'The Siege': Behind Enemy Lines By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, November 6, 1998

Denzel Washington plays a special agent keeping a close eye on Bruce Willis and Brooklyn. (20th Century Fox) Director: Edward Zwick Cast: Denzel Washington; Bruce Willis; Annette Bening; Garry Pastore Tony Shalhoub Running Time: 1 hour, 56 minutes Bloody scenes of terrorist activity, sexual innuendo and general anxiety

The two us-es are the us of civil authority, as represented by the good guys of the FBI and the CIA, and the us of martial expedience, as represented by the U.S. Army. They come into conflict in the later stages of a terrorist campaign fought in New York City on a scale with which only the Israelis and the Europeans are familiar.

But the movie, which is lean and tough and absorbing for the longest time, really seems to lose its identity and its conviction when paratroopers occupy the Bronx. It becomes a case of 54th Airborne, Where Are You? or a low-energy retread of Gillo Pontecorvo's brilliant "Battle of Algiers" (1965).

Ed Zwick's film, like so many of his others – "Glory," "Courage Under Fire," even dating back to his 1983 TV docudrama "Special Bulletin" – means to ask tough questions and avoid easy answers. The question he asks here is the toughest yet: What do we do when the bombs start going off?

We are not talking about the odd cracker hate crime or the screwball genius with an aptitude for airmailing C-4; we are talking committed professional terrorists willing to die by the dozens to slay the infidels by the thousands. New York being the infidel capital of the world, there are plenty around for them to slay, on buses in the beginning but finally in a campaign that targets theaters full of glitterati and whole skyscrapers jammed with bureaucrats.

The FBI responds professionally, under the leadership of special agent in charge Anthony "Hub" Hubbard (Denzel Washington). The usual suspects are rounded up, the usual dimes are dropped, the usual snitches are squeezed, the usual computers whir and click. One person the feds turn up right away is Elise Kraft (Annette Bening), who happens to be a fed herself; her office isn't on Pennsylvania Avenue, however; it's out the GW Parkway, where it hides under the really great disguise "Virginia Highway Commission."

The relationship between these two is really the heart of the film, particularly in a first half that has a documentary feel. They paw, hissy-snit, wisecrack. They scuffle over turf and technique. You feel a sexual heat between them, but they remain professional. Bening is especially good: She's tough, smart, experienced and miles from any sort of star vanity. She turns out to be a case officer with experience running networks in the Middle East; now it appears that some cells we trained and armed for action against a certain government have turned on us. The reason is a secret, unauthorized Special Forces operation by which a leading Islamic religious-political figure has been snatched. Problem: The snatchers refuse to admit they have him.

As long as it's small beer and tough, the movie crackles. We watch as our heroes close in on the cell, and bring off what they call in the trade a "dynamic entry," which is to say, a SWAT raid with many guns fired very quickly in a very small space. Zwick has always had a flair for the feel of small-unit operations, and this sequence is first-rate.

But the victory is short-lived; this cell is the first of four disconnected cells, and when one is destroyed, the others click into operation. More bombs, more death, more panic, particularly in Washington, where a president with an eye on the polls and no character commits to the military option without thinking much about consequences.

The images of tanks and paratroopers and Bradley Fighting Vehicles moving down American streets as they have moved down so many foreign streets is disquieting; in fact, the whole movie might be construed as a policy essay in which the merits of freedom vs. order are weighed judiciously. But it's not a very good policy essay.

The argument is never fairly waged, which seems a shame. Most of the fault rests with the script, which gets to this issue late and feels only perfunctory, more interested in the jolt of the image than the jolt of the idea. But it's to some degree a flaw of casting.

Where Washington and Bening are terrific, there's something smirky and smug about Bruce Willis. He seems too vain to have risen through the combat arms (he wears the Beret) to high command. The rigidity of the performance not only wrecks the verisimilitude but it wrecks the power of the argument. If Willis's Gen. Devereaux represents order, he represents one of the most seductive themes of the century, and the cause of most of its wars. Millions have given up everything for this phantasm, and the movie should make us feel the power of that seductiveness. Instead, one look at Willis with his face drawn up all tight and prim like a schoolmarm in "Little House on the Prairie" and you think: Who would give up anything for this dweeb? You wouldn't buy a used car from him, much less a slightly soiled Constitution.