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Third World Quarterly

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Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the

War on Terror
a
Klaus Dodds
a
Department of Geography, Royal Holloway , University of London , Egham,
Surrey, TW20 0EX, UK
Published online: 24 Dec 2008.

To cite this article: Klaus Dodds (2008) Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror, Third World
Quarterly, 29:8, 1621-1637, DOI: 10.1080/01436590802528762

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 Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 8, 2008, pp 1621–1637

Review Article

Hollywood and the Popular

Geopolitics of the War on Terror
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KLAUS DODDS

In the past couple of years several Hollywood films have been released which
have explicitly addressed the USA and its varied involvement with the war on
terror. They include ‘war’ films (eg Redacted, 2008), surveillance/spy films
(eg The Bourne Ultimatum, 2007), action-thrillers (eg Syriana, 2005; The
Kingdom, 2007, Rendition, 2007), allegorical accounts (eg Good Night and
Good Luck, 2005; War of the Worlds, 2005), historical futuristic fantasies
(300, 2007; The Dark Knight, 2008), techno-thrillers (Iron Man, 2008) and
those that blur a number of generic categories including comedy and drama
(eg Charlie Wilson’s War, 2007; Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?,
2008).1 While some have been more commercially successful than others,2
these films and others provide opportunities for people to watch and reflect
on contemporary international politics.3
As an immensely popular form of entertainment, films are highly effective
in grabbing the attention of mass audiences.4 The power of film lies in not
only in its apparent ubiquity but also in the way in which it helps to create
(often dramatically) understandings of particular events, national identities
and relationships to others. As Mark Lacy has noted, ‘The cinema becomes a
space where ‘‘commonsense’’ ideas about global politics and history are
(re)-produced and where stories about what is acceptable behaviour from
states and individuals are naturalised and legitimated’.5 Image making has
been central to the war on terror—from the burning towers of the World
Trade Center to the ‘mission accomplished’ moment of May 2003 and, more
recently, the exposure of prisoner abuse and rendition in a variety of
locations around the world. Indeed, in the aftermath of 9/11, Karl Rove, then
special advisor to the George W Bush administration, held a summit at
Beverly Hills where representatives of the entertainment industry joined him
to consider how they might contribute to the war on terror.6
While pledging their artistic independence from the Bush administration,
directors such as Oliver Stone (who had made films critical of US foreign

Klaus Dodds is in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey
TW20 0EX, UK. Email: k.dodds@rhul.ac.uk.

ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/08/081621–17 Ó 2008 Third World Quarterly

DOI: 10.1080/01436590802528762 1621
 KLAUS DODDS

policy such as Salvador, 1986) participated in productions like World Trade

Center (2006), which lionises the bravery of several New Jersey Port
Authority police officers trapped in the collapsed building. As part of the
film’s narrative it naturalises the response of other Americans either to the
role of heroic rescuers (men) and/or to anxious yet loyal wives and children
waiting at home for news of their trapped menfolk. It also, at the start of the
film, uses a satellite image of the burning towers to convey an explicitly
geographical sense that this event is more than simply a ‘localised’ tragedy.
Its sheer visibility has, it is inferred, a global potency.7 The film does not,
however, consider the wider context for such attacks or previous foreign
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policies of the USA that might have contributed to what has been called
‘blow-back’ by the American writer Chalmers Johnson.8 As David Holloway
concluded, ‘the film displayed a conventional Hollywood preference for
stories about individuals caught up in contentious historical events, rather
than stories about historical events themselves’.9
The purpose of this review is to explore a number of themes germane to
both film and the war on terror. In the first section a popular geopolitical
approach to film is articulated with explicit reference to the generic action-
thriller. This generic type has been selected precisely because it addresses
human extremes; as the Greeks recognised, gripping drama is provided
through the actions of human beings. One consequence of such dramatic
manifestations is that aspects of the war on terror, such as the ubiquity of
militarisation are manifestly neglected in favour of pathos and moral
retribution. Thereafter the following four films are considered: The Kingdom
(2007), Lions for Lambs (2007), In the Valley of Elah (2007) and Rendition
(2007). As part of this filmic investigation the paper considers themes such as
American masculinities and national security, extraterritoriality, and the
geographical representation of Central Asia and the Middle East. Finally, the
paper offers some conclusions about film, the war on terror and generic
categories, including the documentary, which have arguably explored the
darker contours of the war on terror more convincingly.

Film, genre and popular geopolitics

Geographers, alongside colleagues in International Relations (IR), have
become increasingly interested in popular culture and in particular film.10
But, as Cynthia Weber has noted, there are large areas of mainstream IR that
would still consider popular culture to be marginal to the analysis of war,
diplomacy, statecraft and international politics.11 Over the past decade this
literature has grown, even if the intellectual focus has been diverse, ranging
from representational analyses of particular events and processes to studies
that explore how filmic contexts might be used to illuminate foundational
theories in IR such as realism, idealism and social constructivism. The focus
here is on a literature called ‘popular geopolitics’, which is a sub-set of critical
geopolitics and complements recent scholarship by international relations
writers such as Francois Debrix, who has the made the case for a tabloid
form of geopolitics that underwrites contemporary American popular culture
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 HOLLYWOOD AND THE WAR ON TERROR

