive, Schrader’s style changes from observational objectivity to heavily stylized Expressionism with increasingly fragmented visuals reﬂecting the protagonist’s psychological disintegration. The SLA considers Hearst a prisoner of war and holds her hostage to secure the release of tortured and imprisoned comrades whom they consider political prisoners. Hearst is then subjected to political reeducation, brainwashing her in the revolutionary doctrines of the SLA movement, a network dedicated to ﬁghting the “fascistic,” repressive U.S. government. For Schrader, the rhetoric of revolution justiﬁes a wholesale descent into sexual sadism: the demands of a violently militant sexual psychopath provoking a group psychosis founded on anger. Hence, political rhetoric and the violence it condones are covers for sexual anarchy and immoral abandon — themes inherent in the cinema of terrorism which here appeal to Schrader’s strict Calvinist upbringing. The key philosophy underpinning the SLA, according to Schrader, is their belief that sex is a revolutionary act. In this, Schrader conﬂates the values of the sexual revolution with the immorality of terrorism. The sexual objectiﬁcation of Hearst, her rape by the powerful black man, is the ﬁnal stage in her reeducation. As Hearst’s resistance is worn down, she gradually begins to accept their rhetoric, soon indoctrinated into participating in violent armed criminal enterprise. The SLA includes Hearst in their activities only when it becomes clear to them that their demands will not be met. Her sense of personal responsibility for her behavior removed, Hearst is subsumed into a groupthink mentality, effectively brainwashed into the terrorist cause. Her individual will

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destroyed, she joins in order to be set free from the fear of death. On joining them, she is renamed Tanya. Once a member of the SLA, Hearst discovers many things. Despite their boasts they are just a single group with delusions of revolutionary grandeur, and they are headed by a clearly paranoid psychotic sexual sadist. The sexual revolution they advocate has turned into violent role-playing: essentially, to Schrader, the SLA are still kids, play-acting and fucking, and (like the Manson family) their sexual freedom segues into horriﬁc violence. These are dangerous kids, purposeless and swept up into a rhetorical revolution as the source of their countercultural identity. The more about the SLA that Schrader reveals, the more comical the ﬁlm becomes. The terrorists are delusional misﬁts who get off on power. Unable to reconcile this with their anarchism, they are forever frustrated and angry, hiding their shallow, hypocritical beliefs in a sense of the urgency and importance of struggle. Patty Hearst concludes with an assessment of the legal issues surrounding Hearst’s responsibility and culpability. As the jury rejects the “brainwashing” argument, Schrader again raises a dominant personal theme — free will and socialization. The humanist belief in individual free will is exactly what is eroded by the terrorist usurpation of the right to self-determination, making terrorism the enemy of humanism. Schrader’s complex tonal shift from Expressionist tragedy to farcical absurdity inverts the tonal progression found in director Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, another ﬁlm of a woman kidnapped and forced to go along with the will of a gang of irrational buffoons. Patty Hearst followed on from the telemovie The Ordeal of Patty Hearst and also foreshadowed Guerrilla —The Taking of Patty Hearst, a documentary more sympathetic to the SLA. At the time he accepted the offer to direct Patty Hearst, Schrader’s career was at a low point following the box ofﬁce failure of Light of Day. Resisting studio pressure to make a more conventional ﬁlm, Schrader admitted that he disliked the idea of a passive protagonist and ideally would have rewritten the project to be a radical and subversive account from the point of view of the psychotic SLA leader. Schrader considers Hearst his most fully rounded female character. The real Hearst liked the movie and went to Cannes to promote it, Schrader adding that “she’s far more comfortable being the victim than being independent, which is probably how she got through the ordeal.” The studio disliked the ﬁlm and after a brief release, which impressed the critics, it disappeared from circulation.

The Peacekeeper (1997: d. Frederic Forestier) The Peacekeeper trades on the presence of B-movie action star Dolph Lundgren, an actor who never became as popular as his action contemporaries Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. Lundgren plays a humanitarian pilot (he drops rice to the Kurds) and renegade hero who takes it upon himself to address U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and is thus reassigned to a presidential detail, carrying nuclear launch codes in a black bag which quickly becomes a terrorist target. Foreign policy is here clearly delineated between military and political aims, with the president pledging a “restructuring” of foreign policy so as to concentrate on domestic concerns (the transition of U.S. war imperialism is the background context). Lundgren represents the traditional iconic hero of reactionary American action movies, the staunch family man and father drawn into a pursuit narrative in order to prevent the

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terrorist enemy from achieving their destructive aims. It depicts the terrorist threat as emerging from the post–Cold War decommissioning of nuclear weapons and the breakup of the former Soviet Union — a dominant theme in the 1990s cinema of terrorism — with the threat here posed by rogue domestic elements of uncertain motivation. The terrorist leader wants to launch a nuclear missile from within the USA to destroy Mt. Rushmore (i.e., the U.S. patriarchal heritage) but, again typical of 1990s cinema, he is ultimately motivated by the prospect of revenge — terrorism as extortion. He is a disgruntled former U.S. colonel sent into Iraq on an abandoned mission and seeking the suicide of the president as petty vengeance. He has lured the other members of his terrorist organization not through ideology but through the promise of ﬁnancial gain.

The Peacemaker (1997: d. Mimi Leder) The Peacemaker is yet another 1990s ﬁlm to examine the possibility of terrorism following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The dismantling of the Russian military breeds resentment amongst former Soviet hardliners, enabling terrorists to get easy access to nuclear weapons. The Peacemaker develops both the rogue military and terrorist-as-mercenary plots so common to 1990s terrorist cinema and highlights the plight of its female protagonist struggling for peer acceptance in a male-dominated world. In contrast to the insightful depiction of terrorist psychology in The Assignment (released the same year), The Peacemaker examines the fear-based specter of nuclear weapons as valued commodities on the terrorist open market. Terrorism is less ideology or psychology than a business transaction. There is due attention to the notion of government protocol — the symbolic team of military man (in charge) and scientist (a Hawksian woman)— as a device lending legitimacy to otherwise clichéd plot developments. The villain is a weapons buyer who wants power and respect and is prepared to buy a nuclear weapon to accrue it. The Peacemaker brings to the cinema of terrorism the intersection of the action movie and the cinema of paranoia and fear. In that the nuclear weapon in question is headed for Iran, the ﬁlm suggests that the current problems of the collapsing Soviet Union will relocate global political crisis to the Middle East and have repercussions in arming an Islamic enemy. The terrorist is a European Serb: A man without family, he takes refuge in an ideology which justiﬁes terrorism in a way which threatens the security and stability of the USA. The terrorist threat from the spill-over between the U.S.SR, the Middle East and Europe validates the need for increased U.S. Special Forces operations overseas — a foreign policy of interventionism. New York City is seen as the favored target for terrorists seeking to make international headlines by targeting the symbolic center of the West, the UN headquarters. All forces involved, both terrorist and counterterrorist, claim to act in the name of peace though the ﬁlm makes it clear that anti–Western sentiment is behind such attacks, hence their particular obsession with New York City. The European terrorist here is a suicide bomber, including into the domain of European terrorism the means of the Islamic jihadist.

Persona Non Grata (2005: d. Oliver Stone) Acclaimed ﬁlmmaker Oliver Stone journeyed to Palestine and Israel to interview representatives of Hamas, the PLO and the Israeli government in a build-up to a portrait of

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the legacy of PLO leader Yassir Arafat. The resultant Persona Non Grata is less another Oliver Stone political thriller than a documentary in which Stone’s personal quest to track down and interview Arafat makes the director an integral part of the documentary: the cult of personality elevated to journalistic ﬁgure as has distinguished the American feature documentary format since Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. As much as Stone devotes objective time and scrutiny to both the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives on the terrorism that began with the Palestinian intifada and accelerated into an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, so too his personal responses inform the ﬁlm’s structure and momentum. When he is interviewing Hamas leader Hasan Yosef, Yosef asks what Stone would do if his family were forced from their land into refugee camps and their children killed. Stone replies that he would do exactly what Hamas are doing. Correspondingly, it is empathy for both sides in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle which makes Persona Non Grata a humanist perspective on the terror conﬂict which, at the time of ﬁlming, seemed to be the unspoken root cause of a terror campaign since the mid–1970s and one that arguably lies behind Al Qaeda’s rationale in attacking the USA on 9/11. In a feeble effort to market himself as a peacemaker, President Bush, primarily through Colin Powell, attempted to launch the “roadmap to peace,” which in the end proved as much a nicely worded sound-byte jingle as “axis of evil,” “war on terror” and “enemy combatant”— the post–9/11 doublespeak concealing an ethical agenda that the cinema of terrorism would examine in a wave of ﬁlms in 2007–08 as betraying the ideals of the American Constitution. Persona Non Grata is a short feature documentary (just over an hour). Immediately following 9/11, the Bush government through the “fair and balanced” Fox News Channel fabricated the spin that 9/11 was an isolated act of terror against an innocent and now traumatized America: sentiments reﬂected in the immediate post–9/11 documentary 7 Days in September, a mythopoeic evocation of “ground zero” that Stone himself would attempt in World Trade Center. Any attempt to examine U.S. foreign policy as in any way culpable for the events that led up to 9/11 was considered unpatriotic and even traitorous. To the Bush government, 9/11 was an unmotivated attack in which the USA was wholly innocent and therefore altogether blameless. There were nonetheless serious foreign policy issues that lay behind 9/11: American presence in the Holy Land of Saudi Arabia (later examined in The Kingdom) and American sponsorship and arms-dealing with Israel, the only nuclear power in the delicate Middle East. Signiﬁcantly, it was America’s involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle which the 1977 ﬁlm Black Sunday, which effectively launched the cinema of terrorism as a genre in American ﬁlm, suggested would eventually lead to suicidal terrorist attacks on American soil, a theme continued in 1980’s Wrong Is Right and traced through the cinema of terrorism over subsequent years until The Siege looked at Islamic terrorism in the USA in the wake of the ﬁrst World Trade Center bombing. Persona Non Grata begins with a look at both sides of the violence that consumed Israel-Palestine following the collapse of the Camp David Peace Accords of 2000 and unfolded in tandem with America’s entry into the list of terrorist-affected nations with 9/11. It directly examines the Palestinian-Israeli crisis from the perspective of Israeli involvement, and experience, in a War on Terror (though that phrase is never used) in which the terror threat is a daily facet of life and in which the casualty toll dwarfs that of 9/11. But, as Stone shows, the Palestinians live with daily brutality by Israeli forces who patrol

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with tanks and open ﬁre on gatherings of Islamic men. In contrast to the unapologetic Netanyahu, the more reﬂective former Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres admits that Israel has made mistakes. Between the two, Stone suggests, the possibility of compromise remains faint though Peres remains optimistic and the most humane ﬁgure in the ﬁlm. Netanyahu and the Israelis portray Israel not merely as a Jewish, Zionist state but as the furthermost functioning outpost of Western civilization in the Middle East. Correspondingly, the Israelis downplay any religious agenda in what the Palestinians by contrast see as a holy war revolving around Israeli control of Muslim holy places in the West Bank; thus, the specter of Zionism lingers over the Palestinian resentment of Israel while Israeli leaders sidestep the ramiﬁcations of political Zionism in the Arab-dominated Middle East. Avoiding direct examination of political Zionism except in Ehud Barak’s framing statements that the lands of Israel and Palestine were bequeathed to the Jews from the time of Moses but they are ready to give it back to the Arabs for contractual peace agreements, the Israelis attempt primarily to portray the terrorist cause as a clash of civilizations, with Israel the last bastion of Western civilization and gateway to Europe, the same perspective that saturated Netanyahu’s 1997 book Fighting Terrorism in which he depicts terrorism purely as a cultural clash with roots in Cold War proxy conﬂicts between the Soviet Union and the USA, themes which the cinema of terrorism had been addressing since the collapse of the Soviet Union in such ﬁlms as Death Has a Bad Reputation. Stone arrives in Jerusalem in March 2002, some six months after 9/11. He begins the ﬁlm with interviews with the prime Israeli authorities — Netanyahu, Peres, Barak — before moving on to Hamas and the PLO in the Gaza Strip, which Stone reveals full of posters memorializing the suicide bombers of such as the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, representatives of whom are also interviewed in this documentary. Considering the Western demonization of the suicide bomber as the abominable face of the unknowable enemy in the Bush War on Terror, Stone looks sympathetically at the culture which spawns and idolizes them as martyrs. Even if Stone himself is skeptical of the religious beliefs which lie behind such, he acknowledges the cultural context behind it even as he focuses when interviewing the masked leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade on such issues as the desired borders of the Palestinian state they ﬁght for being those prior to the 1967 war (which saw the Israeli occupation and the growth of Israeli settlements) and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland (which Israel will not allow as such would lead to the loss of control of Jerusalem, a holy city of equal importance to both sides, the fate of separate governments for East and West Jerusalem being the issue that led to the collapse of the negotiations between Barak and Arafat at the failed Camp David peace talks). Israel’s strategic position regarding its settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is outlined, as are the reasons for Israel’s need to ensure security when at its thinnest point Israel is only 15 kilometers wide and in danger of being ripped into two by Palestinian forces and Arab intrusion if the West Bank is left unchecked. Persona Non Grata lays bare the varied, conﬂicting and quite possibly irreconcilable differences underlying the terrorist war that affects Israelis and Palestinians on an hourly basis. As Stone interviews both Israeli and Palestinian residents, so too Persona Non Grata emerges as a portrait of life in a region consumed by terrorism in which both sides claim religious and territorial justiﬁcation — the Israeli justiﬁcation ultimately leading to the impoverishment and exile of the Palestinian people and their idealization of “arch-terrorists” Arafat, Hamas and Al

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Aqsa while the Palestinian justiﬁcation leads to the suicide bombing of shopping malls and school buses. The remarkable thing about Stone’s documentary is that it is effectively the ﬁrst to portray both sides without favoring one over the other, although simultaneously creating a portrait of Arafat as a legendary ﬁgure and motivating force for a generation of Palestinian “freedom ﬁghters” with editing techniques that evoke less of traditional documentary than the revisionist history Stone brought to his portrayals of American political leaders in the preceding JFK and Nixon and the subsequent W, the release of which was well-timed in the weeks leading up to the election that would see the end of the George Bush presidency, if not the legacy of the War on Terror bequeathed America by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld — indictable war criminals according to the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The War on Terror proclaimed by Bush seems mere American bombast in comparison to the ongoing struggle Stone depicts here, making Persona Non Grata, alongside Fahrenheit 9/11, The Manchurian Candidate and Lord of War, one of the core ﬁlms in the cinema of terrorism post–9/11, all of which seek to locate a context for the brand new American experience of terrorism. Stone attempts to relate this new American experience of terrorism to its origins in the Palestinian struggle and its elevation of Arafat to living legend. Hence, Arafat himself is an arch-terrorist to Netanyahu who tries to portray Arafat as a violent monster who brought terror to Jordan and Libya before being booted out by those nations and taking up home in Gaza to terrorize the innocent Israelis. It is clear that to Netanyahu, Arafat is detestable and no negotiation is possible with the Palestinian leadership. Peres, on the other hand, considers Arafat a revolutionary leader who could not make the transition to political leader and, in his recital of Palestinian liberationist poetry, concedes that Camp David failed because Barak expected Arafat to make concessions that would eliminate Arafat’s platform and dream, concessions Arafat could never make. Israel’s leadership are old men. In contrast, 75 percent of the Palestinian populace are under 35. Al Aqsa considers itself the voice of displaced, impoverished Palestinian youth, the view being that circumstances imposed upon them by the Israeli “occupation” necessitate a guerrilla war. Curiously, Peres counters this view by saying that Palestine will mature, as will the Arab states, when they realize not that poverty begets terror but that terror begets poverty. Yet, Al Aqsa boast of getting their arms from Israel just as America sells arms to Israel. The relevance of this struggle to America, hinted at as far back as Black Sunday, is made obvious when Al Aqsa reveals that their war against the occupying Israelis, when directed against Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, is complicated by the fact that up to 60 percent of the Jewish Israelis settling on what the Palestinians claim as their land are also American citizens. America’s de facto occupation in tandem with the Israelis is raised as a byproduct of American foreign policy in the region although the examination of such is not Stone’s agenda here and it remains subtextual. Stone does not use the word “terrorist,” instead establishing the crisis as a guerrilla war in which the participants and martyrs in jihad see themselves as freedom ﬁghters. Interviews with Al Aqsa are juxtaposed with those of Israeli intelligence ofﬁcials, and Peres, reﬂecting on the problems of ﬁnding suicide bombings in advance and preventing destruction. It is the interrogation of those suicide bombers captured before their

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martyrdom which gives Israeli authorities tactics to combat the terror — the families of the suicide bombers themselves, punished by association. Stone reﬂects on Bush’s support of Ariel Sharon and the license this gives the Israelis to go after Arafat; Stone understands the Israeli situation but laments the unquestioned Bush endorsement of the Sharon government and sympathizes with the Palestinians. Less a case of torn allegiance than understanding of both sides, Stone rounds the documentary with a look at what Barak feels is the only solution left Zionism: to disengage completely from Palestine, hence the construction of the fence-wall separating the two regions. In the meantime, Stone’s ﬁnal interview with Peres is interrupted by a suicide bombing a mere 800 meters away, prompting an Israeli attack on Arafat’s headquarters in Gaza, captured with immediacy and irony. Appropriately, the last word goes to Peres, advocating that children be educated about the future and not the past, history being written by wars and the killing of people.

The Point Men (2001: d. John Glen) In The Point Men, director John Glen’s attempt to build a directorial career after a long and proﬁtable association with the James Bond ﬁlms, Secret Service agent Christopher Lambert becomes an embarrassment to the agency after a failed attempt to assassinate a Palestinian terrorist. He is convinced that the mission was a set-up and complains, only to ﬁnd that members of his team are being murdered in a spate of seeming revenge killings. The Point Men assumes American prejudice in the Arab-Israeli struggle but lacks the visual aplomb of Glen’s Bond ﬁlms and instead emerges as a routine telemovie-like experience. The Palestinian terrorist is shown as having links to ex–KGB agents and in a moment of frustration admits that both Arabs and Jews are “fucking insane” and deserve each other. Indeed, Glen gradually distances himself from any afﬁliation and regards both sides in the struggle as equally abhorrent. What he sees as signiﬁcant is the spill-over of the Arab-Israeli crisis dominating the post–Cold War political agenda. The terrorist’s “old school” killings are now personal and vindictive as he no longer believes in the ideals of the PLO or the purpose of a free and independent Palestine. His obsessive vendetta serves no practical or ideological purpose. The superiors in the Arab terrorist movement must continually remind their subordinates to do what is politically signiﬁcant and not what is personally satisfying. Israeli authorities in Tel Aviv describe the Palestinians as “like pigs” and inferior, their Zionist religion lending them a genocidal eugenics. With the PLO bankrupted by the fall of the Soviet Union (the major ﬁnancial benefactor of Arab terrorism), they have turned to the drug trade to gain funds, in league now with the Russian Maﬁa to pollute the West. In the context of fanatical Zionist hatred of the Arab population, Glen suggests that the alliance between terrorism and the drug trade in the Middle East is the direct fallout of the Cold War. Glen suggests that the terrorists do not want peace despite the rare opportunities presented them, for to pursue peace would be to renounce what has become a noble tradition — terrorism, a rationale now needed to validate the anti–Israeli cause. In the madness that ensues, Arab terrorists want revenge for Israeli counterterrorism: payback between armed adversaries, each on God’s side, battling over the land that God promised their ancestors. Hence, any peace process is jeopardized by terrorists who have no other means of self-expression than terrorism. Terrorism is thus a perpetual cycle forever in need of

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renewed terror attacks in order to prevent itself from perishing. In this way, Glen suggests that any peace talks with terrorists are futile attempts as peace would mean not a victory for them, but their demise — terror sustains only more terror. In the end, Israelis and Palestinians must join forces to stop the mentality of terrorism from destroying any hope of a genuine peace process.

A Prayer for the Dying (1987: d. Mike Hodges) In the Jack Higgins adaptation of A Prayer for the Dying, an IRA terrorist-hitman (Mickey Rourke) wanted by the British for the bombing of innocent children wants to get out of his involvement in terrorism (a predicament also affecting the protagonist of the later IRA–themed The Crying Game). To escape, Rourke must kill a gangster. His crime is witnessed by a Catholic priest (Bob Hoskins) and so to protect himself Rourke visits the priest in the Confessional and confesses to the crime, the priest now bound by canonical law regarding the secrecy of the confessional. Moral absolutism and moral relativism come into contrast in A Prayer for the Dying when seasoned terrorist Rourke has a crisis of conscience after accidentally killing school children with a bomb meant for British soldiers. Escaping to London, Rourke tries to renounce violence but ﬁnds that he is drawn back into it by a gangster who appropriates the means of political terrorism to suit his criminal agenda. The ﬁlm suggests that there is a “pure” terrorist ideology which is being contaminated by outside criminal forces looking to recruit revolutionaries in underworld enterprise, a development of themes lurking dormant within director Hodges’ previous explorations of the criminal underworld beginning with the seminal Get Carter. Ironically, terrorist idealism is here being corrupted: the terrorist maintains that he has a code — he has never killed for money or for pleasure but only for the greater cause. However, Rourke’s dedication to the cause and his unwillingness to acquiesce to criminal enterprise makes him now a liability to the IRA as they seek to expand their operations into the English mainland. The rituals of Catholicism are cleverly paralleled to the enterprise of organized crime. Both the priest Hoskins and the gangland leader Alan Bates are pathologically obsessed with death — Hoskins ﬁrst seen in a cemetery and Bates ﬁnding solace in his pet profession as mortician. Rourke too, a terrorist killer, is intimately connected with the cult of death that this ﬁlm considers responsible for the crisis. This obsession with mordant morality acts as if an acknowledgment of the battle between fate and individual selfdetermination — itself a Catholic theme. Destinies intertwine, resulting in a crisis of faith for Hoskins, his humanity set against his religious duty to the confessional: the man of salvation (religion) vs. the man of damnation (terrorism). Rourke, Hoskins and Bates symbolize a mockingly subversive Trinity in what is a somber, brooding look at human despair and its inﬂuence over those who seek salvation and redemption against it in comforting rituals morbidly obsessed with death and dying. A Prayer for the Dying emerges as a ﬁlm about men and conscience as it relates to religiosity, speciﬁcally Catholicism. The characters are all men whose codes have made them confront their conscience as a means of moral self-determination. Rourke is midway on a spectrum between Bates (who beautiﬁes the dead), the moral relativist, and Hoskins, the moral absolutist. Conscience and morality are inseparable from humanity here, all worn away by the death cult that is terrorism and the Irish “troubles.” The terrorist ﬁgure is a lost soul facing damnation, ﬁghting it off with one last chance at redemp-

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tion but fated to lose. In this, A Prayer for the Dying is a view of Christian determinism. Ironically, Hoskins prefers the terrorist Rourke (who at least operates out of belief ) to the gangster Bates who has abstracted death so as to consider it an art devoid of moral consequence. The evil gangster and the good priest thus vie for Rourke’s soul with Hoskins constantly pushing Rourke towards a personal moral reckoning. Rourke’s ﬁnal action is one of moral choice, an expression of free will, ending in a symbolic explosion atop a church.

The President’s Man (2000: d. Michael Preece) Chuck Norris plays the title secret agent, whose cover is a professor of Asian studies at Dallas University. On the verge of retirement he is summoned into action when the First Lady is kidnapped. Taking on the mission, he simultaneously grooms his successor. The President’s Man is a telemovie co-directed by Norris’s son, which possibly explains the emphasis on the theme of the passing on of traditional values between successive generations. The terrorist plot, however, is quite conventional: on a visit to Rio de Janeiro the First Lady is kidnapped by the Brazilian People’s Liberation Army who demand enough weapons to overthrow the government and destabilize the region, as well as a large sum of money. Although rare in its South American location, the ﬁlm is otherwise routinely familiar, with Norris playing a James Bondian ﬁgure who single-handedly rescues the First Lady. This ﬁlm is saturated with patriarchy: Norris was taught by his predecessor and will teach his successor in the best of patriarchal honor. Terrorism is associated with the drug trade as joint forces intent on destabilization. This equation between the War on Terror and the War on Drugs clearly delineates this ﬁlm’s reactionary, conservative agenda: yet another mindless variation on the sole patriarchal hero defeating the forces of destabilization in service of the ultimate Father — the U.S. President (virtually deiﬁed in this ﬁlm’s subtextual validation of patriarchy). The terrorist cult is also of an unconventional religious afﬁliation although little is made of this.

The President’s Man: Ground Zero (2002: d. Eric Norris) Chuck Norris reprises his role as a professor of Asian studies and top secret agent who is called into service. When an Islamic terror wave targets embassies, he and his younger protégé are sent to inﬁltrate and capture the terrorists responsible. They soon discover a plan to smuggle and detonate a small nuclear bomb within the USA. Released shortly after 9/11, this telemovie was one of the ﬁrst to play on the thennational fear of Islamic terror. Intended as an Americanized James Bond takeoff, it is too crudely assembled to offer a point of comparison. Mindless action dominates this ﬁlm although the politics are intriguing: Made before the Iraq invasion that deposed Saddam Hussein, the ﬁlm charts a mission to West Africa to destroy Saddam’s secret stash of missiles. As Norris engages in talk of the problems in the Middle East, mentioned as a viable solution is the prospect of nuking them all — a similar reactionary view to that found in such ﬁlms as Iron Eagle. Against this, Norris says that you can’t kill them all for the actions of a few, just like you can’t blame all Americans for the actions of Timothy McVeigh. This attempt to contextualize the post–9/11 arguments on how to deal with radical Islam in light of America’s commitment to religious freedom (as threatened by jihadi rhetoric)

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may inform the narrative but the ﬁlm itself offers no real solutions beyond the expected terrorist ﬁlm action formula. The terrorist leader here is a clear Bin Laden ﬁgure: the ﬁrst in the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism. In a nod to the dominant post–Cold War concern of pre–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm, the Russians report stolen plutonium, inevitably bound to fall into terrorist hands. In this, The President’s Man: Ground Zero is a bridging work between pre– and post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm. An imperative here is the elimination of the Bin Laden ﬁgure before he acquires nuclear weapons. The Taliban, depicted for the ﬁrst time in the cinema of terrorism, are here destroyers of culture, the ﬁlm set before the storming of Afghanistan by American troops and effectively the ﬁrst to examine immediate post–9/11 concerns resulting in the War on Terror speciﬁcally in regards to the Taliban. Despite this intriguing political context, the ﬁlm disappointingly follows the pseudo-spiritual exchange between the master Norris and his protégé. When the ﬁlm does concentrate on issues of terrorism, it is interesting and curious rather than dramatically successful. The Islamic terrorists within the USA are here seen to be Arab students educated in the USA but believing in a higher purpose to serve Allah. Meanwhile, those terrorists at the Afghan terrorist base live a troglodytic existence and speak in clichéd Arabian Nights dialogue which is merely risible. Their view that the will of Allah depends on Islamic youth is a telling conceit. Other than that, their rhetoric is familiar — America is a corrupt land responsible for its own destruction. In response to this new Islamic threat the president issues a statement saying that America’s worst fears have been conﬁrmed: Loose Soviet nukes and bomb-making technology is now in the hands of religious fanatics hostile to the USA and by deﬁnition, terroristic. As the terrorist leader is protected by the Taliban, a covert mission is launched to render the loose nuke inoperable. Bombing raids can destroy the surface terrain but cannot touch the Bin Laden ﬁgure who resides underground. The threat of nukes stands in for the attack on the Twin Towers and the ﬁlm is revisionist in its view that Norris’ special action can reverse the events of history, making this ﬁlm a reactionary wish-fulﬁllment fantasy. Thus, the Bin Laden ﬁgure is captured by an effectual American superhero. But, in the ﬁlm’s symbolic staging of the capture of Bin Laden is allowed a superﬁcial glimpse into the prospect of what would happen should Bin Laden ever fall into U.S. custody. The Bin Laden ﬁgure is revealed ﬁnally to be a rather stereotypically suicidal Islamic terrorist, willing to die a martyr in the detonation of a nuclear bomb in America. Naturally, Norris — the great American patriarchal hero — thwarts the arch-terrorist’s plan and saves America, the ﬁlm becoming a strictly comicbook action movie.

Prisoner in the Middle (1975: d. John O’Connor) aka Warhead An American colonel is on assignment in the Middle East when a nuclear warhead accidentally falls over the Arab-Israeli border terrain where it is taken by an Arab terrorist. After an Israeli raid saves both the colonel and the warhead, the terrorist vows revenge, targeting the Israeli commandos one by one. Prisoner in the Middle is the ﬁrst ﬁlm to deal with the fear of Arab states and terrorists being nuclear-armed, here through an accident by Israel’s ally America. The terrorists are seen as ruthless — blowing up a school bus — but cowards who ﬂee when directly confronted by Israeli troops. Thus, terrorism is shown to be the act of a coward regard-

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less of the cause. It traumatizes innocents and is a burden to those who oppose it. The depiction here qualiﬁes the need for organized offenses against the terrorist enemy, in turn endorsing without question America’s support (with arms and money) of the Israeli government who must defend itself against such cowardly monsters as are the Arabs here. The ﬁlm stresses the need for Israeli-American cooperation for the future protection of Israel, a situation which later ﬁlms like Rosebud and Black Sunday implied would make the USA the subject of the terrorism currently directed against Israel. Israel and America are here motivated by a common humanity which the Arab terrorists lack, in a representative generalization of all Arabs they are shown as immoral and uncivilized. In so doing, the ﬁlm posits the Israeli-Arab struggle as one of the future of humanity. In that the terrorist here represents the PLO, the ﬁlm is about the atrocious nature of the Palestinian Liberation cause, removing it of any political context and reframing it in the guise of a simplistic American Western. The Palestinians would hold the Americans hostage, steal their bombs and destroy the Zionist state amidst rhetoric such as “one bomb, no Jews.” The ﬁlm makes no attempt to contextualize the Palestinians as anything but a threat to the innocent Israelis forced to defend themselves. Nuclear capacity is the means by which the buffoonish and dangerous PLO feel they will earn the respect of the world community and be a force to reckon with in world politics. Just as the terrorists are cowards who run and hide when any direct confrontation looms, the Israeli troops are depicted as courageous men and women who ﬁght willingly alongside each other in a state of gender equality. They bury their own but leave Arab corpses to rot in the desert heat — the PLO are inhuman rodents not even entitled to burial. What is most interesting about Prisoner in the Middle is its appropriation of some of the conventions of the American Western. Allusive in particular to Robert Aldrich’s Ulzana’s Raid, the terrorists are depicted as Indians ﬁghting in a hit-and-run guerrilla war. The desert battle recalls the traditional landscape of the American West and it is clear that in this genre appropriation, the Israelis are the good guys (their Jeep being a covered wagon) and the desert-dwelling Arabs are the dangerous, marauding Indians. This is a deliberate use of genre to market the pro–Israeli position in the populist terms of American genre history and as such is blatant propaganda, hampered most of all by its low budget. Jeeps stand in for horses and wagons and the Arabs’ distinctive head gear marks them as different much as Indian clothing marked their savagery. When the Arabs capture an Israeli girl and threaten sexual assault, Prisoner in the Middle effectively deﬁnes what would be a standard conceit in ﬁlms dealing with Islamic terrorists — the Arab terrorist (much more so than the European terrorist) is a sexual sadist and psychopath, completely immoral and turned on by rape. Prisoner in the Middle, by focusing on the American attention to nuclear stability, charts the responsibility of Israel as a nuclearized nation. However, it displaces this political reality onto desert skirmishes which blend the aforementioned Western allegory with World War II–type encounters, allusive especially to the Rommel campaign. This it does to link as much of American populist mythology as possible to the pro–Israeli position, a position seriously questioned in such subsequent ﬁlms as Rosebud and Black Sunday. Here, the U.S. must take sides with Israel out of a humanist loyalty and resist the Palestinians. The lone American character here could easily become the last man standing after all the Israelis and Palestinians have killed each other, an irony which undercuts the surrounding pro–Israel propaganda. By reconﬁguring the Arab-Israeli crisis in terms of a

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Western, the ﬁlm unintentionally raises the specter of the Arabs as the indigenous people subject to an Imperialist (Zionist) occupation. This subtext is never examined as a legitimate perspective and exists by non-deliberate suggestion only.

Programmed to Kill (1987: d. Allan Holzman) aka Retaliator Programmed to Kill was advertised as a distaff version of The Terminator. A female terrorist is transformed into a bionic weapon in the war against terrorism and sent against the terrorists, only to turn against her creators. Adolescent-oriented gibberish, Programmed to Kill is intriguing primarily in its cult casting of Exterminator star Robert Ginty and statuesque Sandahl Bergman, who had risen to pinup status on the basis of her work as the female warrior in Conan the Barbarian. It begins with a terrorist action in Greece organized by a PLO splinter group whose demands are recognition for their organization and a forum in which to publicly condemn the policies of the USA. (In a sly note, an ofﬁcial responds to these demands with a shrug and a “What’s new?”) Ginty is in charge of the anti-terrorist mission, demanding that government does not interfere with counterterror tactics. As is common in many B-movies, a hamstrung U.S. government turns to an unofﬁcial covert military operation to solve problems it is incapable of handling through diplomacy. The terrorists are ruthless monsters who imprison American children in a pit in a basement. However, these children never lose their faith in American soldiers as their true saviors and claim that they will not have to wait forever for the Americans to do something about the situation they are in, unlike Beirut. Indeed, the specter of Beirut hangs over this ﬁlm — the failed U.S. efforts to free hostages in Iran and Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 1980s being the historical truth behind those ﬁlms presuming the impotence of American diplomacy and the imperative for covert force. Bergman is a treacherous femme fatale who would stab her American collaborators in the back as it suits her. Rendered a vegetable, she is operated on and her frontal lobes replaced with special circuitry intended to allow control over her subconscious desires — a theme present in science-ﬁction with Michael Crichton’s novel and Mike Hodges’ ﬁlm of The Terminal Man. In that, Programmed to Kill is a rare terrorist movie that crosses over into science-ﬁction. The female zombie-robot serving an authoritarian agenda is a version of the recently released RoboCop and anticipates the dilemma facing the soldiers in Universal Soldier. Ginty is an effective Luddite here, resenting such bio-technological means of ﬁghting terrorism and hoping to expose its shortcomings in order to return to more traditional means of combating terroristic violence. Brainwashed, Bergman is sent back to Beirut to kill her former terror accomplices — she is jokingly referred to as “new action Barbie,” about the intellectual level of this ﬁlm. Barbie-Bergman kills her superiors but, overwhelmed by memories of her past life, malfunctions. The suggestion here, like in RoboCop, is that the individual personality cannot be suppressed by science and dogma. Thus she turns on her creators, becoming — in a scene where she breaks off the tip of a pool cue — a symbolically castrating femme fatale. Once she kills the terrorist leader, Programmed to Kill ceases to be a terrorist ﬁlm and becomes a rogue robot melodrama in which she becomes a threat to be hunted down and eliminated, her attempt to destroy the military forces that sent her on her mission also owing to the end of Rambo: First Blood Part 2.

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Project Shadowchaser 2: Night Siege (1994: d. John Eyres) In this sequel, a terrorist group seizes control of a secret nuclear base. They intend to steal the nuclear “Cobra System” and obliterate an entire continent. To prove their seriousness, they destroy a plane in ﬂight. A supervisor, her son and a janitor inside the base provide the only opposition in what is a highly derivate action movie in the Die Hard and Under Siege mode. The president is seen here to be at odds with the military — the former wanting to disable the weapons system but the military insisting it be kept, claiming that although the Cold War is over, there are other threats emerging (China and North Korea are mentioned directly). Thus, the ﬁlm develops the proposition of a post–Cold War government more concerned with a domestic agenda than with foreign policy security and thus mistakenly de-emphasizing weapons and defense spending in the misguided belief that the end of the Cold War has seen the end of all major threats to domestic U.S. security. Typical of much 1990s post–Cold War cinema, the terrorists are rogue elements from within the American establishment who plan to steal the weapons system before the government renders it obsolete. This alone does not qualify them as “terrorists” though the techniques they adopt are traditionally those of the terrorist-mercenary. The ﬁlm seeks to distance itself from its nominal predecessor — hence video releases outside the USA dropped the numeric reference altogether. The heroine here is a single mother with a rebellious teenage son — a woman in a position of power and responsibility in the process of restoring patriarchy and purging it of its rogue elements. In contrast the villain is introduced bare-chested — as the emblem of rogue masculinity (symbolic perhaps of an out-of-control patriarchal agenda). Signiﬁcantly, although in a clichéd manner, the terrorists demand the release of Islamic “freedom ﬁghters” (from Iraq) or they will launch their missiles on Washington. The ﬁnal ﬁght sidelines the potential heroine and elevates the male janitor as the true defender of American patriarchy, fought out mano a mano in a homoerotic bare-chested spectacle witnessed by the woman. In the end the janitor emerges as the father ﬁgure worthy of bringing together the woman and son in the typical family — the true unit of worth in patriarchally driven, reactionary action cinema.

Proof of Life (2000: d. Taylor Hackford) Russell Crowe works for an insurance underwriter and operative in high-proﬁle kidnapping cases. After a prologue in which a Russian is seized by Chechen separatists (presented as a well-armed guerrilla militia using terror tactics), Crowe is in South America after an American researcher (David Morse) working on a charity water project is kidnapped; Crowe must negotiate or otherwise secure his release. Crowe falls for Morse’s wife (Meg Ryan) whose marriage was on extremely shaky ground. Proof of Life was inspired by a Vanity Fair magazine article about “the ransom trade” and the book by FARC rebel kidnap victim Tom Hargrove, The Long March to Freedom. There is a certain irony in that although kidnap victim Morse is working on a project for the beneﬁt of the locals, because it is funded by an oil developer Morse is considered an enemy by the rebels-terrorists who hold him hostage. The idea here is that American benevolence is mistaken for American imperialism and resented by the local population whose lives the Americans seek to improve. Director Hackford develops a sense of class consciousness, indicating that it is the poor and underprivileged who harbor the

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most resentment. The terrorist group here are former Marxist revolutionaries who after the Cold War turned to kidnapping and the drug trade in order to gain funds, a problem the ﬁlmmakers consider endemic in South American terrorism: whatever political cause that once may have existed has been corrupted and compromised. Hackford suggests that the drug-based South American economy grew out of a terrorist agenda following the collapse of the Soviet Union; now that the political base is eroded, all that remains are the techniques of terrorism for ﬁnancial reward. Crowe considers his occupation a “game” but a business for the rebel kidnappers. His actions are for Hackford tied into the American “war on drugs.” In that, the ﬁlm follows the trend in the cinema of terrorism to conﬂate the drug trade with Latin American terrorism. Crowe, however, is emotionally torn between loyalty to his company (kidnap victim Morse has no terrorist insurance) and his developing attachment to Ryan. As Crowe gets ever more involved with Ryan, the ﬁlm becomes an examination of the needed acquisition of interpersonal responsibility and the moral and ethical choices that accompany discipline and success in one’s chosen ﬁeld. But, as is a frequent Hackford theme, success brings moral compromise. There is a rather condescending view of local authority ineptitude, with South American authorities depicted as generally corrupt, it being therefore up to the Westerners-Americans to deal with every possible contingency. In this, Hackford reveals an imperialist agenda, suggesting that the West has responsibility for the whole world and must ensure its own safety (the irony again being that the threat comes from those whose lives the West is genuinely trying to improve). Negotiation with rebels and terrorists is a process of petty one-upsmanship between people who gain power and self-importance by being in control of another person’s fate, a central conceit in the cinema of terrorism. The terrorist-kidnappers are desperate to assert their authority over all aspects of the negotiation so as to never seem weak. To maintain the perspective of strength and integrity, however false, the terrorists plant bombs, blowing up a local market, considered by them a political message — retaliation for the government attempt to interfere with or regulate the means of cocaine production. (The political ideology of the Marxist revolution has been completely corrupted by and appropriated into the drug trade.) In the Third World, where kidnapping is considered a lucrative business, the ﬁnal solution short of paying is the counterterrorist extraction attempt.

Prophet (1998: d. Fred Olen Ray as Ed Raymond) A CIA agent and his female partner have to catch ﬁve members of a terrorist group, all of them bombers. The terrorists all have telepathic abilities. Soon the agency orders the protagonist “terminated” before he can learn more about the situation. Hunted by other agents, he soon comes to believe that the terrorist suspects are the innocent victims of a government experiment kept secret for 30 years. In the end, he realizes that he too was a part of the experiment and uses his powers to expose the cover-up. Prophet has a footnote in action-exploitation cinema as marking the teaming between veteran producer Roger Corman and the emerging team of Armitraj-Stevens. The ﬁlm itself is merely a vehicle for third-string martial arts star Don “The Dragon” Wilson. It is concerned with the mystique of covert operations and cuts from secret experiments in the 1960s to their ramiﬁcations in the present day. The villains here are a terrorist cult similar to the Japanese Aum cult: The CIA knows where they are but are unwilling to make the same mistakes the FBI did in Waco and so send a priority undercover agent. A

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terrorist cult on domestic soil is not usually the CIA’s jurisdiction but the ﬁlm establishes them as cooperating with the FBI in this instance, the subtext being the need for greater interdepartmental cooperation in ﬁghting terrorist threats. As the protagonist has nightmares of his role in previous experiments, the ﬁlm segues into horror: All of the supposed terrorists are mentally disturbed as a result of experiments conducted by the U.S. government. Like the telepathic misﬁts in director David Cronenberg’s Scanners they are gradually compiling an underground terror organization. The ﬁlm endeavors to establish a link between terrorism and psychiatric disorder, tying into a popular (mis)conception that terrorists must be crazy to do what they do although the ﬁlm is more concerned with what made them crazy to begin with, a question it answers with B-movie sci-ﬁ conventions. As is typical in such low-budget movies, force is the best way of handling all problems. However, the agents in pursuit begin to question their orders when the people they are assigned to catch do not meet the established “proﬁle” of a terrorist although just what this proﬁle is remains undisclosed. Tying neatly into the concern about religious cults following Waco, director Ray in one of his more thematically rich works slyly injects a sense of mounting paranoia as trust is ﬁrst questioned and then eroded in what is a conspiratorial premise. However, the ﬁlm uses the initial hook of “terrorism” to venture into another direction. Without a discernable visual style, Prophet lacks the authority that Cronenberg brought to Scanners, the obvious source material. By labeling people “terrorists,” the government has an easy excuse to eliminate anyone it considers undesirable. As the ﬁlm reveals its subtext of experimental brainwashing it takes its martial arts premise into science ﬁction–horror, eventually jettisoning the terrorist subtext altogether.

