An absorbing enough film and watchable in the same way that Homeland is able to hold the viewer’s attention. Admittedly all the leading characters are a little contrived as is the plot, but the film, like Homeland, grapples with issues that are as contemporary as they can be. Terror begets terror and it is left to the viewer to decide who is most culpable, western Imperialism or Islamic fundamentalism. In true Hollywood style, the film attempts to leave the audience with a very reasonable third way which is all right as far as it goes but ultimately whitewashes the economic and political crimes of Uncle Sam and its bloody precursor, British Imperialism.

The film’s strength is its underlying anti-corporatist narrative. Corporate America, to which the main protagonist gets ensnared in, is shown unequivocally to be an inhuman beast, seeking profit margins at the expense of those who produce the wealth. Nothing new there except our leading man is from Pakistan and when 9/11 hits town those living in America of Asian or Arabic origins are in for some serious xenophobic backroom treatment. Loyalties are suddenly put under extreme pressure and when the shock and awe begins in Iraq and Afghanistan, our Wall Street high-flyer suddenly finds himself out in the cold. The next thing we see is him teaching a robust anti-imperialist message to his students at Lahore University. Predictably that brings him the attention of both the Islamic fundamentalists and the CIA. The film then reasonable explores his conflicted sense of right and wrong.

Is the film ruthless enough in its exploration of how US imperialism’s global empire creates a backlash that is increasingly taking an Islamic jihadist complexion? I think not. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent political and philosophical vacuum that that created, legitimate social resentments have increasingly taken a religious direction. That has to be a step back for mankind but a backward step that is as understandable as it is predictable. Nature abhors a vacuum and having temporarily laid low the secular socialist response, western imperialism must now busy itself with a far more unpredictable foe. I cannot help but feel an inner smirk as I watch US imperialism vanquish secular dictatorships in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria, dictatorships that US and British imperialism were largely responsible for in the first place, only to be confronted with an Al- Qaeda style opposition. So much for the alleged superiority of western military intelligence.

The defining moment in all this murky history, if there is such a thing as a defining moment, is surely the CIA’s covert war against the democratic and progressive government in Afghanistan in the 1970’s.Having opted to fuel the barbaric and wholly reactionary movement against that government, the west has effectively torpedoed any democratic progress in that part of the world by at least half a century, and the bloodletting is far from over. Not only must western imperialism now contend with a militant Islamic Afghanistan, it now has the prospect of Islamic fundamentalism making serious inroads into a nuclear armed Pakistan and many other places to boot. Reaction begets reaction. Terror begets terror. The irony of it all would be funny if it wasn’t so damn depressing. Watching Afghan and Pakistani women and girls reduced to medieval bondage is no laughing matter but we should never forget that the whole Mujahedeen/ Al Qaeda / Taleban threat was engineered in the right wing think-tanks back in the US of A. And now the chickens have really come home to roost.

Like Homeland, the film does tentatively explore the relationship between American terror and the resultant Islamic backlash but the exploration is, like Homeland, superficial. The most deadly fundamentalists on the planet are in and around the pentagon and the White House and riddled throughout the backrooms of the CIA. They have ingratiated themselves throughout the US media and the evangelical religious networks, and most scary of all, throughout the military-industrial complex. War has gone corporate, as John Le Carre points out in his latest novel, and it is in the boardrooms of corporate America where the most dangerous fundamentalists lurk. The film hinted at this unsavoury truth but in the end became too preoccupied with the Islamic backlash and lost track of fundamentalism’s Anglo-Saxon corporatist origins. Worth watching but read Oliver Stone’s Untold HIstory of America before and after.