with its emphasis on simple media punditry, sensationalism and calls for
national unity.12 In this context attention is devoted to how film might be
used to consider not only the representational politics of depicting spaces,
power and identities but also to investigate their creation, articulation,
negotiation and contestation. The latter is particularly significant because
this research is concerned with considering how and with what consequences
particular understandings of place become embedded in wider discussions
about identity politics and relationships with others, whether they be states,
religions or regions.
Films continue to have a capacity to shape and mould public debates and
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opinion. A hugely popular film such as Valley of the Wolves (2006) in Turkey
was deeply controversial in the USA and other parts of the world.13 On the
one hand, the film depicts a Turkish secret agent determined to restore the
honour of some Turkish soldiers captured by US forces in Northern Iraq by
confronting the commander responsible for the action. The agent eventually
does so and actually kills the US officer in question. Turkish audiences were
largely enthusiastic because it reversed the Hollywood norm, which usually
witnesses US figures triumphing over foreign others. The film stimulated a
strong internal debate in Turkey about the role of the country in the Middle
East and Europe and the relationship between Turks and Kurds in the
region. On the other hand, the film was condemned in the USA for being
anti-American and even anti-Semitic for its depiction of a Jewish doctor
involved in the medical export of kidneys to patients around the world.
The film presents a very different view of the USA, Turkey and Iraq from
that currently on offer in US films. It shows US soldiers killing wedding
guests in northern Iraq, it reflects on prisoner abuse and extrajudicial killings
and suicide bombings. The film is unrelentingly critical of US activities in
Iraq since the 2003 invasion. It also draws inspiration from a deeply resented
incident involving US forces capturing and hooding Turkish Special Forces
operating in northern Iraq in July 2003.14 Just as the USA has been publicly
traumatised by hostage crises (eg the 1979 US Embassy crisis in Tehran15),
the Valley of the Wolves offers a geographically and culturally cathartic
viewing experience—Turkish forces avenge the humiliation by killing the US
commander (the appropriately named Sam Marshall) in question and the
violence provides a form of individual and collective redemption. It also
implicitly reaffirms Turkey’s role as a key geopolitical player in the Middle
East—an issue that has been the topic of some considerable debate in the
post-cold war era.
What the Valley of the Wolves also demonstrates, however, is the
importance of understanding the generic qualities of films in general. As
with the Hollywood action-thriller, this production outlines character
position, allocates good and evil qualities and uses suspense and violence
to secure the denouement. Strikingly, for Western viewers versed in
Hollywood generic traditions, it reverses the usual political order of things.
The Americans suffer a defeat and the Turkish secret agent prevails.16 It turns
upside down the 1980s and early 1990s trend in American films to celebrate
the white male hero overcoming tremendous odds in desperate, often Third
1623
 KLAUS DODDS

World, locations.17 One only has to think of films involving Clint Eastwood
(Heartbreak Ridge, 1993) Chuck Norris (Missing in Action, 1986), Sylvester
Stallone (the Rambo series) and, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger in
productions such as Commando (1985) and Predator (1987).
The films considered here are, like the Valley of the Wolves, action-thrillers
and thus an important element of the analysis presented here is generic. Genre is
used not only by Hollywood (and other cinematic traditions) to differentiate
movies from one another but also to flag likely plotlines, narrative structures
and emotional effect. Within film studies it is generally agreed that the following
generic characterisations can be identified: the action-thriller, the western, the
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war film, the comedy, the romance and the horror movie.18 These categories,
however, are fluid and overlapping. Film producers can and do borrow from
different generic traditions and differentiate within genres such as the action-
thriller and the western. In the case of the latter, one could identify traditional
westerns set in the proverbial Wild West (eg High Noon, 1952) and so-called
frontier westerns such as Full Metal Jacket (1987), where the ‘frontier’ is
transposed to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.19
Steve Neale has also noted that generic traditions can shape the
expectations of audiences and producers and even allow audiences to
anticipate and expect certain denouements.20 This can be true not only of
plots/narrative structures but also of places. One obvious example would be
the James Bond film series, where most if not all Bond fans expect the British
secret agent not only to save the world from possible destruction but also to
accomplish his mission in difficult (both spatially confined such as tunnels
and challenging such as mountainous environments) and even ‘exotic’
places.21 The recent Bond film Casino Royale (2005) witnessed Bond
thwarting the activities of a transnational terror network whose presence
stretched from southern Africa/Madagascar to the USA and southeast
Europe. The newest film Quantum of Solace (2008) involves Bond in a new
global intrigue partly filmed in Bolivia and Italy. As a consequence, generic
movies can in a sense be pre-sold to audiences in terms of viewing
expectations. But, as Scott Higgins has insisted, the action-thriller does not
sacrifice a sense of narrative at the expense of spectacle.22 Rather than
assuming that the two are in opposition to one another, it is helpful to
consider how the plot itself advances through spectacular action. Melodrama
is used routinely to stake out moral oppositions, suspenseful races or tense
movements, emotional intensification and sensational endings. This type of
film (the action-thriller) frequently uses stand-offs, races against time and
hostage-type situations to advance the plot and maintain a sense of the
melodramatic.23 Almost invariably the film’s concluding section is secured
through the use of drama (often violent in nature) to achieve a resolution
often victorious for the individual (or small group) encoded as ‘good’, often a
police officer or soldier. The ending is invariably conservative as the political
and cultural status quo frequently prevails—the USA/UK (in the case of
Bond) and the existing system of government are saved, for example.
An understanding of genre and generic categories (alongside filmic
structures) is an important supplement to the existing literature on popular
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 HOLLYWOOD AND THE WAR ON TERROR

geopolitics and allied literatures in disciplines such as IR. Films help to

sustain social and geopolitical meanings and are, as we shall see, capable of
reflecting but also challenging certain norms, structures and ideologies
associated with US foreign and security policies and the ongoing war on
terror. The role and representation of places is critical to this creative process:
the battlefields of Iraq, the mountains of Afghanistan, the detention centre in
North Africa, the political offices in Washington, the military bases in the
USA and elsewhere and, finally, the domestic spaces of US and foreign
homes play a critical role in shaping the identities of the protagonists and the
events associated with the war on terror. Iconic buildings such as the White
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House frequently stand for certain assumed understandings of the USA (as
homeland) and values such as freedom and liberty.24 Places are not simply
backdrops to the development of film narratives, rather they perform a
critical role in the making of these films and their subsequent engagement by
viewers.