Quarantine (1999: d. Chuck Bowman) A terrorist group gains control of a lethal virus which could destroy the entire human race. The U.S. president learns that the terrorists have destroyed whole villages and so enlists a scientist and his team to ﬁnd a cure as he retreats to a safe zone, an island. The terrorists plan to ﬂy the virus within a plane load of kids into the safe zone. The terrorist group, calling themselves “The Gleaming Sword,” acts throughout Europe to secure the virus, the U.S. worrying about stockpiles in a ﬁlm concerned with the threat of biological terrorism and the need for proper countermeasure procedures. As is usual for 1990s cinema, the terrorists exist as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The president, as symbolic patriarch, is a father and family man whose daughter wants a family of her own. In that, he must weigh his personal responsibility with his national responsibility as head of state. Quarantine develops this familial situation in the manner of a soap-operatic telemovie before examining the role of the Center for Disease Control in terrorist threats to Americans. In this, the ﬁlm anticipates a theme that would make headlines in the wake of 9/11 and the initial anthrax attacks. Quarantine combines the virus-on-the-loose genre of Outbreak with the threat of terrorist attack, stressing the need for preemptive covert means of defense, although these backﬁre in the course of the movie. As the virus is airborne, the ease of international travel is revealed to help spread it and aid the terrorist cause. (Such air travel was also the means of a biological apocalypse in 12 Monkeys.) With such a virus in motion, the ﬁlm suggests that the government will have an existing quarantine plan wherein VIPs will be isolated and protected to ensure the continuance of American government, a scenario also found

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in Deep Impact. Though it descends into standard children-in-jeopardy subplots, Quarantine nevertheless emerges a superior telemovie dealing with a worst-case-scenario terror attack. Once the plane containing the virus, and the children, lands in the safe zone, the terrorist holds it hostage and says that he will hand over a cure for the virus if the president meets his demands, hoping to prove himself the power equal of the president. The terrorist is revealed to have had a family killed in U.S. bombing raids and is now seeking to destroy the U.S. way of life in retaliation: Terrorism is not political-ideological, but vengeful. In this, the ﬁlm ties again into a 1990s trend that sought to divorce terrorism from its political component and anchor it in more recognizable motives like criminality or, as here, vengeance.

Raid on Entebbe (1977: d. Irvin Kershner) The telemovie Raid on Entebbe was one of three ﬁlms — the others being Victory at Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt— made about the true-life Ugandan hostage crisis, where a plane of Jewish passengers was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and diverted to Uganda where Idi Amin tried to assert control only to be humiliated by a successful Israeli counterterror raid to rescue the hostages and deliver them safely back to Israel. Beginning in Athens in 1976, the ﬁlm develops a proﬁle of the individual passengers in the manner of the then-popular disaster movie. Boarding the plane essentially commences the drama as the Jewish presence is established. As is typical of such airline hostage dramas, the hijacking is the key set-piece — the dramatization of the usurpation of the right to self-determination by the terrorist enemy, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The terrorist leader asserts his ego by claiming to be in charge and imposing his will on others, director Kershner suggesting that he is driven by a psychological need to prove his potency which overwhelms, or at least underlies, his political convictions and anti–Israeli sentiments. Ruthlessness is integral to the terror agenda and, this ﬁlm suggests, demands ruthlessness in return — force in reprisal is all the terrorists understand. Interestingly, the terrorists speak German, suggesting the inheritance of history’s anti–Semitic tendencies. Uganda is depicted as a rogue state that allies itself to Arab-Israeli terrorism for few reasons other than the ego of its dictator Idi Amin. Although Amin tries to play up the politics of the situation, the Israelis consider the terrorists murderers and nothing else. Amin himself is depicted as a dangerous buffoon. With international authorities and the Israelis eager to avoid another Munich massacre, a covert mission is planned with care. Meanwhile Amin takes the opportunity to use his association with the terrorists for selfaggrandizement. The terrorists also seize on this agenda, determined to prove their power, demanding that their revolutionary brothers and sisters in Europe and Israel be released. In this, Kershner suggests that terrorism is a kind of fraternity which spans nations or even individual political convictions. The second important set-piece here is the selection, in which the Jewish passengers are isolated from the rest, a reference to the Nazi selection process in World War II and also later reworked in The Delta Force. The view here is that the persecution of the Jews continues throughout history in almost ritualistic guise. Israel, in response, has no choice but to defend itself and launch a counterterror mission, needing to balance the response to Palestinian terror with their international obligations to their supporters and

Rangers / Red Eye

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detractors in the global political spectrum of the UN. The counterterror raid becomes the third important set-piece deﬁning the hijack drama in the cinema of terrorism, a response to terror meeting force with force and in this case vindicating the Israeli perspective that any belief in freedom must be acted upon to ensure it. On a curious but telling note, the terrorist leader will not use a hand grenade when the opportunity presents itself, revealing that he too has some humanity after all.

Rangers (1999: d. Jay Andrews) An Army team raids the desert hideout of a known embassy bomber and terrorist. A man is wounded and blames the team, later siding with the terrorists in their ﬁght to eliminate the specialist Army team. He organizes a raid on an Atlanta government building where the terrorist leader is being held, hoping to secure his release. Rangers begins with a clear political statement: the necessity to go after the terrorists where they live even though the mission is a violation of the UN mandate regarding unilateral action. The extraction of the terrorist leader, a vaguely Bin Laden ﬁgure, was a staged mission, however, not meant to succeed; and an American left behind to die (an African American betrayed by whites) switches his loyalty to the Islamic anti–American cause when he realizes that he was set up by a government that needs its greatest enemy alive to score political points. Thus, the ﬁlm subverts its initial point by suggesting that the U.S. anti-terrorist rhetoric is a front, although the motives for the U.S. ambivalence and even support for the terrorists remains unclear and unaddressed. The irony of the situation interests director Andrews, whose protagonist becomes a mercenary motivated by revenge and greed, a typical 1990s disassociation of the motives behind terrorism from political to criminal enterprise. By making the terrorists more powerful, the CIA secures increased government funding: The anti-terror mission was thus a “fund-raiser” and a front, a theme also developed in The Long Kiss Goodnight. In this cynical political climate, the terrorist leader functions as an absent signiﬁer throughout most of the ﬁlm, his terrorist agenda incidental to the protagonist’s desire for revenge at being set up as a patsy in a covert government operation. A massive terrorist reprisal campaign in the U.S. homeland recalls Invasion USA though is here intended to demonstrate the possibility of a war on American soil with Islamic terrorists. The fear now is no longer the Russian enemy of the Cold War but the new emergent Islamic terrorist threat, organized and set to replace the Cold War agenda, a theme topping off the 1990s obsession with post–Cold War terrorism by relocating it speciﬁcally to Middle East trouble spots. In this way, Rangers is perhaps the one terrorist ﬁlm of the 1990s to speciﬁcally address the pre–9/11 threat to America posed by Osama Bin Laden.

Red Eye (2005: d. Wes Craven) A woman (Rachel McAdams) is forced by circumstance to participate in an assassination plot during a ﬂight to Miami. Although unconcerned with political terrorism, the ﬁlm clearly reveals itself as a post–9/11 thriller when the protagonist, waiting to catch her ﬂight, watches a television news broadcast by the Department of Homeland Security concerning the safety of air travel. Such a concern was, of course, a repercussion of 9/11 and a fact of life in the War on Terror. Director Wes Craven sets up this context deliberately in order to plant the fear of terrorism and hijack into the unfolding suspense. As Craven was a literature professor before turning to radically subversive horror in Last House on

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the Left, it seems his post–Scream playful sense of genre self-consciousness concerns the potential relationship between terror in the generic horror sense he knows so well and terror in the sense deﬁned since 9/11: the everyday War on Terror social context of terrorist fears of air travel safety. Red Eye is the ﬁrst horror movie post–9/11 to acknowledge the effect of that now epochal event. The conﬂation of terrorism and generic “terror” is an interesting conceit and Craven explores the new possibilities for airline thrillers in the War on Terror in a manner evocative of what, thanks to the hit Final Destination series, is America’s new cultural phobia — air travel post–9/11. When the protagonist ﬁrst becomes suspicious of the passenger next to her, her ﬁrst concern is with hijacking; the passenger replies that he’s not “suicidal.” The fear of airline hijacking in the War on Terror saturates and deﬁnes the suspense in Red Eye. Even the title — airport lounge jargon for the last late-night connecting ﬂight — anchors this ﬁlm in post–9/11 populist fears of terrorism. Yet, the plot that unfolds does not become a terrorist ﬁlm in the sense needed to make this ﬁlm truly a part of the subgenre rather than merely being contextually driven by it: Red Eye’s generic intertextuality is not to terrorist cinema but to contemporary thriller, here especially showing the inﬂuence of former horror satirist Larry Cohen’s skillful scripting on the mainstream Hollywood hit thrillers Phone Booth and Cellular; and its sense of someone forced to crime to save another from being killed recalls the Johnny Depp vehicle Nick of Time. Craven stages several key suspense scenes evoking the national trauma of 9/11, most notably that of the protagonist trying to write on the bathroom mirror a warning that there is a bomb on the ﬂight — a device that was used as far back as the early 1970s and Skyjacked. Here though, Craven stages a neat inversion. There is no bomb and the terrorist ﬁgure here, played by Cillian Murphy with the disciplined psychotic rage he brought to his characterization of the villain in Batman Begins, redeﬁning the Batman franchise for the War on Terror era, erases the message. Craven considers Murphy a terrorist by allusion only, as the “terror” he inﬂicts is initially an individual, psychological horror before in the end resembling that of the stalking slasher. Nevertheless, as Murphy effectively coerces McAdams into doing his bidding by holding her father hostage, he usurps her right to self-determination and that is the ethical impetus behind the terrorist ﬁlm as a subgenre. Again, it is that conﬂation of terrorist with terror that makes Red Eye Craven’s most contemporary work: It is with Red Eye that Craven again proves himself America’s ﬁnest horror auteur.

Redacted (2007: d. Brian DePalma) Redacted concerns the daily lives of soldiers in Iraq at the Samarra checkpoint and incidents leading up to one of the most notorious war crimes of the Iraq occupation: the rape of a 15-year-old girl by American troops and the murder of her family, all innocent victims of American brutality. Beginning with a disclaimer to the effect that this ﬁlm is ﬁction, Redacted is inspired by an incident that was widely reported to have taken place in Iraq, with a title card explaining that the ﬁlm “visually documents imaginary events before, during and after a 2006 rape and murder in Samarra.” “Redacted” is a military buzzword for “censored” and DePalma here examines how U.S. authorities are concealing the truth of military conduct in Iraq from the American people, in this instance the rape and murder of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops, atrocities which make a mockery of U.S. democracy as they are dismissed under the term “collat-

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eral damage.” The context of a rape committed by military troops echoes director Brian DePalma’s study of the rape of a Vietnamese girl by U.S. troops in Vietnam in Casualties of War, the intertextuality conﬁrmed by Redacted’s tagline “Truth is the ﬁrst casualty of war.” The ﬁlm unfolds from several different viewpoints, including a video diary by Iraqi soldiers stationed at a region where they seem bored as they have had little contact with any insurgents. The protagonist intends his diary to be an actual war ﬁlm that will enable him to go to ﬁlm school when he returns stateside. His desire to record a war movie leads him to videotape the rape. The Marine ethic here amounts to an uneducated “fuck or ﬁght,” believing that the Iraqis get what they deserve as they are subhuman “sand niggers.” The two representative rapist Marines embody America’s gung-ho War on Terror ethic and for DePalma signify what American democracy has come to mean — a total betrayal of the ideals that once made the country great but now reduce it to occupiers and rapists unconcerned with killing innocents. Indeed, the might of the U.S. military is an inhumane duo which considers remorse for the killing of a pregnant Iraqi woman as weakness, saying that killing Iraqis is like stomping on cockroaches. These bastions of American democracy, in a story retracted by the media lest it blacken the war effort and cause criticism of the Republican authority behind it, raid the house of an innocent Iraqi 15-year-old schoolgirl, rape her and then execute her family. Redacted uses this harrowingly dramatized incident to indict the Bush government as war criminals and rapists in Iraq as the gang-rape coordinator (appropriately named Flake) says to the girl he is about to rape and sodomize that he is looking for weapons of mass destruction, that he doesn’t know where they are but he knows they are there and will ﬁnd them whatever happens. For DePalma, Redacted exists to analogize the Bush-led invasion of Iraq to the rape of an innocent 15-year-old girl, in much the same way that DePalma indicted American military authorities in Vietnam for the rape of another 15-year-old girl in the earlier Casualties of War. DePalma’s cinematic source here though is less Hitchcock than Peckinpah: A soldier at a check-point watches a scorpion ﬁght ants (recalling the opening to Peckinpah’s seminal Western The Wild Bunch) and the gang-rape leader Flake announces proudly that he is America’s “wild card.” For the third time in the cinema of terrorism there is the staging of a beheading video, interrupted at the last moment in The Kingdom and Body of Lies but here carried through to the end in a context which arguably sympathizes with the insurgents. Hence, the beheading video, convincingly staged, is not evidence of the “barbaric and brutal nature of the terrorists and their complete disregard for human life” but perhaps an understandable reprisal for a worse atrocity committed by American troops, there for no reason but to rape and kill the innocent. The hypocrisy of the American (Republican) military spin condemning terrorist reprisals is here scathingly revealed by DePalma with misanthropic irony: America is a corrupt and hypocritical warmonger in Redacted. Rape as patriarchal American tradition is a theme in DePalma’s ﬁlms and he again deploys it. However, here he uses it to condemn American moral and ethical hypocrisy by showing the American military no different from what they condemn about the insurgents, though DePalma elaborates fully and contextually on the daily horror faced by U.S. troops that would provoke such inhumane rage in its more repugnant men in uniform, many of whom would not investigate the rape and prefer to cover it up. The raping Marine’s wryly ironic defense is equally condemnatory of the American-led Iraqi

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war —“Bombing and killing them is okay but raping them isn’t?”— adding that prosecuting him for what he did is just aiding the terrorists. And, as no prosecution is forthcoming in documents subject to the title act, the lone Marine with a conscience reﬂects that he went into Afghanistan for the right reasons after “what they did to the Towers,” but that Iraq was a whole other matter. Concluding in a section called “collateral damage,” Redacted offers photographic evidence of American atrocities against civilian Iraqis, seriously impugning the ethics of America’s conduct in the Iraq War and making the ﬁlm a ﬁne companion to such as The Situation and Taxi to the Dark Side, both of which also sought to explore American war crimes in Iraq and those responsible. Redacted is DePalma’s most political ﬁlm to date, and one of his ﬁnest though essentially about the Iraqi experience as different from the War on Terror. It is one of the ﬁrst ﬁctional Iraq War ﬁlms to indict the American military as war criminals, a theme balanced in Taxi to the Dark Side which concludes with the revelation that George Bush as one of his last ofﬁcial acts in ofﬁce decreed that none of his government would ever be subject to war crimes trials. On the basis of Redacted and Taxi to the Dark Side, American democracy has become a hollow ideal which justiﬁes human rights violations on a personal and institutional level and makes a mockery of the American Constitution.

Rendition (2007: d. Gavin Hood) Rendition is an insightful political thriller in the tradition of Costa-Gavras’ Missing. It concerns an Egyptian-American who is removed from an airport during a transitional lull between ﬂights. His baggage is also removed and his name deleted from the passenger ﬂight recording his entry into the USA. His wife tries to trace him but there is no record except for a credit card receipt for a purchase made on a ﬂight, despite the nonappearance of his name on the list of passengers. As she enlists a CIA operative to investigate further, the Egyptian man is interrogated and tortured about cell phone calls sent to his mobile from a terrorist on a two-year bombing campaign. He is suspected of providing weapons design support to terrorists and is held without charge and tortured to determine his role in a bombing which begins the ﬁlm. In some ways a modernization reminiscent of John Frankenheimer’s The Fixer, Rendition mercilessly examines the cost to humanity of the increased powers given the CIA to detain and interrogate citizens as part of the War on Terror in the immediate post–9/11 era. The gradual revelation of the political machinations enabling the CIA to covertly move and torture terror suspects made possible by Republican policies post–9/11 carries the same sense of despair and rage against American political inhumanity that was found in Missing. There is also an odd generational subtext here: The authorities who condone the torture and violation of human rights depicted in this ﬁlm, the ﬁrst to graphically depict the controversial interrogation-torture process known as waterboarding, are older authoritarian ﬁgures represented by Meryl Streep in a role that develops the political menace she essayed in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate. As an examination of the ethics of waterboarding, Rendition concludes the graphic (but brief ) scene with a discussion between an onlooker and the torturer. When the suspect, who may very well be an innocent in a case of mistaken identity, doesn’t give out any information and the onlooker says that the waterboarding isn’t working and he’s giving them nothing, the torturer insists that the only mention of this in the onlooker’s report is that the suspect said nothing. The doubts the onlooker had about the water-

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boarding process’ effectiveness were to be kept to himself: the report could only mention a result, not cast doubt on the process. Its acceptance as an interrogation tool is a given — this is the morality of the War on Terror. The CIA sidesteps these ethical issues by having covert detention and torture centers operated outside the USA, usually in league with Arab regimes that have no Constitution, avoiding the Constitutional implications of “information-extraction” post–9/11. But in its subplot concerning the disappearance of the Arabic torturer’s daughter, the ﬁlm also depicts the Islamic school mentality that by implication enables and sustains the terrorist jihad that America reacts to by further compromise of its Bill of Rights through the obfuscations of foreign policy and covert CIA circumvention of ethical principle. Indeed, young people here fear a government that can detain and torture them seemingly at will, just the kind of undemocratic oppression that the CIA is happy to condone in exchange for utilizing its facilities for the interrogation of terror suspects. Arguably CIA political expediency threatens to reveal a moral hypocrisy which is frightening, although in this ﬁlm always contextualized so as to be rational — but rational perhaps only in light of the realities and Constitutional compromises seemingly demanded as part of the reality of being in the War on Terror. Innocence here is always doubtful. In this way, Rendition is the ﬁrst American terrorist ﬁlm post–9/11 to examine the precise ethics of the War on Terror bequeathed America by the Republicans under George Bush. It is the ﬁrst post–9/11 ﬁlm to fully update the terrorist subgenre: Where terror ﬁlms pre–9/11 depicted a drama of the right to self-determination it was in terms of the terrorist robbing such a right through terrorism. Fighting back against the terrorist design, in the ﬁrst post–9/11 terror ﬁlm United 93, suggested that the events of 9/11 now highlighted this theme of the pre–9/11 terrorist subgenre. A Mighty Heart reconﬁgured the theme of the loss of self-determination to the War on Terror in its dramatization of the kidnapping and execution of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl. Ironically in Rendition, the CIA are robbing the right to self-determination through such practices as waterboarding, the moral confusion between terrorist and counterterrorist being the moral quagmire which the ﬁlm feels will henceforth dominate the terrorist ﬁlm as a subgenre. Rendition is also very knowing of the political imperative to ﬁght the War on Terror, dramatizing the internal pressures faced by the CIA in this instance. There is evidence of a link to a terror group and an answer must be extracted and if such is interrupted by due process ethics, those who campaign for the rights of the tortured risk being called “Bin Laden lovers.” Again, the theme of patriotism is central here: America’s obligation to the War on Terror here seen in terms of the moral erosion of humanity. As the ﬁlm proceeds it complicates the issue further — eventually the torture works and the man whose innocence was in question confesses, a fact which vindicates torture to many, even though he may confess purely to avoid the pain. Yet, as awful as the torture is, it gets results. The moral ambiguity underlining Rendition is that this recognition of the expediency of inhuman compromise is the reality of the War on Terror. The expediency of torture, the moral imperative to win the War on Terror, and the potential compromises necessary to the U.S. Constitution to do so are the themes propelling Rendition. The compliance between the CIA and friendly Arabic regimes also ﬁghting Islamic terrorism to create designated covert torture zones is the contemporary premise underlying a searing drama of political and human capability in the War on Terror.

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The Road to Guantanamo

The Road to Guantanamo (2006: d. Michael Winterbottom, Matt Whitecross) In this combination of documentary and dramatic recreation framed by the cooperation between George Bush and Tony Blair in the weeks after 9/11, three British Muslims journey to Pakistan to attend their friend’s wedding, ending captive in Guantanamo Bay for two years until released without charge. Taliban support in Pakistan in opposition to the mounting American offensive in Afghanistan lurks in the background as archival footage, recreated scenes and interviews blend into an often harrowing but wryly ironic portrait of the celebrated media story of the Tipton three. Unlucky enough to be swept up in the War on Terror, these men were the innocents in Guantanamo: the humanity behind what the Bush government referred to as the “bad guys” held captive there. The Road to Guantanamo recreates the conditions of the American bombing campaign against Afghanistan and the confusion that resulted in the protagonists being unable to leave Afghanistan and return to Pakistan. By the side of the road waiting for a way into Pakistan, they come under ﬁre and ﬂee through a corpse-ridden desert until captured by the Americans, who throw wounded men into mass graves: American military conduct in the War on Terror featuring prominently a year after the release of this ﬁlm in The Situation and the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The treatment of prisoners in the War on Terror was a dominant subtext when co-director Winterbottom followed up his docudrama approach in A Mighty Heart. Allusions to fascistic cruelty paint a terrible picture of American forces: Terming the captured Taliban “dangerous” allows their wholesale mistreatment, including the innocents amongst them. Detainee treatment, military interrogation procedures and intelligence gathering from those in U.S. custody are under intense scrutiny in The Road to Guantanamo; these would be key issues underlying the resurgence of the terrorist subgenre a year later in Rendition, The Kingdom and Body of Lies culminating in the war crimes discussion concluding Taxi to the Dark Side which takes up the theme of U.S. conduct to examine the circumstances surrounding Abu Ghraib. These ﬁlms obsess about the dehumanizing standards of the Republican-led War on Terror post–9/11 and are disturbed by what they discover and its implications about Republican-Christian ethics. Donald Rumsfeld says to the press that the treatment of detainees in Camp X-Ray is humane and appropriate and in line with the Geneva Convention “for the most part”— claims also questioned in Taxi to the Dark Side. George Bush distances America from the detainees by saying “they don’t share the same values we share,” the dehumanization that justiﬁes the ethics of torture in the Republican-led War on Terror. Indeed, the values that Bush evokes as American democracy justify an abuse that makes a mockery of the American claim to moral superiority in the War on Terror — an irony also followed through in Taxi to the Dark Side as evidence of the worst hypocrisy: an inversion of the Constitutional credo “innocent until proven guilty” in the presumption of guilt that justiﬁes the Republican ethic of torture here presented as docudrama recreation. In this context, the efforts of the “dangerous” suspects to retain their humanity and psychological well-being in deﬁance of the American agenda to “break” them is heroic. Equally tellingly, deliberate disrespect for religious practice to provoke and offend against their beliefs — by kicking the Koran along the ground — is seen also as a form of torture, although ofﬁcially such does not qualify as physical health alone determines what constitutes torture. Psychological torture such as forced positioning, sensory deprivation and

RoboCop 3 / The Rock

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religious desecration are correspondingly exempt from Geneva Convention standards, and as applied to “enemy combatants” are fully justiﬁed by the Republican-led War on Terror not only in Afghanistan, as here, but in Iraq, as in Taxi to the Dark Side. Of course, the most ironic issue here, anticipating the 2007 wave of terrorist ﬁlms, is the reliability of information extracted under the ethics of torture and the refusal of the U.S. military to admit error.

RoboCop 3 (1993: d. Fred Dekker) A sequel scripted by comic-book guru Frank Miller, RoboCop 3 posits a giant Japanese-American corporation seeking to evict the people of Detroit to rebuild the city as a corporate paradise. Citizens groups organize resistance and are labeled terrorists by the police, just the label needed to ensure that the toughest means are taken to suppress and eliminate them. RoboCop 3 contrasts the prospect of an idealized future with the harsh reality of a displaced populace, the socio-economically disenfranchised ﬁghting to secure their homeland. Although a science-ﬁction parable, the allegory to contemporary political insurgent struggles is there to be found if one looks for it. However, the ﬁlm’s depiction of capitalist ideology destroying “ordinary” families and homes carries a heavy-handed irony within its caricatured satiric comic book–oriented visual style. Future America is depicted as a fascistic dystopia where corporate policy enables “freedom ﬁghters” that authorities demonize as terrorists. These terrorists are literally underground dwellers who resist the authority that would displace them from their homes, a similar notion to the underground terrorist group depicted in the later Sylvester Stallone vehicle Demolition Man. As the ﬁlmmakers are on the side of the “terrorists,” they are only shown attacking legitimate targets and never are civilians harmed in the process; it is state terror which enslaves and harms the civilian population here. The terrorists are a substitute family for outcasts and the dispossessed, driven to their acts by socio-economic desperation. Despite a context which draws attention to the expediency of labeling people “terrorists,” the ﬁlm abandons its political intrigue for a series of cartoonish, violent encounters with the throwaway humor one would expect from a ﬁlm far more interested in caricature than subtlety. As a fast-paced comic-book it works but its satire is facile when not risible. Hence, the Japanese component of the corporation thinks the American response lazy and so unleashes their own specially armed counterterror cyborg to restore order as the gap between civil order and corporate proﬁt turns the city into a war zone. In this, the ﬁlmmakers delight in anarchy and the chaos of revolution. Only RoboCop stands up to the corporate suppression of humanity, embodying it and rebelling against it with the last humane sentience left his cyborg existence. Armed resistance is necessary against a corporate America which would demonize the homeless and disenfranchised as terrorists in order to suppress their human rights. This armed resistance is not terrorism — indeed the label “terrorist” is here a mere construct, a tool of the powerful with which to demonize their enemy when that enemy ﬁghts back in the only way left it. The balance of radical satire and violent relish is intriguing but the ﬁlm lacks complexity, emerging more like a live-action subversive cartoon.

The Rock (1996: d. Michael Bay) Ed Harris stars as a rogue military ofﬁcer and patriot turned terrorist out of a benev-

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The Rock

olent desire to recompense the families of soldiers killed in action. With a team, he takes over Alcatraz Island and threatens to launch a missile into San Francisco if his demands are not met. Agent Nicolas Cage teams with Sean Connery — the only man to escape from Alcatraz — and sneaks onto the island to neutralize the missile and eliminate the terrorist threat. The Rock, along with Con-Air, cemented the box-ofﬁce status of Nicolas Cage as an action hero in the Jerry Bruckheimer–Don Simpson mold. Its terrorist threat comes from within the American military apparatus. Patriotism is here the motivation for terrorism as the ﬁlm explores the fear of chemical weapons falling into the wrong hands and examines the distinction between patriotism and treason. Cage as a father-to-be represents the American patriarchal hero charged with the responsibility of restoring a malfunctioning patriarchy, often a theme in reactionary action movies: A patriot, he must remove the traitors/terrorists. Although this is routine, the ﬁlm is most intriguing in its depiction of the terrorist leader Harris as a military hero motivated by benevolent reasons — his duty to those troops abandoned in Operation Desert Storm — but segueing into monstrous terrorism in order to see justice done. For director Bay, beneath the ﬂash visual style is an analysis of ends and means, an initially ambivalent questioning of which justiﬁes which ultimately resolved within the conventions of the action ﬁlm formula. Bay is an accomplished technician capable of staging technically proﬁcient and exciting action set-pieces, heavily edited from a variety of points of view, suggesting a more commercial John Woo but without the passionate conviction. Bay is interested in spectacle more so than the human psychology behind it and this intent weakens the ﬁlm in comparison to such as Woo’s superior Face/Off. Of interest though remains Harris, who claims that his actions are not about terrorism but about justice and it is through Harris that Bay manages to develop his interest in ends and means. Harris believes that the expedient end necessitates the means even though such means are morally reprehensible. But in the ﬁnal confrontation he cannot go through with it although his team is determined to see the terror action through. Bay admires Harris so much that he cannot condemn the character as immoral and prefers at least ambivalence. Interestingly in a pre–9/11 ﬁlm, the president announces in his decision to order air strikes against the rogue soldiers that “we are at war with terror,” the notion of being at war being the justiﬁcation for civilian casualties, collateral damage for the greater good of the security of the American people from terrorism. As Harris realizes the enormity of his actions (“My God, what have I done?”), the ﬁlm stresses the need for personal as well as governmental responsibility: the responsibility of the individual for the many, a situation also faced by Bruce Willis as the astronaut charged with saving Earth from destruction in Bay’s subsequent Armageddon. The emphasis on the Ed Harris character was reportedly at the insistence of producer Don Simpson, who guided the screenwriters over several rewrites, feeling that the original conception was merely silly. To ensure that the Harris character remained sympathetic, Simpson insisted that the scripters consider the memoirs of a highly decorated Vietnam ﬁeld commander, Col. David M. Hackworth, who in 1995 published a critique of the military mismanagement of the Southeast Asia campaign. Although an enormously popular ﬁlm, The Rock was despised by critics who felt it exempliﬁed the dearth of intelligence in American populist cinema.

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Rosebud (1975: d. Otto Preminger) Five women on vacation aboard a yacht are kidnapped by Arab terrorists. Their wealthy parents expect a ransom demand. CIA agent Peter O’Toole is assigned to the case. Rosebud was made as a response to the growing Arab-Israeli tensions as surfacing in the terrorist incident during the Munich Olympics, exploring the notion of Arab fellowship as enabling a terrorist network throughout Europe. Although the terrorists reveal a certain humane compassion for the suffering of their captives, they are distinguished by the ability to override any personal or interpersonal concerns and associated morality. In the basement of an ordinary house thus is an armory enabling those who wish to ﬁght to do so by any means necessary. The ﬁve kidnap victims are symbolic: All female, they are the product of capitalist riches, targets for those who have little but the weapons with which to ﬁght back and whose determination is driven by their perceived desperation. In this way, the ﬁlm extrapolates the real-life Patty Hearst kidnapping case to the growing rhetoric surrounding the cause of the PLO and Black September movements. Director Preminger’s concern here is with “political economics,” the rise of conglomerate culture and its disenfranchising effect on the individual, perpetuating social inequality and the rise of terrorism as a means of revolution. The process of capitalistic globalization and 1970s fears of the increased corporatization of the world economy is the context for the revolutionary terrorism of those oppressed by economic inequality. In this context, the terrorist plight is the ﬁght to regain the right to economic self-determination just as, paradoxically, their means of doing so in kidnapping the heiresses is to rob them of their right to individual self-determination. It is the delineation of this paradox in Rosebud that would inﬂuence all subsequent hostage dramas within the cinema of terrorism, itself cemented as a distinct subgenre two years later with the release of John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday. The terrorist demand is for the event to be televised, i.e., they seek media exposure to publicize their cause (Palestinian liberation). Regarding the fate of the hostages, O’Toole says to the concerned parents that the Palestinians need public opinion on their side and so will not act rashly in a way which turns this opinion against them. Such is how Preminger considers the role of the media in the terrorist means of self-aggrandizement. However, the dilemma the parents face is that neither the U.S. nor Israel can appear to negotiate with or concede to terrorist demands. The terrorists on their part seek to expose what they consider the Zionist political treachery that would deprive the Palestinians of their freedom: from this perspective, Black September members are idealists who would expose by force what they consider to be political wrongdoing. In this function the terrorists also spread propaganda (anti–Semitic comic-books) although Preminger suggests that behind the propaganda are genuinely important issues of the Israeli persecution of the Palestinian population. This makes Rosebud a companion piece to the director’s earlier ﬁlm Exodus, about the formation of the state of Israel in part through a planned campaign of terrorism. O’Toole poses as a radical and inﬁltrates the PLO underground linked to West Berlin. There he ﬁnds a fanatical population ready to demonstrate their loyalty to the cause by suicidal terrorism and prepared to justify suicide bombing as a legitimate means of waging war. Their leader, an Arafat substitute, militantly proclaims that his goal is the liberation of Palestine, the elimination of Israel and the greater jihad against the West: to regain Arabia for the faithful in Allah’s name; religious fundamentalism on both sides

229

Royce / Rules of Engagement

is the enemy of humanity in Rosebud. Thus, all U.S. military and ﬁnancial support of Israel is despised, an example of American foreign policy which makes America as likely a target of terrorism as Israel — a theme followed through in the subsequent Black Sunday. In its subtexts, Rosebud is tremendously prescient of the post–9/11 environment, the comparison revealing that in 25 years the agenda of such Islamic terrorism is much the same, it possibly being a terrible failure of foreign policy to have fostered it for so long. This relevance to the post–9/11 environment does not make the ﬁlm any better than it is; but it was nevertheless the ﬁrst ﬁlm to show the very real threat to global stability from the Arab population on a so-called holy mission, which justiﬁes terrorism and which latches onto the Palestinian cause but whose intentions lie elsewhere. For Preminger, the terrorist’s claim of desperation in order to publicize their cause suggests a political desperation removed from the real Arab cause but perfect to exploit for media spin. Signiﬁcantly, the Israelis launch a rescue attempt and capture the terrorist leader during his prayer break: upon which Rosebud becomes rather preachy in conclusion, suggesting that the only real peace can begin once terrorism has been removed completely from the equation.

Royce (1994: d. Rod Holcomb) The secret agent of the title ( Jim Belushi) has to uncover a cabal of ex–CIA agents who wish to restart the Cold War. They intend to hijack a train carrying former Soviet nuclear warheads and sell them to the highest bidder amongst the awaiting terrorists. Beginning just outside Bosnia, the site of the latest U.S. war involvement, the ﬁlm equates Serbian atrocity with terrorism as the means of modern warfare. Despite this context of inhumanity, Royce is ostensibly a comedic action ﬁlm about an arrogant and vain agent — Belushi at his most annoying as a tongue-in-cheek James Bond wannabe. Typical of 1990s ﬁlms dealing with renegade government agents hoping to reignite the Cold War through terrorism, Royce posits that the world has never been more unstable than at the end of the Cold War and that it was the arms race that provided global stability. Disgruntled, retired agents are now terrorists-for-hire, further destabilizing the world through criminal enterprise. It is a view of renegade operatives involved in terrorism that began in the James Bond ﬁlm of détente politics, Octopussy. Although reasonably paced, the ﬁlm merely comprises a succession of bland action scenes which never surmount formula, the subject matter at odds with the supposed humor. Royce is nevertheless noteworthy for its depiction of former intelligence agents as morally ambiguous and conscienceless, segueing into mercenarial terrorism without second thought as to the possible consequences of their actions, delighting in the most amoral of these potential ends. Indeed, these rogue agents are found on both sides, the irony being that former enemies now conspire to bring back the situation that made them enemies, so well trained in anti-terrorism that they can become quite capable terrorists themselves.

Rules of Engagement (2000: d. William Friedkin) A disgruntled Marine (Samuel L. Jackson) with experience in Vietnam, Beirut and Operation Desert Storm heads a rescue mission when the U.S. embassy in Yemen is attacked by terrorists. The confrontation turns violent and 83 Yemeni citizens are killed in the process of rescuing the ambassador and his family. The U.S. government, facing

Running on Empty

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an international scandal, blames Jackson, bringing him to court-martial. His former friend and lawyer (Tommy Lee Jones) now takes on the U.S. military justice system. Rules of Engagement brings the military justice genre of such hits as A Few Good Men and The General’s Daughter (but dating back to the likes of The Caine Mutiny and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell) to the turbulent Middle East. The hostage rescue scenario also refers in part to the Iran hostage crisis of the 1980s and even to the aborted Somali incident later portrayed in the contemporaneous Black Hawk Down. The ethical issue here is whether or not there is any context which justiﬁes the cold-blooded killing of supposed innocents, and the role of military honor is distinguishing right from wrong in such instances — the “code of the warrior” as director Friedkin sees it here, continuing his examination of the ambiguities of judicial processes as begun in Rampage and the remake of Twelve Angry Men. The U.S. embassy in Yemen is presented as being in the middle of a hostile populace which resents any and all U.S. presence. The threats to U.S. interests, as a protest turns violent, are from armed Arabs, here generalized as a hostile mob. Likewise, the ambassador is shown as a somewhat cowardly ﬁgure ready to abandon his post, leaving it to Jackson to retrieve the ﬂag and ensure that U.S. pride remains intact. That reveals what is the ﬁlm’s main agenda: U.S. pride in the face of international hostility and resentment of its foreign reach and foreign policy. Ironically, military honor amounts to the necessity for Jackson to order his soldiers to ﬁre into the crowd of innocents to disperse those within it who are armed, the incident being tried as to whether it comprised a peaceful protest or a terrorist threat. Pressure on the military in such a case requires both a political solution and a scapegoat — blaming an individual instead of any collective military leadership. U.S. authorities are driven by the need to be seen to deliver proper justice over and above the reality of the situation in order to protect its interests in the region and its other embassies. Patriarchy in crisis is a regular Friedkin theme and here again he assesses the need to uphold and protect a crumbling patriarchal power eroding the judicial process in order to do so. The inherent ambiguities in the case allow external pressures to potentially impact the outcome, Friedkin wondering if military justice can ever truly be impartial. Media reporting of the “massacre” guarantees that only those images which present the U.S. as the aggressor are given to the media, Friedkin questioning what he sees as the bias against the USA in such cases and even suggesting it is such media reporting which fuels the Arab-Islamic hatred of America and the West. But Friedkin inverts this by revealing that the shot-up crowd comprised not a peaceful protest but were hiding armed terrorists. In short, the political necessity of appeasing the Arab community is covering up the role of Arab terrorist violence. The ﬁnal trial sequence puts Yemen in the context of Islamic terrorism — providing a terrorist training ground — and Friedkin suggesting that it is for political expediency rather than justice that Jackson is tried.

Running on Empty (1988: d. Sidney Lumet) Running on Empty deals with two former college radicals from the 1960s anti–Vietnam peace movement who were so infuriated that they bombed a government-funded napalm factory, hurting a janitor. In the present day they are still wanted as domestic terrorists and must live a nomadic existence with their children. One of their sons (River Phoenix) wants to live a life of his own free from the fate of his parents who must now

231

Sabotage

ascertain how best to give him such a life, eventually having little choice but to desert him altogether as they continue to ﬂee. The son shoulders the burden for the crimes of his parents, a loathsome predicament the ﬁlm rightly condemns as unfair and immoral. The parents’ bombing itself is seen as a righteous act: When Phoenix is asked by his younger brother why his parents did such a thing, Phoenix replies that the government did nothing when asked nicely and so had to be treated with force and scorn — there was no choice left. The irony here is that these former terrorists are now role models for a new generation whom they have made accessories to their acts of terror. Although the son has accepted their past ideological struggles and the righteous terrorism involved, he needs a life beyond them. As it depicts a network of former radicals and sympathizers, the ﬁlm has a sense of what these parents have lost as a result of their political protests. In this, it is the failure of the parents — symbolically representing the peace movement generation as exempliﬁed by the Weathermen — to provide a semblance of normality to their offspring which suggests the subsequent generation must separate entirely from their legacy. The irrelevance and transience of the facades of “normality” are regular themes of director Lumet, and here mask a genuine sense of desperation and longing for independence from the rule of the parent. Phoenix is at an age where he requires relationships outside the family unit, ﬁnding a girlfriend (who idolizes the 1960s and with whom, the ﬁlm suggests, he can ﬁnd a new basis through which to continue the radicalism of his parents’ generation). As the parents must get involved in a robbery, seen as a political act by the radical network, Lumet wonders about the excuses needed to keep up the momentum of radicalism once the Vietnam crisis was over: What was once a proud revolutionary stance has been reduced to petty armed and dangerous criminality. Although the terrorist act that his parents were initially implicated in was a “pure” ideological act, so many compromises have been made to the ideology since that Lumet wonders what net effect it has had. Indeed, participation in a revolutionary radical movement (the word “terrorist” is carefully avoided) here consumes lives and the parents’ decision to take their kids with them is seen as the height of selﬁshness: radicalism is now seen as inappropriate and inhumane.

Sabotage (1996: d. Tibor Takacs) A former Black Ops agent becomes a bodyguard. When his clients die, he believes that those responsible are the same terrorists that opposed his Black Ops force. Beginning in Bosnia in 1993, the ﬁlm depicts a raid on Serbian terrorists holding Western hostages. The rogue operative engages and shoots the terrorists when he is ordered not to. Three years later he is a political gun for hire who exempliﬁes the terrorist-as-assassin ﬁgure post–Day of the Jackal. Minor action star Mark Dacascos has been rather more fortunate in his choice of projects than many of his martial arts action movie competitors. Here, he works with a competent B-movie director for a look at the dichotomy between chance and fate in the lives of people who can never be truly free from their pasts. The assassin is here the force of fate coming to call on the protagonist as part of an unﬁnished game set in motion in the opening act. The hero is revealed to have been set up as the scapegoat for the initial action, a now disgraced man given a chance to redeem himself. In this, the terrorist angle is a mere springboard for the drama, a starting point through which to examine the lives

Search & Destroy / 7 Days in...

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of counterterrorists involved in lives long after the initial terrorist threat has been resolved but now realizing that the issues and means underlying terrorism continue in muted ways. Indeed, it is the villain who uses the means of terror as a hallmark of his profession, refusing to relinquish its expediency. As terrorism is mostly peripheral to the bulk of this ﬁlm, its interest lies in the depiction of the CIA as sponsors of terrorism, so that not everything is as reported in the media. Indeed CIA operatives here work on the basis of immorality as an operating principle, staging an assassination to look like an anti-terror rescue mission. Typical of the heroes in such action ﬁlms, Dacascos functions as a father ﬁgure, complementing what is “missing” from single mother and helpful FBI agent Carrie-Anne Moss in another narrative about the restoration of both patriarchy and family.

Search & Destroy (1988: d. J. Christian Ingvordsen) Search & Destroy depicts a standard counterterrorist mission in which a team must face down a terrorist group in charge of a chemical weapon which triggers psychosis. It was one of the last terrorist ﬁlms with a Cold War context, as here the Russians are depicted as revolutionaries and the KGB as in league with a terrorist alliance to wage war on the West. These Russian terrorists enter a secret U.S. Army research facility all too easily in this badly acted and woefully directed action ﬁlm. The terrorists intend to alert the media to the U.S. manufacture of illegal chemical-biological weapons in violation of the Geneva Convention. The hostage-taking is thus a staged event to generate publicity, but the terrorist ego is such that the leader would seek to use the weapon in order to demonstrate his true power as a rival to the USA. As the chemical weapon is loosed and quarantine procedures are put into effect, the ﬁlm segues into horror akin to director George Romero’s The Crazies. Sick and infected people become psychotic, suicidal, cannibalistic killers and the terrorist angle is not followed through as anything but a plot contrivance enabling yet another zombie movie–type predicament. Although a ﬁlm about an apocalypse it sees human nature as inherently violent and thus avoids any reference to the sexual anarchy of such apocalyptic fables as David Cronenberg’s Shivers and Rabid, lacking even the analysis of human rage in the rarely seen Graham Baker thriller Impulse.

7 Days in September (2002: d. Steven Rosenbaum) This documentary attempts to portray the events of 9/11 as a turning point in the American collective consciousness. Its patriotic intent is the celebration of the actions of the ordinary people affected by the terrorist incident — the cooperation and resolve in the face of tragedy seen here as evidence of an innocent, unprepared America “ﬁghting back.” It is edited from over 200 hours of original footage from several teams of documentary ﬁlmmakers whose ofﬁces were some 30 blocks north of the World Trade Center and whose camera crews were on scene within minutes of the incident. A cross-section of Americans remember the World Trade Center and their actions on 9/11, including ﬁlm and photographs they made of the World Trade Center before, during and after the terrorist attack turned it into the mythical “Ground Zero.” There is little mention made of the surrounding context of terrorism and foreign policy. Thus, full of outrage about the attack, the ﬁlm concerns only the American citizen response to dealing with a terror attack in isolation from any political or ideological context.

