Normally, I'm not a big fan of direct to DVD releases. They tend to have low production values, bad writing and sub par acting. However, every once in a while some titles will be released directly to DVD because of factors other than being crap. Sometimes a movie has a good idea, solid writing, and a strong cast, but the studio involved just feels like it doesn't appeal to a large enough audience to make a sufficient profit. Sometimes you can run into material that is either controversial or in the most rare cases, ends up with the almost superfluous NC-17 rating. As far as I know, there has not been a widely released title in theaters that held an NC-17 rating for as long as I have been alive (I could always be wrong about this, but I would need to do more digging before I found out for sure).
In the case of Unthinkable, the film runs into the controversy category for reasons to be straight lined to DVD. The main premise of Unthinkable is torture. Not that torture is good or bad necessarily, just torture. Initially that might sound like a very not-selling point, given films like Hostel that have torture as their premise and just suck lots of ass. However, if Hollywood proves anything, it's that there are as many ideas and as many ways to express them as there are people under the sun.
In all honesty, I should probably elaborate on the plot a little bit: an American born Muslim played by Michael Sheen has lost his marbles and decided it would be a good idea to use his special forces training as a demolitions expert to acquire nuclear materials and use them to create high yield explosives that he then leaves around the country in an attempt to get the US to withdraw from Muslim countries. Alright, so the plot is admittedly a little convoluted, but it has to be said that it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Hell, it's not even that far fetched when you really think about it: fundamentalist whackos are everywhere these days and nuclear materials are neither impossible to acquire nor are nuclear weapons all that hard to fabricate if you have the knowledge and experience. I think we tend to assume the idea is ludicrous simply because it's never happened to us, but I think that has more to do with the fact that we have a very aggressive national security policy and a lot less to do with the fact that there are people out there with the will and the means to do great harm to the people of the United States.
So you've probably gathered by now that there are a lot of inherent politics involved with this movie. When I think about it, I'm actually a little surprised this movie even got made since most of Hollywood seems to be composed of PC control freaks. Anyhow, the movie is dark and edgy and doesn't apologize for anything and I really liked that. There's also a very interesting dynamic between Samuel L. Jackson and Carrie Anne Moss. Jackson plays a veteran torture expert full of angst and madness while Moss plays an obvious and intentionally juxtaposed FBI agent who is very by the book and straitlaced. As the story unfolds, the interaction between the two characters can be seen as a metaphor for the dilemma of the human conscience in cases like this: can you really justify sacrificing one person for the sake of many? Even if the sacrifice is horrible?
Taken one step further, the film can also be considered as a look at human nature: just how inhuman are we willing to be when our backs are up against the wall? The movie posits that we are willing to be completely inhuman for the sake of our own preservation and I am inclined to agree. The drive for survival is one of our most powerful urges as humans and we can sense it on many levels, not just the personal and physical.
So I need to wrap things up before I drag on forever. This movie is dark and uncompromising and I liked that a lot. It stood up, spat in the face of political correctness and told it in no uncertain terms to go to hell. This movie is definitely not for everyone and would never be appropriate for younger audiences. But, if you think there's a place for the darker part of human nature in the inventory of necessary skills, then you will probably get something out of this movie.
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