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Credits

Rated: R; Genres: Action/Adventure, Suspense; With: Annette Bening, Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis
C-
By Troy Patterson
Troy Patterson
Troy Patterson is a critic for EW. He lives in Brooklyn.

Director Edward Zwick (Glory, Courage Under Fire) stages this overwrought essay on postmodern terrorism as an overswank post-Cold War thriller. Respectively using stock bravery and cliched cunning, Washington's G-Man and Bening's CIA agent battle Muslim extremists bombing New York City. They must also outwit an Army general (Willis, playing to gung ho type but against sympathy) who zealously enforces martial law in Brooklyn and starts rounding up Arabs at random. That The Siege features both the silliest standoff in film history and numerous oral reports on the Fourth Amendment is typical of its ill-fitting moral seriousness: It's the Bill of Rights adapted as a popcorn conspiracy film. C-


Posted Apr 23, 1999
 

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