The Seige (1998, R)

This film falls pretty cleanly into two arcs and each has solid value, I personally enjoyed the first part more than the second.  Denzel Washington (Remember The Titans, Training Day) plays an FBI agent in charge of an investigation to catch/stop a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist cell in New York city.  The first part of this film has the FBI following leads, investigating, responding to threats, and chasing suspects.  I'm starting to realize that I tend to enjoy procedural police investigations on film, at least when the detectives are clever.  The Denzel's unit in the FBI had a plethora (I always think of The Three Amigos when I hear that word) of other television actors that I like: his partner was played by Tony Shalhoub (Monk, Wings), also in the unit were Lance Reddick (Agent Broyles from Fringe), Mark Valley (Fringe, Human Target), and Danny Proval (The Sopranos). 
Annette Benning (The American President, American Beauty) played a CIA agent who had been working on an ongoing operation regarding Islamic terrorism and the two agencies' paths cross here.  The second arc of the movie kicks in when the President of the United States issues an order that causes/allows an Army general (Bruce Willis, also from Die Hard, Twelve Monkeys) to occupy New York in a state of martial law in a desperate effort to capture or kill the terrorists and end the attacks on the local civilian population.  The notable part of the second arc is the intense pressure on the local Arab community, the increase in hate-crimes and the civil rights violations by the military in an effort to restore peace... and that this movie was released in 1998: 3 years before the 9/11/2001 attacks and the following years in which this fictional film came very close to the truth (minus the occupation of NYC)!  Normally, I would decline to mention some of these detail regarding the second part of the film in order to avoid spoilers but 1) it's on the cover of the film and in the title so you can't avoid knowing it and 2) it's the aspect of the film that makes it most worthy of discussion.

Throughout the course of the film Denzel goes on a couple of his trademarked rants for which fans love him so much.  One of his rants made no sense in the context of the conversation: I wondered, "did he even hear what she said?"  Another of his (I'll say "monologues" this time) focused largely on what has happened in America due to this police action and proposing (as many people have in the last decade in real life) that "the terrorists won" and got what they want by changing our way of life for the worse.  The movie has a definite liberal slant as taken from Denzel's character's perspective, but there could also be the more conservative argument that the general did what he had to in order to save as many lives as he can and maybe it was the right thing to do.  Annette Bennings character is I think a pretty solid portrayal of what a field agent would say/do/act like, so hat's off to the writers there.

For me, it's about 3 stars, pretty middle of the road.  My favorite part of the film was the procedural investigations, the covert operations and the interdepartmental agency work.  The actual siege part didn't do all that much for me, and I imagine the film would have had a larger impact and been more interesting before it became true events.  I'm sure it was visionary and thought provoking, but today I think it's just interesting that the filmmakers could construct this story almost precognitively.  I do have to say that they did a very good job of including many details about the way life would (did) change in such a scenario.  If you like FBI-type movies (The Fugitive from the agent's perspective or The X-Files without the aliens) or if you like movies that raise relevant political issues, then you'll like this one.  If you don't want to see violence such as... say... bombs going off in public areas, or if you don't want to watch a movie with social injustices (kind of a downer), if you don't like movies with police/military action then pass this one up.