<![CDATA[A much better ending would have been…? SPOILER]]>Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Siege

RynoII — 15 years ago(September 06, 2010 01:06 AM)

I found the climax to be very close minded. First of all the point the movie is trying to make is that arabs have the same rights as everyone else. I think they make that point especially at the end when the General is arrested.
I'm not going to say whether I am against it or not, cause I am no counter-terrorism expert. But by making Annette Benning's boyfriend the one last terrorist, is kind of hypocritical. Cause he is the one last arab character left to turn out to be bad or good, and by making him bad it makes almost every arab in the film evil and all working together.
What they should have done was make him a muslim but not arab. Just a muslim of a different race. Then it would make the point that not all muslim terrorists are arab, and that by stereotyping, the government missed who the real terrorists could have been. Every muslim in the movie is an arab, and that's very close-minded. Especially when it provides the opportunity for a twist in which the last terrorist could be a non-arab muslim.
By making the evil boyfriend an arab does two bad things. It says that all muslim terrorists are arab, which is close-minded and it makes it so you see the twist coming a mile away, since it's easy to guess who the muslims are going to be if the characters left for the twist, are arab.

]]>https://filmglance.com/discuss/topic/226896/a-much-better-ending-would-have-been-spoilerRSS for NodeThu, 14 May 2026 07:55:15 GMTSun, 03 May 2026 02:06:57 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to A much better ending would have been…? SPOILER on Sun, 03 May 2026 02:07:00 GMT]]>smokzey — 10 years ago(January 07, 2016 05:23 PM)

I was sure this movie ended differently! That she was keeping him as a scapegoat but really it's Elise Kraft / Sharon Bridger who's the last cell. Daemn

]]>https://filmglance.com/discuss/post/1902350https://filmglance.com/discuss/post/1902350Sun, 03 May 2026 02:07:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to A much better ending would have been…? SPOILER on Sun, 03 May 2026 02:06:59 GMT]]>RynoII — 15 years ago(September 06, 2010 08:45 AM)

No, I think it would take just about as much screen time, just the boyfriend a different race. And I'm not saying they should have changed the polygraph part at all. It's still better than seeing the twist coming right from the boyfriends first scene.

]]>https://filmglance.com/discuss/post/1902349https://filmglance.com/discuss/post/1902349Sun, 03 May 2026 02:06:59 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to A much better ending would have been…? SPOILER on Sun, 03 May 2026 02:06:58 GMT]]>tbeller80 — 15 years ago(September 06, 2010 07:57 AM)

It probably would've taken a lot more screen time to build up to that kind of ending. What the movie did end up portraying was that Devereaux rounded up every Arab in town and focused his efforts on an innocent man. Hub had several victories early in the movie using actual detective work and stayed within the confines of the law (though he cut it close with the cigarette scene.) The moral to the story was somewhat unveiled when it turned out the one guy they were ignoring and knew had terrorists in his family turned out to be the bad guy at the end. While you want the ending to say not all Muslim terrorists are Arab, the movie ended up saying not all Muslim Arabs are terrorists (peace march at the end).
When the FBI building blew up, Hub threatened Annette Benning with putting the guy in polygraph. It turned out that if he actually did that, then the movie would've been a lot shorter.

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