movies

Why, because of the “arab terrorist” trope? I mean? A bit I suppose but also it’s not like groups like that haven’t existed in the past/exist today. I don’t recall them getting into the backstory of “Crimson Jihad” at all but given American interventionism has, IRL bread the distain of Western hegemony; you could look at it as an inevitability that they’d exist and a warning as to what might happen to America (and kinda did, on 9/11). That clearly isn’t the movie’s intent though, but I can see how “Arab terror groups exist and do not like America” could become a plot; and like any action flick they do not do any sympathizing with the designated bad guys.

They do kinda cartoonishly kill the leader at the end though, in a very “America good, delight in this malcontent’s ultimate failure, the west always wins, hoorah” kind of way; but this is also a mid-90s action flick from a time before most of us had a way to see through all the “the rest of the world is desolate and savage” narratives spun by the CIA and the state department and rung though our elected officials. So, it’s not exactly gonna be woke.

It’s a great movie but it’s also definitely a self-report on the state of the American zeitgeist at the time, yeah.