‘Allegory lite’: Hollywood and the filming the war on terror

There has been a great deal of commentary, both popular and academic,
about the emergence of what has been called post-9/11 cinema.25 Some films
planned for release in the immediate aftermath were directly affected—a film
about Columbian terrorists attacking Washington, DC had its release
delayed on grounds of sensitivity (Collateral Damage, 2001) while others
were brought forward because it was believed (rightly) that American
audiences would flock to see war films, which glorified American soldiers as
heroic individuals capable of overcoming tremendous odds (Black Hawk
Down, 2001; Behind Enemy Lines, 2001). Other films, such as Buffalo Soldiers
(2003), which dealt with the activities of US servicemen in late cold war
Berlin, flopped, because the national ‘mood’ was not in favour of productions
that were critical of the behaviour of service personnel and that suggested
that servicemen were involved in drug production and dealing.
Given the scale of the shock of the attacks on the USA, Hollywood
producers have addressed, albeit in different ways, the subsequent declara-
tion by President Bush that the nation was engaged in a war on terror.
According to David Holloway, one response has been to deploy what he calls
‘allegory lite’—‘a commercial aesthetic so packed with different hooks
pitched at different audience groups that a degree of aesthetic and narrative
fragmentation has become intrinsic to the way Hollywood tells stories today,
particularly the block-buster’.26 In other words, the intention is to avoid
alienating audiences by addressing a concrete event such as 9/11 by
association rather than directly.27 Audiences are thus left to ‘work’
contemporary political parallels into the film. Movies such as War on the
Worlds (2005) and The Alamo (2004) might be two such examples which
confront in different ways the threat posed to the USA from aliens and
foreign others respectively. Generic films such as the action-thriller and the
war movie have provided ‘opportunities’ to reflect on the post-9/11 world
indirectly. They include We Were Soldiers (2002) and Tears of the Sun (2003),
1625
 KLAUS DODDS

which not only sought to revisit the legacy left by Vietnam but also
concentrated on developing a sense of the US soldier as an ‘ethical warrior’
who is committed to completing the mission and leaving no man behind.28
The extraterritorial deployment of US military power is also seen essential to
securing the USA and international order more generally. The USA as
special nation with unique responsibilities is writ large in many of the post-
9/11 productions—as Tears of the Sun demonstrates it is only through the
courageous action of a small group of US soldiers (accompanied by US air
power) that vulnerable refugees could be safely transferred across a West
African border to safety.29
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One notable exception was the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 9/

11 (2004), which deliberately targeted the Bush administration’s failure to
address the mounting threat to the USA and highlighted the geopolitical and
geo-economic significance of the US–Saudi relationship.30 Moore’s self-
declared mission was to use the film to influence the 2004 presidential election
and in this he and other critics of Bush failed. Bush himself has also used
films such as Kandahar (2001) to explain and legitimate his decision to
intervene in Afghanistan on the basis of seeking, among other things, to
improve the condition of women under the repressive Taliban administra-
tion.31 This attempt, using the First Lady as well to appropriate a film about
a woman’s search for a sister in Afghanistan, has earned the derision of many
feminist commentators who poured scorn on the claim that gender relations
were a key element in the post-9/11 military strategy for this Central Asian
state.
While the earliest post-9/11 movies approached the war on terror and the
USA’s standing in the world either allegorically or obliquely, this had
changed with the release of a number of films in the final years of the Bush
administration. While this review concentrates on the action-thriller, it is
worth noting that the documentary has been used to considerable effect in
terms of charting the more egregious qualities of the Bush administration’s
counter-terrorism strategies. Examples include Road to Guantanamo (2006)
and Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), which chart the experiences of those who
have endured rendition and subsequent torture on the basis of a highly
flawed policy of capturing and interrogating so-called illegal combatants. In
the case of the first film, the experiences of the so-called Tipton Three (British
citizens of Pakistani origin) is re-created and interspersed with interviews
with the victims concerned, who were eventually released because the British
police were able to confirm to their US captors that they could not have been
in Afghanistan (any earlier then they had claimed) because they were in
prison in the UK for petty criminal offences.
The four films examined here are explicit in their consideration of the war
on terror as opposed to being allegorical. A summary of each film is briefly
offered in order to help contextualise the identification of those themes. The
table below offers an indication of the commercial successfulness of each of
the four films in question with reference to the North American and global
markets (see Table 1). Commercially, the most successful has been The
Kingdom (2007) in terms of both overall box office receipts but also in terms
1626
 HOLLYWOOD AND THE WAR ON TERROR

TABLE 1. Box office receipts

Film Box office receipts

In the Valley of Elah (2007) $6.7 million domestic and $21 million overseas
Lions for Lambs (2007) $15 million domestic and $47 million overseas
Rendition (2007) $9 million domestic and $16 million overseas
The Kingdom (2007) $47 million domestic and $39 million overseas

Source: www.boxofficemojo.com, accessed 20 June 2008.