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S.F.W.

Hence, the ﬁlm sets up a theme of crisis management — of individual and group response to a national emergency. This context of crisis management, devoid of any real political comment, would linger until saturating the ﬁrst two ﬁlms made about 9/11 itself— United 93 and World Trade Center, the latter cementing the notion of Ground Zero into the American consciousness. Part commemoration and part commiseration, 7 Days in September edits together much of the raw footage and imagery familiar from television news coverage of the event and intersperses it with interviews with and testimony from eyewitnesses. The result is an effective documentation of America’s immediate response to terrorism on home soil and the patriotic fervor that resulted.

S.F.W. (1994: d. Jefery Levy) Stephen Dorff and his friend go to a convenience store where they are held captive by a terrorist group who set up TV cameras and claim they will commence killing hostages if live television coverage ceases at any time. The only two survivors face a media onslaught and are transformed into cult heroes. The title refers to the protagonist’s motto “So fucking what?” an anarchic apathy that had this ﬁlm drawing comparisons as a social satire comparable to Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. It ties into the emerging angst of Generation X, who had embraced serial killer pathology in the likes of Love and Human Remains and its aberrational dropout scorn as a valid lifestyle choice in an amoral, indifferent and even hostile world. The terrorist group, known as “Split Image,” forces a live telecast in an eerie anticipation of the reality TV wave that would consume America within a few years. The telecast ensures that the hostages become national celebrities, the ﬁlm intensely critical of what it sees as the mindless American cult of celebrity. The terrorists intend their action to force awareness on those who have suffered, ironically empowering those whose self-determination they initially usurp. For them, the media are an aggrandizing weapon and they seek to make heroes out of directionless people. All characters here are unsympathetic and unlikable losers, yet ironically played as the representatives of their generation, distorting media culture with the rise of so-called reality programming. The terrorist ordeal becomes a spectacle televised as mass market entertainment. Yet, their action only exposes the apathy behind the culture of disaffection consuming American youth. The protagonist’s motto is less deﬁance than the credo of an apathetic, brain-dead deﬁance where nothing of political signiﬁcance exists beyond self-indulgent hedonism for its own sake. It is truly an ideologically bankrupt generation being exposed and celebrated by these terrorists, the ﬁlm’s satire emerging in the extent to which these losers become spokespersons for their generation, so bereft of role models it seems as to latch onto anything “hip” the media spin that is the cult of celebrity provides for it to mindlessly idolize. Despite its ﬂaws, S.F.W. is more representative of the problems of Generation X than such Hollywood product placement-endorsing drivel as Reality Bites. In contrast to the ﬁlms of Greg Araki and even Dominic Sena’s Kalifornia, S.F.W. is so self-important as to become stale and redundant in its depiction of pointless disillusionment, subtextually nihilistic although reluctant to fully embrace this spirit. S.F.W. offers no reason for the terrorist action beyond boredom, suggesting ennui as the motivation for pointless social rebellion. In short, this is hardly a politically revolutionary act and can be written off as an isolated outburst of pent-up hostile resentment. Passing for

Shadow Man / Shooter

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satire is the notion that youth will accept as a role model a man with the message that there is no message worth listening to and that all life is pointless. As a demonstration and arguable validation of apathy as a solution to America’s problems, S.F.W. desperately tries for a “connection” with its audience of presumably disenchanted youth, probably too apathetic to think about the ﬁlm’s ambiguities and ironies. Finally, the two false heroes of celebrity are shot by new breed of terrorist — one who believes that “everything matters.”

Shadow Man (2005: d. Michael Keusch) Steven Seagal stars as an ex–CIA agent and now martial arts teacher who is used by rogue elements within the CIA to smuggle a deadly new virus out of the USA after it is tested on animal subjects in a secret laboratory. When Seagal’s daughter is kidnapped on a European vacation, Seagal must rescue her from foreign agents and prevent the virus from falling into enemy hands. A car bomb at a Bucharest airport shockingly reveals the danger of terror actions. However, the emphasis on the renegade CIA plan to sell the virus to the highest bidder is such that the political context of European terrorism that comprises the background is secondary to the idea of terrorist-enabling by black market biological weapons sales. That theme remains at the level of expository intrigue rather than serious political examination in this formula action ﬁlm, riddled with clichéd dialogue and stunts in the expected action movie manner. Intrigue with vague ideological motive can only carry this ﬁlm so far: Shadow Man is thus concerned solely with superﬁcial action intrigue and, despite its terrorist overtones, consistently fails to engage with them.

Shooter (2007: d. Antoine Fuqua) Latin American émigré Luis Llosa was the last to add signiﬁcance to sniper mythology, ﬁrst in Hour of the Assassin in his native country and then Sniper for Hollywood, Tom Berenger playing the title character in that instance, uttering the enigmatic line to deﬁne his profession as military hitman on assignment: “They’re all suicide missions!” Now there is Shooter, the latest action thriller from director Antoine Fuqua, one of Hollywood’s most in-demand directors following the Academy Award–winning Training Day. In Shooter the assassin is Mark Wahlberg. Wahlberg is asked by a Congressional Medal of Honor winner (Danny Glover) to speculate on the possible assassination of the president of the United States of America. His speculation is eerily feasible and he is thanked for his service to his country. The president makes a speech as Wahlberg watches, a spotter for the Secret Service. But the president isn’t shot, a visiting Ethiopian diplomat is, and Wahlberg too must ﬂee for his life, now blamed, like Harvey Oswald before him, as the lone nut sniper. Wahlberg’s only hope: a Secret Service agent to whom he spoke before ﬂeeing. The agent is played by Michael Pena, an actor fast becoming a ﬁxture in contemporary terrorist cinema, having hit the scene in Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center and then appearing alongside Robert Redford in Lions for Lambs. Shooter boasts a superb supporting cast, reveals a top-notch storyteller director of reﬁnement and complexity and evokes the political assassination subgenre from The Parallax View and Executive Action in Watergate-era America through to Oliver Stone’s conspiratorial view of President Kennedy’s broken Camelot legacy in JFK. Wahlberg’s rugged survivalist know-how matches that of Sylvester Stallone as Rambo in the original First

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The Siege

Blood but at times he has a vulnerability that enhances the ﬁlm’s sense of peril in addition to the political conspiracy intrigue. Terrorism is never directly mentioned; it lurks in the background by conspiratorial implication, not here the act of radical Islamists as in all the other terrorist-related ﬁlms of 2007 but a political reality that underlies American democracy and threatens to render it morally accountable to a lost humanity — the core theme uniting the 2007 terrorist ﬁlms. In the key scene, Wahlberg confronts the other assassin, who brings the morality of political assassination into the reality of the War on Terror, referencing the American atrocities committed against terrorist prisoners in Abu Ghraib as the hypocrisy by which we must now judge American foreign policy: “Prisoners are tortured at Abu Ghraib and only the underlings go to jail,” a fact which makes a mockery of the Republican Party here alluded to by analogy as corrupt and conspiratorial in their foreign policy tantamount to the assassination of foreign diplomats to secure political gain. Republican American political ideology in the War on Terror is literally the sanction of assassination, an implication this ﬁlm suggests but leaves simmering as a background context to what is an actionful political thriller: Shooter represents an infusion of the post–9/11 ethical confusion regarding intelligence-community humanity into genre, a trait it has in common with the other political thriller of 2007, Vantage Point, a ﬁlm more directly terroristic in its premise. The moral issue here is not the inhumane nature of the atrocities committed in the name of the War on Terror (addressed in Rendition) but what the government must admit it knew about and sanctioned. Government accountability for international foreign policy is a creeping undertext to Shooter as it is to all of the terrorist ﬁlms of 2007 in which American cinema ﬁnally set aside its reticence on the subject of terrorism during the early War on Terror years when President Bush decreed any analysis of foreign policy to be treason obfuscating Bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11— a topic underlying the assessment of Middle East politics in Syriana. Although Shooter contextualizes these issues within strict genre requirements, it stands alongside the key terrorist-related ﬁlms of 2007 as a demonstration of the ethics of the War on Terror transforming the ideological agenda and moral reference points of popular genre. Tellingly, the resolution of Shooter introduces a new ambiguity into the political thriller — moral blackmail: U.S. foreign policy makes it subject to moral blackmail in order to cover up the depths of its Republican immorality.

The Siege (1998: d. Edward Zwick) A rash of Islamic suicidal terrorism directed against U.S. forces abroad and masterminded by a clearly Bin Laden ﬁgure, prompts selective U.S. responses, eventually taking the terrorist leader as hostage. This in turn spurs the Islamic terrorists to launch a series of bombings in New York City. In the midst of such bombings the military is put in charge and a process of the racial proﬁling and segregation of Muslim-Americans begins. This ﬁlm takes as a given tit-for-tat reprisals between American troops and Islamic terrorists, a situation which director Edward Zwick asserts will shortly lead to a series of suicide bombings within the USA. Bruce Willis is the military chief assigned to keep the peace, assisted by a Muslim (Tony Shalhoub) and resenting the presence of an outside agent (Annette Bening). The rivalry between Willis and Bening suggests that American intelligence agencies are reluctant to cooperate and that domestic security is hampered by petty interdepartmental rivalry and hostility. In this, the bomb blast is an arguable

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lesson in humility directed against an arrogant and complacent American establishment, the patriarchy here represented by Willis. The Siege follows the process of investigation for domestic terrorism, examining the money trail via immigration records and centering on the Islamic community, with authorities knowing full well that within this subsection of American society that the greatest danger lurks. This notion of the enemy within — with the terrorists able to easily blend into the community — is tempered with the awareness that those able to be assimilated into wider American culture now face ostracization based upon ideas of racial, cultural and religious “difference.” The ﬁlm wonders, “If some enemies are hiding within, should the entire community be targeted in order to isolate them? Or does this comprise an unacceptable imposition upon their civil liberties as American citizens?” The questions are not easily answered and propel the narrative as Willis favors isolation and segregation in what is essentially a detective story set against the backdrop of domestic terrorism from within the Islamic community. The issue of the reactionary blanket condemnation of all Muslims on the basis of terrorism also makes for a background context. As tantalizing as these issues are, they are raised rather than truly examined for their political-social-cultural-religious origins and arguably exploited by the ﬁlmmakers for their timeliness alone. The use of force is taken as the necessary response in the eventuation of a terrorist attack. Willis says he is in support of benevolent Muslim leaders but insists that the entire community needs to be surveilled. What is most intriguing is the depiction of the terrorist suicide bombers — seen bathing and ritually purifying themselves for their act. In these depictions is not a political enemy, motivated by an ideology, but a humanity driven to mass destruction as religious commandment. Religion is the enemy of humanity in this ﬁlm, which uses Islam to exemplify the principle of the danger posed to civilization by religious belief. These terrorists are not poor and uneducated but afﬂuent and educated. What separates them is their religious fervor, their absolute belief in theist dogma — paradise and the life in the hereafter. Although depicting Shalhoub as the stereotypical “good Muslim,” The Siege still holds the Islamic religion to account for the atrocities carried out by its strictest adherents. In this, The Siege is the only terrorist ﬁlm pre–9/11 to examine terrorism as the direct result of religious belief. It doesn’t examine the speciﬁcs of these beliefs but anchors terrorism in religion nonetheless. Indeed, few ﬁlms after 9/11 have been bold enough to make this absolutely necessary connection, spelled out in Sam Harris’ bestseller The End of Faith. However, the attack on the U.S. way of life as represented by terrorism provides the military with just the excuse necessary to curtail the civil liberties of large sections of the American populace. Military representative Willis plays the role in terms of one-note caricature, so The Siege loses out on some of its thematic complexity. Nonetheless, it does seek to raise the issue of what should be the proper U.S. response to terror, when the expedient response is in arguable violation of the U.S. Constitution and the very ideals that the military and the government are sworn to protect. This paradox underlies the ﬁlm as the same defenders of freedom are quite prepared to condone torture — an ethical issue which would dominate the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism and which is essentially introduced here, making The Siege perhaps the most important and trend-setting of pre–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms of the 1990s. Indeed, The Siege is one of the rare ﬁlms of the 1990s to see terrorism in the context of religious Islamic militancy and not the result of the demise of the Cold War. The distinction between humanity and inhumanity in both

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terrorist behavior and counterterrorist action makes The Siege a bold, complex and involving work, offering no answers but full of speculation as to where the U.S. is heading in its “war on terror” before that phrase was to be ofﬁcially made part of the new American lexicon. Presciently, Sight & Sound remarked of the ﬁlm’s plot point that has agent Bening the lover of a terrorist that “it represents, in grossly literal terms, how the expediencies of foreign policy create strange bedfellows” (Hollings, Sight & Sound, February 1999). It is this context of terrorism and foreign policy that would dominate the post–9/11 wave of terrorist cinema.

The Situation (2007: d. Philip Haas) When a teenage boy is killed, an Iraqi community leader tries to offer monetary compensation to the family in order to keep the peace. But the population, many of them armed, are fueled by justiﬁable resentment of the American military presence in Iraq, seen here as monstrous at the level of patrolling troops and futile at the level of Baghdad Green Zone talks. In The Situation, the internal politics of the Green Zone are contrasted to the Iraq community equivalent, torn between hatred of the Americans and a questioning of the terrorist mentality that plants roadside bombs just as they tolerate it. The perils that Iraqis face for publicly demonstrating support for the Americans put them at tremendous risk, and only the poor and those in need of money are joining the U.S.–trained Iraqi police force. The Situation is one of the ﬁrst ﬁlms to voice concerns about the American strategic concern for a democratic Iraq purely for leverage against Syria and Iran in future Middle East foreign policy. Indeed, its political concerns are provocative: a contextualization of the view that the proper countermeasure to increasingly radical Islam in the Muslim world is forced democratization. The irony of this in contrast to the ﬁlms The Stone Merchant and Body of Lies (which dramatize the jihadists as seeking forced conversion) makes for an increasing ideological polarity: The Situation points out that in the War on Terror, Islamist fundamental absolutism is echoed in the Republican rhetoric of forced Middle Eastern democratization. Ordinary Iraqis caught in the middle of this conﬂict of absolutes thus understandably have divided loyalties, especially when confronted by the mindless brutality of American troops who go unpunished for atrocities, and every Iraqi associated with “terrorists” faces the threat of two months detention in Abu Ghraib. Iraqis live in despair and poverty while the annual $80 billion U.S. military budget goes towards building larger PXs so that GIs can “shop in style.” Such cynical asides distinguish the disillusioned American intelligence ofﬁcial (Damian Lewis). Lewis conﬁdes his belief to a reporter investigating the murder of a teenage Iraqi boy by American troops who beat and threw him off a bridge after ﬁnding him out after curfew. American authorities heading the Iraq force offer ﬁnancial incentive, a cash reward for every terrorist shot dead by Iraqi police, and the Iraqi police shoot anyone associated with known “terrorists” in the back and drive away, reminiscent of Los Angeles street gang drive-bys. The Iraqi imperative to prevent the world thinking they are religious maniacs needs favorable press reporting of American atrocity. Hence the self-conscious attempt to disassociate the daily lives of Iraqis from religious fundamentalism differs from The Stone Merchant and Body of Lies which endeavored to show that Islamic fundamentalism is a danger concealed from public discussion for fear of offending Muslims.

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The Situation is a cynical ﬁlm highly critical of the American military. A road patrol in Samarra, Iraq, detains two teenage Iraqi boys on a bridge after curfew. They harass them, beat them and throw them off the bridge without provocation, the sound of the bodies hitting the water leading Iraqi troops to think the Americans are having a swimming party. Lives of ordinary Iraqis have humor here, as a young Iraqi man sympathetic to an American reporter jokes that if there was a McDonalds in Iraq the Americans would never have invaded, as folk analysis demonstrates that the U.S. doesn’t invade countries which have the hamburger chain — a trope that circulated on the Internet post–9/11. There is also much irony to the daily Iraqi “terrorist” experience of ﬁghting American troops: hence a jihadist says that as the American dollar’s ﬁnancial status is weakening, the next time he is paid for his services he wants Euros. Indeed, the ﬁlm favors Iraqi sentiments regarding the failure of the American-led occupation (and the corresponding decrease in living standards for ordinary Iraqis living under American authority) so much that of all the ﬁctional terrorist scenarios of the ﬁlms of 2007 The Situation is the most hostile to America. The Situation humanizes the Iraqi “enemy” as much as the Iraqi “people” (represented by two men) it features as primary characters. One is a twenty-something Christian Iraqi photographer selling insider pictures to the U.S. media, with success to the point that U.S. authorities want to question him for possible association with terrorists, for which he would face detention in Abu Ghraib. The other is a mature man sympathetic to the Americans whose loyalties put him at great risk from his associates in a climate as anti–American as the streets of Iraq. The American intelligence community indifferent to the plight of these Iraqis as they admit futility and defeat also makes The Situation the most pessimistic 2007 ﬁlm about America’s future in Iraq, a questioning followed through to a much different intent in the 2008 release of Body of Lies. The Iraqi moderate here is libidinous, educated, moneyed and bilingual — representative of a class of Iraqi society not associated with the jihadi religious holy warrior “suicide bomber” ﬁgure emerging in the cinema of terrorism post–9/11. The humanism in this ﬁlm, cynical though it may be, is confronting in its disassociation between the Iraq War and the War on Terror: reﬂecting doubts of American intelligence claims of direct connection linking Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda made at the beginning of the Gulf War — reﬂected in announcements by Colin Powell which the 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side demonstrates resulted from intelligence extracted under torture sanctioned by Dick Cheney and George Bush. It is that humanism — shifting through the rhetoric of religious extremism that surrounds the War on Terror to characterize the Iraqi moderate position with both humor and wry reﬂection of the position of young women within Islamic society living without men to support them. The perils of living as an American journalist outside the Green Zone in Iraq are depicted with alarming immediacy. The “winning of hearts and minds” jargon that entered the American lexicon following the Vietnam War’s failure is here reconﬁgured in the context of the Iraq War as distinct from the War on Terror. And: the ﬁlm makes sly but subtle allusions to the prospect of sexual attraction between young Iraqi men and American women. In a genre where Islamic terrorists were depicted as sexual threats to the sanctity of American women, The Situation, like many of the 2007 ﬁlms, represents a sophistication denied the terrorist ﬁlm subgenre in pre–9/11 Hollywood ﬁlmmaking, which in 2007 were still well represented by Next and Die Hard 4.0. In the last act, the prospect of

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attraction between photographer and reporter in a war zone recalls the immediacy of the Nicaraguan-set Under Fire but with sharper irony. Ultimately, it’s the perspective on the Iraq War from the insurgent and moderate point of view that distinguishes The Situation.

Sky Riders (1976: d. Douglas Hickox) Sky Riders concerns the countermeasures following a politically motivated kidnapping by an armed group that targets innocents and seizes a house. A counterterror plan involves the descent by hang-glider of a team led by counterterror specialist James Coburn, a man also in it for money and mercenarial glory. The terrorists claim that the hostages are captives of the World Activist Revolutionary Army in the cause to “liberate the oppressed people of the world.” This was standard rhetoric for depictions of terrorist hostage-takers in the 1970s and 1980s following on from the real hostage-taking actions of the PLO and other Palestinian liberation factions after the events at the Munich Olympics. They believe they are ﬁghting the tyranny of imperialism. This ideological-political conviction distinguishes them from the counterterrorist expert Coburn, who is simply in it for the money. It is ironic that Coburn is seen as morally superior to the terrorists, the view of this ﬁlm being than political allegiance is a corruption of human nature. Indeed, the so-called idealists are not beyond also demanding money and the ﬁlm in turn suggests that it is money that motivates all human action, with political conviction a mere smokescreen for innate human greed. What distinguishes Coburn from the terrorists ultimately is an honor code: Coburn asserts one whereas the terrorists have none. This redeems Coburn in the ﬁlmmakers’ eyes. It is the lack of an honor code that enables the terrorists to imprison individual innocents without concern for basic human rights. Terrorism is shown to be in opposition to all tenets of humanity, the terrorist claim to be representing the oppressed people being nothing but hypocrisy, confusing Marxism with anarchy. The terrorist leader is thus shown as a former activist who advocated peaceful protest but who failed to achieve a high enough personal proﬁle through these means. Turning to force allows him, as he sees it, the personal and political self-aggrandizement that paciﬁst protest denies in a world geared towards the recognition of violent action. Violent terror is synonymous with political expediency in the terrorist mentality. Yet, his actions threaten the sanctity of what is held as the ultimate ideal of American Patriarchy — family values. The terrorist is monstrous for his threat to the sanctity of the family unit, the core operating principle of American patriarchy. In contrast to the earlier release Rosebud, Sky Riders is a fast-paced and escapist thriller built around a central gimmick — the assault by hang-glider. Symbolically though, American patriarchs Robert Culp and Coburn join forces to rescue the symbolic son from the threat to the patriarchal family posed by terrorism. The actual hang-gliding mission is well-ﬁlmed and off beat, making this terrorist thriller one of the more successfully gimmicky to emerge from the 1970s: terrorism as adventure. In its latter stages the ﬁlm resembles a World War II behind-enemy-lines actioner with terrorism presented as recognizable movie tradition — a trend in the cinema of terrorism initiated a decade earlier by The Lost Command and followed by the likes of Prisoner in the Middle. The ﬁlm’s closing reels owe to the likes of The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare and Escape to Athena more so than to any ideological consideration of terrorism, which it at least attempts to integrate. On the basis of this ﬁlm, Variety noted that “terrorist plots ﬁll the gap in contemporary

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ﬁlms left by the demise of old-fashioned patriotic war ﬁlms” (Mack; Variety, March 24, 1976).

Sleeper (1973: d. Woody Allen) Woody Allen is awoken after being cryogenically frozen alive for 200 years. He encounters a pleasure-driven world and falls in league with a revolutionary group intent on destroying the Dictator’s nose before it can be used to clone him. The ﬁlm is often regarded as the best of Allen’s pre–Annie Hall comedies, a futuristic vision of a post–sexual revolution America. It is inferred that America has been destroyed some 100 years prior by nuclear terrorism. Yet, a new revolution is brewing and the underground organization here opposes a placid future. (Sleeper’s premise would be later reworked as the action-oriented sci-ﬁ of Demolition Man, again linking terrorism to the social discontent of an underclass.) In Allen’s future, the artist-intellectual class that once advocated political revolution has grown complacent and shallow, pleasure-driven in their values. Despite Allen’s inferiority complex he is clearly superior to the forces around him and which make him an undesirable outsider who must ﬂee to protect himself. Kidnapped by underground revolutionaries, Allen is again brainwashed. In this, Allen the director suggests that whatever organization aspires to power will inevitably seek to shape and control the egos of others into an acceptance of what it means to be “free.” This notion of psychological programming is akin to role-playing; for Allen it is inherent in the link between person and persona. Diane Keaton plays the underground revolutionary terrorist, spouting the same leftist student-politics of the early 1970s which had inﬁltrated Allen’s earlier satire of Bananas. Keaton in this role offers a foretaste of her work in the solemn The Little Drummer Girl a decade later. Plot machinations reveal a bomb has been planted by the revolutionary underground as a ﬁnal act of rebellion.

The Soldier (1982: d. James Glickenhaus) A secret CIA agent (Ken Wahl) whose identity is hidden even from the U.S. president has to deal with a terrorist threat to destroy the world’s oil reserves unless the Israelis withdraw from occupied Palestine. The opening titles of this bleak ﬁlm equate U.S. democracy with perpetual global violence, with the counterterrorist agent Wahl being a necessary force in order to quell the terrorist threats that emerge as an unavoidable part of the geo-political order. The growth of terrorism is an outgrowth of the Cold War, with terrorist training camps sponsored by the KGB. Most intriguing is the incipient suggestion that Middle Eastern terrorism will supplant the Cold War as the greatest threat to American security. The Islamic terrorists are in league with KGB spies, striking at the Saudi oil ﬁelds. Anticipating the post–Cold War theme of “loose nukes,” the terrorists steal a nuclear weapon from the U.S. and threaten to detonate it in the Saudi oil ﬁelds unless Israel withdraws from Palestine. The ﬁlm holds that such a terrorist incident would precipitate Western collapse and ensure the spread of global Communism. In this context, the U.S. is forced to intervene in order to protect its oil interests. This suggestion — that U.S. foreign policy is motivated by America’s oil-driven economy — would dominate the post–9/11 peace movement. The ﬁlm is cynical in its assertion that U.S. foreign policy would only seek restitution of the Palestinian question when under direct threat of terrorism affecting its oil revenue. The Israelis are seen as deter-

241

Some Mother’s Son / Sorcerer

mined in their actions, killing Arab terrorists in the attempt to keep their land from the Palestinians. Israeli–U.S. cooperation is here a shallow alliance. In countering terrorism, the means of terrorism are deployed — the nuclear bomb is reclaimed and followed by a threat to launch it against Moscow unless the pro–Palestinian agenda is countered and Israeli authority over the region is unquestioned.

Some Mother’s Son (1995: d. Terry George) Helen Mirren stars as the mother of an IRA prisoner held by Thatcherite Britain. She must decide whether to continue her “normal” life as a teacher away from the Irish “troubles” or to ﬁght alongside the “terrorists” who share her son’s political beliefs. Director George co-wrote The Boxer for Jim Sheridan (who co-wrote this) and his ﬁlm is far harsher on the British than is Sheridan’s own work as director. He begins this ﬁlm set in 1979 with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s proclamation of a so-called era of “new hope” as she is about to enter 10 Downing Street. Thatcher’s subsequent agenda against the Irish insurgents was one of depoliticization, isolation, criminalization and demoralization. According to Thatcher, there is no war: The terrorists are killers, not soldiers or guerrillas. In this way, Some Mother’s Son addresses the criminalization of political terrorism with speciﬁc reference to the IRA troubles. Mirren’s casting recalls her work in Cal a decade earlier. In that ﬁlm, she fell in love with a younger man who considered himself a soldier in a war. In Some Mother’s Son she again must tangle with young men who believe they are soldiers ﬁghting a just war. She must thus recognize the dynamics of a situation in which those who believe in a political cause are being treated as murderers rather than prisoners of war: The son does not recognize the authority of the British court that convicts him. In his refusal to be treated as a common criminal he refuses to deal with defense lawyers, protesting his imprisonment alongside petty criminals by refusing to wear the prison uniform. His imprisonment unfolds in parallel to Mirren’s growing political awareness suggesting that it is simply impossible for any Irish person to remain detached from involvement in the political scene. Neutrality is a betrayal of one’s right to a political consciousness. Although reluctant to endorse the means of terrorism, Some Mother’s Son is in full support of the IRA struggle, clearly revealing the incorrectness and inhumanity of the British decision to criminalize political prisoners. One British ofﬁcial admits that it is a war but that the Irish should be treated like terrorists and even less than common criminals. For George, British hypocrisy is such that the government will treat it as a war in all but name, refusing to politicize the cause of Irish independence as much as they struggle to suppress it. The government ﬂip-ﬂops in its policy between treating the captured Irish as criminals or as terrorists whenever it suits them. Thatcher considers the Irish to be terrorists but seeks to treat them as common criminals to keep their cause from achieving any validity in the public eye. In this way the IRA reprisal killings are reactions against the deprivation of human rights by the British authorities. In that Mirren’s ﬁght to have her son recognized as a political prisoner is ﬁnally shown to win out, the ﬁlm reveals that her choice of political cause over neutrality was the right one: Only by politicization is change possible.

Sorcerer (1977: d. William Friedkin) Four desperate men are recruited by a company to transport by truck a cargo of unstable nitroglycerine over harsh mountain roads in order to put out an oil ﬁre many miles

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away. As they go through the various obstacles, including an encounter with a guerrilla group, they ﬂash back to their lives before this situation. A remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, Sorcerer was a noted box-ofﬁce ﬂop, ending director Friedkin’s unbroken runs of hits. A completely unheroic ﬁlm, it depicts the poverty of a South America plundered by international oil companies. Grimly naturalistic, it unfolds in vivid, exciting detail, capturing a world of futility and despair almost unrivalled in American ﬁlm of the period. Yet, it is only of tangential interest to the cinema of terrorism for its brief depiction of a South American guerrilla group and for the ﬂashback of one of its characters establishing him as a possible PLO terrorist who had to ﬂee Israel, now driving for his one chance to escape this Hell and return to civilization. The Palestinian terrorist — a man who planted a bomb designed to kill Israeli troops — is seen as just as worthwhile a contender for survival as any other displaced individual, the ﬁlm offering no moral or ethical judgment in a world-view of complete ambivalence.

Speed (1994: d. Jan DeBont) Speed was an enormously popular ﬁlm, making box-ofﬁce superstars out of the wholly inexpressive Keanu Reeves and the vapid Sandra Bullock. Mad bomber Dennis Hopper plants a bomb on a bus, setting it to detonate if the bus goes below a certain speed. Reeves, the top member of a demolition team, boards the bus in motion and seeks to ﬁnd a means of preventing the detonation. Speed ushered in a brief wave of bomb-themed movies (Blown Away, Live Wire, Final Cut and The Specialist) which intersected terrorist themes and contributed to the continued box-ofﬁce viability of the terrorist genre through the 1990s. Hopper here, though a bomber, is less a genuine terrorist than an extortionist and Speed follows a trend initiated by Die Hard in which the terrorist ﬁgure is equated with the forms of conventional criminality, downplaying any potential political ideology or cause. Indeed, when Hopper reveals his personal philosophy of the bomb achieving its full potential, it is pure gibberish. Shorn of any political afﬁliation, the terrorist ﬁgure here acts alone, his terrorism being the product of individual criminal enterprise rather than an act of collective political empowerment. However, Hopper does refer to himself as a terrorist and it is clear that the ﬁlm attempts to depict him as such, though in effect depoliticizing the term in a way which the ﬁlms that followed did not. What Hopper does have in common with the archetypal terrorist ﬁgure is a desire for self-aggrandizement through the deprivation of the right to self-determination, considered the hallmark of an essentially inhumane psychosis. Although motivated by money and revenge, Hopper is quite prepared to kill innocents to prove his intentions. It is this targeting of innocents that has the police here stop referring to him as a bomber and instead labeling him a terrorist, despite his motivation being purely entrepreneurial criminality. Hence, extortion by bomb threat is, like kidnapping, a form of apolitical terrorism and thus incorporated into the cinema of terrorism, making for a viable plot source. Amusingly enough, Bullock inquires of Hopper’s motivations, “Did we bomb this guy’s country or something?” unable to believe that such terrorism could evolve from criminal enterprise alone. Hopper’s ostensible last words are, “I wish I had some leftover purpose, but it’s just the money.” Thus, by reconstituting such domestic terrorism as the work of lone criminals, Speed disavows the genuine nature of organized domestic terrorism as

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Speed 2 / Spy Game

represented by such as Timothy McVeigh, rendering it a mere escapist action vehicle, although undeniably exhilarating.

Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997: d. Jan DeBont) Keanu Reeves refused to return for this sequel to the hit ﬁlm Speed. Here Sandra Bullock and her risk-junkie cop boyfriend Jason Patrick are on a cruise. Soon their trip is beset by a lunatic vengeance-seeking extortionist (Willem Dafoe) who threatens to blow up the ship if he does not get his money. Furthering the association between terrorism and criminal enterprise so popular through the 1990s Speed 2 is a dreary attempt to recapture the energy of the original. The only thematic note of interest is whether a shared fascination for risk and excitement will replace genuine interpersonal connection between human beings. Although Speed selfconsciously alluded to the terrorist ﬁgure, Speed 2 totally abandons any terrorist implication whatsoever, the disavowal of terrorism having been accomplished by the ﬁrst ﬁlm. With a silly, improbable script, Speed 2 furthers the debt to the disaster movies of the 1970s felt in some Hollywood blockbusters of the 1990s. Effective set-pieces are deployed through slick action and calculated humor.

Spy Game (2001: d. Tony Scott) A CIA agent (Robert Redford) on the brink of retirement discovers that his younger former partner (Brad Pitt) has been imprisoned in Beijing on charges of espionage. Pitt had tried to break out a female prisoner and get her out of China; the same woman had caused a rift between the partners years earlier. Redford takes on this mission himself. Spy Game begins with Pitt in China in 1991 responding to a cholera outbreak in prison. He fakes his death but is caught. Taking place two years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the ﬁlm posits that China is now seeking to become a superpower to rival and humiliate the USA. With a hyper-charged pace, as is typical of director Tony Scott, the ﬁlm develops a palpable sense of immediate threat. Pitt here plays a young upstart (in the mold of Tom Cruise in Scott’s breakthrough hit Top Gun), now part of the intelligence community “system.” The ﬁlm takes a matter of political delicacy — the U.S. president has to prevent the execution of a U.S. citizen as a common criminal charged with espionage, with Redford brought in to sort out the mess. The older, wiser patriarch is a traditional ﬁgure in such ﬁlms and is here represented by Redford, a man with Vietnam experience now training his successor (Pitt). The idea of Redford as a teacher would recur in Lions for Lambs. The ﬁrst half of the ﬁlm establishes Redford’s status as patriarch and the second half develops his mission to get Pitt out of trouble. The key scenes between them, and the ﬁlm’s bearing on the cinema of terrorism, are those set during terrorist troubles in Beirut requiring an entanglement with Hezbollah. Here, a U.S. intelligence operation is launched against a terrorist warlord operating out of Cyprus and responsible for the embassy bombings. It is a targeted assassination and the objective is to make it appear as if he died of natural causes. Pitt poses as a photojournalist in order to get close to the highly paranoid terrorist sheik. The important point is that although the credentials of patriarchy were established during the Vietnam experience, the Beirut experience poses new problems. Indeed, there is a sense of progression here — from the Cold War to Vietnam to the Middle East and China with the CIA as an inhumane organization using good people to

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further U.S. foreign policy agendas. In the Middle Eastern context, the “international aid worker” is a pretense for the support of Hezbollah: both sides in the conﬂict erect false roles to cover their real agenda — part of the game that validates and invigorates the intelligence community. Pitt’s mistake is to fall in love with a radical terrorist who worked for a human rights organization that bombed a Chinese operation when no one was supposed to be there. The irony is that Redford arranged for her capture as part of a prisoner exchange with the Chinese, though now is acting to get her out. Indeed, the CIA are not above deploying the means of terrorism if it suits them, perfectly willing to use the Lebanese militia to plant a car bomb in order to target a terrorist leader associated with Hezbollah, who here epitomize Islamic terrorism. The implicit suggestion in this ﬁlm is that if pushed into a practical corner the CIA will conspire with others to use terrorist means in order to restore the balance of power in their favor, regardless of the humane or Constitutional implications of their actions. They are capable of rationalizing the deaths of innocents as unfortunate but, insofar as the innocents were not the intended target, not the direct result of terrorism. Thus, the CIA is inherently hypocritical, using the means of terrorism but denying that it is in any way terrorism. As one of the immediate post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms, Spy Game is noteworthy also for its use of a suicide bomber to eliminate a Beirut terrorist, an acknowledgment of this aspect of Islamic terrorism as a major new set piece in the terrorist genre post–9/11. Curiously, several post–9/11 reviewers considered the ﬁlm inappropriate for release because of the skepticism it reveals about the intelligence community and its loyalties. Overall however, most criticism dismissed the ﬁlm as yet another glossy but empty thriller for director Scott.

State of Siege (1973: d. Costa-Gavras) In South America, guerrillas kidnap an American dignitary who was in league with the CIA and demand that their cause reach a public forum for open discussion and recognition. When this is not forthcoming they debate about what to do with the hostage, eventually executing him for his crimes. State of Siege is a seminal ﬁlm in the cinema of terrorism and one that was much praised on its release in the USA. The ﬁlm’s structure begins with an initial attack on what seems an innocent American citizen and then works back to reveal that supposed “innocent” man’s involvement in the incidents that made him a target. Cause and effect is contextualized by director Costa-Gavras, revealing that nothing was entered into by the terrorists without due deliberation and planning — these are not random thugs and criminals but moral idealists. The U.S. citizen, in one of several ﬂashback scenes, is revealed to have been told that he is a representative of Western civilization in the region, which Costa-Gavras sees as a demonstration of the innate sense of superiority with which the Americans approach South America. The terrorists seize only what they deem appropriate for their needs: They are an organized group ﬁghting to ensure a better future for the people, as they see it. They are a hidden presence, forever observing as their point of view slowly becomes allied to that of Costa-Gavras’ camera, the ﬁlm in turn allying its perspective to theirs, in effect sanctioning the killing of the American hostage. For the director: to observe is itself the preliminary of a revolutionary act — a politicization of ﬁlm aesthetics that Costa-Gavras

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State of Siege

shares with Battle of Algiers director Gillo Pontecorvo in particular. The terrorists are dedicated, youthful and purposeful and Costa-Gavras suggests that they must be taken seriously in a climate of bourgeois indifference (as demonstrated in a scene where a businessman sees a man get thrown out of a van, tied up and wrapped in a rug but merely turns away rather than help him). In such a climate, terrorist action is necessary to galvanize the population in activity against such indifference and oppression. Authorities here must respond to a spate of kidnappings on a single day, which they use to justify and publicize oppressive laws put into effect by the government speciﬁcally to combat the threat of terrorism. The government calls their opponents “terrorists” but the media refer to them as “the nameless.” The government outlaws the terrorist group, the Tupamores, in order to further demonize them as a political “other.” Hence, “terrorist” is a label for the convenient dismissal of political opposition, in effect denying them a voice in the political process of self-determination. Considering the terrorists criminals by extension is a convenient means of denying any validity to their cause. Although the kidnapped citizen is considered an innocent, the ﬁlm reveals that he was a front agent, spying to ensure U.S. interests in collaboration with a fascistic government. As the American was a primary ﬁgure in the repression of the local populace by a fascist authority condoned by an American agency out for economic and political gain alone, he is a legitimate target. Indeed, the more disclosed about the kidnap victim, the less innocent he is and the more the extent of American covert involvement is revealed. This innocent was a witness to acts of political torture (electric shock) performed by the fascist government and condoned by the supposedly benevolent Americans — he was an aide to state terror. In contrast to a fascistic government ready to torture to extract information, the supposed terrorists here treat their hostage fairly and humanely. Thus, the decision to kill him is not entered into lightly but debated (and even voted on) as a necessary act in order to deal with a CIA activist who was supporting the fascist authority’s military repression. In this, the ﬁlm suggests that U.S. international organizations seek to control Latin American politics for primarily economic gain and will condone repressive governments in order to achieve this foreign policy intention. U.S. counterterrorism is thus merely the rhetorical front for the suppression of political dissent: The USA will manipulate “terrorism” in order to demonize the revolution as an enemy of humanity just as they hypocritically condone torture and repression in order to ﬁght change; the USA are arch-conservatives who believe in the exploitation of the majority by the minority (a hideous indictment of American democracy). Amusingly, the terrorists’ demand of the release of hostages is considered unacceptable blackmail and thus undemocratic, just as the government uses their armed forces to establish civil control. Indeed, as the terrorists vote as to their captive’s fate, they are shown as the most democratic. State of Siege clearly shows that judicious “terrorist” actions are complex means of achieving genuine socio-political change. Terrorism in this context is a form of progressive revolution and justiﬁed as a means of desperate, but not conscienceless, action against a fascist authority propped up by American foreign policy interests. The U.S. is seen as the real enemy of the South American population in this ﬁlm. It is the U.S. support of the apparatus of torture that makes them monsters and hypocrites, a theme returned to in the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism. Indeed, the press here report that the so-called “terrorists” use violence far more judiciously and intelligently than those who label them and

The Stone Merchant

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would eliminate them. For Costa-Gavras terrorism is a means of achieving political change and he uses the ﬁlm to demonstrate how the political kidnapping causes a chain reaction which leads to the possible resignation of the South American country’s president. The government will not relinquish power and will execute captured “terrorists.” The ﬁlm was initially scheduled to be shown at the American Film Institute at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC but AFI head George Stevens Jr. thought it inappropriate as it “rationalized political assassination” (Derry, The Suspense Thriller, p. 120). On the subsequent discussion of what constitutes terrorism, Costa-Gavras said that “the word ‘terrorism’ is a word invented by the reactionary press to poison the minds of its readers and hide the justiﬁable acts to which all the revolutionary movements are forced to resort” (Derry, p. 122) and that he intended the ﬁlm to present “a speciﬁc example of neo-colonialism, and in so doing to show the faces of events that are hidden to the public... I think a ﬁlm is like a match or a detonator — you can make a big ﬁre or explosion, or nothing at all... It’s just the beginning of something, not the totality.” (Kalishman & Crowdus; “A Film Is Like a Match,” Cineaste, VI/I; 1973, pp. 2–7)

The Stone Merchant (2007: d. Renzo Martinelli) The Stone Merchant, an Italian–UK co-production, begins with a quote by Mark Twain intended to encapsulate the War on Terror: “Man is the only religious animal. In the holy task of smoothing his brother’s path to the happiness of heaven, he has turned the globe into a graveyard.” A professor in “terror studies” delivers a lecture in the jihadi movement from Mogadishu now inﬁltrating Europe. He is an authority and also a victim of terrorism, having lost both his legs in a U.S. embassy bombing in Nairobi. The ﬁlm is a genuine rarity in that it features a disabled protagonist. The reality of living with physical disability — loss of limbs — is tenderly treated (as are the issues facing a wife and caregiver to a disabled lover) but the disabled man’s “disability” as the result of terrorism here also evokes the “disabled veteran” becoming a means of eliciting emotions: from genuine sympathy to political point-scoring as in the interviews with a limbless Iraqi veteran in Michael Moore Hates America who demands an apology from Moore and is used by the ﬁlmmakers as a means of discrediting the American leftist antiwar movement by cheaply evoking the rightist patriotism of military service. Following a terrorist incident in an airport, the professor is asked to tone down his rhetoric and stop seeming to be a “crusader” (a loaded term; the Islamic enemy in the War on Terror regard themselves as holy warriors). He vacations with his wife, meeting a gem trader (Harvey Keitel) plotting a major terrorist attack. The background suggestion is that politically correct concern for Muslim religious sensitivity is preventing discussion of the War on Terror from focusing on the ideological realities of jihad’s Islamic core — the reality of this as a religious holy war to the jihadi movement, who demand of their enemy either religious conversion or enforced submission and death. This acknowledgment also informing Ridley Scott’s hit terrorist thriller Body of Lies. Well structured but unconvincingly played, The Stone Merchant is a terrorist thriller with unusual cultural parallels (whirling dervishes as evocations of those who seek states of religious ecstasy) in its study of religious extremism and the psychological trauma and physical ordeals of terrorism’s innocent casualties. Its framing sexual intrigue is ironic in this context: presenting the terrorist as sexually attractive. Thus, the ﬁlm’s exploration of jihadi fundamentalist ideology is complemented in the second half with a melodrama

247

Strategic Command / Sudden Death

concerning the professor’s wife sexually drawn to potential terrorist Keitel, a situation replete with allusion to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The key terrorists are at ﬁrst nice and are certainly moneyed — far from the poor indoctrinated in religious schools — and Keitel plays the character as driven by sexual attraction as much as a hidden intention. However, the supposedly dangerous romantic intrigue is clichéd rather than exciting. The professor of terrorism as a character also featured in Arlington Road. The facts behind the lecture commencing The Stone Merchant suggest the link between Wahhabism, terrorism and Saudi Arabia, themes also of the concurrent 2007 release The Kingdom.

