A friend had recently watched Unthinkable, a 2010 Hollywood exploration of the use of torture, and recommended it to me. Along with offerings like Rendition and the last seasons of the TV show “24,” the movie purports to be a thoughtful examination of the use of torture to gain useful information in the war on terror. The subtitle says it all: “how far would you go to protect your country?” The assumption is, of course, that the farther “you” go, the more protection is gained. More torture=more safety.

The premise is absurd. The film can be boiled down to the familiar “ticking bomb” scenario. An Iraq veteran played by Michael Sheen (a wonderful actor as Tony Blair in The Queen, among other roles) has converted to Islam, and for a reason that goes utterly unexplained has placed a number of nuclear devices, so-called dirty bombs, in US cities. One imagines that being Muslim is enough of an explanation for this plan. He records an ultimatum of completely grandiose demands, arranges to get caught, then proves absolutely impervious to torture of the most grisly variety.

Enter an over-the-top Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson at the San Diego ComicCon 2008

Image via Wikipedia

, in a caricature of a performance. He is “H,” infamous for his ability to chop digits, castrate (I think), apply lethal doses of electricity and even murder Sheen’s Muslim wife. The script is an utter mess, as we don’t understand why the terrorist is doing this or why H, whose Bosnian wife was herself tortured, would take on the guise of her torturers. SPOILER ALERT: In the end, the torture doesn’t work, as the one bomb Sheen doesn’t tell them about goes off.

After wishing I had never cracked open the DVD case, I puzzled for a bit about what this was all about. Unlike even the cartoonish “24,” the film didn’t engage with any real issues around torture. There was no agonizing (except by a lame and easily convinced FBI agent played by the weirdly bow-legged Carrie Anne Moss) and no examination of what might drive a man to sacrifice his family.

Then I realized — this was just another entry under the category of “torture porn.” Advertising Age called it the “hottest (and most hated) thing in Hollywood. Saw, Hostel, Captivity — all are essential plotless festivals of special effects, untethered to plot orcharacter. It doesn’t matter that we don’t understand Sheen’s motivation, much less that of his torturer, H. All we need to know are what the instruments in H’s bags can do to the human body.

Unfortunate indeed for a country that has yet to come to terms with our legacy of torture, including (and only most recently) in the course of the post 9/11 “war on terror.” As disturbing, we could easily return there. Despite campaign promises, President Obama has rejected key reforms that would, in the words of lawyer Eric Lewis,  “erect a high legal wall against the return of torture. Criminal prosecutions of Americans for torturing suspects will be blocked; there will be no truth commission to examine events comprehensively; and the Department of Justice has  intervened to stop civil litigation by detainees against their torturers, including in the cases of Khaled al-Masri and Maher Arar.

As Lewis points out in today’s New York Times:

What the Bush administration experience showed was not that torture never works, but that the impulse to torture is ever present. Torture is always seen as a sad necessity, imposed with increasing frequency and brutality as panic and frustration increase. The would-be torturer invokes the scenario of the ticking time bomb, but given the power to torture, officials begin to see ticking time bombs everywhere, perhaps especially if they believe they have been right once before. 

Unfortunately, the disgusting scenes of “torture porn” displayed as entertainment in flicks like “Unthinkable” may not be so unthinkable after all.

 

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