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of the North American market. One reason for this might that it is arguably
the most straight forwardly action-thriller of the selected quartet and
arguably provides the simplest resolution to the plot concerned—the
terrorists are killed and the FBI officers concerned return to the USA.
In the Valley of Elah (2008) concerns the search by a former Vietnam vet
(played by Tommy Lee Jones) for his son who recently returned from Iraq
after a deployment. Having been told that the Army authorities were not
aware of his location at his home base, the former soldier discovers his son’s
mobile phone in his room within the barracks. Grainy images of video, taken
via the phone, suggest that his son may have been involved in prisoner abuse
and photographs taken in the country show at least one dead Iraqi body by a
roadside. With the help of a sympathetic police officer, his son’s body is
eventually recovered and the film concludes with their struggle to discover
what happened to his son. It becomes apparent that he was killed by one of
his comrades and then mutilated and dumped on waste ground, which is
itself caught up in a jurisdictional struggle between military and civilian
police authorities. In a poignant final section, the father returns to the family
home and turns the US flag upside down on a nearby flag pole in order to
signal distress.
The film Lions for Lambs (2007) addresses the viability of the war on
terror. It is based around three distinct geographical encounters—one based
in the office of a college professor (Professor Malley), another in the office of
a US Senator (Senator Irving) and the final featuring the experiences of a
small party of US troops based in Afghanistan. Robert Redford’s
professorial character is seen to be discussing with a student the latter’s
options after university, including the possibility of serving in the armed
forces. In the senatorial office a journalist (Janine Roth) talks to an ambitious
Senator about how the war on terror might be ‘won’ and in Afghanistan we
witness (in part via satellite imagery) the fate of a party of soldiers landing at
a high point in Afghanistan. Shortly after their landing, they are confronted
by fighters and eventually perish, despite the use of American airpower.
The practice of extraordinary rendition is the primary subject matter of
Rendition (2007), which portrays the detention and removal of chemical
engineer Anwar El-Ibrahami to a North African location. While the film is
careful to simply designate his location as ‘North Africa’, his apparent
disappearance (after a business trip to South Africa) provokes his American
wife (Isabella) to seek assistance from a senatorial aide. After his rendition
1627
 KLAUS DODDS

El-Ibrahami is confronted with apparent evidence of suspicious cell phone

calls after the earlier death of a CIA agent via a suicide bombing. The rest of
the film gravitates between Washington, DC, where Isabella confronts a CIA
director over his case, and North Africa, which depicts the unwilling
involvement of a local CIA agent in the torture methods used by North
African officials to extract information from the suspect. Unable to
countenance any further torture, the CIA agent arranges for his release and
eventual return to the USA, where the film concludes with a reunion with his
family. The film offers no explanation for the ‘evidence’ apparently provided
by cell phone usage but does confront the absurdities inherent in extracting
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information via torture when El-Ibrahami’s character in desperation

recounts the names of the Egyptian football team when asked to provide
information about possible accomplices.
After a short, almost documentary, overview of post-1945 US–Saudi
relations, The Kingdom (2007) is essentially concerned with a team of FBI
agents sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate a massacre of expatriate American
citizens at a compound. After a series of jurisdictional and cultural clashes,
they eventually secure the co-operation of a senior Saudi police officer and
begin to track down the perpetrators of the atrocity. The film culminates with
the confrontation between the FBI team and the terrorist mastermind who is
shot in his family home. As with The Siege (1998), the FBI team is led by an
African American officer (Ronald Fleury) and composed of three other white
men and women. As an action-thriller dealing with terrorism the film is
interesting because, although it distinguishes between good and bad Saudis, it
also offers a portrayal of Saudi domestic life and in particular the role of
Islam as a religion which is embedded in everyday life. The figure of Colonel
Al-Ghazi, a Saudi police officer, is critical in the film as he is shown to be
sympathetic to the FBI team and a devout family man. He is later killed while
assisting the team in capturing the terrorist mastermind.

Masculinities and the war on terror

Feminist writers such as Cythnia Enloe and Sarah Whitfield have offered
insightful accounts of the relationship between certain types of masculinities
and the military, whether American or in the form of UN peacekeepers.32
The constituting of a soldier is not just a matter of training, it also involves
the promotion of an ideology of manliness, with the individual being asked to
conform to certain codes and expectations in return for a sense of community
and individual robustness. Through violence and the denigration of others,
including the places in which they reside, soldiers help in part to consolidate
their militarised identities and institutions. For Hank Deerfield in The Valley
of Elah (2007), Iraq is a ‘shit hole’ and, precisely because his son has served in
that place, he assumes that his missing son is entitled to be treated
honourably.
Each of the films considered here is deeply implicated in the production of
masculinities and the gendered division of space both in the USA and
elsewhere. As Matthew Hannah has noted, cultural representations of
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 HOLLYWOOD AND THE WAR ON TERROR

masculinity have been hugely important in post-9/11 America. The

ideological role of manhood has been fundamental in the light of a tendency
within ‘American culture . . . to conceive of conflicts as tests of strength
between two combatants playing by the same rules, as in the stereotypical
western gunfight’.33 However, as the 9/11 attacks demonstrated, the use of
airliners as weapons of mass destruction was indicative not only of so-called
asymmetrical warfare but also denied Americans an opportunity to confront
their adversaries in a proverbial ‘show-down’. Despite the legacy of the
frontier and manifest destiny in US culture, American men were denied the
opportunity to demonstrate unflinching resolve and courage in the face of
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danger, with the partial exception of those who attempted to resist the
hijacking of United Airlines flight 93 (‘Let’s roll’) as it flew towards
Washington, bound either for the White House or Congress.34 The film
United 93 (2005) explicitly addresses that episode and attempts to visualise
the final moments of the flight and the resistance of the passengers.
In the aftermath of 9/11 Americans were urged by their president to support
the country and the popular media and political leaders lionised particular
types of men such as soldiers and fire fighters. The 9/11 attacks denied the
opportunity for a showdown and henceforth Americans would have to restore
their dignity and virility in different arenas. When President Bush declared that
the war on terror was in part a struggle over civilisation itself, this brought into
play a sense of masculine assertiveness which was expressed in places such as
Afghanistan and Iraq. By doing this, the so-called ‘conflicted masculinity’ of
the Clinton era gave way to the brash belligerence of the Bush epoch.35 In
many ways this was reminiscent of the Reagan administration, which placed
heavy emphasis on a strong militaristic foreign policy alongside a domestic
economy and set of values associated with hyper-masculinity, fatherhood and
family life.36 Under the Bush administration cultural commentators spoke
approvingly of women who had returned to family life and men who were
anxious to serve the military and assert themselves in the workplace.37
While a film such as In the Valley of Elah (2007) explores the consequences
of this hyper-masculine and nationalistic evocation of US manhood, it also
reinforces specific gendered divisions of space. Former Vietnam veteran
Deerfield not only possesses mobility (via his truck) compared with his
‘housewife’ (quite literally because she only leaves the house to briefly view
her son’s remains at the US army base) but he is also empowered through his
gender and past working experience to enter and engage with military
personnel attached to the base. When he is joined in his search for his son by
a female police officer, Detective Sanders, she is able to enter and engage on
the basis of her jurisdictional authority. Apart from her character, all the
other women in the film are employed in low-paid service jobs and the female
police officer is frequently undermined and ridiculed by her fellow male
officers. Public space, whether it is in the office environment or at the military
base, becomes a stage for men to demonstrate their authority and rugged
determination.
While reinforcing rather stark gendered distinctions between private and
public space, In the Valley of Elah does probe the problematic nature of US
1629
 KLAUS DODDS

