The Siege raises a lot of important questions about racism, free speech, and the power of government. It doesn't deal with them particularly effectively, but it's still an enjoyable movie, on a less intellectual level. The film is even more interesting in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York City and the Bush administration's attacks on our Constitutional rights.

In the film, Middle Eastern terrorists carry out a series of high-profile attacks in New York City, blowing up buses and such, and Denzel Washington plays Anthony Hubbard, the FBI agent who, along with his Lebanese partner Frank Haddad (Tony Shalhoub), is in charge of tracking down any remaining "cells" that might have further plans. There's no Patriot Act passed limiting Constitutional freedoms and giving the government unchecked rights to imprison citizens and noncitizens without trials, but when the attacks get too bad, martial law is declared in the Bronx, and General Devereaux (Bruce Willis) is in charge of the city. In a prescient twist, he locks up and interrogates thousands of Middle Eastern men (shades of the Bush administration's imprisonment of hundreds of men without trials). His techniques are old-fashioned, stretching to torture of suspects and even murder to get information.

Meanwhile, Hubbard and Haddad, with the help of shady CIA operative Elise (Annette Bening), attempt to find out who is staging the attacks and prevent the final cell from fulfilling its mission. They use more or less Constitutional means, but the gaping hole, the rank hypocrisy, that scuttles the film is that, in a way, some of Hubbard's methods are no better than those of the reviled Devereaux. In one scene, he uses a suspected terrorist's fear of having cigarettes put out on his skin (something that apparently happened to him in training) to force a confession, with no lawyer for the suspect in sight. There's not much difference between Hubbard's threat of torture (but we all knew he wouldn't do it, didn't we, because he's Denzel Washington, and he wouldn't do things like that) and the more direct means used by Devereaux. Hubbard's imassioned speeches about the sanctity of the Constitution ring hollow after this flagrant disregard for the very document he's supposed to protect.

So that breakdown in logic, as well as the fact that we aren't really presented with characters but with mouthpieces spouting slogans and hot-button phrases, damages the movie. It is still enjoyable as a sort of political thriller, but it's too bad, especially viewing it in the wake of September 11, that Edward Zwick and company didn't go a little deeper into the issues.