Strategic Command (1996: d. Rick Jacobson) The premise of Strategic Command borrows from that of the superior Air Force One: Five terrorists hijack the vice-president’s 747. They are armed with chemical weapons and threaten to explode the plane over Los Angeles and release the weapon if their demands are not met. As in Executive Decision, a spy-plane containing an anti-terrorist team is sent out to intercept them. Beginning with the theft of chemical weapons, Strategic Command develops its hijacking scenario with a formulaic conviction born of the borrowings from Die Hard to The Rock. The terrorists take over the plane in a routine set-piece and demand that their imprisoned leader be freed and that the government pay for their actions against the terrorist group. The terrorists are ruthless enough to execute hostages to prove the seriousness of their intentions. However, the ﬁlm quickly becomes a familiar counterterror inﬁltration plot which owes to the hybrid of terrorist ﬁlm and martial arts movie in such as American Ninja III and Bloodﬁst IV.

Sudden Death (1995: d. Peter Hyams) Sudden Death is the second of star Jean Claude Van Damme’s ﬁlms with director Peter Hyams (following the hit Timecop). It is a familiar variation on the successful Die Hard model of rogue terrorist–like operatives who feign terrorist takeovers in order to proﬁt ﬁnancially. Van Damme plays a ﬁreﬁghter estranged from his wife. He takes his son and daughter to a hockey game which is soon the target of a terrorist attack designed to take the attending vice-president hostage. Van Damme must thwart the terrorists and save his little girl. Although amusingly paralleling the mindless violence of the hockey game to the mindless violence of its terrorist plot, Sudden Death is an efﬁcient if routine ﬁlm. Ironically, the hockey game spectators delight in the violence before them as a spectator sport but are unaware of the threat of genuine violence unfolding just above their heads. The terrorist connection concerns the threat by domestic groups to national security but these groups are less terrorists than offshoots of organized crime, typical of a move in 1990s cinema to link terrorism to criminality and disassociate it from any political ideology. The terrorist leader (Powers Boothe) is a standard egotistical villain, driven by pride and justifying ruthlessness in terms of a personal power-driven vengeance of sorts. As he takes the little girl hostage, he symbolically represents the bad father who would subvert patriarchal control and authority from those who deserve it. Van Damme, as the good father and worthy patriarch, must restore patriarchy to its smooth functioning. Sudden Death is a demonstration, though not quite a critique, of the U.S. culture of competitive violence.

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The Sum of All Fears (2002: d. Phil Alden Robinson) In The Sum of All Fears, a neo–Nazi terrorist group gets hold of a nuclear weapon lost during the 1973 war between Israel and Egypt-Syria and hire Russian scientists to use a plutonium contaminant to build a new bomb. They plan to detonate this bomb during the Superbowl in the hopes of starting a nuclear war between Russia and the USA from which the neo-fascists will emerge to bring a new Reich unto the world. Though planned and ﬁlmed before 9/11, this ﬁlm’s release was delayed because of the Twin Towers attacks. Signiﬁcantly, all material of contemporary relevance was removed in the preproduction process, making what could have been the most timely of terrorist ﬁlms into a mindless, escapist popcorn fodder summer blockbuster. The villains in the original novel were Islamic terrorists but this was changed for fear of causing offense. Thus, the plot of Islamic terrorists bombing the Superbowl, indebted to the premise of the ﬁlm Black Sunday, effectively offered this ﬁlm a chance to neatly bookend the cinema of terrorism pre–9/11: In Black Sunday, the plot is thwarted but in The Sum of All Fears it is carried through. But it’s a matter quickly forgotten by the ﬁlm’s end which sees the hero romantically involved with a woman and all reference to nuclear devastation jettisoned. In this, The Sum of All Fears is moronic escapism of little real interest beyond the circumstances of its production and timely release as one of the ﬁrst post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms. The ﬁlm merely extends what was a common theme in pre–9/11 terrorist cinema: terrorism as a result of the collapse of the Cold War as rogue Russian former Cold Warriors are in league with European fascist organizations. The neo–Nazis claim that the entire of twentieth century history was overshadowed by the collapse of communism and that now the climate is set for fascism to rise again. They resent U.S. imperialism for robbing nations of their right to self-determination and plan a nuclear attack to interrupt this imperialism. Far from delivering what the title suggests, this ﬁlm displaces genuine fears regarding terrorism on a plot so fanciful and unrealistic as to be ridiculously risible. Although in its better moments the ﬁlm works as a delineation of pre–9/11 terrorist fears concerning post–Cold War nuclear war, it lacks any meaningful discussion of the threat posed by Islamic terrorism. Here, the fear is the process of global destabilization assisted by terrorism. But the real fear in The Sum of All Fears is the loss of control over international political stability and the threat this poses to U.S. sovereignty and foreign policy. Of concern to the American authorities is the possibility of a new Russian hardliner coming to power unable to control all the segments of his military or secure his weapons. The ﬁlm seems decidedly nostalgic about the Cold War era and, a decade after its demise, ludicrously out of touch with contemporary fears following the ﬁrst World Trade Center bombing. Political stability is the primary intention of the U.S. government here. Other fears include Russian scientists being recruited into terrorist causes and the use of chemical weapons — by the Russians in Chechnya and tied into the stability of a new Russian regime unable to control the rogue hardliners. Cumulatively, the fear is that the terrorists seek to cause global destabilization by provoking war between the USA and powerful nations, the theory being that there exists a network of connection between all right-wing hardliners inevitably linked to a perseverant strain of Nazism. In this, the ﬁlm loses all credibility. The nuclear explosion during the Superbowl is realized with an allusion to Black Sunday in the establishing presence of the Goodyear blimp. As in Black Sunday, the American people are wholly ignorant of the threat posed to their security by terrorists. After

249

Superman 2 / Sword of Gideon

the bombing, the ﬁlm follows Secret Service agent Ben Afﬂeck’s race against time to prevent the escalation to global conﬂict. It is up to Afﬂeck as the new patriarch (his mentor dies in the explosion) to restore stability, order and self-determination to American patriarchy. In that the ﬁlm ends with the nuclear blast all but forgotten and Afﬂeck ready to marry and assume the role as husband and father that typically connotes the acceptable American patriarch, the ﬁlm merely trots out the standard depiction of a patriarchy in need of new leadership and in search of the best and brightest to uphold its erstwhile traditions. The ﬁlm ends with the terrorists killed by a joint Russian–U.S. mission, suggesting the need for international cooperation in ﬁghting terrorism.

Superman 2 (1981: d. Richard Lester) In this sequel to the hit comic-book adaptation, three criminals escape from the Phantom Zone and wreak havoc upon the Earth until Superman intervenes. Of only tangential relevance to the cinema of terrorism is the initial sequence on the Eiffel Tower where reporter Clark Kent is assigned to get background information on a terrorist group who are holding hostages in the Tower and threatening to blow it up with a hydrogen bomb. In its brief depiction of a terrorist scenario, Superman 2 suggests that terrorism is emerging as a threat to world peace and that terrorist movements demand only the anarchic and destructive overthrow of contemporary order. With the ﬁlm played for laughs, any thematic treatment of terrorism is submerged within the fantastical comic book–inspired goings-on and the ﬁlm jettisons its initial contemporary reference to terrorism and global politics in favor of yet another fanciful plot involving Superman’s nemesis Lex Luthor. However, what remains is a paranoid comic-book vision of the capacity for mass destruction falling into enemy hands, ﬁrst in a realistic terrorist scenario and then as pure escapist fantasy, the segue between them being engagingly carried out in director Lester’s disrespectful treatment of one of America’s favorite populist myths.

Sword of Gideon (1986: d. Michael Anderson) Sword of Gideon is a recreation of, and insight into, the events following the Munich Olympics massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by members of the radical Palestinian Liberation group Black September. Following this terrorist incident, Israeli Secret Service agency Mossad embarked on a process of worldwide retribution against those responsible. Covering similar territory to Steven Spielberg’s later Munich, Sword of Gideon begins with the invasion of the Olympic Village and the failed anti-terror intercession by the German military. Following this outrage, Mossad call for volunteers, recruiting a mission leader (Steven Bauer) who must weigh his duty to his country against his personal obligations (a pregnant wife). Israel is here considered a haven away from the worldwide enemies of the Jews and Bauer represents the mature generation born in such a homeland and having the duty to protect it. Prime Minister Golda Meir suggests that now Israel must stand alone against its enemies and is determined to strike back and meet force with force. She says that the terrorists are forcing them to become killers in eliminating the terrorist threat but that such is a necessity for the security of Israel. The specialist team is given the responsibility of killing the terrorists by targeted assassinations, ﬁrst against the Munich massacre organizers but then against other targets. The main imperative for the team is that no innocent blood be spilled, otherwise

Swordﬁsh

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they would be inseparable from their terrorist enemy. The terrorist targets are attacked not for their views concerning a Palestinian homeland but for their methods in the goal of achieving such. However, the ﬁlm is ultimately also about the Israeli counterterrorist policy of assassination and execution that the Palestinians would in the 1990s consider evidence of Israel’s attempt to destabilize their leadership and peace process. Indeed, the futility of any peace process underlies this telemovie. Once the team’s existence becomes known to the Middle East, Israel insists that this team of professional killers are different from Middle Eastern terrorists who have targeted innocents in the name of their cause and that terrorism itself is merely a form of non-discriminatory violence. But as Bauer realizes, innocents can be affected by the team’s actions even if not directly targeted. Bauer is eventually disillusioned and comes to question the imperative to kill terrorists using the means of terrorism when these terrorists are merely replaced by others now intent on reprisal acts against Israel. Contemplating the political futility of his actions, he remarks that he has now become an executioner and not a soldier. He has no way out. In one scene, terrorists use a priest as cover to shoot back, suggesting that benevolent Western religious interference is absolutely pointless and will merely be exploited. Violence seems to transcend any religious attempt to mediate it, just as it may be religious difference in the ﬁrst place which justiﬁes the violence.

Swordﬁsh (2001: d. Dominic Sena) A computer expert must track down a renegade ( John Travolta) intent on recruiting him to use the means of terrorism against terrorists, as he sees it, unaware that he too has in the process become a terrorist. Travolta wants to use a team of hackers to carry out his plot. A note of irony begins this ﬁlm: Travolta denounces Hollywood superﬁciality at the commencement of what quickly becomes a piece of Hollywood’s slickest gloss. Travolta talks of the means of his hostage-taking and says that the merciless killing of any such hostages in order to escape and obtain the ransom would cause a news frenzy and eventual policy reversal concerning the non-negotiation with terrorists. Swordﬁsh posits an intelligence community in which government forces are in league with criminals and abstain from any communication with the FBI or other agencies as they pursue their operations. Travolta makes a commanding super-criminal ﬁgure, a man whose genius and reputation seems inspired by The Usual Suspects. Concerned with the rise of cyber-crime and its possible links to cyber-terrorism, the ﬁlm follows its protagonist (Hugh Jackman) as he is emotionally pressured into working for a powerful, arrogant criminal who may or may not be a new form of super-terrorist. He knows that a policeman is on his trail but is seduced by the money and the challenge (as well as the opportunity to extricate himself from personal matters). The more he is involved, the more he learns of project Swordﬁsh, a government DEA set-up involving dummy money-laundering companies closed down but leaving a lot of money there for the taking. As it develops this premise, Swordﬁsh ties into the hero-hacker movies such as the teen-oriented Hackers as well as the caper movie then undergoing a resurgence in the popular Mission Impossible series. Finally, Travolta reveals his real agenda to Jackman: He considers himself a patriot and protector of the U.S. way of life, the head of a secret group who seek to make terrorism a horrifying reality as a means of dealing with terrorist threats. The circularity of

251

T-Force / The Taking of Flight 847

his logic notwithstanding, he intends to respond privately so forcefully to any terrorist action that no terrorist group will ever again think of attacking Americans. He is justiﬁed, as he sees it, by the Clinton government’s failure to respond to international terrorism. Thus, his personal terrorism and hostage-taking is motivated by a paradoxical patriotism and even intended benevolence, resorting to terrorism in order to properly ﬁght the terrorists and instill in them the fear of the severity of a U.S. reprisal. Considering force the only way of dealing with terrorism or the threat of it, he buys weapons on the open market. In its peculiar consideration of terrorism and counter-terrorism, Swordﬁsh depicts a desire to rid the world of terrorism by directly punitive reprisals: force met by force, but hampered by soft government policies in dealing with terror threats. In that sense, Travolta is not a villain (as he was in Broken Arrow for instance) but a powerful man fed up with government inefﬁciency over terroristic violence and taking matters into his own hands — a glamorous vigilante ﬁgure. Addressing the theme of what may be justiﬁed in order to protect the U.S. way of life, Swordﬁsh, a savvy terrorist thriller made with considerable skill, refuses to condemn its supposed villains, instead arguing that in the political climate immediately surrounding 9/11, meeting terrorist force by terrorist force may be a valid proposition after all.

T-Force (1994: d. Richard Pepin) Terrorists take over an embassy and demand the release of political prisoners. When hostages are killed, the robot-humanoid title force are called in. Thirty terrorists are killed but innocents die in the crossﬁre and the government shuts the force down, forcing the team members to turn renegade in order to preserve their identities. This comic-bookish ﬁlm owes much to the Universal Soldier series, with the title force being considered “cybernauts.” The T-Force are barely human, robots taking on human qualities, and are headed by a central father ﬁgure, a doctor. As they have an awareness of their impending death they rebel against their orders in favor of what they consider as their own self-preservation. Thus, the T-Force become an anti-law force determined to crush the authority they consider corrupt for wanting to shut them down. In the process they become a terrorist group themselves. T-Force is a mediocre action ﬁlm along the lines of the created turning against their creator, indebted to Blade Runner, and becoming dangerously anarchic in the process.

The Taking of Flight 847 (1988: d. Paul Wendkos) The Taking of Flight 847 is a true story based on the events of June 14, 1985, where the title ﬂight was hijacked and hostages taken. It depicts the story of stewardess Uli Derickson. Many “hijacked airplane” ﬁlms would concentrate on stewardesses as central characters after establishing them as part of the standard multi-character exposition ushered in by the disaster movie in the 1970s. Here, the hijacking premise is contextualized by verite news footage of the conﬂict between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite population as if this conﬂict will sooner or later directly impact upon American lives and domestic security. In this, the takeover-hijacking scene represents the effective end of a period of international innocence and indifference to terrorist conﬂicts in the Middle East, a true demonstration of how unsafe the world has become in light of the turbulence in the

Taxi to the Dark Side

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Middle East. The terrorists here, as is typical of many such airline hijacking ﬁlms, speak German, the current spate of terrorism and the legacy of Nazi anti–Semitism here equated with the Arab population due to their shared hatred of the Jew. Such terrorism is also hinted to be the next stage in an evolving world war set in motion by those countries who consider the USA to be “the Great Satan.’ Typical of the airline hijacking ﬁlm is the selection scene wherein the passports of all passengers are taken and those passengers of Jewish heritage isolated. The terrorists maintain that Hezbollah has a moral superiority over the USA in its treatment of women and children. In its depiction of the terrorist agenda, the ﬁlm suggests that little has changed since the 1976 Entebbe incident but that Israel is no longer the sole enemy, an equal target now being the USA as a result of its foreign policy support of Israel. A similar progression can be seen in comparing the two Menahem Golan–directed hijackinghostage dramas Operation Thunderbolt and The Delta Force. The dilemma facing the German stewardess (also to be dramatized in The Delta Force) is whether or not to participate in the selection process of the Jewish passengers. In turn, the passengers’ dilemma is whether or not to ﬁght back and regain the right to self-determination seized from them by the terrorists. As the terrorist leader (Eli Danker) looks at his reﬂection in a mirror, the theme is clear — terrorism is a vain means of asserting power over others by robbing them of their right to self-determination. Once the terrorist leader prays to Allah, it is clear that vanity and religious self-aggrandizement are inseparable in what insinuates Islam as a gloriﬁed cult of violent death. The terrorist offers as a rationale the view learned from the traditions of his ancestors — that people in the world listen to violence and anger as a means of achieving change. The religious justiﬁcation for murder by terrorism is thus something of an Islamic tradition. Terrorism as a catalyst for the advancement of a religious cause suggests Taking of Flight 847 one of the few ﬁlms to begin to explore the link between the Islamic religion and the acts of terror carried out by fanatics in its name. Yet, the ﬁlm also suggests that there is a personal motivation as deep as the religious conviction: The U.S. bombed the terrorist leader’s homeland and he cannot understand why the U.S. would get involved when all his people wanted was to be left alone. This motivation is far more difﬁcult to dismiss than his religious fury. Taking of Flight 847 portrays the terrorists with more depth than usually given them. In the terrorist’s command of a stewardess to sing for him is a hint of childish sadism and indeed director Wendkos feels that the terrorism functions as an attention-seeking act born of social, political and personal desperation fueled by mad religious conviction. Understanding the roots of this desperation demands that even such monstrous ﬁgures as terrorists be regarded as human, the ﬁlm having an understated faith in the power of human interpersonal communication to resolve issues. Still the terrorist leader is a man whose desperate action makes him feel important — a man of consequence, his terrorism an act of rather petty self-aggrandizement through the denial of the right to self-determination of his hostages.

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007: d. Alex Gibney) An Iraqi taxi driver is taken for interrogation as a suspect by the American military. He dies in custody several days later, an autopsy revealing his death the result of injuries sustained by torture. Investigation of this incident leads to a chain of ultimate responsi-

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Taxi to the Dark Side

bility for war crimes during the War on Terror that implicates the key Republicans of the Bush era: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The ﬁlm ends with the acknowledgment that Bush has legislated so that the U.S. is exempt from answerability to the international court for war crimes committed under its (Republican) authority. The human rights and ethics of detainees and interrogation of terror suspects is the subject of this documentary, which outlines the practice and ideology of torture as Bush government policy during the War on Terror. It is not alone in that concern and its eventual consideration of the legitimacy of waterboarding being the true legacy of the Bush era ﬁnds an echo in the graphic dramatization of detainee detention in Rendition and Civic Duty, two key revisionist terrorist ﬁlms also from 2007. These are themes interjected into the terrorist ﬁlm post–9/11 and Taxi to the Dark Side is a potent documentary exploring the ultimate responsibility for the treatment of detainees by the U.S. government and unraveling a chain of connections in the Bush era agenda of torture from the death of a helpless innocent in Afghanistan to torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. In that the Bush government here is responsible for the sad state of inhumanity and circumvention of the U.S. Constitution that is revealed in this ﬁlm, it is the War on Terror that Taxi to the Dark Side exposes and indicts with harrowing implications concerning America’s international reputation, ﬁctionalized in Rendition. The rhetoric of democracy is held in contrast to the horrendous moral indifference and inhumanity of U.S. military authority and even of U.S. foreign policy as typiﬁed by the issue of detainee treatment. Presidential authority in the name of U.S. security after 9/11 is the issue here: morality in the War on Terror years as exempliﬁed by the issue of culpability for Abu Ghraib and the need to justify an era of systematized torture sanctioned at the highest levels of government. The Republican-led War on Terror has brought to Americans a need to rationalize, justify and account for (excuse?) the systematic torture of detainees sanctioned by the U.S. intelligence community. Hence the sidestepping of Constitutional practice by the CIA in detaining and interrogating terror suspects at secret torture bases outside the USA revealed at the end of Taxi to the Dark Side became the basis for the feature Rendition released the same year, also questioning culpability for the ethics of torture. These ethics of torture are synonymous with American military authority and even American democracy in the War on Terror. Underlying this documentary is a subtext concerning the compromises the Bush government has made to U.S. ideals and its Constitution in the name of winning the War on Terror. Taxi to the Dark Side is a revelation of how irredeemably hideous are American military ethics in the War on Terror as sanctioned by Republicans George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and especially Dick Cheney. Prior to 9/11 the U.S. intelligence community treated terrorists as criminals (and as this book has shown, so did the movies) but 9/11 reframed the discussion to one of the rules of wartime engagement when Department of Justice legal council John Yoo and special presidential counsel Alberto Gonzalez participated in the drafting of memos to Cheney arguing that in the War on Terror the Geneva Conventions did not apply to terrorist detainees: America could circumvent international human rights. The principle of command responsibility under international law ultimately holds the Republican leadership accountable for what are arguably the war crimes of the Bush era. Taxi to the Dark Side reveals the horrifying inhumanity behind the staunch rheto-

The Tehran Incident / Telefon

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ric of the Bush era, which this ﬁlm equates with the legitimization of torture in a betrayal of the ideals that made America great, showing just how morally bankrupt American government became under the Republican leadership of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld (who have neatly exempted themselves from ever being prosecuted as war criminals, which this ﬁlm implies is their due and deserved fate in history). Taxi to the Dark Side documents what it is about American power that has alienated the rest of the world and remains a powerful exposé of the terrible inhumanity of the War on Terror, from the supposed “good guys” in Bush’s “our side or theirs” equation. Taxi to the Dark Side is a ﬁlm about what can be described as “Republican terrorism”: the ethics of torture.

The Tehran Incident (1978: d. Leslie H. Martinson) When a nuclear cruise missile is stolen from the Soviet Union, Russia and the West cooperate in hunting it down. A U.S. agent teams with a Russian agent, pursuing the missile through Iranian locations as they uncover an international criminal organization intent on global destabilization. The Tehran Incident is a cheap James Bond clone trading in particular on the premise of The Spy Who Loved Me, even to the point of sharing the same leading actor (Curt Jurgens) as villain in charge of a SPECTRE–like organization. It begins with a missile test in the Caspian Sea, then involves Jurgens’ agenda in attempting to steal it and use it to destroy a Middle East peace conference. Amusingly enough, Jurgens as the arch-terrorist mastermind here is a homosexual, typical of terrorist ﬁlms which sought to depict terrorism as allied to some kind of sexual deviance (usually sadism or pedophilia). Interesting for being set in Iran before the fall of the shah to the Iranian Revolution, the ﬁlm attempts to root its drama in American foreign policy in the Middle East. Despite this novelty and some tourist travelogue–type looks at street life and local culture in the shah’s Iran, The Tehran Incident is a resounding and dire mediocrity failing in its intention to be a fast-paced international espionage ﬁlm. The role of the American presence in Iran is, however, barely addressed as the ﬁlm takes it for granted that a U.S. presence in Iran is a long-term thing. In this, the terrorist threat comes not from Islamic radicals but from megalomaniacal Europeans. Local Iranians are mere bystanders in the ﬁght between powerful international forces. Despite its undeveloped premise, the ﬁlm does suggest that joint Russian and American cooperation will be needed in preventing a new global terror threat from emanating from the Middle East.

Telefon (1977: d. Don Siegel) Charles Bronson plays a Russian agent who has to stop a rogue hardline Stalinist (Donald Pleasence) from activating a group of suicidal, brainwashed sleeper agents within the USA. Bronson is aided by a double-agent (Lee Remick), and a romance develops as the two pursue the trail of suicides. Although only tangentially related to the cinema of terrorism and more of a Cold War thriller, Telefon is intriguing in that it indirectly addresses the issue of the suicide bomber — here a brainwashed agent ready to kill himself when triggered by a phone call. The targets are strategic rather than civilian, however; a few years later, the prospect of the Islamic suicide bomber on American soil was visualized in Wrong Is Right. Telefon is one of a number of ﬁlms which sought to address the politics of détente with the Sovi-

255

Tenth of a Second

ets, also examined in the James Bond ﬁlm The Spy Who Loved Me. Like the later Bond ﬁlm Octopussy, Telefon raises the question of terrorism by renegade Russian ofﬁcials, in this case hardliners the Soviets are trying to eliminate from the ranks of government. In the 1990s this theme would be revisited with much greater thematic investment as many ﬁlms felt that the greatest post–Cold War terrorist threat was faced by former ofﬁcials of the Soviet Union intent on igniting war. The premise of Telefon would prove hugely inﬂuential over a decade later: that rogue Russian agents would engage in acts of sabotage-as-terrorism in order to destabilize global politics and precipitate World War III. “Telefon” itself is a secret Russian project involving deep cover agents to activate in case of a nuclear war. These agents have been thoroughly brainwashed into accepting death and each mission is a “suicide trip” by what Bronson describes as “human time bombs.” In its way, Telefon is a ﬁlm about the equation between the old Cold War agenda and the possible emergence of terrorism. Terrorism itself is never mentioned directly as, in the terms of the spy ﬁlm genre that this movie alludes to, “sabotage” is the key concept. But, sabotage removed of ofﬁcial sanction becomes a renegade act closer in spirit to terrorism.

Tenth of a Second (1987: d. Darrell Roodt) When his wife deserts him a man feels betrayed and is used by a terrorist organization and pressured to plant a bomb in a shopping mall. Later he feels regret and contemplates revenge against those who manipulated him. Director Roodt, best known for his exploitation work, drew some critical acclaim for Place of Weeping. Themes of personal despair and interpersonal collapse seem prominent in his work as is the idea of the cold and impersonal city. The terrorist plot here is set against the backdrop of white South African imperialism and the tyranny over the black population. The imperative for Roodt is to begin teaching a generation that does not care for such political philosophies as apartheid, which Roodt sees in Orwellian terms. Signiﬁcantly, it is the breakdown in interpersonal communication which enables emotionally desperate acts which can segue into terrorism: such discontent is the perversion of idealism. Intriguingly, the ﬁlm was made before the prison release of Nelson Mandela and reveals that the government considers him a terrorist and would only release him if he renounces violence as a means of achieving political change, a parallel to the Israel demonization of Yassir Arafat. The terrorist protagonist, his despair and self-hatred exploited by the terrorist group, is a white man on the side of black reform and prepared to target innocent South Africans. In this way, the ﬁlm endorses the anti-violence measures and is arguably anti-reform, equating reform with terrorism and thus perhaps not criticizing the South African government’s condemnation of Mandela as a terrorist. For Roodt, the protagonist is a petty man who decided to make a grand statement rather than confront his own personal issues and who seeks to escape his concerns by immersing himself in the larger political sphere of “freedom” as opposed to tyranny. In the process, however, he becomes the tyrannical enemy of the same ideal of freedom he espouses. Finally, he even feels betrayed by the terrorist group who considers him a liability when he is captured and interrogated by the police. Signiﬁcantly, the terrorist group consider themselves at war and that any innocents are just casualties and any association with them ruins the lives of those concerned.

Terminal Entry

256

Terminal Entry (1986: d. John Kincade) Teen computer hackers spending a weekend at a cabin intend to hack into a restricted access computer. Once in the system they play a game, unaware that it is a terrorist communication network and that the acts they order are carried out for real. Once oil reﬁneries are blown up and diplomats assassinated, the U.S. government organizes a strike force to hunt down those responsible. Terminal Entry is part of the “teen genius unwittingly starting a war” genre as seen ﬁrst in the hit Wargames two years earlier and the “clever kid builds a nuclear bomb” plot of Manhattan Project. However, much of it unfolds as a cheap and tawdry sexploitation ﬁlm along the lines of the then-popular Revenge of the Nerds movies. The ﬁlm is one of the ﬁrst to consider the prospect of suicide bombers within the USA and that such martyr-minded terrorists do not respond to threats of economic embargo or sanction against countries sponsoring terrorism. In so doing, the ﬁlm questions the ability of U.S. domestic security agencies to face up to such a terrorist attack on American soil. Ironically, domestic security concentrates on the idea of keeping the borders sealed, unaware that threats emerge from within rather than from outside the USA. As the teens become the unwitting instigators of a nationwide campaign of terror, the adults are depicted as weary and overwhelmed by their responsibility in contrast to the anarchic irresponsibility of the youth they must deal with. These youth must learn the seriousness of the consequences of their actions through awareness of the global perspective on terrorism. Cynically, the ﬁlm suggests that the worldwide risk of terrorism will reach the USA if it is not curbed. Computer software and the proliferating game players of games with hostile political content (a precursor to the Internet in this ﬁlm’s terms) must be tracked as a matter of national security. The ﬁlm’s foreshadowing by allusion to the terrorist takeover of the Internet makes Terminal Entry a surprisingly prescient ﬁlm. Only by gaining access to the computer trail left by the terrorists can they be tracked and defeated. Terminal Entry would have been far more intriguing were it not for its irresponsible teen subtext, though it does suggest that terrorism is an extension of the godlike fantasy of power that teens derive from playing destructive games. Thus, the ﬁlm is far more relevant in its implications than in its weak, gimmicky execution. It is also quite cynical as to human nature: These kids are all too willing to play a game involving the assassination of government ﬁgures without questioning the game’s morality — an argument thus emerging for the regulation of such video games to children not old enough to fully comprehend the greater political, social and moral issues involved. Because a game is considered “harmless” it enables these kids to suspend the exercise of moral judgment and indulge in vicariously immoral fantasies which, this ﬁlm suggests, can have lethal consequences for the future of the nation. In this way, Terminal Entry is a highly moralistic ﬁlm examining the consequences of the removal of moral choice. The terrorists seek to effect world change for real whereas the teens have no concept of immorality having any consequence in the real world. Computer games are a substitute for reality and initiator of a pathological sexual perversity: As they play, they get increasingly turned on. The computer realm of the Internet ﬁnally pits the kids against the adults for the fate of the future world, neither having much of an awareness of the other as the adults know the game is real and the kids see the real as a game. Within this timely assessment of a contemporary generation gap around the issue of computer ethics,

257

Terminal Rush / Terror Squad

Terminal Entry reveals that acts of terrorism within the USA have the capacity to cripple American society.

Terminal Rush (1996: d. Damian Lee) A new airplane is tested by the U.S. government in the Nevada desert. An arms dealer has assembled a team of mercenaries (led by Rowdy Roddy Piper) to takeover the Hoover Dam. They take hostages and demand $25 million. Don “The Dragon” Wilson stars as a man whose father is amongst the hostages and who seeks to free him. Terminal Rush is part of a trend of ﬁlms suggesting the arms dealer–mercenary as a new threat in terrorism-for-proﬁt criminal enterprise. The means of terrorism are here, typically of 1990s cinema, divorced from any political ideology and shown purely as criminal acts, thus negating the very deﬁnition of “terrorism.” Terrorism merely presents a methodology which entrepreneurial criminals can adopt for their own ends, a theme popularized in the Die Hard series. The FBI realizes that despite the enormity of the action, none of the perpetrators can be considered terrorists in the strict sense of the term. The lead mercenary says that killing is better than sex, suggesting a perverse immorality that is otherwise unaddressed. Despite this addendum, the ﬁlm is yet another reactionary action ﬁlm about the restoration of patriarchal authority from the threat of destruction posed by mercenarial terrorism. The hero rescues his father and restores his estranged wife and child to the status of family; as a family man, father and hero, he has earned his place in the patriarchal hierarchy so typical of reactionary American cinema.

Terror Squad (1987: d. Peter Maris) A small Indiana farming town is beset by terrorism when radical Arabs attempt to seize a Black River nuclear power plant and hold high school teenagers hostage. A policeman and his team are sent to rescue the hostages and disarm the terrorists. Beginning with anti–U.S. protests in the Middle East by armed militants opposing U.S. imperialism, Terror Squad generalizes the entire Arab world as violent terrorists whose threats if left unchecked will soon affect U.S. soil directly. The Middle East is thus presented as the modern major trouble-spot affecting global political stability. The threat of Libyan reprisals for U.S. action speciﬁes the fears of terrorism in a contemporary manner. The hostage high-schoolers symbolize the future of America, its youth here having their right to self-determination robbed by fanatical Arabs who crossed over into the U.S. via lax Canadian border security. However, when the attempt to blow up the plant fails, the terrorists ﬂee to the nearby town and begin shooting up that community, revealing themselves to be mere murderers despite whatever political ideology may lie behind their initial anti–U.S. rhetoric. The local sheriff says “We’ve got a war on our hands” as he must deal with rogue terrorists running around shooting at individual, innocent targets. Once the students are taken hostage, the ﬁlm becomes rather more conventional. Signiﬁcantly, the terrorists believe that “as long as we have hostages, we are in complete control,” demonstrating, as is typical of hostage crisis dramas, that the terrorist usurpation of the right to self-determination of their hostages is an act of individual and group self-actualization. Yet, this control is in a sense born of desperation as in effect they have lost control of all else — such is the paradox of the terroristic self-actualization. Here, Islamic hypocrisy is a central conceit — the terrorist holding a gun says that he is not a violent person. The terrorists

The Terrorist / The Terrorists

258

denounce the U.S. but are not prepared to rationalize their objections in a meaningful way or to engage in direct conversation: No dialogue is possible with such extremism.

The Terrorist (2000: d. Santosh Sivan) Taking its basis from true events surrounding the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, The Terrorist is the tale of a young woman groomed as a suicide bomber in the last few weeks of her life before she faces the decision of whether or not to go through with her political and religious duty to the terrorist cause. Most intriguing is the ﬁlm’s depiction of the suicide bomber recruitment process and the role of individual feelings within those selected for this task. In this case, the groomed suicide bomber is a teenage girl whose dedication to the terrorist cause makes her a role model to many of her fellows. The suicide bomber is considered the subject of a highly privileged undertaking to the terrorist hierarchy (all men). Each aspiring bomber pleads his/her case before the recruiters as to why they should be chosen for the task and given the chance to die as a martyr. The process of indoctrination in turn leads to the romantic idealization of the movement’s aim and the corresponding validation of martyrdom as a necessary, holy sacriﬁce and noble death. The terrorist leaders consider the girl a “thinking bomb” and an invaluable weapon (tellingly, they have lost all feeling for her as a human being). Thus, she is told that her action will generate the fear and bloodshed the world needs in order to generate respect for the terrorist movement, a process in which media exposure is essential. The adult terrorists feel that children are ready to be indoctrinated into doing their bidding: there is little attention here to individuality or choice. Thus, the terrorist leaders here are faceless and unknowable in their remove from all humanity, the ﬁlm instead trying to humanize the indoctrinated rather than those who do the indoctrinating — the real enemy. Once the ﬁlm explores this context regarding the recruitment of the suicide bomber, it seeks to explore just what the terrorists would deny — the humanity left in the girl chosen to be a martyr. The closer the protagonist gets to the moment of her death, the more introspective she is, remembering and analyzing the details of her life that have led her to this position. Her journey to death ironically becomes one of self-discovery, albeit perhaps too late to make a difference, a question the ﬁlm leaves ambiguous. She is in many ways still a child with a child’s fears and views of interpersonal interaction, reacting to the death of her loved ones and merely a project handed on to professional killers where she is considered open to extremist recruitment, controlling her life through fear, hatred and regret. The ﬁlm follows the child’s point of view throughout, exploring the gradual perception of a world far greater in scope than she initially realizes, capturing the sense of discovery she makes as she proceeds on her mission of terror. In a world of seeming moral relativism she is manipulated throughout, her only moment of control being the hesitation on which the ﬁlm ambiguously ends.

The Terrorists (1975: d. Caspar Wrede) aka Ransom Originally titled Ransom but retitled more sensationally for its U.S. release, The Terrorists unfolds in the style of the violent British criminal street realism of the 1970s as a city is rocked with explosions, leading to a major airline hijacking which a specialist is brought in to contend with.

259

Thunder Run

The leader of a UK terrorist group is targeting continental Europe, putting governments under pressure to deal with a situation rapidly getting out of hand — the growth of international terrorism. This is the context that begins The Terrorists: the concept of a career terrorist whose motives blend the idealist and the mercenary, with extortion being a major factor in his intended terrorism for proﬁt and self-aggrandizement. In this, the hijacking scene is depicted as a smooth takeover, the UK terrorists maintaining a sense of decorum and reserve far removed from the desperation of the radical Islamic hijacker of subsequent ﬁlms. There is a calm rationale to the distanced European terrorists here, even a sense of dispassion and professionalism as hijacking is revealed to be a back-up plan after an initial kidnapping attempt went wrong. As is typical of hostage drama, the main theme is the issue of self-determination, a human right threatened and usurped by terrorist action. Signiﬁcantly, the UK government wants to give in to the terrorist demands but hostage negotiator Sean Connery asserts that any negotiation would merely open the ﬂoodgates for copycat action and that a much ﬁrmer hand is needed. The terrorist action is framed as the central ﬁght in the battle between civilization and anarchy, the terrorists claiming that they ﬁght against a system they consider evil and reprehensible, willing to die to make their point. The role of death-suicide in the self-aggrandizing agenda of the terrorist is a theme that runs throughout the cinema of terrorism and surfaces, naturally, in later considerations of the suicide bomber in particular. Once Connery has had his ﬁll of government complacency, he seeks to expose their indifferent agenda, offended by the sense of political expediency with which such governments respond to terrorist threats.

Thunder Run (1985: d. Gary Hudson) A retired truck driver is convinced to act as bait in a plan to obliterate an international terrorist group. To do so he has to drive a cargo of plutonium over 200 miles to a heavily fortiﬁed research station. He buys a monster truck and, with his grandson, modiﬁes it as he must keep the truck on the road long enough to engage all the terrorists who will inevitably try to seize the plutonium. Thunder Run is a rehash of the 1970s truck movie genre which included such ﬁlms as White Line Fever and Convoy— with the vehicular smash and chase sensibility of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. In a wholly implausible scenario, the military are willing to use a plutonium shipment to solicit a terrorist attack. The theory is that the terrorists would never attack a full convoy but would go after a single truck. The truck driver is that type of American commonly referred to as a “good ol’ boy,” representing the intended market for this ridiculous ﬁlm. His grandson is into sex and speed (vehicular, not narcotic) and is presented as a normal American youth. The ﬁlm is yet another patriarchal allegory of tradition, loyalty and honor amongst, in this case, “ordinary” American men. The ﬁlm’s ﬁrst act deals with the communal sources of expression and cultural unity in the American heartland — car culture, roadside casinos, youth bonding and so forth. It suggests an interest in youthful sociology and it is essentially these values which the ﬁlm shows as being threatened by terrorism. Thus, it falls to the youth and the traditional patriarch to defeat this threat to America’s future. Although the unusual action is the dramatic hook, the ﬁlm stresses loyalty to family more so than loyalty to government, in that it is an assessment of the values of patriarchal culture as they revolve around family values and male authority. Well-meaning rather than exploitative, and hardly

Ticker / Time Bomb

260

politicized, the ﬁlm is about generations of men who realize how lucky they are to be Americans: indeed, it is one of the very few optimistic terrorist related movies in the subgenre pantheon. However, the attempted terrorist takeover of the truck is a violent setpiece which seems to restage a conventional Western: The truck is the covered wagon and the terrorists are the marauding Indians, a tactic used a decade earlier to introduce the Israeli-Palestinian crisis to American viewers in Prisoner in the Middle.

Ticker (2000: d. Albert Pyun) A major city is in the grip of a terrorist gang. When a scientist is kidnapped, widespread bomb threats and reprisals result. Ticker is proliﬁc director Pyun’s follow-up to Blast. Here he concentrates on the activities of a bomb squad considered the proverbial “home front” in the War on Terror. SWAT teams are brought in to deal with terrorists in hostage situations when Senators are seized and held for ransom. Typical of ﬁlms in the immediate pre–9/11 decade, the terrorist leader is an extortionist more than an idealist and the wave of terror here has little developed ideological platform and is more of an expert criminal enterprise. However, the leader is from the Balkans (but learned his trade via the IRA) and the ﬁlm leaves ambiguous the suggestion that terrorism is the result of U.S. interventionism and the socalled global policies of the “new world order.” The terrorist’s repeated interest in planning bombs allies him to serial killer pathology — previously linked in such ﬁlms as The Mad Bomber and Final Cut. As the bomber is played by Dennis Hopper, the ﬁlm carries on from the actor’s role as the demented bomber in Speed. The interconnectedness of all terrorist institutions is an undercurrent as director Pyun seeks to develop the notion of terrorism as a means for the global spread of anarchy. He concentrates on the methodology of terrorism rather than any political ideology. In this scheme, terrorism offers Hopper a means of self-actualization and self-aggrandizement; it is both an occupation and an orientation, a power trip. Hopper also reveals a monstrous sexual pathology, considering a kidnapped female scientist his possession; his terrorism is thus in part the attempt to secure his erotic object, who ultimately betrays him. However, Hopper’s masculine ego is deceived by this woman, a true femme fatale. A scientist, she is a co-conspirator intent on creating with Hopper a master bomb. She plays the victim but ﬁnally blows up Hopper and reveals herself as the super-terrorist threat: the educated, sexually independent woman as threat to a helpless and pathologically warped patriarchy. She, unlike Hopper, is not in it for the money: She intends a grand statement to the world, revenge against the U.S. government for killing her husband as he was about to expose government corruption.

Time Bomb (1984: d. Paul Krasny) Three government agents transport weapons-grade plutonium in a specially made truck. It is targeted by a terrorist (femme fatale Morgan Fairchild) who heads an international organization of radicals. Time Bomb is rare in the cinema of terrorism for highlighting a female as the leader of a terrorist group. Fairchild is both a terrorist and a seductress in a telemovie intended to capitalize on the actress’ then loyal prime time soap opera fandom and which, in its incorporation of the 1970s trucker movie, anticipates Thunder Run. The terrorist group are former domestic radicals, now mature and focused in their hatred of the U.S. government.

261

Time Lapse / Total Recall

What is most intriguing is the conception of the threat to patriarchy. Fairchild as terrorist has no children or husband and is someone for whom sexuality is removed from procreation. Her nemesis is a family man, with a son; i.e., the responsible patriarch entrusted with the responsibility of protecting patriarchy itself— as a male-dominated and traditionally ordained authoritarianism. Fairchild in this allegorical opposition represents the threat to patriarchy posed by feminism and sexual liberation. She avoids romance and family at all costs while all the male heroes seek to pursue couple-hood and family. The men here represent traditional loyalty and family values while the liberated woman represents the threat to it, as Fairchild is quite prepared to kill her lover before allowing him to be captured and interrogated. Fairchild is revealed to be the most wanted terrorist in the world — educated, of Algerian descent, associated with such as the Red Army faction, Baader-Meinhoff, and Black September, and frequently seen in the Middle East. She considers the lives of her underlings expendable for the greater cause yet her motives and agenda remain vague and unaddressed, it being enough for these ﬁlmmakers to suggest the threat she represents to patriarchy without detailing why it is such a threat. In the end, all patriarchal relationships are restored as the “good” women wait patiently at home for their men to do their national duty.

