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____holy terror Far from being racist, "The Siege" shows how terrorism is used to justify racism toward Arabs and Muslims. BY CHARLES TAYLOR | There are several justifiable complaints that can be leveled against "The Siege"; that it's a racist film isn't one of them. This thriller about a wave of terrorist bombings in New York City that results in the government internment of the city's Arab citizens has angered some Arab and Islamic groups, which have charged the movie with perpetuating negative Arab stereotypes. Here's the catch -- none of those groups appear to have actually seen the movie. In the current issue of "Vibe," Jeff Salamon reports that Ibrahim Cooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations started complaining when "The Siege" began shooting last winter. In Boston, where I live, Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal of the Islamic Council of New England has been quoted as saying that "The Siege" "hideously distorts the religion of Islam." At the time of his remarks, Dr. Asmal had not yet seen the film. There's no winning with ideologues, and perhaps seeing "The Siege" won't change the minds of the people who've already condemned it. That's their loss, because despite its being a mess, "The Siege" offers a consistent view of how terrorism is used to justify racism against Arabs and Muslims, and also how American foreign policy sometimes acts as the unacknowledged catalyst for terrorism. Yes, the terrorists here are Arabs, and Americans are their victims. But, unlike its premature critics, "The Siege" doesn't equate "Americans" with "white people" -- or "Arab" with "terrorist." Near the beginning of the film, we see a Muslim man in the turret of a mosque beginning his daily prayers. The camera pulls back to reveal that the mosque is located in Brooklyn. The message of that shot couldn't be clearer: These people whom we think of as "the other" are our fellow citizens. Some protest groups have charged that "The Siege" equates Islam with violence. But that's not the same thing as acknowledging that some terrorists have used Islam to justify their actions. In one of the film's key scenes, a Palestinian named Samir (Sami Bouajila) talks of how his younger brother became a suicide bomber because he was told that Allah would reward him with paradise (and that his elderly parents would be handsomely provided for). I don't know how "The Siege" could make it any more plain that the use of Islam to justify terrorism is a perversion of the religion. If "The Siege" frustrates anyone, it should be the moviegoers who turn up expecting the kind of clean resolution that action movies thrive on. The opening sequence cuts between news footage of President Clinton's press conference following the recent bombings in Africa ("The cowards who committed this horrendous act must not go unpunished") and American intelligence agents abducting a suspected Arab terrorist by first executing his entourage. We're not told (at first) whether the suspect is guilty. The point of the scene is simply to show the bloody reality behind our get-tough-on-terrorism rhetoric. Later we see the face of a young (and, it turns out, innocent) Arab suspect after he's been beaten by American intelligence during an interrogation. And we watch as the American general (Bruce Willis) in charge of enforcing martial law decides what form of torture to use to get a suspect to talk. Director Edward Zwick ("Glory"), who worked on the script with Laurence Wright and Menno Meyjes, doesn't show us the torture or (with one exception) the majority of the bombings that figure in the plot. And in the aftermath of the bombings, Zwick gives us only the briefest glimpses of the victims. He's not out to pump us up or work us over. Zwick wants to make us aware of how terrorism plays on our emotions. But the biggest risk "The Siege" takes is that it dares to suggest how terrorism can be triggered by the shortsightedness of American foreign policy. That's exactly the sort of thinking that -- in the aftermath of terrorist attacks -- is considered heresy. But that's not the same thing as justifying terrorism. I don't want to make "The Siege" sound like a new version of the sort of films we were inundated with during Vietnam and Watergate -- the ones that suggested American life was full of corruption and there was nothing to be done about it. The movie is an honest attempt to suggest the pitfalls of favoring emotion over reason when dealing with the very real problem of terrorism. There are simpleminded passages in "The Siege," times when Zwick falls back on awkward narrative shorthand. But at the root of the film is a coherent vision of how get-tough foreign policy triggers terrorism that, in turn, forces society to closer resemble the tyrant terrorists claim it is. Unfortunately, a consistent viewpoint is not the same thing as coherent execution, and "The Siege" is clumsily put together. Zwick is careless about plot details, so the movie is often needlessly confusing. Perhaps he was so anxious to make his points that he regarded the plot mechanisms to be of secondary importance. While the plot developments having to do with the internment of Arab citizens feels like a logical extension of the curbs on civil rights that are inevitably called for in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, Zwick's handling of it is both shrill and perfunctory. And that Zwick has stereotyped the politicians who put martial law into place (the senator who first proposes it is a jowly Southerner) as well as the military who carry it out takes away from the intelligence of the movie's arguments. Zwick means to pull off something subversive by making Bruce Willis -- in the sort of action-movie role he usually plays -- the villain. But Willis, an underrated actor, has been pretty much directed to sneer throughout the film. Zwick acts as though making the general a three-dimensional character would have been giving comfort to the enemy. There's really not much for the actors to do here. As the head of the FBI team investigating the bombings, Denzel Washington acts authoritatively, and Tony Shalhoub, as his Arab-American partner, is the likable sidekick. Annette Bening, as an intelligence specialist working with the FBI, gives the movie's best performance. It's not that great a role, but it's great to see that Bening has stopped the twinkling that's characterized most of the performances she's given since "The Grifters." Bening has one of the most marvelously low voices in the movies (though, unfortunately, some of her lines are lost because of the poor sound recording), and it's great to see an actress who doesn't seem concerned about appearing her age. It's hard to argue with the Arab-Americans who complain that movies too often rely on stereotypes of Arabs. But that they should have chosen to take out their frustrations on a film so aware of how Arabs have become scapegoats is an example of what the movie is preaching against: letting emotion ride roughshod over reason, judging by association rather than particulars. Blasting a movie in advance of its opening is a tried and true way to draw attention to your concerns. But shouldn't we expect people to know what they're complaining about before we give credence to anything they have to say? SALON | Nov. 9, 1998