(2010, extended version) Here's the situation: In a self-made video from three different locations - "In the name of Allah the merciful, and his prophet Muhammad" - a 38-year-old American citizen, calling himself Yusuf Atta Mohamed, formerly Steven Arthur Younger (Michael Sheen) from Akron, Ohio, who had been a US Army specialist in explosives, including tactical nuclear weapons, displays what he says are nuclear bombs located in three major American cities, which have been set to detonate on Friday, the 21st, at noon Pacific time, if his unstated terms are not met. On Tuesday a story goes out to the media that Steven Younger is a dangerous fugitive sought for the murder of a policeman and abduction of two children (because "faces lead to places"); that same day, but not reported, he's caught and arrested in a Phoenix shopping mall, without making any resistance.

Taking the topical issue of the ultimate, unthinkable terrorist threat we fear having to face, matched with unthinkable options among the instruments and methods of enhanced interrogation available to someone authorized and willing to employ them, director Gregor Jordan and screenwriter Peter Woodward (both of whom seem to have high regard for David Mamet's style of filmmaking) have creepily created the most intensely suspenseful, psychological drama of our time: nuclear disaster or moral catastrophe.

On Wednesday FBI agent Helen Brody (Carrie-Anne Moss) and her superior Jack Saunders (Martin Donovan), the bureau's assistant director, are brought to a centralized command center in LA under General Paulson's authority where they again (after an earlier snafu) find Henry Herald Humphries (Samuel L. Jackson), otherwise known as "H," who has been called in from his CIA-sponsored witness-protection location to apply his specialized expertise on Yusuf.

Already the suspect has endured "everything within operation parameters," explains Col Kerkmejian: "Hot, cold, sleep deprivation, intense noise, bright lights, threats of violence" (but no actual physical harm). To which H responds: "Amateur hour …This is never going to work" because Younger was trained by the Army to withstand such mistreatment.

As H begins his less constrained approach, Brody takes exception to his methods as being "illegal and ineffective"; nevertheless, with as many as ten million people's lives at risk and full approval to have his way with the suspect ("Higher authority believes that we should all do what we think is best for our country and its people"), he chooses her - Harvard grad who has chosen career over having a family - as his partner. In his first act H chops off a portion of one of Yusuf's fingers with a fire ax.

With Yusuf's citizenship having been revoked, making him a stateless person, H says to him: "All your worst fears, all your nightmares, are right here." Outraged at what she must witness - "tortured … unconstitutional" - Brody's taken aside by Donovan: "If those bombs go off, there will be no fucking Constitution!" In a further effort to placate her sense of injustice being done, Donovan promises that afterward: "We'll bring a civil-rights prosecution against these bastards."

Brody continues to argue against H's abuse of Yusuf - electric-shock treatment of his bared flesh as he hangs with his hands chained to the ceiling, removal of fingernails, mutilation of his genitals, drill applied to his teeth, waterboarding: "Physical torture doesn't work," only resulting in his saying anything but nothing reliable. "We're afraid, they're not," replies H: "We doubt, they believe."

Unwittingly fulfilling his intention of her acting as the good cop to his bad cop, Brody says to Yusuf: "You talk to me, otherwise this bastard is going to keep at it." But he answers: "I can take it. I deserve it…. Do what you have to. I can't lose."

Often appearing to take delight in the challenge of breaking Yusuf, H informs his victim that as personalities neither of them matters: "There's only victory and defeat. The winner gets to take the moral high ground, because they get to write the history books. The loser just loses. The only miscalculation in your plan was me." Nonetheless, Yusuf repeatedly appears to have anticipated and prepared himself for every move and maneuver of his captors well in advance.

On Thursday, with Yusuf not yet having even divulging his demands, H's Bosnian wife Rina (Lora Kojovic) comes to the center with a laptop for H during a break to chat with their two children; she reveals to Brody her own tragic past of having been raped in front of her family by Serbs, who then massacred everyone except her.

With just 21 hours remaining after Yusuf is permitted to make his statement on video of conditions for disclosing the bombs' locations - which even H allows is a reasonable request under the circumstances but which the president's representative dismisses out of hand as giving a terrorist too much influence over foreign policy - the question of the bombs even being real arises. Considering that Yusuf was too complacent in wanting to be captured and tortured, Brody urges him to give up one location to "prove it." He refuses: "What you call freedom is a false god." H assents in remarking that the American belief of everyone's wanting in every culture to be free has been a costly, erroneous assumption.

Trying desperately to put an end to the torture as well as to Yusuf's obstinate refusal to cooperate, Brody offers him her moral white flag: "You've proved that we are exactly the kind of people we say we aren't." Yusuf continues to confound everyone but H, though on Friday with three hours left even the veteran interrogator admits: "He may not crack."

Then, after failing to flee the country to Saudi Arabia, Yusuf's wife Jehan and her two children are found. In giving H the go-ahead - "We need to finish this," says the government official - Yusuf's torturer says to him with thousands of women and children's lives in the balance: "They won't stop me now."

Who is evil? "This is war!" shouts H at his accusers: "This is sacrifice!" Who will be the courageous hero daring to perform or accept unbearable punishment? There is faith, and then there is knowing, but finally one must see. In an unusual, enigmatic ending, Graeme Revell's powerful original score, taking over from the visual action and dialogue, climaxes during the credits.

An unfortunate lapse in editing dialogue occurs on Wednesday when Agent Vincent comments that Friday is "four days from now," followed by another's saying: "So we have seventy-two hours to figure out where he's hiding."

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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