Homeland Security

I had been curious for a while about HOMELAND SECURITY because of its cast, the low score of 4,1 and the notion that back in 2005 it probably was aired on channel 2. Last December I finally saw it and I found it a bit better than the score reserved for nearly the worst movies might make you assume.

The story is set some days after the 9/11 attacks. Retired Admiral Theodore McKee (Tom Skerritt) receives a call from the White House that since he has been a commander in chief he has to serve again, and once in the White House he is invested of the charge of senior member of the Homeland Security team. Soon we see that NSA agent Sol Binder (Leland Orser) kinda predicted a terrorist attack where the numbers 9 and 11 kept popping out but since there wasn't yet a OHS team the attack couldn't have been avoided. As the movie goes on there are also different subplots including the invasion of Afghanistan, the Custom agents on the Canadian border stopping a vehicle carrying explosives for an attempted bombing, the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, destruction of Al Quaeda training camps and McKee's daughter Melissa that luckily avoided the flight that had been hijacked by terrorists. But soon after despite avoiding tragedy, Melissa witnessed some training of bombers while in the OHS office they are all discussing of alerting properly the US population about an eventual other attack.

While the pace was stale in some points what prevented me to give it a 1 or 2 was that the acting was good by nearly all (Skerritt, Scott Glenn, Glenn Morshower and Michael Cudlitz especially) and it was a decent view about the Homeland Security division before and after the 9/11 attacks.

Not a bad movie by any means but I am also now assuming that some of the haters might be some conspiracy theorists.

A confusing, episodic TV movie that was either cut down from a lengthy mini-series or written by a committee that never met. Is it based on fact? or purely fiction? or somewhere in between? Perhaps all or none of the above; it is never clear. The footage that was left on the cutting room floor may have fleshed out the subplots and characters and clarified just what was going on. Maybe the DVD will be complete, although I doubt that even intact this film would be worthwhile. The acting by has-beens and never-weres is passable at best, while the writing is not. Some of the dialog sounds like political posturing, and the "climax" would make Frank Capra cringe. After 9/11, one commentator asked how long it would be before a film would try to capitalize on the events. Now we have the answer.

"Homeland Security" wasn't the worst, but by the same token, wasn't all that great. I guess I expected a little better out of this, since the cast was pretty decent; Tom Skeritt (Picket Fences), Beth Broderick (Sabrina The Teenage Witch), Scott Glenn (Silverado and Backdraft) and Stephi Lineburg was good as Melissa McKee, Admiral McKee's (Skeritt) daughter.

What I liked about it was the timeline from events leading to September 11th, 9/11 itself and the formation of the US Department of Homeland Security. I especially liked that they didn't dwell on 9/11, although it was a tragic event and what lead to the formation of the US Department Homeland Security, we all know what happened, lived through it and I didn't want to see a another long drawn out version of it. That would've been the easy thing to do.

The problem I had with this show, is I'm trying to figure out what it's supposed to be. Is this a movie, a mini-series or a pilot to a new drama/action series? By the end of the show, there were many "loose ends" that needed to be tied, especially the final scene, but it looks like it won't be. I'm assuming that this was supposed to be a pilot to new series, NBC bought it, but changed their minds and scrapped it.

* 1/2 out of 5 for being incomplete

I rented this movie the other day on DVD and knew nothing about it other than what was on the jacket. I read other users comments and felt compelled to comment as well. Despite the low budget casting and filming processes, I felt that the message conveyed in this film was very good. The message? Well, one that came across to me was that no matter what status a person has in society, people are just human.

Considering the finger pointing for blame on the terrorist attacks (past and present), this movie conveyed that we are all human with frailties. How would a mother and father respond to their potential son-in-law's father being imprisoned and considering how smoothly he had logical answers directed toward him when interrogated. We can all be easily fooled and terrorists are experts with intensive training to play upon human traits, whether we are an American or not.

One thing, though, that I wished this movie would have attempted to clarify more was regarding Homeland Security set up and its' boundaries for the homeland. Is America going to have another agency with such power it can abuse and terrorize Americans similarly to the IRS? I agree, having an agency that combines databases of other agencies sounds cool, but the message I derived from this movie is that this set up for another agency was vastly opportunistic. Hence, I personally felt terror from this movie in this regard and how this agency will be run and what boundaries/limitations have been set, if any. After all, even I had trouble with Tom Skerritt's role of even being considered to set up such an operation ... just not the type or very credible ... just a nice old meandering neighborly guy, eh? Sure, like this is the kind of man now in charge? Perhaps keep him on the Lifetime movie channel. But, gee, maybe using him in this role helped to use this movie as a tool to influence people to be supportive enough to pay more taxes to support this new undefined (unrestricted?) powerful agency? Am I the only one who was left with feeling more terror about this new agency after viewing this film?

Regarding other non-ending pieces and parts, I felt that this was intentional to provoke thought processing for viewers. If there had been more film with the tracking down of the terrorists and other things, it would have taken away from the human quality of this film.

With that said, I felt this movie was very good in conveying that people are human and if it helped to teach some people not to let their emotions take charge in serious decision-making , then it succeeded in that degree.

Yes it's true, I worked 45 minutes outside Hollywood to shoot this awful movie. I don't know what was worse... 1) being used a dead body on the field with the red ants... 2) All the scenes we had to do 20 takes for but never saw in the film. The plot has holes big enough to drive trucks through and the use of racial stereo-types are truly what makes this film a laugh. Perhaps someday we will see the scenes from the big battle with Scott Glen. Maybe we will see the more of the interrogation scenes. Or just maybe they will finally show us the second part to the movie that was never shown. But I guess there is no need to complain about a film that was poorly funded by Paramount Pictures.