Time Lapse (2001: d. David Worth) An anti-terrorist agent’s mission goes wrong and he ﬁnds himself in the midst of a conspiracy. He struggles to maintain his identity and thwart a plot involving the threat of nuclear terrorism for the ﬁnancial proﬁt of the conspirators. The threat of nuclear terrorism emerges from a post–Cold War concern, namely that lax security in the former Soviet Union will enable terrorists to acquire a weapon of mass destruction (a small, low-yield nuclear device concealed within a conventional suitcase). The protagonist is injected with a virus that slowly erodes his memory and identity, making it difﬁcult for him to investigate. He believes he must hold on to his memories in order to have a clear sense of who he is; i.e., that identity is informed by past action. Ultimately, the ﬁlm seeks to deﬁne as terrorist the rogue agent who would sell a stolen weapon to a hostile state for monetary gain alone; the fact that he heads an anti-terror unit is here treated as a throwaway irony. The ﬁlm has little to offer the cinema of terrorism beyond repeating one of the central conceits of pre–9/11 terrorist cinema.

Total Recall (1990: d. Paul Verhoeven) In this blockbuster science ﬁction hit, Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to a memoryimplant center and emerges believing that he is a spy from Mars. He goes to Mars where he ﬁnds an oppressed colony and a group of mutant underground revolutionaries whom the government consider terrorists. The “terrorists” here are an independence movement who resist the capitalist mining exploitation of the planet. A “freedom brigade,” they have been demonized in the media as terrorists. The same media go to great lengths to deny the populism behind the revolutionary groundswell movement, insisting that the terrorism is the work of a small group of extremists and misﬁts. The theme is clear: Terrorism depends upon who has the authority to deﬁne what the term means. The terrorists here are unconventional — they are mutant human beings for the most part — and their communality is signiﬁed by their

Toy Soldiers / Traitor

262

difference, the “otherness” from government “normality.” Indeed, the demonization of their otherness also helps to negate their cause in such media reports. The terrorist leader is a psychic mind-reader and folk hero to the populace who, in contrast to the media label of “terrorists,” refer to this group as “rebels.” The distinction between rebel and terrorist is, for director Verhoeven, ambiguous. The bombing of innocents technically qualiﬁes this group’s actions as terrorism, however warranted they are depicted as being — shown as necessary and even evidence of an heroic struggle by the ﬁlm’s end. In this, the ﬁlm subversively vindicates the goals and even the methods of a terrorist agenda just as had been attempted by the earlier science-ﬁction ﬁlm Brazil. But, insofar as the mutant world here is hedonistic and sexually “immoral,” the ﬁlm subverts the traditional association between terrorism and sexual perversity running throughout the terrorist ﬁlm as a subgenre. The sexual decadence, rather than qualify pathological dysfunction, signiﬁes a threat to bourgeois moralism and its associated political ideology. Sex and Eros is liberation, a theme common to Verhoeven’s work in which all sexual expression is a challenge to bourgeois sensibilities.

Toy Soldiers (1991: d. Daniel Petrie Jr.) The title refers to the cadets at a prep school taken over by Colombian terrorists who hope to secure the release and extradition from the U.S. of a drug lord and father ﬁgure. The cadets and students gradually begin to organize a counterterror plan. Toy Soldiers brings a terrorist theme related to Colombian drug operations to the cinema of patriarchal military school crisis as demonstrated in the earlier ﬁlms Taps and The Lords of Discipline, combining it with allusions to the frat house hijinks of the teen ﬁlm genre following Animal House. The terrorist leader seeks a judge’s son to hold hostage and after killing a teacher symbolically sits at the headmaster’s desk, intent on teaching these American kids a lesson in true political power. The cadets here represent the future of American patriarchal power now threatened by the spill-over of the war on drugs into international terrorism. Here, the terrorists literally rob future American leaders of their right to self-determination. However, the kids rally to defeat the terrorist threat and prove themselves worthy of inheriting the traditions of their fathers. Despite the novelty of the situation, the ﬁlm closely follows the standard hostagetaking scenario dynamics. Ironically, it suggests that the terrorists are also acting out of loyalty to the traditions of a father ﬁgure and the ﬁlm allegorizes the clash between sons over the proper authority of the rightfully just father. The natural anti-authoritarian resentment of the cadets is coupled with their education to make them a viable opposition to the terrorist agenda. When the terrorist leader gets a stubborn cadet, he whips him, saying that this is the discipline that he has been taught: The message here is that sons adopt the means of the father and thus it is a matter of cadets following an ennobling tradition, American patriarchy. Ultimately, the ﬁlm is a rather jingoistic and conservative celebration of the American hot-shot kid, a rebel who discovers his innate leadership qualities and proves himself worthy of integration into American patriarchal hierarchy.

Traitor (2008: d. Jeffrey Nachmanoff ) An African-American man (Don Cheadle) of Sudanese descent and Islamic faith is caught in Yemen selling detonators to terrorists. Broken out of prison, he joins the terrorists on their bombing campaign throughout Europe, bombing the American embassy

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Traitor

in Nice. Rising through the terrorist ranks, Cheadle and his fellows journey to Canada and then America to put into action a plan utilizing the coordinated activities of up to 30 suicide bombers, already in the USA on student visas. An FBI agent (Guy Pearce) is on his trail, hoping to use Cheadle’s former girlfriend as a source of information. Traitor is a gripping and complex evocation of ethics and morality in the War on Terror. In contrast to the ﬁlms which sought to realize such concerns squarely in terms of the Bush government’s ethics —Redacted, Taxi to the Dark Side, Rendition, The Situation, Civic Duty, The Road to Guantanamo—Traitor examines the question of religious and national loyalty. At the outset, Cheadle is considered a traitor to America because of his material support of terrorists. However, this situation becomes increasingly complex as Cheadle faces a personal dilemma: As a man of Islamic faith he must reconcile his role in terrorism with that faith. The ﬁlm ultimately becomes a study of the imperative for Islamic men of good conscience to root out the terrorism that betrays their religion. However, the ﬁlm refuses to judge or condemn, giving each perspective equal attention in what is essentially the ﬁrst terrorist thriller post–9/11 to humanize the terrorists, making its release on the eve of the election that saw George Bush’s War on Terror ﬁnally consigned to history a symbolic restoration of humanity. The “terrorists” here are intelligent, educated, charming, suave and devout men of faith who whole-heartedly believe in what they are doing. Correspondingly, Traitor is initially structured to draw audience sympathy for them and for Cheadle in one of contemporary American ﬁlm’s most complex examinations of vicarious audience identiﬁcation. The friendship between Cheadle and terrorist Said Taghmaoui is deep, genuine and affecting, eventually making for a conclusion which returns the subject of morality and ethical conduct to the examination of how best to deal with terrorism — a necessity the ﬁlm feels faces Islam more so than the USA even though the USA is the target. Hence, the ﬁlm examines the religious beliefs that underlie terrorism and contextualizes them so as to make them understandable and, in terms of the willing suspension of disbelief so integral to the enjoyment of watching cinema, identiﬁable for the viewer. Placing the viewer initially with the terrorists rather than the American intelligence community’s War on Terror sides the viewer with the bomb-maker — a frequent character type in the cinema of terrorism post–9/11, ﬁrst seen in The Kingdom and concurrently deployed in Body of Lies. Although narrative twists in Traitor confound this initial audience empathy with the terrorist and transform the ﬁlm into another examination of how the American intelligence community is ﬁghting the War on Terror, it is the important humanist construction of the terrorist enemy which is paramount. War on Terror rhetoric demonizing the terrorists and the suicide bombers as inhuman and evil monsters not worthy of protection by the Geneva Convention or even international human rights is swept aside here for the most humane and perceptive look at the War on Terror yet to emerge from American cinema. In contrast to Body of Lies, Traitor examines the reality of the War on Terror from the terrorist’s side, charting terrorist covert intelligence in contrast to U.S. covert intelligence and depicting the struggle as a war with despicable tactics that cause debate and doubt even amongst the terrorists who advocate them. Traitor even de-mystiﬁes the other character type to emerge strongly in the post–9/11 cinema of terrorism — the suicide bomber. A cross-section of suicide bombers features in Traitor— from one whose bomb fails

Traitor

264

to detonate, to one naïve teenager whose bragging of his impending martyrdom causes a security leak for the terrorists, to those willing to carry out missions within the USA and blending in until their assignment comes through. Humanizing the suicide bomber adds tremendously to the sense of intimacy this ﬁlm is able to achieve in its scenes dealing with terrorist planning (for instance, the scene where Cheadle puts the bomb vest on a suicide bomber and teaches him how to use it.) In scenes like this, shorn of any judgmental repugnance for those involved, Traitor’s thoroughly humanist intent emerges. Terrorists are not evil people here but sympathetic, and Traitor goes a long way to try and understand in their terms what makes them do what they do — from proud vengeance against the brutality of American foreign policy in the Middle East to the view that since the U.S. government boasts that it speaks for the people, therefore the people are the legitimate targets of terror attacks against the American government: such is, after all, American democracy’s chain of responsibility. Although director Nachmanoff is aware of the irony, he does not let political polemics skew his humanist, nonjudgmental intent and indeed shows more awareness of the Islamic faith’s response to terrorism than in all previous post–9/11 ﬁlms which either avoid the issue or equate Islam with terrorism, an equation that Cheadle takes to heart and attempts eventually to redress. With sly humor, Nachmanoff explores the ramiﬁcations of contemporary religious extremism upon those of Islamic conviction. Relativism abounds here despite the theme of absolutism: hence, when FBI agent Pearce tells Cheadle that his terrorist ilk kill innocents, Cheadle replies that so does the American military, though only those whose skin color isn’t white. Sacriﬁce and martyrdom here are treated with the same earnestness that those subjects are accorded in Islam, which is treated with knowing respect; hence terrorist Taghmaoui muses on what is a central concept in Islam — the difference between the lesser jihad (the terrorist Holy War) and the greater jihad (the challenge facing all Muslims to live a virtuous life away from temptation), concluding that the greater jihad is the bigger challenge. Again it is humor, irony, which introduces Islamic themes to an American terrorist genre thriller: hence the amusing scenes where the terrorists argue about what it is necessary to do in public in order to blend in with the enemy, referencing and debating the passages in the Koran which essentially validate deception and terrorism. Finally, it is the unbearable tension between Cheadle as anti-hero and unlikely hero — a ﬁgure of astonishing moral complexity being hinted at beneath Cheadle’s subtle and restrained demeanor here (put to good use from his sterling work in the underrated Vietnam War movie Hamburger Hill to his star-making turn in Hotel Rwanda)— that propels Traitor to its clever conclusion. Religious underpinnings of terrorism impel the moral examination of the War on Terror, with Cheadle examining his Muslim faith and FBI agent Pearce implying a kinship in his Christian belief, with both of their fathers once being religious leaders. Religious belief is not endorsed by the movie, which is more about how religious men ﬁght the War on Terror in accordance with their beliefs (whichever side they may be on) than it is about endorsing one religious view over another. Men of God here face an intense crisis of conscience and the ﬁlm is about what they do to rectify the situation in accordance with their beliefs. The ﬁlm raises many of the issues that emerged after 9/11, from the racial proﬁling of Middle Eastern students to the physically brutal interrogation of captured terror suspects. Pearce is the voice of reason as he says ﬁrstly that racial proﬁling does not work as

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Treasure of the Lost... / Trident Force

only 20 percent of Muslims entering the USA on student visas are Arabic of Middle Eastern descent, and secondly refuses to use violence or torture when interrogating subjects (and gaining much more cooperation and reliable information in the process). These themes were examined to varying degrees in the cinema of terrorism post–9/11 but it is Traitor that integrates them contextually and summarily for dissemination within the terrorist cinema structure from a progressive rather than retrospective viewpoint. Traitor avoids the direct condemnation of the ethics of the Bush-led War on Terror that thematically dominated the rush of preceding terrorist ﬁlms in 2007–08 to concentrate on the ethical issues that face America and the greater Islamic community now that the Bushled War on Terror is over, even though the War itself may continue for some time. Yet, once again, a post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlm suggests that the “do anything to win the war” rhetoric of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld makes potential hypocrites and bullies out of the self-righteous, themes also addressed in Body of Lies.

Treasure of the Lost Desert (1984: d. Tony Zarindast) Four commando volunteers are led by a former Green Beret hero on a mission to destroy terrorists working in the state of Dubai which is needed by the Americans for strategic reasons. The terrorist leader is searching for a lost treasure which he intends to trade for guns. The Green Beret merely wants the treasure. Filmed in Yemen, Treasure of the Lost Desert is a lesser known entry in the immediate post–Raiders of the Lost Ark wave of episodic action adventure movies. It is a ﬂat and uninspired ﬁlm which begins by evoking in voice-over the turbulence in the Middle East as creating a region of perpetual unrest but rapidly becomes a standard counterterror adventure. The commandos are a team of assorted military misﬁts: had the ﬁlm the budget to cast twelve of them, it may have drawn comparisons to The Dirty Dozen. Played as broad comedy, this is a simply awful movie in which the temptations of gold outweigh the ideology of both terrorism and counterterrorism.

Trident Force (1988: d. Richard Smith) Trident Force follows on from the success of The Delta Force and is about the formation of an elite multinational counterterrorist force headed by the SAS. It is assigned to prevent a wave of bombings and assassinations by a conglomerate of Marxist revolutionaries and Palestinian Liberationists. The ﬁlm is one of several reactionary action B-movies of the mid- to late 1980s which sought to demonstrate that foreign policy problems in the Middle East threaten to escalate into a global terrorist crisis demanding a uniform world response. Although there is some concern for the daily poverty of life in the Middle East and the dominance of Islamic faith as a means of transcendence, it has only scant respect for that local culture. However, it does covertly suggest that any foreign power in the region is likely to be an occupying force which will treat the local culture with absolute disdain. Here, the foreign occupiers are the Americans and the support for British military experts. In light of this, the terrorist claim to be freedom ﬁghters is treated with more ambivalence than usual for such reactionary cinema. Although the ﬁlm is rich in subtext, it is mediocre in execution. The caricatured Russian villain (the ﬁlm allying terrorism to the legacy of the Cold War) is a homosexual pedophile, the ﬁlm equating state-sponsored terrorism with mon-

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strous sexual pathology and dysfunction. Hence, the ambivalence initially given the freedom ﬁghters is eroded by their generalization as sexual perverts and “dastardly ﬁghters.” An English-educated Muslim soldier is presented as a link between worlds — the uncivilized Muslim and Western civilization — and thus an ideal member of an international counterterrorist team although he is depicted as a Rambo-like ﬁgure. The team itself are chosen from many nationalities and represent a hybrid of the UN and the doctrine of preemptive force, a supposed microcosm of the international pressures facing forced but necessary cooperation against terrorism. Terrorism itself is depicted as a global threat to common security. Signiﬁcantly, this terrorist threat is Palestinian in origin, the leader believing he has been sanctioned by Allah in a holy war against the inﬁdels to prevent Arabs from collaborating with Westerners.

True Lies (1994: d. James Cameron) True Lies is the third collaboration between actor Arnold Schwarzenegger and director James Cameron following the ﬁrst two Terminator movies. Here, “Arnie” plays a secret agent and jealous husband who, after tormenting his wife over her planned inﬁdelity, recruits her to assist him in a mission to remove an Islamic terror threat. True Lies demonstrates a misogynistic machismo that Cameron would temper and reassert in the romantic drivel of the later Titanic: a woman’s fate is in the hands of a heroic man who enables her to have an exciting life after initially humiliating her. There is some amusement value in the casting of the muscle-bound hero as a husband and father but this is a preliminary act for the terrorist plot. The point of the ﬁrst act is, once again, to demonstrate the protagonist as a worthy patriarch, restoring his position as husband and familial authority before he pursues his obligation to protect the nation from the threat of international terrorism. In this, the greatest threat is from the Middle East. Indeed, all villains are non–American and non–WASP: the villainess is Asian and the terrorists are of dirty Arab appearance, reinforcing an agenda of caricatured racism that runs throughout the reactionary drivel of this crowd-pleasing “entertainment.” Schwarzenegger’s attitude to the terrorists is much the same as his attitude to women: They must be kept in line. He actually fears being made a cuckold more than the terrorist threat. The premise allows for the search within U.S. borders for dangerous terrorists who have assimilated into U.S. culture, and it is resolved in spectacular action set-pieces which are engaging to watch but wholly superﬁcial dross. Although the ﬁlm attempts to delineate between truth and role-playing in interpersonal and professional life, it can only deal in the shallowest of emotional responses and is obsessed with a desire to humiliate those it regards as unworthy. This humiliation, especially of women, is staged for laughs and played against the terrorist plot as a kind of running joke. The terrorists are equally caricatures, espousing the standard anti–U.S. rhetoric, claiming that people of the USA are hypocrites and in effect the real terrorists for bombing from afar. True Lies does not even begin to address the causes of this anti–American sentiment which it intends to crush with bombastic force. The Islamic terrorists have no depth, no humanity; they are simply raving psychotics who have acquired their weapons as a result of lax security following the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. True to reactionary form, Schwarzenegger emerges an idealized father who rescues his wife and daughter (kidnapped by the terrorists as a result of his bad parenting), proving himself the perfect father and worthy patriarchal hero — a role he would essay again in the later Collateral Damage.

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21 Hours at Munich

21 Hours at Munich (1976: d. William A. Graham) Filmed on actual locations, 21 Hours at Munich recreates the events of the XX Olympiad in Munich in 1972 when Palestinian terrorists invaded the Olympic village and held Israeli athletes hostage, the crisis ﬁnally amounting to a botched rescue attempt and hostage massacre. The documentary atmosphere is important to this ﬁlm’s recreation and verisimilitude. It begins by establishing the Munich games as a political statement, to heal the lingering wounds left by Nazism in Germany. It was intended to show how the world can change for the better, a symbolic Olympiad. Yet all this was destroyed in a single terrorist act in which the Palestinian cause made terrorism synonymous with the modern world. Although the ﬁlm is one of a number that sought to illustrate the continuing anti–Semitism directed against the Jewish community following World War II, its main focus is on the way terrorism effectively became the new focus of global instability in the world. Hence, it is deliberately structured to take advantage of the terrorist ﬁlm’s dominant paradox of self-determination. Beginning with the invasion of the Olympic Village by terrorists, the ﬁlm systematically chronicles the usurpation of the individual right to self-determination by terrorism, ironically in the cause of liberation. This irreconcilable irony would become a dominant impetus behind subsequent hostage-crisis ﬁlms in the terrorist pantheon and 21 Hours at Munich is its establishing feature, the ﬁrst terrorist ﬁlm to fully dramatize the crisis of self-determination as a structural principle in the terrorist subgenre. The danger of the new force of terrorism in the modern world, birthed by the Palestinian actions, is marked in the cry of a Jewish team member trying to ﬂee the terrorists: “Help us, Arabs with guns!” In that admission are the seeds for the major terrorist-themed ﬁlms that followed — the prospect to a civilized world of a terrorist struggle with “Arabs with guns.” The terrorists, the “Arabs with guns,” claim that they do not want to kill anyone though clearly this is a fallacy. They picked the Munich Olympics purely to make headlines through a murderous protest under the excuse of political self-aggrandizement — drawing world attention to the cause of freedom through violence. It was a new announcement and one that was unique to the rhetoric emanating from the Arab-Islamic world, eventually ﬁnding a religious justiﬁcation in the methodology of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda exporting “Arabs with guns” to the point of becoming a major threat to global peace. The Arab League here does not fully condone the terrorist action, not condemning it but distancing itself to a noncommittal posture, knowing that the entire Arab world will be held accountable for these actions despite the immediate speciﬁc focus on the Palestinian cause. They even attempt to bribe the terrorists in reaching a solution, but this ﬁlm (and indeed all the initial ﬁlms about terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s until Die Hard) clearly reveals ﬁnancial motives as not a part of terrorism, The ﬁlms of the 1990s would attempt to disprove this and associate terrorism with criminal enterprise for ﬁnancial proﬁt. The hostage scenario here, the crisis of self-determination, simultaneously analyzes the power politics and the dynamics of terrorism. Terrorists gain control and force negotiating parties into a reactive technique, the drama being the attempt to wrest control from the terrorists, a means that is tried by force, with disastrous consequences. But, just as force is destined to fail, negotiation is futile; Israel’s Golda Meir admits as much when she calls these men murderers. Negotiating with murderers is anathema to a realistic

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human discourse as, the ﬁlm suggests, terrorism evidences the inversion of human nature in a perversion of human rights abuse in the name of those same rights. Terrorism is the madness of the modern world according to 21 Hours at Munich. The failure of negotiation and the failure of force in reprisal in this ﬁlm contrasts to the successful anti-terror raid against Palestinians in the ﬁlms made about the Entebbe crisis around the same time (Raid on Entebbe, Victory at Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt). On the basis of the Entebbe raids, the special counterterrorist force as the solution to the problem of terrorism became the solution to the unsolvable dilemma posed by 21 Hours at Munich’s admission of the terror paradox regarding self-determination and human rights. The anti-terror negotiator here has to try to appeal to the terrorist’s humanist values, to prompt an acknowledgment of a common humanity as a negotiating standard. When this fails, all are faced with the reality that terrorism is enacted by people beyond any responsibility to a common humanity yet acting in perverse defense of such. There is simply no solution to this dilemma to humanism blinded by ideology. Hence, these terrorist ﬁgures epitomize the destruction of human worth by a cause-based ideology, whether political (as here) or religious (as would ﬁnally be acknowledged by the genre some thirty years later). The ﬁlm concludes with a humanist condemnation of the terrorist belief that hatred and violence are political tools. In its ﬁnal ominous voice-over that the terrorists were released after another hijacking, it acknowledges the chain of world events that began in Munich, events that are paralleled reactively throughout the cinema of terrorism. Following 21 Hours at Munich, Black Sunday would presciently suggest to Americans that the terror initiated on the world stage at Munich would directly affect Americans on their homeland — it was just a matter of time before 9/11. But the Munich Olympics were beyond religious fervor, though arguably these events paved the way for the Muslim justiﬁcation of the cult of martyrdom. Although the suicide bomber remained a rare ﬁgure in the subsequent cinema of terrorism, in the wake of 9/11 this enigma would dominate the screen when the cinema of terrorism began to treat the religious underpinnings of terrorism at exactly the same time that books like Sam Harris’ The End of Faith dared suggest religion be held accountable for terrorism and the militant atheism begun by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Harris and Daniel Dennett (the so-called Four Horseman) began to imprint itself into the cinema of terrorism.

Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977: d. Robert Aldrich) A renegade ex-general (Burt Lancaster) and three men takeover a nuclear missile silo and threaten to launch the missiles unless the U.S. president reveals to the press certain secret documents concerning the real reasons for the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. This ﬁlm introduces the concept that political assassination or other acts of domestic terrorism may be about to consume the U.S. as a result of those who feel betrayed, manipulated or misled by the U.S. government. Discontent with the American government as a result of Vietnam had begun to inﬁltrate cinema in the 1970s especially after Watergate. Twilight’s Last Gleaming introduced a concept that cemented the reactionary split in American patriotism following Vietnam and Watergate: The terroristic general here is arguably a patriot and hero (Lancaster being the model for the similar general played by Ed Harris in The Rock, an update of the issues of patriotism discussed here). Twilight’s

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Last Gleaming presents a patriarchy in crisis: men in authority are now driven to violent conﬂict about what constitutes American honor and tradition. The terrorist general has faith in the ofﬁce of the president (an ironic inversion of the lack of faith in presidential ofﬁce played by Burt Lancaster as another general intent on power in Seven Days in May, which Twilight’s Last Gleaming often alludes to). The president doubts his ability to rationalize with Lancaster though he remarks of the terrorist that the rhetoric he espouses would get him elected in many places in the USA. Thus, both the president and the terrorist are held up as representative political ﬁgures, diverse courses of action now facing American politics in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate. There is one crucial difference though: The president is bound by the ideals of democracy and the Constitution whereas the terrorist places himself above them, just as much as he acts out of a desire to uphold them. This irreconcilable gulf in what constitutes true patriotism in a terroristic context would inﬁltrate all subsequent depictions of domestic terrorism. The idealistic issue underpinning this discussion is the issue of “open government” over Vietnam. The terrorist wants open disclosure of all U.S. foreign policy to the people but the U.S. government, sworn to uphold the Constitution, wishes to withhold information from the American public. The question for director Aldrich is whether or not America is a nation prepared to confront the truth of its political machinations, hypocrisies and paradoxes. The president ﬁnally reads the information that the terrorist demands be released — that the U.S. was prepared to suffer and inﬂict untold carnage in Vietnam in order to perpetuate a holocaust for political credibility in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The view here is that American foreign policy was such that it needed a threat of nuclear war and to ﬁght limited, proxy wars to avoid the nuclear war and perpetuate the threat. The U.S. government, in this ﬁlm, sought to prove in Vietnam that it is capable of inhuman action if it is thought necessary to win the Cold War. Ironically, this is exactly the rhetoric espoused by the “War on Terror” manufacturers; that post–Vietnam, war would see the hypothetical inhuman ethics postulated in Twilight’s Last Gleaming played out in the sanctioning of torture and the U.S. government’s willful violation of the Geneva Convention in the construction of Guantanamo Bay. The view espoused by Aldrich is that the U.S. was irrevocably scarred by Vietnam, its monstrousness exposed in a crisis facing patriarchal authority that continues to this day and is evident in American foreign policy decisions. In the crisis to patriarchy mythologized effectively for the ﬁrst time in Twilight’s Last Gleaming, open and democratic accountability of the government to the people is the central conceit. Hence, the terrorist is a force of political change, purging patriarchal irresponsibility. By robbing the nation of its right to self-determination, the terrorist forces it to reconsider its Constitutional responsibility to that very same right. It is an ethical paradox, irreconcilable at the level of doctrine and so ever since played out in the cinema of terrorism’s search for a solution to the dilemma posed by the crisis of self-determination, individual, national and global. The terrorist convinces the president to tell the truth and to return control and knowledge to the American people and the democratic process. However, the machine of government supersedes even the authority of the president, and instruction is given to kill him before letting any information about the “truth” of American government and foreign policy be revealed. The ﬁnal message here is that American patriarchy has become so warped and fascistic that no change is possi-

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ble and that even the president is an expendable ﬁgure in the inhumanity of patriarchy as an institution. America ceases to be a democracy in Twilight’s Last Gleaming. Twilight’s Last Gleaming ﬂopped at the box-ofﬁce. Aldrich said that Americans simply “just didn’t want to know” (Silver & Ursini, p. 42). Within two years, George Lucas had released Star Wars, Spielberg made Jaws and the Hollywood spectacle summer blockbuster became the dominant Hollywood agenda — movies about politics were out in the 1980s and action spectacles were in, action ﬁlms which sought to solve the crisis to patriarchy by presenting rugged male action heroes, family men and loyalists who single-handedly defeat terrorist threats and restore a benevolent patriarchal authority to its proper place. In the conservative 1980s, “family values” replaced “democracy” and “open government” as worthy subjects for the cinema of terrorism. There has been little critical attention given Twilight’s Last Gleaming though what there has been had this to conclude of the ﬁlm: “a stunning indictment of the arrogance of America’s decision makers and the lengths to which they will go to maintain ‘business as usual’” (Nash & Ross, Motion Picture Guide).

Under Fire (1982: d. Roger Spottiswoode) Three war correspondents and a mercenary ﬁnd themselves amidst a war-torn Nicaraguan political struggle involving insurgent terrorism. Journalist Nick Nolte faces the decision whether to publish the truth that a revolutionary guerrilla leader is dead or perpetuate the myth that he is alive as a means of continuing what he increasingly sees as a just revolution. “To print the truth or print the myth” is a dilemma that would also face Andrew McCarthy in Year of the Gun and which dates back to the advice given James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Though not as well remembered as Oliver Stone’s contemporaneous Salvador, Under Fire was a well-received ﬁlm. It unfolds as a character portrait of those journalists driven to report on insurgent terrorism around the world, from Africa to South America. In this character study is a discussion of the ethics of documenting revolutionary terrorism and insurgent struggles in the Third World. Tellingly, the supposedly objective journalist Nolte is held in constant counterpoint to his friend, mercenary Ed Harris, a man so objective as to have lost perspective of a side, cause or ideal worth ﬁghting for and selling his talents to the highest bidder regardless of ideology. Journalistic noncommittal objectivity and mercenarial political indifference are offered as the proverbial two sides to the same coin. Both thrive on the danger to the point of exploiting the people around them. In such a context, journalism is depicted as a profession full of irresponsible risktakers. It is a thrill-seeking culture in which responsibility is held against an existential drive to experience and capture the thrill of revolution, regardless of the political context. Journalistic objectivity permits self-indulgence and “the truth” becomes arguably just another “construct,” a theme reiterated 15 years later in Year of the Gun. Director Spottiswoode would prove affected by the theme of journalistic manipulation and the illusion of true objectivity and use that as the basis for his presentation of the megalomaniacal James Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies. Under Fire examines the process by which an indifferent thrill-junkie is forced to make an ethical choice regarding the responsibilities of his profession. Here, this ethical choice amounts to a support of the Marxist revolutionary agenda and the perpetuation of the legend of the terrorist revolutionary folk hero. Only in this decision is Nolte distinguished from the mercenary Harris.

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The main means of terrorism here, endemic in South America, is kidnapping — the targeting of government ofﬁcials in a planned hostage exchange. The government refuses to acknowledge the Marxist revolution as anything but “terrorism,” again suggesting that the label of terrorist depends upon the agency doing the labeling. Here, South American dictators are prepared to kill Americans and blame it on the “terrorists” as, because of the implications of the oft-used term, it demonizes anyone so-labeled as being beyond reach or understanding, an enemy of the state but, ironically enough, the enemy of a state that has lost sight of any humanist basis. In this respect, Under Fire concludes with an assessment of the humanist dynamic behind the political conﬂicts which frame the deﬁnition and demonization of terrorism as a political means and statement in a revolutionary struggle. Regarding the political efﬁcacy of the terrorist means, a woman remarks that some 50,000 Nicaraguans have died and yet it is the death of one American that makes the U.S. and the world take notice.

Under Siege (1985: d. Roger Young) Co-scripted by journalist Bob Woodward, Under Siege is a now-prophetic television mini-series about terrorist strikes within the USA and the government’s response. After a military base is bombed, followed by attacks on airplanes in Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, the FBI launches an operation to ﬁnd the culprits. After much inﬁghting with Presidential staff, an attack on the Capitol Building brings demands for war and vengeance and the conﬂict escalates from military to civilian targets. Under Siege is signiﬁcant in the terrorist movie pantheon for its acknowledgment of the suicide bomber as the deadliest weapon in the terrorist arsenal, with terrorism itself founded on Islamic religious principles. The human misery caused by the acts of these human weapons is depicted here although the emphasis is on the political dilemma of a need to respond: the means of such reprisal being hotly debated, though centering on the use of counter-force measures. The mini-series posits, presciently, that a terrorist crisis on U.S. soil would focus patriotic duty on the ofﬁce of the president. In such a crisis, the president becomes the embodiment of democratic Constitutional ideals and the government media machine works to rally the people around their leader. In contrast to this demagogic mystiﬁcation of the ofﬁce of the presidency, the terrorists consider themselves a “pure” force and intend to make America suffer in the name of “revolutionary purity.” The terrorists believe that their plight ennobles the cause of the weak and disenfranchised against the machine of monstrous American imperialism. They want to make America fall from its lofty hypocrisy — hence the symbolic targeting of airplanes as weapons (a traditional target for terrorist action since the initial wave of Palestinian airline hijacking). In its development of this clash, Under Siege is the best 1980s ﬁlm to deal with the subject of Islamic terrorism on American soil, ﬁrst essayed in the seminal Black Sunday. When American authorities realize that Islamic terrorism has reached the USA it is admitted that “we all knew it would happen. Just a matter of time, so now what to do?” It is an admission that would remain thereafter primarily dormant in the American cinema of terrorism until the events of 9/11 made it no longer mere speculation but an incontrovertible fact upon which to rebuild the folk-mythology of the terrorist ﬁlm as a genre. In response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland, the Department of Homeland Security introduces security measures ﬁrst at airports and points of entry into the

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country, even considering the internment of Iranians. (A decade later, this theme of internment in response to terrorism would be the subject of The Siege, a ﬁlm also in response to speciﬁc Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil as a result of the suicide bomber cult of martyrdom.) U.S. authorities consider such terrorism an act of war and begin comparison to such historical events as Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II. However, this war is to be a new kind of war, one the ﬁlm does not name but which the events of 9/11 and the George W. Bush presidency (founded on the principles of the religious right which had elevated Bush more so than Constitutional ideals of democracy) would term the War on Terror. All of this is anticipated in Under Siege. The president, elevated to demagogue status, cannot afford to appear indecisive. His response by advisors is to bomb the trouble spots in the Middle East that are responsible for sponsoring this terrorism, speciﬁcally the Islamic Republic of Iran. In light of the extreme pressure now singling out their communities, Arab-Americans denounce the terror attacks, reporting that they came to the U.S. seeking “freedom.” The difﬁculty faced by the U.S. government is not only tracking those responsible for the terrorism but trying to ascertain the mindset capable of such actions, especially when these terrorists have no demand but to make America suffer. A wave of indiscriminate terror (hand grenades tossed into doorways) puts incredible pressure on the president to be seen to act decisively even before the truth of the chain of responsibility has been demonstrated. The terrorists could be independent, or indeed anti–U.S. sentiment in the Middle East is so strong that U.S. authorities fear that state-sponsorship of anti–U.S. terror could be from anywhere in a region so resentful of U.S. foreign policy, although Iran seems the likeliest prospect in this scenario. The terrorist leader here is an Iranian outcast and U.S. authorities would rather eliminate him completely than be bothered by the Constitutional implications of any capture and subsequent trial in the U.S. courts. In this imperative, the president is prepared to sanction political assassination, in effect making his authority no different than the state sponsors of terrorism he would decry. Terrorism, and terrorism alone, according to this ﬁlm has the power to make hypocrisy out of U.S. democracy. Although this aspect is not fully revealed here, it would be followed through in wave of post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms beginning in 2006–07 with the likes of Taxi to the Dark Side.

Under Siege (1992: Andrew Davis) The symbol of U.S. military might, the battleship, proves vulnerable to rogue operatives and domestic terrorist traitors within the military. However, the terrorists face down with a Navy SEAL on board, a cook (Steven Seagal). Tommy Lee Jones stars as the leader of a group of renegade military operatives who commandeer the U.S.S Missouri on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. He is a man ready to segue into nuclear terrorism by launching a missile. The terrorists stage a takeover and are faced down by a lone, deﬁant man in this reconﬁguration of Die Hard. Effective at that thanks to efﬁcient direction by Andrew Davis, the ﬁlm established the vainly selfimportant Seagal as a minor box ofﬁce action star. Terrorist Jones feels betrayed by the military who tried to assassinate him and has turned anarchist, his catch-cry being “Welcome to the revolution.” He wants post–Cold War chaos and although threatening a nuclear strike intends to sell the hijacked missiles to the highest bidder (once again, so typical of 1990s ﬁlms, this is terrorism for proﬁt). Jones is ﬁnally motivated by a desire

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to prove his potency, ﬁring missiles at Honolulu simply for the sake of it. After Seagal thwarts Jones, Seagal proves himself a worthy enough patriarch to kiss and claim as a prize the only woman in the ﬁlm (a Playboy bunny).

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995: d. Geoff Murphy) In this sequel, a train is commandeered by a terrorist (Eric Bogosian) intent on proﬁt and blackmail. Navy SEAL Steven Seagal on board tries to stop him. The villains here are again former members of the U.S. military turned mercenarial terrorists. They seek to usurp military technology and turn it against the U.S. government. After a standard hijacking and hostage drama, it is revealed that Bogosian intends to sell the weapons to eager Middle Eastern terrorist interests, the assumption being that the unstable region seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Bogosian is a conscienceless psychotic, again obsessed with potency, and with a grudge against the military. The theme here is the fear of weapons technology being turned against its initiators. As is typical of 1990s terrorist ﬁlms, the terrorist ﬁgure here has little political or ideological motive for what he does and operates out of vindictiveness and greed — terrorism for proﬁt, as he is ready to destroy an airplane in order to prove his seriousness. The view here is that a man with a grudge can recruit a group of mercenaries to assist him in a terrorist plot.

United 93 (2003: d. Paul Greengrass) On September 11, 2001, four terrorists board United ﬂight 93 bound for Washington. At air trafﬁc control, technicians and military react to the hijacking of planes soon crashed into the World Trade Center. All planes are ordered grounded nationwide. The terrorists take over the ﬂight, the passengers calling the ground after the incident. Soon ground control debate shooting the plane down. Eventually the hostages mount an offense, causing the plane to crash in the woods well short of its Washington target. United 93 is effectively the ﬁrst American ﬁlm about terrorism to emerge post–9/11. It focuses on what was reported as a heroic stand by the passengers of Flight 93 against the terrorists. Indeed, the “heroes” of Flight 93 became enshrined in American popular culture as the sole redemptive act of deﬁance against the terrorist agenda otherwise so spectacularly successful on 9/11. As the ﬁrst ﬁlm after 9/11 to deal with terrorism, United 93 carries an enormous responsibility and the choices it makes are telling. It unfolds like a raw docudrama, its sense of pace and documentary-like recreation adding much authenticity. However, the decision to play the material as a docudramalike recreation of the events of 9/11 eschews the conventions of the terrorist movie pre–9/11 and speaks towards a desire to reshape the terrorist ﬁlm subgenre for a post–9/11 mentality just as the Vietnam War movie had to wait for the national trauma of Vietnam to be over with before redeﬁning the war movie genre to suit the new conﬂict and its affect on the American psyche. The ﬁlm begins with the terrorists in a hotel room going through their ﬁnal prayers and rituals. The fact that they know in advance what they will do effectively suggests that the terrorist ﬁgure in the redeployment of the terrorist ﬁlm as genre is now a personiﬁcation, indeed even the epitome, of fate. The Muslim prayers and scenes of the terrorists arming themselves suggests that fate — affecting humanity — is in effect a condition motivated by religious zeal. Thus, the ﬁlm contrasts the Muslim prayers with a

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billboard reading “God Bless America,” neatly setting up the idea of the fate of the world as the result of theist religious madness. Intercutting between terrorists boarding and unsuspecting airline crew establishes the everyday routine of airport travel in an America unprepared for the hostility against it. Indeed, much is made of the way these terrorists move undetected as around them the business and routine of air travel casually unfolds. An irony here is that while the plane is checked out and prepared in advance through security checks, it is the human element that if unchecked is the real risk here. Attention to authentic sounds, overlapping voices and hand-held in-close camerawork brings a spontaneity and immediacy to the ﬁlm. However, the attention to multi-character drama, terrorism and airline strife unavoidably recalls the disaster movies of the 1970s Airport cycle of ﬁlms, which saw brief redeﬁnition in the 1990s with the likes of Turbulence and Passenger 57. The focus in United 93 is less an assessment of terrorism that the recreation of America’s trauma on 9/11 in disaster movie terms — a trend that Oliver Stone would continue in World Trade Center and which would echo in the destruction of New York by a rampaging monster in Cloverﬁeld. This reconﬁguring of the disaster movie to the newfound threat of terrorism essentially attempts to reconﬁgure the 9/11 trauma within established ﬁlm genres, in United 93 merging the terrorist ﬁlm, the docudrama and the disaster movie. Many terrorist ﬁlms feature thwarted terror actions, but as this is no longer possible in a post–9/11 world now that there has been a successful terror attack on America’s home soil, post–9/11 terrorist movies spearheaded by United 93 focus on the reactions of people to what is accepted as the inevitability of terrorism. It is this quality of inevitability that affects and distinguishes all post–9/11 terrorist-themed ﬁlms following United 93. The professionalism and tensions of “disaster management” is the premise and theme set up by United 93, causing a redeﬁnition of the terrorist ﬁlm subgenre. It offers a crosssection of characterizations and a central disaster before descending into a reworking of the hostage scenario, which it transplants from the terrorist ﬁlm proper into its docudrama recreation of disaster. Terrorist cinema as disaster movie: It was essayed in part as early as Black Sunday but here the generic transference is complete. With Oliver Stone’s subsequent World Trade Center, this is an earnest treatment of a national disaster in terms of crisis management. The political contexts surrounding 9/11 are irrelevant to these docudrama recreations: tense authenticity under pressure in United 93, unabashed patriotic sentiment in World Trade Center and monster-movie wreckage in Cloverﬁeld, which abstracts 9/11 almost completely just as much as it visually evokes it. Indeed, the telemovie The Hamburg Cell would go into the terrorist mindset surrounding the disaster of 9/11 more so than the disaster itself, offering a humanist and individualized look at terrorism which United 93 downplays in favor of recreating the intensity of national crisis. It’s almost an hour before the ﬁlm addresses the in-ﬂight experiences, bringing to them the same docudrama intensity brought to the recreation of crisis management in the ﬁlm’s prior scenes. The terrorist takeover of the ﬂight recalls the usurpation of the right to self-determination that recurs throughout hostage scenarios in terrorist movies: again, reaction to conﬂict is as important to the ﬁlmmakers as the conﬂict itself. The heavily religious references in the terrorists’ dialogue underscores their devout determination to destroy. In this ﬁlm, religious conviction is a monstrous enabler of mass disaster: religion and terrorism are inseparable post–9/11. Yet, United 93 sees the hostage rebellion against the terrorists in terms of the battle for self-determination: Only in this rebellion

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is autonomy against fate’s designs possible. Indeed, discussions of the passengers as they mount their offense effectively dramatize the central conceit of the hostage drama: the right to self-determination. American heroism in United 93 is the resolve of determined individuals to act together to regain what of their self-determination they can, in so doing thwarting the terrorist agenda and cheating the designs of a cruel fate. Crisis management and decisive adversarial action here are the American survivalist means of combating terrorism’s religious zealots who would put Islam and Allah above collective humanity. United 93 is “dedicated to the memory of all those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001.”

Universal Soldier (1992: d. Roland Emmerich) Universal Soldier is director Roland Emmerich’s venture into the Hollywood mainstream, with a plot concerning rival cyborg soldiers Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. It reveals an interest in militarized responses and futuristic technology in the smooth functioning of American society in response to a terrorist threat. The question is, what type of counterterrorist force should be used in the instance of a terrorist attack? After the initial terrorist scenario though, the idea of a counterterrorist force of cryogenically stored soldiers — dead men preserved and reanimated — takes over and unfolds in a routine and episodic action ﬁlm manner with no terrorist connection. Vietnam experience is presented as the root of a morbid American militarized psychosis, the view of patriarchy as forever trying to purge and purify the American ﬁghting man into a streamlined, conscienceless human weapon. The proof of the effectiveness of this ultimate ﬁghting force is the defeat of a terrorist threat. The terrorist sequence in this ﬁlm occurs at the outset. Terrorists take control of a hydroelectric dam project and threaten to execute hostages unless their demands are met, the demands being the release of their “comrades” from imprisonment within the USA. Black-hooded, these terrorists are a symbolic, faceless threat. Their defeat is a mere plot point in the unfolding action surrounding the rivalry between Van Damme and Lundgren.

