edward zwick 's " the siege " raises more questions than it can convincingly answer or even clearly articulate .
its subject is the rising threat of terrorism in american cities .
denzel washington is anthony " hub " hubbard , who runs the fbi 's anti - terrorism task force in new york .
his investigation into arab terrorist cells intensifies when suicide bombers take out a busload of people .
hub focuses on a mysterious cia operative ( annette bening ) , whose goes by both " elise " and " sharon .
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as the terrorist attacks continue and the body count rises , the question of martial law is raised .
enter general devereaux ( bruce willis ) , who opposes martial law at first but who , as soon as the president decides to send in the army , begins herding arab immigrants into a prison camp and attacking every link that hub uncovers in the terrorist chain .
hub listens as devereaux tortures and murders a suspect .
the future zwick and screenwriter lawrence wright offer is all too possible .
what would happen , they ask , if terrorism became as much a fact of daily life in new york as it is in cities like beirut and belfast ?
what would happen to our civil liberties if soldiers patrol our streets with machine guns ?
these questions " the siege
" answers in realistic detail .
it implies tougher ones , though : what can be done to combat terrorism without sacrificing justice and freedom ? if we encourage terrorism abroad ( from bening 's character we discover that the cia trained the bombers ) , will it inevitably come back to us ?
" siege " avoids the tougher questions by endowing its hero , hub , with a uncompromising sense of clear right and wrong .
this comforting fantasy of sir galahad confronting the evils of the modern world is an escape from the thought - provoking issues the movie raises .
still , zwick deserves credit for at least addressing the issue with as much realism as he does where so many movies ( willis ' " die hard " series , for example ) offer only a comic - book view on terrorism .
answers in realistic detail deserves credit