Unthinkable: Torturing The Torture Question

This little movie, which may have missed a theatrical release, makes an interesting rental if you're looking for some hard-core morality discussion about the philosophical issue of the efficacy of torture. That is, if you don't mind sitting through two hours of a stage-play version of pretty intense, physical torture and murder.

Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) stars as agent Helen Brody, an FBI agent who's assigned to track down the location of three nuclear bombs that have been hidden in three American cities, threatening to go off in precisely 48 hours. Meanwhile, the terrorist - Steven Arthur Younger (don't you love how terrorists get three names?), who is played with an effective Midwestern accent by brit Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon, Underworld), happens to be held in custody by the Feds at a high school in California. Brody is called in along with Samuel L. Jackson (as "H"), a mysterious character who happens to be a master torturer, and whose handlers set him to work on Younger in order to break him down.

While the premise seems like a B-movie version of an episode of 24, the movie is less interested in the ticking clock and the slow suspense of tracking down the bombs than it is exploring the arguments for and against torture, with Brody being maneuvered to play the good cop to H's very very very bad cop. H begins his torture session by chopping off Younger's pinky - and let me just say, it goes on to get worse from there. This isn't a movie for the squeamish. This seems to be precisely the point, as H relents his physical abuse at key points so that Brody can go in and talk reasonably, cajole, and otherwise serve as an emotional counterpoint to help break the terrorist down. She doesn't like participating and wants to stop it, but the orders come on from on high: as long as they are getting information, and possibly saving millions of lives, any level of physical abuse is worth it, or so the American officials argue.

Younger argues (in his abused state he's still somehow able to deliver the type of clearly reasoned counterpoints that usually only come out of Sophomore year-end theses) that the physical abuse only goes to prove how depraved Americans have become. What they are doing is merely another form of murder and terrorism.

With all the action taking place on a stage in the gym of the high school, I wondered throughout most of the film if this wasn't the film version of a stage play. I couldn't find a reference to an original anywhere, but the talkiness of the torturers and the limitation to what's basically a single set gives the film the feeling of issue-based theater. It drove me a bit crazy that with only 48 hours, we never see Brody or her team actually go and do any detective work. Instead, we only get the torture question, and all is left to ride on whether Younger will break. The movie wants to shove us into a narrow funnel that isn't really realistic, but is designed to press a very specific ethical question: how far is it ethical to go in using physical torture and terrorism to extract information designed to save a great many more people from the threat of physical terrorism?

Some will naturally want to argue its not ethical to go there at all, but to me, the real question is whether the moral questions about torture posed by the movie are the right questions in the first place. Brody argues that torture is ineffective - though H does eventually manage in the end to come up with a Jack-Bower-like gambit that gets Younger to confess, well, most of what they want to know. But the confession comes only because Younger - as well as Brody and the American handlers - have become convinced that H is capable of any act of barbarity that will make Younger talk. The movie wants us to understand that in the end, there's no reasoning with terrorism: the only thing a terrorist understands is more terrorism.

What I find unfortunate is that while the movie slowly doles this insight out as some piece of hard-learned wisdom, it seems that Americans are only starting to come to the beginning of a question that has vexed Israelis for fifty years. If the only way to combat terrorism is with terror, we are surely in for a cycle of endless bloodshed and vengeance. This is in fact no answer, but only the beginning of what's indeed a very thorny problem for any modern society that bases itself on democratic values.

The movie is at least willing to start to ask those serious questions, however. Unlike 24, it's not just a pop-terrorism for entertainment. That's why I think it's of note, and possibly worth renting, if you have the stomach for it. Stilted as the dialogue is as a morality tale for the political set, and implausible as the set-up would seem, Moss, Jackson, and Sheen all give fine performances. If you make it all the way through the end, it will surely give you something to talk about.

Frost / Nixon Reach Oscars After Going All Twelve Rounds

The title of the movie is Frost / Nixon with a slash...but it should be Frost v. Nixon - as in an HBO boxing special. For the boxing metaphor is the central organizing principle that Peter Morgan has set up in his play about TV Host David Frost's first public interview after Nixon's impeachment.

In this corner: David Frost, handsome, breezy international playboy, social butterfly, and lightweight TV-comedian turned Australian talk-show host, looking for a way back into the U.S. prime-time television limelight, and played with earnest enthusiasm by Michael Sheen.

In the other corner: Richard M. Nixon, aging right-wing paragon who's fallen from grace, former President, intellectual powerhouse, perversely anti-social paranoid and world's most notorious criminal. Played with intense nuance by Frank Langella.

Just as in the best boxing movies, both are consummate athletes in their field - in this case, the field of politics and media. And the match is set up as they typically are: the gutsy challenger (Frost) going for 12 grueling rounds against the past-his-prime champion (Nixon). Just as in the best boxing films, each man's weakness is the other's strength, and each can only triumph by learning how to overcome his weakness through his opponent's example. The question for Frost: can he learn the intellectual discipline necessary to corner Nixon on his own turf, and force an admission of culpability? For Nixon: can he ride Frost's good humor to muster the social grace necessary to revive his image in the eyes of the media and hence, America?

Both men have their coaching teams. (For Nixon, a former marine, Jack Brennan, played in caricature by Kevin Bacon. For Frost, his producer, John Birt, and the hired guns of Bob Zelnik - the news professional - and James Reston Jr - played by Sam Rockwell as kind of the "soul" of liberal America that NEEDS Nixon to be properly confronted).