Unmasking the Idol (1986: d. Worth Keeter) The protagonist in Unmasking the Idol (advertised as a hybrid of James Bond–Indiana Jones and Rambo) learns of a secret island where death cult members led by the “Scarlet Leader” live in underground caverns alongside a fortune in gold which they intend to turn over to a madman intent on ﬁnancing a worldwide campaign of nuclear terrorism. Unmasking the Idol is one of many routine, indifferent follow-ups to the successful Raiders of the Lost Ark. Intended as parody, it ties into the Ninja mystique then popular but emerges as merely ridiculous, the protagonist keeping the company of a pet baboon. The villains are a religious terror alliance intent on nuclear catastrophe. Only the hero can stop them in this mindless action spoof for non-discriminating adolescent boys.

Up the Sandbox (1972: d. Irvin Kershner) Barbra Streisand is a mother and housewife — the domesticated woman of the early 1970s bypassed by women’s lib and the sexual revolution. She is also perpetually pregnant, a state seen as a form of gender oppression is what soon emerges as a series of fantasy vignettes about feminist empowerment. Her friends are other women who live in the shadow of their husbands’ achievements.

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Highly conscious of the socio-political issues facing early 1970s feminism, Up the Sandbox is a series of dreams. One posits Fidel Castro as a visionary for the cause of gender equality and the liberation of middle-class women. But just as a politicized Streisand goes to interview him, he reveals himself to actually be a woman. The equation of leftwing ideology and issues of gender empowerment intersect the theme of simultaneously escapist and empowering fantasy. In this, the ﬁlm posits a series of fantastic empowerment scenarios for women, feminist variations on The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Terrorism is here an expression of social discontent with the current state of supposed social liberties, reﬂecting a growing disenchantment with the institutions of political power during the Watergate era. The terrorists in this fantasy vignette are the Black Panthers, whom Streisand joins in a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty.

The Uranium Conspiracy (1978: d. Menahem Golan) In 1968, a uranium shipment disappeared, kept secret from the rest of the world for it would show that someone could create 30 nukes, each with the power of the Hiroshima bomb. In 1977, the various heads of national secret services gather for an urgent meeting as reporters have found a nuclear reactor built in the Sahara Desert. The Uranium Conspiracy is one of the ﬁrst ﬁlms to address the subject of nuclear theft. It presents a sexually decadent Africa and stresses the need for Israeli secret service agency Mossad in particular to police the area to prevent black-market nuclear arms smuggling and terrorism. The terrorist trail leads to Germany, suggesting Israel’s position as a cultural gateway between the Middle East and Europe and validating the tiny nation’s strategic importance to Western inﬂuence. The aggrandizement of Mossad in the struggle against the threat of international terrorism is this ﬁlm’s agenda. The enemies of Israel seeking such weapons of mass destruction inevitably intend complete genocide, a curious continuum between Nazism and terrorism (a theme also in evidence in mid- to late 1970s ﬁlms in response to the wave of Palestinian terrorism beginning with the Munich Olympics). The ﬁlm never states the terrorist threat directly but rather works on its underlying assumption. The threat must be removed before it actually reaches its potential to be a global menace. It is taken for granted that any power seeking nuclear weapons in the region would pose a direct threat to Israel. In that terrorism remains unsaid and unacknowledged, the terrorist ﬁgure here functions as an absent signiﬁer, the silent menace that motivates Mossad.

V for Vendetta (2006: d. James McTeigue) In future London, a vigilante (named V and played by a masked Hugo Weaving) resorts to revolutionary terrorism to exact revenge on those who disﬁgured him, hoping to bring the totalitarian political system to its knees. A detective (Stephen Rea) tries to track him down and a girl (Natalie Portman) faces a personal choice as to her loyalty to the man she admires (and who saved her from rape by a fascist police force) or to the human ideals she feels he challenges. Her ﬁnal ability to reconcile terrorism and social liberation is the journey V for Vendetta explores, adapting the original serialized graphic novel by David Lloyd and Alan Moore (who had his name removed from the credits) into a superbly detailed post–9/11 War on Terror allegory. Anti-Americanism and the view of godless action inspiring judgment against Muslims and homosexual degenerates sets the tone for the fascistic view of a future England

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in which the police enforcing curfew take their power as an excuse to rape. Patriarchal authority in the name of God is in V for Vendetta a vile, hypocritical and pernicious political monstrosity that fosters totalitarianism, the ﬁlm bringing Orwellian and anti–Christian irony to a beginning which evokes that of the Tim Burton version of Batman, itself originally a DC Comics property. It is a Christian religious authority here, under the motto “strength through unity, unity through faith,” that results in fascistic oppression in the name of the twin devils of religion and nationalism that this ﬁlm holds responsible for tyranny in a future Britain reacting to the American War on Terror by retreating into conservatism and the manufacture of fear. Terrorism is a Romantic idealism in honor of Guy Fawkes Day in V for Vendetta. It is the expression of individual free will against the oppressive, Christian government in what is a radical and subversive celebration of political terrorism as social revolution — liberation even. Correspondingly, the British leader (played by John Hurt as a kind of Big Brother ﬁgure — an ironic piece of casting considering his role as Winston Smith in the British version of 1984) says that he wants the “terrorist” caught and shown the true meaning of “terror.” Hence, it is the juxtaposition between terrorism as ideological conviction and state terrorism as oppressive thought-control that underlies this ﬁlm, clearly indebted to the mystique of George Orwell as much as the modern-day horror of the suicide bomber and the graphic novel Vertigo comics oeuvre. Thus, the British media broadcast mindless visions demonizing Islamic terrorists while they remain oblivious to the ideology of revolution from within their own nation. Terrorism is not that of the mindless jihadi menace but the result of an ideological fervor born of tradition — the revolutionary spirit of Guy Fawkes and the intent to bring down a government that has ended freedom in the name of fearful religious totalitarianism. What motivates the terrorist here is the obedient consent of the masses to a hierarchical political system based on censorship and surveillance, the kind of society that those who wish for stability readily compromise their liberty to achieve — exactly the kind of concessions to national security that proliferated in the wake of 9/11 in England as attention turned to the immigrant Muslim population. Correspondingly, ideological protest against governmental oppression is branded terrorism: the demonized myth of the terrorist threat thus spreading through the ofﬁcial media — the British equivalent of Fox News in this ﬁlm’s perceptive analogy to the War on Terror within its Orwellian comic-book origins — who are quite prepared to lie to reassure and pacify the populace into a manageable docility they can exploit for their own ends, such ends being the continuation of power. The rationalism of terror here is intriguing: that a building is a symbol and therefore blowing it up can change the world if enough people understand the symbolism. The relevance of this to 9/11 is unmistakable, even though the ﬁlm has no concern for Islamic terrorism except as a convenient scapegoat for the political machinations of a terrorist state. Media collusion with a lying government and the concept of justice served by violence in the right cause give credence to the terrorists’ ideology in V for Vendetta. Yet, Portman must decide whether humanity is served by justiﬁable violence, including assassination, and her personal moral debate is cleverly paralleled to detective Rea’s investigation of the political background that birthed the terrorist: speciﬁcally, the inhumane immigrant detention centers operated by those who had service in the Middle East — a clear allusion to British immigration policy concerning “undesirables” (also heavily informing Children of Men). Yet, when the terrorist assassinates several Party members (includ-

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ing a bishop prone to sexually molesting young girls, as Portman ﬁnds when she tries to warn him), the person charged with extracting information from suspects is a man willing to torture, another clear alliance between the British mentality during the War on Terror, its collusion with the Republican ethos of torture as condoned by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and Orwellian ﬁction. The notion of violence to serve political ideology is here juxtaposed between two polarities — individual and state terrorism. The cost to freedom for stability in England is monstrous as human rights have ceased to mean anything except for party members, the elite. Totalitarian terror is thus a far greater crime against humanity than individual terrorism, which is here revolutionary. Indeed, illegal medical experimentation on detainees with biological weapons is here the epitome of state power — and England’s treatment of undesirables amounts to Mengele-like experimentation, a complete betrayal of human rights in medical ethics which England’s leader John Hurt insists be covered up but which are revealed in disturbing ﬂashbacks. State terror is ultimately responsible for the individual terrorist who acts to bring down said state — revolution is the inevitable product of religious oppression; the media demonization of ideological challenge through violent, retributive justice is labeled “terrorism” at the urging of said state, as a matter of convenience and political expediency in covering up its previous policies, which may have resulted in a loosed virus conveniently blamed on religious extremists. Indeed, the government manufacture and sustaining of a climate of fear in order to keep its hold on power is the ﬁnal tactic in the opposition against the terrorist threat — a clear allusion to the War on Terror Bush-Blair years. News media broadcasts of new terror threats contributes to the depiction of a world on the edge of chaos, the intent being to reinforce the perception that the population needs the government and its stern security measures to ensure its safety. The allusion is clear: The War on Terror is government spin, a theme also featured in as unrelated a movie as Fahrenheit 9/11. Fear ensures power: Manufacturing a terrorist threat by unleashing a “terror” attack against one’s own people ensures that those who prey on the fear of terrorism retain power. Power based on the fear of terrorism ironically perpetuates the need for terrorism to sustain the fear keeping the government in power; such is the paradox of state terror. Signiﬁcantly, the government so sustained in power by fear is conservative, Christian and fascistic — a clear comment on the alliance between Tony Blair and George Bush, just as ﬂashbacks reveal that it was an out-of-control American war (the unnamed but clearly alluded-to War on Terror) that began the manipulation of fear as the means of sustaining power. And in the ﬁlm’s ﬁnal, radical suggestion, anarchy brings liberation from the enslavement and oppression that is living in state-sponsored religious fear. Terrorism is in V for Vendetta an idea that survives long after the terrorist is dead — in mythology and folklore wherein the terrorist is a martyr, not in the sense of the suicide bomber but in the sense of a man who embodied an idea, of the need for the people to rebel against the climate of fear perpetuated by a terrorist state. In contrast to all the ﬁlms of terrorism post–9/11, V for Vendetta alone equates “terrorism” with humanism, making it a boldly subversive War on Terror allegory.

Vantage Point (2008: d. Pete Travis) The opening to Vantage Point establishes a contemporary political context of post–9/11 international anti–Americanism. At a media event in Spain which the reporter begins by

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comparing to terrorism statistics post–9/11, the president of the USA drives by protestors accusing him of terrorism. Media head Sigourney Weaver cares only for the story of the president, telling her camera people to stay away from the protestors (unless they set themselves on ﬁre). The cameras record the president’s assassination by gunshot and subsequent bomb explosion: now to solve what’s been seen as the latest act of (seeming) political terrorism. A lone intelligence agent (Dennis Quaid) follows up on surveillance footage to uncover a larger plot involving a kidnapping conspiracy. Vantage Point is a clever variation on intertwining stories in director Quentin Tarantino’s work, transferring it to the age of digital video surveillance and political terror reminiscent of the political thrillers of director Tony Scott such as Spy Game and Enemy of the State and even of Peter Hyams in Capricorn One. Various perspectives on a single instance — the assassination — are revealed in succession, the story unveiling in the synthesis of details (including the revelation of a presidential body double). The terrorist threat here is believed to be an act of retaliation for the U.S. prevention of a dirty bomb plot out of Morocco: the tit-for-tat battle of terrorism and counterterrorism inherited from the Israeli-Palestinian terrorists. The CIA wants the president to order an action against a friendly Arab nation for harboring terrorism. Vantage Point is an accomplished thriller which moves at a dynamic pace even if in its ﬁnal moments it stretches credibility. It suggests a post–9/11 world of constant terrorist-based one-upsmanship. Ideology is irrelevant and the emphasis is on the sheer professionalism of the terrorists in their enterprise and, once again in terrorist ﬁlms post–9/11, the American unprepared-ness for such action. However, in the emphasis on the lone rugged hero — the intelligence agent played by Dennis Quaid — the ﬁlm resorts to the cowboy-to-the-rescue mentality of B-movie reactionary fantasies. Although the ﬁlm is a gripping thriller, it merely updates existing terrorist characterizations and scenarios with the climate of post–9/11 anti–Americanism being all the justiﬁcation needed for the presumption of a terrorist agenda existing wherever the U.S. may make its presence felt internationally. One interesting thing about Vantage Point is that by now in the cinema of terrorism as a subgenre post–9/11, the War on Terror is an assumed ideological background and increasing expositionary shorthand. Just how this “war” may be dramatized is the challenge embraced by Vantage Point although it never becomes truly allegorical. The lead terrorist ﬁgure here says American arrogance is such that it cannot foresee any possibility in which it is not one step ahead and is therefore blinded to political reality in the War on Terror. When two rivals confront each other, one says, “This war will never end.” As a post–9/11 action thriller, Vantage Point takes as its core rationale the premise that the tit-for-tat exchange between terrorists and the U.S. set in motion by 9/11 and comprising the War on Terror will never end. In that assertion, it is a bleak ﬁlm and exists primarily for the cleverness of its captivating execution. However, the ending, which sees a news report of a lone gunman blamed for the assassination, anchors the ﬁlm ﬁrmly in the tradition of post–Kennedy era political thrillers from The Parallax View through to JFK.

Victory at Entebbe (1976: d. Marvin J. Chomsky) Victory at Entebbe is a recreation of a seminal counterterrorist act in the 1970s: the rescue of Israeli hostages from a hijacked ﬂight forced to land in Uganda. Air France ﬂight 139 is diverted to Uganda by German and Palestinian terrorists, forcing Israeli leaders

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into a rescue attempt (saving 106 Jewish hostages some 4000 miles away). It was this incident that both conﬁrmed the role of airline hijacking in the terrorist pantheon and spoke of the need for efﬁcient counterterror strategies. Victory at Entebbe is one of three ﬁlms made about this crisis (alongside Raid on Entebbe and Operation Thunderbolt). This ﬁlm insinuates that it was the Germans who were pumping up the Palestinians despite a chain of responsibility which sees the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Che Guevara Group, Gaza Brigade take responsibility. The hijacking forces the Israelis to act decisively in ways beyond the nonegotiation stance: They need to show that the nation of Israel is not a pushover to the terrorist agenda. Israel’s response is to track the whereabouts of known terrorists and groups, monitoring enemies in a hostile land. Typical of hijacking movies, the counterterror agenda here represents the battle to restore control and self-determination to those who have had their right to such usurped by the terrorists. The terrorists on their part enforce an “order” which alludes to Nazi experience and suggests, as many ﬁlms did, that such terrorism directed against Israel is the continuation of the anti–Semitic agenda at its nadir in World War II. Director Chomsky is unsubtle but handles the issues and responses with a due sense of responsibility. Just as the passengers realize that they have surrendered their right to self-determination, so too Israel ﬁghts to bring it back — such is a matter of national political pride, both individual and Zionist. The terrorists say they are not murderers despite the worldwide Zionist propaganda demonizing them as such. Instead, they claim that the reason for their terrorism is to draw attention to the political issue of the Palestinian ﬁght for a homeland; they crave media attention as self-aggrandizement. The terrorists carry the usual demands: the release of political prisoners from Zionist prisons. Israel in turn knows the shame that comes with lack of decisive action or compromising its non-negotiation policy and thus is forced to act with quick military discipline. As Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada enters the picture, his dangerous buffoonery is evident. He claims that he intends goodwill for all in securing the release of the non–Israeli hostages but his sympathies are with the terrorists as exempliﬁed by a blonde German woman and stereotypical Aryan sadist. The Palestinians have their homeland cause but the Germans here seek a different agenda — the struggle against world capitalism. Thus, the German terrorist leader seeks to distance himself from the Nazis but is reminded that he still carries a gun and kills Jews, as if nothing much has changed in the German mentality despite the radicalism of such terrorist groups as Baader-Meinhof. In the end his humanity wins out and he refuses to kill when he has the chance.

Voyage of Terror: The Achille Lauro Affair (1990: d. Alberto Negrin) This telemovie is based on the true story of an Italian luxury liner hijacked by Palestinian terrorists in October 1985 as it left Genoa. The terrorists radio their demands — the release of 50 political prisoners in Israel — prompting diplomatic negotiations and military efforts. The ﬁlm unfolds in standard disaster movie fashion, offering a cross-section of the many passengers and their terrorist enemy as they board the ship. The passengers have their fair share of optimism and personal tragedy to humanize them. Being a miniseries, there is much time for passenger interaction and interpersonal bonding before the terrorist hijacking drama gets underway and propels the narrative elsewhere.

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The terrorists claim to be freedom ﬁghters who do not recognize the state of Israel. The terrorist takeover is presented as a set-piece representing the symbolic end of innocence in the world’s treatment of the terrorist threat. The hostages are herded together as a means of asserting power over an international microcosm. As usual for such hostage dramas, the takeover is followed by the passport selection scene. The terrorists, despite their politics, are inhuman murderers, organized but with a complete disrespect for human life, considered the essential factor in the deﬁnition of “terrorist” here. Yet, in a curious subtext, the ﬁlm suggests that the military might of the Western world can be compromised by such terrorist actions. The world military is still bound by rules of ethical conduct which the terrorists can violate at will although in doing so the terrorists prove themselves untrustworthy killers. In that the terrorists were Syrian and Yassir Arafat claimed not to know of their plans, the ﬁlm in part explores the international political ramiﬁcations as fallout from the PLO bandwagon beginning in the rise of Palestinian terrorism since Munich. In this, the generic passport selection scene becomes a symbolic look at what might be termed “terrorist diplomacy” as they force their control over their hostages and assign priorities to their use of force. The ultimate prize for these terrorists is an elderly Jewish-American. Control over these hostages gives the terrorists a symbolic power of determination over international affairs — seizing the microcosm to affect the macrocosm. Taking control of the destinies of others is a desperate attempt to assert their own self-determination: the paradox of the terrorist hostage scenario. The Arab and Syrian communities consider the work of such terrorists the work of bandits, a politically expedient disavowal of responsibility. The terrorists control the hostages through the fear of impending death — holding a hand grenade with the pin removed. They execute the Jewish-American to prove their seriousness even though this proves to be a political mistake. Only one terrorist, a man claiming to be a “soldier,” eventually speaks out against what is being done in the name of a Palestinian homeland.

W. (2008: d. Oliver Stone) W. fulﬁlls two trends in Oliver Stone’s cinema, one consistent throughout his career and one relatively recent. On the latter note ﬁrst, it is the great director’s completion of a War on Terror trilogy: W. comes after examining the patriotic sentiment that consumed America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in the admittedly maudlin and surprisingly apolitical World Trade Center and the deconstruction of the Israeli-Palestinian terrorism crisis as centered on the enigma of Yasser Arafat in Persona Non Grata. In that aspect, W. essentially examines America’s political response to the surrounding War on Terror, speciﬁcally the role that Iraq plays in Republican imperialism. But as a presidential biopic, W. completes a trilogy that began with the controversial JFK and continued with Nixon. These trends jointly conclude with W. a radical, rationalist portrait of nothing less than the political failure of patriarchal Christian America as epitomized by the George W. Bush presidency and indeed endemic in Republican political ideology. Stone systematically and carefully establishes George W. Bush as a born-again Christian who believed that God wanted him in power at a crucial time in American history. He and vice-president Dick Cheney believed that 9/11 was a fulcrum point in American history and that the task now before them was to reconﬁgure America for the post–Cold War “new world order.” Bush prays for guidance repeatedly through this ﬁlm, adding to

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W. a discourse on the role of religion and politics in America mostly absent from the preceding Stone presidential biopics. Indeed Stone shapes W. as a ﬁlm about the “new world order” as envisioned in speciﬁcally Republican politics since Ronald Reagan saw an end to the Cold War as birthing the Christianization of the White House and, in Bush’s presidency, the disastrous fusion of church and state. Although W. does not address the mechanics of terrorism with the immediacy of the post–9/11 wave of terrorist ﬁlms in 2007–08, it importantly confronts the speciﬁcally Christian agenda behind America’s action in the War on Terror from a distinctly rationalist perspective which at times incorporates a Brechtian alienation strategy to make its deconstructive comments about church and state. It sees this in the fusion of president and vice-president, Bush and Cheney. Indeed, Stone ﬁrst shows them together discussing the use of radical interrogation strategies against even American citizens, strategies which Cheney denies are torture but which Bush incorporates in stride into his presidential ambitions, which an hour later into the ﬁlm are shown to be the result of his belief in being “called” by God to run for the presidency. Stone establishes, by intercutting the drama surrounding Bush’s decision to (mis)lead the War on Terror by invading Iraq with ﬂashbacks to the events leading up to his religious conversion, that the issues which the wave of 2007–08 terrorist ﬁlms examine for their ethical compromises to American Constitutional ideals of democracy were essentially put in practice as a result of what amounts to an ignorant, religiously deluded ambition rooted in one man’s desire to live up to his family name. The various issues which have led such ﬁlms as Taxi to the Dark Side to condemn members of the Bush administration as war criminals here ﬁnd their most cogent political context, and one which implies that behind America’s actions in the War on Terror era lay Christian delusional ignorance. Stone introduces this theme gradually, ﬁrst exploring the engineered rhetoric of the “axis of evil” (the formulation of which begins this fascinating biopic)— one of the meaningless jargon terms invented by the Republicans in the desire to “beat” the achievement of Reagan in ending the Cold War and the germ through which Bush entered the Iraq War on the grounds of weapons of mass destruction, redirecting attention from the War on Terror in Afghanistan and in the process obfuscating American ideals of freedom and democracy in the pursuit of divine-inspired Empire. In that Bush’s favorite refrain was “God bless America” (and the fact that he was determined never to be “out–Christianed” in politics and won ofﬁce after coaching from advisor Karl Rove about how to court the conservative Christian vote), Stone’s biopic makes it clear that Bush’s strategy in Iraq and the War on Terror — concluded by prayer meetings in the Oval Ofﬁce — was to him a “holy war.” Bin Laden is not the religious enemy of humanity here — Bush is. In going after Saddam, convinced that the Iraqi leader was in possession of weapons of mass destruction with which he would possibly aid terrorists to attack America, Stone’s Bush is an uncultured Texan cowboy with delusions of spiritual grandeur. Stone reveals this in two scenes: (1) When the decision comes to invade Iraq, Bush says that he is giving Saddam 48 hrs to “get out of Dodge”; (2) after the statue of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad square is torn down, Bush ﬂies triumphantly onto an aircraft carrier and announces victory, adding that he prays God will continue to bless America. And what is God’s answer to His chosen President? Stone immediately cuts to news footage of a terrorist insurgency in Iraq that claims life after life in ever-mounting atrocities, coupled

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with the inability to ﬁnd any evidence whatsoever of weapons of mass destruction and ﬁnally evoking Bush as a president who, as the ﬁnal scene in this ﬁlm reveals, merely looked to the heavens for guidance but was so blinded by the “light” of God that he lost all chance of acting in a way that would bring America to victory in the War on Terror, invading Iraq without any idea of an exit strategy. W. reveals the Bush presidency as the ultimate failure in American political history, the compromise of democracy in the fusion of theist delusion and the patriarchal traditions so dear to Republicans. But in that Bush was a Christian and his presidency a Christian presidency, the vision of a Christian America that brought him to power and took him to war is also, to Stone, a hypocritical failure. In that, Stone renounces the fusion of church and state he sees at the core of this failed presidency. Indeed, the delusional hypocrisy of the Bush presidency is increasingly in evidence as the ﬁlm proceeds, albeit in subtle details: The same man who appeals to God for guidance says little when informed by Iraq commander General Tommy Franks that the U.S. will only bomb Iraqi schools at night. When Colin Powell suggests that Iraq is irrelevant to the War on Terror, Bush turns to Cheney for justiﬁcation, Cheney being the man who begins the ﬁlm “selling” Bush on the ethics of torture only to have Bush when told of interrogation procedures that violate the “pesky” Geneva Convention says that they remind him of his own experiences pledging the college fraternity. Cheney proposes that the USA has ﬁve percent of the world’s population but uses 25 percent of its energy resources, resources that are ﬁnite unless the U.S. can gain strategic control of the Middle East, speciﬁcally Iraq and Iran (two of the three countries, alongside the nuclear ambitious North Korea, comprising the “axis of evil” and, by implication, seeking WMD capability). For Cheney, the U.S. must gain military control of the Middle East to secure the world’s oil reserves, securing the U.S. dependence on the oil economy and ensuring that the U.S. is a world power that can never again be challenged. Cheney unites Bush’s belief in God-given power to guide the American people with the concept of American imperialism as centered on power over oil in the Middle East. A God-driven Christian American empire in control of the world’s energy resources: that is what Bush ultimately means in his continued evocations for God to bless America. “Freedom” and “democracy” are here no longer terms of any Constitutional meaning, but rhetoric redeﬁned alongside the “axis of evil” in order to justify a war policy in reaction to 9/11. The War on Terror is a construct of this agenda which began in Afghanistan with noble intentions but was misdirected by the Iraq policy. Bush’s naïvely optimistic belief in peace and bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East are the smokescreens of American imperialism, a uniquely Republican agenda that began with Ronald Reagan “winning” the Cold War against what he had skillfully (and equally religiously) termed “the Evil Empire.” Bush partly models himself on this Republican victory and Stone subtly probes from the outset of this biopic how the manufacture of the term “axis of evil” redesigns the Reagan rhetoric for the War on Terror, in effect repackaging it for the American people and demonizing the very countries that Cheney sees as standing in the way of American imperialism — Iraq and Iran. For Stone, the shift from the immediate impetus to go after Bin Laden (who is dismissed in a throwaway line of dialogue as a “religious nut in a cave”) to go after Saddam Hussein was the appropriation of justiﬁable outrage against terrorism into an American imperialism driven by oil concerns and underpinned by theist visions of a Christian America. The irony for

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Stone is that this awful imperialism was essentially enabled before the world community by a speech by Colin Powell, previously depicted as the administration’s sole voice of reason, before the UN concerning Saddam’s anthrax capabilities: the fabricated myth of WMD. Rather than being a worthy man of God, Bush is depicted as an uncultured, partly educated and rather folksy believer. He is little concerned with the truth of matters and holds onto his religious belief, content to pray rather than discuss. Impetuous, he is driven by advisors who believe that they can only stay in power at the next presidential election if Bush becomes a literal “war president” and that Afghanistan, though the real focus in the War on Terror (at least according initially to Colin Powell), is simply not enough of a war to guarantee victory in the next election. The elevation of WMD paranoia — the fear of a nuclear terrorist attack — to national political priority enables this new war to be carefully constructed as not based in the evident home of terrorism in Afghanistan but in Iraq: a war only possible by a radical shift in American foreign policy from containment to preemptive engagement. When Bush realizes that there are no weapons of mass destruction, he feels betrayed and grapples to ﬁnd a historical analogy, commenting that he feels like “that Roman” betrayed by his senators but lacking the education to mention Julius Caesar by name. By the end of the ﬁlm, the president who felt that God was calling him into power to guide the American people at a crucial time in its nation’s history is a failed, deluded, confused and powerless fool. And, for Stone, his failure is the failure of the ideals of a Christian America to live up to true Constitutional ideals of freedom and democracy. When Bush is asked what kind of democracy he intends to set up in Iraq to replace the Saddam regime, he merely says that he doesn’t care, as long as it is a democracy; his religious beliefs have removed from him any ability to understand the real meaning of the terms, construing as he does solely in the patriarchal traditions of American family values and the authority of the “father” that also underlies Christianity. With his advisors — who have no planned “exit strategy” in Iraq and indeed, via Cheney, hope to stay there to control the oil reserves — American democracy is reduced to an empty, meaningless concept. Yet, in the “great” American democracy, the president is granted unique powers in wartime, powers which Bush fails to comprehend in any meaningful way, content to pray for guidance rather than think. Bush’s failure, the failure of a Christian America is also, for Stone, the failure of the theism underlying American patriarchy and even the unprecedented “faith” it gives the president in times of war. This is the purpose of the ﬁlm’s many ﬂashbacks — to Bush’s alcoholism and his discovery of Jesus Christ — to reveal what Stone considers the burden of the American ideal of family and faith-based tradition. For instance, the fraternity that Bush pledges consists of youths who have been part of the fraternity for generations and whose leader says that their family fortunes will sweep them into power — power as rooted in Republican money. And the head of Bush’s family is his father, George Sr. (who calls his son “Junior,” something that George W. resents). The younger Bush lives in the shadow of his father, driven to rebel but ﬁnally determined to prove himself worthy of the family name. In this, George W. Bush is a slave to Republican patriarchal tradition — the law of the father being a precursor to his Christian reformation. Theism, for Bush, allows him to believe in a higher patriarchal authority than his father — God. Belief in God validates the law of the father just as it gives Bush a purpose. Unable to ever live up to his father’s expec-

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tations, Bush’s divine “calling” by God to be president is merely a delusional escape from his own unresolved psychological inability to reject the law of the father and seek out an individual identity beyond patriarchal Christian tradition. To meet the responsibility of the patriarch, Bush turns to God. In this, Stone’s ﬁlm is the most important political movie to emerge to date post–9/11. It deconstructs the obfuscation of the War on Terror in terms of a patriarchal Christiandriven desire for American imperialism in which Constitutional ideals of “democracy” and “freedom” cease to have any meaning. Although as a director Stone keeps this intent subtle, a distinctly satiric intent emerges in W. much more so than in any of Stone’s presidential biopics. To ensure that Bush’s Christian agenda is never accepted as valid, Stone subtly deploys a music selection as an ironic counterpoint to those scenes establishing Bush as a Christian ﬁgure — indeed, the song selection here by undercutting the notion of God-given authority instead creates the impression that Bush is a mere folksy, deluded and inadequate representative of his country. So too his beliefs — patriarchal Christian authority, American imperialism and the theist justiﬁcation he takes for granted — mislead America in the War on Terror years. And Stone is clear in staging a press conference scene near the end that, when confronted by the complete failure of his beliefs and his “democracy” and questioned about it, Bush is unable to think on his feet, ﬁnally even deserted by the God he once prayed to, unable to live out his dream of “winning.”

Wag the Dog (1997: d. Barry Levinson) Wag the Dog is a political satire in which a U.S. president (modeled on Bill Clinton) is involved in a White House sex scandal. His advisor (Robert DeNiro) has to cover up and gloss over the controversy and so enlists a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) in the effort to draw the media’s attention from the sex scandal by manufacturing a war in Europe in which the USA must intervene. Notions of political manufacture and the manipulation of the media to suit a government agenda inﬁltrate Wag the Dog. DeNiro is a man with a reputation as “Mr. FixIt” who must sort through an American government consumed by petty sex scandals as if such were to propel the nation into a moral crisis. The fear behind the need for a coverup is that sexual immorality will erode faith in the nation’s leadership and that such faith is renewed by decisive wartime action. In the manufacture of a war to circumvent the controversy, Albania is chosen in order to heighten the rhetoric concerning the threat posed by Muslim fundamentalists, thus preying on the U.S. fear of Islamic extremism as a legitimate rallying cry around which to go to war. The media spin creates an America in fear of a tiny nation developing WMD capacity and using it against the USA by terrorist means, making this ﬁlm quite prescient in terms of world events following 9/11 a few years later. An added irony here is that those responsible for creating the media spin do not even vote and merely do it for the challenge. Once it is manufactured, there is an attendant need to keep the story going, so much so that media spin soon determines the political agenda. DeNiro states that the U.S. war of the future will be against the threat of nuclear terrorism by a small group of dissidents possibly unknown to the countries they operate within. However, the ﬁlm’s main concern is the ability to manipulate public opinion for political ends, a theme in several ﬁlms directed by Barry Levinson including Sleepers and Good Morning Vietnam. In turn, the U.S. populace is shown as gullible, easily duped by master showmen: The rich elite of

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America here pull the strings that shape politics for the masses. But even the best plans are threatened by human egotism (a theme of screenwriter David Mamet) as director Levinson here reveals a sly appreciation and absolute dread of the fraudulence inherent in his chosen medium as serving only the agenda of the egotists with the money and power to deploy the medium to its fullest potential — the deliberate misleading of the American people. As Hoffman demands that he be given credit for the manipulation, Levinson cynically reveals that the only difference between Hollywood fabrication and government fabrication is that the former acknowledges it is a “construct” by accreditation of those responsible in the fabrication.

Wanted: Dead or Alive (1986: d. Gary Sherman) Inspired by the old Steve McQueen TV series, Wanted: Dead or Alive follows Nighthawks in its premise of an international terrorist coming to the USA. The terrorist here is Islamic and carries the ideological ferocity expected of this afﬁliation. A bounty hunter (Rutger Hauer) must track down and stop the terrorist threat. In the course of updating the Western, Wanted: Dead or Alive posits that the new dangerous enemy to the American way of life is the international terrorist. This terrorist is here a literal cut-throat villain, and good-guy Hauer functions as a hybrid of Western lawman and loner as a modern bounty hunter (of the type essayed by Steve McQueen in The Hunter). The terrorist uses explosives, bombing a movie theater and calling in to claim responsibility, leaving a clear handprint on the glass so as to identify himself. Terrorism is his means to self-actualization and self-aggrandizement, a demonstration of his potency and desire to be known and feared as a terrorist. Hauer’s recourse against this terrorist is meant to demonstrate the righteous man’s sense of moral outrage, though he still needs the ﬁnancial reward of a bounty to motivate him fully. The terrorist has a female accomplice (another parallel to Nighthawks) and seemingly has access to an intelligence-gathering community of sorts, able to steal and buy weapons within a network of domestic connections. The suggestion is that organized terror groups need to be led by intelligent men with knowledge of weaponry and bombmaking if they are to achieve their full potential. Thus, racially integrated cells operate within contemporary American society. In one of cinema’s ﬁrst ﬂirtations with the prospect of a suicide bomber on American soil, a terrorist here blows himself up rather than be captured and forced to give information. The implication behind this wave of Islamic terrorism is that CIA policy in the Middle East is now coming back to haunt the USA, a theme introduced as early as Black Sunday. However, the ﬁlm fails to develop any real motivation or ideological basis for the terrorist’s actions and thus the terrorist emerges as a caricature villain in a reactionary action ﬁlm which shows the terrorist as an “other” devoid of reason, cause and rationale: the terrorist is here an unknowable, inhumane abomination.

Warbirds (1988: d. Ulli Lommel) A Middle Eastern ally of the U.S., El Alaheim, is attacked by terrorist radicals. In response, the U.S. sends a mercenarial counter terrorist force to rescue the country and its leader. The team is assembled but betrayed and so face an onslaught of jets, helicopters and “suicide commandos.” Based loosely on memories of the U.S. desire to suppress the Iranian Revolution,

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the terrorists here are cheering, ruthless rabble who considers themselves an army and dress in uniform. What remains intriguing about this very low-budget actioner is the political context — that the U.S. must respond to the Middle Eastern religious rebels with a new base in the region: Military presence in the region is essential to global peace according to this ﬁlm. In turn, the Middle East needs U.S. support, though secretly despise the country and culture. The assembled team is a stereotypical group of “hotshots” out of Top Gun and Iron Eagle but here are less endorsed as American heroes than presented by director Lommel as the ugly face of American imperialism. There are thus some sly jibes about this group’s sexual proclivities and their view that any emotionality is a weakness. The ﬁlm is a parodic deconstruction of American gung-ho stupidity, with knowingly comical acting. Human need is held in counterpoint to political reality and cultural self-determination. Yet, the maverick member of the team is motivated by revenge and acts out of a desire to put the terrorists back in their place, essentially a function of reactionary American arrogance in response to the real issues plaguing the region. America here emerges as a proud but ignorant patriarchy obsessed with submerged homoerotic codes of honor and reprisal, making Warbirds highly critical of the jingoism of such as Top Gun and Iron Eagle. With a dryly humorous admission of its own budgetary constraints, Middle Eastern civilization is here represented by a tent in the desert — the U.S. perception of the region — there being a jokey outrage at how such sadistic Arabs torment American Marines. Indeed, the mistreatment of a captured American here recalls the forced confessions during the Vietnam War, suggesting that America’s next Vietnam will indeed lie somewhere in the Middle East. Signiﬁcantly, the villains are considered rebels until they hold and torture Americans, upon which they earn the label “terrorists.” With this, the ﬁlm emerges a condemnation of the reactionary action genre as basically American wishfulﬁllment revenge fantasies for the failure to act during the Iran hostage crisis and prevent the Islamic Revolution. Director Lommel used an abundance of stock footage, doing the ﬁlm primarily for the money. He intended the deliberate cheapness of the ﬁlm to be a commentary on the insigniﬁcance of the higher-budgeted Top Gun and its sense of jingoistic fun and games behind American military engagement. Lommel has since dismissed the ﬁlm as “idiotic.”

Wargames: The Dead Code (2006: d. Stuart Gillard) aka Wargames 2 A sequel to the 1980s hit Wargames in which a teenage computer nerd hacks into the NORAD defense computers, Wargames: The Dead Code restages the same premise with a War on Terror twist. This time a computer hacker breaks into an online terrorist attack simulation game which has been designed to appeal to terrorists, marking as a security threat those players who get to a certain level. With a ridiculous prologue in Afghanistan which depicts supposed terrorists as partygoers dancing with hookers and shooting weapons, Wargames: The Dead Code is an insulting thriller aimed for undiscriminating teens. It depicts U.S. authorities as slaves to a supercomputer which can be hacked by a smart teen with a PC. Unrelentingly trivial, this ﬁlm attempts a sense of urgency but is poorly scripted and indifferently acted, resulting in a run-of-the-mill thriller with sci-ﬁ paranoid leanings about ﬁghting the War on Terror through technological means. The paranoia of U.S. authorities ﬁghting terror is

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the point here, a post–9/11 theme handled without subtlety in a derivative plot that was fun 25 years ago but is merely silly now. Besides restructuring the War on Terror to suit video gamers, the ﬁlm posits terrorists as undisciplined perverts and potential suicide bombers as video game–playing teenagers. The result is a ﬁlm that stretches credibility to the point of insult, its politics of protecting the U.S. against terror threats here being trivialized to the point of banality, bringing the post–9/11 terrorist thriller to the nadir of genre dross: high schoolers inadvertently caught up in the War on Terror and saving the U.S. from a rampant supercomputer game. Irrelevant as a terrorist thriller, Wargames: The Dead Code is notable only for the paranoia it associates with military intelligence, though trivializing it to video game culture achieves little except for a plot about a teen in over his head who outsmarts his superiors and saves the day.

Wild Justice (1993: d. Terry Whormby) In Wild Justice, produced in conjunction with Italian television and based on a novel by Wilbur Smith, a man expelled from the CIA works for a wealthy baroness who owns an industrial plant. There he uncovers links to an international terrorist group making weapons to wage war against the CIA. A plane containing Nobel Prize winners is held for ransom, the hijackers preparing to kill unless their demands are met. When a counterterror operation begins, there is much dissention in the terrorist ranks over the willingness to die for the cause. A media hero is forced to resign. There is a certain soap-operatic quality to the plotting here, in which all the major characters are revealed to have some link to terrorism in their past, the baroness here representing a generation whose parents were killed by terrorists and demanding that the patriarchal legacy be held accountable. The baroness in turn wants the protagonist to ﬁnd the one terrorist, named “the Caliph,” responsible for her father’s death. The Caliph is a celebrity of sorts who purchases weapons and gives them away to causes wishing to make a name for themselves. The protagonist traces the money trail through the Middle East to Southeast Asia and groups in operation since the Vietnam War. Here, the ﬁlm posits a network of related Islamic terror groups throughout the Muslim world slowly being linked together as a loose-knit army of terrorists needing uniﬁed leadership — precisely the void that Bin Laden would ﬁll. The ﬁlm also suggests that unchecked arms proliferation is aiding the spread of global terrorism as all terrorist causes are here linked to the one anarchic agenda served by the means of terrorism. Eventually the terrorist trail leads to Iraq and Saddam Hussein, intending to wage war on the West by supplying terrorist groups with weapons. This notion of Iraq sponsoring terrorism in the wake of the ﬁrst Gulf War is a subtext running throughout 1990s ﬁlms dealing with Iraq. Yet, Western operatives sell arms to terrorist groups in a vision to keep Arab power fragmented and to control the fundamentalists lest they eventually dictate world oil prices. Hence, the CIA is revealed to be responsible for supplying terrorists and creating terrorist “masterminds” as a means of manipulating and controlling the growth of Arab fundamentalism in the Middle East. Wild Justice is noteworthy for its provocative theme that events in the Middle East are stage-managed by the CIA in the interests of U.S. foreign policy, holding oil prices stable by controlling Islamic fundamentalism. However, such is a situation that threatens to grow beyond the CIA’s ability to control it. In turn, the ﬁlm conﬁrms the Arab

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resentment of U.S. interests as purely oil-driven. The ﬁlm also addresses the roots of Islamic resentment in the perception of the West as suppressing Islam in the name of these same oil interests. It is unfortunate that the ﬁlm not address these themes more directly as they seem central to the background tensions under discussion. Nevertheless, what emerges by implication only is a genuine resentment of U.S. intelligence operations within the Middle East in service of the suppression of Islam and the issue of a Palestinian homeland.

Winter Kills (1979: d. William Richert) A man is immersed in his father’s business empire when he learns of someone maintaining he was a presidential assassin. Meanwhile, a reporter tries to persuade a magazine publisher to do a feature on what she claims is the truth behind the assassination of the U.S. president some ﬁfteen years earlier. Clearly owing to JFK conspiracy theories, Winter Kills is a black comedy which neatly caricatures a misfunctional patriarchy. The presence of a second riﬂeman in the JFK assassination conﬁrms a conspiracy, this ﬁlm positing the act as an intended means of political destabilization and thus a terrorist act. The sense of mounting crisis and accumulation here owes to both farce and the Theater of the Absurd, the ﬁlm cleverly essaying political paranoia as ridiculous. The ﬁlm emerges as a near-parody of the style of such political thriller experts as John Frankenheimer and Alan J. Pakula, with the casting of John Huston recalling his role as the incestuous patriarch of the earlier Chinatown. Winter Kills indicts then contemporary America as a mad, conspiratorial society, charting the protagonist’s growing disenchantment with the patriarchy he reveals as monstrous, corrupt and horrid. Protagonist Jeff Bridges represents the last vestiges of America’s naïve humanity, proving himself only the foolish inheritor of a failed and perverse patriarchal authority that would kill its own president for business interests. But this president is revealed to have been a sexually immoral man: all powerful patriarchs here are sexually perverse, with Bridges concluding that his experience in discovering the truth has been a lesson in futility, for the powerful stay in power through deception and disinformation. The ﬁlm’s ﬁnal thesis, as son confronts father, is that the sons of American power are betrayed by their fathers, to which they can but resign with a terrible admission, “I’m part of the family.” America’s rhetoric of “family values” has never been as scornfully mocked and subverted as in Winter Kills.