masculinities that resides within the military and how that might be expressed
in places such as Iraq. As part of Deerfield’s investigations the grainy film
contained on his son’s cell phone becomes a crucial piece of evidence not only
of the latter’s experiences but also of prevailing attitudes towards Iraqi
civilians. Although fragmentary, it becomes clear that the missing soldier was
responsible for killing a young child because it is US military policy that
forbids soldiers from stopping their vehicle unnecessarily on a public road for
fear of being attacked by insurgents. The child in this case was a victim of
standard operating procedure. It is also apparent that he has been involved in
abusing at least one wounded Iraqi citizen. His fellow soldiers called him
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‘Doc’ because he liked to ask his victim(s) about whether it hurt when he
deliberately poked their injuries.
As Deerfield’s investigation unfolds, it is apparent to viewers that his son
has been killed by one of those fellow soldiers and the others in the party
have helped to dismember his body. The perpetrator eventually admits that,
after killing him, he and his colleagues used the dead man’s credit card to
purchase a meal before returning to their base. The casual nature of their
violence is startling and one of the men commits suicide, apparently unable to
deal with the aftermath of the killing. Alongside a murder of a woman in the
nearby town the film confronts, but does not in any substantial way seek to
resolve, how and why men turn to violence, not only killing themselves but
killing others, including women and children in the USA and Iraq. Broader
questions pertaining to the militarisation of American society and the
gendered roles of men and women are addressed in part through the figure of
Deerfield. Here, the film suggests, is a Vietnam veteran who not only carried
out his military service with valour but also demonstrates that it is possible to
be both an honourable solider and a patriotic citizen, one who is also able to
be a surrogate ‘father figure’ to the policewoman’s young son. In earlier and
possibly simpler times, the film suggests, a soldier could perform on the
battlefield and then return home and be a good husband and father too.

Extraterritoriality and the Jackson tradition of US foreign policy

In his analysis of US foreign policy in the post-Independence era, Walter
Russell Meade suggested that there were four main traditions, as named after
influential US statesmen—Jacksonian, Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian and
Wilsonian.38 For the purpose of this analysis the Jacksonian tradition is
the most germane as it refers to the belief that the first priority of US
administrations is the physical security and economic well-being of the
domestic population. While this tradition tends to be cautious about
international interventions, it embodies a belief that, if America is engaged
in a conflict, then it should do so with the explicit purpose of securing a
complete and overwhelming victory. The approach is uncompromising
towards adversaries and places considerable merit on being self-reliant and
not being dependent on international networks and institutions. President
George W Bush is widely believed to be the living embodiment of Jacksonian
values and this development has been enabled greatly by the impact of the
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9/11 attacks on the USA and by the influence of a neoconservative cabal,

which advocated a ‘strong America’.39
One film that embodies the Jacksonian approach to foreign policy is The
Kingdom (2007), which addresses the role of four officers attached to the FBI
and their small-group investigation of a massacre of US expatriates living in
Saudi Arabia. The opening section of the film is uncompromising and shows
the victims, who have been playing baseball and enjoying a barbecue, being
massacred by two men dressed in Saudi security services uniforms. After
some survive the initial onslaught, a huge bomb is exploded inside an
ambulance, killing further people, Saudis and Americans alike. It is clear that
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the mastermind behind the attack is watching from a nearby high-rise

