Metauser

Unthinkable

January 3, 2011 Posted by mitch | movies, thoughts | 0 Comments

I watched a movie titled: Unthinkable over the holiday weekend. Which I will say, did have some disturbing imagery. So, for those that can't stomach the likes of the saw movies... don't watch it. However, I did enjoy the movie and the situation that was trying to be portrayed. If you are watching it, and find yourself siding with "all the other assholes" or siding with Samuel L's "H" character, or do you find yourself siding with Carrie-Anne Moss's "Agent Brody" character? Personally... I think I was always in the position of Agent Brody, it seemed at times she might have questioned her own resolve to what she thought was right... but she maintained that stance.

If your wondering what the movie is about and aren't going to watch it... SPOILER ALERT....

The movie is about an (white... if that really matters...) American Islamic citizen, who's made a video of and planted "3" nuclear bombs in "3" American cities, and that those bombs will detonate in 6 days if his demands are not met. He then purposefully gets himself caught, which is when they bring in FBI Agent Brody and H. The character H's history, skill set and purpose is somewhat of a mystery at first... all you know is he's protected by the highest levels within our government. It turns out that he's an interrogator. The type that will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Which is where Agent Brody figures out what is going to go on... The terrorist is then revealed to be captured, and already in the process of being interrogated. If I remember correctly... he's being given the equivalent of water boarded... without the board. Something that's not learned about until at least a third of the way into the movie... is this terrorist, is not only an American citizen... he's special forces trained, in nuclear bombs. Has worked as a contractor for the Russians, Iranians, and probably more that I missing... either way... He knows what he's doing, had access and the ability to do what he said he's done. (There was a line in there that had the Iranians saying they lost 18lbs of plutonium and that our terrorist was the one that had to have had it. Which surprised H that they were so forth coming, and the reply was that if things went south, they didn't want us to think they had anything to do with it, and have us bomb the shit out of them.) Anyway, H begins with the torture, in order to get the information about where the bombs were planted. They work on him for 3 days? and the most they get out of him at one point is a location of "one" of the bombs... which, from the video "should" have been there... what ended up happening was that they went to the roof where a simple trigger was setup on a power breaker box, that triggered a small bomb of C4 to blow up in a shopping mall, killing 53 people. This is where Agent Brody seems to start questioning her own conviction of what is really right and wrong. And is where she allows H to go a bit further... and by further... he brings in the terrorist Ex-wife.... where he was going to make the terrorist watch as he tortured his wife.... The "others" (ie: all the other characters that have been around this... that have been objectionable, some overruled, but wavered quite a bit over what they would allow) all objected to this method H was about to use... which is where H swings his arm, hand holding a knife just as the ex-wife was going to be taken away... in which she is killed... This... in the end still does not break him, and is still not giving any more information. Which is where the "Unthinkable" portion comes into play... H wants the terrorists kids brought to him. Yeah... unthinkable right? With lots of objections from everyone, and H even promising to not "touch" the kids... just wants to make the terrorist think he will.... H is running out of time... locks himself in the room with the kids and preps them... while the terrorist is sitting outside now, watching.... This causes him to give up the three locations of the bombs, which in the story line they had found one on their own without him... and one of the locations matched with the one they knew about. Problem was... the bombs had only 4.5lbs of plutonium.... meaning they were still 4.5lbs shy of the full 18lbs that the Iranians said they lost. And this what the information H was trying to get out of him.

This is where the story was leading up to.... the terrorist had been playing them the whole time as H states in the movie.... he never told them about the C4 bomb... and he told them about "3" bombs. Meaning that if they were able to break him (the terrorist), he would still only have to tell them about "3" bombs... not the 4th that he had enough plutonium for. H was stopped before he was able to do anything to the kids, and Agent Brody essentially said to the possibility of a 4th, "Let it go off then". As the terrorist was able to grab a gun and kill himself, she took the kids and left the building. Which is where the movie ends. You never know if there was an actual 4th bomb... but it stands to reason that there would be.

The question I believe the movie is posing... is How far do you go? With as far as H went, they still never knew really if there was a 4th for sure? It took a couple days for the terrorist to say what his demands were... but when he did... two things... stop supporting fake regimes in Islamic countries, and pull all military forces out of Islamic countries.... yeah... that's it. Which is what I believe it would take to get them to leave us alone... So... again... How far do you go? Is torture ever ok? The research is in... and Agent Brody stated it several times... Torture rarely reveals anything useful.... because they get to a point where they'll say anything they think will get you to stop, regardless of how much they actually know.