Witness in the War Zone (1986: d. Nathanial Gutman) In war-torn Beirut, a U.S. TV reporter (Christopher Walken) ﬁlms an interview with a pretend leader who claims that the PLO is ready to negotiate with Israel and the Phalangists. Walken discovers the deception is part of a plan to massacre civilians. For Walken this is just another assignment. He has no political conviction yet is able to feign sympathy for the bombing victims. Beirut, once considered the Paris of the Middle East, is now shown to be a war zone. In this context it emerges that journalistic coverage of this is a mere Western exploitation of a regional crisis to make headlines, in order to ﬁll more advertising space for American beer commercials. The British journalist (Hywel Bennett) is revealed to be sexually exploiting young Lebanese girls, so demoralizing is the Western presence to the ambitions of those in the region. And as Walken is manipulated into what he thinks is a genuine interview, the theme becomes clear: Journalists are petty

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egotists easily manipulated by those who have found genuine commitment. In this cynical ﬁlm, the press is another political weapon in the terrorist spread of worldwide disinformation. Despite its cynical framework, Witness in the War Zone does an intriguing job of revealing the political tensions that underlay Lebanon in the context of the Israeli–PLO struggles of the early 1980s, dividing it into religious loyalties. But as Walken learns that he has been duped, the ﬁlm changes tack and concerns the process by which an uninterested man acquires a sense of purpose — in this case a belief in the power of the journalistic profession to highlight a just cause, offering comparison to Under Fire. Having the chance to leave the region when his replacement arrives, Walken decides to stay, now motivated by the role he personally can play in shaping world events and perceptions. He begins to care about people in crisis beyond his petty selﬁshness and so is motivated to risk his life in pursuit of the truth, validating journalistic integrity just as at the outset he subverted it. The truth Walken discovers is that he was being manipulated all along, by Israeli secret service, the view ﬁnally emerging that machinations in Israel control the perception of the region and that PLO terrorism is the attempt to thwart this Zionist agenda. Both the PLO and Israel want to continue the bloodshed and do not intend for there ever to be a true peace in the region. Those who want peace become the enemies of both sides in the Middle East conﬂict, which here ideologically thrives on bloodshed and retribution. Walken’s newfound humanitarianism extends to an effort to warn the Palestinians of an attack planned against them but the Palestinians choose to stay and be massacred, intending their martyrdom to be an inspirational lesson to their people. As Walken sees the horror and futility, wandering through the massacred civilians, his newfound humanity is replaced once again by a world-weary indifferent cynicism: He has come full circle.

World Trade Center (2006: d. Oliver Stone) Two New York City Port Authority policemen (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena) are trapped in the rubble of the collapsing World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. As they bond, unable to move, rescue efforts above them continue. When all hope seems lost, a lone Marine takes it upon himself to join the search, eventually leading to the rescue of the two trapped men, the only survivors of the WTC collapse. World Trade Center is not a terrorist movie although it takes place on 9/11. It takes on the crisis management subtext of the traditional disaster movie that also inﬂuenced United 93, the ﬁrst movie on terrorism post–9/11. However, where United 93 sought to apply this in order to reinvent the terrorist subgenre through its dramatization of a hostage crisis, World Trade Center is content to be a sentimental, old-fashioned disaster movie with 9/11 as a context. The lack of any sustained political discourse beyond the most conventional of feel-good American patriotism makes this ﬁlm one of director Oliver Stone’s least impressive works — and, as a precursor to Stone’s tackling of the War on Terror president in his subsequent biopic of George W. Bush, almost irrelevant. World Trade Center does address the concept of an American identity pre– and post–national disaster. It happens to take place on 9/11 and by default that national disaster it addresses is the result of terrorism but the ﬁlm does not address the terrorism. Rather, it concentrates on the actuality of the disaster — the collapse of the Twin Towers, the people trapped inside, the heroic attempts to rescue survivors — taking the sole

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survivor story of the collapsing World Trade Center and elevating it to the status of modern American legend. World Trade Center focuses on 9/11 as the contemporary equivalent of a loss of national innocence, an event which for Stone galvanized the country into a mix of patriotism and sentimentality, qualities which infect his treatment of the plot. The simple story of trapped survivors, however, relates back to what was central to the cinema of terrorism — the crisis of self-determination. Here, the struggle for survival is the battle to regain self-determination, both individual and national. For Stone, the rescue of the two trapped men is a triumphant moment in the push towards the regaining of a national self-determination threatened by the events of 9/11 and terrorism. Hence, it is the efforts of a lone patriotic marine doing his duty for his country as he sees it, by combing Ground Zero for trapped survivors, that enables the individual and national triumph here: a plot development that would be impossibly hackneyed were it not apparently true. Either way: Patriotism and the restoration of national pride are Stone’s agenda here as he sees 9/11 as a wounding of American pride, eventually restored by the recovery effort. In this way, the ﬁlm relates to the end of United 93, where it is the restoration of self-determination that allows America to mark its injuries and continue as a great nation. The vividness of the collapsing tower scenes and the depiction of New York City in the grip of a national emergency recurred in, of all things, the non-terrorist monster movie Cloverﬁeld. Although Stone can be commended for the humanism he brings to much of this movie, the mounting patriotic sentiment renders the ﬁlm unforgivably mawkish in its resolution and World Trade Center amounts to little more than a competent disaster movie straining for national signiﬁcance in its familiar dramatics. However, dramatizing the events of 9/11 seems a necessary stage in the advance of the terrorist movie and it is this function that is best ﬁlled by Stone’s movie, though it offers the terrorist subgenre little in comparison to United 93 and emerges a piece of effective, but strained, survivalist sentiment — extolling the determination of the American character to survive whatever obstacles are thrown its way. World Trade Center may be a “modern classic” of American patriotic ﬁlmmaking but it is only incidentally a terrorist movie and more a mythic evocation of Ground Zero.

Wrong Is Right (1980: d. Richard Brooks) aka Man with the Deadly Lens In Wrong Is Right, the world is constantly being watched by satellite technology. New York City is in the grip of a crime wave when journalist Sean Connery goes to North Africa in search of an oil billionaire beset by terrorists. The journalist here is a national celebrity, a kind of globetrotting James Bond ﬁgure whose pursuit of “the truth” becomes the exploitation of crisis. The general populace of the foreign oil-rich nation here resents the U.S. presence, terrorism essentially being the voice of such protest. In this, Connery is left wondering how “America” became such a dirty word in the region. In protest of U.S. foreign policy oil interests, the terrorists are preoccupied with doing God’s will, even hearing hallucinatory voices as a justiﬁcation for their horrendous actions. The view here, in a ﬁlm that quickly reveals itself as satire, is that politics between the Middle East and the USA are determined by absolute madmen religious in their fanaticism: The U.S. president is a Christian who relies on a caricatured preacher for guidance. In this, Wrong Is Right is the ﬁrst and only ﬁlm in the cinema of terrorism pre–9/11 to ﬁnd root cause in religious madness as much as political resentment.

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The terrorist organization has here a network of camps throughout the Middle East where men eagerly train for war with America. They are religious fanatics ready to commit suicide on command. Terrorism is a revolutionary legacy turned mad. In the efforts of the terrorists to target New York, Wrong Is Right is also the most prescient of pre–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms. Though it is set in Africa, the specter of Middle East terrorism coming to America saturates the ﬁlm, developing themes present in Black Sunday although to much more satiric ends. As far as the U.S. response is concerned, the ﬁlm suggests that the desire of these terrorists to target the U.S. by whatever means necessary validates any and all paranoia and justiﬁes the use of, at the very least, satellite spy surveillance systems. Unusual in a genre so heavily concerned with ideas of terrorism as Cold War spill-over, the threat here is not from the Soviet Union but from Arab religious fanatics. In light of this, the USA is given no choice but to pursue and eliminate the terrorist threat and those organizations and governments that support and sustain it. These terrorists have declared war on the USA and wage it accordingly (through demonstrations, ﬂag burnings and embassy bombings). Suicidal protests and actions within the USA follow as Islamic terror against oil-driven U.S. foreign policy relating to CIA operations in the region. On this note, the ﬁlm is careful to depict the CIA as operating independently of government, so that the U.S. government can maintain “plausible deniability” when confronted with CIA action and its consequences in the Middle East. The real power to inﬂuence foreign policy thus comes from the intelligence community, director Brooks left bemused as to what the real agenda here may be. Wrong Is Right is an elaborately plotted satire of international amorality. Despite the emphasis on the suitcase bomb (which would become a regular feature in the cinema of terrorism a decade later), the ﬁlm posits that the main means of Islamic terrorism is the suicide bomber. Television coverage of such a waste of human life becomes a popular news item watched by millions worldwide eager for more evidence of the atrocity of Arab–U.S. relations. Wrong Is Right is also prescient for its suggestion of suicide bombing as a spectacular set-piece; which it would become in such post–9/11 terrorist ﬁlms as The Kingdom and Traitor. With such a human weapon at their disposal in the war against America, it is just a matter of time before religious fanatics target America directly. A wave of suicide bombings in America may have been the stuff of satire in 1980 but twenty years later it was all too frighteningly plausible. In a ﬁnal eerie prescience, a nuclear suitcase bomb is found on the ﬂagpole atop the World Trade Center, the ultimate fanatical terrorist target as a symbol of American economic might.

XChange (2000: d. Allan Moyle) XChange was advertised as a cross between Face/Off and The Matrix, a rare terrorist–sci-ﬁ hybrid. In the future, people travel by transmitting their consciousness to other people’s bodies anywhere in the world. Anti-corporate terrorists assassinate a CEO and an agent is transferred into the body of the terrorist leader, having to return to his own body within two days. XChange plays into fears of the corporatization of the world economy and those who would seek to prevent the development of the so-called “new world order.” Patriarchy is such that the son is ready to inherit the father’s corporation and also inherit the terrorist threat against it. The terrorist group here launches a campaign of bombing attacks on corporate structures, the symbols of Western greed and cultural imperialism. The notion

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of “mind transfer,” the latest advance to be debated by the Senate, was initially a recreational gimmick for the rich and redolent of the work of Philip K. Dick. Such mind travel, however, allows the users a vicarious thrill and permits more hedonistic escapades in nightclubs — hence a service for the old who transfer into bodies of the young (reminiscent of the ﬁlm Seconds). The terrorist must be tracked via these host bodies, the protagonist now ﬁnding himself trapped in someone other than himself and transported into the body of an all-purpose clone. The same character is here depicted by three different actors. In a confusing and convoluted plot, director Moyle reveals a sense of the absurdity of future human interaction, with mildly satiric overtones. The protagonist discovers that his body has been stolen by major anti-corporate terrorists and he must endeavor to reconcile what this ﬁlm visualizes as a mind-body split almost irrelevant to identity. Individuality is thus raised in terms of its relation to a corporate-controlled world which favors the rich and where hedonism is the domain of a functional workforce. The corporate bosses are absorbed with their own power in the economic depersonalization of human worth and the commodiﬁcation of individual human identify. The corporation is seen as the oppressive power of the future. However, the terrorist here is revealed to be in league with the corporate successors, in it for the money rather than the ideology — as typical of immediate pre–9/11 depictions of terrorism.

X-Files: The Movie (1998: d. Rob Bowman) In this popular adaptation of the hit TV show, a virus of alien origin frozen for 37,000 years is unleashed in modern Texas. When a terrorist bomb destroys a building in Dallas, agents Mulder and Scully investigate, revealing a far-ranging conspiracy with extraterrestrial implications behind the virus. Primarily a conspiratorial sci-ﬁ thriller, X-Files: The Movie uses a terrorist bombing as a plot point and timely hook upon which to introduce the conspiracy. This is an appropriation of public concerns and fears following the Oklahoma City FBI building bombed by Timothy McVeigh — the same incident inspiring the ﬁlm Arlington Road. Following the terrorist bombing which initiates the narrative, Mulder and Scully delineate the terror rationale. The aim is to spread fear, a purpose achieved by bomb threat and discovery though not necessarily by detonation. Thus, the ﬁlm sets up its two protagonists in terms of their reaction to and interpretation of an act of domestic terrorism. The fear of viral contamination and the horror of domestic terrorism make for the ideological platform upon which this movie launches into its sci-ﬁ angle. Terrorism is shown as having a pattern which can be subject to unpredictable new variation — here explicitly paralleled to a virus. In response to a terror threat there are thus protocols in place, the FBI suggesting that since the incident at Waco, Texas, they are under pressure from the attorney general to properly place due responsibility for the destruction resulting from acts of terrorism. Notions of professional accountability follow such incidents and their investigation: The FBI and the government need to protect their public image in the ﬁght against terrorism. However, the ﬁlm is sci-ﬁ in focus and it is soon revealed that the terrorists are a scapegoat for a more sinister extra-terrestrial agenda: Terrorism is here thus a convenient and believable cover story. Interestingly, the ﬁlm validates the pro-patriarchal discourse throughout much reactionary American ﬁlm: Mulder becomes the lone man ﬁghting a system of institutional cover-up and is charged

Year of the Gun

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with the responsibility for the purging of patriarchal order though the ﬁlm is irresolute about his ability to do so.

Year of the Gun (1992: d. John Frankenheimer) Journalist Andrew McCarthy arrives in Rome amidst a hub of Red Brigade terrorist activity. He writes a ﬁctional work based on real people and incidents, including his association with a photojournalist (Sharon Stone). Stone and the terrorists think that his ﬁction is a real work and he becomes the target of the Red Brigades who fear that he knows too much about their plans to kidnap Italian Senator Aldo Moro. Year of the Gun is director John Frankenheimer’s return to the cinema of terrorism following the seminal Black Sunday and the detour into neo–Nazism in Dead Bang, also recalling his American a long way from home premise of French Connection 2. Year of the Gun commences in 1978 when the Red Brigades have “brought a shocked society to a state bordering on revolution.” A radical student protest movement is depicted in detail as the director mixes cinema verite realism with a stylized, grotesque sense of visual distortion — expressionistic realism. McCarthy begins the ﬁlm with the typically American view that terrorism should be suppressed. His Italian intellectual contact ( John Pankow) is more sympathetic to the terrorist cause and methodology, the ﬁlm examining the collusion between the youthful Red Brigades and the collegiate intelligentsia who feel that revolution is beneﬁcial to society but wish to remain at a remove from the actual tactics of terrorism. McCarthy constructs a ﬁctional manuscript using real names, implicating these people in a constructed plot which closely resembles a real terrorist plot. Both he and his manuscript thus become highly sought after by the terrorists. Slowly, McCarthy realizes that through the media, fact and ﬁction are inseparable in the creation of legend. Indeed, this is Frankenheimer’s assessment of the political ﬁlm as a genre — truth as construct: making this the director’s most self-reﬂective look at manipulation and the media since his classic The Manchurian Candidate. McCarthy’s self-awareness is his growing sense of responsibility, learning that he simply cannot create a fabrication based on real people and events for to do so crosses a line in which real people in real situations are affected. Such is the principle of media accountability. McCarthy’s realization of his responsibility is in terms of a systematic wounding and humiliation — a traumatic physical and emotional ordeal which focuses his thoughts and intentions almost as a kind of cathartic puriﬁcation. Such a “wounding” is a consistent theme in Frankenheimer’s body of work; counterterrorist Robert Shaw went through a similar cathartic purge in Black Sunday. Photojournalist Stone wants to team with McCarthy for a combination picturesand-words exclusive. Yet, as McCarthy’s interest is elsewhere, the ﬁlm raises the question as to whether even words and pictures can add up to a representation of the “truth” and whether such representations serve or obfuscate the intentions of the people and movements involved in the so-called creation of objective truth. Professionalism and exploitation are the proverbial two sides of the same coin in such journalistic ﬁction ﬁlm. As McCarthy writes about a ﬁctional kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the terrorists plot the actual event, the two narrative strands interweave until they intersect in a recreation of the actual kidnapping. The terrorist leadership is well-dressed and educated, their underlings also educated but shorn of any sense of bourgeois social convention (a woman goes to the

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Zabriskie Point

toilet openly in front of intellectual Pankow). The terrorists are absolutely ruthless but believe in the power of the media to be used to their advantage and so spare McCarthy and Stone their wrath. Finally, in a televised conference, McCarthy and Stone talk to the media from different locations (Stone now in Beirut) united by their appearance on the television monitors around them. Year of the Gun is the ﬁrst American ﬁlm to tackle the tumultuous period of Red Brigade terrorism in Italy. Frankenheimer felt that the actual Moro kidnapping was a story best left to the Italians and so constructed his ﬁlm as a ﬁction around the real incident, concentrating on the role of the media in the power politics of terrorism and social revolution. What was found interesting about this American perspective on terrorism in foreign lands was that “what the ending also makes clear, and this is something unusual in an American ﬁlm, is that foreigners really have no business getting involved in other countries, especially ones whose internal traumas they do not understand” (Murray, “Year of the Gun,” Cinema Papers, October 1992, pp. 38–42).

Zabriskie Point (1970: d. Michelangelo Antonioni) Italian director Antonioni came to America for two ﬁlms —Zabriskie Point and The Passenger— both tangentially related to the cinema of terrorism. Zabriskie Point concerns speciﬁcally the radicalization of the American youth-student movement at the end of the 1960s as contemporaneously evoked in the ﬁlm Getting Straight. Zabriskie Point is a landmark of the Woodstock era. Improvisational, its sense of societal discontent incorporates the move to black militancy and student revolutionaries as a new domestic terrorist presence, a revolutionary force for social change in what is a heavily anti-authoritarian ﬁlm. Force, the student takeover of the university, is necessary to achieve change on a revolutionary scale. But Antonioni senses the discontent, the sexual yearning behind the protest generation of American youth and examines their politicization in such a way as to relate it to their desire for sexual freedom. In this way, Zabriskie Point becomes the deﬁnitive ﬁlm of the sexual revolution, a true “zeitgeist” movie. Antonioni seeks to capture the era in sight and sound (the music of Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead being included in the soundtrack). The student radicals here (incipient terrorists although that term is never used) consider it a necessity to arm themselves for the potential revolution against the prevailing consumer mentality, the commercialized culture surrounding them, repressing them and determining their socio-cultural socialization. The important question debated by the radicals is when the desire for revolution should translate into terrorist action as opposed to remaining a type of localized radicalism: Violence is a practical tool here. Correspondingly, radicalism is a precursor to terrorism once peaceful protest is violently put down by the authorities and fails to achieve the necessary social changes. The questions concerning Antonioni are 1) the tendency for this to be resolved in the great American tradition of the “gunﬁght” and 2) whether American radicalism will merely be subsumed into the monster of American capitalism and the culture of commercialization it fosters — the omnipresence of the “product” as the solution to all dilemmas. Final dreams of an apocalypse translate into an orgiastic tableaux, the view that these people will wander the desert to ﬁnd themselves, realize their fantasies and return afresh to explode the façade of American consumerism. But, tellingly, in the end the revolution is all a dream, a fantasy... a ﬁlm.

The Zone

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The Zone (1995: d. Barry Zetlin) A Russian physicist in a secret nuclear weapons laboratory must convert uranium to weapons-grade plutonium. The head of the CIA contacts a rebel pilot (Robert Davi) and frames him for murder to force him into cooperating on a mission to prevent this scientist. The Zone is a typical 1990s ﬁlm in that it locates a nuclear and terrorist threat in the political tensions of the demise of the Cold War: former Soviet agents now gone rogue. The pilot hero is a Gulf War veteran forced to resign in disgrace and who holds the U.S. responsible for claiming to destroy Saddam Hussein’s Iraq war machine but failing to do so in the initial Gulf War. He resents the fact that the U.S. military did not oust Saddam when they had the chance and left the Iraqi people hanging with a dictator still in power, in effect furthering the climate of anti–American hostility and misunderstanding rampant in the Middle East. Interestingly, U.S. authorities fear that the terrorist will strike the World Trade Center and destroy Manhattan but the government cannot (as yet) authorize a preemptive strike against a sovereign and newly democratic nation, even if the threat of state-sponsored anti–U.S. terrorism comes from such new, little countries split apart by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The ﬁlm suggests that such small countries actively seek nuclear weapons, a desire which translates into a threat to the USA. In so doing, the ﬁlm equates nuclear ambition with aspiring state-sponsored terrorism: such terrorism, or at the very least the threat of it, is seen here as a form of national self-aggrandizement. The Zone is technically polished but only intersects the cinema of terrorism in a conventional scenario drawing inspiration from James Bond–type adventures (star Robert Davi was a Bond villain in License to Kill).

Notes 1. The problem of deﬁning terrorism is well documented and although there are certain standard elements (such as political ideology, the targeting of innocents, courting maximum media exposure), the power to deﬁne the terrorist as enemy has inﬂuenced the corresponding deﬁnition of “terrorism” and shaped it to arguable ideological convenience by those who would seek to easily demonize and negate an enemy based on the tactics they use in their struggle against the dominant political order of the day. The label “terrorist” can easily negate whatever ideological causes underpin the terrorist actions, so the deﬁnition is at risk of being self-serving. 2. Just as theories of a proxy war began to take hold in the 1980s Reagan era, so too leaders of other nations latched onto the theory to justify continued U.S. involvement in their personal political dealings with terrorist movements, hence the progressive attempts of Israel to involve Palestinian terrorism in the greater struggle against perceived U.S. hegemony, as expressed in such as Netanyahu’s Fighting Terrorism (p. 52). 3. President Reagan believed that ﬁghting terrorism wherever it was found was in effect a means of facing down the “Evil Empire” (the Soviet Union), which he felt was the prime agent sponsoring international terrorism as a kind of proxy war. This mentality led eventually to U.S. inﬁltration and logistical assistance in Afghanistan, training the very Muslim militants that would later form Al Qaeda and thus directly lead to the terrorism of Osama bin Laden. Reagan’s obsession with Soviet-sponsored terrorism is recounted in Simon’s The Terrorist Trap: America’s Experience with Terrorism. Of course, Reagan’s own non-negotiation with terrorists was exposed as a sham when the Iran-Contra scandal broke in the late 1980s and it was revealed that the U.S. was secretly giving arms to the supposed terrorists in exchange for the lives of American hostages. 4. Director Robert Wise intended The Day the Earth Stood Still to be a paciﬁstic riposte to the in-

creasing domestic militarism Wise saw consuming American society. As the ﬁlm needed cooperation from the American military, the script was submitted, as was then standard procedure, to the Department of Defense, who turned down the ﬁlmmakers because they felt the ﬁlm’s paciﬁstic message was at odds with the military agenda and so would reﬂect badly on American militarism. Wise managed to secure cooperation from the National Guard, who apparently had no such concerns. The incident is recounted in Emery’s The Directors: Take One (pp. 23–24). 5. Not all spy ﬁlms spelled out a direct terrorist threat but it was an unsaid menace lurking in the background to many ﬁlms. Soon there emerged Seven Days to Noon, effectively the ﬁrst ﬁlm to deal with nuclear threat (according to Newman’s Apocalypse Movies, p. 203). Ironically, it was a peaceful scientist here who steals a nuclear weapon and threatens to obliterate London unless the UK ceases production of such weapons, a sentiment echoed in the warning the benevolent alien gives to Earthmen to change their ways before they destroy each other in The Day the Earth Stood Still. The danger in subsequent ﬁlms would follow a similar line — the menace posed by a demented individual (often from benevolent motives) whose actions intersect terrorist means. From the outset of the cinema of terrorism in the Cold War, however, the terrorist segued from the foreign spy/agent with an alternative totalitarian ideology to the home-grown lunatic with a cause. Therefore, the terrorist threat could thus be foreign or domestic — at issue was the capability for mass destruction. This would later be transmuted into the large-scale disaster movies of the 1970s especially. 6. Some of the irony considering Palestinian terrorism is/was the State of Israel’s seeming refusal to admit and acknowledge its own legacy of terrorism as a prelude to independent statehood. The activities of such groups as the Irgun and the Stern Gang were certainly terroristic in nature,

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Notes culminating perhaps in the much-publicized bombing of the King David Hotel — a fact that was acknowledged in Otto Preminger’s epic view of the formation of the State of Israel, the lavish and lengthy ﬁlm Exodus (1960). Preminger sought cooperation from former terrorists and found that they held the common view that the current government never did acknowledge their contribution as fully as was otherwise deserved and also felt that the ﬁlm did not give them enough credit (see Pratley’s The Cinema of Otto Preminger, p. 135). Ironically the Israeli government feared that by seeking the contribution of former terrorists, Preminger would give them more credit than the Israeli government was comfortable admitting. 7. There is much debate in terrorist-theory circles over the extent to which terrorism has been legitimized as a tactic of armed resistance/ struggle. Such pedantic oppositions as “freedom ﬁghter” and “terrorist” indicate the efforts to somehow reserve the domain of “terrorist” for something outside an acceptable or understandable code of conduct in resistance/revolutionary struggle. The demonization of the terrorist thus accompanies the delegitimization of their tactics as opposed to movements which would contextualize terrorism as something far less than an aberration by attempting to explain its tactics as not psychological imbalance but deliberate, planned choice and thus a strategic means of conducting warfare. 8. Although the Palestinian Liberation Organization was founded in 1964, it was not until after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that the PLO took on armed struggle as a supposed means of self-determination (see Hiro’s Dictionary of the Middle East, pp. 247–48). The efforts of the PLO, led by Yasser Arafat and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), led by George Habash, pioneered Palestinian terrorism, including the new phenomenon of airline attack beginning in 1970 when a bomb was planted on board a Swiss Air ﬂight from Zurich to Tel Aviv, killing 47. The event was soon followed by the phenomenon of airline hijacking. 9. The moral ambiguity in what is effectively the ﬁrst modern example of the American cinema of terrorism in Black Sunday was explored in the assessment of John Frankenheimer found in Derry’s The Suspense Thriller. Frankenheimer subsequently emerged as one of the central ﬁgures in the American cinema of terrorism, returning to it in his assessments of domestic neo-Nazi terrorism in Dead Bang (1988) and his adroit ﬁctionalization of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro by Red Brigade student-terrorists in the neglected Year of the Gun (1991) through to the under-texts in his

298 assessment of the post-war espionage world of mercenaries for hire in the superb thriller Ronin (1998). 10. The account of the development of terrorism as a modern phenomenon with clear historical antecedents is found in such books as Sinclair’s An Anatomy of Terror as well as Stern’s The Ultimate Terrorists (centering on WMD — weapons of mass destruction — fears) and Whittaker’s The Terrorism Reader. These books outline the state of 20th century terrorism and its precursors throughout history in the effort to contextualize the events of 9/11 in light of ofﬁcial Bush government policy that sought to promote the view that any attempt to contextualize the horrifying event in terms of historical precedent was effectively an act of traitorous, unpatriotic sedition. 11. R. Meeuf, “Collateral Damage: terrorism, melodrama and the action ﬁlm on the eve of 9/11,” Jump Cut #48, Winter 2006. 12. Death Wish struck a nerve, eschewing the liberalism of the previous generation to present a highly reactionary wish-fulﬁllment fantasy about the wronged vigilante as the true force of American patriarchal justice and the inheritor of the Western cowboy hero tradition so beloved in American cinema, even if the genre of the Western was at that time in its revisionist phase and slowly drawing to a close. The star of Death Wish, Charles Bronson, would play a succession of such vigilantes through the 1980s, often partnered with British director J. Lee Thompson. The duo tackled the theme of torture as a means of state-sponsored terrorism in The Evil That Men Do (1984), which cynically indicts American complicity in such actions. 13. Carlos the Jackal was a freelance terrorist who sold his services to the highest bidder. A rare example of an occupational terrorist thus, after working through the 1970s and 1980s in various high-proﬁle incidents, he was ﬁnally identiﬁed and apprehended. His almost legendary status was ﬁnally addressed in Canadian director Christian Duguay’s The Assignment (1997). 14. The idea of the terrorist personality as a dangerous cult of machismo is explored at some length in Morgan’s The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism. This cult of machismo would seep into portrayals of male terrorists in ﬁlm as usually arrogant and dangerously libidinous characters. 15. This is recounted in Grant’s Chronicle of 20th Century Conﬂict and other accounts of the evolution of terrorism. 16. It has been reported that when President Ronald Reagan ﬁrst saw Rambo: First Blood Part 2, he declared that he was glad to have seen the

299 ﬁlm for it clearly showed what to do next time there was a hostage crisis or American interests were threatened abroad. 17. The failure of the Carter presidency as speciﬁcally rooted in the Iranian hostage crisis, Carter’s failure to rescue them paving the way for Reagan’s triumphant entry into the political arena and his own far-reaching anti-terror policies, is recounted in some detail in Simon’s The Terrorist Trap. 18. The incident is often analyzed as having crippled the Carter presidency. Carter’s successor Reagan had a problem with hostages too, this time in Lebanon, where there was also a new kind of terrorist waging war — the suicide bomber. Purportedly sponsored by Iran, the hostage-takers ensured that the efforts of a small group would hold the U.S. accountable for its foreign policy interventions. Reactionary resentment of the terrorist power of small nations surfaced in many minor action ﬁlms of the Reagan era, perhaps most expressly in Iron Eagle where a character refers to the fact that America cannot let itself be controlled by these “shitty” little countries. Considering the Middle Eastern setting, the “shitty” seems a deliberate pun on Shiite, that branch of Islam behind much terrorism. 19. Recent studies attempting to proﬁle the terrorist mindset as a recognizable and clearly deﬁnable clinical aberration have failed to ﬁnd enough common ground to do so, an admission which inﬂuences such accounts of the terrorist psychology as found in Reich’s Origins of Terrorism and Silke’s Terrorists, Victims and Society. 20. Derry’s The Suspense Thriller: Films in the Shadow of Alfred Hitchcock (pp.41–42) looks at the issue of moral choice in the suspense thriller. 21. The racial proﬁling of the Arab is not something unique to the terrorist ﬁlm. Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Viliﬁes a People looks ﬁlmographically at the historical treatment of Arabs in ﬁlm as it eventually culminates in the contemporary caricature of the demented, somewhat grubby terrorist. It is ironic that terrorist

Notes ﬁlms seek to make a clear distinction between those terrorists who are clearly “other” (Arabs primarily) and those who are from within “us” (Europeans primarily) and where it seeks to demonize the other, secretly revels in the actions of Western terrorists, according them a validity which is denied those terrorist ﬁgures considered culturally “other.” 22. The concept of such domestic terrorism as resulting from the U.S. militia movement and the Christian basis for its often messianic beliefs is explored in Katz and Popkin’s Messianic Revolution and Dees’ Gathering Storm: America’s Militia Threat. 23. This theme runs throughout what is, at time of writing, the most recent attempt to delineate the modern cinema of terrorism (by focusing on the 2001 ﬁlm Collateral Damage— planned before 9/11 but released after, thus making it, along with The Sum of All Fears, the last terrorist ﬁlm before the genre was given a potential knock-out punch by the events of 9/11) in Meeuf ’s “Collateral Damage: terrorism, melodrama and the action ﬁlm on the eve of 9/11,” Jump Cut #48, Winter 2006. 24. Films of terrorism throughout the 1990s especially would return to this theme after the Cold War when the threat of terrorism was posed by disgruntled ex-agents, usually Soviet, who lamented the demise of the Cold War and wanted to return to its simplistic, familiar, ideological oppositions. Films like Company Business (1991) sought to update the world of post–Cold War espionage in the depiction of former agents now essentially loose cannons up for grabs, a trend that culminated in the professional former agents hired by a vaguely terroristic association in Ronin (1998). Such ideologically confused agents thrown into the lurch of political uncertainty balanced the developing emphasis on mercenarial terrorists, those soldiers of fortune who got in it not for cause but for money and thrills. Generically thus, the terrorist and the mercenary intersected.

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Index Abu Ghraib 185, 225, 235, 237, 238, 253 Achille Lauro 128, 172, 196 Adams, Brooke 85, 86, 87 Adams, Marcus 177 Afﬂeck, Ben 249 Afghanistan 4, 65, 66, 98n, 122, 124, 170, 173, 180, 213, 223, 225, 226, 253, 282, 283, 284, 297 Africa 26, 130, 131, 149, 163, 195, 212, 270, 291, 292 Agent Red 18 Agnew, Spiro 129 Airboss 19–20 Airforce One 18–19, 64, 65, 100, 117, 118, 165, 247 Airport 124, 274 Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade 208, 209 Albania 285 Alcatraz Island 227 Aldrich, Robert 27, 205, 214, 268, 269, 270 Al Gashey, Jamal 194 Algeria 5, 40, 68, 88, 97, 134, 174, 261 Al Jazeera 158 All the President’s Men 164, 200 Allen, Woody 39, 91, 177, 240 Al Qaeda 25, 80, 102, 119, 122, 154, 158, 166, 185, 207, 238, 267, 297 Amanpour, Christiane 182 The Amateur 6, 20–22, 184 The Ambassador 22–24 American Gangster 174 American History X 12, 24–25, 90, 183 American Ninja 36 American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt 25, 247 American Ninja 4: Annihilation 26 American Tigers 26–27, 64 Amin, Idi 27, 28, 101, 219, 280 Amin: The Rise and Fall 27–28 Amsterdam 100 Amurri, Franco 129 Anania, Jay 89 Anderson, Michael 249

Andrews, Jay 128, 183, 220 Angel Fist 29, 32 Animal House 262 Annie Hall 240 anthrax 29, 30, 218, 284 Anthrax 29–30, 183 Antonioni, Michelangelo 7, 201, 295 Apocalypse Now 183 Arafat, Yassir 207, 208, 209, 210, 228, 255, 281 Araki, Greg 233 Aramco 166 Arcand, Denys 89 The Arena 58 Argentina 148, 164 Arlington Road 12, 30–31, 73, 76, 97, 247, 293 Armageddon 78, 227 Armitraj-Stevens see Stevens, Andrew Ashcroft, John 122 Assault at Ground Zero 32 The Assignment 11, 12, 33–34, 53, 54, 97, 172, 206, 298 Asteroid 78 Athens 91, 219 Atlanta 220 Atlanta Olympics 47 Atta, Mohammad 141 Attack on the Queen 34–35 Auden, W.H. 52 Aum Cult 217 Australia 78, 135, 155, 202, 203 Avalanche Express 35–36 Avenging Force 36–37, 42, 90 Avery, Rick 92 Baader-Meinhof 48, 100, 261, 280 Babel 89 Bad Company (2002) 37–38 Badham, John 50 Badiyi, Reza 115 Baghdad 122, 237 Baird, Stuart 117 Bait 38 Baker, Graham 232 Balsam, Martin 86 Bananas 39–40, 240 Barak, Ehud 208, 209, 210

303

Barcelona 100, 119 Bardem, Javier 87 Barhoum, Ashraf 166, 167, 168 Bates, Alan 211 Bates, Kathy 151 Batman 221, 277 Batman Begins 221 Battle of Algiers 5, 40–41, 58, 59, 174, 175, 245 Bauer, Steven 249 Bay, Michael 37, 118, 226, 227 Bean, Sean 203, 204 The Beatles (band) 85 Beatty, Warren 200, 201 beheading/execution video 16, 51–52, 159, 168, 222 Beijing 243 Beirut 45, 94, 101, 143, 151, 165, 172, 184, 186, 215, 229, 243, 244, 289, 295 Bekaa Valley 184 Belfast 105, 142, 145, 156, 198 Belushi, Jim 229 Beneath the Planet of the Apes 154 Ben-Hur 168 Bening, Annette 235, 237 Bennett, Hywel 289 Berenger, Tom 41, 42, 234 Berg, Alan 42 Berg, Peter 166 Bergman, Sandahl 215 Besson, Luc 71 Betrayed 36, 41–43, 62, 91 Beyond the Limit 147 The Big Chill 130 Bin Laden, Osama 27, 43, 115, 122, 155, 158, 159, 166, 173, 213, 220, 224, 235, 267, 282, 283, 288, 297 Bird, Antonia 140 Black, Karen 149, 150 Black, Shane 173 Black Dawn 43 Black Hawk Down 43–45, 51, 154, 170, 230 Black Panthers 113, 146, 147, 199–200, 276 Black September 21, 45, 80, 187, 193, 194, 228, 249, 261 Black Sunday 5, 6, 14, 21, 45–47,

Index 90, 108, 110, 116, 153, 175, 191, 207, 209, 214, 228, 229, 248, 268, 271, 274, 286, 292, 294, 298 Blade Runner 87, 251 Blair, Tony 151, 157, 158, 159, 225, 278 Blast 47–49, 260 Blood Diamond 136 Bloodﬁst IV 247 Bloodﬁst VI: Ground Zero 32 Blown Away 49–50, 109, 242 Blue Thunder 50–51 Bluebeard 153 Body of Lies 16, 51–53, 99, 116, 159, 167, 168, 222, 225, 237, 238, 246, 263, 265 Bogosian, Eric 273 Bond, James (ﬁlms) 12, 86, 112, 118, 129, 132, 172, 179, 193, 210, 212, 229, 254, 255, 270, 275, 291, 296 Boothe, Powers 247 Bosnia 38, 229, 231 Boston 77, 271 The Bourne Identity (1988) 53–54, 137 Bowling for Columbine 122 Bowman, Chuck 218 Bowman, Rob 293 The Boxer 54–55, 157, 241 The Boys in Company C 197 Boyz N the Hood 199 Bradshaw, John 134, 169 Brambilla, Marco 103, 104 Brandauer, Klaus Maria 112 Brando, Marlon 58, 59, 60 Brazil 7, 55–56, 67, 262 Brickman, Marshall 176, 177 Bridges, Jeff 30, 49, 50, 289 Broken Arrow 56–57, 251 Bronson, Charles 22, 153, 254, 255, 298 Brooks, Richard 291 Brosnan, Pierce 107, 132, 172 Bruckheimer, Jerry 37, 44, 227 Bucharest 110, 234 Buffalo Springﬁeld (band) 173 Bulletproof 57–58 Bullock, Sandra 57, 103, 242, 243 The ’Burbs 72 Burn! 40, 58–60 Burton, Tim 277 Busey, Gary 57, 58, 169 Bush, George H.W. 110, 152, 284 Bush, George W. 1, 14, 15, 16, 51, 66, 72, 73, 98, 99, 100, 103, 121, 122, 123, 141, 144, 145, 151, 158, 159, 167, 168, 179, 181, 184, 185, 207, 209, 210, 222, 223, 224, 225, 235, 238, 253, 254, 263, 265, 272, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 290 Cage, Nicolas 104, 120, 121, 173, 174, 189, 190, 227, 290

304 Caine, Michael 66, 67, 132, 139, 140, 148, 149 The Caine Mutiny 230 Cal 60, 161, 241 Cameron, James 266 Canada 164, 165, 257, 263 Cannes (Film Festival) 60, 205 Cannon Pictures 22, 25, 63, 91, 106, 107, 145, 150, 160 Capricorn One 164, 279 Caravans 136 Cardinale, Claudia 174 Carlos the Jackal 7, 12, 13, 33–34, 53, 96, 97, 98, 172, 179, 191, 298 Carlyle Group 121 Carpenter, John 114, 115 Carradine, Keith 77 Carter, James ( Jimmy) 8, 91, 99, 144, 152, 161, 196, 299 Carver, Steve 57 Cast a Giant Shadow 61–62, 118, 119, 175 Castle, Nick 78 Castro, Fidel 5, 85, 276 Casualties of War 222 C.A.T Squad 62–63 Catch 22 66, 173 Catholicism 16, 55, 60, 77, 142, 161, 211–212 Caton-Jones, Michael 162 Cellular 221 Chain of Command (1993) 63–64 Chain of Command (2000) 64–65, 118 Chamberlain, Richard 53, 54 Chapa, Damian 161 Charlie Wilson’s War 15, 65–66, 98n, 168 Charlie’s Angels (TV) 145 Chase, Chevy 93, 94 Cheadle, Don 262, 263, 264 Chechnya 248 Cheney, Dick 1, 15, 43, 51, 103, 122, 123, 167, 176, 185, 186, 209, 238, 253, 254, 265, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284 Chicago 73, 271 Children of Men 66–67, 277 Children of Rage 67–69, 116, 117, 191 Children of the Corn 159 Chill Factor 69–70 China 34, 35, 64, 74, 168, 169, 174, 216, 243, 244 Chinatown 289 Chomsky, Marvin J. 279, 280 Christianity 14, 15, 16, 82–83, 90, 96, 114, 115, 136, 141, 144, 158, 184, 212, 238, 264, 277, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 291; see also patriarchy CIA 20, 37, 43, 57, 63, 64, 65, 70, 71, 73, 75, 78, 99, 112, 124, 125, 129, 151, 164, 169, 173, 184, 185, 203, 204, 217, 218, 220, 223, 224, 228, 229, 232, 234,

240, 243, 244, 245, 279, 286, 288, 292, 296 CIA: Code Name Alexa 70–71 CIA 2: Target Alexa 71–72 Cimino, Michael 113 Cinema Papers (journal) 204, 295 Civic Duty 52, 72–73, 99, 181, 182, 253, 263 Clancy, Tom 203, 204 Clannad (band) 142 Clark, Lawrence Gordon 96, 142 Clear & Present Danger 76, 203 Clinton, Bill 44, 54, 64, 66, 251, 285 A Clockwork Orange 103 Close, Glenn 18 Clouse, Robert 25, 29 Cloverﬁeld 274, 291 Clyde, Brian 154 CNN 95, 143, 182 Coates, Kim 169 Coburn, James 239 Code Name: Vengeance 73 Cohen, Larry 221 Cold Night Into Dawn 73–74 Cold War 3, 4, 5, 12, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23, 30, 32, 33–34, 35, 37, 43, 62, 66, 71, 77, 79, 96, 97, 98, 102, 106, 110, 117, 123, 132, 133, 160, 163, 168, 172–173, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 191, 195, 198, 200, 202, 206, 208, 210, 213, 216, 217, 218, 220, 229, 232, 236, 240, 243, 248, 254, 255, 261, 265, 266, 269, 272, 281, 282, 292, 296, 297 Collateral Damage 6, 37, 74–77, 105, 109, 186, 266, 299 Collins, Joan 136 Colombia 74, 75, 76, 77, 262 Colors 199 communism 3, 32, 65, 72, 123 Company Business 299 Con-Air 108, 227 Conan the Barbarian 215 The Confessional 77–78 Conlon, Gerry 156 Connery, Sean 85, 86, 87, 190, 191, 227, 259, 291 Connor’s War 78 Convoy 259 Coppola, Francis Ford 122 Corman, Roger 57–58, 154, 155, 217 Cornwell, Stephen 165 Cosmic Shock 78–79, 113 Costa-Gavras 11, 36, 40, 41, 42, 43, 76, 88, 91, 181, 223, 244, 245, 246 Coto, Manny 79 Counter Measures: Crash Dive 2 79 The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell 230 Cover-Up 79–81 Cox, Brian 54 Crackerjack 81