building and is accompanied by his grandson, who is made to watch the
massacre. The very thing that initially hampers the response by the FBI is that
which the Jackson foreign policy tradition fears most of all—internal and
international jurisdictional wrangles that prevent firm action. The key
question becomes whether the Saudis and senior State Department officials
will allow the FBI to enter the Saudi Kingdom in order to investigate the
killings. Speed and mobility are of the essence. A senior officer is finally able
to leave with his other team members for Saudi Arabia, where their initial
investigations are hampered by Saudi obfuscation and sensitivities over
jurisdictional authority. Time also matters, as the FBI team are anxious to get
to the crime scene as quickly as possible.
The second segment of the film deals with the investigation and charts the
IFBI officers’ frustrations with a country and culture that none of the team
understands. The one female member of the team is reprimanded for
attempting to investigate the body of a Muslim man (who also happens to be
one of the initial assassins) in the morgue. Another is angry that the Saudi
investigative team is not willing to investigate all potential leads. After
securing the support of a sympathetic and Westernized Saudi police officer
(Colonel Al-Ghazi), the team is eventually able to carry out its investigation
and even persuades the authorities that it must be allowed to investigate
other potential sites, including the high-rise building. This eventually leads
them to track down the identities of the bomb makers and of the ‘evil genius’
figure who is responsible for unleashing violence on Americans and Saudis
alike.
The final part of the film culminates in the team’s hunt for the perpetrator.
The FBI team and its convoy are attacked on a highway and the assailants
kidnap one of its members. In a desperate race against time the others follow
the kidnappers into a dangerous part of the capital city. The victim is taken
to a small room and it is clear that the extremists will film the capture and
beheading of the FBI officer. After a violent confrontation involving other
residents, the team eventually secures his release and they enter the home of a
family. In order to calm the fears of the residing family, the female FBI officer
offers some sweets to a small girl. In return she offers a marble and it is
apparent that the said marble is exactly the same as one found in the
remnants of the previous bomb attack on the American expatriates. The
Saudi officer accompanying the FBI officers identifies the terrorist mastermind
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within this home, a deed visually confirmed when he literally sees the
‘evidence’ embodied by the damaged appearance of this man’s hands. He
appears, so the film suggests earlier, to have lost some parts of his fingers as a
consequence of previous bombing accidents. Another young family member
shoots the Saudi officer and, in order to save themselves, the FBI shoot not
only the young assassin but also the terrorist mastermind.
The climax to this film is significant because the dying terrorist whispers to
his young grandson that he must now kill them all. A generational shift of
hatred is presented at the same time that the lead FBI officer (Ronald Fleury)
admits that he told a grieving colleague that he was going to kill the assassins
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before departing for Saudi Arabia. Fleury and his team end their stay in
Saudi Arabia by telling the young son of Colonel Al-Ghazi that his deceased
father had been a brave man who had died in the course of duty. Having
honour and being prepared to pay the ultimate price are judged in this film to
be critical when confronting those who are determined to kill without
remorse and who implicate their children and grandchildren in their
murderous operations. In this way it also marks a crucial difference between
the two sides. The FBI’s use of violence, while deadly, is also supplemented by
a concern for the ‘victims’ of terror. As with Denzel Washington’s character
in The Siege (1998), Jamie Foxx’s African American character is sympathetic,
gentle (at least with his family and colleagues) but also conscientious and
willing to use violence in order to secure justice for those American victims.40
Critically the extraterritorial intervention of the FBI has been shown to
work—the perpetrators were killed and no one in this multicultural FBI team
was ‘left behind’.
By way of brief contrast, Lions for Lambs (2007) provides a more
dialogical interpretation of the Jackson foreign policy tradition, particularly
via the conversation between the Republican Senator Irvine and a liberal (in
American terms) journalist. The use of maps is critical in helping the Senator
to explain to that journalist (and viewing audiences) the apparent dangers
facing the USA. As Senator Irving asserts with reference to those
cartographic representations, they are ‘proof that there really is a new axis
of evil’ and that ‘You do not respond to an attack by using diplomacy’. As
the conversation continues, the journalist is berated by the Senator and asked
whether she wants to ‘win’ the war on terror or not. According to the
Senator, a new type of strategy is needed in order to secure that victory, to do
‘whatever it takes’ to address a ‘shattered Iraq, hopeless Afghanistan and
nuclear Iran’. Their conversation ends awkwardly with the Senator urging
the journalist to report the new ‘story’ but unlike, The Kingdom (2007), the
film offers a more nuanced ending involving the death of two soldiers in
Afghanistan juxtaposed with the journalist driving past the Arlington
Cemetery (where US soldiers from previous conflicts, including World War II
and Vietnam, are buried) close to Washington, DC. The final moment of the
film depicts another university student contemplating his options (and
perhaps the country’s options) for the future.
Strikingly The Kingdom (2007) was commercially a more successful film
than Lions for Lambs (especially in the USA); perhaps one reason why this
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might be so is that it offers an unambiguous conclusion. Violence is shown to

have resolved not only the kidnapping of one of the team but also ‘justice’
has been secured in the sense that the proponent of the deadly assault on US
citizens living in Saudi Arabia has been eliminated. What it does not address,
despite the opening segment covering the US–Saudi relationship in the post-
1945 period, is what the USA might do with regard to the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and how other massacres in the future might be avoided. In that sense
it is suitably ambivalent about a war which, unlike past conflicts (such as
World War II), does not seem to have an obvious closure date and is
unquestionably more nebulous.
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Ambivalent places: Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa and Saudi Arabia

The global South featured in these films is conceived of in deeply ambivalent
ways. On the one hand, films such as Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) draw our
Western attention to the precarious condition of humanity in the refugee
camps that litter the Afghan–Pakistan border. It is on the basis of seeing
these camps that Representative Wilson (after an earlier visit himself)
persuades a senior Congressional chairman to act in terms of granting more
aid and armaments to Afghan resistance forces operating against Soviet
forces in the 1980s. Indeed, the film leaves the viewer in no apparent doubt
that the chairman has been visibly ‘moved’ by the plight of these refugees and
their basic living conditions. On the other hand, places such as Afghanistan,
Iraq and Saudi Arabia are depicted in unflattering terms. They are shown to
be, at various times, too hot, too cold, too dangerous and too socially
conservative. While the films do distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foreign
others, the overall impression is that these places would not be considered
worthy of interest had they not been implicated in the war on terror.
As Edward Said and a host of other authors have recognised, Oriental
discourses are long-standing and well rooted in popular culture, including
film.41 Hollywood is no exception to this rule and in recent decades has
provided egregious examples of place depiction, suggesting that the
inhabitants of Middle Eastern and North African cities are untrustworthy,
dangerous and prone to extreme violence.42 Films such as Delta Force (1985)
and Iron Eagle (1986) are among the most notorious but more recent
offerings, such as Terms of Engagement (2000), also suggest that even Arab
children are willing to pick up weapons and shoot at US soldiers. If there are
‘good’ Arabs then they generally have to be taught and or guided by their
American counterparts in order to behave or perform in the appropriate
manner. In The Kingdom (2007) it is the FBI officers who encourage the Saudi
police officer to take the initiative in order to get results. The Middle East in
this film is not only an incubator for terrorism but also a site for US
personnel to demonstrate their superior skills and technical expertise.
Performing such deeds is all the more demanding when one considers how
the characters have to endure the dangerous spaces of the Arab city. As Steve
Graham has noted, ‘Arab cities, moreover, have long been represented by
Western powers as dark, exotic, labyrinthine and structureless places that
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need to be ‘‘unveiled’’ for the production of ‘‘order’’ through the ostensibly

