True Lies (1994)

Until last week, True Lies remained an overlooked item on Arnold Schwarzenegger’s and James Cameron’s long résumés. Hollywood poured $120 million (an astronomical sum at the time) into this overbearing, overlong action-comedy. It saw astronomical success at the time, but now, absent from streaming services, it remains the stuff of mothballed DVD boxes in attics everywhere. Schwarzenegger played Harry Tasker, a federal agent and one of the deadliest spies in the world… without telling his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) or his daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku). Harry’s family learns about his double-life when a Palestinian terrorist organization threatens him.

True Lies reentered the public consciousness a few days ago, when Dushku came forward with her harrowing story of sexual assault at the hands of stunt coordinator Joel Kramer. Two other women have since made similar allegations. I believe all three accusers. I also find it bitterly appropriate that the most high-profile allegation concerns this film, which displays with a straight face all the things wrong with toxic masculinity and jingoism. If this film could walk and talk, it would hate women and minorities.

The Citizen (2013)

They say everyone remembers when they heard about JFK’s assassination. Everyone remembers the morning of September 11, 2001. And I will remember today, the day Donald Trump became president. Because I, an Arab in Trump’s America, feel terrified. If you don’t understand why, then Sam Kadi’s 2013 drama The Citizen will help.

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. inspired me to start Turban Decay. Growing up Arab in rural America meant (among many, many other things) that seeing any images of “people like me” in a film felt like finding Waldo. I’d just feel so excited at seeing anyone in any film from the same part of the world as my ancestors.

Then I watched To Live and Die in L.A., a movie that opens with Friedkin using the language of film to sing the praises of Ronald Reagan and his tough talk on taxes. Before the film’s actual plot even started, an Arab showed up for a handful of seconds only to summarily detonate himself. It hit me that what I just saw has become not the exception but the rule. I’d feel so excited about representation that I willed myself to ignore the hateful propaganda within. I might feel different if much had changed for racial politics in the 31 years since its release, but, well, Donald Trump.…

76 Links of Muslims Denouncing Terrorism

Update: I’ve already had people respond with something to the effect of, “Only 73?! What about all the other billion plus Muslims?” Several of these include lists of other Muslims speaking out. But more to the point, I shouldn’t have to provide literally over a billion links to almost every single Muslim in the world to make you understand the wrongness of bigotry and why you don’t get to pay back tragedy with genocide.


Muslims hear it all the time.

“Why haven’t Muslims condemned these attacks?”
“Why have Muslims remained silent?”
“Why haven’t Muslim leaders said anything?”

For expediency, let’s ignore the bigoted undercurrents inherent in presuming over 1.5 billion people as guilty unless they actively denounce the actions of less than 100,000 others who claim to share their faith. Let’s also ignore that ISIS has killed mostly Muslims who don’t share their opinions. Let’s then also ignore that ISIS has explicitly stated that they do what they do in the west to turn westerners against Muslims in the hopes of driving up ISIS’s numbers. So to actually answer these questions…

Escape Plan (2013)

As an Arab-American of Muslim upbringing, the last 14 years have made one thing painfully, ineluctably clear: although I identify as a pacifist and I’ve never even met a terrorist, my fellow countrymen have no qualms about sacrificing my liberty for their security.

I don’t even just mean hate crimes. At any time, any day, for any or no reason, I could suddenly get disappeared by authorities. The feds could immure and torture me in some black site in the heart of America, or I could face even worse treatment in Guantanamo Bay, or face even worse treatment in an unknown facility on the far side of the world, all with no evidence that I’d done anything wrong, at a site specifically chosen to deprive me of the use of a lawyer, with an arbitrary “enemy combatant” tag designed to make sure I can’t use the Sixth or Seventh Amendments. They could intentionally set a prohibitive fine; maybe they just wouldn’t tell anyone they had me in custody at all. They could convince my friends and loved ones that I’d done something to deserve this. (More of them would believe it than I want to admit.) I might never speak to my lawyer, family, or friends again. I might literally never see the light of day again. The staff at these prisons know they could torture, brutalize, starve, and possibly murder me with no provocation and no fear of punishment for decades, if ever. Whatever higher authorities would do to my torturers wouldn’t compare to what they’d do to anyone who’d try to stop it.

You might respond with blandishments about how, as a civic-minded film critic with a graduate-level education, I have nothing to worry about. But don’t waste your time or mine by claiming this has never happened to people who don’t deserve it. Only an idiot would believe that the government only punishes “bad people.”

So Escape Plan—a movie taking place inside “the Tomb,” a super-duper-max, ultra-secret, privately-owned, putatively “escape-proof” prison peopled with dissidents and Muslims—hits home for me.

The film centers on highly-paid escapologist Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) and his attempts to escape the Tomb with the help of curiously solicitous fellow inmate Emil Rottmayer (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Breslin also faces the reptilian Warden Hobbes (James Caviezel) and his violent assistant (Vinnie Jones).

Achmed Saves America (2014)

I loathe Jeff Dunham.

I don’t mean to say I have a personal beef with him. Maybe he has a wonderful personality. Maybe he put a lot of hard work into doing all those voices whilst moving his mouth just enough for his less drunk audience members to see the bounce of his Adam’s apple. Maybe he pays his bills on time or buys a round when he goes out with Bill Engvall or Guy Fieri or Joe the Plumber or whoever; I don’t know. I just know that I find his comedy jejune, racist, and insufferably unfunny. He fancies himself an “equal opportunity offender” as he uses bland comedy to effectively monetize racism in the vein of Lisa Lampanelli, but for “equal” opportunity, he spends an inordinate amount of time touting his stereotypical Arab Muslim dummy, Achmed.

So I regret to inform you all that Achmed got a movie, and I regret to remind myself that I’ve now seen it.

Back to the Future (1985)

Yep. Back to the Future, the 1980s film classic.

Before we begin, I do not debate the classic status of the Back to the Future series. I love the films myself! I won’t do a full-on review here, though, because what could I possibly add to a movie that we all grew up loving that nobody else has already said?

Four Lions (2010)

I have to admit that I had a lot of trepidation about watching Four Lions. A lot can go wrong with any satire centered around Islamist fundamentalists. Chris Morris and the three co-writers had a lot of lines to toe. The screenplay needed to make the protagonists likable without unwittingly conveying approval of terrorism. The script required farce, gravitas, and memorable characterization without endorsing bigotry or alarmism. On top of that, the film ends on a downbeat, which comedies don't usually attempt.

I think Morris succeeded, and I must say I really like the result.

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

All right, first review of the blog!

Zero Dark Thirty actually catalyzed my decision to create this blog. I practically felt like I had to after reading some of the decidedly bigoted responses thereto…