Line #8 YMMV/TheSiege


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2	* AluminiumChristmasTrees:
3	** The "premonition value" of this film is lowered a bit if you remember that [[OlderThanTheyThink in 1993]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_Yousef an al-Qaeda related organization]] already planned to hit New York City several times, before they settled for "just" trying to blow up the World Trade Center.
4	** On the other side, a democratically elected government declaring martial law in response to a terrorist incident is exactly what happened in Canada during the 1970 October Crisis (thankfully, without much in the way of human rights abuses, though). The same thing happened after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
5	** The Posse Comitatus Act does not prevent the Army from performing protective duties, or for that matter, law enforcement duties. Further, the military (Army and Air Force specifically) can be used for any law enforcement act, if Congress authorizes it. The military can also act to protect the country from foreign threats, whether an army or a singular threat.
6	* {{Anvilicious}}:
7	** Hubbard unflinchingly upholds the Constitution. Elise Kraft is a CIA Agent that compromises the law and makes mistakes, eventually [[spoiler: getting killed for it]]. General Devereaux ignores the law to protect his country and its people. Guess who is portrayed as being in the right?
8	** From a rather specific point of view, they're all right: Hubbard's steadfast belief in the law is what you'd expect from an FBI agent, but it's utterly useless against dedicated Islamic terrorists who are willing to commit kamikaze runs for their cause. Elise's attempts to sway and use people have their uses, as she's able to help identify several cells and gather needed intelligence to take them down, but the blowback from her operations years before the main plot were what set everything off. And Devereaux specifically argued against martial law, and specifically stated that he didn't want to do it, but he was ordered to and therefore he was doing it. He's not wrong to follow orders, and he has the best intentions in mind, but he does take it too far without realizing it.
9	* DesignatedVillain: [[spoiler: By the chain of command, the US President needs to be held accountable for ordering Devereaux into New York to instill martial law. His fate is not seen in the film, partly because the film is primarily set within New York City and wraps things up with the siege ending, and partly because at the time it was considered unthinkable to arrest the US President. But it can be implied that the President's reputation will have suffered some damage for authorizing the siege.]]
10	* HarsherInHindsight: Terrorist attacks happening in New York City. It can make the movie a bit harder to watch after 9/11.
11	** Terrorist incidents in the United States that happened after this movie, like 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing, may not have led to martial law, mass detention, torture by military personnel and use of helicopter gunships in urban areas of American cities, but the subsequent counter-insurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq used exactly these tactics.
12	** Not as unusual as one thinks. Mass detention certainly did not happen (even the large numbers of Saddam Hussein's military captured were more or less released after Baghdad), helicopter gunships were used in urban areas as far back as Korea (and also in Indochina, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan) and indeed were expected to be utilized in the WWII invasion of Japan. So this is nowhere near as unprecedented as it seems at first... [[FridgeHorror which says something VERY unpleasant about the military]]. WarIsHell indeed.
13	** One member of the council discussing the possibility of sending in the Army briefly floats the notion of finding TheManBehindTheMan, offhandedly suggesting Libya, Iran and Iraq. Two out of three of those would undergo violent regime change in the following two decades.
14	** This trope is also inverted of sort in that the tipping point is a bombing of an FBI field office that kills over 600 people. The movie treats it as the most horrific terrorist act that could ever happen in New York City. More than four times that many people were killed at the World Trade Center alone, and more than five times that many once the deaths from the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 are added on. Though in the movie, part of the reason the attack on One Federal Plaza was so devastating was that with the FBI counterterrorism office destroyed, their capability to respond to additional attacks was severely weakened.
15	*** It's also possible that if continuous terrorist attacks occurred, martial law and the detention without charge of "suspicious" people would have been utilized. All of the film's elements were done, just not in New York City, but overseas.
16	** Post 9/11, FOX itself lampshades this by marketing the movie as "Eerily prescient of the 9/11 attack and their aftermath" on the backcopy of the blu-ray DVD edition.
17	** The second bombing involves the bombing of the New Victory Theater in Times Square, which results in mass casualties. While no theatres in New York City have been targeted by bombs, Times Square itself was the target in 2010 of an attempted car bombing.
18	** General Devereaux is arrested for first-degree premeditated homicide in regards to the torture and murder of a single suspect. After the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse Abu Ghraib]] scandals, absolutely ''zero'' officers were tried for '''any crimes whatsoever.'''[[note]]Several were released from duty, but not tried for any crimes.[[/note]] Ultimately, it's as if Devereaux got off, but ''all his men'' were blamed for '''his''' crimes!
19	** Come 2017 and the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_the_Nation_from_Foreign_Terrorist_Entry_into_the_United_States Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States]] order has resulted in Iraqi refugees being detained in airports.
20	* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Notice how after the bus explodes, and emergency crews break cover, pretty much everyone rushes towards the burning remains of the bus to extinguish the blaze and look for survivors, except for Frank, who immediately rushes to Hubbard's side to check on him.
21	* HilariousInHindsight: [[Creator/BruceWillis General Devereaux]] says, when explaining how martial law in Brooklyn would look, "[[Film/TheExpendables We will hunt down the enemy, we will find the enemy, and we will kill the enemy.]]"
22	* NightmareFuel:
23	** The bombing of Bus #5287. It's so sudden that none of the hostages still on the bus even have time to scream.
24	** The initial response to the various terrorist attacks. This is most noticeable when Hubbard, Frank and Elise respond to the theater bombing. When they arrive, the fire department has set up an active triage center to treat people who have been injured by shrapnel (dead bodies are being covered up), and at one point, Hubbard's eyes fall on a woman staggering down a staircase with her left arm missing below the elbow.
25	** Brooklyn under martial law, especially the army's arrival. Devereaux even opposes the move at first, warning that "It will be noisy, it will be scary, and it will ''not'' be mistaken for a VFW parade". He's dead serious.
26	* RetroactiveRecognition: That patrol cop at the second bus hostage scene who tells Hubbard that there are kids on the bus? That's Creator/WoodHarris, before he became better known as Avon Barksdale in ''Series/TheWire''. And Floyd Rose is played by Creator/LanceReddick, who ''Wire'' fans will better know from playing Cedric Daniels.
27	* ValuesResonance: It's honestly quite hard to believe that this film was made before 9/11. Devereaux's HeelRealization at the end resonates quite strongly with the racial profiling and curbing of freedoms ever since the attack.

Context YMMV / TheSiege