superior scientific, planning and military technologies of the occupying
West’.43 Films such as Rendition (2006) visually address the enclosed spaces
of the ‘Arab city’ in order to generate a sense of claustrophobia and fear.
Narrow alleys, dark spaces and confusing street plans not only facilitate the
terrorists and their supporters but also complicate still further the task of law
enforcement agencies. Inside the city a religious school provides the
backdrop to one scene, which shows a young men being indoctrinated and
encouraged to bomb and kill both Americans and those apostates and their
representatives who offer support to the USA and its war on terror. The
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young men are encouraged to see their bodies and mobility as weapons.
Meanwhile the American torture of the chemical engineer continues without
apparently delivering any useful information about terrorist networks. The
sting in the tale is provided by the fact that the young man chosen to kill the
Chief of Police responsible for the torture of the engineer is in a relationship
with his daughter. The young man is seeking revenge for the death of his
brother. Unlike the local CIA officer, who consummates his relationship with
a local woman, the audience is never shown any intimacies involving the
other couple and the North African chief police officer is depicted as a
domineering figure who bullies or coerces female family members.
As Rendition suggests, these nameless places in the Middle East and North
Africa not only provide a base for the generation of terrorists in the first place
but also paradoxically enable the USA to remove terror suspects to be
questioned and tortured by regional accomplices. Even if an American CIA
official later secures the release of the suspect when it becomes clear that he
does not have any links to known terror groups, the film does not resolve the
question of whether the ‘exported’ practices of rendition and torture should
be allowed to happen on behalf of the US government. Instead the focus is
squarely placed on the eventual return of this green card-holding US resident
to his heavily pregnant white wife and small child. Interestingly the film never
identifies the North African place in question, even though it will be obvious
to many viewers as Marrakech in Morocco.

Conclusions
Film provides a rich medium for exploring the kinds of moral geographies
that Michael Shapiro has identified as being so important in marking out
territories, identities and states.44 Film audiences are active producers of
meaning, even while the patterns of engagement can be strongly shaped by,
among other things, the generic qualities of movies. As noted in this paper,
the action-thriller, with its use of melodrama, spectacular action, just-in-time
moments and frequently dangerous places, helps to depict and represent
political space in frequently stark terms. Space is never simply a backdrop in
these movies because it provides a series of interconnected settings for the
unfolding action and eventual resolution of the stories. The action-thriller,
despite the emphasis on action and spectacle, is nonetheless capable of
generating a range of responses to the cultural appropriation of the war on
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terror by the entertainment industry. Even if films are judged to be better at

representing than explaining, they nonetheless provide resources for critique
as well as simply telling citizens what feels right to do (cf Lions for Lambs).
Rendition, for example, underscores the point that the victim involved was a
green card holder who was married to an American citizen. Dick Cheney’s
so-called ‘dark side’ (his euphemism for rendition) is brought to the wide
screen in a manner not envisaged by him. Indeed, the DVD release of the film
provides additional resources at http://www.renditionmovie.com.
As discussed, this appropriation is varied as the films considered here
engage the war on terror in different ways and their foci vary geographically
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and thematically. Collectively these films remind us that the geographies of

the war on terror remain widespread and encapsulate a range of public,
private and secretive spaces such as the university, the military base, the
family home, the ghost plane and the airport. Finally, the films involve
specific national places varying degrees—most notably the USA, Afghani-
stan, Iraq, North Africa and Saudi Arabia. Overwhelmingly it is the agency
of the USA and sanctioned individuals that is privileged by these films and
viewers are left with little doubt in the case of The Kingdom that it is right and
legitimate for the country’s law enforcement officers to use extreme violence
in the face of an enemy that shows little inclination to desist from its attacks
on US citizens and infrastructure. If Mark Lacy is right that ‘Cinema
provides the West with moral comfort food, the geopolitical feel-good
factor’, then this paper suggests that the four action-thrillers considered here
do so in complicated and, at times, deeply ambivalent ways. Despite its
reputation for roller-coaster entertainment, the action-thriller is not only
capable of ‘thrilling’ but also of providing resources for critical reflection on
what Judith Butler has termed the precariousness of human life.45

Notes
The help and support of Jason Dittmer, Mark Lacy and TWQ editor Shahid Qadir are gratefully
acknowledged.
1 This list is in no way exhaustive and could include other recent releases such as Standard Operating
Procedure (2008) and Stop-Loss (2008), which address prisoner abuse and the war experiences of a
group of Texan soldiers in Iraq, respectively. The agitprop of Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
and the puppet-based satire of Team America (2004) offer further evidence that post-9/11 Hollywood
cinema is not easily summarised. For one reflective piece, see B Rich, ‘After the fall: cinema studies
post 9/11’, Cinema Journal, 43, 2004, pp 109–115.
2 For details on box office receipts, see http://www.boxofficemojo.com
3 A Light, Reel Arguments, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001.
4 US presidents have self-consciously deployed movie references such as Ronald Reagan referring to
Rambo and George W Bush recreating a so-called Top Gun moment when he landed a plane on a US
aircraft carrier and then emerged later to declare that combat operations were over in Iraq in May
2003. For one analysis of that filmic inspired spectacle, see F Rich, The Greatest Story Ever Sold,
London: Penguin, 2008.
5 M Lacy, ‘War, cinema and moral anxiety’, Alternatives, 28, 2003, pp 611–636.
6 For a larger discussion of the military–industrial–media–entertainment complex, see J Der Derian,
Virtuous War, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001.
7 On the iconography of the global, see D Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001.
8 C Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
9 D Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008, p 86.

