Ruined by cartoon villain

Rating: 3/10 (2 April 2011)

MAJOR SPOILERS
An intriguing set-up which promises a lot until the villain shows up. He's an American patriot. You know, the kind that's always blowing things up. To make matters worse Gyllenhaal at first follows two Islamic guys, one middle Eastern, the other white, who both turn out to be innocent, as if to say in the usual lazy Hollywood way "see, see, we are confronting your prejudices here." If only they would confront their own prejudices.
In modern Hollywood the villain comes in three varieties 1. White patriots. 2. White capitalists. 3. A combination of 1 and 2. Why is it that Hollywood now seems incapable of dealing with any idea of evil which doesn't include these categories? Its not as though the world is not furnishing enough examples of terror to write about. Yet as daily examples of Islamic/communist/ecological violence greet us, Hollywood is more and more engaging in fantasies where not only is this not happening but the choice of villain is the least likely to commit them. Its as though the Hollywood of 1944, instead of making films about spies and fifth columnists, made ordinary Americans the real threat.
For those not ideologically minded (ie the majority of the audience) the problem is not the leaden agenda but the utter predictability of it all by now. The brief thought that an Islamic terrorist might appear (for once) in a mainstream movie only serving the accentuate the crushing deflation when it turns out to be the same old. I expect huge groans for cinemas when the sucker punch hits them "Not again!" Which will turn to anger as they realise (yet again) that Hollywood and the critics have conspired to churn out something utterly insulting to its audience as "intelligent". Its a pity, since this film has pretensions to be a thinking sci-fi thriller.