Will Nixon be able to rehabilitate his reputation with this four-part interview (covering the four faces of Nixon: Viet Nam, foreign policy, Watergate, and "Nixon the man") and re-enter politics? Or will Frost deliver the knock-out blow that will reveal Nixon's guilty conscience to the world, thus providing the catharsis of culpability that the liberal public longs for (and the media riches and acclaim that Frost desperately needs)?

Needless to say, the story and the issues it raises - in terms of the criminal abuses of the Presidency, the need for political catharsis, and the power of the media to not only conceal and reveal, but also bestow both fame and notoriety - echo strongly with our current times. And as a film that explores the intersection of politics, history, and media through this conceit of the intellectual boxing match between these two men, the story succeeds masterfully at creating the kind of political fable that makes for excellent post-movie dinner conversation.

So let's talk about how the people behind Frost / Nixon have put together this confection. I agree completely with other reviewers who have compared this film's direction favorably to Doubt: by handing Frost / Nixon over to Ron Howard to direct (rather than attempting it himself, as John Shanley did with Doubt), Peter Morgan allows his story to escape Doubt's wordy claustrophobia. Visual symbols (such as a pair of Italian shoes, or the expression on Nixon's face) come to play as key a role in this film as the interview itself, and we're taken across the oceans and through Washington and LA as the film unfolds its story on the world stage. According to Entertainment Weekly's interview on the film, Howard "opened up" the feel of the movie by allowing his actors to free themselves of the gestures and habits they learned onstage. That freedom helps create performances that translate keenly on film, letting the actors interact broadly with the sets and making us feel the hothouse poppy Hollywood environment that Nixon has retreated to. Even so, the climactic scenes boil down to two men, facing each other in comfy chairs in a small, middle-class living room. But consider this the boxing ring, and you see how that set is just the arena for battle, supported by the wide-ranging backgrounds we see outside the ring.

Frank Langella as well deserves the praise (and the Oscar nomination) he's received, for the complexities of the Nixon he creates are the key to the film's message: this Nixon is a flawed but fascinating villain in the best Shakespearean tradition. When Nixon introduces his Hollywood agent, Swifty Lazar, to the reporters doing his bio (including Diane Sawyer), he does so as a personal joke about Lazar's fear of shaking hands. It doesn't matter so much that no one else in the room cares about Lazar's predilections: Nixon himself is perfectly amused. The scene reveals both Nixon's creepy fascination with people's personal idiosyncrasies and his social insensitivity (he has a file on everyone, a Watergate habit he can't seem to shake), as well as his keen insight into human nature (he's able to sum up Frost the instant he sets eyes on him). Never mind that Langella neither looks nor sounds much like Nixon; this is definitely the best portrayal of the man to date, capturing perfectly the quality of ambition, perversity, and intellect that made Nixon so considerable a figure to begin with. As some have said, it is a performance that perhaps captures the meaning of "Nixon" better than the man himself.

Sheen, for his part, does a serviceable job carrying the film as the entertaining David Frost, who gambles big and must face total ruin before summoning the nerve to truly act like a reporter. Not much else perhaps needs to be said of this side of the ring, since Frost's underdog story is perhaps the most expected one in the film, and Frost, though the protagonist, is not the ultimate subject of this biopic.

And so we come to the quibbles I have with this movie, which though I am giving five stars, is far from perfect. First, there's the treatment of Nixon. While I may not share Sam Rockwell's complete thirst for blood, I do find that the extent to which the movie makes us actually like Nixon makes me a bit uncomfortable. While I'm sure that the man could be charming, and understanding tricky Dick's nature is part of the dual edge of the sword here, I fear the film suffers a bit from its own greatest fear: that it will rehabilitate Nixon's reputation more than he deserves. Yes, I know this is a film that is not JUST about Nixon. Still, Frost's failure in completely nailing Nixon's culpability (and I'm not completely convinced he DOES nail it) needn't be the filmmakers.

And then there's that sports metaphor, which gets driven into your skull repeatedly. As an organizing principle of the story, I think it works. But even something that works can be overused. I think we tend into that territory, here.

And then, finally, there's simply the fact that however much we want this movie to be about something more - to be about our present day issues, or the nature of political corruption, or media ambition, mortality, and the rest of it - that it ultimately is about what it is. Which is to say, it's a smallish film, with limited ambitions - that is, if you consider the exploration of social graces and class resentment limited, which I kind of do - even though it largely achieves them.

But there is one scene in the movie that makes the film stand out. Just before the final interview, when everything is on the line, Nixon unexpectedly and ill-advisedly telephones Frost in the middle of the night. In that conversation, Nixon reveals both the commonality and the differences between the two men, in a speech that soars with insight and mastery of the film's themes. Without that scene - and the subsequent references to it - the film would have laid flat, a mere character study cum morality play, like Doubt. But that late-night encounter between the two men dives right into the heart of what this story is about, and ties it up neatly. It helps too that it's the middle of the night, the same time as the Watergate henchmen would have been breaking into the Democratic headquarters, the time when social mores and commonsense strategies can be thrown out the window, and truths can be gotten down to. The fact that Nixon can't remember it happening may lead us to wonder whether Nixon's ultimate flaw was his conscious ambition, or his unconscious demons - and whether the ruin of a country can really all be the fault of a single man.

So I have to say that despite its flaws, a movie that makes us consider that question - and consider it in such an entertaining and convincing way as this one does - in this day and age, is deserving of all the stars I have.