The Siege
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment | Release Date: November 6, 1998 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
53
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
15
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's a thinking person's thriller, where pyrotechnics give way to plot, character development supplants fight scenes, and adrenaline does not short-circuit intelligence. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A political thriller with more plausibility -- and yes, more thrills -- than most. Read full review
70
Village VoiceGary Dauphin
An intramural debate masquerading as an action movie. Read full review
70
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
What a shame, therefore, that in its puritanical treatment of the only strong female character, the otherwise politically correct police story is blithely unaware of its own closet misogyny. Read full review
70
Dallas ObserverAndy Klein
A political film in the form of a thriller, rather than a garden-variety potboiler gleefully helping itself to stock political tropes from the genre's grab bag. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
It's a cautionary tale about the excesses of jingoist paranoia, and the folly of it all is that the more the film descends into somber liberal chest thumping, the less engrossing it becomes. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
The Siege is not a documentary but a glossy Hollywood entertainment that is prey to all the exaggerations, simplifications and acting histrionics that come with the genre. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
In its clumsy way, it throws in comments now and then to show it knows the difference between Arab terrorists and American citizens. Read full review
60
SalonCharles Taylor
If The Siege frustrates anyone, it should be the moviegoers who turn up expecting the kind of clean resolution that action movies thrive on. Read full review
60
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A potentially provocative idea is played out to diminishing returns. Read full review
60
The New York TimesJanet Maslin
Edward Zwick's ultimately sedate thriller starts out with crisply efficient style and the potential for a much more involving story. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
The problem, as always, is that when you try to mix cliches with more complicated data it's often the cliches that win out. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
As a nail-biting thriller, The Siege is too confusing, and as a thought-provoking social drama, too confused. Read full review
50
San Francisco ExaminerWalter Addiego
At some point, the movie itself crosses the line, from a modestly thoughtful attempt to extrapolate a drama from real and urgent events to a generic action piece with predictable good and bad guys and pat, civics-book morals. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
This is a dumb action flick that pretends to have a brain, a spot of affectation that plunges the audience into double jeopardy -- forcing us to traipse through not just the standard litter of bloody corpses but (oh, damn) the added trash of bloodless ideas. Read full review
50
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Zwick frequently sacrifices dramatic urgency in the name of sobriety. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
The good news, then, is that The Siege is hardly the ticking time bomb of racial slurs some would have you imagine, and the bad news is that it doesn't matter because it's all too damn pedantically serious to take seriously. Read full review
50
Washington PostStephen Hunter
Most of the fault rests with the script, which gets to this issue late and feels only perfunctory, more interested in the jolt of the image than the jolt of the idea. Read full review
50
Film ThreatChris Gore
A sometimes gripping but mostly routine shoot-em-up about Muslim terrorism in American. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It's one of those fast, slick, half-smart shows that can't decide whether to pay its debts to action or reality -- and winds up cheating both. Read full review
50
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
The story is an odd mixture of preachiness and paranoia, but the stars provide sizzling performances and the action moves at a lively clip. Read full review
50
The New YorkerDavid Denby
The filmmakers peddle fear and then try to claim the moral high ground; the treatment is foolish, confused, and borderline irresponsible. Read full review
40
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
The pre-posterous plot is a far-fetched way to dis-cuss the power and meaning of the Consti-tution in the context of international terror-ism. Read full review
30
NewsweekJack Kroll
This echo of the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans is the only new gimmick in Edward Zwick's entry in the cliche- terrorist genre. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
In an attempt to be complex and fair-minded, a simple story becomes a jumble of confused motivations. Read full review
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