Before I get started, I'll summarize my opinion thusly:

Rating Including The Last 30 Seconds of the Movie:  C+
Rating Exclusing The Last 30 Seconds of the Movie:  A-

I started watching it recently after avoiding it for a while assuming there'd be some ridiculous moral relativism about terrorists and was pleasantly surprised for the full length of the movie minus thirty seconds.  It is almost as if the last thirty seconds was added on by someone who had nothing to do with the rest of the movie.

Until that point, the terrorists are treated as the monstrous scum they are and all of the characters are three dimensional human beings reacting to a truly awful terrorist attack with the anger and effectiveness you'd expect and applaud. 

Not to ruin the film, but they do many things to emphasize Saudi Arabia's backwards treatment of women, non-muslims and even did a rather intelligent and passable job representing the various fractious elements within the Saudi royalty and population. 

Then, in the last thirty seconds, they manage to paint the American reaction to the attacks as starkly equivalent to the behavior of the terrorists.  At least, that is the very clear impression I got from it. 

So, watch it.  It is a fucking badass action movie mixed with a pretty solid crime procedural and a shake of Tom Clancy-style international intrigue.  Just turn it off thirty seconds before the credits and you can avoid the implication that we shouldn't brutally murder every terrorist in the world. 

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 03:50 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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