Review of State of Siege

Yves Montand relinquished his membership of the Communist Party following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. He became slightly more conservative with the years but never ceased to speak out against political corruption and social injustice. His working-class credentials of course gave his opinions greater credence. Having worked with Costa-Gavras on 'The Sleeping Car Murders' he gave his name and talents to that director's 'Dictatorship Trilogy', comprising 'Z', ' The Confession' and 'State of Siege'. Costa-Gavras maintained that Montand's choices were artistic rather than political. That may or may not be but there is no doubting that Montand's star status and charisma made these films more attractive commercially. Needless to say Montand is splendid and sympathetic in the role of Michael Santori whose character is based upon American counter-insurgency agent Dan Mitrione who was kidnapped, interrogated and executed by left-wing Tupamaro guerillas. At first he insists he is simply a 'technician' but is soon revealed to have played a much more sinister role and ends up declaring that whatever methods he employed were justified in order to defeat the enemies of civilisation. Good performances also from an unrecognisably young Jacques Weber as his interrogator, an unrecognisably middle-aged Renato Salvatori as a hard-nosed security chief and an instantly recognisable O. E. Hasse as a journalist who asks Government spokesmen too many embarassing questions. As a film this is probably the weakest of the three as it lacks a certain focus but the editing by Francoise Bonnot is as always exemplary and it holds one attention. Costa-Gavras has made the right call here by showing us Santori's corpse at the outset and by not showing his execution. IMDB is a forum for those who love Film and is not a platform from which to air ones political views so whether this film has a 'bias' is neither here nor there. What it does is to remind us of Jean Renoir's chilling observation: "Everyone has his reasons".