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10 There is a growing and intellectually diverse literature exploring the role of popular culture within the
discipline of International Relations. See, for example, R Gregg, International Relations on Film,
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998; C Weber, International Relations Theory, London: Routledge, 2001;
and Weber, Imagining America at War, London: Routledge, 2005.
11 See, for example, Weber International Relations Theory.
12 For one overview, see M Power & A Crampton (eds), Cinema and Popular Geo-Politics, London:
Routledge, 2006. An early example of popular geopolitics involving magazines was J Sharp,
Condensing the Cold War, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. The most
important book length exposition on critical geopolitics remains G Toal, Critical Geopolitics, London:
Routledge, 1996. On tabloid geopolitics, see F Debrix, Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics,
London: Routledge, 2008.
13 For one analysis of the film and its impact on US–Turkish relations, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
entertainment/4700154.stm, accessed 16 June 2008.
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14 For more information on the 4 July 2003 incident (the so-called bag affair) involving US special forces
and Turkish forces, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3049590.stm, accessed 16 June
2008.
15 Various films, such as the Rambo series, arguably not only address the issue of missing POWs in
Vietnam but also, alongside others such as Missing in Action (1986), suggest that hostage/captivity
crises can be resolved successfully. Later variants on this theme would include Behind Enemy Lines
(2001), which deals with the successful rescue of a naval airman in Serb-occupied Bosnia.
16 The film is also significant in terms of US–Turkish cinematic engagements, given the unpopularity in
Turkey of Midnight Express (1978), which dealt with the jailing of an American citizen after he was
found to possess drugs while in the country. For a brief discussion, see Z Sardar, Orientalism: Concepts
in the Social Sciences, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2000, pp 105–106.
17 On 1980s Hollywood and Reagan’s America, see J Valantin, Hollywood, the Pentagon and Washington,
London: Anthem, 2001; and, for the aftermath, T McCrisken & A Pepper, American History and
Contemporary Hollywood Film, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005.
18 R Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
19 M Anderson, Cowboy Imperialism and Hollywood Film, London: Peter Lang, 2007.
20 S Neale, Genre and Hollywood, London: Routledge, 2000.
21 K Dodds, ‘Screening geopolitics: James Bond and the early cold war films 1962–1967’, Geopolitics, 10,
2005, pp 266–289.
22 S Higgins, ‘Suspenseful situations: melodramatic narrative and the contemporary action film’, Cinema
Journal, 47, 2008, pp 74–96.
23 E Anker, ‘Villains, victims and heroes: melodrama, media and the 9/11’, Journal of Communication, 55,
2005, pp 22–37.
24 C Collins, Homeland Mythology, College Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2007.
25 On post-9/11 cinema and television, see W Dixon (ed), Film and Television after 9/11, Carbondale, IL:
University of Southern Illinois Press, 2004. On Hollywood in recent pre- and post-9/11 times, see
B Dickenson, Hollywood’s New Radicalism, London, IB Tauris 2006.
26 Holloway, 9/11 and the War on Terror, p 83.
27 Maltby, Hollywood Cinema.
28 See S Dalby, ‘Warrior geopolitics: gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the Kingdom of Heaven’,
Political Geography, 27, 2008, pp 439–455.
29 Ibid.
30 C Weber, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11: the temperature where morality burns’, Journal of American Studies, 40,
2006, pp 113–131.
31 C Weber, ‘Not without my sister: imagining a moral America in Kandahar’, at http://
www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-resolution_1325/kandahar_3006.jsp, accessed 16 June 2008.
32 On masculinities and hegemonic forms, see R Connell, Masculinities, London: Allen and Unwin, 1995.
For a feminist approach to gender and militarization, see C Enloe, Does Khaki Become You?, London:
Pluto, 1983; and Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1999. On masculinity and UN peacekeepers, see S Whitfield, Men,
Militarism and UN Peace-Keeping, Boulder, CO: Lynne Riener, 2008.
33 M Hannah, ‘Virility and violation in the US ‘‘war on terrorism’’’, in L Nelson & J Seager (eds),
A Companion to Feminist Geography, Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, pp 550–564.
34 On US national mythologies including the frontier, see R Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, New York:
Athenaeum, 1992.
35 B Malin, American Masculinity under Clinton, London: Lang, 2005.
36 S Jeffords, Hard Bodies, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
37 S Faludi, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, New York: Metropolitan Books,
2007.

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38 W Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World, London:
Routledge, 2002.
39 On neoconservative thought and the Bush administration, see, for example, D Frum & R Pearle, An
End all Evil, New York: Random House, 2003. For a dissenting view from a former neo-conservative
supporter, see F Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
40 For one persuasive reading of The Siege (1998), see M McAlister, Epic Encounters, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2006.
41 E Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York: Vintage, 1994. On Hollywood and oriental
representations, see L Khatib, Filming the Modern Middle East, London, IB Tauris, 2006.
42 See, for example, J Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs, New York: Olive Branch Press, 2001.
43 S Graham, ‘Cities and the war on terror’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 30,
2006, p 256. More generally, see D Gregory, The Colonial Present, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
44 M Shapiro, Cinematic Geopolitics, London: Routledge, 2008; and Shapiro, Violent Cartographies,
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Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

45 Lacy, ‘War, cinema and moral anxiety’, p 634. See also J Butler, Precarious Life, London, Verso 2004.

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