305 Crash Dive 18, 81–82 Craven, Wes 220, 221 The Crazies 232 Crichton, Michael 215 Crimes of Passion 140 Crimson Tide 35, 81 Cronenberg, David 218, 232 Crossﬁre (1979) 82–83 Crossﬁre (1998) 83 Crowe, Russell 51, 52, 216, 217 Cruise, Tom 169, 170 Cruising 62 Crum, Henry 155 The Crying Game 60, 83–85, 161, 180, 211 CSI (TV) 168 Cuaron, Alfonso 66 Cuba 58, 85, 97 Cuba 85–87 Culp, Robert 239 Cusack, Joan 30 Cyborg Cop 37, 87 Cyborg Soldier 87 Cyprus 243 Czechoslovakia 20 Dacascos, Mark 155, 231, 232 Dada, Idi Amin see Amin, Idi Daddo, Cameron 29 Dafoe, Willem 243 Daily Telegraph (newspaper) 181 Dallas 293 Daly, Tyne 113 The Dancer Upstairs 87–88 Danker, Eli 63, 252 Davi, Robert 296 Davidson, Jaye 83, 84 Davis, Andrew 74, 75, 76, 198, 272 Davis, Geena 72, 172 Davis, Judy 127 Dawkins, Richard 16, 268 Day of the Jackal 41, 88–89, 96, 146, 162, 163, 231 Day on Fire 89 The Day the Earth Stood Still 4, 187, 297 Day-Lewis, Daniel 54, 55, 156, 157 Dead Bang 12, 42, 62, 90–91, 162, 183, 294, 298 Deadly Heroes 91–92 Deadly Outbreak 92–93 Deadly Takeover 92 Deal of the Century 62, 93–94, 124 Death Before Dishonor 7, 94–96, 101, 102, 130, 144, 154, 188 Death Has a Bad Reputation 96–98, 208 Death of a President 52, 98–100 Death Wish 6, 21, 153, 298 DeBont, Jan 242, 243 Deep Impact 78, 219 The Deﬁant Ones 69 de Gaulle, Charles 88 Dehlavi, Jamil 157

Déjà vu 190 Dekker, Fred 226 The Delivery 100–101 Delon, Alain 174 The Delta Force 7, 81, 91, 92, 101– 102, 106, 133, 145, 160, 165, 196, 219, 252, 265 Delta Force 2 102 Delta Force 3 37, 102–103 Demme, Jonathan 175 Demolition Man 103–104, 108, 226, 240 DeNiro, Robert 55, 56, 146, 147, 285 Dennett, Daniel 16, 268 DePalma, Brian 146, 221, 222 Depp, Johnny 221 Derickson, Uli 251 Dern, Bruce 45, 46, 47, 108 The Detonator 104, 177, 178 Detroit 226 Devane, William 78, 79 The Devil’s Own 49, 54, 104–106 DF One: The Lost Patrol 106–107 DiCaprio, Leonardo 51 Dick, Philip K. 190, 293 Dickerson, Ernest 134 Die Hard 13, 18, 32, 35, 48, 81, 92, 93, 102, 104, 107–108, 110, 118, 129, 162, 169, 192, 216, 242, 247, 257, 267, 272 Die Hard 2 108, 109, 110, 173 Die Hard 4.0 16, 29, 109–110, 178, 238 Die Hard: With a Vengeance 108– 109 Dillman, Bradford 113, 114 Diplomatic Siege 110–111 The Dirty Dozen 26, 27, 265 Dirty Harry 192 Dirty War 111–112 disability 246–247 Divoff, Andrew 83 Dmytryk, Edward 152, 153 The Dogs of War 14 Doomsdayer 112 Dorff, Stephen 233 Double Team 168 Douglas, Kirk 61, 62 Douglas, Michael 163 Drago, Billy 91, 92 Drum 58 Dryer, Fred 94, 96 Dubai 265; International Film Festival 140 Dublin 197 Dudikoff, Michael 26, 36, 64, 81, 153, 154 Duguay, Christian 33, 172, 298 Dunaway, Faye 188, 189 Earthquake 35, 174 Eastwood, Clint 19, 113, 114, 129 Easy Rider 130 Ebert, Roger 126 Edinburgh Film Festival 140 Educating Rita 132

Index Egypt 65, 223, 248 Emmerich, Roland 275 The End of Faith (book) 236, 268 The Enemy 112–113 Enemy of the State 279 The Enforcer 113–114, 192 Entebbe 6, 7, 28, 91, 149, 252, 268 Enter the Dragon 25 Enter the Ninja 25 Erin Brockovich 30 Escape from L.A. 114–115 Escape from New York 114, 115 Escape to Athena 239 Every Which Way But Loose 114 The Evil That Men Do 298 The Execution 115–117 Executive Action 234 Executive Decision 108, 117, 124, 247 Executive Target 71, 117 Exodus 61, 118–119, 175, 228, 298 The Exterminator 215 Extraordinary Rendition 167 Extreme Ops 172 Eyres, John 216 Face of Terror 119–120 Face/Off 57, 120–121, 227, 292 Fahey, Jeff 169 Fahrenheit 9/11 15, 52, 98, 121–123, 185, 207, 209, 278 Fail Safe 65 Fairchild, Morgan 260, 261 Falkland Islands 128 Falling Down 72 Fallout 123 Fargo, James 113, 114, 135–136 Fawkes, Guy 146, 277 FBI 36, 48, 73, 78, 90, 107, 126, 129, 130, 134, 163, 166, 172, 192, 196, 199, 200, 202, 217, 218, 250 Fear of Flying —Turbulence 2 123– 124 Fedayeen 69 Ferguson, Michael 137 A Few Good Men 230 ffolkes 193; see also North Sea Hijack Fifty/Fifty 124–125 52 Pick-Up 22, 90 Fight Club 125–126 Fighting Terrorism (book) 208, 297 Final Approach 126–127 The Final Countdown 187 Final Cut 49, 137, 242, 260 Final Destination 221 The Final Option 18, 127–128, 132 Final Voyage 128–129 Finch, Peter 188, 189 Fincher, David 125 Firefox 19, 129 Firehawk 129 First Blood 7, 234–235 Firstenberg, Sam 36, 37, 87, 102, 195 The Fixer 223

Index Flashback 129–130 Flashpoint Africa 130–131 Flemyng, Gordon 77 Flight 93 131 For Your Eyes Only 193 Ford, Harrison 18, 65, 105, 132, 203, 204 Forestier, Frederic 205 Forster, Robert 102 Forsyth, Frederick 96, 97, 132 Forsythe, William 90 Fortress of Amerikkka 90 The Fourth Protocol 77, 132 Fox, Edward 88, 89 Fox News 72, 122, 207, 277 Foxx, Jamie 166 France 174 Frankenheimer, John 11, 45, 46, 47, 90, 91, 176, 223, 228, 289, 294, 298 Franks, Tommy 283 Frantic 132–133 Freedom Strike 133 French Connection 2 294 Friedkin, William 45, 62, 93, 94, 229, 230, 241, 242 From Russia with Love 35 Full Disclosure 134 Fuqua, Antoine 234 Furie, Sidney J. 161 Furlong, Edward 24 Futuresport 134–135 Game for Vultures 130, 135–136 Gandhi 136–137 Gandhi, Rajiv 258 Garner, Jennifer 167 Gaza Strip 208, 209, 210, 232, 257, 263, 264, 271, 293 The General’s Daughter 230 Geneva Convention 15, 43, 225, 226, 232, 253, 263, 269, 283 Genoa 280 George, Terry 54, 241 Gere, Richard 148, 149, 163 Germany 21, 171, 194, 195, 276, 279 Get Carter 211 Get to Know Your Rabbit 146 Getting Straight 295 Ghost Rider 190 GI Jane 195 Gibney, Alex 99, 122, 252 Gillard, Stuart 287 Gilliam, Terry 55 Ginty, Robert 73, 215 Glen, John 193, 210, 211 Glickenhaus, James 240 Globus, Yoram 22, 91, 106 The Glory Boys 137 Glover, Danny 234 Go 100 Golan, Menahem 22, 91, 92, 101, 106, 165, 196, 252, 276 Gonzalez, Alberto 253 Good Morning Vietnam 285 Gooding, Cuba, Jr. 69

306 Gossett, Louis, Jr. 161 The Graduate 66 Graef-Marino, Gustave 110 Graham, William A. 267 The Grateful Dead (band) 295 Greece 215 Greenmail 137–138, 187 Greetings 146 The Grissom Gang 205 Groszynski, Alexander 43 “Ground Zero” 77, 232, 233, 291 Guantanamo Bay 15, 16, 100, 158, 176, 182, 185, 225, 253, 269 Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Heart 138–139, 205 Guevara, Che 76, 85, 138 Guildford Four 156 Gulf War 78, 99, 111, 122, 153, 154, 162, 175, 238, 288, 296 The Guns of Navarone 239 The Gypsy Moths 90 Haas, Philip 237 Habash, George 298 Hackers 250 Hackford, Taylor 216, 217 Hackman, Gene 198 Hackworth, David M. 227 Hagannah 118 Half Moon Street 139–140 Halliburton 123 Hamas 11, 206, 208 The Hamburg Cell 140–141, 167, 274 Hamburger Hill 264 Hanks, Tom 66 The Hard Way 159 Hargrove, Tom 216 Hark, Tsui 168 Harlin, Renny 108, 109, 172, 173 Harris, Ed 59, 86, 226, 227, 268, 270 Harris, Frank 202 Harris, Richard 135 Harris, Sam 16, 236, 268 Harry’s Game 137, 142–143 Hauer, Rutger 48, 191, 286 Hauser, Wings 149, 150 Havana 85 Hawaii 134, 135 Hawke, Ethan 174 Hawks, Howard 4 Hays, Robert 124 Heap, Jonathan 137 Heard, John 42 Hearst, Patty 43, 113, 131, 138, 139, 189, 196, 197, 204–205, 228 Hearst, Randolph 138 Held Hostage 143–145 Hell Squad 145 Hennessy 7, 145–146 Heston, Charlton 122 Hezbollah 11, 94, 101, 102, 151, 166, 243, 244, 252 Hi Mom 146–147 Higgins, Jack 77, 211

Hijack 147–148 Hill, George Roy 170 Hines, Gregory 94 Hiroshima 4 Hitchcock, Alfred 3, 72, 222 Hitchens, Christopher 16, 268 Hodges, Mike 211, 215 Hoffman, Dustin 285, 286 Hoffman, Philip Seymour 66 Holbrook, Hal 164 Holcomb, Rod 229 Holm, Ian 174 Holzman, Allan 215 Hong Kong 57, 121, 168, 169 Honolulu 273 The Honorary Consul 148–148 Hood, Gavin 223 Hooks, Kevin 162, 201 Hoover, J. Edgar 200 Hopkins, Anthony 37 Hopkins, Stephen 49 Hopper, Dennis 129, 130, 242, 260 Hoskins, Bob 211, 212 Hostage 9, 149–150 Hostage Flight 150–151 Hostages 143, 151–152 Hotel Rwanda 264 Hour of the Assassin 234 Hudson, Gary 259 The Human Factor 6, 152–153 The Human Shield 153–154 The Hunt for Eagle One 154–155 The Hunt for Eagle One: Crash Point 155 The Hunt for Red October 81 The Hunter 286 Hurt, John 277, 278 Hussein, Saddam 122, 153, 154, 212, 238, 282, 283, 284, 288, 296 Huston, John 289 Hyams, Peter 247, 279 I, Robot 87 I Walk the Line 90 I Was a Teenage TV Terrorist 155– 156 Ice Cube 78 Ice T 78 Impulse 232 In the Name of the Father 54, 105, 156–157 India 136 Inﬁnite Justice 144, 152, 157–159, 167, 168 Ingvordsen, J. Christian 19, 232 The Insider 30 Internet 51, 100 Into the Sun 159 Invasion USA 160, 220 IRA 49, 54–55, 56, 60, 67, 77, 78, 83, 84, 85, 105, 106, 111, 137, 142, 145, 146, 156, 157, 161, 163, 180, 181, 184, 185, 197, 198, 203, 204, 211, 241, 260; CIRA (Continuity IRA) 161

307 Iran 27, 80, 106, 128, 133, 136, 152, 153, 154, 215, 237, 254, 272, 283, 299; hostage crisis 8, 230, 299; Revolution 7, 8, 136, 144, 254, 286 Iran-Contra 152, 172, 297 Iraq 15, 78, 94, 99, 106, 122, 133, 153, 154, 169, 170, 176, 196, 206, 212, 221, 222, 223, 226, 237, 238, 239, 246, 252, 282, 283, 284, 288, 296 Ireland 77, 104, 142, 145, 180, 181, 184, 197 Irgun 119 Iron Eagle 19, 129, 133, 144, 159, 161–162, 212, 287, 299 Irons, Jeremy 108, 109 Irresistible Force 162 Ishtar 164 ISI 64 Islam 16, 26, 32, 52, 105, 140, 141, 152, 158, 159, 167, 180, 184, 188, 212, 220, 230, 235, 236, 244, 246, 248, 252, 259, 263, 264, 285, 286, 288, 289 Israel 5, 6, 7, 22, 23, 28, 32, 34, 45, 46, 47, 61, 67, 68, 69, 80, 92, 93, 94, 97, 101, 106, 116, 118–119, 133, 134, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 151, 153, 170, 171, 173, 175, 185, 186, 191, 193, 194, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 213, 214, 219, 220, 228, 229, 240, 241, 242, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 260, 267, 276, 279, 280, 281, 290, 297, 298 Istanbul 111 Italy 152, 295 The Jackal 162–163 Jackman, Hugh 250 Jackson, Samuel L. 108, 229, 230 Jacobs, Jerry P. 133 Jacobson, Rick 32, 247 James, Steve 36 Jarhead 94 Jarrah, Ziad 140, 141 Jarrot, Charles 18 Jaws 270 Jefferson, Thomas 202 Jerusalem 208 Jesus Christ 128 Jewel of the Nile 163–164 JFK 99, 164, 192, 200, 209, 234, 279, 281 jihad 65, 96, 133, 140, 158, 159, 209, 212, 228, 246, 264 Johnson, Brian 77 Johnson, Don 90, 91 Johnson, Hugh 69 Jolie, Angelina 181, 182 Jones, Tommy Lee 49–50, 93, 198, 230, 272, 273 Jordan 95, 209 Jordan, Neil 83, 84, 161, 180, 181 Juggernaut 35, 129 Jurgens, Curt 112

Kalifornia 233 Karachi 158 Kaye, Tony 24 Kazakhstan 18, 129 Keach, Stacy 24, 183 Keaton, Diane 170, 171, 172, 240 Keeter, Worth 147, 148, 178, 179, 275 Keitel, Harvey 246, 247 Keith, David 29 Keller, Martha 21, 45, 46, 47 Kelly’s Heroes 174 Kennedy, George 152, 153 Kennedy, John 187, 234; assassination 31, 200, 289 Kershner, Irvin 219, 275 Keusch, Michael 234 KGB 14, 21, 34, 35, 77, 96, 97, 98, 132, 210, 232, 240 Khomeini, Ayatollah 8, 152, 154 Kidnapping of the President 118, 164–165 Kier, Udo 112 Kiersch, Fritz 159 Killing Streets 165–166 Kincade, John 256 King, Martin Luther 199 The Kingdom 15, 16, 52, 159, 166–168, 207, 222, 225, 247, 263, 292 Kingsley, Ben 33, 136 Kinmont, Kathleen 70, 72 Kinninmont, Tom 112 Kinski, Klaus 171 Knock Off 168–169 Koresh, David 138, 202 Krasny, Paul 260 Krause, Peter 72, 73 Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 36, 42, 90, 195 Kuwait 78, 153, 175 Lady Chatterley’s Lover 247 Lamas, Lorenzo 71 Lambert, Christopher 210 Lancaster, Burt 268, 269 Las Vegas 145, 189 Last House on the Left 220–221 Lebanon 11, 83, 92, 94, 95, 101, 102, 128, 137, 143, 144, 151, 165, 173, 183, 184, 188, 215, 251, 290, 299 Le Carré, John 170 Leder, Mimi 206 Lee, Bruce 25 Lee, Damian 18 Leon the Professional 83 Leonard, Elmore 22 Leonard, Terry 94, 95, 96 Leong, Po Chih 104 Lester, Richard 85, 86, 87, 249 Lethal Tender 169 Lethal Weapon 109 Let’s Get Harry 76 Levin, Jerry 143 Levine, Paul 129 Levinson, Barry 285, 286

Index Levy, Jefery 233 Lewis, Damian 237 Liberia 174 Libya 27, 34, 80, 97, 139, 195, 209 License to Kill 296 Light of Day 205 Lions for Lambs 169–170, 176, 178, 234, 243 Liotta, Ray 123 Lipsky, Gary 83 Lithgow, John 177 The Little Drummer Girl 7, 71, 170–172, 240 Live Free or Die Hard 109; see also Die Hard 4.0 Live Wire 49, 172, 242 Llosa, Luis 234 Lloyd, David 276 Lockerbie 129, 172 Lommel, Ulli 286, 287 London 111, 128, 137, 140, 145, 181, 193, 203, 211, 276 London, Jerry 34 The Long Kiss Goodnight 72, 118, 172–173, 179, 200, 220 Long March to Freedom (book) 216 Lonsdale, Michael 89, 112 Lood, Bruce 82 Looking for Mr. Goodbar 171 Lord of War 94, 104, 105, 106, 124, 136, 173–174, 209 Lords, Traci 139 Lords of Discipline 262 Los Angeles 29, 43, 50, 103, 114, 119, 120, 147, 189, 199, 237, 271 Lost Command 5, 40, 41, 136, 174–175, 239 Love and Human Remains 89, 233 LSD 139, 157 Lucas, George 270 Ludlum, Robert 53 Lumet, Sidney 188, 230, 231 Lundgren, Dolph 64, 79, 106, 205, 275 Luraschi, Tony 197, 198 Lynch, John 60 Lynch, Richard 160 MacDonald, Rodney 123, 186 Mackay, David 123 Mackenzie, John 132 Mad Bomber 137, 260 The Mad Max 2 see Road Warrior Madsen, Michael 117 The Magniﬁcent Seven 125 Magnolia 170 Magnum Force 113 Malcolm X 199 Malkovich, John 87 Malmuth, Bruce 191 Mamet, David 286 A Man Called Rainbo 193 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 270

Index The Man with the Deadly Lens 291; see also Wrong Is Right Manchurian Candidate (1962) 176, 200, 294 Manchurian Candidate (2004) 14, 175–176, 185, 186, 209, 223 Mandela, Nelson 255 Mandingo 58 Manhattan 115, 127, 192, 296 Manhattan Project 176–177, 256 Manifest Destiny 45, 59 Manson, Charles 197, 205 Manson Family see Manson, Charles Marcus, David 61 Maris, Peter 183 The Marksman 104, 177–178 Markstein, George 128 Martinelli, Renzo 246 Martinson, Leslie H. 254 Marvin, Lee 101 Mascara 84 Massad, Uri 115 Mastroianni, Armand 126 Mathis, Samantha 56, 57 The Matrix 292 Mazo, Michael 81 McAdams, Rachel 220, 221 McCarthy, Andrew 270, 294, 295 McCarthyism 4 McDowell, Malcolm 50 McHale’s Navy 178 McLaglen, Andrew V. 193 McQueen, Steve 286 McTeigue, James 276 McTiernan, John 104, 107–108 McVeigh, Timothy 27, 31, 127, 147, 183, 202, 212, 243, 293 Mean Guns 49 Megahy, Francis 130 Meir, Golda 185, 249, 267 Melbourne 155 Memorial Day 178–179 Mendeluk, George 164 Mercenary 150, 179–180 Mercury Rising 83 Merhi, Joseph 70, 71, 117 Meteor 78 Mexico 58, 112 MI5 66, 77 Miami 220 Michael Collins 84, 161, 180–181 Michael Moore Hates America 246 Middle East 7, 8, 11, 20, 22, 27–28, 38, 47, 51, 61, 63, 75, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103, 106, 109, 112, 116, 117, 132, 133, 137, 139, 142, 144, 145, 151, 152, 153, 154, 159, 16, 162, 163, 164, 167, 172, 173, 179, 180, 184, 188, 190, 191, 195, 196, 203, 205, 206, 210, 212, 213, 220, 230, 235, 237, 240, 243, 244, 250, 251–252, 254, 257, 261, 264, 265, 266, 272, 273, 276, 283,

308 286, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 296, 299 A Mighty Heart 158, 168, 178, 181–183, 224, 225 militia 27, 70, 90, 162, 183, 202, 203 Militia 183 Milius, John 113, 160 Miller, Frank 226 Mills, John 152 Ministry of Vengeance 183–184 Mirren, Helen 60, 241 Missing 181, 223 Missing in Action 162 Mission Impossible 250 Mitchum, Robert 22 Mogadishu 43, 246 Mohr, Hanro 149 Mona Lisa 84 Monroe Doctrine 76 Moonlighting (TV) 107 Moonraker 112 Moore, Alan 276 Moore, Michael 14, 15, 52, 121, 122, 123, 207, 246 Moore, Roger 112, 193 Morante, Laura 87 Moro, Aldo 294, 295, 298 Morocco 279 Morse, David 216, 217 Moscow 102, 241 Moss, Carrie-Anne 169, 232 Mossad 23, 33, 46, 65, 116, 182, 195, 249, 276 The Most Dangerous Game 36 Mount Rushmore 206 Moving Target 184–185 Moyle, Allan 292, 293 Mozambique 195 mujahedeen 98n, 124 Munich 185–186, 194, 249 Munich Olympics 6, 8, 139, 185, 193–194, 228, 239, 249, 267, 268, 276, 281 Murphy, Cillian 221 Murphy, Geoff 273 My Left Foot 54 Nachmanoff, Jeffrey 262, 264 Nagasaki 4 Nairobi 246 NATO 79, 152 Natural Born Killers 233 Nautilus 79, 186–187 Navy SEALS 133, 164, 187–188 Nazism 21, 41, 42, 61, 101, 171, 248, 267, 276 Neeson, Liam 180 Negrin, Alberto 280 Nehru, Pandit 137 Nesher, Avi 179 Netanyahu, Benjamin 208, 209, 297 Network 12, 39, 131, 188–189 Never Say Never Again 112 New Jack City 199 New Orleans 36

New York City 37, 82, 83, 89, 108, 127, 146, 150, 176, 186, 191, 206, 274, 290, 291 Newman, Paul 119 Newton, Huey 199 Next 189–190, 238 The Next Man 116, 140, 190–191 Nicaragua 239, 270, 271 Niccol, Andrew 173 Nice 263 Nichols, Mike 65, 66 Nicholson, Jack 201 Nick of Time 221 Nighthawks 191–192, 201, 286 Nikita 71 1984 277 Nixon 164, 209, 281 No Place to Hide 192–193 Nolte, Nick 270 Norris, Chuck 101, 102, 160, 212, 213 Norris, Eric 213 North, Col. Oliver 172 North Korea 98, 216, 283 North Sea Hijack 193 Norton, Edward 24, 125 Noyce, Philip 203, 204 Nyby, Christian 4 Obama, Barack 1, 14, 15, 16, 53 O’Connor, John 213 O’Connor, Pat 60, 161 Octopussy 77, 132, 229, 255 Oklahoma City 109, 126, 147, 293 Oldman, Gary 18, 19 Olyphant, Timothy 109 One Day in September 139, 185, 193–195 OPEC 20, 97, 190, 191 Operation Delta Force 37, 62, 195 Operation Delta Force 2: Mayday 195–196 Operation Desert Storm 227, 229 Operation Thunderbolt 7, 28, 91, 101, 219, 252, 268, 280 The Ordeal of Patty Hearst 139, 196–197, 205 Orphans 105 Orwell, George 277 Oslo Accord 80 Oswald, Lee Harvey 99, 200, 234 O’Toole, Peter 228 Outbreak 18 The Outsider 7, 104, 197–198 Owen, Clive 66, 67 The Package 132, 198–199 Pakistan 64, 65, 136, 158, 181, 225 Pakula, Alan J. 104, 105, 106, 200, 289 Palestine 3, 5, 7, 22, 28, 34, 40, 45, 47, 61, 62, 67, 68, 69, 81, 89, 97, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 133, 134, 139, 140, 142, 143, 153, 171, 175, 185, 186, 190–191, 193, 194, 195, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 214, 219, 228, 229,

309 239, 240, 241, 242, 249, 250, 260, 265, 266, 267, 268, 271, 276, 279, 280, 281, 289, 297, 298; see also PFLP; PLO Pankow, John 294, 295 Panther 199–200 Paraguay 148 The Parallax View 31, 89, 105, 200–201, 234, 279 Pare, Michael 91, 92, 159, 165 Paris 132 The Passenger 7, 201, 295 Passenger 57 108, 117, 201–202, 274 Patel, Shared 27 patriarchy 6, 11, 12, 13, 24, 38, 49, 79, 90, 92, 105, 112, 113, 148– 149, 154, 162, 163, 164, 183, 188, 196, 198, 202, 206, 212, 216, 227, 230, 232, 239, 247, 249, 259, 261, 266, 269–270, 275, 277, 281, 289, 292, 298 Patric, Jason 243 The Patriot (1986) 202 The Patriot (1998) 162, 202–203 Patriot Act 99 Patriot Games 49, 54, 104, 203–204 Patriots 90 Patty Hearst 139, 204–205 Peace Corps 26 Peacekeeper 64, 205–206 The Peacemaker 26, 38, 74, 104, 118, 146, 206 Pearce, Guy 263, 264 Pearl, Daniel 158, 181, 182, 183, 224 Pearl Harbor 272 Peckinpah, Sam 121, 222 Pellington, Mark 30 Pena, Michael 234, 290 Pepin, Richard 70, 71, 251 Percival, Daniel 111 Peres, Shimon 208, 209, 210 Perkins, Anthony 193 Persona Non Grata 206–210, 281 Petersen, Wolfgang 18 Petievich, Gerald 62 Petrie, Daniel, Jr. 262 Petulia 85 Pfarrer, Chuck 188 PFLP 28, 219, 280, 298 Philippines 29, 154, 155 Phoenix, River 230, 231 Phone Booth 221 Pink Floyd (band) 51, 295 Piper, Rowdy Roddy 257 Pitt, Brad 105, 106, 125, 126, 243, 244 Place of Weeping 255 Pleasence, Donald 254 PLO 22, 23, 28, 32, 45, 80, 91, 119, 135, 143, 149, 151, 170, 171, 186, 207, 208, 210, 214, 215, 228, 239, 242, 281, 289, 290, 298 PM Entertainment 70, 72

The Point Men 210–211 Point of No Return 71 Poitier, Sidney 163 Polanski, Roman 132 Pollack, Sydney 85 Pontecorvo, Gillo 5, 6, 11, 40, 41, 58, 59, 245 Portman, Natalie 276, 277 Post, Ted 113, 153, 154 Postlethwaite, Pete 156, 157 Powell, Colin 207, 238, 283, 284 A Prayer for the Dying 77, 84, 211–212 Predator 108 Preece, Michael 212 Preminger, Otto 118, 228, 229, 298 The President’s Man 212 The President’s Man: Ground Zero 212–213 Presley, Elvis 44 Primary Colors 66 Prisoner in the Middle 22, 57, 106, 116, 175, 213–215, 239, 260 Programmed to Kill 71, 215 Project Shadowchaser 2: Night Siege 216 Proof of Life 76, 216–217 Prophecy 30 Prophet 217–218 “proxy war” 4, 179, 208, 269, 297 Pryce, Jonathan 55, 56 Puerto Rico 82 Pulp Fiction 100 Pyun, Albert 47, 48, 49, 260 Qatar 73 Quaid, Dennis 279 Quantum of Solace 179 Quarantine 218–219 Queen Elizabeth 146 Quinn, Aidan 33, 34 Quinn, Anthony 174, 175 Rabid 232 Raid on Entebbe 7, 28, 219–220, 268, 280 Raiders of the Lost Ark 265, 275 Rambo: First Blood Part 2 7, 20, 73, 75, 96, 101, 154, 162, 193, 215, 298 Ramirez, Sanchez Ilich 96; see also Carlos the Jackal Rammstein Air Base 20 Rampage 230 Range, Gabriel 98 Rangers 220 The Ransom 258; see also terrorists Rather, Dan 65 Ray, Fred Olen 217, 218 Raymond, Ed 79, 217; see also Ray, Fred Olen Rea, Stephen 83, 84, 85, 276, 277 Reagan Ronald 4, 72, 73, 101, 108, 123, 129, 144, 151, 152, 156, 161,

Index 172, 188, 282, 283, 297, 298, 299 Reality Bites 233 Rear Window 72 Rebel 192, 193 Red Army Faction ( Japanese) 45, 261 Red Brigades 50, 294, 295 Red Dawn 160 Red Eye 220–221 Red Scorpion 106 Redacted 15, 168, 221–223, 263 Redford, Robert 37, 169, 170, 176, 243, 244 Redgrave, Vanessa 171 Reeves, Keanu 57, 242, 243 Reindeer Games 91 religion 8, 16, 58, 96, 141, 150, 169, 183, 211, 212, 218, 236, 246, 252, 263, 264, 273–274, 277, 278, 282, 291 Remick, Lee 254 Rendition 15, 51, 99, 110, 167, 176, 178, 181, 182, 223–224, 225, 235, 253, 263 Renfroe, Jeff 72 Retaliator 215 Revenge of the Nerds 256 Rhodesia 135 Richert, William 289 Rickman, Alan 107, 109 Riyadh 166 Road to Guantanamo 15, 100, 112, 157, 225–226, 263 The Road Warrior 69, 259 Robbins, Tim 30 Robin and Marian 85 Robinson, Phil Alden 248 Robocop 215 Robocop 3 226 Robson, Mark 35, 174 The Rock 226–227, 247, 268 Rock, Chris 37, 38 Rodman, Denis 78 Rodnunsky, Serge 73 Rollerball 134 Romancing the Stone 163 Romania 110 Rome 294 Romero, George 232 Ronin 298, 299 Roodt, Darrell 255 Rosebud 5, 116, 119, 153, 191, 214, 228–229, 239 Rosenbaum, Steven 232 Rothrock, Cynthia 29, 72, 162 Roundtree, Richard 136 Rourke, Mickey 77, 211, 212 Rove, Karl 14, 282 Royce 229 Rubens, Percival 149 Rules of Engagement 45, 229–230 Rumsfeld, Donald 1, 15, 103, 209, 225, 253, 254, 265, 278 Run Lola Run 100 Running on Empty 31, 129, 134, 230–231

Index Russell, Kurt 114, 115 Russia see Soviet Union Ryan, Meg 216, 217 Sabotage (1936) 3 Sabotage (1996) 231–232 Salvador 270 Samarra 221, 238 San Francisco 113, 114, 227 Santiago, Cirio H. 29, 155 Saraﬁan, Richard C. 190 Sarna, Michael John 112 SAS 127–128, 265 Sassoon, Cat 29, 32 Saudi Arabia 122, 133, 166, 167, 168, 176, 189, 190, 207, 240, 247 Scanners 218 Scheider, Roy 50, 64, 118 Schneider, Maria 201 Schnitzer, Arthur Allan 192 Schrader, Paul 204, 205 Schreiber, Liev 175 Schroeder, Rick 119, 120 Schumacher, Joel 37, 72 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 74, 75, 76, 107, 261, 266 Scotland Yard 111 Scott, Ridley 43, 44, 51, 246 Scott, Tony 37, 44, 243, 244, 279 Scream 221 The Sea Wolves 193 Seagal, Steven 43, 162, 202, 203, 205, 234, 272, 273 Seale, Bobby 199 Search & Destroy 232 Seattle 137 Seconds 293 Secret Life of Walter Mitty 276 Secret People 3 Segal, George 174 Seidelman, Arthur Allan 67, 68, 69 Semler, Dean 202 Sena, Dominic 233 Serbia 206, 231 7 Days in September 207, 232–233 Seven Days to Noon 3, 297 sexuality 8–9, 13, 21, 25, 26, 32, 48, 58, 85, 86, 88, 91, 92, 97, 101, 103–104, 113–114, 132, 148– 149, 150, 151, 193, 197, 203, 204– 205, 214, 221–223, 238, 246– 247, 262, 265–266, 276–277, 278 Seymour, Gerald 137 S.F.W 155, 233–234 Shadow Man 234 Shalhoub, Tony 235, 236 Sharon, Ariel 210 Sharp, Don 145 Sharp, Ian 127, 128 Shavelson, Melville 61 Shaw, Robert 35, 45, 46, 47, 294 Sheen, Charlie 188 Sheridan, Jim 54, 157, 241 Sherman, Gary 286

310 Shining Path 134 Shivers 232 Shooter 99, 100, 234–235 The Siege 11, 31, 72, 99, 102, 105, 108, 117, 141, 168, 207, 235–237, 272 Siegel, Don 254 Sierra Leone 174 Sight & Sound (journal) 237 Silva, Henry 58 Silver, Ron 92 Simpson, Don 227 Singer, Stanford 155 Sinn Fein 181 The Situation 122, 223, 225, 237– 239, 263 Sivan, Santosh 258 Sky Riders 150, 180, 239–240 SLA 113, 138, 139, 189, 196, 197, 204–205 Slater, Christian 56, 57 Sleeper 240 Sleepers 285 Smith, Charles Martin 124 Smith, Richard 265 Smith, Wilbur 288 Sniper 234 Snipes, Wesley 103, 104, 177, 178, 201 The Soldier 240–241 Some Mother’s Son 54, 60, 241 Sorcerer 241–242 South Africa 62, 63, 195, 255 South America/Latin America 4, 39, 57, 58, 87, 88, 108, 148, 217, 242, 244, 245, 246, 270, 271 Soviet Union (aka Russia) 13, 18, 19, 20, 23, 35, 37, 43, 57, 58, 65, 66, 77, 79, 96, 98, 98n, 102, 103, 112, 117, 123, 124, 129, 132, 158, 160, 162, 163, 168, 173–174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 189, 190, 191, 195, 198, 206, 208, 210, 213, 220, 232, 248, 254, 255, 261, 265, 266, 269, 292, 296, 297, 299 Spain 119, 278 Speakman, Jeff 92, 93 The Specialist 49, 242 SPECTRE 12, 179; see also Bond, James ﬁlms Speed 57, 69, 70, 109, 137, 242–243, 260 Speed 2: Cruise Control 243 Spicer, Brian 178 Spielberg, Steven 185, 186, 194, 270 Spottiswoode, Roger 270 Spy Game 37, 243–244, 279 Spy Who Loved Me 112, 255 Stallone, Sylvester 7, 20, 73, 101, 103, 107, 191, 193, 226, 234 Star Wars 270 State of Siege 76, 88, 138, 244–246 Steiger, Rod 145, 146 Stern, Daniel 50

Stern, Steven Hilliard 150 Stern Gang 297 Stevens, Andrew 43, 81, 123, 178, 179, 187, 217 Stevens, George, Jr. 246 Stevenson, Rich 29 Stewart, James 270 Stone, Oliver 16, 99, 100, 122, 164, 192, 200, 206, 207, 208, 209, 233, 234, 270, 274, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 290, 291 Stone, Robert 138 Stone, Sharon 294, 295 The Stone Merchant 97, 237, 246– 247 Stormare, Peter 37 Strategic Command 247 Streep, Meryl 169, 175, 176, 223 Streisand, Barbra 83, 146, 275, 276 Strong, Mark 51, 52 Sudden Death 107, 247 Sudden Impact 114 suicide bomber 11, 16, 88, 89, 96, 102, 141, 208, 209, 235–237, 254, 258, 263–264, 272, 286, 292, 299 The Sum of All Fears 14, 37, 38, 45, 76, 186, 203, 248–249, 299 Sundstrom, Cedric 25, 26 Superbowl 14, 45, 47, 248 Superman 2 249 Sutherland, Donald 33 Sutherland, Keifer 129 Swaim, Bob 139 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song 199 Sword of Gideon 137, 185, 249–250 Swordﬁsh 57, 250–251 Syria 22, 27, 61, 79, 80, 94, 95, 97, 99, 133, 237, 248, 281 Syriana 235 T-Force 251 Taghmaoui, Said 263, 264 Taiwan 64 Tajikstan 123 Takacs, Tibor 231 The Taking of Flight 847 251–252 The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) 16 Taliban 64, 65, 98n, 213, 225 Talk Radio 42 Tamahori, Lee 189 Taps 262 Tarantino, Quentin 279 Taxi to the Dark Side 15, 51, 52, 99, 110, 122, 123, 167, 209, 223, 225, 226, 252–254, 263, 272, 282 Teague, Lewis 163, 164, 187 Tehran Incident 254 Tel Aviv 79, 92, 210, 298 Telefon 254–255 Tenth of a Second 255 Terlesky, John 64 Terminal Entry 256–257 The Terminal Man 215 Terminal Rush 257

311 The Terminator 215, 266 Terror Squad 257–258 The Terrorist 258 The Terrorists 258–259 Thatcher, Margaret 151, 241; Thatcherism 128, 241 Thing from Another World 4 The Thomas Crown Affair 107 Thompson, Emma 156, 157 Thompson, J. Lee 22, 23, 298 Three Kings 94, 122, 174 Thunder Run 259–260 Ticker 48, 49, 137, 260 Ticotin, Rachel 134 Tightrope 114 Time Bomb 260–261 Time Lapse 261 Timebomb 71 Timecop 247 Titanic 128, 266 To Live and Die in LA 62 Tomorrow Never Dies 270 Top Gun 19, 129, 159, 161, 243, 287 Total Recall 261–262 The Towering Inferno 107, 108, 129 Toy Soldiers 262 Training Day 234 Traitor 16, 158, 168, 262–265, 292 The Transporter 100 Travis, Pete 278 Travolta, John 56, 57, 120, 121, 250, 251 Treasure of the Lost Desert 265 Trenchard-Smith, Brian 78 Trident Force 265–266 Troma Films 155, 156 True Lies 266 Tuff Turf 159 Tupamores 245 Turbulence 108, 274 Turner, Kathleen 140, 163 Twain, Mark 246 Twelve Angry Men 230 12 Monkeys 30, 56, 218 28 Days Later 30 21 Hours at Munich 6, 185, 194, 267–268 Twilight’s Last Gleaming 32, 78, 268–270 Twin Towers see World Trade Center Uganda 91, 219, 279 Ulrich, Skeet 69 Ulzana’s Raid 106, 214 Unbreakable 190 Under Fire 86, 130, 239, 270–271, 290 Under Siege (1985) 160, 271–272 Under Siege (1992) 18, 32, 81, 93, 128, 169, 216, 272–273 Under Siege 2 147, 273 United Artists 59 United Nations 41, 44, 65, 110, 119, 133, 174, 183, 190, 192, 206, 220, 245, 266, 284

United 93 15, 52, 98, 112, 117, 124, 127, 131, 140, 150, 155, 181, 182, 224, 233, 273–275, 290, 291 Universal Soldier 215, 251, 275 Unmasking the Idol 275 Up the Sandbox 83, 146, 275–276 The Uranium Conspiracy 276 The Usual Suspects 250 V for Vendetta 14, 67, 146, 276– 278 Van Damme, Jean Claude 168, 205, 247, 275 Vanity Fair (magazine) 216 Van Peebles, Mario 199 Van Peebles, Melvin 199 Vantage Point 100, 167, 182, 235, 278–279 Variety (newspaper) 68, 119, 146, 153, 198, 239–240 Verhoeven, Paul 261, 262 Victory at Entebbe 7, 28, 219, 268, 279–280 Vietnam/Vietnam War 1, 4, 7, 14, 27, 50–51, 63, 68, 74, 78, 94, 96, 101, 107, 114, 122, 124, 138, 139, 143, 147, 162, 174, 192–193, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 203, 222, 229, 230, 231, 238, 243, 264, 268, 269, 273, 275, 287, 288; veteran 46, 70, 146, 147, 192–193, 197–198, 199, 243 Village Voice (journal) 53 Von Ryan’s Express 35 Voyage of Terror: the Achille Lauro Affair 280–281 W. 16, 100, 164, 209, 281–285 Waco 126, 138, 217, 218, 293 Wag the Dog 285–286 Wages of Fear 70, 242 Wahhabism 166, 247 Wahl, Ken 240 Wahlberg, Mark 234, 235 Walken, Christopher 289, 290 Walker 59, 60 Walker, William 58, 59, 60 Wall Street Journal (journal) 158, 224 Wanted Dead or Alive 286 War on Drugs 212, 217 War on Terror 1, 14, 15, 16, 30, 43, 51, 52, 53, 65, 66, 67, 72, 96, 98, 98n, 99, 103, 109, 110, 111, 120, 121, 122, 123, 131, 140, 144, 145, 146, 151, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 167, 168, 169, 170, 174, 175, 176, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 190, 207, 209, 212, 213, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 235, 237, 238, 246, 253, 254, 263, 264, 265, 269, 272, 276, 277, 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 285, 287, 288, 290 Warbirds 286–287 Ward, Fred 134 Wargames 50, 177, 256

Index Wargames: The Dead Code 287– 288 Wargames 2 see Wargames: the Dead Code Warhead 213 Washington 18, 81, 92, 175, 216, 246, 273 Washington Post (newspaper) 181 Wasson, Craig 197, 198 waterboarding 1, 51, 223 Watergate 192, 196, 197, 234, 268, 269, 276 Waters, John 139 Waters, Roger 51 Watson, Charlie 112 Weather Underground 12, 113, 138, 192, 193, 231 weathermen see Weather Underground Weaver, Fritz 46 Weaver, Sigourney 139, 140, 279 Weaving, Hugo 276 Wein, Yossi 195 Weller, Peter 111, 124 Wendkos, Paul 196, 197, 251, 252 Weston, Jack 85 Wheatley, David 151 Where Eagles Dare 239 White Line Fever 259 Whitecross, Matt 225 Whittaker, Forrest 83, 84 Who Dares Wins see The Final Option Whormby, Terry 288 Wide World of Sports 39 The Wild Bunch 222 The Wild Geese 14, 136, 193 Wild Justice 288–289 Williams, Billy Dee 191 Willis, Bruce 48, 92, 107, 108, 109, 110, 162, 163, 227, 235, 236 Wilson, Don “the Dragon” 32, 184, 217, 257 Winger, Debra 41, 42 Winner, Michael 153 Winter Kills 289 Winterbottom, Michael 112, 181, 182, 225 Winters, David 73 The Wisdom of Crocodiles 104 Wise, Robert 297 Wiseman, Len 109 Witness in the War Zone 143, 289– 290 WMD 65, 70, 74, 80, 112, 125, 178, 183, 283, 284, 285 Woo, John 56, 57, 120, 121, 227 Woodstock 295 Woodward, Bob 271 World Trade Center 14, 43, 112, 125, 126, 140, 158, 173, 181, 186, 190, 207, 232, 248, 273, 290, 291, 292, 296 World Trade Center 112, 131, 207, 233, 234, 274, 281, 290–291 World War II 4, 21, 61, 118, 119,

Index 166, 176, 214, 219, 239, 267, 272, 280 Worth, David 26, 27, 63, 64, 261 Wrong Is Right 11, 46, 58, 102, 130, 207, 254, 291–292 XChange 292–293 X-Files the Movie 293–294 Year of the Gun 90, 270, 294–295, 298

312 Yemen 229, 230, 265 Yoo, John 253 Yosef, Hasan 207 Young, Roger 53, 143, 144, 271 Zabriskie Point 7, 201, 295 Zarindast, Tony 265 Zemeckis, Robert 163 Zetlin, Barry 296 Ziller, Paul 184 Zimbabwe 135

Zimmerman, Joe 83 Zinnemann, Fred 88, 89 Zionism 42, 69, 95, 116, 118, 119, 133, 141, 171, 191, 194, 208, 210, 214, 215, 228, 280, 290 Zito, Joseph 106–107, 160 The Zone 296 Zurich 298 Zwick, Edward 235